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isteria monocytogenes contamination in cheese,” a promise on which they are delivering.
Cheese can be made legally in the U.S. using unpasteurized milk, so long as the cheese is aged for a minimum of 60 days at a temperature no less than 35 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, unpasteurized milk can only be used to produce a limited variety of cheeses as specified by the FDA. All other federal regulations for cheese production are the same whether or not milk used for cheesemaking is pasteurized. Inspections are conducted regularly by federal and state agencies as well as private organizations.
Being a small producer, or an artisan producer, does not change the fact that safety must always be any food producer’s top priority. The FDA has worked with the American Cheese Society by reviewing our Best Practices Guide for Cheesemakers to ensure its technical accuracy and alignment with current regulations, including the safe production of raw milk cheeses. We will continue to focus on educating producers about safe cheesemaking practices, and working with regulators to maintain science-based guidelines that positively impact public health and safety.
American cheesemakers care deeply about making safe, delicious, wholesome products for consumers, and this event is a devastating reminder that food safety is of the utmost importance.
Please see our website at www.cheesesociety.org for complete, thorough, and up-to-date educational resources and accurate facts about the industry.
Nora Weiser
Executive Director
American Cheese Society
About the American Cheese Society
Founded in 1983, the American Cheese Society (ACS) is the leader in promoting and supporting American cheeses, representing over 1,700 cheese industry professionals. ACS provides the cheese community with educational resources and networking opportunities while encouraging the highest standards of cheesemaking focused on safety and sustainability.Cristiano Ronaldo became a transcendent player at Real Madrid, but it was at Manchester United where he truly developed his craft.
The Portuguese star received a perfect education from Sir Alex Ferguson. Ronaldo’s abilities ensured he was always going to develop into a star, but the ex-United boss gave him that reassurance and treated him with great affection.
But it wasn’t always easy for the three-time Ballon d’Or winner. Ferguson wasn’t afraid to clash with his players and Ronaldo certainly wasn’t excused from criticism.
Phil Neville revealed in 2013 how Roy Keane, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt used to kick Ronaldo in training in order to toughen him up.
Things went even further than that, however. Ronaldo arrived at Old Trafford in 2003 as a raw 18-year-old who was so used to winning matches at Sporting Lisbon on his own.
Ferguson, of course, was having none of it. In a new book titled Cristiano Ronaldo: The Biography, author Guillem Balague explains how the 31-year-old was reduced to tears by the criticism he received from his manager and teammates.
The fiery Scot would attempt to drill into the winger the importance of keeping his shape.
“When we used to play against Arsenal it was imperative that Ronaldo got back into shape,” Neville is quoted as saying in an extract published by Newsweek.
“They had Pires on one side, Ljungberg on the other, we weren’t allowed to have any gaps and in training leading up to the game, the focus was probably on him, particularly in the early years, to keep his shape.”
Fergie reduced Ronaldo to tears
But Ronaldo would often forget his responsibilities. Ferguson eventually reached boiling point.
“In Ronaldo’s first match back on home soil since signing for Manchester United, a Champions League game against Benfica, Ferguson could not contain himself any longer,” Balague writes.
“Things had not gone to plan as the Portuguese team ran out 1–0 winners in Lisbon. The winger, who spent the game trying to prove why he was a Premier League player, had a bad day at the office.
“Ferguson showed no pity.
“‘Who do you think you are? Trying to play by yourself? You’ll never be a player if you do this!’
“Ronaldo began to cry.
“The other players left him be. ‘He needed to learn,’ said [Rio] Ferdinand. ‘That was a message from the team, not just from Ferguson: everyone thought he needed to learn.’
Ferdinand and Fortune teased Ronaldo
“Predictably, the group responded by winding him up. Quinton Fortune and Rio Ferdinand reminded him of the incident a few weeks later.
“‘He’s crying in the changing room again!’”
“‘F*** off! What are you talking about?’”
“‘Cry-baby, cry-baby!’”
Ferguson quickly realised that Ronaldo needed to be loved and would always apply the carrot.
“Ferguson had never treated any other player with the same respect and affection as he did Ronaldo,” Balague added.
Is Cristiano Ronaldo the greatest player in history? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!Support us! GearJunkie may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Learn more
“If you build it they will come”… especially if you sock $400 million into the project and add 5 miles of zip-lines through the trees.
Did we mention the skate park, BMX track, and mountain-boarding, too?
A literal mecca to adventure sports is being built in the woods of West Virginia. It’s called The Summit, and this 15,000-acre adventure wonderland, financed with the above-mentioned millions of dollars, will be “the largest project in the history of Scouting” when it’s completed this month.
The Summit site was announced in 2011 in the media, and planning stretches back a few years before that. Construction has been full time since, and this month it debuts to the world, on July 15th, at the annual National Scout Jamboree.
Tens of thousands of Scouts will descend upon the site to camp, climb, whitewater raft, and gather as the finishing touches are put on the property this month.
(See more images of the Summit and a breakdown on the adventure activities on page 2 of this post)
The Summit is named after a mountain on the property overlooking the New River Gorge. Immense cliffs line the valley, which drops off to fast-flowing whitewater thousands of feet below.
It’s a natural wonder and the kind of site Scouts and anyone into the outdoors dreams of spending a week exploring. But don’t think the experience is all hiking trails and merit badges. Though traditional Scouting themes will be present, the Summit aims to be a new and different kind of experience.
I talked with Jack Furst and John Stewart, project leaders for the Summit site. Both stressed the Summit was built for a new generation of Boy Scout, one who is “connected 24/7, phone in hand,” as Stewart put it.
“You invite these kids camping and tell them they need to leave their phones behind… you’re going to lose that kid and never get them outdoors,” Stewart said.
Instead, the Summit — official name: the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve — has more than 400 wifi hot spots amongst its trees. Hiking trails and camp fires will be present, but so will the action sports like BMX, skateboarding, zip-lining, and freeride mountain biking.
Said Jack Furst, the man charged with overseeing the development and programming at the Summit: “Our customer is a 14- to 21-year-old youth. They are interested in hanging upside down on zip lines going 60mph with their hair on fire… while texting.”
Furst is exaggerating. But he stresses being “relevant and cool” was a No. 1 priority when the Summit was being designed. “The Summit is defined by varying levels of adrenaline rush,” Furst said. “It’s also about technology and sustainability.”
The Summit will host the National Jamboree every four years, the first of which is this month, July 15 – 24.
It also joins three major Scouting camps around the U.S. as a new “high adventure base” that Scouts will travel to year-round for activities.
See page 2 of this post for more images and a run-down on the Summit’s impressive amenities to adventure. Makes me want to be of age to join the Scouts again!
—Stephen RegenoldBack on Sept. 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, an Ohio woman was one of three people detained by authorities at Detroit Metro Airport, where she claims she was strip-searched and held without cause for four hours.
No charges were ever filed against any of the three passengers, but the woman is now suing airport officials, Frontier Airlines, and various federal authorities, including the TSA and the FBI.
To go back to the start, during the woman’s Frontier flight from Denver to Detroit, crew members reported suspicious activity. Specifically, they claimed that two male passengers, who were seated in the same row as the plaintiff but with whom she was not acquainted, were spending too much time in the bathroom. The plane was escorted to Detroit Metro by F-16 fighter jets.
In a blog post written the day after the events, the woman wrote that she had no idea that there was any problem until after the plane had landed on the tarmac.
“Before I knew it, about 10 cops, some in what looked like military fatigues, were running toward the plane carrying the biggest machine guns I have ever seen–bigger than what the guards carry at French train stations,” she wrote. “Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down… He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.”
She claims that the officers holding her would not answer her questions and that she was placed in a 6’ by 10’ cell with a metal cot and a video camera above the open toilet.
According to the complaint, authorities ordered her to strip naked and squat and cough as an officer looked on. Investigators also searched her mouth, checked under her eyelids, and in her hair. All before interrogating her and the ultimately releasing her.
“I was frightened and humiliated, and my rights were clearly violated solely because of my ethnicity,” recalls the passenger in a statement released today. “As an American citizen and a mom, I’m really concerned about my children growing up in a country where your skin color and name can put your freedom and liberty at risk at any time. This kind of discrimination should not be tolerated.”
The ACLU of Michigan, which is filing the suit on behalf of the passenger, claims that public records show she was detained because of her proximity to the two men and because of her name.
A staff attorney for ACLU of Michigan calls the incident “not simply a mistake made by an airline employee or government agency, but a predictable consequence of institutionalizing racial stereotypes and mass suspicion as law enforcement tactics.”
The complaint — filed against Frontier, the TSA, Wayne County Airport Authority, Detroit Metro Airport Police, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Patrol — alleges unreasonable search and seizure and discrimination prohibited by the federal civil rights laws.WAILUKU — A 10-year prison term was ordered Tuesday for a former jail guard convicted of sexually assaulting an inmate while he was working at the Maui Community Correctional Center three years ago.
James Siugpiyemal took advantage of his job as an adult corrections officer and “violated this position of trust to establish a sexual relationship” with the inmate, said Deputy Prosecutor Iwalani Gasmen.
“This was not based on love but was based on his exploitation of her,” Gasmen said in arguing for the prison term.
“He used her. He used her for his own sexual gratification, even despite having a wife and family.”
In a trial in July, Siugpiyemal, 44, was found guilty of second-degree sexual assault and two counts of third-degree sexual assault of the 36-year-old Kihei woman.
She videotaped a sexual encounter between her and Siugpiyemal on Aug. 11, 2014, in her car at the Maui Tropical Plantation in Waikapu. At the time, she was a work furlough inmate at the Wailuku jail.
The woman reported that Siugpiyemal had threatened to have her work furlough privileges taken away after he saw a photo of her wearing a bikini that she had posted on Facebook. He called her and the two exchanged text messages before she reported having sexual contact with Siugpiyemal on July 31, 2014, and Aug. 11, 2014.
During the second incident, the woman said she turned on a camera in her car to make the video because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
“You were banking on the fact that you were a corrections officer and people are going to believe you,” the woman said, appearing by videoconference for Siugpiyemal’s sentencing Tuesday. “I’m just a drug addict...
“At the end of the day, nobody did believe what I said because you were acquitted on the first time... and you know for a fact it happened,” she said.
She was referring to jury verdicts finding Siugpiyemal not guilty of two other charges of second-degree sexual assault.
“They might not have believed what I said, but they believed what they saw,” the woman said. “I just hope at some point you can take responsibility and accountability in some way for your actions.”
While noting that he didn’t have any specific information, 2nd Circuit Judge Joseph Cardoza said the not-guilty verdicts weren’t necessarily a rejection of what the victim said in her testimony. He said the jury appeared to pay “very close attention” to some legal definitions in those charges.
Defense attorney Richard Gronna, who was appointed to represent Siugpiyemal after the trial, argued for probation for the defendant.
Siugpiyemal, who has no prior arrests or convictions, has already spent 11 months in jail and would have to register as a sex offender, Gronna said.
Because he is not a U.S. citizen, Siugpiyemal will face deportation to the Federated States of Micronesia, Gronna said.
Siugpiyemal is the son of a chief on a small atoll of less than 200 people in Yap, said Pat O’Brien, a San Diego, Calif., resident who spoke in support of Siugpiyemal at his sentencing.
“He was raised as a responsible leader, and he played that role up until this incident,” O’Brien said.
He said Siugpiyemal had joined the Yap Police Department and was managing the U.S. census there.
“He will never be free of this stigma,” O’Brien said. “He’s lost all status he once enjoyed.”
But he said Siugpiyemal could help residents who need to move in the next few years from the island because of rising sea levels.
Gronna said that the victim could have talked to jail staff about her concerns when Siugpiyemal first approached her about her Facebook page or when they exchanged text messages. “I think the defendant would have been dealt with appropriately,” Gronna said.
As police began an investigation, Siugpiyemal resigned from his job Oct. 9, 2014, and left the state, officials said.
Gronna said Siugpiyemal hadn’t been approached by law enforcement before he returned to Yap to help his family.
But Gasmen said Siugpiyemal had been placed on administrative leave from his job Oct. 3, 2014. He paid $1,634 to change his plane ticket so he could leave Oct. 9, 2014, a day earlier than his original ticket, Gasmen said.
She said it took two years for the state to have Siugpiyemal brought back from Yap to face the charges.
“Sexual assaults in state correctional facilities are drastically underreported and rarely brought to trial,” she said.
Siugpiyemal didn’t testify during his trial.
Speaking in court Tuesday, he said he wanted to return to Yap to help his family, including his wife and parents.
“I realize what I did was wrong, and I cannot reverse my action,” he said. “For that, I would like to apologize to (the victim) and her family for all the pain I have caused.”
In sentencing Siugpiyemal to prison, Judge Cardoza said he weighed several factors, including the defendant’s history, the nature of the offense and the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense.
“At the end of the day, this is extremely serious,” Cardoza said.
* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.Shutterstock
Going freelance is becoming ever more popular as the years progress; and with the pursuit of a healthy balance of work and life playing a vital role in our career choice, working from home seems to be the ideal solution.
If you’re thinking of doing this full time, or simply just for some extra income, your choice of speciality is vital. Not only do you want to choose a job that you enjoy but also one that will bring in a good amount of money.
So, which jobs bring in the highest pay by freelancing? Continue reading the list to find out what the top paying gigs are!
20. Customer Service Support Officer
Freelance jobs in customer service are not as easy to find as some of the others on the list, but opportunities are still plenty. You could be hired as an Apple tech support, for example, and work in the comfort of your own home. To succeed in this position, you need to be a good communicator.
Average Salary: $8-$12 (£5–£8) per hour
19. Administration Support Officer
Some companies don’t mind where their admin support is, as long as they are doing the job. To be successful, you will need previous experience in an office position to show that you can manage your duties well from your own four walls.
Average Salary: $11-$13 (£7-£9) per hour
18. PR Consultant
Many PR specialists are self-employed and take on various campaigns and projects. Previous experience to demonstrate that you have the skills to take on these tasks is beneficial. Before you solely freelance, it’s a good idea to build a strong online portfolio that demonstrates your previous work.
Average Salary: $13-$22 (£9-£15) per hour
17. Marketing Consultant
You could be involved in a number of projects from email campaigns to social media or content. Once you establish a solid name for yourself, you’ll see a flux of projects coming in. Like with PR, build yourself a strong portfolio to showcase your work.
Average Salary: $13-$25 (£9-£18) per hour
16. 3D Modeller
If you’re trained and skilled in 3D modelling, why not focus on being your own boss in the field? This in-demand skill is used in many different industries, including virtual reality, video games, 3D printing, marketing, TV and motion pictures, scientific and medical imaging, computer-aided design and manufacturing CAD/CAM.
Average Salary: $18-$20 (£12-£14) per hour
15. Transcriber
This is the perfect role for you if you want to make a bit of extra cash on the side. Your work will involve transcribing audio files in any type of field. You need to ensure you have great listening and typing skills to succeed.
Average Salary: $20 (£14) per hour
14. Illustrator
If you have a thing for creating logos, sketches or graphics, becoming a self-employed illustrator could be the path for you. As you progress in your career, you can charge up to $250 (£200) per illustration.
Average Salary: $21 (£15) per hour
13. Graphic Designer
Graphic design ranks at number two on UpWork’s most in-demand skills list. You could be involved in designing webpages, infographics or designs for print. A portfolio is key in this area of expertise, too.
Average Salary: $23 (£16) per hour
12. Article and Blog Writing
If you’re a skilled writer and enjoy being your own boss, why not go write for others or even start your own blog? There are a number of freelance websites that request writers for a number of jobs.
Average Salary: $25 (£17) per hour
11. Social Media Coordinator
This position comes as no surprise, with the online world being the most important. Many businesses require an extra pair of qualified hands to take over their ‘Gram and other social media outlets. If you’re an online guru, you can start making a decent income out of it.
Average Salary: $25 (£17) per hour
10. Game Developer
Are you a videogame fanatic? What’s better than building (coding) your own games and then getting to test them, too? In order to be trusted, you’ll need prior experience before going at it alone.
Average Salary: $31 (£22) per hour
9. Translator
This is one of the most popular choices for self-employed positions – and it’s quite easy to become a translator, providing that you’re fluent in two or more languages. You’ll also need to make sure you have the correct certification for your country.
Average Salary: $31 (£22) per hour
8. Teacher
Do you love teaching but hate the early starts that come with a school job? It’s not the end of the world, because you can become a private tutor giving students additional lessons after school or coach pupils online. You’ll, of course, need the correct qualifications for your chosen subject.
Average Salary: $41 (£29)
7. Recruiter
If you’re an experienced recruiter and want to span off into a one-man band, you certainly can! You’ll have established the contacts you need in your specialised field and can work in the luxury of your home, coffee shop or hotel!
Average Salary: $46 (£32) per hour
6. Voice Actor
If you have a distinctive voice, you could get paid to be a voice artist. This could involve adverts, TV shows, radio productions, tech companies or retail stores. As the working world is moving towards video advertising, voice actors are becoming even more in demand.
Average Salary: $46-$52 (£32-£36) per hour
5. Copywriter
Copywriters are different from content marketers and writers. These freelancers specialise in writing content for website pages and descriptions for products and services. The charge rates for copywriters depend on each individual’s level of experience and skill.
Average Salary: $47 (£33) per hour
4. SEO Specialist
SEO specialists are high in demand in the freelance world – after all, everyone wants to rank highly on Google and other search engines, don’t they? You’ll need to have a proven track record to get an influx of clients.
Average Salary: $50 (£35) per hour
3. Internet Security Specialist
With so many hackers targeting big business and startups, internet security skills are on the rise. If you’re able to ramp up someone’s internet protection, you could make a lot of money out of it.
Average Salary: $50 (£35) per hour
2. Web Developer
If you’re qualified at building and coding websites, you could be in business! Everyone wants their own webpage but they don’t have the skills or time to figure it out – this is where you step in with your expertise and earn a decent salary while doing so.
Average Salary: $60 (£42) per hour
1. Legal Services Expert
If you have experience with a well-known firm under your belt but can’t take the long hours anymore, why not go at it alone? People are always seeking expert services when it comes to corporate, criminal, property and family law.
Average Salary: $70–$120 (£49-£85)
Freelancers now make up 35% of the US workforce, and companies are always looking to outsource and work with them to meet their business goals. All you need to do is get out there, build a strong personal brand and find these opportunities to start earning (more) money.
Have you considered going freelance before or are currently self-employed? What advice can you give to others? Let us know what your thoughts are in the comments section below….
Salary information is based on data compiled and published by Glassdoor. Currency conversions are based on rates supplied by XE.com on 24 January 2018.It was a hot day in summer – or so they say – when Moshe Yaalon delivered a harsh, unyielding verdict on the fate of a thwarted nation. "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people," the Israeli officer said – or is said to have said.
The year was 2002, near the height of a violent Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation now known as the Second Intifada. At the time, Yaalon was the Israel Defence Forces' chief of staff – in other words, the country's top soldier. To some ears, his stark assessment of Palestinian fortunes served to reinforce the worst suspicions of Israel's critics, depicting Israelis as heartless aggressors and Palestinians as hapless victims. The statement, or some approximation of it, crossed oceans, countries and continents, appearing in print or repeated over the airwaves around the world. It was published in some of the globe's most distinguished publications, including the Star.
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There's just one problem. Yaalon did not say what he is supposed to have said. Certainly, Yaalon did not speak these words during a 2002 interview with Ari Shavit, a reporter with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in whose pages the now-notorious remark is widely supposed to have originally appeared. In fact, it seems Yaalon, who now serves as his country's minister of strategic affairs, never uttered the words at all. "I can confirm that he has never said the quote ever," Yaalon's spokesman, Alon Ofek-Arnon, told the Star in an email. Like a stubborn bug in a massive communications machine, Yaalon's never-uttered utterance has lived long and travelled far. The chronicle of its progress could serve as a case study in a seldom-examined aspect of popular culture in the electronic age – the self-replicating propagation of erroneous information.
Only now, seven years after the incendiary statement was originally supposed to have been made, is the record finally being corrected. In recent weeks, publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe have all carried retractions or clarifications, either disavowing the comment outright or conceding it should not have been attributed to Yaalon.
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The Star carries a similar correction in its pages today, in reference to a 2004 article by columnist Haroon Siddiqui. "The statement attributed to (Yaalon) was not just in the blogosphere but was widely quoted in mainstream, respected publications," explained Siddiqui. "There had been no correction or clarification sought or given that I was aware of. So I had no reason to think it was not a valid quote." Siddiqui is far from alone. "It only takes one mistake, one falsehood, and others pick up on it," said Gilead Ini, senior research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a media watchdog that has lately been tracking down publications that have printed the comment. The watchdog learned of the problem in January, after Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi repeated the quotation in an op-ed piece for The New York Times, attributing it to Yaalon. That finally set the wheels of editorial clarification in motion. The Times printed an "editor's note" later that month in which it referred to the statement as "an unverified quotation" that should not have been published. In March, the Chicago Tribune printed a correction about the now-infamous remark, which had been included in an op-ed article that appeared more than five years earlier. It is not clear just how, when or why this particular misquotation sprang to what has been a long, if not entirely happy, life. Ini believes the error originated with Henry Siegman, a pundit and academic formerly associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank. In a piece for The New York Review of Books in December 2003, Siegman referred to Yaalon as "the official who had formerly talked of how war would `sear deep' into Palestinian consciousness that they are a defeated people." In that instance, the only words that appeared in quotation marks were "sear deep." But in August 2007, in an article for the London Review of Books, Siegman repeated the passage almost word for word and, this time, he placed the entire phrase in quotation marks, once again attributing it to Yaalon. This past February, Time magazine printed a version of the quote similar to Siegman's – "It will be seared deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people" – and credited Yaalon for the remark. According to Ini, the magazine has agreed to publish a correction. Many writers, including the Star's Siddiqui, have repeated a somewhat different version of the same quotation, almost always crediting it to Yaalon. In the 2002 Haaretz interview, in which he is supposed to have uttered the offending words, Yaalon actually seems to have been trying to make a very different point. Attempting to define what would constitute an Israeli victory in the Palestinian conflict, he said the following: "I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation – the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold." Robert Thompson, an expert on media and popular culture at Syracuse University, agrees it is important for publications such as the Star to correct the record in this and similar cases. But such corrections, he said, go only so far. "It doesn't mean the argument collapses," Thompson said. "The quote, for many people, was used to shore up something they feel very strongly about. It takes on a life of its own. It's almost irrelevant whether it was ever said." Even so, the Star regrets the error.A Solar System Simulator, based upon our current understanding of the sciences. The Small Step Engine represents a solar scope simulator culminating many modern laws of astrophysics with DirectX to produce a real-time representation of a Solar System in its entirety. Created as part of an MRes Computer science project, the created program is now freely available (non-commercial) for all to use (Visit the Downloads section); further developments are purely a labour of love and will continue in line with the prospects of educational use of such a tool.
The below trailer, published on the 9th of March should give an indication of the available programs core functions but ultimately, many features will only be discovered when you obtain your copy of the program. Should you create your own videos (Please preface them with 'TSSE' so they can be searched for easily), I will be very willing to post them within this website. But for now, enjoy!
Direct Youtube Link(CNN) For Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held in the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it has been a long haul.
Bounty hunters captured Aamer in Afghanistan in 2001 and turned him over to the United States. He was cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007. And on Friday, eight years later, he finally returned home to the UK, arriving around 1 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET).
"The reason I have been strong is because of the support of people so strongly devoted to the truth," Aamer said in a statement Friday.
"If I was the fire to be lit to tell the truth, it was the people who protected the fire from the wind. My thanks go to Allah first, second to my wife, my family, to my kids and then to my lawyers who did everything they could to carry the word to the world," he said.
He credited everyone who sought justice for him and an end to the Guantanamo prison.
"Without knowing of their fight I might have given up more than once; I am overwhelmed by what people have done by their actions, their thoughts and their prayers and without their devotion to justice I would not be here in Britain now," he added.
"The reality may be that we cannot establish peace, but we can establish justice. If there is anything that will bring this world to peace, it is to remove injustice," he said.
'I want my dad back tomorrow'
It has been a long haul for Aamer's family as well.
In 2005, his daughter Johina, then 7, wrote a letter to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, asking him to help obtain her father's release. She posted a copy of the letter on her Twitter account Friday.
"He used to love me when he was with us all," she wrote. "We are all sad and depressed. We used to cry a lot for him. Sometimes my mum cries a lot on her bed or on her chair and on the floor and I don't know how to stop her. She used to cry then I cried.
"I want my dad back tomorrow."
UK officials welcome release
The British Foreign Office confirmed that Aamer was back in the UK.
JUST WATCHED Why Guantanamo Bay is still open Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Why Guantanamo Bay is still open 02:16
"It has been a longstanding government policy to secure Mr. Aamer's return to the UK," a Foreign Office representative said. "We welcome his release and continue to support President Obama's commitment to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo."
And Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, welcomed Aamer's release as well.
"Great news," Corbyn tweeted. "Huge congratulations to his family, Reprieve, Shaker campaign!"
An alleged confession
The United States has said that Aamer was an enemy fighter and an aide of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. He was allegedly in Afghanistan on a false British passport.
He also allegedly confessed before he was taken to Guantanamo Bay.
Aamer's family and supporters say he was in Afghanistan doing charity work. And the confession, according to the London-based human rights group Reprieve, came under torture.
With no charges ever filed, and no evidence presented and tested at a trial, it is hard to judge between the competing allegations.
Allegations of U.S. torture
Aamer has contended that he was tortured by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan as British intelligence officials watched, and that his head was slammed against a wall so hard, it bounced. He has also said he was tortured and mistreated at Guantanamo Bay.
"When he arrived in Guantanamo Bay, he became a respected spokesman for the prisoners and was dubbed 'The Professor' by the U.S. military," according to CAGE, an organization that says it works "to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror."
"During the prison-wide hunger strike in July 2005, he became a leader on the prisoners' council and successfully negotiated a settlement with the military before any of the prisoners died," CAGE said.
"The authorities agreed to respect the Geneva Conventions and treat prisoners who have been neither charged nor convicted of any crime in a humane manner. However, the administration reneged on their promise shortly after and Shaker was returned to isolation and was forcibly made to ingest liquid food with tubes through his nostrils."
Irene Nembhard and Gareth Pierce, attorneys for Aamer, condemned his imprisonment.
"Shaker Aamer is an extraordinary man who determined for 14 years that he would return to Britain in the face of the determination of the most powerful of states that he would never do so," the two attorneys said in a statement.
"He achieved this by unimaginable, heroic, sustained courage, the strength of his character and of his faith being for years his only resource. No one knows and no words can describe (the) torture, isolation, despair, even less for the length and intensity that he has endured."
Wife and children live in UK
What is beyond doubt is that Aamer spent a long time in Guantanamo, even after being cleared for release in 2007.
According to Reprieve, the release process "required no fewer than six U.S. government agencies to agree that he posed no threat to the U.S. or its allies." And Aamer spent another eight years in Guantanamo before that process was complete.
Aamer is a Saudi national who is a permanent resident of Britain. He is married to a British woman; his wife and four children live in Britain.
He was to see the youngest of his children for the first time Friday.Staining of CORO2B (green) with tubules (red) and DNA (blue) in U-251 MG cells.
Welcome to another HPA image of the week! This week's image was brought to us by citizen scientists in Project Discovery, and specifically by Shiverwarp who found this image while playing Project Discovery in EVE online.
The protein stained in Fig 1. is an image of Coronin, actin binding protein, 2B (CORO2B) found in the focal adhesions and at the plasma membrane of the cell. This sample shows U-251 MG human glioblastoma astrocytoma (brain) cells.
Focal adhesions are transmembrane groups of protein that allow the cell to "grab" the surrounding environment. In the case of cell culture, this means the cell flattens out and adheres to the surface of the plate on which it was grown, however in the body this happens in three dimensions of course. These adhesions not only hold the cell in place and help it keep its shape, but also are essential for cellular motility (Hynes R. O. & Lander A. D. 1992, Gumbiner B. M. 1996).
As discussed a couple weeks ago, in our post on actin filaments, focal adhesions bind to these filaments and allow the cell pull itself along through the substrate. As the name suggests, CORO2B is an actin binding protein found most prominently at the leading edge of the cell (the edge towards which the cell is moving) near the plasma membrane. This protein binds to actin at this leading edge and helps helps the actin network interact with the outside environment through the focal adhesions.
Focal adhesion are often found to have a high turnover rate in aggressive cancers where cells are highly motile (Nagano M. et al. 2012). As such, proteins involved in focal adhesion and cell migration are often targets of treating invasiveness of such cancers (Bijian K. et al. 2013).
Thanks to the citizen scientists participating in Project Discovery and particularly to Shiverwarp for their contribution to science!Justice Minister Arpine Hovannisian disagreed on Tuesday with criticism of the Armenian government’s main anti-corruption body which has been voiced by the U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, Richard Mills.
The Anti |
in Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac installer. On February 22, some Kaspersky Lab users encountered problems with the installation process: the certificate in Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac, with which the operating system validates the installation of the software, expired on February 22. This issue was reviewed and fixed on February 23. During this 24-hour period, in order not leave our users unprotected, Kaspersky Lab technical support helped users to turn their system clocks back as a temporary solution. We would like to assure all our customers that actions have been taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future. To avoid any confusion, we would also like to comment on some points in the article “Dear Kaspersky Lab: Yours is a very bad installer”. The certificate had expired for only 24 hours, not two weeks, and the certificate check is being done by macOS installation utility, not by the product's installation wrapper. The message "Use –allowUntrusted to override” is the standard notification of the macOS installation command-line utility, shown when a user tries to install software with an outdated certificate, and regardless of this notification users don’t have the possibility of installing the product. We would also like to provide more information the installation process. The product's installation wrapper connects to the Kaspersky Lab website, only to check if a newer version of the product is available. If a new version is in place, the installation wrapper downloads a new package and verifies by its hash that this is the correct file. There is nothing unusual about the text string mentioned in the article – it doesn’t contain keys and is in fact a cryptographic signature of the file that the installer checks to verify the integrity of an installation package being downloaded. Then, it initiates installation, and the operating system checks its signature as well. This installation wrapper is signed by an Apple-issued certificate, and a macOS feature called Gatekeeper regulates its launch and the certificate check.
Despite Kaspersky's contention that the problem lasted only 24 hours, the software in question was purchased and downloaded on February 26, and Kaspersky's technocal support told the user (my father) to turn the clock back on February 27.These are the nights that Jerry Stackhouse still cherishes. A loud and rambunctious arena. Teams trading buckets. A basket as big as the ocean. Maybe these nights are fewer and further between, but that’s fine with him. He can see the finish line now. It’s not just that Stackhouse chipped in 14 points, drilling four out of five 3s to will the Brooklyn Nets to a November overtime win over the Knicks in the first matchup of their reborn rivalry. He isn’t satisfied with a single shot or a solid game. Jerry Stackhouse isn’t truly content until he’s had a conversation with his mother, Minnie, later that night.
“There’s nothing like having the game I had last night and calling my momma and hearing her voice,” Stackhouse said the next day. “She has good and bad days. She’s 83. She’s battled a lot of different things with her health, but I could hear it in her voice last night. She was telling me, ‘I couldn’t believe you could kick your legs up that high.’ They came back down, but I still got them up there.”
Stackhouse hasn’t played in a playoff game in nearly three years. Across his 17-year professional career, he’s made just one appearance in the NBA Finals, with Dallas in 2006, when they fumbled a 2-0 lead to Miami and lost in six games. He has few regrets, but he still wants to win.
“Would I trade having a championship ring or being able to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy over what my momma said last night on that phone after watching that game?” he said. “No way.”
Rasheed Wallace, once Stackhouse’s running mate at the University of North Carolina, was on the losing end of that first Brooklyn–New York battle. Wallace missed nine of his 11 shots. It’s true, the ball don’t lie. Nor do the lasting careers of two of the league’s locker room sages. They’ve been allies, All-Stars, contributors, opponents, retirees, returnees, lightning rods, and — perhaps most importantly — chameleons, adept at adapting to their ever-evolving NBA roles. Both 38 years old, both hoping for one last playoff run, it’s been nearly two decades since Sheed and Stack first met at Chapel Hill.
“You’re not going to beat Father Time,” Stackhouse said. “He’s going to catch up with us all. But I think we can manage him. I think that’s what I learned to do. Playing less minutes, absorbing a little less of a role than I would customarily want … taking my wants out of the equation and putting other people’s at the forefront. When I was pushing, pushing, pushing for what I really wanted, it seemed like I never really got it.”
Both Wallace and Stackhouse have become known within NBA circles for their distinct personalities. Wallace’s teammates have always loved him, but he is often aloof with those he doesn’t know or trust — particularly reporters and officials. Stackhouse is poker-faced, but approachable — and yet he’s always been considered an old-school tough guy who shouldn’t be crossed under any circumstances. Even after all these years, Wallace still defends well in the post; Steve Smith, his teammate in Portland, calls him a “middle linebacker,” the lead communicator on defense. Stackhouse lives on the perimeter, resigned to outsmarting opponents over out-quicking them. Both can drain a timely 3, both are utterly fearless, and both are valued for their locker room contributions as much as what they can still do on the court.
“I think people can see that I go hard,” Wallace says now. “I’m just out there trying to go hard. I only know one speed. When I was in my heyday, of course I had those who hated me. They were supposed to hate the opposition. But it’s good, though. It feels good.”
“I’m here right now because of who I am,” Stackhouse says, “not because I’ve succumbed or had to settle. I’ve changed my roles. I understand the importance of having to change roles. I look at a guy like Allen Iverson. There’s no way, from a talent level or what he’s done for the game of basketball, he shouldn’t be on somebody’s team right now. But we know why. We know why.”
Rasheed Wallace was called for one technical foul in high school. Just one. Bill Ellerbee, Wallace’s coach at Philadelphia’s Simon Gratz High School, borrowed some thinking from General George S. Patton in his coaching philosophy: “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.” He later conducted coaching clinics in which others asked how he dealt with talented players. “It’s not what you do,” Ellerbee would respond. “It’s what you don’t do. And what you don’t do is kiss their ass.”
That’s why Wallace received his one and only high school technical during his freshman year. Ellerbee told his players that they could dunk whenever they wanted. But if anyone missed a dunk when an easy layup would have sufficed, he’d yank them from the game. During one game, Wallace missed a thunderous slam — and immediately knew he was coming out — so he punched the basketball stanchion in frustration. A referee blew the whistle. His first tech. “I tried to explain to him that [Wallace] would be taken out of the game and everything,” Ellerbee said. “He actually ended up giving me a technical foul, too.”
The rest of Wallace’s high school career was largely drama-free. He rose to prominence as a freshman when the varsity team traveled to Las Vegas for a tournament. Harry Moore, the team’s center, had been shot in the leg just before the team departed. The team visited Moore at the hospital before leaving, and while there, Moore called Wallace to his bedside to tell his teammate that he would have to do whatever he could for the team. “Rash had tears in his eyes,” said the team’s assistant coach, Nate Smigel. Wallace scored 25 points in the first game of the tournament. “That’s when I watched Rasheed blossom,” said Aaron McKie, a senior on the team who enjoyed a 13-year NBA career. “That game he pretty much carried us. I knew he was going to be special. He jumped into the limelight.”
Ellerbee insisted that his players participate in other sports, so Wallace played outfield and pitched for Simon Gratz’s baseball team. “He could really fire,” said Smigel, who doubled as the baseball coach. “He would sidearm it and have great control. But he was afraid of hitting people, so he’d take a little bit off.” In those days, it wasn’t hard to spot the 6-foot-9-and-growing Wallace, also a member of the track team, galloping through the Philadelphia streets. Cars honked at him as he ran. Drivers, hollering from their windows, would ask if he’d chosen a college yet.
“To be truthful, I was rooting for one of the schools in the area,” Ellerbee said. “Villanova, Temple, all the local schools were recruiting him. I was kind of hoping for him to stay close. But once Dean Smith came into town, that was the end of it.”
North Carolina’s recruitment of Wallace actually started much earlier, when Stackhouse and Wallace starred at the 1992 Nike All-American Academic basketball camp in Indianapolis together, overwhelming lesser talents like Randy Livingston, Dontonio Wingfield, and Rashard Griffith, who never quite made it to the next level. “Everybody was talking about us,” Stackhouse recalled. “We won and I had a good game, [but] Sheed actually closed the game out better. He was unstoppable.”
Stackhouse and Wallace remained friends and loved arguing about who would win if their high school teams ever played. North Carolina had already locked up two of the state’s best players — Stackhouse and point guard Jeff McInnis, teammates who had led Oak Hill Academy to a 36-0 record — when the 1993 McDonald’s All-American Game rolled around. McInnis and Wallace bunked at the game. Stackhouse often joined them, and they put together a full Tar Heel press. “I worked him the whole McDonald’s game,” McInnis said. “I talked about Carolina the whole entire time.”
Smith ensured Wallace’s commitment by flying into Philadelphia just one day after North Carolina captured the 1993 NCAA championship over Michigan. “He never did that type of thing,” remembers Dave Hanners, an assistant coach at North Carolina. “That was really unusual from the way we recruited back then.” But Smith knew they had a chance to dominate the mid-1990s, mixing a championship core with one of the best freshman classes of the decade. Teammate Pat Sullivan believes Wallace and Stackhouse “changed the culture a little and brought an edginess. They didn’t bring a toughness. We already had that. But those guys talked a little bit during games and let people know they were going to play hard and do everything they could to win.”
“Those guys were coming in, trying to take positions,” adds Donald Williams, the hero of that 1993 title game. “We had some great practices, more competitive than a lot of games.”
Stackhouse loved playing for Smith. One of 11 children, he grew up with a routine just as rigid and predictable as Smith’s famously controlled practices — church on Sunday, Bible study on Monday, and choir practice on Tuesday. “At Oak Hill, he’d always be the one cooking the food, getting us up,” McInnis says now. “He was always acting older. Hanging around him at 16, you would think Stack was 20.” Stackhouse always played to win, consequences be damned. Charlie McNairy, with whom he grew up, was a teammate at North Carolina, but that didn’t stop Stackhouse from elbowing him in the chops during practice after tussling for a rebound. “I’m not telling you how to live your life,” Hanners recalls whispering to McNairy. “But if that was me, I wouldn’t let him get away with that. I would go back at him.”
“Thanks for the advice,” McNairy replied. “But I did try to go after him in high school once and he ended up beating me up for the next two weeks.” Says McNairy now: “If you weren’t prepared, he would come after you. You knew he cared about you. But he was kind of a ‘take no prisoner’ type of guy.”
Wallace was always more complicated: competitive, but lighthearted and always testing his coaches. In practice one day, Wallace took an ill-conceived 15-foot baseline shot too early in a possession for Smith. The famed head coach blew his whistle and halted the practice immediately. “Do you think that’s a good shot?” Hanners remembers Smith asking Wallace. Wallace replied that he did. “Well, let’s see you make 10 of them in a row,” Smith challenged him. Wallace drained eight straight from the same spot before Smith told him to stop.
Another time, the team traveled en masse to Durham one Thursday before a showdown with Duke. “They were having a party,” McInnis said. “So we go down there just to be cocky.” Students had already started camping outside the stadium to secure game tickets. “On our way back to the car, it was probably about one in the morning, Rasheed was pulling their tents back up and then when people come out, they’d see Rasheed Wallace going crazy,” McInnis said. “All the people coming out the tents and they basically walked us to our cars, chanting, ‘Let’s go Duke.’ It was just the craziest thing. Rasheed stirred up this whole big thing on campus, pulling people’s tents up.”
Before another Duke game, Wallace pulled aside McNairy — whom he had already nicknamed “Air McNairy” because he once dunked in the waning moments of a nationally televised game. Wallace told McNairy he noticed the two of them were dressed before everyone else, so he asked his teammate to warm up with him before the game. McNairy left first and Wallace trailed him. But by the time he hit the court, McNairy realized that Wallace was nowhere to be found.
“In unison, the crowd starts chanting, ‘Who are you? Who are you?'” McNairy said. “I’m feeling two inches tall. Nervous as can be. I shoot a shot and it’s a brick and I go up and try to shoot a layup and the kids are taunting me. I hit my layup and then go back. Rasheed is in the tunnel and he’s just dying laughing.”
No moment reflects the difference in Stackhouse and Wallace more than one of Michael Jordan’s returns to Chapel Hill. Working himself back into shape for his post-baseball comeback, Jordan ran with the second team one afternoon. He stuck around after practice and played one-on-one with any and all comers. Wallace was already back in the locker room by the time the games commenced, his shoes off and his feet soaking in ice water. He wasn’t about to put them back on, either. Not even for His Airness.
“Rasheed said he wasn’t playing. And it’s not that he’s not a competitor or anything,” Hanners said. “He didn’t want to give Michael the satisfaction. But Jerry was up there playing until they couldn’t play anymore. Michael won them all. It’s just the difference in the two. Jerry, I don’t know if it was the ego or not, but he wanted to prove to Michael that he was as good as him. Rasheed knew he wasn’t and didn’t care one way or the other.”
“Jeff McInnis was the smartest one,” Sullivan said. “Jeff played him last. He had the most success against him because Michael was just so tired by then.”
North Carolina never made it to the NCAA championship game with Stackhouse and Wallace — they were stunned by Boston College in the second round of the 1994 tournament, then lost to Arkansas in the Final Four the following spring. Coming off a sterling sophomore season, Wallace told Stackhouse that he was declaring for the NBA draft. Stackhouse leaned toward staying before ultimately following suit. “My mom and dad worked their whole lives,” Stackhouse said. “I didn’t feel like we were poor or underprivileged because the most I ever needed was sneakers. Whatever I needed, they went and got it for me. But in reality, we were at the poverty level.”
Bullets GM John Nash owned the fourth overall pick and wanted Stackhouse. But being a fellow Philadelphia native, he also found himself intrigued by Wallace. He interviewed both Tar Heels, as well as Joe Smith and Antonio McDyess. “Jerry showed up for the interview in a suit,” Nash remembers, “looking very corporate, looking like he was applying for a job on Wall Street. Rasheed was more laid-back and came to his interview wearing a warm-up suit.”
Philly grabbed Stackhouse with the third pick, hoping he’d follow in the footsteps of Wilt, Julius, and Barkley as The Next Great Sixer and maybe even The Next MJ someday. (As fellow Tar Heel and future Sixers coach Larry Brown points out, “When Jerry went to Carolina, the career he had in high school and the expectations were unbelievable, especially following Michael and what Michael accomplished — not only in college, but in the pros.”) The Bullets followed by taking Wallace fourth, even though they were already building around two other prized young forwards, Chris Webber and Juwan Howard. Stackhouse immediately became the leading scorer for an 18-win Sixers team; meanwhile, Wallace learned to stretch his game away from the basket and play all three frontcourt spots on a Washington team bound for another lottery.
“I say this as a compliment,” says Jim Lynam, Washington’s coach at the time. “He’s been beating to his own drum since Day 1. A follow-up question is, when did Day 1 start? My dig would be maybe in the crib. You could always tell on Monday mornings whether the Kansas City Chiefs won the day before. If they won, invariably he would enter the practice facility that next day with a Kansas City Chiefs helmet on. His first jumper would be with a Chiefs helmet on.”
Still, his coach loved him. “He was one of my favorite guys,” Lynam said, a line echoed by all of Wallace’s former coaches. Wallace’s professional problems always came with officials. He had received only seven technicals in two years at North Carolina, but without those strong coaches who molded him over the years — not just Smith, but Ellerbee, too — Sheed routinely lost his composure on a precocious Bullets team. “You can’t quite explain why something would travel in the direction that it did,” Lynam said. “I think it took on a life of its own. It became something in Sheed’s mind that was a real issue. I would apply the same rule I did to Charles [Barkley] way back. Charles being Charles and Sheed being Sheed.”
Recognizing that Wallace, Webber, and Howard were all power forwards who couldn’t play together, the Bullets shipped Wallace to Portland for point guard Rod Strickland after his rookie season. “I remember telling him that he was going to get branded if he didn’t control his temper with officials, and I don’t think I made that much of an impact in my conversations with him,” Nash said. “It hurt him over the course of his career. Officials were tougher on him because he was so difficult.”
Stackhouse found himself in a similarly awkward situation, forced to coexist with Allen Iverson after Philly picked the former Georgetown star first overall in the 1996 draft. Although it was far-fetched to expect two headstrong alpha-dog scorers to mesh as teammates, the Sixers were losing ground locally and couldn’t resist trying. It couldn’t have worked out worse. The New York Post reported that friends of Iverson and friends of Stackhouse fought shortly after Christmas during Iverson’s rookie season, although both players denied the story. An incident they did not deny: The two fought at a shootaround later that season — although “fight” may be too strong a word. “It was a fight between one guy who didn’t know how to fight and another guy who didn’t want to fight,” Stackhouse told reporters at the time.
“[Stackhouse] was in a really bad situation when I got him,” said Brown, who arrived to coach Philadelphia in 1997. “He was an early pick, had a phenomenal year — ‘StackHouse,’ that’s how they labeled the arena in Philadelphia — and then all of a sudden, Allen came and they almost forgot about Jerry. That was tough, and we ended up trading him. I didn’t think it was a good fit for both of them. Not that they couldn’t get along or coexist. That’s just such a difficult thing. You have a great year, all the attention is on you, and then all of a sudden, Allen comes and you’re not relevant anymore.”
This was a volatile era for the NBA, with salaries skyrocketing and agents wielding more power than ever before. Across a six-year span of drafts from 1991 to 1996, an astonishing 16 top-five lottery picks switched teams within five years of being drafted by their original teams, including Wallace and Stackhouse, who was sent to Detroit with Eric Montross for Aaron McKie, Theo Ratliff, and a 2003 no. 1 pick on December 18, 1997. His reputation as the Next Michael Jordan followed him to Detroit, a comparison that made little sense to Stackhouse — someone who hadn’t even won one-third of the NBA games he’d played to that point.
“The hype helped me as far as coming into the league with endorsements. [I was] supposed to be this next, next, next, next,” Stackhouse said. “Cool. I’ll roll with it. But I knew in my mind, our games weren’t similar. We really didn’t do the same things. But I could dunk.”
And score. Stackhouse averaged more than 20 points for four straight seasons, including a career-high 29.8 points in 2000-01. But those Pistons teams never waded deep into the playoffs, not even during Grant Hill’s apex in the late 1990s. The lowest moment happened during the 2000-01 season, after Hill had fled for Orlando in free agency, when coach George Irvine called Stackhouse and Michael Curry into his office and told them they were doing “horseshit jobs of leading the team.” Enraged, Stackhouse fired back that Irvine was doing a “horseshit job of coaching the team.”
“I went right back at him,” Stackhouse remembers ruefully. “I bruised him. He was a guy who was really a true ally of mine — he really had my back. And because of a quick moment, a quick lash of the tongue, I lost him to where I don’t think he was real positive in anything he said after that. It was like he was almost against me, in a way. But that was probably one of the things I regret, because I really liked him.”
“Tell him that I have no hard feelings about that,” Irvine responded in a recent phone conversation. “He played hard and he competed and he has a lot of pride. As a coach, I was really competitive, and you’re going to have moments when you don’t see eye to eye. But I also knew he had my back, and he proved that, and that’s what I remember more than anything. I remember one time when there was pressure on me as a coach, when we were in Dallas, and we were struggling and there was talk about me getting fired. We won a game that we probably should not have won. Jerry played great and he came up afterward and gave me a hug and said something like, ‘I have your back.’ That’s what I remember better than this other episode.”
When Rick Carlisle took over the Pistons the following year, Stackhouse belatedly evolved into the centerpiece of a 50-win team that came close to making the conference finals. That happened much faster for Wallace, as Portland quickly became a legitimate contender after adding Scottie Pippen in 1999. Portland’s coach at the time, Mike Dunleavy, desperately wanted to take advantage of Wallace’s incomparable low-post game, but Sheed shied away from that go-to role.
“At times, he was unselfish to a fault,” Dunleavy said. “If I set the play up for him, he’d be totally against it.”
Dunleavy called crunch-time plays with Damon Stoudamire serving as the first option, Pippen as the second, and Wallace as the third. But, just as the huddle broke, he’d pull Stoudamire and Pippen aside.
“I said if either one of you guys shoot the ball, I’m going to shoot you,” Dunleavy recalls. “Invariably, that’s what would happen. We’d get the ball into the low post and throw it in and Rasheed would hit a turnaround jumper over his right shoulder and we’d win the game.”
That struggle manifested in the worst possible way when Portland blew a 15-point lead in Game 7 of the 2000 Western finals to the Lakers because nobody could take over when it mattered — including Wallace, who scored 30 points but was responsible for six of Portland’s 13 consecutive misfires as their lead evaporated. Wallace always gravitated toward blending in over standing out. “I don’t think he ever really embraced being The Guy,” said Steve Kerr, a TNT analyst who played for Portland during the 2001-02 season. “I think that was hard for him. He didn’t have the same qualities that Tim Duncan had or Kobe or Jordan or whoever. But he loved being one of the guys, and he was really fun to have as a teammate.”
Kerr loved how playful Wallace was, remembering one time when he drained a long 3 at practice in front of Wallace, then broke character and yelled out “Ass” — a shortening of “In your ass,” which was Kerr’s way of trash-talking him. Wallace nearly fell down laughing. Kerr rejoined San Antonio the next season; during a return match against the Blazers, he found himself guarding Stoudamire as he came off of a screen. Kerr trailed him and Stoudamire nailed a 3 by Portland’s bench, followed by Wallace joyously screaming “Ass!” at Kerr. “I looked at him and cracked up,” Kerr said. “It was a funny moment.”
By the 2003-04 season, those funny moments were few and far between for Portland. Not only did the talented Blazers fail to make the Finals, but the “Jail Blazers” were running amok as locals openly revolted against their once-beloved team. Wallace, Ruben Patterson, and Zach Randolph became the poster boys, blamed for making too much money and showing too much disdain toward the community (as this Sports Illustrated story detailed). It didn’t help when Wallace and Stoudamire were cited for misdemeanor marijuana possession, or when Wallace curiously told The Oregonian in 2003 that the NBA exploited young black athletes. He became famous for two quirky catchphrases: “Ball don’t lie” (which had been around forever, but he popularized) and “Both teams played hard” (in response to repeated questions from reporters during the 2003 playoffs). Before the 2004 season, Wallace was seemingly destined for a career as a Hall of Fame character, and that’s it. On the court, his confrontations with referees became less an annoyance and more of a career-threatening issue. He had 41 — 41! — technicals in 77 games during the 2000-01 season. One season later, he angrily confronted and threatened official Tim Donaghy after a game.
“I had a referee tell me he didn’t like coming to the Rose Garden because he knew it was going to be a battle with Rasheed,” remembers Nash, who took over the Blazers in 2003.
When asked for comment, NBA officials declined to speak for this story.
“Despite the fact he’s had a marvelous career, I think it could have been better,” Nash says. “But he was never about personal accolades. He was a team player, wanted to win, and coaches had a high regard for him, which is evidenced now. The fan base in Portland was probably equally divided. He had a lot of supporters because they liked his play. But he had a lot of detractors, too, because he wasn’t fan-friendly. He was also difficult with the media, so the media never portrayed him in a favorable light. That’s a shame in some ways, but it was his doing.”
That’s just Sheed being Sheed — he never cared about what anyone thought other than his teammates and coaches. You can’t blame Portland for cutting bait and sending him to Atlanta, who quickly rerouted him to Detroit after one game. On the other hand, you probably can’t remember what Portland got for him, either.
Beyond talent and durability, there are specific reasons why some NBA lifespans exceed others. Maybe it’s an opportunity that presents itself during those fleeting years between “star” and “contributor.” Maybe the player loses a half-step but gains a few points in basketball IQ. Maybe he matures a little late, or maybe he finds himself enchanted by a specific chance to resuscitate his career. The ones who evolve and accept a lesser role stick around. The ones who cannot are shuttled out. There’s a reason Stackhouse and Wallace are still playing in the NBA, just like there’s a reason guys like Iverson and Kenyon Martin can’t find a team.
Stackhouse found himself flipped to Washington (for Rip Hamilton), then Dallas (in a four-player deal for Antawn Jamison). His numbers steadily dropped and injuries cost him 109 games over a three-year stretch. Thanks to Philly’s 2001 Finals trip and Detroit’s 2004 title, he was also developing a reputation as something of a loser’s salvation — teams were better off after trading him, or so people believed. “People said, ‘There’s no way he can be a sixth man,'” Stackhouse said. “Nobody had ever asked me. It’s just because of my persona and my confidence in the starter role, nobody fathomed that I would accept being a sixth man. Don Nelson just basically came to me and said, ‘On my team, I’ve got six starters. But only five of them can be on the court at the beginning of the game. But to me, you’re a starter. You’re going to play starter minutes. And I value you as a starter.’ ‘All right, cool, Coach.’ Enough said. All that matters to me is impressing my coach.”
Stackhouse knew that the Dallas crowd cheered just as loudly when he came off the bench as it would have if he were starting. Both Nelson and Avery Johnson had no problem drawing plays for him and letting him loose. That first Dallas season also featured the defining Jerry Stackhouse, Tough Guy story. It happened after Utah rookie Kirk Snyder took a cheap shot at him under the basket during a game. Stackhouse retaliated with one of his own. Both men thought they were even. Nope. They bumped into each other a few plays later and well, Stackhouse can explain the rest.
“Boom, he punched me in the stomach with an open fist,” Stackhouse said, incredulously. “I was like, ‘OK, I can go crazy right now and get suspended for two or three games and lose this money.’ The smart side of me said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. But I’m going to get this boy.’ You don’t put your hands on me. I can deal with a lot of verbal stuff and wolfing and all that, but you put your hands on me, no. And I thought I had cleaned it up, but obviously I hadn’t.”
When the game ended, Stackhouse recalls asking the training staff for a warm-up suit, then waiting on the docks where Utah’s bus would depart. “I ain’t even shower,” Stackhouse recalls. “I put on some sweats, some sneakers, and I went and stood in the tunnel. As soon as [Snyder] came out, I fired on him. I got in a couple. That was it. I don’t know where all these security people came from. It probably lasted 20 seconds. Everybody pulled me off and that was it.”
And that’s how an NBA urban legend is born. Only, in this case, it actually happened: the time Jerry Stackhouse saved a few bucks by beating up Kirk Snyder after a Mavs-Jazz game. They ran into each other again the following year, after Snyder had been traded to New Orleans. Again, he approached Stackhouse in the tunnel. “He started walking to me,” Stackhouse remembers. “I closed my fists, wondering what’s this fool up to, thinking we’re about to go in. He just came in and opened his hand out to me and said, ‘Man, I really needed that.'” Snyder told Stackhouse that he had been struggling to get onto the court and wanted to impress his coach, Jerry Sloan. “I was just like, ‘Damn, next time just get my number. You want to talk to somebody, we can do that without me having to pay a $1,000 fine. But it was the weirdest thing I had ever witnessed. You get into some knuckles with someone and they come back and tell you, ‘I needed that.'”
Stackhouse’s toughness proved to be a crucial piece for Dallas, who won their first two 2006 Finals games before falling apart. In Game 4, Stackhouse flagrantly fouled Shaquille O’Neal and drew a suspension for Game 5. Miami barely squeaked out that game on the final possession — getting help from Bennett Salvatore on an infamous push foul on Dwyane Wade in the final seconds — stealing the momentum and the series. It’s the closest Stackhouse has come to a title.
“When Jerry went to Dallas, his personality, his attitude changed so much,” Larry Brown said. “He became an unbelievable team player, a mentor, somebody that everybody would want on their team for a veteran guy. I think when he went to Dallas, he just figured out how he could help.”
Meanwhile, his buddy Wallace became the missing cog on a memorable Pistons team, helping them to the 2004 title and hounding Tim Duncan to a surprisingly inefficient series in San Antonio’s hard-fought 2005 NBA Finals win. He labeled Brown “Pound for Pound” for Brown’s initials (L.B.) and his belief that Brown was the league’s best coach. And on an unselfish squad of veterans who loved playing defense and playing for each other, Wallace had finally found basketball nirvana. He didn’t have to be the man in Detroit — just one of the guys.
“Every minute I was around Rasheed, I was excited to be there,” Brown said. “He plays the right way. He makes his teammates better. He respects the game. He respects coaching. And when the average person sees him, they don’t realize that.”
“That’s a guy who has the pulse on the team,” said Darvin Ham, a teammate of Wallace’s in Detroit. Ham and Wallace became close. “I would consider him a brother. Not only a friend, but a brother.”
“The one thing that you can say about Rasheed Wallace and the Detroit Pistons, when he came to the team, if there was any selfishness on that team before, it was gone the day he walked on the court,” said George Blaha, the Pistons play-by-play announcer since 1976. “People realized, if a guy this talented doesn’t care about anything other than what’s on the scoreboard, we can’t have any issues, either.”
Brown and the Pistons parted ways after the 2005 Finals. Detroit remained an Eastern Conference mainstay for another three years before finally blowing up that team. “There’s no question Rasheed and I butted heads at times because he was very open in things he wanted to do and did not want to do,” says Flip Saunders, who replaced Brown. “As coaches, you have to be demanding at times as far as what you want players to do and not do. But you always knew where he stood. That’s what I loved about him. He always let you know where you stand, whether it’s teammates, coaches, media. Even referees. That’s pretty much who he is, and that’s the number-one thing as a coach that you respect, because you always know where he’s coming from.”
And the technicals? Saunders, like Dunleavy, found that Wallace played passively at times. The technicals revved him up.
“There’s no question people would push his buttons to get him,” Saunders said. “But from a coaching perspective, that was usually a benefit, because he’d really play at a higher level. It was almost a Catch-22 in that the emotions of him going off, on the outside, would be frustrating for people watching. But on the inside, players, coaches, everybody knew that when that happened, you could probably start running some plays for Rasheed.”
For a player to hang around, there’s one final checkpoint: He can become a clubhouse leader, dispensing advice to younger players and serving as a guru of sorts. Stackhouse, thanks to a mixture of bad luck, injuries, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, never quite took to that role. He fell out of favor in Dallas after Avery Johnson was fired in 2008. “I kind of got lost when they fired Avery because I was looked at like kind of one of Avery’s guys,” Stackhouse believes. And he bounced from Memphis to Milwaukee, where the 2010 Bucks made the playoffs with Stack coming off the bench.
“They decided not to bring me and Kurt [Thomas] back — which is fine,” Stackhouse said. “They haven’t made the playoffs since. I get a call from [former Milwaukee coach] Scott [Skiles] every season. He lets me know that they miss what I brought to the team. That’s the best compliment. You ain’t have to sign me back. You ain’t have to do nothing. But in my phone, I get a text from the coach that he misses the intangibles of what I bring to that team. I take some satisfaction in that. And I take some satisfaction in that I’m going to always be me.”
Stackhouse made a pit stop in Miami before landing on NBA TV for a few months, then riding the pine for the Atlanta Hawks last season, to be near his children. “Now, I feel like I can relate to everybody,” Stackhouse said. “I feel like I can relate to a franchise player. I can relate |
en were on the tongues of an American public that had fallen for the humanistic functionalism of a design movement referred to as Scandinavian, or Scandinavian Modern. Wegner’s elegant wooden chairs, often described as having an "organic functionality," became popular in the U.S., while Danish architect Arne Jacobsen’s famous Series 7 chair took the world by storm.
A watershed in the movement’s rise was the "Design in Scandinavia" exhibition, which toured 24 locations in the U.S. and Canada between 1954 and 1957. Proposed by House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Gordon, a prominent midcentury tastemaker, and supported by the kings of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, among other notable patrons, the exhibition secured the region’s place on the North American market.
Scandinavia’s focus on the home and family, assertions of democratic principles, and emphasis on traditional craftsmanship fit in well with consumerist ideals of the postwar period. Gordon, a staunch critic of the radical direction American modernism was taking, published a series of articles lashing out against the International Style—another name for the modernist architecture and design that emerged out of Europe in the 30s—which she referred to as "totalitarian," and those responsible for it as "dictators in matters of taste." Such sentiment played on Cold War era politics of the period.
The international heyday of Scandinavian design in the late 1950s and 1960s was the culmination of a gradual buildup in interest that had begun two decades prior. Already in the 1930s, Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and Swede Bruno Mathsson were well known across the Atlantic, having exhibited at MoMA. George Nelson, then chief designer of Herman Miller, was a major proponent of all things Scandinavian, having loaned Aalto’s chairs to his initial American exhibit at MoMA in 1938. The museum’s director of design, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., became a major advocate of Scandinavian design after World War II, helping to push the movement forward. The Danish modern look, lauded for its simple elegance and finely crafted wood, received a nod when Danish architect and designer Finn Juhl designed a modern line for Michigan’s Baker Furniture in 1951.
By the end of the 1950s, international imports had increased markedly, with companies including Herman Miller, George Tanier, and Raymor, and local department stores, many in New York City, showing off the streamlined forms of Nordic furniture and decorative arts.
Yet the international popularity of Nordic design was short-lived, petering out by the late 1960s. In the postmodern heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, many classics went out of production as focus shifted to other corners of the globe. But once the 1990s hit, austerity and an interest in sustainable development overtook the decadence of the previous decade, bringing Scandinavian design back into the spotlight. Designers like Jasper Morrison drew on Scandinavian and Danish Modern traditions early in the decade, while Swede Thomas Sandell set high standards for new Nordic design. A flurry of traveling exhibits and academic writing helped to usher in a new era for the region’s design.
Today, Scandinavian design is once again riding a wave of success that many say stems from a wider fascination with Nordic countries. Kjetil Fallan, professor of design history at the University of Oslo, attributes the present popularity to the greater visibility of the Nordic lands during the period after the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.
"When a lot of large stable economies like the U.S. were having major problems, they discovered small Nordic countries were hardly affected by it at all," said Fallan, barring Iceland, of course. He cites a renewed interest in what is commonly referred to as the Nordic model in governance and society, which is typically categorized by a strong welfare state and an emphasis on individual autonomy. Just in the past year, Sweden’s flirtation with six-hour workdays and Finland’s planned experiment with universal basic income have grabbed headlines, further piquing the world’s curiosity. Such publicity may have had trickledown effects on the design field. "There is a tendency," Fallan says, "to equate Scandinavian design as a reflection of Scandinavian society."
Nordic arts and culture, too, have become increasingly popular abroad. "I think it started with a mix of different furniture, interiors, food, music, and film," says Poul Madsen, co-founder of Normann Copenhagen, a Danish interior design brand. "Danes were announced as the happiest people in [the] world a couple of years ago and even Oprah was talking about it," he added. "Suddenly, everything we did in Scandinavia really echoed." Indeed, increased media coverage, the popularity of Danish TV in the UK, and Copenhagen’s cache of Michelin-starred eateries, like world favorite Noma, have been rolled into what Madsen describes as "one big mass of Nordic living."
Even 2009—a shaky year for consumerism in the West—was a success for the firm. Normann Copenhagen’s New Danish Modern furniture series designed and produced within Denmark included Jesper K. Thomsen’s molded beech wood Camping set, which was awarded the Good Design award by the Chicago Athaeneum later that year.
Since then, business has been booming. The company, which sells to 82 countries, has seen export markets up 45 to 50 percent per year for the past two years, although Madsen admits that their pieces are still most successful within Denmark.
Kristian Byrge, co-founder of Muuto, another Danish design firm that’s riding the wave of Scandi-love, feels Scandinavian design aptly captures the present zeitgeist, which has pushed it into the spotlight. "If you go back to the core values, not just of Scandinavian design, but also of Scandinavia, the understated, authentic, long-lasting, democratic, and social elements are a good fit with the times we live in," he says. These values, according to Byrge, are also appreciated outside of Scandinavia.
When Byrge and his business partner Peter Bonnén founded the firm a decade ago, they choose to call it Muuto after the Finnish word muutos, which translates to "new expressions." Adding the tagline "New Nordic" was aspirational, says Berge. "The idea was to present Scandinavian design of our generation and hopefully start a wave that would reclaim the position we had in [the] 50s and 60s," he added. Commissioning top designers from all over the world while experimenting with new materials has worked well for the company, and the pair are zeroing in on consumers in the U.S., where they have noticed an increased interest. Bonnén recently moved to TriBeCa to be closer to the U.S. market, and will show at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair during New York Design Week.
This tendency of contemporary designers to rely on the heritage of the midcentury golden years is widespread, says Kjetil Fallan. The current generation of designers, he adds, are those who began their careers around the change of the millennium. "They are part of a retro revival in the sense that they rediscovered these pieces from the 50s and 60s that the previous generation had discarded," he says. To put it in the words of Alvar Aalto, one of the period’s most prominent designer-architects, "Nothing old is ever reborn, but neither does it totally disappear. And that which has once been born, will always reappear in a new form."
Danish furniture company by Lassen has embraced the traditions of two major figures in the Danish Functionalism movement, brothers Mogens and Flemming Lassen. The company, which launched in 2008, is co-owned by Nadia Lassen, the great-granddaughter of Mogens.
While searching for a thesis topic for her bachelor’s degree at the Copenhagen Business School, Nadia Lassen began to research her great-grandfather’s career. "I initially thought there wasn’t enough there," she said, sitting on a prim sofa—one of Mogens’ designs—at the company’s booth during the Stockholm Furniture Fair. "My uncle convinced me to take a deeper look, and we found there was so much to be re-discovered."
Although Mogans and his brother Flemming were schoolmates of Arne Jacobsen, Ole Wanscher, and Hans Bretton-Meyer, all top architects in their day, they lacked business know-how and interest in self-promotion, according to Lassen. Only Mogans’ Bauhaus-inspired "Kubus," a metal candleholder crafted by Danish artisans, was in production after his death. After securing the rights, Nadia and her uncle Søren Lassen discovered hundreds of unrealized furniture design sketches, which they have since brought to life. The use of materials like nickel, misty green laminate, and lacquered steel bring the pieces into the present while the original design remains unchanged.
Reviving the works of past masters, says Lassen, is a trend at the moment. "Because we had so many great Danish designers, all the Danish design companies are looking back," she says. "Why bother to make a new design if we have so much great design in history?"
Many are paying close attention to auctions in hopes of ‘discovering’ new old designers. By Lassen fortuitously secured the rights to the work of Flemming Lassen just in time for the architect, previously famed and forgotten like his older brother, to become a best-seller at auction. In 2014, his original 1935 teddy bear-reminiscent chair, "The Tired Man," became the most expensive designer chair sold in Denmark, going for approximately $210,000. The trend isn’t limited to auction houses within Scandinavia—a one-off coffee table by Peder Moos sold for $1.3 million at the October Nordic Design sale at Phillips Auction house in London, breaking the record for Nordic design at auction.
Big-name classics too, are making use of the world’s fascination with Scandinavia, while also injecting new life into their product lines and looking outside of the region for inspiration.
On a rainy morning midway through Stockholm Design Week, which ran parallel to the Furniture Fair, design cognoscenti gathered at the Wetterling Gallery in the heart of the city, snacking on miniature slices of green tea cheesecake and sipping strong cups of coffee. The occasion was the unveiling of a long-awaited homeware collection by Finnish glassware company Iittala and Japanese fashion house Issey Miyake.
No less than four years in the making, the 30-item Iittala X Issey Miyake collection includes pastel colored plates, bowls in ceramic and glass, and pleated placemats and cushion covers. Japan and Finland are design soulmates: they share a love of minimalistic elegance, natural materials, and functional designs in the home, among others design principles. The collaboration is significant for Iittala, which typically re-issues works by Fins like Alvar Aalto and Kaj Franck from the 1930s and 1940s that they are famed for. "Something new came out of Iittala and something new came out of Miyake that wouldn’t have previously existed," said Jeremiah Tesolin, director of design for Fiskars Living, which includes Iittala, Arabia, and Rörstrand. "We have been interested now in that sort of synergy."
Founded in 1935 by Alvar and Aino Aalto and colleagues, design firm Artek has also recently collaborated with top international designers. The Kaari collection by popular French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, on display at the Stockholm Furniture Fair, points to another important feature of the new Nordic design: it’s a matter of mentality, not nationality.
The Bouroullec brothers share Aalto’s penchant for working with systematic parts, according to Marianne Goebl, the company’s managing director. "Aalto like[d] the idea of having one component that you can use in many products," she explained. Employing what she describes as "poetic simplicity," the brothers’ collection utilizes bent steel in a variety of ways, a practice Aalvo almost certainly would have approved of. "The work is simple, but has character," says Goebl. "They were a good fit for us."
Artek is primarily known for its reissued classics, including light fixtures by Tappio Wirkkala and chairs by Aalto from the 1930s to the 1950s. The company moved away from the non-Nordic markets between the 1970s and 1990s, but increased international outreach in the early years of the millennium when business picked up.
Part of that success, Goebl thinks, is a renewed interest in making ethical purchases. Today’s consumers are conscientious, she says. They need to know where their products come from. "Generally, the Aalto collection comes from Finnish birch trees [that] are 80 years old, and from two sawmills," she says. "This transparency, honesty, and proximity to nature are what people are interested in."
As it turns out, customers are also interested in vintage Artek furniture. As part of the firm’s sustainability policy, the company launched Artek 2nd Cycle in 2007, giving buyers a chance to purchase classic Artek works that have been refurbished.
Back at the Furniture Fair, the future of design was shining brightly in Greenhouse, a wing dedicated to design schools and young independent designers. The small booths were occupied by students of the region’s famed design schools and young up-and-comers, who showcased everything from textiles to lighting in a space designed by Swedish firm Form Us With Love. Earlier in the day, winners of the Ung Svensk Form, the annual award for young designers, were presented with five-month scholarships to work in IKEA Sweden’s product development center, among other prizes.
Near the entrance, 24-year-old design student Olivia Öberg displayed her latest work in a deliciously Instagramable mint green booth. The fledgling furniture designer, now in her final year at the Carl Malmstein Furniture Design program in Linköping, Sweden, presented a smart, customizable drop shelving unit, a mint-green armchair, and a wooden "Helio" lamp inspired by the solar system.
"I think it’s beneficial for everyone to have influences from all over the world," says Öberg of Scandinavian design’s global appeal. As for the classics, she acknowledges the extent to which their legacy has been an influence, but says she would never have them at home. "Every other house has 60s design and at a certain point it becomes like a caricature," she says. "It gets boring."
Öberg doesn’t take inspiration from a single period or designer, but rather picks and chooses. Ironically, she is occasionally influenced by American blogs’ interpretation of Scandinavian design, such as pairing Nordic furniture with what she considers un-Nordic elements, like splashy retro decor from the 1970s.
Despite the region’s design legacy and present popularity, the young designer is looking to the future. "I want to build my own box, and not fit into one," she says.
Editor: Sara Polsky
Illustrator: Kaye BlegvadEZ Inhibition Missense mutations in the core constituents of the genome packaging material, chromatin, have been implicated in several of human cancers. Nucleosomes are made up of histones, and a mutation of lysine 27 (K27) to methionine in the N-terminal tail of histone variants H3.3 and H3.1 has been identified in various pediatric gliomas. Lewis et al. (p. 857, published online 28 March; see the Perspective by Morgan and Shilatifard) show that the polycomb enzyme complex, which can epigenetically modify K27 by addition of a methyl group—and which is often a silencing signal—is itself potently inhibited by replacement of the H3.3/3.1 K27 by methionine. The inhibition of the EZH2 subunit causes an overall reduction of K27 methylation. Methionine mutants of other methylated lysine residues in histone H3 cause similar reductions in methylation levels of the cognate lysine, altering the epigenetic profiles of such cancer cells.
Abstract Sequencing of pediatric gliomas has identified missense mutations Lys27Met (K27M) and Gly34Arg/Val (G34R/V) in genes encoding histone H3.3 (H3F3A) and H3.1 (HIST3H1B). We report that human diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs) containing the K27M mutation display significantly lower overall amounts of H3 with trimethylated lysine 27 (H3K27me3) and that histone H3K27M transgenes are sufficient to reduce the amounts of H3K27me3 in vitro and in vivo. We find that H3K27M inhibits the enzymatic activity of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 through interaction with the EZH2 subunit. In addition, transgenes containing lysine-to-methionine substitutions at other known methylated lysines (H3K9 and H3K36) are sufficient to cause specific reduction in methylation through inhibition of SET-domain enzymes. We propose that K-to-M substitutions may represent a mechanism to alter epigenetic states in a variety of pathologies.
Somatic mutations in genes encoding proteins that modify chromatin dynamics frequently contribute to tumorigenesis (1). Mutations in subunits of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) are often associated with tumor progression (2). PRC2 normally helps maintain epigenetic gene silencing and X chromosome inactivation through enzymatic di- and trimethylation of K27 on histone H3 (3). In addition to enzymatic machinery, histone H3 missense mutations in pediatric gliomas represent direct evidence that alterations of the histones themselves can promote cancer. In two pediatric brain cancers, diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs) and supratentorial glioblastoma multiforme (GBMs), 60% of patients studied exhibited one of two mutually exclusive mutations in either H3F3A, one of two genes encoding the histone H3 variant H3.3, or HIST1H3B, one of several genes encoding H3.1 (4–6). The K27M mutation occurring in either H3F3A or HIST1H3B was observed in nearly 80% of DIPGs, and 22% of non–brain stem gliomas (6).
We sought to determine whether DIPG samples that contain the K27M mutation exhibit global changes in key regulatory histone modifications. Immunoblots with antisera raised against the K27M substitution (fig. S1A) indicated the presence of H3 K27M protein in DIPG samples containing H3F3A (H3.3) or HIST3H1B (H3.1) alleles (Fig. 1A). DIPG tumors containing H3K27M mutations exhibited both a decrease in H3 with trimethylated lysine 27 (H3K27me3) and a modest increase in amounts of H3 with acetylated lysine 27 (H3K27ac) by immunoblot with modification-specific antisera (Fig. 1, A and C). Quantification of H3K27me3 by immunohistochemistry demonstrated that K27M mutant DIPGs contained significantly less H3K27me3 than non-K27M mutant DIPGs (Fig. 1D). The H3.1/3 K27M protein is 3.63% (±0.33) to 17.61% (±1.11) of total H3 in human DIPG samples, as measured by quantitative mass spectrometry (fig. S1B). Two histone modifications related to transcription and/or activation (H3K4me3 and H3K36me3) were similar in DIPG samples regardless of tumor genotype, which could be used to argue that global changes in posttranslational modifications were specific to H3K27. Using a platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)–induced brain stem glioma model to characterize this mutation in vivo (7), we found that transgenic H3.3K27M was sufficient to increase H3K27ac and to significantly reduce H3K27me3 (Fig. 1, B to D). Expression of H3.3K27M with p53 loss in nestin progenitors of the neonatal mouse brain stem was not sufficient to generate gliomas but did induce proliferating ectopic cell clusters in 72% (21 out of 29) of the mice (fig. S1C), whereas expression of the wild-type H3.3 with p53 loss (n = 8) in nestin progenitors of the neonatal mouse brain stem did not result in the induction of ectopic proliferating cell clusters (fig. S1D).
Fig. 1 Histones extracted from human DIPG containing H3F3A K27M (H3.3) or HIST3H1B K27M (H3.1) mutations exhibit decreased H3K27me3. (A) Immunoblots of acid-extracted histones from DIPGs of different indicated H3 genotypes. (B) Immunoblots of histones from PDGF-induced gliomas with and without the H3.3K27M transgene. (C) Immunohistochemistry of H3K27me3 in human or murine gliomas containing wild-type H3.3 or H3.3K27M. (D) Immunohistochemistry quantification of nuclei staining positive for H3K27me3 (P = 0.01 for human DIPG, and P = 0.0001 for murine gliomas with the unpaired t test).
To investigate the mechanism by which H3K27M decreased overall H3K27me3, we generated stable human embryonic kidney–293T (HEK293T) cell lines that express FLAG- and hemagglutinin (HA) epitope–tagged wild-type histone H3.3 or K27M and G34R/V mutants, which contributed to about 1% of total cellular histone H3, as measured by immunoblot. Cells expressing the H3K27M mutant histone exhibited a profound reduction in H3K27me2/3, with little changes in the amounts of H3K4me3 or H3K36me3 (Fig. 2A). This reduction was specific to the H3K27M mutation, as amounts of H3K27me2/3 remained unchanged in H3.3G34R/V transgenic cell lines. We did not observe change in the amounts of PRC2 complex components in H3.3K27M, PDGF-induced glioblastoma cell lines (fig. S2A).
Fig. 2 H3K27M transgenes cause a global decrease of H3K27me3. (A) Immunoblots of whole-cell extract from lentivirus-transduced 293T cells expressing the indicated H3.3 transgenes. (B) Immunoblots of whole extract from H3.3 K27-to-X transduced 293T cells. The antibody against HA (anti-HA) blot shows the relative H3.3 transgene amounts. (C) Immunoblots of anti-HA–immunoprecipitated heterotypic H3.3 K27M or G34R/V mononucleosomes from the indicated H3.3 transgenic 293T cell lines. (D) Immunoblots of anti-HA–immunoprecipitated oligonucleosomes (>95% of four to five nucleosomes in length, with a median of two to three nucleosomes) from the indicated H3.3 transgenic 293T cell lines (vertical black lines indicate where control lanes were removed for clarity).
The heterozygous and invariant nature of the lysine-to-methionine mutation at residue 27 in nearly 80% of pediatric DIPGs strongly suggests that this specific amino acid substitution imparts a unique gain-of-function to the mutant histone. To further test the specificity of this substitution, we performed a survey of all amino acid substitutions at H3K27. Nearly all substitutions had little effect, if any, on the amounts of K27me3, with the exception of methionine, and to a lesser extent isoleucine (Fig. 2B).
The global reduction in H3K27me2/3 suggested that the H3K27M transgene reduced methylation on endogenous wild-type H3 histones. Indeed, purified heterotypic mononucleosomes (1:1 ratio of H3.3-FLAG-HA: endogenous H3.3), oligonucleosomes containing H3K27M, or wild-type oligonucleosomes from K27M-expressing cells displayed a marked decrease in H3K27me3 on the endogenous H3 protein (fig. S2B). Concomitantly, these nucleosomes exhibited a modest increase in the acetylation of H3K27 (H3K27ac) on the untagged H3 in the heterotypic K27M nucleosomes (Fig. 2C), and, similar to the modification pattern observed on mononucleosomes, oligonucleosome arrays showed elevated H3K27ac when they contained H3.3K27M (Fig. 2D).
We investigated amounts of H3K36me3 in cell lines carrying H3.3G34R/V mutations to determine whether these mutations behave similarly to H3K27M. Although overall amounts of H3K36me3 remained unchanged in H3.3G34R/V cell lines, a marked loss of H3K36m3 was exclusive to the epitope-tagged H3.2/3 of purified mono- or oligonucleosomes (Fig. 2, B and C). The epitope-tagged H3 exhibited a decrease in K36me2 (~2.7-fold) and K36me3 (~18.5-fold) on the G34R/V mutants, compared with wild type, as measured by mass spectrometry (fig. S2C). Heterotypic H3.3 G34R or G34V mononucleosomes were methylated to a lesser extent by recombinant SETD2 in vitro, which indicated that nonglycine residues at position 34 on the substrate peptide decreases SETD2 methylation at K36 (fig. S2, D and E).
H3K27me3 peptides allosterically stimulate PRC2 methyltransferase activity on nucleosome substrates (8, 9), and we found that incubation of 10 or 100 μM of H3K27me3 peptide strongly stimulated PRC2 activity toward mononucleosome or oligonucleosome templates (Fig. 3A). Heterotypic H3K27M mono- or oligonucleosomes containing H3K27M (fig. S3, A and B) were methylated to a lesser extent than wild-type nucleosome substrates when purified human PRC2 was used (Fig. 3A and fig. S3C). This reduction in PRC2-dependent signal was unique to chromatin containing H3K27M, as heterotypic K27A, K27R, or K27Q mononucleosomes showed no decrease in methylation on the endogenous histone (Fig. 3B).
Fig. 3 H3K27M inhibits PRC2 methyltransferase activity in cis and trans. (A) Fluorography of PRC2-mediated methylation of wild-type H3.3 or heterotypic H3.3K27M nucleosome substrates. (B) Fluorography of PRC2-mediated methylation of heterotypic mononucleosomes containing the indicated amino acid substitution. (C) Fluorography of PRC2-mediated methylation of wild-type mononucleosomes in the presence of 10 or 100 μM of the indicated peptide. (D) Quantification of PRC2 methyltransferase activity with varying concentrations of wild-type oligonucleosomes in the presence of 45 μM of H3K27ac or H3K27M peptides. Error bars represent the standard deviation for three repeats of the experiment. (E) Fluorography of PRC2-mediated nucleosome methylation with titration of K27M or K27ac peptides.
The reduced methylation on nucleosome templates suggested that the K27M peptide might interfere with PRC2 activity normally stimulated by H3K27me3. Incubation of K27M peptide in trans decreased PRC2 activity on wild-type nucleosomes to below the no-peptide signal (Fig. 3C), whereas the unmodified or K27ac peptide exhibited little stimulation relative to no-peptide control (Fig. 3C). The H3K27M peptide reduced PRC2-dependent methylation by 6.2-fold at 45 μM as measured by scintillation counting (Fig. 3D). Peptide titration showed that μM concentrations of H3K27M, but not the K27ac peptide, could inhibit PRC2-dependent methyltransferase activity in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 3E and fig. S3, D and E).
We synthesized biotinylated H3 peptides carrying either the diazirine-containing methionine isostere l-photo-Met at position 27 (peptide 1) or a benzophenylalanine residue at position 31 that retains the K27M mutation (peptide 2) (fig. S4, F and G). Upon irradiation, both peptides cross-linked effectively to the EZH2 subunit and less so to the AEBP2 and EED subunits (Fig. 4A and fig. S4E), which suggested that K27M peptides inhibit PRC2 through interaction with the EZH2 active site. Although the EED subunit is needed for enzymatic activity and K27me3 allosteric activation (8), we did not observe interaction between EED and H3K27M peptides by surface plasmon resonance or peptide pull-down assays (fig. S4, A to D). We additionally found the K27M peptide could inhibit a PRC2 complex that contained a mutant EED (Y365A) that cannot interact with K27me3 (fig. S5A).
Fig. 4 H3K27M-mediated inhibition of PRC2 occurs through interaction with EZH2. (A) Coomassie gel of purified PRC2 cross-linked to peptide 1 (fig. S4F) and immunoblots with streptavidin–horseradish peroxidase (SA-HRP) or antibody against EZH2. (B) IC 50 measurement for methionine or norleucine substitution at K27. Titration reactions of H3.3K27M or K3.3K27Nle peptides with 70 ng PRC2 and 0.8 μg wild-type oligonucleosomes. Error bars represent the standard deviation of five repeats. (C) Quantification of PRC2 methyltransferase activity in the presence of 50 μM of H3 peptides (18 to 37) containing K27acetyl, K27Leu, K27Ile, K27Met, or K27Nle. Error bars represent standard deviation of three repeats. (D) Fluorography of methyltransferase reactions with wild-type or EZH2-Y641N PRC2 on wild-type H3.3 nucleosomes in the presence of 50 μM H3 peptides (18 to 37) with K27acetyl, K27Met, or K27Nle. Error bars represent the standard deviation of three repeats. (E) Quantification of methyltransferase activity of reactions in (D). Error bars represent the standard deviation of five repeats. (F) Immunoblots of 293T cells expressing the indicated EZH2 and H3.3 transgenes. The anti-HA blot shows relative H3.3 transgene amounts, and the anti-FLAG shows the relative EZH2 or Y641N amounts. (G) Immunoblots of whole-cell extract from transduced 293T cells expressing the indicated H3.3 transgenes. The arrows to the right of the total H3 blot point to the transgenic histone (red) or endogenous wild-type histone (black). (H) Quantification of histone methyltransferase activity on H3 peptides (1 to 20) by SUV39H1 or G9a in the presence of 10 μM H3K9me3 or H3K9M or no peptide. Error bars represent the standard deviation for five repeats.
Titration of K27M peptide to in vitro methylation reactions revealed a median inhibitory concentration (IC 50 ) of 5.9 μM [95% confidence interval (CI) of 1.10 to 6.42]. To evaluate whether the thioether moiety of methionine was required for inhibition of PRC2, a norleucine derivative (K27Nle) was prepared. The K27Nle variant proved to be an even better inhibitor of PRC2 (Fig. 4B) (IC 50 for K27Nle = 0.85 μM) (95% CI: 0.57 to 1.27) (fig. S6A). Peptides containing Lys27 replaced by Ile inhibited PRC2 to a lesser extent than K27M (IC 50 for K27I = 8.9 μM (95% CI: 4.12 to 11.2), whereas Lys27 replaced by Leu had no inhibitory effect on the amounts of H3K27me3 in vivo or PRC2 in vitro (Fig. 4C and fig. S6, B to D). Thus, a long, hydrophobic residue suffices for EZH2 binding, and methionine—and to a slightly lesser extent isoleucine—represents the ideal biochemically accessible choices.
SET domain histone methyltransferases contain several highly conserved aromatic residues that serve in substrate binding and catalysis. The Tyr641 residue in EZH2 is hypothesized to restrict higher-order lysine methylation by acting as a steric gatekeeper (10, 11). Recombinant Y641N EZH2-containing PRC2 was less sensitive to inhibition by the H3K27M peptide compared with wild-type PRC2 (Fig. 4, D to F, and fig. S6, E and F), which furthers the argument that hydrophobic interactions between the methionine side chain and aromatic residues in the EZH2 active site are important for K27M inhibition of PRC2.
We tested whether the highly conserved active sites of other SET-domain proteins may be similarly sensitive to methionine substitution at their cognate peptidyl-lysine substrate by constructing H3.3 transgenes containing methionine at K4, K9, and K36 (12). H3K9M and H3K36M transgenes decrease overall amounts of H3K9me2/3 and H3K36me2/3, respectively (Fig. 4G and fig. S7A). Although H3K4M transgenes did not diminish overall amounts of H3K4me2/3, the lack of reduction in methylation may be a consequence of reported inhibition of LSD1/2 histone H3K4me3 demethylases by H3K4M peptides (13). Histone H3K9M(1–20) peptides effectively inhibit recombinant histone H3K9 methyltransferases SUV39H1 and G9a (Fig. 4H) [IC 50 for K9M = 2.2 μM for SUV39H1 (95% CI: 1.7 to 2.6); IC 50 for K9M = 3.6 μM for G9a (95% CI: 2.1 to 5.9)] (fig. S7, B and C). These data argue that the H3K9-specific SET-domain inhibition likely causes the reduction of H3K9me2/3 in H3.3K9M-expressing cells.
To determine whether the chromatin context of K-to-M mutants is important for in vivo inhibition of trimethylation, we placed the H3 tail (amino acids 1 to 42) onto the core domain (amino acids 23 to 102) of histone H4-HA-FLAG. H3K9me3 was reduced in cells expressing the K9M H3-H4 hybrid (fig. S8A). However, K27M and K36M failed to reduce H3K27me3 and K3K36me3 when expressed in the context of H3-H4 hybrid transgenes (fig. S8, B, C, and D). These results argue that SET-domain protein interactions with non–N-terminal nucleosomal surfaces are important for the full inhibitory activity of some K-to-M, but not all, mutants in vivo.
In summary, the data shown here provide compelling evidence that a missense histone mutation can dramatically alter nuclear biochemical processes through a gain-of-function mechanism. Moreover, our data indicate that K-to-M mutations target the active sites of diverse SET domain–containing methyltransferases and, thereby, effectively compete with substrate binding and turnover. Notably, in their proper chromosomal context, K-to-M mutant histones that make up only a few percent of total histones suffice to prevent global methylation at their cognate residues. This reduction in histone methylation is expected to disrupt positive-feedback loops that contribute to the regulation of PRC2 and thus to enhance the inhibitory effect of mutant histones. We propose a model whereby aberrant epigenetic silencing through H3K27M-mediated inhibition of PRC2 activity promotes gliomagenesis. The broadly adaptable, yet highly specific, inhibition of SET-domain proteins through K-to-M mutation offers the intriguing possible existence of other etiological missense mutations in histones. Additionally, our work has uncovered a potentially useful mechanism to exclusively inhibit individual SET-domain methyltransferases, and conceivably other chromatin-modifying enzymes, implicated in a variety of malignancies.The Panel:
Ian Bremmer is President of the global political risk research and consulting firm Eurasia Group, and author of Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in |
problem, but keeping track of thousands of items in inventory, minimizing fraud, automating, and the logistics would be.
It’s interesting that Neatorama feels that plugins aren’t sufficient to carry out large-scale e-commerce. But how does Alex feel about WordPress as a publishing platform?
We’re not moving away from WordPress because it’s failing us as a blogging platform. Rather, our business evolved from being a pure publisher into a side-by-side e-commerce and blogging operation. WordPress and its vibrant community continue to be a great choice for most publishers big and small.
Learning From The Pros
It’s great to hear about what all of these websites are doing, but what advice can they offer you?
Servers
Learn how to deal with servers, or get someone who does. You should know how to configure nginx and PHP-FPM, MySQL slaved with HyperDB, Varnish VCLs, and NFS. “If you don’t know how to deal with the stuff in between a browser sending the request and your code running,” warns Tom Willmot, “it will seriously limit you in terms of how things can be improved and also debugging issues. Server issues can be extremely frustrating; if you don’t have a handle on it, it will come back to bite you.”
Read and Learn
Jean Paul Horn advises that you should keep up with the latest performance recommendations, and he particularly recommends the following:
Steve Souders,
Web Performance Today,
Articles about performance right here on Smashing Magazine,
A saved Twitter search with the #webperf hash tag.
Ask for Help
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” says Jean Paul. “The community out there is exceptional and truly supportive.” Spend money hiring WordPress performance experts. This provides an excellent return on investment. If your website goes down or is unreachable, potential readers could end up with the competition. Trying to visit a website that is constantly down is frustrating for the visitor, and they won’t stick around.
Shop Around
Alex Santoso suggests that you “Shop around for hosting costs. Similar hardware configurations can have vastly different pricing from different hosting companies.”
Trail and Error
SlashGear suggests that you use trial and error to get your configuration right. Decide whether a plugin is really necessary. Many plugins use many resources for a simple function that could be hard-coded into the theme. “Adding new hardware and server resources isn’t always the solution,” said Ewdison Then, “but sometimes it’s the only solution.”
Optimize What Matters
Mark Jaquith recommends that you don’t optimize blindly. “Find out what the biggest bottlenecks are and eliminate them. Rinse and repeat.”
WordPress Performance Resources
If you feel inspired to start scaling, here are some resources to check out:
Many thanks to all of the people who contributed their knowledge to this post:
Optimize What Matters
Mark Jaquith recommends that you don’t optimize blindly. “Find out what the biggest bottlenecks are and eliminate them. Rinse and repeat.”
WordPress Performance Resources
If you feel inspired to start scaling, here are some resources to check out:
Many thanks to all of the people who contributed their knowledge to this post:Native people of the Salish Sea have lived off the bounty of this place for thousands of years. A new exhibit at The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington campus, created in collaboration with area tribes, explores and explains the indigenous foods of the region as well as their gathering and use.
Salish Bounty: Traditional Native American Foods of Puget Sound focuses on the revival of traditional food gathering and use in the region, but also provides an intimate look into the past. From herring rakes to gathering baskets, the tools for gathering nature's bounty adorn the exhibit and are a feast for the imagination. Even everyday things surprise: the name Tukwila, it turns out, comes from the Chinook jargon trade name for hazelnuts. gathered from the trees that used to thrive in that now paved-over place.
Showing the resilience and survival of traditional food ways, the exhibit also includes videos and audio interviews with tribal members about the meaning of traditional food and the culture that informs their gathering and use.
The exhibit kicks off with an opening celebration Saturday, January 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is part of a larger exhibit Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, at the Burke from Jan. 28 to June 10.
Along the way will be a series of special events for the public, including a teach-in on March 31 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on traditional Northwest native foods and diets.
Teachers from the Northwest Indian College will join members of local tribes to present activities, food walks and talks about the renaissance of interest in traditional foods. Demonstrations and discussions about traditional foods, plant medicines, basketry, cordage, netting and tool making, as well as recipes for wild green salad, acorn bread, and crab apple butter will be presented. There also will be a chance to learn how traditional foods were gathered, stored and prepared, and discussion of traditional foods as a healthy alternative to the conventional mainstream American diet. The session is included free with museum admission fee.
For a complete list of events, which are still in the making, go online to the exhibit's website.
Making kelp pickles. Photo courtesy of Elise Krohn.
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Thimbleberries are one of the first fruits of the season. Photo courtesy of Elise Krohn, Burke Museum
Berries always have been a central food in the Coast Salish diet, prized for their flavor, versatility and nutritional value. Berries were eaten fresh, dried and mixed in with other foods, especially as a pemmican with pounded dried salmon. They typically were gathered in handmade cedar baskets and often still are today. For many tribal members a fresh, hand-gathered, homemade berry pie, particularly of tiny berries such as huckleberries, is a special treat reserved for honored guests at gatherings large or small.
For more about berries and their importance in contemporary Coast Salish life, and to see photos of some some beautiful heirloom gathering baskets, read my Field Notes post on berries last spring.
I remember once spending an evening with members from the Jamestown S'Klallam and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe to sample a Klallam language class taught by Lower Elwha Klallam tribal language teacher Jamie Valadez. We left the reservation in Port Angeles for the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe's tribal center in Blyn late in the afternoon, and I was kicking myself for not bringing something to eat. How funny that I would have worried.
As soon as students for the class started arriving, so did the food. Buckets of clams, fresh off the beach just outside the classroom door, was the featured dish. Baked on a cookie sheet in the oven in a kitchen adjoining our classroom, the clams emerged hot, fragrant and steaming.
We ate the shellfish with buttered bread, the door to the classroom open to the soft swishing sound of the incoming tide. The taste of those clams and the sound of the tide went together perfectly with the sound of the language. It was a dreamy, timeless feeling to experience the tribal language, food and landscape all together, as of course, they had always been.
Salish Bounty Co-curator Elizabeth Swanaset holds clams collected on a Puget Sound beach last summer. The clams were then smoked and preserved for winter use. Photo by Warren King George. Courtesy, Burke Museum
The learn more about the central role of the cook and traditional foods in tribal ceremonial life, read my story in Pacific Northwest Magazine.BRUSSELS—Over the weekend, negotiators from the European Union's executive body and the US Federal Trade Commission worked frantically to thrash out a deal to allow transatlantic data transfers to take place. But the so-called Safe Harbour 2.0 is far from a done deal.
So how did we get here? Two men are essentially responsible: Edward Snowden and Max Schrems.
The whole world knows only too well about the whistleblowing exploits of Snowden, who infamously exposed the US National Security Agency's PRISM spying operation. What Austrian privacy campaigner Schrems went on to do with that information, once it became public in 2013, is logical but impressive in its scale. Schrems—then a law student in his mid-20s—looked at the companies accused of leaking personal information to the NSA and decided to file an official complaint about the misuse of his personal data by Facebook.
“I could pretty much have chosen any other big company that was involved in PRISM and has a European headquarters. You just need a company that is here in Europe, and some element in the US, and straight away you have two jurisdictions colliding,” he tells Ars.
Schrems speaks at a million miles an hour, as though he can't wait to explain everything that's happened and does not want to leave out even one iota of legal wrangling.
On the subject of any potential new agreement, he argues it would be no better and that a sector-specific approach to EU-US data transfers would be preferable. “If this case goes back to the ECJ [European Court of Justice]—which it very likely will do, if there is a new safe harbour that does not meet the test of the court—then it will fail again, and nobody wants that," he says.
“What we should be focussing on are all these other companies in the US that do not fall under mass surveillance laws and that actually could protect our data well if they had the right agreements and the right arrangements.”
So why all this fuss now? After all, the ECJ ruled the Safe Harbour agreement invalid nearly four months ago. However, as Schrems notes, it’s not the European Commission’s deadline; it’s the deadline of data protection authorities who agreed after the ruling last October to hold off on action until officials in Brussels and the US had a chance to put their house in order. Now though, January 31 has come and gone, and no deal has been signed.
“There is a bunch of data protection authorities that will still do nothing after that date. But there are others who have already started doing things, so it’s kind of a soft deadline,” Schrems says.
But this “soft deadline” is one the big US corporations are taking lightly. Phrases like “legal limbo” have been bandied about, and companies are lobbying hard to persuade the Commission that the US does have sufficient safeguards for European data. It's an assertion that Schrems finds amusing.
"It’s hilarious if you read all these documents, because they are absolutely missing the point. The tactic from the US point of view right now is to pick on the weakest link in the European Union, usually the UK—even though being compared to the UK is a prize no one wants to win in the privacy world—and say 'the US is essentially equivalent.' What they’re absolutely missing out on is that the transfer between companies falls under EU jurisdiction, while national surveillance does not, so we have different standards,” he says.
Schrems is adamant that those lobbying in favour of so-called Safe Harbour 2.0 are trying to blur the lines “by saying we have this little change here, this little change there. But none of these are substantial changes of surveillance techniques that the US has. They have not even changed their own national system to a level that would be compliant with European law.” He adds: “They are basically trying to bombard Brussels with tons of lobby paper and hope that this is going to help them."
In the meantime, some EU authorities, including the European Commission—which is the executive wing of the 28-member-state bloc—have advised companies to rely on so-called standard contractual clauses, rather than Safe Harbour, to cover their responsibilities in protecting the data of European netizens. According to Schrems, standard contractual laws are no good because, as Article 4 of the EU Data Protection Directive states, data transfers cannot happen if there’s conflicting national law. “Obviously we have conflicting national law,” he says.
So, does the man who ruined the game for those data-hungry multinationals have a solution? Sort of. He tells Ars:Junior forwards Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson have been dismissed from the Dayton men’s basketball team, coach Archie Miller announced Wednesday.
Miller would not comment on the specific reasons for the dismissals. According to a source, the dismissals are related to a series of thefts from residence halls on campus. The University of Dayton Department of Public Safety is conducting an investigation into the thefts, which occurred over the weekend. That investigation is ongoing, but a police log showed at least 25 theft reports came in over the weekend from students in two dorms.
Scott and Robinson, both graduates of Northland High School in Columbus, played major roles in the Flyers’ run to the Elite Eight last season. Scott and Robinson could not be reached for comment. Their coach at Northland, Sean Taylor, said he didn’t know enough about the situation and declined to comment.
Scott was named one of three captains in a preseason vote by his teammates. He has started all nine games and averaged 9.1 points and a team-best 7.4 rebounds in 27.7 minutes per game. Robinson averaged 3.2 points and 2.4 rebounds in 15.3 minutes per game.
“We made a decision as a basketball program to dismiss Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson from our team,” Miller said. “This is a decision really based on behavior and acceptable behavior. Both guys didn’t live up to expectations, not only in what we feel about our players but in general in how you’re supposed to do things.
“There are no winners. It’s a sad day. This is a basketball decision. This is a program decision. From this point forward, we’ll move on.”
Miller ruled out a possible return for Scott and Robinson in the future. They have not been dismissed from school, but Miller said he expects them to move on at some point.
“They’re dismissed permanently,” Miller said. “They’ll no longer be a part of this program. Both guys will continue to finish what they’re supposed to do in school. That’s a university decision. From our standpoint, we’re moving forward.”About The Artist
Matthew Cusick’s newest paintings are a series of Texas highways traversing allegorical landscapes. For his second exhibition at Lisa Dent Gallery, Cusick has refined his technique of painting with maps, using them as a surrogate for paint – their inherent visual qualities of tone, value, and density employed to render the spatial image of the highways.
The maps used for this body of work come from Cusick’s collection of American world atlases and school geography books from 1872-1945, a time period during which the world’s geography changed dramatically. By juxtaposing antique maps with modern highway images, Cusick tells the story of America’s foreign policy and domestic infrastructure and its struggle to remain the ultimate superpower. The gold-hued international maps of the background landscapes are treated as sculptural objects. Each country has been individually cut out, retaining its natural contours and political boundaries, and then reconfigured into an assemblage of geology gone awry. In creating these imaginary landscapes, Cusick has drawn from the ravaged topography of abandoned open pit and strip mines and has captured the caustic quality of these chemical wastelands.
The oblique aerial images are based on photographs Cusick took during a helicopter tour of Dallas-Fort Worth’s paradigmatic highway interchanges. The “Mixmaster” in Fort Worth, recently reconstructed as part of the NAFTA Superhighway, was previously explored by Cusick in “Mixmaster I” (2004). For this exhibition, Cusick includes his newest work, “Course of Empire: Mixmaster II” (2006). This new “Mixmaster,” layered with animal migration paths, trading posts, and railroad depots is viewed by the artist as a portal into history.
Cusick captures the beauty of potentially disastrous architectures. Color choices such as the cyan blue in “Chasing the Dragon” (2006) make the images both poignant and disturbing. Maps are still masterfully cut and inlaid, but some areas are left untreated while others appear to have already eroded. For Cusick, these tiny deviations in craftsmanship are apocalyptic gestures revealing the ominous end to our civil ambitions.
Along with the paintings, Cusick will also create a wall installation. Using maps and map pins, Cusick plays with the world’s geography to create conceptual histories of war, colonization, disputed territory, political upheaval, and globalization. (Lisa Dent Gallery)
Matthew Cusick’s Website
Matthew Cusick at Lisa Dent GalleryI remember when I was growing up reading teen magazines, I'd frequently come across headlines like "Can a Girl Ask a Guy Out?" Thankfully, the answer was usually "yes," but looking back, the fact that this was even a question is regressive. The fact that it's still a question (and that people assume every date will be between a guy and a girl) seems regressive as well. But we must be a pretty regressive society, because whether or not women should make the first move is still very much under debate.
When I discussed this question with my friends as a teen, the idea that anyone can ask anyone out was not a given at all. Many of my friends believed that while girls can ask guys out, they shouldn't, because they should be "chased." If they don't show they're worth the chase, I was told, girls come off like they don't respect themselves, which is a turnoff.
By framing playing "hard-to-get" as a way of showing self-respect, these friends portrayed it as feminist. But to me, it's been anything but. Waiting passively for someone to "chase" me due to stereotypes that men are more active has made me feel powerless. (Not to mention, the whole concept of a "chase" is pretty rapey. I'm not an animal being hunted.) And the only way I've ever gotten the relationships I've wanted has been by making the first move.
How Asking Guys Out Got Me What I Wanted
When I was in college, I was so shy about asking guys out that I got my first date ever by daring someone to ask me out in a Truth or Dare game. Since he was good-looking, charming, sophisticated, and a bit older, I thought he might reject me. My genius plan was that if he wasn't feeling it, I could just brush off the dare as a joke. But he actually followed the game up with "how about Monday?"
That relationship taught me a valuable lesson: If I avoided asking people out, I'd be depriving myself of awesome people like him.
That relationship taught me a valuable lesson: If I avoided asking people out, I'd be depriving myself of awesome people like him. So, when I joined OkCupid, I was very proactive about messaging people. I got into two relationships through the site in my early 20s, both with people I messaged first. Surprisingly, friends asked questions like "so how'd he first message you?" This idea that men must initiate everything just won't go away.
After I took a break from online dating, I went on vacation with a friend, where I spotted an incredibly hot guy in a nightclub. I was feeling bold that night, so I told him exactly how attractive I found him. I actually made him promise not to leave the club without me, which he later told me he found "cute." We're still together 13 months later, so "thrill of the chase" my ass.
This Gives You More And Better Options
One reason I advocate making the first move is simple math. The number of people who approach you plus the number of people you approach is going to be greater than just the first number. So just by asking people out, your pool of possibilities expands, even if most of them say "no."
OkCupid's data show that women who start conversations on the site end up with partners who are rated as more attractive.
On top of that, the group of people you approach is probably going to be more attractive to you than the group that approaches you. To illustrate this, just look at your inbox on any dating site. The users who messaged you first probably have a wide range of attractiveness to you, from those you really like to those you don't interest you at all to those who are being totally inappropriate. If you look at the conversations you started, on the other hand, all those people are probably attractive to you. OkCupid's data show that women who start conversations on the site end up with partners who are rated as more attractive. When I was online dating, I went on almost no dates with users who messaged me first — not because I was opposed to that on principal, but because those messages were generally full of "hey babies" and lacking in substance.
I've Found More Progressive Partners This Way
Fotolia
Maybe my teenage friends were right in one way: Some guys do judge women who make the first move. But those aren't the guys I want to date. I want to date guys who appreciate assertive women — and who err on the side of not coming on too strong themselves, because they're conscious about potentially coming off creepy.
Think about a nightclub, for example. The kind of guy I'm into understands that women often understandably feel uneasy in these settings. So, while they may start conversations with potential love interests, they're not going to aggressively try to pick them up because they want them to be comfortable. In other words, they're going to wait for women to make the first move.
That's how it was when I met my partner. We were in a nightclub in Ibiza — a setting where he could have found a ton of women looking for sex if he wanted to — and he was just standing there enjoying the music. Already to me, that was a sign that he wasn't a pushy person. A few months later, he told me he liked that I wasn't afraid to approach him — which also suggested to me that he didn't buy into gender roles.
If I refused to make the first move in these situations, nothing would have happened with him. I'd probably have attracted more guys who came to the club to prey on women.
It's So Empowering To Go After What You Want
Women are too often taught to sit back and wait for what they want, whether it's in relationships, in the workplace, or in the process of something as simple as telling someone how you like your coffee. Asking people out is great practice for being your own advocate in all areas of life.
In any situation where you want something, you have two choices: You can secretly hope you get it and say nothing so that nobody's mad at you and you don't end up embarrassed, or you can risk humiliation and ask for it. I've found that when you go with the second option, you'll be surprised by how often you get it. There will be times you get a "no," and it may wound your ego, but it's worth all the times you get a "yes."
This Whole "Thrill Of The Chase" Business Is Total Sexist Garbage
Because making the first move has worked out so well for me, I have no patience for people who tell me it's "biology" for men to make the first move. Whatever our caveman ancestors did is irrelevant to me — I'm going to go with what's working for me right now in the 21st century.
The idea that men are wired to pursue when while women are wired to reject or accept their advances isn't just heteronormative and sexist.
The idea that men are wired to pursue when while women are wired to reject or accept their advances isn't just heteronormative and sexist. It also contributes to rape culture. It denies women agency over their own sexuality and downplays their desires, furthering the assumption that their primary role is to be desired. And since someone without desires is basically an object, depicting women this way undercuts their ability to consent — or not consent.
In short, telling women they're not suited to ask anyone out objectifies them. Not to mention, it deprives them of some amazing relationships. If we want to empower girls to go after what they want, encouraging them to ask their crush out is one great place to start.This post is a follow-up to an article I wrote on Forbes entitled, The Kratom Experiment Begins.
First, I should explain why I am publishing this piece here instead of Forbes. When I wrote the original piece, I mentioned that I would be using Lucky Kratom brand capsules for the evaluation. This set off a cascade of comments and emails telling me that I was making a mistake limiting myself to that brand, for a variety of reasons.
At the same time, several Kratom distributors contacted me offering free samples to use during my evaluation. I decided to accept samples from three of these companies:
Mayan Kratom
Nutmeg Kratom
Online Kratom
Because I accepted these free samples, I felt it was no longer ethical to write the follow-up article on Forbes -- a venue for which I am paid to write. Instead I chose to move the follow-up here, to The Daily Brain, a blog I own and derive exactly zero compensation from.
I am grateful to each of the companies that supplied samples, because they enabled me to conduct a much more thorough evaluation than would have been possible with only one brand (Lucky Kratom – a product I paid for myself, I should add).
Having said that, I will not be comparing products from different companies in this post. That was never my intention. Rather, I will simply provide you with my personal experience with the products in general.
The two forms of Kratom I experimented with were powder and capsules. I also experimented with a variety of strains and “fusions” of different strains and extracts. Generally speaking, I took Kratom in the morning, usually mixed with a small amount of orange juice.
I did not experience a tremendous difference between strains, although the fusions that contained extracts were consistently more potent. Because the extracts lead to quicker tolerance, I spaced out my usage and tried to stick to regular strains most of the time. I especially liked Bali, Maeng Da and Green Thai.
Now for the effects.
My overall takeaway is that Kratom has a two-tiered effect. Initially it provides a burst of energy very similar to a strong cup of coffee. Unlike coffee, however, the energy I derived from Kratom was longer-lasting and level. My experience with coffee is that the initial burst is strong but it tapers and descends rapidly, leading to the well-known caffeine crash. The energy from Kratom, on the other hand, would often last for three or four hours, but was subtle enough that at no point did I feel like I was jumping out of my skin. I also did not experience an energy crash with any of the Kratom products I sampled.
The second-tier effect was relaxing, but fell short of being sedating. I never felt sleepy while taking Kratom, but I did experience a level relaxation that was pleasant, and balanced out the initial energy-boosting effects nicely.
As to side effects, I can’t say that I experienced any worth noting. A few times I noticed that my eyes were bloodshot after I used a fusion containing an extract, but that was not a consistent side effect and it never obscured my vision, nor did it seem related to any other drawbacks.
As to the difference between capsules and powder, I noticed that the powder worked faster, but the capsules seemed to be generally as effective, though with somewhat delayed effects. That makes perfect sense since it takes the stomach a bit longer to break down the gelatin containing the powder.
My biggest concern with most of the products I sampled is that it’s not easy to nail down the specific amount to take. I used “bakers spoons” that indicated how many grams a spoonful contained, but I’d strongly recommend anyone who wants to take the product long-term to invest in a decent-quality digital kitchen scale. I am indebted to several people who have sold Kratom for years for offering free advice on how to arrive at the correct amount for my body type (I'm six feet, 225 lbs with an athletic build).
In my case, about three grams was adequate to induce an effect, but I have been told by several regular Kratom users that amounts vary greatly by person. I can’t make any recommendations on the “right” amount to use. I simply experimented with amounts (guided by the advice I mentioned) until I found one that worked well for me.
My overall comment on Kratom is that it’s a lot like good coffee, but with a more even, long-lasting energy effect, and a much more pleasant “finish.”
As to the results of stopping usage, I can tell you without hyperbole that getting off coffee is a far worse experience than getting off Kratom. I was able to stop taking Kratom for three days and at most I experienced a bit of sluggishness that wore off in a day or so. Withdrawal from coffee, for me, includes at minimum two days of excruciating headaches that make me want to rip trees from the ground and toss them through store windows (something I've never actually done, mind you). Suffice to say, caffeine withdrawal is significantly worse than Kratom withdrawal, if it can even be called "withdrawal." There's no comparison whatsoever.
Having now experienced the product myself for a number of weeks, I can see no reason why it should be banned, or on what basis such a product would be banned if people can walk into a typical coffee shop and buy an enormous cup of an addictive substance that’s arguably more potent than any Kratom available anywhere.
If you have any questions about my experience or would simply like to discuss further, please feel free to email me:
disalvowrites [at] gmail.com
You can also leave a comment on this post.
*A note on quoting from or reprinting/reposting this piece: overall I am flexible on reposts, but please contact me ahead of time by email to let me know when and where you'd like to repost. Thanks in advance.
David DiSalvo's newest book, Brain Changer, is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.5 years ago
(CNN) - Hours before President Barack Obama's event on Wednesday in Boston promoting his health care law, his Republican challenger from last year's election criticized Obamacare.
White House officials say the President, appearing in the backyard of Mitt Romney, will say in a speech that the Affordable Care Act is based largely on the health care law that the 2012 GOP presidential nominee implemented as governor of Massachusetts last decade.
Romney, in a statement on Wednesday, revived a line he used quite often on the campaign trail contrasting his state's initiative with Obama's signature domestic achievement, which is now being skewered in Washington over the rocky rollout of its website.
"In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect, nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country," Romney said.
"Beyond that, had President Obama actually learned the lessons of Massachusetts health care, millions of Americans would not lose the insurance they were promised they could keep, millions more would not see their premiums skyrocket, and the installation of the program would not have been a frustrating embarrassment," Romney said. "Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally."
Obama is expected to say the Massachusetts measure had many challenges early on like the national health care law, but is now providing quality and affordable health insurance.
White House spokesman Jay Carney signaled the President would draw a comparison between the low enrollment numbers so far for Obamacare and a similar sluggish start to the Romney health care plan.
"As has been the case in Massachusetts and in other similar kinds of programs, when you have this sort of extended shopping period, most people tend to wait until closer to the deadline before they actually enroll," Carney said.
The President will deliver his speech at Boston's Faneuil Hall, the Colonial-era meeting house where Romney signed the Massachusetts health plan into law.
David Simas, a senior White House strategy and communications official, told reporters on Tuesday that regarding the president's Wednesday speech, "No, there's no outreach to Governor Romney."
A source close to the former governor told CNN that Romney was not invited to the event.
A former Romney campaign adviser and spokesman had low expectations for the President's speech.
"Unless he stands up in Faneuil Hall and unveils a revamped, working website and admits he misled the country about how their insurance policies would be affected, it will be just another Obama speech. One full of empty promises, self-serving rhetoric and intellectual dishonesty," said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor.
Stuart Stevens, a former top adviser to Romney's 2012 campaign, compared news coverage of Obamacare to news coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960's and 1970's, which started out non-controversial before becoming extremely critical of U.S. efforts.
"This coverage is so much like the coverage of Vietnam. It was all great for so long until reporters really got on the ground and saw the reality," Stevens told CNN.
CNN White House Producer Kevin Liptak contributed to this storyIt’s a very weird time of year for the non-religious skeptic. Everyone is going to church, talk of Jesus and God abound and the holiday discussion is centered around whether we should say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas.
I didn’t grow up in a very religious home. My parents allowed me to make my own decision about religion. I went to bible school a few times when I was a child during summer. I even attended a Christian private school from pre-school to 1st grade. My only recollection of that experience is that the staff was scary and that I had to memorize verses every week. How that relates to a good education, I still have no idea. My parents, thankfully, figured this out quickly and put me into public school, where I really learned a lot and could grow up to be a well-rounded, healthy person.
Religion is such a sensitive subject, I even thought twice about whether I wanted to write anything on the net that talks about religion, and my views of it. I know there are friends that I have that are very religious, that may read this. Generally, I just avoid that subject with them, because most of the time, I have no desire to discuss or quarrel with them on my religious views. My friendship is more important that one aspect of their lives not aligning with mine.
I worry that if I do not share their religious sentiment, that they will think less of me, or they won’t patronize my business. But it’s time to set those feelings aside. I am a good, moral person… More than a lot of Christians that I know, actually. I don’t get to hide behind religion or sins. I have to be a good person because I want to be, and that the way I feel a moral citizen should act. I don’t worry what God might think, but rather what would my Mom and Dad think. That’s got more real-life implications.
For some reason, however, Christmas brings out the need for those so inclined religiously to really reach out to everyone and make sure that they are saved, or that we all know the “real reason for the season” (To get the retail businesses into the black for the year right??)
I don’t mind the pageantry of Christmas. I love the holiday, and I have no problem with churches extending their arms to find new sheep for their flock. As long as my views are respected and the fact that I don’t attend church regularly doesn’t make me a lesser person in their eyes, I’m perfectly fine. To me the symbolism of religion in Christmas is very much like the symbolism of Santa Claus. They’re both icons representing nice stories that, during this time of year, many people like to feel a part of so that they can push the stress and fear of the rest of the year aside for a moment and feel like there’s something bigger, and more important to think about.
To me Christmas isn’t real until I go over to my parents house and see all the decorations that adorn every corner of the place. Everything is sparkling, and colorful, and then, I feel the magic of the holiday. Who knew that such strong emotions could be stored in 35 boxes in their attic most the year.
When Christmas Eve comes, many of my relatives come there and we all sit around the table talking about our year, what’s going on and have a great time and good food. We miss our departed relatives, and talk about holidays past. There’s no prayer, no discussion about a story from centuries ago, just family, sharing a meal, good conversation, the emotions and love that can be found just as much at our house as the pastor’s house down the street.
Merry Christmas everyone.The Obama administration has softened its stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and acquiesced to Moscow’s foreign policy of no regime change, a move GOP Rep. Chris Smith thinks may be reversed by establishing a tribunal to prosecute Syrian officials for war crimes.
Smith has forwarded a resolution to the House Foreign Affairs Panel with the goal of pressuring the White House to wield its influence in the United Nations and demand the establishment of a war crimes tribunal by the Security Council. This ad-hoc tribunal, which Smith has been advocating for since 2013, would transform nebulous allegations against officials in the Syrian government into a careful and detailed list of confirmed crimes. According to Smith, a tribunal ruling would render any kind of cooperation with Syrian regime far more tenuous and may even lead to regime change.
Republicans have notably bashed the Obama administration for abandoning its original goal of regime change after in-depth negotiations with Moscow.
“Everyone who commits crimes of this magnitude could be prosecuted, and I think we have a chance if it’s really promoted to get at least the Russians to abstain from involvement,” Smith told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The tribunal would make it harder for Russia to stand by such an ally, and it would definitely put pressure on everyone else,” Smith added.
So far, Obama administration officials, like Samantha Power, have dodged Smith’s informal requests for a U.N.-created tribunal. The point of a House-passed resolution is to “send a clear message that the status quo is unacceptable.”
While the tribunal would by no means function as a magic wand, Smith thinks that it would apply additional pressure on Assad in the same way that the International Criminal Court has made life more difficult for Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, who is well-known for committing atrocities, though he has never been brought to The Hague.
But the International Criminal Court is definitively not the right forum for the prosecution, as the court has focused on entirely the wrong issues or otherwise squandered its investigative resources.
“The ICC has been ineffective beyond words,” Smith said. “They’ve had two convictions since 2002. They focus almost exclusively on 8 African nations, and in their most recent report, they examine alleged crimes attributed to the armed forces of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland deployed in Iraq between 2002 and |
seen aggressive adoption in the enterprise there. But we are slowly starting to see interest move up the stack. So I’ll tell you we’re seeing increased interest in open source content management systems and enterprise content management systems. Things like Drupal and now Alfresco. We have an analyst in our organization, Stephen Powers, who’s just been writing in that area. And we’re seeing increased interest in open source BI. There’s really a number of very good solutions out there, you know, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Spago BI, and Actuate, all build core solutions around open source components that are very interesting to organizations. Traditionally, they have to really think about how they deploy BI because it’s expensive, and it can’t really be widely deployed to lots and lots of users without spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And the idea of an open source BI model is something that excites a lot of organizations and has got them thinking about what that might do to the way that they deploy business intelligence in their organization. So gradually moving up the stack, but still strongest at the core of the IT organization.
James Turner: This is breaking news today, so I’ll understand if you don’t feel like you can comment on it at this point. But I’ve seen reports that the London Stock Exchange which was, I believe, one of Microsoft’s Get the Truth poster children, is pulling back from their Windows deployment. Does that say anything to you?
Jeffrey Hammond: Well, it’s difficult for me to comment on the reasons or what’s going on there. But we’re going to see these sorts of switches back and forth. And you could argue that running open source on Microsoft platforms is also a very interesting way to go. I wrote recently about what Microsoft’s done with their Web PI products that take PHP and make it and PHP-based applications very simple to install on the Windows platform. And so there are both good and bad from Microsoft’s perspective in terms of open source.
The one thing I’d add here is that, to some extent, as we start to see systems migrate into the cloud, what operating system to some extent becomes a little bit less important than the overall cost of maintaining the stack and deploying the stack in that hosted environment. So it’s possible that you could see Windows versus Linux being much less of an issue in the overall open source software debate. Certainly a lot of the organizations that I talk to happily continue to run Windows as their core operating system platform but still use other kinds of open source products like Eclipse, like Apache and Tomcat, like Spago or Jaspersoft. And really look at it as a mixed environment, not a pure open source or pure commercial type of situation.
James Turner: You’re going to be presenting at OSCON on a panel called, Beyond the Hype: The True Cost of Open Source. Is there anything else at the conference that’s caught your interest, or that you’re particularly looking forward to?
Jeffrey Hammond: Honestly, I haven’t had a lot of time to scope out some of the sessions that I want to attend. And that’s just reflective of the way that Forrester works with the end of the quarter and everything that’s been coming together. But, in general, wherever possible I’m looking to gauge the level of pragmatism in the community versus religious fervor, because certainly in the enterprise space we see pragmatism ruling the day. And to some extent, I think it’s important to see who at the conference is understanding of that attitude and is adapting and reacting accordingly. And who is maybe dismissive of the interests of enterprise IT. And I’ll give you an example of that; one of the things that most tends to concern enterprises is the security of open source software. And if you look at any of the defects in the bug reports when you look at the NIST reports and that sort of thing, I think there’s no justification to say that open source is less secure than commercial source. But it’s a perception that is held in the enterprise–that’s just the way it is. So the community can do one of two things. They can either understand that perception is there and deal with it and put data up that disproves it. Or they can say, ‘Well, the enterprise doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Aren’t they stupid? And they don’t know what’s going on.” And I think that that dismissive approach is counterproductive from a business standpoint. So I’ll be looking for sessions and seminars and attitudes that show that there’s an understanding of the myth and the realty of open source, that, if properly dealt with, can really help the folks that believe in it as a fundamental business model be more effective in working with enterprise organizations.
James Turner: Well, Jeffrey Hammond from Forrester, it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you. We look forward to seeing you at OSCON. And hope to see you there.
Jeffrey Hammond: Thanks a lot. Can’t wait.Introduction
We've been hearing about Intel's VROC (NVMe RAID) technology for a few months now. ASUS started slipping clues in with their X299 motherboard releases starting back in May. The idea was very exciting, as prior NVMe RAID implementations on Z170 and Z270 platforms were bottlenecked by the chipset's PCIe 3.0 x4 DMI link to the CPU, and they also had to trade away SATA ports for M.2 PCIe lanes in order to accomplish the feat. X99 motherboards supported SATA RAID and even sported four additional ports, but they were left out of NVMe bootable RAID altogether. It would be foolish of Intel to launch a successor to their higher end workstation-class platform without a feature available in two (soon to be three) generations of their consumer platform.
To get a grip on what VROC is all about, lets set up some context with a few slides:
First, we have a slide laying out what the acronyms mean:
VROC = Virtual RAID on CPU
VMD = Volume Management Device
What's a VMD you say?
...so the VMD is extra logic present on Intel Skylake-SP CPUs, which enables the processor to group up to 16 lanes of storage (4x4) into a single PCIe storage domain. There are three VMD controllers per CPU.
VROC is the next logical step, and takes things a bit further. While boot support is restricted to within a single VMD, PCIe switches can be added downstream to create a bootable RAID possibly exceeding 4 SSDs. So long as the array need not be bootable, VROC enables spanning across multiple VMDs and even across CPUs!
Assembling the Missing Pieces
Unlike prior Intel storage technology launches, the VROC launch has been piecemeal at best and contradictory at worst. We initially heard that VROC would only support Intel SSDs, but Intel later published a FAQ that stated'selected third-party SSDs' would also be supported. One thing they have remained steadfast on is the requirement for a hardware key to unlock RAID-1 and RAID-5 modes - a seemingly silly requirement given their consumer chipset supports bootable RAID-0,1,5 without any key requirement (and VROC only supports one additional SSD over Z170/Z270/Z370, which can boot from 3-drive arrays).
On the 'piecemeal' topic, we need three things for VROC to work:
BIOS support for enabling VMD Domains for select groups of PCIe lanes.
Hardware for connecting a group of NVMe SSDs to that group of PCIe lanes.
A driver for OS mounting and managing of the array.
Let's run down this list and see what is currently available:
BIOS support?
Check. Hardware for connecting multiple drives to the configured set of lanes?
Check (960 PRO pic here). Note that the ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Card will only work on motherboards supporting PCIe bifurcation, which allows the CPU to split PCIe lanes into subgroups without the need of a PLX chip. You can see two bifurcated modes in the above screenshot - one intended for VMD/VROC, while the other (data) selection enables bifurcation without enabling the VMD controller. This option presents the four SSDs to the OS without the need of any special driver.
With the above installed, and the slot configured for VROC in the BIOS, we are greeted by the expected disappointing result:
Now for that pesky driver. After a bit of digging around the dark corners of the internet:
Check! (well, that's what it looked like after I rapidly clicked my way through the array creation)
Don't even pretend like you won't read the rest of this review! (click here now!)I want to talk about how to initiate touch with a woman in a social party, at a bar, at a club, in any kind of party or nightlife situation, in a manner to generate HARD attraction with her- and get her horny within 3 minutes flat.
First of all, touching a woman causes her body to release a powerful sex hormone called oxytocin.
Oxytocin, what it does is increases a woman’s testosterone levels, giving her high sex drive. Oxytocin also causes a woman to feel a powerful bonding feeling with whoever is touching her. And it creates a desire to be penetrated; a woman spiked with Oxytocin has a sudden desire for intercourse.
So you’re talking to a woman, and even if she’s cold to you at first, a few touches will make her start to feel hot and sexual, literally against her will, because it’s an automatic response women have to touch.
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And it doesn’t matter where or how much you touch her, even a few small touches on the woman’s arm is enough to release a spike of oxytocin hormones into her body and warm her up to you.
What’s more, the oxytocin hormone gives her the desire to be touched even more, producing yet even more oxytocin, a reinforcing cycle of sex hormone escalation.
So if you keep touching a woman, she’ll quickly get to the point of wanting more and more touches and eventually warm up to penetration and sex.
And here’s the strange but wonderful thing about it; the Oxytocin response is FAR more powerful in women than it is for men.
That’s because Oxytocin affects the brain only in combination with estrogen. Without estrogen, Oxytocin has no effect. And women have far more estrogen in their bodies than men, particularly young women.
I mean, in your experience, have you ever noticed how a girl you were never really attracted to before, one day she touched you on the hand or shoulder and suddenly, suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, blood rushed to your penis or you started to think about her differently, in a more sexual way?
Well, in women, that effect of a touch is literally 10 times more powerful!
A touch turns you from nice guy friend into potential lover instantly.
You can’t underestimate how being touched automatically and universally gets women in the mood for sex, literally and immediately, and for more touching and quickly for and penetration.
Oxytocin also decreases mental processes and impairs memory. A spike of the hormone brought on by a touch basically takes a woman outside of her head and into the moment. That’s why hugging a girl will typically defuse and melt away her “bitch shield” or cool her off from an argument; touch breaks her pattern, makes her forget her pain, and changes her state. Hugging a girl can instantly warm her up to you in a purely sexual way.
For all those reasons, it’s why touch is one of the KEYS for generating HARD attraction in women.
If she likes you, she thinks you’re awesome, you’re entertaining to her, she will feel light attraction to you. But unless you are touching her, you’re going to FAIL to generate HARD attraction, period, that hard attraction where the girl will literally chase you down.
And look, guys are naturally more physical than women. We’re sportier, we’re about 20% physically larger on average, and physically stronger.
Women are more in touch with their feelings and their feelings quickly change to the surrounding environment.
So it’s natural to stimulate women’s feelings, spiking their sexual hormones, through being masculinely physical. By touching a girl and her being receptive and having your touch affecting her feelings, you are being a natural man, and she’s being a natural women. So it’s completely natural to touch women, all women, when you meet them.
Touch The Girl Right Away
Now, when you’re in a bar or club or social party, it’s very important to touch a woman right off the bat, from the beginning of the interaction.
Because if you just stay in conversation land, and you talk, and you talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk some more, the longer the conversation goes on, the weirder it’s going to feel to the woman in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.
And how long can you fucking talk a girl’s ear off? 20 minutes? You’re going to keep going for 40 minutes? And never make physical contact?
What happens is, if you never touch her, you just end up entertaining her to keep the conversation going. And that’s a sure-fire recipe for the conversation to eventually just die and go nowhere and you end up wasting your time.
The sooner you touch a girl from the first moment the conversation starts, the more NORMAL the touching and the conversation is going to feel to her.
Because if you touch her right away, it shows her that you are completely comfortable with touching, you’re not making a move, it’s just part of who you are, and what you do with everyone. And since it’s no big deal to you, it won’t be a big deal to her.
When you touch a girl right away, you’re showing her your sexual masculine intent from the very beginning and she feels in her gut that you’re a sexual man and a possible sexual partner, and not just a friend or a buddy.
But if you wait 20 minutes into the conversation, and THEN you suddenly try to lay your hands on her of nowhere, you’ll creep her out because it’s like you were pretending to be the “nice guy” for the first 20 minutes to make her like you, and only THEN once you felt you had her permission to go further, only then did you start touching her. And that’s WEAK and girls don’t like it because you suddenly changed personalities halfway through.
That’s not what a cool guy who trusts in his actions does, he doesn’t look for the girl’s permission to start touching her, he just does it from the very beginning because that’s just what he does with all girls.
So touch the girl right away, because if you wait and beat around the bush trying to get her permission and making sure that she likes you, the girl isn’t going to trust you.
But once a woman feels physical contact is there from the very beginning, once she sees it’s just part of who you are, she will accept whatever the fuck you do, because girls fundamentally like touch. And once touched, they want more touch.
The Initial Moves You Need To Make
Okay, now what I’m going to do is give you a give you a moves to begin touching a woman in a bar or club when you first open her and say hello.
The jewelry moves. After saying hello or introducing yourself and opening, you check out her jewelry. You just ask her about her jewelry while you touch her jewelry and by default brush her skin with your fingers. You do a jewelry inspection.
Or another initial first touch you can make, is when you introduce yourself, you shake her hand and you pull her in slightly.
Or you introduce yourself, say something that you like about her, and then you give her a hug, which conveys assertiveness, comfort, and sexuality.
Or when you open her, you put your arm around her shoulder as you do so.
So you want to pick some physical move that you start out every interaction with. And it can be the same move for every girl you meet. You don’t 5 different opening physical moves in your head at once. Just pick one, stick with it, they’re all effective, and they’re all good.
It doesn’t matter the first physical move you make, it just matters that you make a move. They’ll all triggering the Oxytocin response. That all convey assertiveness, leadership, comfort with oneself, trust, self-acceptance and convey sexuality. All of them. So just pick one. And get it down. Use it and recklessly bust it out on all the girls you meet.
For example, every time you open a girl, start inspecting her jewelry. For every single girl you meet.
Or, every time you say hello to a girl, put your arm around her shoulder. Even if she’s with other girls in her group, or whatever. Just make it a rule that when you introduce yourself, you put your arm around her shoulder.
Hugging every girl is damingly effective because girls likes hugs. And you make it the one minute hug rule. Within the first minute of any interaction, you MUST hug the girl! No questions asked. No scenario where this isn’t possible. No situation where it won’t lead to a better outcome.
So pick your opening physical move, and just stick with that move. And getting physical is exactly what sparks that HARD attraction.
(P.S. For even BETTER physical moves, check out my Nonverbal Sexual Mind Control program here)
The 1 Minute Hug Rule
Here’s how to make a girl horny in one minute flat…
Now most guys talk about what they should SAY to women, but really attraction and seduction is not in your verbal sparring with the girl, but in the physical interaction, the touching.
Because can’t really expect to talk your way into a girl’s heart. It’s got to be through physical touch. It’s physical touch that is what makes the girl wet and horny between the legs for you.
So rule #1 is, you want to touch the girl right off the bat. You don’t to be waiting 10 minutes into the conversation before you start thinking, “Oooh, wait a minute, I should be touching this girl.”
You need to initiate touch right from the beginning, and the second you start talking to her, you should be touching her.
It could be giving her a high five, or shaking her hand on the introduction, or tapping her on the shoulder, it doesn’t matter. You just want to set the precedent of touching her and giving her the idea that you’re okay with touch and that it’s okay to be touched by you.
And once that first touch precedent is set, you want to keep physically escalating!
And one good rule to follow is the hugging rule.
And the hugging rule is that you want to hug the girl within 60 seconds of meeting her. So within the first 60 seconds of any interaction, somehow you MUST hug the girl! So questions asked.
So even if people are looking, it doesn’t matter girls like to be hugged no matter what. You can hug the girl in front of other people. Girls love hugs.
Even if a girl has a boyfriend that you don’t know about, it’s still cool and socially accepted to hug the girl.
And you don’t need a good reason to hug the girl. Just for any dumb excuse you can give her a hug. She says something you like, and you say, “Hey that’s so cool of you! Come here, give me a hug for X Y and Z!” And you hug her.
And what hugging does is that conveys confidence, it conveys dominance, assertiveness, friendliness, sexuality, it conveys to the girl that you do what you want and you take what you want.
Hugging conveys that you’re not held back by what other people think or by society’s standards. It conveys that you’re comfortable with physicality and therefore sex.
It conveys that you’re a leader, and that you’re not worried about being judged by others.
And the cool thing about hugging the girl within 60 seconds is that it helps to overcome one of the biggest conversation problems, and that is the problem of running out of things to say.
Once you hug the girl, there’s a level of sexual tension, and then it doesn’t matter what you say. Because even talking about your job or what the weather is going to be is going to be far more sexually charged, and therefore very interesting to the girl.
So instead of trying to be interesting by having the most interesting or funny things to say, instead touch her right away, hug her within the first minute, and then you’ve created a low level of sexual tension and then even the most boring topics will seem interesting to the girl because your are physically attractive to her and there’s a physical attraction going on.
And be setting the physical groundwork early, it makes it much easier down the road to cross that barrier into kissing and sex.
Because if you don’t touch her early on, it gets very hard later on to try to go for that first kiss. But if touching is already there, getting to the kiss is more of just a natural extension or next step of the physical escalation.
So remember, touch the girl right away, even if it’s just with a handshake, and hug the girl within the first 60 seconds.
It makes the interactions so much easier and getting to that first kiss, and you don’t have to worry about what to say so much.A Russian military court has sentenced a Belarusian IT specialist working in Nizhny Novgorod to two years imprisonment for what it deemed ‘public calls to terrorism’ (Article 205 § 2 of the Criminal Code). The material, including pictures, were on his social network page on VKontakte and certainly do not appear to warrant the charges. If something especially incriminating was deleted, it is strange that this is nowhere reported.
According to Belarussian activist Pavel Yukhnevich, Kirill Silivonchik, a 22-year-old with 3rd level invalid status, was arrested at his workplace in Nizhny Novgorod on Dec 18. Colleagues were also detained but later released.
The sentence passed on April 9, in October 2014 states that Silivonchik “posted photographs and posted comments in which he expressed his attitude to the events in Ukraine, called to “kill Moskali” [a fairly derogatory term for Russians - HC], “return Crimea to Ukraine”, etc. Among the photographs and pictures, for example, there was one where a Ukrainian solder is ripping up a Russian flag and stamping on the coat of arms”.
The VKontakte page has now been deleted, but the pictures and texts can be seen, for example, here. Their artistic merit is more than questionable, but these are cited as justification for a 2-year term of imprisonment. The only call to violence is in the alleged call to ‘kill moskali’. If this was in fact there, it was much milder than the call made by the Russian fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin and discussed on pro-Kremlin television channels. He stated that “Ukrainians must be killed, killed, killed, there can be no discussion on that subject”. He has not faced any consequences from the authorities, let alone prosecution.
Yukhnevich says that Silivonchik chose to ‘admit guilt’ in order to receive a milder sentence and did not therefore appeal against the sentence. Instead of the possible 5-7 years, he was sentenced to 2 years in the mildest regime prison colony.
He also accepted the services of a lawyer – Yulia Baronets – provided by the investigators which makes it difficult to ascertain the full details of this case. She told the newspaper Nasha Niva, for example, that he hadn’t been sentenced for the pictures but for “public calls to terrorism”, but couldn’t remember any and could not find the supposedly open record of the court hearing.
Grani.ru reports that this same lawyer was taken on to defend Vladimir Golubyov, a Nizhny Novgorod physicist charged with state treason. Golubyov says that he finally got rid of her after she concentrated only on getting him to ‘confess’.
Worth noting that Svetlana Davydova, the mother of 7, including an infant she was still breastfeeding, also received the ‘services’ of a lawyer who encouraged her to ‘confess’ and who did not even mention to the court her family circumstances. She was only released thanks to public outrage over that case.
Yukhnevich reports that Silovonchik’s relatives back in Belarus believe that it is best to remain silent and that publicity could hurt the young man. They also, however, think that there is a chance that he could be released under the amnesty planned for Victory Day (May 9). In this they are mistaken since the amnesty does not cover such charges (or indeed any of those who are serving politically motivated sentences in Russia.
Belarusian activists do not agree that silence is the safest option and have initiated a campaign in support of Kirill Silivonchik who certainly appears to have been convicted for expressing his views on a social network page.
Support and publicity beyond Belarus is also vital. (Please use the hashtag: #FreeBelarusian)
Letters can be sent to Kirill Silivonchik at this address:
Кирилл Валерьевич Силивончик
603009 Нижегородская обл.
г. Нижний Новгород
пр. Гагарина 26-а СИЗО № 1
Please bear in mind that any letters will be read by the prison authorities and should not make it any comments that could harm him."Definitely. I think it was a 180-degree turn from how we played last night," he said. "We chipped pucks past the U.S. all night, made their defence have to turn and get back to pucks, and put their goalie under pressure with a lot of good forecheck pressure.
"That was probably one of the critical factors in the game, that chipping it past their 'D' puts us into a lot of battles, spots on the ice where our size and strength can make a difference."
Canada finishes the preliminary round against Sweden on Friday. The Swedes are 0-2 after losing 2-0 to Finland on Wednesday.
Canada is playing at the tournament without six key veterans including star forward Hayley Wickenheiser, while the Americans were also sitting some veterans. Both teams are evaluating talent ahead of February's Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, where they are perennial favourites to play for gold.
Canada twice beat the U.S. in exhibition play in October. Church said the games are giving his side a good idea of how the Americans will play in Sochi.
"There's always a bit of cat and mouse and things that you hold back and change, so they don't get a full complete picture of what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish....," said Church. "So I think we do have a good sense of who they are as players but I think we'll learn more as we move along as well."
The game also gave Church his first look at Lacasse in an international game that mattered.
The 24-year-old Kingston, Ont., native is vying for Olympic starts with Shannon Szabados and Charline Labonte. Szabados started for Canada when the team won gold against the U.S. in 2010, but Church said Lacasse has just as much of a shot as her teammates at starting in next year's final.
Lacasse said she doesn't expect to be on the ice for that game.
"I don't think so. I'm the underdog, I'm the young one coming in. So there really aren't that many expectations for me," she said.
"I just go out there and practise and try to bring some fun to the team, and bring that light energy, but when it's time to get to business it's business time. All three goalies get along super well... we know that whoever's in net will do the job."
By The Canadian PressSouthbank, Melbourne outage affected 10,000 people, Citipower says, after power restored
Updated
Power has been restored in the Melbourne suburbs of Southbank and South Melbourne after an outage that affected 10,000 people, provider Citipower says.
Citipower said the outage was caused by two linked substations going down in South Melbourne and Southbank.
Citipower spokesman Drew Douglas said one of the lines supplying power from the substations was down due to planned maintenance when the second back-up line went down.
He said the second line appeared to have been taken out in a traffic incident, but the official cause was still under investigation.
A large number of traffic signals were affected by the power failure and VicRoads urged motorists to approach intersections with care.
Melbourne Arts Centre was evacuated as a result of the outage.
Citipower said electricity was restored at 11:33am, despite an earlier warning that the outage could last until 1:00pm.
Topics: electricity-energy-and-utilities, disasters-and-accidents, southbank-3006
First postedThey have a problem if you have narrow eyes and call you 'chinky'. They also have a problem if you are from the northeast and do not have small eyes and say, "How come you are from the northeast and look normal?" When they hear my name they say, "…but you are a Hindu? Thakur in northeast?"
When I say I am flying home, they look bewildered to know that the northeast has not one but many airports. When I upload pictures from the northeast on Facebook, they say "Arre? Your place is really beautiful... But Guwahati looks like any other big city?" And they are astonished when I say one of India's first rockstars, Lou Majaw, is from the region.
All I can say is that in my 14 years outside Guwahati, though I have never encountered any form of violence or abuse - courtesy, my "mainland looks", as they say - the moment I name my native place, I have been bombarded with questions, some out of curiosity, some in amaze and many them sarcastic and mocking in nature. Questions like "What do you eat? What language do you speak in the northeast? Do you often go to China? How far is Japan from there? Do you need a passport to come to India? Any militants in the family? How many colleges are there? Heard you get drugs in shops?"
Every time, I take pain to explain that the northeast is not one state with one language, religion and culture but eight states with numerous languages, dialects, sub-dialects, cultures, religions and governments. And that the region is very much a part of India and we are all very much Indians and humans like the rest. I am not amazed if the question comes from an illiterate man selling tea on the streets of Delhi or the nearby kirana store owner who has never been out of his colony his entire life. It troubles me when such queries come from the educated, from certain people of my profession, HR managers, techies, lawyers and even ministers.
Some years ago when I landed in the Maximum City and joined a leading media brand, the HR manager asked me with curiosity when she was scanning through my files - "So, you have done MA in English from Gauhati University...where is Guwahati?" Didn't really expect it from an HR manager, especially when they had an office in Guwahati. I replied, "Near Japan." She looked at me, puzzled. I clarified, "Assam". Then came another gem. "Oh, Assam... they have a university there?" I retorted, "Well, No. I forged my certificate." I complained to her senior, who understood my anger.
During one of my visits to the Taj, I couldn't help but argue with two constables who asked two youngsters from Manipur to show their passports and insisted they pay the entrance fee meant for foreigners. This after they showed their ID cards. When I intervened, the cops asked me "Aap kyon beech mein par rahe hain bhaisaab...yeh log to Japan se aakar bhi paisa nehi dena chahte. (why are you intervening, these people from Japan do not pay up the requisite fee". When I explained I too belonged to the north-east and they were not Japanese, the cops said: "Kyon majaak kar rahe hain bhai (you are joking)". The boys, who were obviously used to such obnoxious queries, told me to ignore the cops.
I remember my days when I came to take admissions in Delhi University and was staying with friends near North Campus. It was a cultural shock for me to hear expletives from the landlord who warned us not to impose "our culture on his kids". "Tum logon ki culture main hoga raat ko ghoomna, hamare bacchon ko bigaro mat." More recently, a colleague from Tripura shared her experience with a senior government functionary, who referred her to as the girl from Japan. Then, there was this group of people near DDU Hospital in Hari Nagar who showed me the way to the colony where the 'people from Japan' lived. (The people from Japan were my doctor friends from Assam). And who can forget this classic from a police officer in Bangalore, who said: "Northeast people from look similar."
Ignorance is bliss, as they say. But in this case, ignorance is crime, I say. Over the years, I have become used to such ignorance but when I see someone losing his life just because he protested a snide remark, my blood boils. "You people remain aloof and cannot assimilate with the mainstream," they argue. "How can we assimilate when you call us names, make fun of our looks, snap at our culture and share jokes about our food habits," I counter.
I stay in Ghaziabad, eat rajma and chole chawal, relish on butter chicken and biryani, and my son speaks Hindi. How much more assimilation do you want? I am sure majority of people from the northeast living outside would have similar stories to share.
In these past 14 years, I have made a lot of friends - and very close ones - most of who are from north India and speak Hindi. One obviously cannot hold an entire city responsible for the action of a select few but there is also no denial that intolerance is present, if not prevalent, in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai or, for that matter, even in the northeast, against 'outsiders'. Sometimes it is against Africans, this time it was against a northeastern student. The next time, it could be somebody else.
There are many like me who have learnt to ignore, but there was this boy who protested. And paid with his life.
First Published: Feb 02, 2014 18:25 ISTThe first female strawweight fighters to win the inside the Octagon will collide in December.
Claudia Gadelha and Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who scored unanimous decision victories in their first appearances inside under the UFC banner, are set to battle at the UFC on FOX 13 card in Phoenix on Dec. 13. MMAFighting.com confirmed the match-up with sources close to the situation following a report from polish website MMA News.
Unbeaten in MMA, Gadelha improved to 12-0 with a win over Tina Lähdemäki at UFC Fight Night 45 in July. Jedrzejczyk, who is also undefeated in MMA with a 7-0 professional record, scored a unanimous decision victory over Juliana Lima in her first bout inside the Octagon at UFC on FOX 12. The winner could earn a shot at the UFC gold next.
A week later, Tim Means will make a trip to Brazil to battle The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 3 finalist Marcio Alexandre Jr., who will cut down from middleweight to welterweight, at UFC Fight Night 58, the promotion announced Friday.
Means (21-6-1) enters the bout coming off a win over former Shooto welterweight champion Hernani Perpetuo in July. "Lyoto" (12-1) suffered the first loss of his professional career at TUF: Brazil 3 middleweight final, tapping to Warlley Alves in a middleweight bout.
UFC Fight Night 58 takes place in Barueri, Brazil, on Dec. 20, and is headlined by Lyoto Machida vs. C.B. Dollaway.
UFC also announced a new match-up for UFC 183. Brazilian middleweight Thiago Santos will take on Andy Enz in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 13.
Santos (9-3) looks to get back on track following a decision loss to Uriah Hall, while Enz (7-2) tries to secure his first win under the UFC banner after back-to-back losses to Clint Hester and Marcelo Guimaraes.South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada, second left, celebrates the wicket of India’s Ambati Rayudu during their second Twenty20 cricket match in Cuttack on Monday. (Source: AP)
Kagiso Rabada’s current status is that of South Africa’s newest aggressive tearaway, a son to conscientious parents and a Jo’burg boy with big dreams declaring he wants to grow up to be a ‘great man who is respected.’ Father Dr Rabada’s WhatsApp tagline, meanwhile, reads like a gentle life-message for his cricketer son, who is being primed to become a hero of black townships even while underlining the need to stay grounded, finds Sriram Veera.
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Kagiso Rabada, the 20-year old pace bowler from South Africa, had just been walloped for two sixes in three balls by Rohit Sharma in the first Twenty20 international at Dharamsala. Kagiso hurls the next one faster and shorter, and it rushes past a surprised Sharma who is beaten for pace on a dead track. Kagiso takes couple of steps forward and says something to Sharma, who is enraged enough to start waving his hands and say something back as well. The Dharamsala night was getting hotter.
[related-post]
Back in Johannesburg, Florence, who works for the South African government as a director of asset-management, was getting excited. A touch worried as well. “Why is he talking to the batsman? Why? What did he say? Why?” Sitting beside her was her husband and father of Kagiso, Dr Rabada who turned to Florence and said, “He is just chirping, no foul language, just trying out something.” In his mind, ran a internal |
Bending rules and calling in favors to give one's kid a competitive edge is morally corrosive.
Like Stearns, he is alarmed that parents, pursuing disability diagnoses so that children can take untimed SATs, actually encourage kids to think of themselves as sickly and fragile. Colleges no longer know when SATs are untimed—but the kids know. "The kids know when you're their behalf," says Anderegg, "and it makes them feel terribly guilty. Sometimes they arrange to fail to right the scales. And when you cheat on their behalf, you completely undermine their sense of self-esteem. They feel they didn't earn it on their own."
In buying their children accommodations to assuage their own anxiety, parents are actually locking their kids into fragility. Says the suburban teacher: "Exams are a fact of life. They are anxiety-producing. The kids never learn how to cope with anxiety."
Putting Worry in its Place
Children, however, are not the only ones who are harmed by hyperconcern. Vigilance is enormously taxing—and it's taken all the fun out of parenting. "Parenting has in some measurable ways become less enjoyable than it used to be," says Stearns. "I find parents less willing to indulge their children's sense of time. So they either force-feed them or do things for them."
Parents need to abandon the idea of perfection and give up some of the invasive control they've maintained over their children. The goal of parenting, Portmann reminds, is to raise an independent human being. Sooner or later, he says, most kids will be forced to confront their own mediocrity. Parents may find it easier to give up some control if they recognize they have exaggerated many of the dangers of childhood—although they have steadfastly ignored others, namely the removal of recess from schools and the ubiquity of video games that encourage.
The childhood we've introduced to our children is very different from that in past eras, Epstein stresses. Children no longer work at young ages. They stay in school for longer periods of time and spend more time exclusively in the company of peers. Children are far less integrated into adult society than they used to be at every step of the way. We've introduced laws that give children many rights and protections—although we have allowed and marketers to have free access.
In changing the nature of childhood, Stearns argues, we've introduced a tendency to assume that children can't handle difficult situations. "Middle-class parents especially assume that if kids start getting into difficulty they need to rush in and do it for them, rather than let them flounder a bit and learn from it. I don't mean we should abandon them," he says, "but give them more credit for figuring things out." And recognize that parents themselves have created many of the stresses and anxieties children are suffering from, without giving them tools to manage them.
While the adults are at it, they need to remember that one of the goals of higher education is to help young people develop the capacity to think for themselves.
Although we're well on our way to making kids more fragile, no one thinks that kids and young adults are fundamentally more flawed than in previous generations. Maybe many will "recover" from diagnoses too liberally slapped on to them. In his own studies of 14 skills he has identified as essential for adulthood in American culture, from love to leadership, Epstein has found that "although teens don't necessarily behave in a competent way, they have the potential to be every bit as competent and as incompetent as adults."
Parental anxiety has its place. But the way things now stand, it's not being applied wisely. We're paying too much to too few kids—and in the end, the wrong kids. As with the girl whose parents bought her the Gestalt-defect diagnosis, resources are being expended for kids who don't need them.
There are kids who are worth worrying about—kids in poverty, stresses Anderegg. "We focus so much on our own children," says Elkind, "It's time to begin caring about all children."Election hype preys on hope
Death Panels. Witchcraft. Birthers. Islamophobes. Tea Partiers. Obama text messages. Palin robo-calls. TV commercial after TV commercial after TV commercial. And now, at the end of this $4 billion We-Didn't-Start-the-Fire-worthy vaudeville known as the 2010 election, what do we have to show for it? That's right, a new House Speaker with the politics of Newt Gingrich. If after this soul-crushing extravaganza you find yourself shell-shocked, that's understandable. If you are confused, that's understandable, too, considering the contradictions.
A president who helped corporate interests gut the very proposals he was elected on - health care reform, Wall Street regulation and economic stimulus - was suddenly berated for being anti-business and for overreaching. An anti-Establishment/anti-corporate/anti-NAFTA/anti-government Tea Party ended up electing to the Senate a Congressman's son (Rand Paul), a pharmaceutical lobbyist (Dan Coats), a Bush trade representative (Rob Portman) and a corporate chieftain whose business was propped up by government grants (Ron Johnson). Meanwhile, a country that twice rejected Bush Republicans in favor of Democrats suddenly returned those same Republicans to power.
Yet, as perplexing, demoralizing and insane as all this seems, a clear pattern does exist in the madness.
As I documented in my 2006 book, "Hostile Takeover," our political system has been swallowed whole by moneyed interests - and whichever party is in power inevitably legislates that reality. Americans have come to fully understand this situation - and despise it. Thus, as I showed in my 2008 follow-up book, "The Uprising," we are now reflexively drawn to whichever minority party candidates promise the swiftest backlash. Whether the challengers happen to be anti-Bush Democrats or anti-Obama Republicans, America is drawn to these faux rebels even though we implicitly know they will almost certainly become part of the problem once elected.
It's kabuki theater ad absurdum - and it explains a lot.
For instance, with Democrats embodying the Hostile Takeover right now, the binary dynamic accounts for the recent resurrection of the old conservative populism first pioneered during the 1980s (this, by the way, is the subject of my Spring 2011 book, "Back to Our Future").
The Uprising-versus-Hostile-Takeover cycle also explains not the end of any particular era - but the end of political eras as a whole. Whereas clear differences between the parties once created epochal congressional majorities and intractably red and blue states, we now rapidly vacillate between two similarly money-dominated parties in a spastic search for an insurrection that will bring something different.
That, of course, gives us a unified theory of the last three elections. In an America straitjacketed by a two-party system, these contests have been all about voters trying to support any available uprising, irrespective of party labels or even ideology.
Ending this tail-chasing exercise and constructing a truly transformational and results-oriented politics is essential - but won't be easy because powerful forces are invested in the charade.
Partisan media outlets generate ratings by pretending their respective party's uprising won't be tomorrow's hostile takeover. The political consulting class makes big money from commercials that do the same thing. And a hyper-partisan population divorced from genuine social movements is addicted to believing that if only we wait for the next election, one of the parties - however corrupt or compromised - will supposedly bring about "real change."
In that sense, biennial election hype is the opiate of the masses - an opiate made particularly potent because it preys on the psychology of hope. We desperately want to believe that we can mount a successful uprising. And it's true, we can. But not until we realize that both parties are now part of the hostile takeover we seek to confront.
2010 Creators.comWar of Kings #1 Leinil Francis Yu Variant Cover (May 2009) by Marvel Comics
Limited Edition Variant Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU. Written by DAN ABNETT & ANDY LANNING Penciled by PAUL PELLETIER In the aftermath of the Secret Invasion, Black Bolt has led the Inhumans on a shockingly savage path to restore their strength and security. But that path has brought them into direct confrontation with the Shi'Ar Empire - and their mad ruler Vulcan! Who will get in the first strike? Who will fall on the bloody battlefield? Who will rule? The Imperial Guard, the Starjammers, the Inhuman Royal Family and more of your favorite sci-fi characters are locked on a collision course…and it all starts here! Join the acclaimed team of Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (NOVA) and Paul Pelletier (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) for a pivotal turning point in Marvel’s cosmic history!
- Buy this comic with BItcoin -CLOSE Tensions between Brevard County Judge John C. Murphy and assistant public defender Andrew Weinstock resulted in a challenge - and apparent fight just outside a courtroom in Viera. Posted June 2, 2014
A panel is reviewing evidence in the case of a Brevard judge who scuffled with a public defender.
Buy Photo Judge John Murphy during the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission hearing in Viera. (Photo: TIM SHORTT/FLORIDA TODAY)Buy Photo
A Brevard County judge who told a public defender during a 2014 courtroom hearing that he would "beat his ass" faced an hearing panel Monday, telling members that he did not hit the attorney during a scuffle but conceded his anger got the best of him.
"I'm the one in charge of what I do. I'm the one who said those things," Judge John C. Murphy told the six-member panel during the first day of testimony in the two-day hearing at the Moore Justice Center in Viera.
The group, made up of two attorneys, two judges and two citizens, is reviewing charges that Murphy acted inappropriately during the June 2, 2014 scuffle with Assistant Public Defender Andrew Weinstock and that he continued to preside over seven cases despite Weinstock's departure following a hallway confrontation. The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission's panel will ultimately recommend to the Florida Supreme Court whether the judge, first elected in 2006, will keep his job. Weinstock is now in private practice. No criminal charges were filed in the case.
" I had two hands on him," the judge explained when asked to describe the physical confrontation. "He was coming at me fast. I thought I was being attacked. I did not hit Mr. Weinstock. I did not punch him," adding that Weinstock first pushed him in the chest, prompting Murphy to grab Weinstock by the shoulders and swing him around until he hit a shredder bin in the hallway. There were no eyewitnesses.
Sumter County Circuit Judge Michelle Morley of the Fifth Judicial Circuit, is overseeing the hearing, which included portions of the widely circulated video featuring verbal sparring. Murphy, who described Weinstock as rude, made national headlines when the video hit the Internet.
The argument — including a statement by Murphy saying that if he could, he would hit Weinstock with a rock during a contentious exchange — was captured by courtroom cameras. The courtroom microphones picked up an off-camera commotion with Murphy in the hallway saying, "do you wanna (expletive) with me?"
Murphy later said he was angry that Weinstock was refusing to waive a speedy trial for his clients. Murphy's counsel, Larry Turner, said his client admitted making inappropriate comments toward Weinstock. The judge has since taken an anger management class and is still hearing cases. Public Defender Blaise Trettis supported Murphy's return to the bench.
Weinstock also took the stand, saying that Murphy essentially was pressuring him and his clients over setting court dates for their misdemeanor hearings. "When I feel like a judge is trying to screw my clients over, I will say so," the attorney said, defending his comments on the video.
"I enjoyed being a public defender until this happened. This was so far over the line. I think he should be removed from office. I'm not vindictive but it's so far over the line to attack an attorney because they're trying to protect the rights of his clients," he said.
F. Wally Pope Jr., special counsel selected by the commission, told the panel that Judge Murphy used foul language during the hearing, belittled Weinstock several times from the bench and then invited the attorney to fight twice. Both stepped into the hallway where, "(Weinstock) was hit two times in the face," Pope said. Pope also fired a quick salvo with his first question by asking the judge if he recognized that the court system was designed to replace violence.
Several of the panelists also questioned both the judge and Weinstock, with one member telling Murphy that she was disturbed that he continued to hear Weinstock's clients, even after the attorney left following the confrontation. "I should not have done that," he admitted.
Turner said Murphy, a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Army who served a year in Afghanistan, was provoked by an attorney who was disrespectful, defiant and dismissive toward both his own clients and the judge. The hearing panel will make a recommendation to the Florida Supreme Court over whether to reprimand, fine or remove Murphy from the bench. Testimony continues today.
"At first blush it looks like a pretty simple case but I assure you it's not. What you have on that video is one hour of one day of a very, very fine man," Turner told the panel during an opening statement.
"What you see is not who this man is. The question is why did this happen."
CLOSE Public Defender Andrew Weinstock speaks during hearing after 2014 courtroom scuffle in Viera. Video by J.D. Gallop. Posted March 30, 2015.
The key players
Judge John C. Murphy: Murphy grew up in a military family and is a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Army and served a year in Afghanistan. He was first elected in 2006 as a Brevard County judge and was reelected in 2012 without opposition. His current term is set to expire in 2019.
Andrew Weinstock: Worked eight years as a public defender. He quit the agency after objecting to Murphy's return to the bench after a four-week leave of absence. He now works with a private firm.
Judge Michelle Morley: She is a Fifth Judicial Circuit Court judge in Sumter County and was elected in 2006. She was born in the Bronx, NY and has her law degree from Stetson University College of Law. She practiced family law and civil litigation before her election.
Read or Share this story: http://on.flatoday.com/1bJl7kcBenevolence is widespread in our societies. It is defined as considering a subordinate group nicely but condescendingly, that is, with charity. Deleterious consequences for the target have been reported in the literature. In this experiment, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to identify whether being the target of (sexist) benevolence induces changes in brain activity associated with a working memory task. Participants were confronted by benevolent, hostile, or neutral comments before and while performing a reading span test in an fMRI environment. fMRI data showed that brain regions associated previously with intrusive thought suppression (bilateral, dorsolateral, prefrontal, and anterior cingulate cortex) reacted specifically to benevolent sexism compared with hostile sexism and neutral conditions during the performance of the task. These findings indicate that, despite being subjectively positive, benevolence modifies task-related brain networks by recruiting supplementary areas likely to impede optimal cognitive performance.Dear all,
I have no clue if this is the right topic for such kind of information but because I’ve struggled for some time to bring Atom, racer and rust-language support together under Win32 I thought it could be of some value to other Win32 devs if I write it down.
Some time ago I’ve tried to activate the Rust code completion under Atom. Sadly, it didn’t work on my machine so I informed the maintainers about this issue: https://github.com/edubkendo/atom-racer/issues/45#issuecomment-126720989
At this time I used a pre-1.0 version of Racer and Atom v.1.0.
The problems were two fold: the code completion was not fully active (only certain namespaces were shown) and I always had to press CTRL+SPACE to activate it.
Of course, such workflow isn’t very productive so I gave up…and went back to Sublime3
Now, a few days ago Racer got updated to version 1.0 and I tried to install all components again. And it worked!
My set-up consists of following components:
a) Atom 1.0.3 editor https://atom.io/
b) rust-language support: https://atom.io/packages/language-rust
c) racer-addin for Atom: https://atom.io/packages/racer
d) racer itself: https://github.com/phildawes/racer
e) build-addin for Atom (to get nice Cargo.toml support under Atom): https://atom.io/packages/build
Installation/Config steps are as follows:
a) Atom install package needs to be downloaded, the rest is just Win32-typical click/click/click
b) Now, go to the Settings-page and under Install type “rust” and install the package “rust-language” from the list of available packages.
c) Then go to the Racer github pages (the binary, not the addin…this comes later) and clone the sources. For cloning either use “git clone” via Console, or a tool like this one: https://windows.github.com/
d) Build Racer with cargo build --release and move the whole target/release directory to your preferred path. On my machine I have it under C:\bin
e) Now, install the racer support under Atom. Again, go to Settings/Packages/Install and type “racer”.
f) Configure the Racer-Addin by clicking on it in the Settings/Packages list and selecting its own Settings option. You’ll see a list like this:
We see that Racer-Addin needs two paths, one of the racer binary you just compiled but also the path to the Rust sources itself. Racer needs this path to provide you the nice code-completions. Therefore, you must clone Rust sources from GitHub. In my case I was using the stable branch. You can decide on your own which sources you’ll use. What’s important is that you point to the /src sub-directory of the Rust-source tree.
So, after having completed all this steps the code completion will work:
But, this is not the End (…my only friend, the End…The Doors)
We also want to use Cargo directly from Atom
Luckilly, there’s an incredibly cool package capable of compiling different sources/project types. And it understands Cargo.toml!
Atom Build: https://atom.io/packages/build
Install it via Settings/Install then go to its own Settings page and activate/deactivate options according to your preferences (save-on-build, build-on-save, auto-scroll-on-error etc.)
Now you’ll be able to execute an existing Cargo.toml via CTRL-ALT-B (or by any other key-combination you set up)
But, sometimes one would like to quickly compile a single *.rs file without creating a complete project. I myself often want to execute some nice scripts because I’m still learning the language, so there’s really no need for me to always set-up a complete project just to get some “hello world” executed.
Therefore I created this.atom-build.json config file for Atom-Build which I put into a root directory where all my “single-rust-sources” live.
{ "cmd": "rustc", "args": [ "-v","{FILE_ACTIVE}", "--out-dir", "{FILE_ACTIVE_PATH}" ], "sh": false, "cwd": "{PROJECT_PATH}", "errorMatch": "^(?<file>[^\\.]+.rs):(?<line>\\d+):(?<col>\\d+)", "keymap": "alt-c" }
This file instructs the Atom-Build package to take care of the current active file and feed the rustc compiler with it. The output (that is, the win32 EXE file), will be placed into the directory where the source file lives.
Now, when I hit ALT-C my single source file gets compiled and the rust-output is placed under the same path:
For more information on different Options/Flags of the Atom-Build Addin, please, consult their nice docs: https://atom.io/packages/build
This is it.
I hope this little intro will be of some value to other Win32 developers.
Best regards,
HarrisWASHINGTON — There have been letters signed by generals, rabbis, Hollywood folks, and now – as of Thursday morning – a New York Times advertisement signed by a who’s who of Jewish “formers,” 25 mostly erstwhile members of the A-list of American Jewish leadership avowing their support for the Iran nuclear deal.
The prominent newspaper carried a full-page ad, sponsored by a group called the “No Nukes for Iran Project,” which urged Congress to support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement between Tehran and six world powers to check Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.
The clock is ticking for the Obama administration to enlist the support of enough members of Congress to sustain a presidential veto on what is expected to be a Congressional vote of disapproval on the controversial nuclear deal.
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The advertisement noted that many of the signers have “devoted decades to building and enhancing Israel’s security and strengthening the US-Israel alliance,” a statement designed to counter claims by some on the American right that no supporter of Israel could endorse the agreement, which Israeli leaders on left and right strongly oppose.
It begins by quoting former Israeli Navy commander and Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon, who said that “when it comes to Iran’s nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option” among those actually available to the international community.
“We agree with Admiral Ayalon and leading Israeli military, scientific and intelligence experts who share this view,” the signers wrote.
“Each of us has devoted decades to building and enhancing Israel’s security and strengthening the US-Israel alliance. Our commitment to Israel is everlasting.”
The signers noted that they “remain deeply concerned that Iran is unflinchingly anti-Semitic and an unapologetic state-sponsor of terrorism,” but added that “a nuclear-armed Iran would be even more dangerous. While not perfect, this deal is the best available option to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
They concluded by “strongly urg[ing] Congress to support the Iran agreement.”
Congress is in the middle of a 60-day review period of the deal, which was signed between Iran and the P5+1 states last month. Congress’s Republican leadership will have Congress vote on a resolution of disapproval which, if passed, could force the US to pull out of some of its sanctions relief obligations under the agreement.
The administration is seeking to secure a large enough number of Democratic supporters to sustain a presidential veto of the resolution – which Congress can only override with a two-thirds vote in both chambers – and the battle for individual votes in the Senate has proven to be one of the key political dramas in President Barack Obama’s second term.
Both sides have pressured and cajoled undecided lawmakers.
A number of the people who signed the declaration are former heads of organizations that have come out swinging against the controversial deal, including former AIPAC executive director Thomas Dine and former American Jewish Committee presidents E. Robert Goodkind, Robert S. Rifkind, and ex-ambassador Alfred H. Moses.
The list also includes three former chairs of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, two Jewish former members of Congress and nine leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America.
The signers stressed that they were signing as individuals rather than as representatives of the organizations that they formerly headed.
Only two signers — S. Daniel Abraham, the chair of the eponymous S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, and National Jewish Democratic Council Chairman Greg Rosenbaum – presently hold their leadership positions.
Thursday’s letter is the latest in a series of signed missives intended to show high levels of support for the Iran deal in specific sectors. In recent weeks, similar public letters have been released in support of the deal by rabbis, prominent scientists, retired military officers and Hollywood figures.
The two most recent such letters – Thursday’s and the rabbis’ letter, which came out three days ago – are touted by promoters as proving that the US Jewish community is far from universally opposed to the nuclear accord.Amazon's Alexa rules the home voice-tech world while rivals Google, Apple and Microsoft race to keep up. The giant retailer doesn't make phones (anymore), but it's building the talking digital assistant into devices beyond its blockbuster Echo and Dot line of always-on, always-listening home speakers.
The cheapest, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, costs just $40 (or £40 in the UK from 6 April 2017). It's always on but not always listening. Instead, it requires your TV to be powered up and you to talk into the remote while you hold down, er, Tap, the mic button.
The Fire TV Stick is frequently discounted from its standard $40 price. Check our list of Amazon device deals to see if it's on sale now.
Once you do that, the Stick behaves just like any other Alexa device. Her sorta-robotic female voice replies to questions like "What's the weather?" or "How much does the sun weigh?" via your TV's speakers (unlike Siri on Apple TV, who remains silent for now) and an on-screen message. She can turn on the lights, set the thermostat or otherwise interact with any other Alexa-compatible device in your home.
That's not why you're buying one, however. For most people, Alexa on the Fire TV Stick will be an afterthought. The Stick's main schtick is streaming video, just like its predecessor, which cost the same and also worked with Alexa, but didn't include that voice remote.
The new Stick is faster and remains an excellent value with plenty of content. UK viewers can enjoy online services including Netflix, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5 and Curzon Home Cinema. And Amazon Video has a healthy slate of original programmes such as "The Man in the High Castle", "Transparent" and "The Grand Tour". It's a no-brainer buy for heavy Amazon video watchers and people who prefer talking rather than pressing buttons. But compared to rival Roku, whose $50 streaming stick is our favorite such device, the new Amazon stick currently falls a bit short.
The main reason is the on-screen user interface, which still relentlessly pushes you toward Amazon's TV shows and videos rather than provide the equal playing field for all apps (like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, WatchESPN, Sling TV and countless others) that Roku does. The new Amazon Stick is just as quick as Roku's stick, and its voice capabilities run circles around Roku's, but for now it's not as good unless you already get most of your video from Amazon anyway.
Why do I say "currently" and "for now"? Amazon will soon give all of its Fire TV devices a completely overhauled menu system and user interface (above). It will roll out first to this product by the end of the year, then make its way to older Fire TV models like the 4K-capable Fire TV box (which remains on sale at the new price of $90). For that reason I'm not going to say much about the current menu system (detailed here) in this review.
I will update this review when the new system becomes available and I can test it. In the meantime, here's my take today.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Same winning stick design
In my book smaller is better for pretty much any tech device (that doesn't have a screen). The stick form factor slims streaming down to the bare minimum, allowing the device to hide discreetly behind the TV. The only real downside compared to boxes like the Fire TV, Apple TV or Roku's boxes is lack of ports like Ethernet (although Google's Chromecast has a clever solution), MicroSD, USB and optical audio.
Unlike many of streaming boxes the new Fire TV Stick has 1080p resolution, not 4K. The only mainstream 4K stick-like streamer is the $70 Chromecast Ultra. Like the 4K-capable Fire TV box the new Stick does have HEVC decoding, so it can take advantage of that superior compression format to use less bandwidth for similar picture quality, even with 1080p streams. Amazon has re-encoded its entire video library to HEVC.
The newer version of the Fire TV stick is a bit chunkier than the original but still plenty small. If the back of your TV is too cramped to accommodate it, you can use the included "port saver," a short female-to-male HDMI adapter included in the box (Roku's stick doesn't include one).
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Compared to the original, the new Fire TV Stick improves the Wi-Fi capability from 802.11n to 802.11ac, and adds the ability to connect a set of Bluetooth wireless headphones for private listening. I had no issues connecting to either 2.4GHz or 5GHz networks, and both of the headsets I tried (a Polk Hinge and a Motorola SF520) connected easily and showed good-enough lip sync. Lip sync issues can vary on different Bluetooth headphones, however.
Like other sticks Amazon's power can come from a standard AC wall socket via the included adapter and cable, or from a USB port (typically on the TV). I recommend using the wall socket since it allows the stick to remain in standby, ready to go immediately. Using USB power from a TV means you'll have to wait around 40 seconds for it to boot up each time. At least that beats the original stick, which took 110 seconds to boot up.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Amazon's speed stick
Amazon claims a 30 percent boost in speed compared to the original Fire TV Stick thanks to a new quad-core processor, and comparing the two directly the new version is certainly faster in many ways. That said, the improvement isn't so stark that current Stick owners should feel compelled to upgrade.
The most popular apps provide the biggest differences. Netflix launched twice to three times faster, while YouTube launched about twice as fast. Browsing Netflix was about the same on both devices, although while YouTube's browse was a bit pokier on the old one.
I was also curious about PlayStation Vue, an app that I've found quite sluggish on the old Stick. On the new one it's definitely faster, taking about half as long to load completely. Navigation of the complex menu is also quicker and more responsive, without the frustrating lag of the old Stick (which has improved since I last tested it, but the new one is still much better). Vue on the Fire TV box is still a bit snappier than on the new Stick, but the gap is much closer than before. Compared to the frustrations of the old stick, I think most people will be fine using the new one for everyday Vue-ing.The new website has a cleaner look, additional video and audio clips, revised trial accounts, and new features that should improve the navigation.
The Nuremberg Trials: Newspaper Accounts
The Execution of Nazi War Criminals
by Kingsbury Smith
Nuremberg Gaol, Germany
16 October 1946
International News Service
On 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its verdicts, after 216 court sessions. Of the original twenty-four defendants, twelve (including Martin Bormann, tried in absentia) were sentenced to death by hanging. The author of this account, Kingsbury Smith of the International News Service, was chosen by lot to represent the American press at the executions.
Hermann Wilhelm Goering cheated the gallows of Allied justice by committing suicide in his prison cell shortly before the ten other condemned Nazi leaders were hanged in Nuremberg gaol. He swallowed cyanide he had concealed in a copper cartridge shell, while lying on a cot in his cell.
The one-time Number Two man in the Nazi hierarchy was dead two hours before he was scheduled to have been dropped through the trap door of a gallows erected in a small, brightly lighted gymnasium in the gaol yard, 35 yards from the cell block where he spent his last days of ignominy.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister in the ill-starred regime of Adolf Hitler, took Goering's place as first to the scaffold.
Last to depart this life in a total span of just about two hours was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, former Gauleiter of Holland and Austria.
In between these two once-powerful leaders, the gallows claimed, in the order named, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, once head of the Nazis' security police; Alfred Rosenberg, arch-priest of Nazi culture in foreign lands; Hans Frank; Gauleiter of Poland; Wilhem Frank, Nazi minister of the interior; Fritz Sauckel, boss of slave labor; Colonel General Alfred Jodl; and Julius Streicher, who bossed the anti-Semitism drive of the Hitler Reich.
As they went to the gallows, most of the ten endeavored to show bravery. Some were defiant and some were resigned and some begged the Almighty for mercy.
All except for Rosenberg made brief, last-minute statements on the scaffold. But the only one to make any reference to Hitler or the Nazi ideology in his final moments was Julius Streicher.
Three black-painted wooden scaffolds stood inside the gymnasium, a room approximately 33 feet wide by 80 feet long with plaster walls in which cracks showed. The gymnasium had been used only three days before by the American security guards for a basketball game. Two gallows were used alternately. The third was a spare for use if needed. The men were hanged one at a time, but to get the executions over with quickly, the military police would bring in the man while the prisoner who proceeded him still was dangling at the end of the rope.
The ten once great men in Hitler's Reich that was to have lasted for a thousand years walked up thirteen wooden steps to a platform eight feet high which also was eight square feet.
Ropes were suspended from a crossbeam supported on two posts. A new one was used for each man.
When the trap was sprung, the victim dropped from sight in the interior of the scaffolding. The bottom of it was boarded up with wood on three sides and shielded by a dark canvas curtain on the fourth, so that no one saw the death struggles of the men dangling with broken necks.
Von Ribbentrop entered the execution chamber at 1:11 a.m. Nuremberg time.
He was stopped immediately inside the door by two Army sergeants who closed in on each side of him and held his arms, while another sergeant who had followed him in removed manacles from his hands and replaced them with a leather strap.
It was planned originally to permit the condemned men to walk from their cells to the execution chamber with their hands free, but all were manacled following Goering's suicide.
Von Ribbentrop was able to maintain his apparent stoicism to the last. He walked steadily toward the scaffold between his two guards, but he did not answer at first when an officer standing at the foot of the gallows went through the formality of asking his name. When the query was repeated he almost shouted, 'Joachim von Ribbentrop!' and then mounted the steps without any sign of hesitation.
When he was turned around on the platform to face the witnesses, he seemed to clench his teeth and raise his head with the old arrogance. When asked whether he had any final message he said, 'God protect Germany,' in German, and then added, 'May I say something else?'
The interpreter nodded and the former diplomatic wizard of Nazidom spoke his last words in loud, firm tones: 'My last wish is that Germany realize its entity and that an understanding be reached between the East and the West. I wish peace to the world.'
As the black hood was placed in position on his head, Von Ribbentrop looked straight ahead.
Then the hangman adjusted the rope, pulled the lever, and Von Ribbentrop slipped away to his fate.
Field Marshall Keitel, who was immediately behind Von Ribbentrop in the order of executions, was the first military leader to be executed under the new concept of international law - the principle that professional soldiers cannot escape punishment for waging aggressive wars and permitting crimes against humanity with the claim they were dutifully carrying out orders of superiors.
Keitel entered the chamber two minutes after the trap had dropped beneath Von Ribbentrop, while the latter still was at the end of his rope. But Von Ribbentrop's body was concealed inside the first scaffold; all that could be seen was the taut rope.
Keitel did not appear as tense as Von Ribbentrop. He held his head high while his hands were being tied and walked erect towards the gallows with a military bearing. When asked his name he responded loudly and mounted the gallows as he might have mounted a reviewing stand to take a salute from German armies.
He certainly did not appear to need the help of guards who walked alongside, holding his arms. When he turned around atop the platform he looked over the crowd with the iron-jawed haughtiness of a proud Prussian officer. His last words, uttered in a full, clear voice, were translated as 'I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than 2 million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons - all for Germany.'
After his blackbooted, uniformed body plunged through the trap, witnesses agreed Keitel had shown more courage on the scaffold than in the courtroom, where he had tried to shift his guilt upon the ghost of Hitler, claiming that all was the Führer's fault and that he merely carried out orders and had no responsibility.
With both von Ribbentrop and Keitel hanging at the end of their rope there was a pause in the proceedings. The American colonel directing the executions asked the American general representing the United States on the Allied Control Commission if those present could smoke. An affirmative answer brought cigarettes into the hands of almost every one of the thirty-odd persons present. Officers and GIs walked around nervously or spoke a few words to one another in hushed voices while Allied correspondents scribbled fur |
liced with a slightly sweet Kansas City accent."
Runner up: Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que (Kansas City)
Best ribs: Plowboys Barbeque
Kansas City
"Kansas City loves barbecue pork ribs. Although spareribs from the lower portion of porcine rib cages are most commonly served, baby back/loin ribs from the upper portion of the rib cage are also popular. Competition barbecue has influenced a change from traditional Kansas City-style untrimmed, unskinned whole spareribs to neatly trimmed St. Louis-style rectangular slabs sans breast bone, brisket flap, and bone-side membrane.
"Championship pitmaster Todd Johns transferred his winning ways with baby backs to his enormously popular Plowboys restaurants in Blue Springs and Downtown Kansas City. Your first bite will explain why Plowboys' competition barbecue team is no stranger to the winner's circle."
Runner up: Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue (Kansas City)
Best pulled pork: Johnny's BBQ
Kansas City
"Kansas City loves the upper portion of pork shoulder known as Boston butt, smoked for hours until pull-apart tender. Johnny White applied what he learned from Kansas City barbecue legend Anthony Rieke and tweaked it with his own signature flavor profile: lightly seasoned with award-winning rub and a hickory-smoked mix of tender juicy pork meat mixed with bark and a splash of tomato base sauce."
Runner up: Brobeck's Barbeque (Overland Park)
Memphis
Folks from Tennessee aren't ones to piggyback on others' barbecue styles. A combo plate in Memphis means pork, pork, and more pork. And for the best hog, we consulted Chef Troy Black, championship pitmaster and author of All Fired Up, for a few short and sweet recommendations about his area's best meats.
Best ribs: Central BBQ
Memphis
"Memphis is known for its dry-rubbed ribs. These ribs are some of the best in town... wet or dry. These baby backs are meaty, tender, and perfectly seasoned with just the right amount of smoke."
Runner up: Cozy Corner (Memphis)
Best chopped/pulled pork: The Bar-B-Q Shop
Memphis
"Memphis barbecue is all about pork. The Bar-B-Q Shop is a bona fide barbecue joint serving pork that is moist, smoky, and very tender."
Runner up: Payne's Bar-B-Que (Memphis)
Alabama
Alabama's main contribution to the barbecue lexicon is Big Bob Gibson's signature white chicken, but anyone from the state will tell you that they take their other meats just as seriously. Our Alabama expert, Bob Carlton, comes way of the Birmingham News and AL.com, where he reports on restaurants and culture.
"In Alabama, we're blessed with so much great barbecue that the state tourism department, as part of its Year of Alabama Barbecue campaign, created a mobile app that alerts travelers when they're near a joint they've been meaning to check out," says Carlton. "Picking a favorite spot for pork, chicken, or ribs is always a good way to start a friendly argument, but it is a debate in which there are no losers."
Best chicken: Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q
Decatur
"In Decatur, Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q serves smoked half-chickens dunked in its legendary white barbecue sauce (a concoction of mayonnaise, vinegar, and black pepper).
Runner up: Saw's BBQ (Homewood)
Best pulled pork: Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q
Bessemer
"For pulled pork barbecue, it's hard to go wrong with the smoked meat at Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q in Bessemer.
Best ribs: Rusty's Bar-B-Q
Leeds
"If you're going for ribs, by all means check out Rusty's Bar-B-Q in Leeds, a relative newcomer that is making the old pros take notice."
Best turkey: Full Moon Bar-B-Q
Birmingham
"Birmingham's Full Moon offers a smoked turkey sandwich with a thick, red sauce and a spicy-but-sweet chow-chow that is so good you may never want to eat pork barbecue again."
Best mixed plate: Archibald's BBQ
Northport
"If there were just one barbecue joint to go to before you die, for me, it would be Archibald's BBQ, a modest, cinder-block shack off the beaten path in Northport. My final meal would be the small mixed plate, with sliced pork and spare ribs, grilled over hickory wood in an open pit and served with a tangy, vinegar-based sauce that will spank your taste buds. Wash it down with a cold Grapico, and you're in barbecue heaven."
More from Thrillist:This review appears in The Washington Post’s 2018 Fall Dining Guide as No. 4 on a list of the year’s top 10 restaurants.
Shrimp toast with toasted sesame, kewpie mayo, tare scallion and bonito flakes at Himitsu in Petworth. (Deb Lindsey /for the Washington Post)
No. 4. Himitsu
(Excellent/Superlative)
It’s not the easiest restaurant to access, given its 24-seat, first-come/first-serve dining room. But this Japanese-inspired storefront from chef Kevin Tien and drinks mistress Carlie Steiner became loads better when they introduced a front patio and started taking reservations for Monday nights. That’s when Tien scraps his usual script to showcase a “supper club” menu that finds him serving dumplings, more vegetarian dishes and works-in-progress for future meals. Here are some reasons for any line the rest of the week: crudo that lights up your mouth; a roasted carrot that mimics Mexican street corn, with burnt chile crema playing the role of cotija cheese; shrimp toast spread with Kewpie mayonnaise and showered with scallions and fluttering bonito flakes; and rosy slices of wagyu beef, striped with ginger and scallions and fanned over pearly sushi rice. The concise menu is explained by a small exhibition kitchen, and yep, that’s Tien hosing down the dishes when he’s not turning out some of the most exciting small plates in the city. Steiner’s tastes run to the eccentric but delicious. Cocktails might incorporate rice wine vinegar or toasted sesame rum (or both), while wines lean to uncommon finds from around the world (Bolivia included), mostly from female producers.
3 1/2 stars
Himitsu: 828 Upshur St. NW. himitsudc.com.
Open: Lunch Monday through Friday, dinner daily, brunch Saturday and Sunday.
Prices: Cold and hot plates $14-$38.
Sound check: 71 decibels / Must speak with raised voice.
The Top 10 restaurants of 2018:
10. Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly
9. Little Havana
8. Three Blacksmiths
7. Spoken English
6. Momofuku
5. Maydan
4. Himitsu
3. Centrolina
2. Pineapple and Pearls
1. Del Mar
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The following review appeared in The Washington Post’s 2017 Fall Dining Guide as No. 3 on a list of Tom’s top 10 restaurants.
Yellowtail, fish sauce inaigrette, thai chili, orange and tobiko at Himitsu. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
3. Himitsu
(Excellent/Superlative)
The second-biggest challenge at this beloved shoe box is narrowing down your choices. It’s almost impossible to find a lesser dish on the Japanese-bent menu conceived by chef Kevin Tien and drinks maven Carlie Steiner. “We can always just cook for you,” a server says. “Just tell us how hungry you are.” Deal! For the next hour or so, two “medium hungry” diners practically lick clean every bowl and plate set before us. A twist on Italian ’nduja swaps chicken liver mousse for fiery pork paste, and yes, we’d like more baguette slices to catch every speck of the paprika-shocked, lemony-salad-topped spread. Our experience of a couple raw plates — amberjack with coins of squash, red onion and peanuts in coconut milk vs. yellowtail, oranges and Thai chile-flecked fish sauce vinaigrette — is a fight to a first-place tie. Lightly fried red drum (more chefs should be using the firm, large-flaked catch) swims in a velvety green curry that Steiner says Tien has been working on for eight years. Let me just say, practice makes perfect. And if Steiner’s daiquiri infused with nori doesn’t make you a fan of the drinks program, her (apt and appropriate) description of a Riesling with a whiff of petrol will: “More Vaseline than gasoline.” My BFF and I are more than sated, but sliced Kobe steak with briefly fermented white kimchi and buttery, furikake-sprinkled rice sounds too good to pass up, so down the hatch and into our hearts goes the immense pleasure. Obviously, the first challenge here is getting a table: No reservations and two dozen seats mean you’ll probably have to get in line to taste the place. But fabulous things go to those that wait.
3.5 stars
Himitsu: 828 Upshur St. NW. No phone. himitsudc.com
Prices: Cold and hot plates $14-$46.
Sound check: 71 decibels / Must speak with raised voice.
Owner and beverage director Carlie Steiner pours wine for dinner guests. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
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The following review appeared in The Washington Post’s 2017 Spring Dining Guide as No. 3 on a list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants.
3. Himitsu
(Excellent)
Talk about good things in pocket-size packages! Himitsu made its debut in November with a mere 24 seats and major attributes in the form of co-owners Kevin Tien and Carlie Steiner. They’re the chef and bar maven, respectively, of a gem of a restaurant with a Japanese bent. From the open kitchen flow small plates of distinction: egg custard with ginger and sea urchin, whole fried shrimp in a host of warm spices, amberjack and apples in a terrific salad. The dish that has everyone talking is a variation on Peking duck, rosy slices of meat kissed with five-spice powder and flanked with baked-to-order biscuits in the role of traditional pancakes. The one drawback? No reservations. Good thing Himitsu is flexible about closing time. If people are coming, the chef keeps cooking.
Tom Sietsema’s top 10 new restaurants (Spring, 2017)
10. Colada Shop
9. Kobo
8. Fish by José Andrés
7. Bindaas
6. Tiger Fork
5. Ambar
4. Arroz
3. Himitsu
2. Sfoglina
1. Mirabelle
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The following review was originally published March 1, 2017
Himitsu review: This Petworth jewel is a secret no more
(Excellent)
Chawanmushi — Ginger Consommé, House Cured Alaskan King Salmon Roe, Uni and Chives. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
Co-owner Kevin Tien puts finishing touches on the Orange Upside Down cake. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)
Time was, cooks dominated the kitchen, servers held sway in the dining room and dinner began with “Good evening” rather than “Let us know if you have any food allergies.”
In 2017, it’s not unusual for a chef to bring you your food, a server to wash dishes between orders and an entire menu to be tailored for the gluten-intolerant.
The new way of business describes Himitsu, a modern Japanese restaurant in Petworth whose captivating food and beguiling service make up for the fact that it doesn’t take reservations, lacks a phone and can seat two dozen diners, max. Behind the brand are chef Kevin Tien and drinks guru Carlie Steiner, whose résumés include some of Washington’s top tables and whose young establishment is a case study in contemporary dining.
A few courses in, it’s impossible to think of Himitsu without either owner.
Steiner, a graduate of Barmini in Penn Quarter, is the first face you’re apt to see. Even if you’re not much of a drinker, you have to admire the attention she devotes to beverages. Her list is a snapshot of trends — sherry is the quaff of choice with the food, and you may be encouraged to give amber wine from the country of Georgia a whirl — although if you want a local beer or a classic cocktail, Himitsu obliges. Don’t imbibe? Steiner offers a handful of booze-free drinks, including an ace pineapple-allspice shrub, listed under “Temperance.”
An Old Fashioned is among the classic cocktails offered at Himitsu. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
Beverage Director and co-owner Carlie Steiner previously worked at Barmini. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
It’s not immediately obvious which cook is Tien, who last worked at the four-star Pineapple and Pearls on Capitol Hill and shares his open kitchen with a bartender. Everyone seems to be doing everything, with little regard for hierarchy. What’s crystal clear is the quality of the food, starting with some of the finest snacks now playing.
A bowl of deep-fried Brussels sprouts, flagged as vegan, is a dish everyone can rally around. Halves are tossed in a sweet chili sauce along with rice that’s toasted and ground by hand and a window box of fresh herbs: spearmint, cilantro and Thai basil, among other bright accents. The Japanese egg custard called chawanmushi tastes newly exciting with ginger in its flavoring and garnishes of sea urchin and glistening salmon roe. Each silken spoonful delivers something warm, something cool and a gentle pop as the beads of caviar break in the mouth.
Then there are sweet shrimp, a few inches long, fried whole and tossed in a host of warm seasonings, from clove to cumin. You may be reluctant to eat the head and bodies, but you’ll be glad you did; if the ocean made barbecue potato chips, these are what they might taste like.
Tien’s first restaurant gig was in a sushi restaurant in his native Louisiana, where he says he learned not to send out anything less than perfect. That’s your cue to order some sushi, loose pads of rice draped with very good fish — or not. (Japanese eggplant, among a dozen or so choices, makes an excellent topper after it’s been brushed with yuzu miso and lightly torched.)
On a platter of Peking duck breast, the buttermilk biscuits are just as big a star. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
The rest of the menu is divided between cold plates, featuring fish, and hot ones. The former include a quail egg-topped tuna tartare made with chunks of lush bigeye tuna and eaten with scoops snapped off a sail of sesame rice cracker — my idea of chips and dip — and an artful fish salad. Ribbons of Japanese amberjack and magenta radishes are staged as if for a fashion shoot with creme fraiche and pickled apples, tangy as kimchi.
Tien and crew make vegetarians and vegans feel like first-class citizens, offering meatless versions of most of their hot plates. A draw since Himitsu opened in November: salt and pepper tofu, deep-fried cubes of custardy tofu in a bowl of dashi invigorated with ginger and scallions. (If you don’t ask for the vegetarian take, the standard version is animated by bonito flakes, shavings of preserved fish that flutter from the heat of the dish.)
This is, for the most part, food that tastes like a celebration but is priced for workday consumption. The hot and cold plates, basically entrees, average $17. And every month seems to find an expanded selection of dishes and drinks.
Little bigger than a studio apartment, the restaurant, formerly Crane & Turtle, has the air of a dinner party with a few friendly strangers squeezed in. Eight stools form a half circle around the visible kitchen; the rest of the seats fill out the space, its whiteness replaced here and there with a splash of blue or a green plant. In Japanese, Himitsu means “secret.” The lines out the door at opening time, Saturday in particular, suggest the word is out.
A tip from Tien: If you can’t be there at opening time (5 p.m.), try to show up at least before 6 p.m. weeknights or after 9:30 on weekends. Himitsu is flexible about when it closes, says the chef. As long as people are showing up, the owners will serve them.
A quail egg yolk is a luxurious top to tuna tartare, which is scooped up with a rice cracker. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
Fried Brussels sprouts are tossed with sweet chili sauce. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)
Early on, the crack dish here was buttermilk-brined chicken, shocked with chile sauce, fried so you could hear it crackle, and dropped off with homemade sweet pickles. More recently, a riff on Peking duck has assumed the mantle of Must Get Dish. You order it, assuming the duck is the big deal, and it is, plump breast seasoned with five-spice powder, sugar and salt and presented as blushing slices. But just as compelling is the choice of starch: baked-to-order biscuits instead of the traditional thin pancakes. The platter includes sliced cucumbers, pickled red onions and hoisin sauce, from which diners assemble ducky sandwiches. I, for one, am always sorry to see a clean plate. To drink, Steiner might pull out a dear Grenache, using the increasingly familiar Coravin device to extract a glass or two and preserve the rest.
A bite of glorious duck, a sip of wonderful wine — it’s as substantial a pairing as Tien and Steiner. Catch you in line.On January 3, 2016, during the Miami Dolphins’ final after-game press conference of the 2015-16 season, owner Stephen Ross was asked a simple yet greatly important question – What needs to change?
Ross, 75, a former New York real estate mogul who purchased the franchise in 2008, responded by saying this:
The biggest thing is we need to change the culture.”
“Culture Change” and “Leadership” – two words that have almost become a mirage since the departure of Bill Parcells — who stated he never felt comfortable with “neophyte owner” Stephen Ross.
In his tell-all book “Parcells: A Football Life,” Parcells, who severed as the Dolphins’ vice president of football operations, also states that he never truly felt comfortable with Ross’ approach to ownership.
“My leaving created a situation that was not good for the Dolphins, retrospectively, I thought I was doing the right thing for the Dolphins to let these guys go, take over on their own.”
“Retrospectively, I don’t think it was the right thing, because I saw things happen that I would have made every effort to try to avoid.” – Bill Parcells
Good ownership plays a giant role in building a successful franchise – no one can deny this.
But what about the other intangibles: Coaches, GMs, Executives?
Since the infamous “Bullygate” scandal of 2013, Miami had continued to recycle and retool people within the organization, thus never fixing the deeper problem that lay beneath.
Bullygate shocked the Miami Dolphins, who finished 8-8 after a 3-0 start, yet Coach Philbin remained in Miami. In 2014, the Dolphins’ miss the playoffs for a second straight season finishing 8-8.
Head coach Philbin not only remained in Miami, but signed a three-year extension.
After the Dolphins failed to improve in 2015 starting 1-3, Ross finally fired Philbin along with the offensive and defensive coordinators midway through the season. However, he left the remnants of a failed coaching staff behind as coaches within the organization — the move comes after reports of the teams unwillingness to play for previous staff.
This process of never fully giving the Miami Dolphins a chance to rebuild or heal old wounds has left the Miami Dolphins in a state of “misery loves company”. The Dolphins’ locker room culture has been portrayed more like an episode of HBOs “Ballers” rather than a once winning franchise who in the last decade has been down on its luck.
We have to change the culture. I have to change the culture, and that’s what I intend to do.” – Dan Campbell
Of course Campbell ultimately didn’t get the head coach position at Miami. Adam Gase did. Now the culture of the Miami Dolphins team is his responsibility, so how exactly can Gase change a failing culture that’s plagued the Miami Dolphins for all these years?
Build from the ground up….
Gase has already taken the first steps towards doing just that. As recently reported by multiple news sources, Miami’s 38-year old head coach, unlike other coaches in the league, will be taking his rookie minicamp to the classroom where they will learn off the field –not on it. Instead of practices, according to Miami Herald writer Armando Salguero, the Dolphins will do “life labs” to teach players about proper training, nutrition, fiscal planning, sports science, and how to properly deal with the media. (Thanks Miko)
Players will still be learning schemes, and Coach Gase has stated the move will help his young players complete a season without getting “rookie wall syndrome” aka a slide in progression in the latter parts of the season. This is a bold move by the new coach and it promises to be only the beginning of the new culture in Miami.
Miami is no longer the blood soaked, cocaine filled utopia it once was in the 80’s, just as the Miami Dolphins are no longer the 144- page Wells Report that depicts a vicious, unsafe locker room.
If Stephen Ross can take a giant step back and let Adam Gase build a better tomorrow and a new culture for the Miami Dolphins, the once damaged foundation that lies beneath the “House of Ross” can be fixed, giving the former reality tycoon his best investment property ever owned and Dolphins fans a team they can be proud to be a part of.Because there's not enough money in politics and elections already, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the current biennial limits on individual campaign contributions. This time around, it's likely they'll bolster the Citizens United with a parallel decision lifting limits on what individuals may contribute to individual candidates, because money is speech, right?
Huffington Post reports:
The case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, argues that the limit on what individuals are allowed to give candidates ($46,200 per two-year cycle) and parties and PACs ($70,800 per two-year cycle) is an unconstitutional violation of the individual donor's free speech rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals already ruled in favor of keeping the biennial limits, which have been in place since 1971 and were upheld in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case. By accepting the case, the court is stepping into the thick of another controversial campaign finance case just three years after ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations and unions can spend freely on elections. If the court rules against the two-year limits, it would mark the first time a court has overturned a part of the landmark Buckley ruling that deals with campaign contribution limits. This is not terribly surprising as the court has been hostile to campaign finance laws ever since Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a supporter of campaign finance regulation, was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court's conservative bloc who is opposed to campaign regulation. Campaign finance reformers are already calling on the court to maintain the Buckley precedent and rule against the challenge in McCutcheon, for fear that any overturning of Buckley will eventually lead to future erosion of contribution limits and other campaign finance precedents meant to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption.
I think we can predict the outcome on this, can't we? After the Montana case where they ruled that there was no corruption because of excessive money in campaigns even though the Montana law was passed to prevent rampant corruption, I'm certain those limits will go away.
If Congress has any will for anything, they should quit trying to limit campaign contributions and instead focus on real-time disclosure. If the Supreme Court is going to allow unlimited money, we should expect to know in real time who is spending that money. I don't want any nonsense about anonymous speech, either. Voters have a right to assign weight to a candidate's motives based upon who is paying for them to ascend to office. In real time. Not eighteen or twenty months past the election.
We're not going to win the limits argument with this court. But we might win the disclosure argument handily in lieu of the actual solution -- an amendment to the constitution.Twice already Marie had pointed out the brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect field of corn, because the brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect field of corn put her in mind of a haunted house—not a haunted house she had ever actually seen but the mythical one that sometimes appeared in her mind (with adjacent graveyard and cat on a fence) whenever she saw the brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect etc. etc., and she wanted to make sure that, if the kids had a corresponding mythical haunted house that appeared in their minds whenever they saw the brilliance of the etc. etc., it would come up now, so that they could all experience it together, like friends, like college friends on a road trip, sans pot, ha ha ha! But no. When she, a third time, said, “Wow, guys, check that out,” Abbie said, “O.K., Mom, we get it, it’s corn,” and Josh said, “Not now, Mom, I’m Leavening my Loaves,” which was fine with her; she had no problem with that, Noble Baker being preferable to Bra Stuffer, the game he’d asked for. Well, who could say? Maybe they didn’t even have any mythical vignettes in their heads. Or maybe the mythical vignettes they had in their heads were totally different from the ones she had in her head. Which was the beauty of it, because, after all, they were their own little people! You were just a caretaker. They didn’t have to feel what you felt; they just had to be supported in feeling what they felt. Still, wow, that cornfield was such a classic. “Whenever I see a field like that, guys?” she said. “I somehow think of a haunted house!” “Slicing Knife! Slicing Knife!” Josh shouted. “You nimrod machine! I chose that!” Speaking of Halloween, she remembered last year, when their cornstalk column had tipped their shopping cart over. Gosh, how they’d laughed at that! Oh, family laughter was golden; she’d had none of that in her childhood, Dad being so dour and Mom so ashamed. If Mom and Dad’s cart had tipped, Dad would have given the cart a despairing kick and Mom would have stridden purposefully away to reapply her lipstick, distancing herself from Dad, while she, Marie, would have nervously taken that horrid plastic Army man she’d named Brady into her mouth. Well, in this family laughter was encouraged! Last night, when Josh had goosed her with his GameBoy, she’d shot a spray of toothpaste across the mirror and they’d all cracked up, rolling around on the floor with Goochie, and Josh had said, such nostalgia in his voice, “Mom, remember when Goochie was a puppy?” Which was when Abbie had burst into tears, because, being only five, she had no memory of Goochie as a puppy. Hence this Family Mission. And as far as Robert? Oh, God bless Robert! There was a man. He would have no problem whatsoever with this Family Mission. She loved the way he had of saying “Ho HO!” whenever she brought home something new and unexpected. “Ho HO!” Robert had said, coming home to find the iguana. “Ho HO!” he had said, coming home to find the ferret trying to get into the iguana cage. “We appear to be the happy operators of a menagerie!” She loved him for his playfulness—you could bring home a hippo you’d put on a credit card (both the ferret and the iguana had gone on credit cards) and he’d just say “Ho HO!” and ask what the creature ate and what hours it slept and what the heck they were going to name the little bugger. In the back seat, Josh made the git-git-git sound he always made when his Baker was in Baking Mode, trying to get his Loaves into the oven while fighting off various Hungry Denizens, such as a Fox with a distended stomach; such as a fey Robin that would improbably carry the Loaf away, speared on its beak, whenever it had succeeded in dropping a Clonking Rock on your Baker—all of which Marie had learned over the summer by studying the Noble Baker manual while Josh was asleep. And it had helped, it really had. Josh was less withdrawn lately, and when she came up behind him now while he was playing and said, like, “Wow, honey, I didn’t know you could do Pumpernickel,” or “Sweetie, try Serrated Blade, it cuts quicker. Try it while doing Latch the Window,” he would reach back with his non-controlling hand and swat at her affectionately, and yesterday they’d shared a good laugh when he’d accidentally knocked off her glasses. So her mother could go right ahead and claim that she was spoiling the kids. These were not spoiled kids. These were well-loved kids. At least she’d never left one of them standing in a blizzard for two hours after a junior-high dance. At least she’d never drunkenly snapped at one of them, “I hardly consider you college material.” At least she’d never locked one of them in a closet (a closet!) while entertaining a literal ditchdigger in the parlor. Oh, God, what a beautiful world! The autumn colors, that glinting river, that lead-colored cloud pointing down like a rounded arrow at that half-remodelled McDonald’s standing above I-90 like a castle. This time would be different, she was sure of it. The kids would care for this pet themselves, since a puppy wasn’t scaly and didn’t bite. (“Ho HO!” Robert had said the first time the iguana bit him. “I see you have an opinion on the matter!”) Thank you, Lord, she thought, as the Lexus flew through the cornfield. You have given me so much: struggles and the strength to overcome them; grace, and new chances every day to spread that grace around. And in her mind she sang out, as she sometimes did when feeling that the world was good and she had at last found her place in it, “Ho HO, ho HO!”
Callie pulled back the blind. Yes. Awesome. It was still solved so perfect. There was plenty for him to do back there. A yard could be a whole world, like her yard when she was a kid had been a whole world. From the three holes in her wood fence she’d been able to see Exxon (Hole One) and Accident Corner (Hole Two), and Hole Three was actually two holes that if you lined them up right your eyes would do this weird crossing thing and you could play Oh My God I Am So High by staggering away with your eyes crossed, going “Peace, man, peace.” When Bo got older, it would be different. Then he’d need his freedom. But now he just needed not to get killed. Once they found him way over on Testament. And that was across I-90. How had he crossed I-90? She knew how. Darted. That’s how he crossed streets. Once a total stranger called them from Hightown Plaza. Even Dr. Brile had said it: “Callie, this boy is going to end up dead if you don’t get this under control. Is he taking the medication?” Well, sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn’t. The meds made him grind his teeth and his fist would suddenly pound down. He’d broken plates that way, and once a glass tabletop and got four stitches in his wrist. Today he didn’t need the medication because he was safe in the yard, because she’d fixed it so perfect. He was out there practicing pitching by filling his Yankees helmet with pebbles and winging them at the tree. He looked up and saw her and did the thing where he blew a kiss. Sweet little man. Now all she had to worry about was the pup. She hoped the lady who’d called would actually show up. It was a nice pup. White, with brown around one eye. Cute. If the lady showed up, she’d definitely want it. And if she took it Jimmy was off the hook. He’d hated doing it that time with the kittens. But if no one took the pup he’d do it. He’d have to. Because his feeling was, when you said you were going to do a thing and didn’t do it, that was how kids got into drugs. Plus, he’d been raised on a farm, or near a farm anyways, and anybody raised on a farm knew that you had to do what you had to do in terms of sick animals or extra animals—the pup being not sick, just extra. That time with the kittens, Jessi and Mollie had called him a murderer, getting Bo all worked up, and Jimmy had yelled, “Look, you kids, I was raised on a farm and you got to do what you got to do!” Then he’d cried in bed, saying how the kittens had mewed in the bag all the way to the pond, and how he wished he’d never been raised on a farm, and she’d almost said, “You mean near a farm” (his dad had run a car wash outside Cortland), but sometimes when she got too smart-assed he would do this hard pinching thing on her arm while waltzing her around the bedroom, as if the place where he was pinching were like her handle, going, “I’m not sure I totally heard what you just said to me.” So, that time after the kittens, she’d only said, “Oh, honey, you did what you had to do.” And he’d said, “I guess I did, but it’s sure not easy raising kids the right way.” And then, because she hadn’t made his life harder by being a smart-ass, they had lain there making plans, like why not sell this place and move to Arizona and buy a car wash, why not buy the kids “Hooked on Phonics,” why not plant tomatoes, and then they’d got to wrestling around and (she had no idea why she remembered this) he had done this thing of, while holding her close, bursting this sudden laugh/despair snort into her hair, like a sneeze, or like he was about to start crying. Which had made her feel special, him trusting her with that. So what she would love, for tonight? Was getting the pup sold, putting the kids to bed early, and then, Jimmy seeing her as all organized in terms of the pup, they could mess around and afterward lie there making plans, and he could do that laugh/snort thing in her hair again. Why that laugh/snort meant so much to her she had no freaking idea. It was just one of the weird things about the Wonder That Was Her, ha ha ha. Outside, Bo hopped to his feet, suddenly curious, because (here we go) the lady who’d called had just pulled up? Yep, and in a nice car, too, which meant too bad she’d put “Cheap” in the ad.
Abbie squealed, “I love it, Mommy, I want it!,” as the puppy looked up dimly from its shoebox and the lady of the house went trudging away and one-two-three-four plucked up four dog turds from the rug. Well, wow, what a super field trip for the kids, Marie thought, ha ha (the filth, the mildew smell, the dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume, the pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy cane inexplicably sticking out of it), and although some might have been disgusted (by the spare tire on the dining-room table, by the way the glum mother dog, the presumed in-house pooper, was dragging its rear over the pile of clothing in the corner, in a sitting position, splay-legged, a moronic look of pleasure on her face), Marie realized (resisting the urge to rush to the sink and wash her hands, in part because the sink had a basketball in it) that what this really was was deeply sad. Please do not touch anything, please do not touch, she said to Josh and Abbie, but just in her head, wanting to give the children a chance to observe her being democratic and accepting, and afterward they could all wash up at the half-remodelled McDonald’s, as long as they just please please kept their hands out of their mouths, and God forbid they should rub their eyes. The phone rang, and the lady of the house plodded into the kitchen, placing the daintily held, paper-towel-wrapped turds on the counter. “Mommy, I want it,” Abbie said. “I will definitely walk him like twice a day,” Josh said. “Don’t say ‘like,’ ” Marie said. “I will definitely walk him twice a day,” Josh said. O.K., then, all right, they would adopt a white-trash dog. Ha ha. They could name it Zeke, buy it a little corncob pipe and a straw hat. She imagined the puppy, having crapped on the rug, looking up at her, going, Cain’t hep it. But no. Had she come from a perfect place? Everything was transmutable. She imagined the puppy grown up, entertaining some friends, speaking to them in a British accent: My family of origin was, um, rather not, shall we say, of the most respectable... Ha ha, wow, the mind was amazing, always cranking out these— Marie stepped to the window and, anthropologically pulling the blind aside, was shocked, so shocked that she dropped the blind and shook her head, as if trying to wake herself, shocked to see a young boy, just a few years younger |
angrily to the stands following his equaliser in France's opening game, a 1-1 draw against England. His reaction of putting his finger to his lips was believed to have been aimed at the French media.
He then became involved in a heated exchange of words with a journalist following France's quarter-final exit to Spain.
The clash occurred in the Donbass Arena after the 24-year-old was asked for his reaction to the result.
Nasri reportedly called the journalist a "son of a bitch" and repeatedly complained about the media's behaviour.
The former Arsenal player, a substitute in the game, added: "There, now you'll be able to say I've been badly brought up."
After that incident, Nasri wrote on his Twitter page: "The supporters and in particular children should know that I regret that my language may have shocked them.
"I love the France team, football and I have a profound respect for the fans."
Nasri did not apologise to the reporter, only adding: "It's a personal matter between some journalists and me. I will explain further when the time comes."
The French Football Federation is due to meet next week to discuss Nasri's case.By Sam Smith | 10.23.2015 | 2:40 p.m.
You often defend the theory that the Bulls should keep Taj, Noah, Gasol, and Mirotic. Seems like Gar and Pax agree and want to keep all of the bigs, with Bobby Portis thrown into the mix on top of everyone else. Unfortunately for the team and the fans, this is a terrible move. Players are not basketball cards, stashing one in case another gets ruined is a terrible strategy that does not work in real life. If you have quality players you play them, and if you don't have the minutes for those players then you trade them to a place that does and improve your roster elsewhere. Keeping players around in case of injury is a terrible strategy that upsets team chemistry and player morale. This happens on YMCA teams, high school teams, and college teams, and the NBA is no exception because the stakes are the highest. As long as Gar/Pax continue to play this game with our five bigs, the team will continue to struggle. This puts the coach in a lose/lose situation, trying to find playing time where it doesn't exist and attempting to keep players that aren't getting minutes happy.
--Yuriy Fomin
Sam: Pretty angry for the team still being undefeated in the regular season, eh? This is likely going to be a continuing theme this season as Portis, even as a rookie, is showing he may merit reasonable playing time on a good team. That’s not common for these inexperienced players leaving college early. Good for him and the Bulls for getting a guy like that at No. 22 in the draft. I understand the concept, but that’s why fan/fantasy basketball is much easier than actually running a team.
Yes, you want to win this season because—as the saying goes—this is the only season you can win a title this season. You never know what will happen, so you go for it. I generally subscribe to that philosophy. But the Bulls are in an uncomfortable spot given both Noah and Gasol can be unrestricted free agents after this season. If they get huge, long term offers, do you want to keep both for four years? And if you don’t, and you have dealt someone like Gibson for this season your front court is Mirotic and Portis. See you in the lottery. OK, say you trade Noah or Gasol: That would seem to me to endanger your prospects for this season given both have had injury issues and both are over 30, and how wise is it to ask one to play major minutes in the regular season? It seems playing each less like the Spurs do will make the Bulls a better playoff team.
If you are the Bulls and are looking for help on a team that already as you say has perhaps too much depth, then your need is probably a starting level athletic wing player. No chance you get that for a 30-plus center who is a free agent and can leave after this season. Is it worth cashing Gasol or Noah in for a backup point guard? He won’t play much if Rose is healthy. And he won’t be good enough if Rose is not. I’m not opposed to trading, as most know given my history of deals that have not occurred. But I see too many negative outcomes if the Bulls do trade a veteran; and we know they are not trading Portis or Mirotic. I think the pieces are there. If they are not we’ll see in the next few months. Then you’d have a better idea of whether to move someone and whom. And whether you can get something to make you better. It’s not time yet to start stockpiling draft picks for talent.
In one of your answers in Friday's mailbag you wrote about the possibility of Hoiberg splitting up the front court minutes in such a way that keeps everyone under 30 mpg and that this approach could allow for five guys to all get significant time. I think that would be a good idea but I have one big reservation. Noah does not seem like they type of player who can produce offensively with sporadic minutes. Assuming he's healthy, we know he has the skills to contribute. I'm worried though that if he doesn't play very regularly or big minutes, he won't be able to add much to the team. In Noah's best year he ran a lot of plays from the top of the key but most of the passes he made from there were into the paint. Hoiberg's offense seems like it will feature much more outside shooting. Can Noah's passing ability be utilized to hit outside shooters or is that too hard for a center?
--Cameron Watkins
Sam: I don’t believe with Noah it’s so much about running the offense. That was mostly under emergency circumstances and he did so amazingly well, but with Rose out. We assume Rose will be healthy this season—or healthier—after not having to rehabilitate from a knee surgery in the offseason. If he is, there’s not as much offense being directed by Noah, which was more in the half court. The edge with having Noah is he will pass and can. And while defenses don’t guard him closely, he has shot the ball with less fear this preseason. So he may get the defenses to react more. But he’s also good in transition as an unusual big man who can run the court and then find shooters on the wing or corner.[?
I see Noah going back more to the player he was before Rose’s injuries, a player who’ll run the court and provide defensive energy, and as such vital to the team because you won’t see that as much with Gasol and Mirotic. When he and Gibson have played together in the preseason that’s generally been the Bulls best defensive look and activity. So he should be valuable, if not exactly relying on the way he played to become an All-Star. As Noah always has been team first, I assume that won’t be an issue.
Bobby Portis – DNP against Indiana. No comments by anyone. Why?!
--Rex Doty
Sam: Nothing wrong; just too many big guys (which most teams wish they could say) and Hoiberg wanted to give more time to Gibson, who hadn’t played early in the preseason, and playing with Noah. I expect Portis to play Friday in the preseason close and be part of the rotation when the season starts. How many minutes will pretty much depend on how guys are playing. But as I’ve written and emailers have noted, this is going to be an issue for Hoiberg, at least until someone is hurt.
And we know someone always is hurt. Another reason not to get rid of someone too quickly. Nothing wrong with a little competition as well to push guys. You did get the sense at times under Thibodeau no matter how much opponents said the Bulls played hard that guys would walk through periods because everyone knew when they were coming in and were guaranteed playing time as long as they weren’t a rookie. If you are mad about not playing enough, play better and contribute more. Hoiberg has impressed me thus far as a coach willing to be flexible and go with what is working and who is working the hardest. Seems to make sense.
The Knicks have a lot of depth. Phil did a good job. If healthy no reason this team can’t win 40-45 wins.
--Mike Sutera
Sam: The Knicks on some level are a fashionable choice among many observers to do better. I don’t see a.500 season, but I know from his time with the Bulls that Jackson is excellent fitting the pieces to build a team. He and Doug Collins were the ones lobbying hardest for the drafting of Horace Grant over Joe Wolf and then Phil for the trade of Cartwright for Oakley even as Jordan also was against it.
Phil also deftly argued for the additional big men to counter Shaq and to get Rodman, though Phil did lobby first for Derrick Coleman because of his passing and shooting. I agree Phil has added some nice pieces and Carmelo Anthony’s value has been underestimated after such a poor season last year and surgery. I have my doubts about Derek Fisher communicating with that group, but I can see them at least being a contender for the last playoff spot late into the season.
What are the chances of Cristiano Felicio making the team this year? He hasn't played a whole lot but from what I saw, he's very active around the basket and not afraid to bang his body in there. I also watched on youtube and really like his potential. I believe it'd be worth a shot to keep him around and he may turn out to be a valuable role player.
--Jay Choi
Sam: The Bulls Thursday released Jordan Crawford and Marcus Simmons, so his chances improved. The Bulls still have a 15th spot open on the roster and I actually think he has a chance to stick. I know the Bulls like him and I also think given the future uncertainty regarding some of the big men that they’d like to keep a young big man around. He wouldn’t play much or at all if he stayed, but there’s at least a 50-50 chance or better that he does. And it’s not bad insurance if there are injuries even with all the big guys thus far.
Jordan Clarkson is playing really good basketball, but you always don't believe in good players playing in bad teams. Will he be this good if he's playing on a contender?
--Ken Berango
Sam: Like the saying goes, someone has to score. Even with the 76ers. I know the Lakers seem to like Clarkson, but that sometimes sounds like being late at the bar or party and looking to go home with someone. It’s not like the Lakers have much to choose from now. They’re going to be really bad this season. Then the question for them is Kobe. If he retires and comes off the books, it’s still L.A. and it seems most of the league lives there in the summer. So they’ll get a free agent. Probably two as with the expanded salary cap they’ll be able to offer two guys a deal to come together like a LeBron/Wade thing. Then your Chris Bosh type will tag along.
I’m not high on their young players, Randle or Russell, and I think if a big name player comes on the market with their cap room I can see them trading them. The Lakers are about titles; not that they’re getting any this decade. But they like to think so. Then there’s the Kobe issue. The big problem with having a superstar—like Jordan in Washington—is they are incapable of being someone other than who they were. No matter his age or infirmity, Kobe is going to believe he still is Kobe. Because people still call him that. And he expects that. It’s why it sounds good to fans to add a big name veteran, but it kills your locker room and chemistry. So until Kobe makes his plans known, the Lakers will be held hostage by him.
I would have thought that the Bulls are going to have fewer assists this year, but that may not be so. With this offense it may only require one pass off a drive to get a really open shot. And if they initiate faster that's going to be a tight rhythm. They attack from wing, baseline, and top of the key. Much more efficient with the clock than recent past.
You can also see how Rose will do pretty well here, though his scoring might be down a bit. There's a lot of space in this offense and Rose stands to get the other team moving in half court sets. Crucial aspect here is Rose's ability to finish. If he's back close to where he was, Brooks, Dunleavy and Gasol (and Mirotic if he figures out how to consistently catch and shoot) are going to kill it because he'll draw 3 sometimes 4 defenders to the rim with him. Gibson's got that little 10 footer and takes an inside pass down the baseline pretty well going to the basket.
Rebounding will be a little tougher because the longer shots make it harder to hold a box and bounce bigger. At the end of all this they will have more possessions this year and if they're sharp their assists may actually be up because they're going to score more. Key is to commit to the offense. Back to Snell. He's a bit symbolic of this offense because when he takes it aggressively to the rim, good things happen for him. When the ball is taken hard and decisively to the rim in this offense, good things happen fast. Second team is going to be fun again. Please, mercy on the injuries this year. It should be an entertaining rendition to watch.
--Pete Zievers
Sam: I believe so, but I think it will take some time. Obviously not having Rose preseason was a setback, and Hoiberg basically conducting on court tryouts slows the process. Also,you can see habits need to be broken. You see Bulls players when things break down with pace early running to spots as if Thibodeau is going to call a play. These are five-year habits for most and you don’t break them in a few weeks and without everyone playing. Yes, everyone wants to see less wear on guys; but you have to play to adjust to one another with a new style of play. I see those offensive elements developing and it will be fun to watch. I don’t expect them regularly for a while.
When I'm not rooting for the Bulls during the summer, I'm a die-hard Mets fan; have you also noticed that much of Matt Harvey's situation with the Mets this year has almost mirrored Derrick Rose's situation with the Bulls? The Harvey camp vs the Mets camp, the drama with the agent, poorly timed statements by Harvey himself. Though I don't find Harvey to be nearly as likeable as Derrick I find the two situations eerily similar.
--Trevor Hoffler
Sam: It is an interesting parallel and I know fans of the Cubs want to hear the opinions of fans of the Mets. That sort of thing is probably inevitable when you are dealing with an uncommon situation. After all, how do you know what to do if you didn’t do it before? I know fans and media expect executives to get it right. They’re the experts, I always hear. That’s what they are paid to do. The reality is they merely have the jobs. There’s no school for being a sports executive; no degree, no graduate school. There’s just on the job training. So they are training. Just because, say, you are a good scout or former player or coach doesn’t mean you know how to project an injury. That innings limit is like the minutes limit in basketball.
There’s no proof either way what works. So you take a shot and see if it works. What I’ve noticed lately is Jabari Parker not starting the season despite working out. It will be about 12 months before he plays again. Funny that no one in Wisconsin now thinks he doesn’t care and isn’t trying. And this is a state that elected Scott Walker. I’d be tempted if I were the Mets not to pitch Harvey in the World Series. But how do you know? These are only answers made after the fact. If he is hurt, the half who said not to pitch him will condemn the Mets. If he’s isn’t, the half who said he shouldn’t pitch will wait until something happens next season and then condemn the Mets. As Roseanne Roseannadanna liked to say, “It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it ain't one thing, it's another."
For what it's worth, here's my starting lineup, though it's already looking like it's not going to happen. Rose and Butler at the guards. McDermott at the 3. Taj and Noah at the 4 and 5. Speed, defense, especially under the basket...with toughness, no less...and outside shooting. I'd like to see some consistency with the rotations. Players seem to do better when they know they're coming into the game and who's going to be on the floor with them. I hate to see the Bulls so vulnerable on defense under the basket. I'll bet the opponents will have a circus sending men to the rim. But, then again, I'm probably the wrong one to ask. I sure hope we can score 130/game!
--William Kochneff
Sam: 120 might be enough. It sounds like Hoiberg has made up his mind to start, and to start Gasol, Mirotic, Snell, Butler and a Rose to be played later. It makes sense, really. I think you get more from Pau starting given both his age and that he doesn’t warm up into games quickly and Mirotic’s potential ability to spread the floor and make threes. Then you need Snell for defense as you need two defenders on the floor for a guard and forward. Part of the Bulls personnel makeup issue, as they’ve had for a few years, is a lot of players best on one side of the ball. It’s almost platoon basketball.
So you have to play a lot of guys to have a chance at ultimate success. It seems Hoiberg wants to do that. So you open with an offensive group and if it’s not working bring in the defense with Noah and Gibson. Though fans and media will focus on the starters, once the game starts rotations can change. I agree players like to know their role and responsibility, but that also can cause ennui. Perhaps get too comfortable. As I’ve written, I think Hoiberg will challenge guys to produce with a deeper roster. The theory is that should lead to better play. Theory, anyway. The Bulls have a good group of people, basically team oriented and supportive. So I think it should work playing in waves. And, after all, and as we love to point to the Spurs, they do an awful lot of that with Popovich as more mad scientist than predictable.
So what do you think of the Mirotic+Gasol starting pair? Is this Hoiberg's way of guaranteeing that at least one team will score 30 points in the first quarter? Or maybe T. Thompson will break the single game offensive-rebounding record in that first game of the season?
--Alejandro Yegros
Sam: Actually, he did that last season against Gasol and Noah, though Noah at half speed off surgery. Noah has been much better and livelier, and Kevin Love will start and you have to go after him outside. I believe Hoiberg is flexible enough to change and players have said Hoiberg is more attuned to reacting to matchups than Thibodeau was. So yes, perhaps less stability but more dynamics. It’s not like this has been a championship Bulls team.
Regarding the 95-96 Bulls. Do you think this team (72 wins) could have beaten the 94, 95 Rockets with Hakeem?
--Adnaan Hamid
Sam: That always was the team the Bulls did have problems defeating in the first title run in the early 1990s. I know the Rockets hate that people say they only won because Jordan left. But when Jordan returned it wasn’t the same Rockets team and the Bulls were too good for them then. They went in there that season and beat them badly. It would have been interesting to see them in the Finals between 1991 and 1993 because the Bulls then couldn’t deal with Hakeem and Otis Thorpe ran Grant.
Plus, Vernon Maxwell truly had no fear of Jordan. Or anyone else. Vernon would scream at Jordan and threaten him during games. Not that Jordan minded that much or didn’t play well, but Vernon had some big games and didn’t allow Jordan to help on defense. And Robert Horry and Sleepy Floyd could get hot and made those big shots. But the Rockets never did their part and got there, so there’s not much they can say.The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995
The Specific Character Ideas system that had originally been on this page has been replaced. Users can now create their own roleplaying character ideas on their own Roleplaying Ideas page. Please see that page for details.
Roleplaying is an optional way of playing the game, that can range from a brief diversion to a full overhaul of the game. By playing as if your character has a personality and preferences beyond the game's basic statistics, you can add additional depth and interest. At a basic level, many players will give their characters some sort of backstory explaining who the character is. Beyond that, you can choose to incorporate limitations that make gameplay more realistic or more challenging, as detailed in Increased Realism. Or you can model your character after any favorite person, real or fictional.
Increased Realism
There are a wide variety of ideas for how to make the game more realistic, that can be used alone or combined based upon your preferences. PC players can enhance many of these ideas by adding various third-party mods.
Traveling
Slow down! You don't need to run/jump everywhere. Take a walk in the forests. If you do run while you travel, take the occasional rest.
Only travel in good weather. If you must travel in poor weather, wear appropriate attire. Consider running to find a camp or cave to wait out the storm.
If you come across a village, don't keep going. Unless you're doing something important, stop by. See how the livestock and townspeople are doing.
Spend nights in inns or taverns. If you are caught in the wilderness at night, stop by the side of the road as if you were camping for the night.
Stop and pray at chapels during your travels.
For players who consider Fast Travel to be unrealistic, its use can be minimized or eliminated. Spending more time journeying across Cyrodiil can greatly enhance the aesthetic appeal of Oblivion; some of the lesser traveled places are stunningly beautiful.
to be unrealistic, its use can be minimized or eliminated. Spending more time journeying across Cyrodiil can greatly enhance the aesthetic appeal of Oblivion; some of the lesser traveled places are stunningly beautiful. Use your map and compass more realistically Use your map only when you are sheltered. If it is raining or snowing, your map could get soaked and most likely ruined.
more realistically When entering a dungeon, carry a torch and walk slowly, on the lookout for unknown dangers.
Horses
Take care of your horse more realistically.
Always leave your horse at a stable, in its paddock. Leave an apple or carrot near your horse. Chat with the proprietor and tell them to take extra good care of your horse and bribe him as payment.
When riding, take your horse's fatigue and Health into account Don't run nonstop between cities through the middle of the wilderness, jumping over boulders, running into trees, and swimming across lakes. When possible, stick to the roads. Only run full speed when you are attacked or urgently need to get somewhere. Slow down when your horse is exhausted or injured.
On the PC, you may use the console to give your equine friend a unique name.
Eating
Although it is not necessary, eating regularly is an easy way to enhance roleplaying.
Eat three meals a day at the appropriate times (or less if you are poor). Eat foods appropriate for your character and the mealtime. Once you have eaten, wait for one hour to show it takes time to actually eat--you haven't just instantly eaten your meal. If you find yourself a long way away from a house or an inn, then gather some nearby natural ingredients. Seeds, flowers and other things could make a meal.
Sit down in a chair when you eat.
Eat out at the local inn, socializing with others.
If you had a particularly good meal at an inn, tip the barman by bribing him.
For drinks, you can mix ingredients and call the potion "Juice".
Sleeping
Sleep in a home appropriate for your role. If you can't afford a house (or do not want one), rent a room at an inn or find a bedroll. Also, rent a room when you are visiting a city.
Put your armor in the cupboards, put your sword on the bed next to you, etc, before you sleep. Put on a simple outfit as "pajamas".
Read a book before going to bed, like you fell asleep reading.
If you must wait instead of sleeping then wait under a balcony or a tree, or in a crevice in a wall, to simulate sleeping on the streets or wilderness.
Houses
Take off your shoes when you enter your house.
There are many options for decorating your house: Place appropriate items throughout: books on bookshelves, wine in wine racks, decorative armor on shelves, writing items on desks, food and dishes in the kitchen. If you are a mage put potions and scrolls everywhere. If you own a nice home (Benirus Manor, Arborwatch, Rosethorn Hall, Battlehorn Castle, etc.) put Cyrodilic Brandy on shelves as most nobles do. Create displays that commemorate your adventures, for example by showcasing items representing animals or people you have conquered: a minotaur horn in a display case or a Daedric Artifact on a shelf.
Flag your storage chests to give you a hint as to what they contain. Leave your favorite weapon atop your weapons chest, a pickaxe over the crate where you keep your Varla, Welkynd, and Sigil Stones, etc.
Have a butler in the manors. Get a follower and tell him/her to wait by the door and greet you when you come home.
Station the Adoring Fan outside so he lights up the doorway with his torch at night.
Equipment
Try playing the game using a realistic limit for the amount of items your character can carry. If you need to transport more items than a person could realistically carry, use a horse.
Wear clothing appropriate to the weather and/or activity.
Take off your armor and replace it with casual clothes when you're in towns. If you use a shield in combat, equip a two-handed weapon or a bow when in towns so that you can use both hands without your shield getting in the way.
Wear clothing and use weapons that are appropriate for your character.
Combat
Simulate damage from combat beyond simply losing health. Rest after a fight so you are prepared for your next encounter. After a major battle or after catching a disease, take several days to gradually heal, slowly doing more physically demanding activities.
When your health drops below a certain level, flee from the battle, preferably to the nearest town and seek help from the guards (however, make sure the guards can actually defeat your enemies).
Don't change armor after combat has begun.
Memorials
If you become attached to the NPCs in the game, you can pay homage to them after they die.
Place the NPC's robes/cuirass and/or sword in a place of significance and honor. Collect Viranus Donton's armor and sword from Forsaken Mine. Put them in a display case at the Chorrol Fighters Guild or return them to his mother Vilena Donton, for example by placing them on her desk. Add troll fat, an item of Blackwood Company armor, or an item of Eduard's armor to the memorial. Rename the items (by enchanting them, for example) to name them after the NPC who used them. Take the Akaviri blades of any Blades who fall in combat and place them in Cloud Ruler Temple.
Conduct a memorial ceremony, for example by shooting a flame arrow into the sky just outside the temple.
Scatter flowers and torches where someone died.
Use the weapons, armor, or spells of fallen NPCs when avenging their death.
Straighten out a fallen ally's (or opponent's) body (folding the arms if possible) and place the body in a peaceful location. If he or she died in the water, drag the corpse onto land, possibly a meadow of flowers, and perhaps leave a flower next to the body.
If near a fire, cremate the body by dragging it in.
You can also honor your fallen enemies, in particular if they fought honorably. This may include people acting immaturely, they didn't mean or want to start combat.
Take their armor only to upgrade your own, not for profit.
Leave their weapon next to their body to symbolize that they died honorably.
If dealing with someone like a Pirate, either drag them onto their ship or into the sea and let them float.
If someone such as a Dark Brotherhood Follower dies, hide the corpse and clothes so no one can learn anything of the Dark Brotherhood's enchanted armor.
Miscellaneous
Give your character a personality with preferred foods, activities, and clothes. What creature or race does he/she hate/like the most?
Do not reload your last save game after making a mistake, such as killing someone accidentally. Continue playing and live with the consequences of the mistake.
Adjust the difficulty slider based on your game-play preferences. If you think sneak attacks or power attacks should be able to kill enemies with a single blow, push the difficulty slider to the left. If you think fights with bears and wolves should be desperate struggles for survival, push the difficulty slider to the right.
With a very basic view of the Construction Set, you can make your own people and add them to the world of Cyrodiil (workers, family, etc.).
Given that most people don't have supernatural attention spans, try not to wait for long periods of time all at once, unless there is a good reason (e.g., you're spying on someone).
Bathe periodically by taking off your clothes and swimming. Wash your clothes, too, by dropping them in the water. For more realism, drop them in a sunny place and wait for them to dry; if it's cloudy, wait a bit longer.
Read The Firmament to determine which month your character was born in (though those with the Serpent birthsign may find this impossible). Choose a day in that month to be your birthday and celebrate it.
to determine which month your character was born in (though those with the Serpent birthsign may find this impossible). Choose a day in that month to be your birthday and celebrate it. Use Followers as bodyguards, friends or colleagues. Tell your followers to wait in a place where they would actually stay (Inn, bar, guild hall etc.) Use console commands to give them names. "Dark Brotherhood Murderer" and "Adoring Fan" do not seem like realistic names.
Put a realistic limit on how much gear can go into a container. How can you put seven sets of armor a war axe and six tower shields into one chest? Take the size of the item into context, a war staff cannot be put into a lectern but maybe in your hunting closet. Also your desk should not contain weapons and armor even if it would fit. Inkwells, books, and maybe a dagger is good though.
Play the game according to your chosen race: Try to only use skills that your race favors (e.g., skills for which your race has positive modifiers). Only deal with merchants of your race; generally try to help NPCs of your race. Use appropriate equipment (Orcs use Orcish; Elves use Elven; etc.)
If you are role-playing a job for which you should be paid, you can receive your pay in multiple ways: Pickpocket your pay from the person you're dealing with. Duplicate items to then sell for your pay Duplicate items relevant to your job. If you're a Vineyard Helper, duplicate wine or grapes; if you're a Mage's Apprentice, duplicate soul gems, etc. On the PC you can also use the console to collect your pay.
When you take a book from a guild's library, you have a week to read it before it must be returned. Bribe members in the area for overdue fees.
Use a War-Hammer or similar weapon when entering taverns or other places you'd like to be noticed.
If you are repairing something, find the nearest anvil and equip a mace or a hammer. Place your item in the side of the anvil and pound away as if "repairing" it. (You can repair it for real afterward.)
If possible download the Actors in Charge mod as it adds more animations to your character. TES Nexus.
Religion
Dedicate your life to a Daedric Prince or God. Choose a god to follow based on your character's race and class. Worship your Chosen god through activities that would please your particular god. Visit the chapel every morning and pray. If you strongly believe in your god then you could wake up every day at a certain time and place a gift on the altar. Place fresh flowers on graves to show the gods that you're devoted to them. Worship according to your race if you hold pride in it. For example as a Khajiit, worship the Khajiit pantheon and drink Skooma to make you feel closer to the Lunar Lattice. This can be changed depending on what race your character is. Convert as many people as possible. Summon a Daedra Lord only on certain days. You could therefore celebrate these days by acting as a madman on Sheogorath's summoning day, reading books all day when it's the summoning day of Hermaeus Mora, etc. Read through and study the holy texts of your religion. Copy them and drop them in public places to spread your faith!
Family
If you have a family, keep in touch with them, or create a scenario that discourages contact. If they died, that may change your opinion about the races, factions, or people involved.
If your parents or close family are rich or powerful, then you have great power where they live. In other words, if your brother was a Chancellor, you would have much influence. If you are part of a noble family like the Septims, throw your newfound power around. Also, enchant your gear and name it after your family.
Make your family race-appropriate so no Altmer fathers and Orc children.
Play with a race that has few last names, like Altmer. Other Altmer that you like, or even dislike, for drama, are your relatives.
Character Type Roleplaying
General Character Creation
You can create and develop your character to emulate any person you like, including heroes from stories and movies. There are several basic ways you can customize your character to resemble your rolemodel:
Give your character a race appropriate name.
Choose an appropriate race and gender.
Customize your character's appearance to match your rolemodel.
Create a custom class with an appropriate name and skills.
Equip your character with appropriate clothing, armor, and weapons. Enchant items to rename them.
Decide which NPCs are your friends and which are your enemies. Only do quests for your friends, and only join guilds that are appropriate for your character.
You don't necessarily have to start a new character, although your options are more limited if you are building on an existing character.
Specific Character Ideas
Specific character ideas can be found linked to from the roleplaying ideas article. Any new ideas or changes to existing ideas must follow the guidelines set forth on that article.A man has landed himself in hot water with the law (and found new levels of douchebaggery) after allegedly beaching a hammerhead shark, repeatedly punching it, and then taking photos of it.
The 21-year-old was seen by witnesses dragging a 2.7 meter (9 foot) hammerhead shark out of the water and onto the beach with his friend near the pier in St Andrews State Park in Florida on the evening of October 24, according to an Incident Summary Report by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, obtained by Panama City News Herald.
“The white male had his left arm around the shark’s head and was punching it repeatedly in the stomach,” the eye-witness said.
They then pulled the shark further on shore, sat a 4-year old boy on its body, and proceeding to take photos of the kid, the witness went on to say. The two men then released the hammerhead shark back into the water.
Officers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission responded to a call about the incident and managed to question the man. In an attempt to justify his actions, the officers said he explained he was punching the shark around the stomach area to get the air out of its lungs.
“It’s kinda like doing CPR on a shark,” he explained.
It should go without saying, sharks do not have lungs.
Unsurprisingly, the officers found the hammerhead dead under a pier later that night.
Great hammerheads are considered a prohibited species in Florida, so it’s illegal to harvest, land, or kill them. On a side note, they are also considered endangered under the IUCN Red List. As such, charges are being filed against the 21-year-old. The other man involved is believed to have avoided charges.
That's one step back for marine conservation, one giant leap for idiots.
[H/T: Panama City News Herald]Last year Pope Francis demoted U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burk to a largely ceremonial role as head of a Rome-based Catholic charity it was seen by many as a way for Francis to silence his most vocally conservative critics.
The move however has done anything but silence Cardinal Burk who told an interviewer that Catholics who remarry or gay couples who are trying to lead “faithful” lives are like “the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”
“If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn’t any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin,” Burke said in an interview with LifeSiteNews, a popular far-right news site. “And to give the impression that somehow there’s something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the (Catholic) Church has always and everywhere taught,” he continued.
These comments seem to be a disruption of the PR spin that the Vatican is trying to put on the churches view of homosexuality and marriage. While not coming out in support of marriage equality, the Vatican is trying to be a little more silent on the issue as to not drive more attention to it.
This does fall in line however with recent comments the Pope himself made when condemning trans people as sinners against God’s creation.
The comments should be seen as outrageous and offensive, but given the current |
; Kubo et al., 2013) but is associated with modern-like brain organization including a posteriorly positioned lunate sulcus, and surprisingly sophisticated tools (Morwood et al., 2004). Further, large endocranial volumes are known for modern humans (range 1090–1880 cm3) and Neanderthals (range 1172–1740 cm3) (de Sousa and Cunha, 2012), but it has been suggested that they could have differed in functionally-relevant brain organization. Modern humans, compared to Neanderthals, are estimated to have a slight, statistically insignificant decrease in occipital lobe volume (Balzeau et al., 2012) and based on their smaller orbit size, a decrease in the size of striate and extrastriate areas has been suggested (Pearce et al., 2013). The model here suggests that perhaps changes at the sensory level create the necessary advantages in neural processing that allow for increasingly complex behaviors, followed by a later expansion of higher-level associative areas only possible once the benefits of such behavioral innovations, such as tool use, arise.
The study of extant species provides the tantalizing hypothesis that the reconstruction of the evolution of the brain through endocasts holds the possibility to reveal how fossil hominins saw the world, perhaps despite the pessimism held by some: “It might be interesting to know how cognition (whatever that is) arose and spread and changed, but we cannot know. Tough luck” (Lewontin, 1998).
Initial Clues and Remaining Questions
The comparative psychological and neuroanatomical data available are consistent with a model that relates primary visual cortex size to visual acuity and the perception of visual illusions. An increase in the size of V1 begets a decrease in the magnitude of the perception of size illusions (Kanai and Rees, 2011). Here we report that overall the neuron volume density decreases with brain size in higher primates. This indicates that as brains get bigger, less space is devoted to neuronal soma and there is more space for connections. This suggests that as the size of V1 increases, the number of neurons increases. Thus a larger absolute V1 can provide the basis for lower illusion strength due to having more neurons to represent a field of space.
Future comparative studies of sensory information processing could be quantified to more easily permit comparisons across species (rather than just testing qualitatively whether the animals can do the task). The mechanism in question might be investigated in further studies which incorporate information about neural circuits (e.g., dendritic arborization, synaptic density), a topic which is revealing itself to be surprisingly complex (Elston et al., 2009).
Does the relationship hold across all species in general, and within primates in particular? Clearly the current literature provides scant data for a full examination of that question. More comparative studies of visual illusions in non-human animals paired with investigations of comparative neuroanatomy can shed light on our understanding of structural and functional relationships and on the evolution of cognition (Emery and Clayton, 2005; de Sousa et al., 2010b; Tomasello and Call, 2011; MacLean et al., 2012).
Importantly there are many novel questions arising from this study that such a research initiative can address. For example, there are many other illusions that are used to assess conscious perception in human and non-human animals and the potential neural basis for these are of great importance as well. A recent study examined illusory size perception in the experience of after images, and found that V1 activity corresponded to perceived size rather than retinal size (Sperandio et al., 2012). Certainly this model need not be restricted to vision, either. The primary auditory and somatosensory cortices can also be assessed through comparative psychological and neuroanatomical studies as well. Given the recent findings that compare visual to auditory neuron numbers and area mass in non-hominid primates (Collins et al., 2013; Wong et al., 2013), it would be interesting to examine neuronal size, neuron density, and area mass, volume, and surface area for such future studies. The approach of the model presented here is most relevant for assessing functional changes in sensory, rather than association areas. For example, the addition of novel association areas seems to be another way that brains expand in size and diversify in function (Kaas, 1989, 2000; Kaas et al., 2013). However, although the details would be harder to examine, even high level multisensory areas, such as those in the superior temporal sulcus and posterior parietal cortex (Pasqualotto and Proulx, 2012; Proulx et al., 2014), are involved in multisensory illusions (McGurk and MacDonald, 1976) and cortical size could reflect this. This bottom-up approach to understanding brain evolution, that is from a sensory and perceptual perspective rather than a top-down or high-level cognitive and linguistic perspective, might yield the sorts of findings that have hitherto been overlooked in the investigation of cognitive evolution and the origins of consciousness (Humphrey, 2011; Proulx, 2011).
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Wong, P., Peebles, J. K., Asplund, C. L., Collins, C. E., Herculano-Houzel, S., and Kaas, J. H. (2013). Faster scaling of auditory neurons in cortical areas relative to subcortical structures in primate brains. Brain Behav. Evol. 81, 209–218. doi: 10.1159/000350709 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full TextThe reviewers discussed the fact that during the review process a similar paper was published by the Schiffman group. However, the reviewers concluded that the current manuscript by Sulak et al. contains significantly more information, and that it also reaches somewhat different conclusions about the expression and mechanism of action of the p53 retrogenes. Accordingly, the reviewers agreed to recommend submission of a revised manuscript that would not only address several concerns about experimental design and data analysis, but that would also contain an exhaustive comparison and discussion of the findings in the two papers.
We thank the editors for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our manuscript.
We have modified the main text, specifically the Results and Discussion sections, to address reviewer comments including the addition of several new experiments, and expanded details of results to clarify reviewer concerns and misunderstandings. Among the new experiments are a demonstration that TP53RTG genes are necessary for the augmented TP53 signaling response in elephants via siRNA-mediated knock-down of TP53RTG transcripts and a detailed structural and functional comparison of our model of TP53RTG mechanism of action vs the model proposed by the Abegglen et al. (2015). We elaborate on these additional experiments as well as other changes below.
The key concerns raised by reviewers are:
A) Comparison and discussion of the findings in the current manuscript versus those in the paper by the Schiffman team. Reviewers concluded that it would be critical for readers to clearly understand the additional information in this paper, as well as the areas of conflicting observations that may require future investigation. The paper from Schiffman et al. needs to be cited and acknowledged in the current manuscript. Reviewers observed that since this paper complements and extends the published work in significant ways, it may well end up being more highly cited, and that proper citation practice would be to cite both of these together. Some examples of the aspects that should be compared between the two papers are:
A1) The current manuscript contains an elegant demonstration of the mechanism of copy number gain via segmental duplication, which should be highlighted. The results described in the first three subsections of the Results section, on the phylogenetic origin and the association of increased copy number with increased body size provide independent added value that goes beyond the Schiffman.
A2) Some of these results on RTG expression are more precise than those reported in the Schiffman et al. paper. The authors need to go over the supplementary material as well as the results in the published paper and point out where they agree, where they do not, and where these results extend the results from Schiffman et al. For example, using RNA-seq, the authors show that the retrogene RTG12 is the variant most predominantly transcribed in elephant cells. In contrast, Schiffman et al. employed RT-PCR to document expression of'retrogenes'. How many of the retrogenes are actually expressed? Is it possible that retrogenes are expressed in a cell type-specific manner (e.g. fibroblasts in this paper versus lymphoblastoids in Schiffman's paper?).
We apologize for not explicitly addressing the Abegglen et al. (2015) study in our prior submission, although we were aware of their manuscript was forthcoming we did not have access to it prior to our submission to eLife (it was published a few days after our submission).
In our revised submission we have dedicated a section of the Discussion (‘Comparison to previous studies of elephant TP53’) to specifically compare and contrast our findings to those of Abegglen et al. (2015). While we compare our results to Abegglen et al. (2015) in detail in the revised Discussion, our key observations are that: 1) Abegglen et al. (2015) did not determine the mechanisms of expansion whereas we have, therefore we have elaborated our discussion of the mechanisms of duplication; 2) Abegglen et al. (2015) found that elephant and human cells had different sensitivities to ionizing radiation, but their taxon sampling did not allow for polarizing which species was different whereas our explicit phylogenetic approach allows us to determine that elephants evolved increased sensitivity to DNA-damage; and 3) Abegglen et al. (2015) used RT-PCR and Sanger sequencing to show two distinct transcripts were expressed in elephant PBMCs, but they did not assign the loci to which these transcripts correspond. We analyzed the chromatograms shown in Abegglen et al. eFigure 4 and found that the 185bp product is a transcript from the TP553RTG14 gene and the 201bp product is a transcript from the TP553RTG5 gene. Thus, our combined data suggest that at least five TP53RTG genes are transcribed. Furthermore, we did not observe TP553RTG14 or TP553RTG5 expression in adipose, placenta, or fibroblasts suggesting that the expression of some TP53RTG genes is tissue-specific.
B) Unclear mechanism of action of the retrogene-encoded p53 variants. The two papers disagree on the mechanism of action of the retrogene-encoded proteins. Here, the authors describe a 'transdominant' effect that does not involve MDM2 binding. In contrast, the work by Schiffman et al. concludes that the retroproteins do bind to MDM2. The data from both papers is weak in this regard. If RTG12 does not bind to MDM2 as indicated in this paper, how is then its expression controlled upon DNA damage? What is the mechanism by which UVC leads to significantly more expression of RTG12? To address this issue, the authors should test whether RTG12 induction is at the level of RNA or protein stability, and to define whether Nutlin (an inhibitor of the MDM2-p53 interaction) also induces protein accumulation in this setting. Furthermore, their current model does not include stabilization of RTG12 protein upon DNA damage.
We have greatly expanded our revised manuscript and now dedicate a section of Results, a figure (Figure 10), and a section of the Discussion to comparing our model to the Abegglen et al. (2015) model and specifically test our model and theirs. While those analyses are too complicated to include here, we show that: 1) Abegglen et al. (2015) actually do not demonstrate an interaction between TP53RTG9 and MDM2, the co-IP shown in their eFigure 5C does not have a band at the size expected for MDM2 (eFigure 5C, top panel). It is unclear to us why they conclude there MDM2 co-IP’d with TP53RTG9; 2) A tryptophan residue in TP53 critical for the interaction between TP53 and MDM2 is substituted for glycine in all TP53RTG proteins; 3) This W->G mutation is predicted to severely destabilize the TP53RTG/MDM2 interaction; and 4) TP53RTG12 does not co-IP with MDM2. Thus we conclude that the Abegglen et al. (2015) model of TP53RTG proteins acting as decoys for the MDM complex is unlikely.
In contrast we show that: 1) The TP53 dimerization domain in TP53RTG proteins is conserved; 2) A model of the TP53/TP53RTG12 dimer is nearly indistinguishable from the TP53/TP53 dimer; and 3) TP53RTG12 co-IPs with TP53. Based on these data we propose a model in which TP53RTG proteins dimerize with TP53, thereby protecting TP53 from the MDM complex because the MDM complex only (efficiently) binds to TP53 tetramers. We have yet to demonstrate how TP53 is released from the protection of TP53RTG proteins, clearly this is an important part of our model but given the scope of the current paper believe this is best left to a follow up paper.
We note, however, that we do not provide evidence that TP53RTG expression is increased upon UVC exposure. Our Western blot demonstrating bands at the expected size for TP53RTG12 (and TP53RTG19) is of total protein from cells treated with UVC and the proteasome inhibitor MG132. The goal of this experiment was to ascertain if there was evidence for TP53RTG proteins, not their regulation by DNA-damage. Thus we sought to stabilize TP53 and prevent its degradation, so that we might accumulate and potentially observe low abundance proteins. We agree that it is important to demonstrate how TP53RTG expression levels are affected by DNA damage, and if this is mechanism that releases TP53 from TP53RTG dimerization.
How does RTG12 in this manuscript compare to RTG9 in the paper by Schiffman et al? Could it be that differences in putative binding to MDM2 among the two papers are due to sequence variations in the N-terminus domain of the various retroproteins? To address this, the reviewers request a figure showing aminoacid and nucleotide alignments of the N-terminus transactivation domain regions for all RTGs, highlighting the residues known to be important for transactivation and binding to MDM2, and including all proper Genbank identifiers for each sequence. One of the reviewers pointed out that the MDM2 binding site is mutated in all the TP53RTG proteins (for those that initiate at the first ATG). Furthermore, the same Reviewer observed that, from analysis of the sequences available in Genbank, all the TP53RTGs except one can produce a protein of at least 79 amino-acids, as some TP53RTG can be translated from codon 728 or 940. This should be discussed in the revised manuscript.
We have compared the sequence of RTG9 from Abegglen et al. (2015) to our TP53RTG12 and conclude they are the same protein (100% protein and nucleotide identity). Thus based on our revised analyses of MDM2 binding by TP53RTG proteins, including the observation that the MDM2 biding site is mutated in all TP53RTG proteins (we thank the reviewer for this very helpful observation), we conclude that the Abegglen et al. (2015) model is not supported by current data. We now include a panel in Figure 9 showing the location of functional domains in TP53 and TP53RTG proteins, and logos of the MDM2 interaction motif and TP53 dimerization motif in TP53 and TP53RTG proteins to highly conserved and divergent residues, and a table that includes Ensembl IDs for all TP53RTG genes. We also briefly discussed alternative start sites for TP53RTG proteins in our conclusion section.
To further support their 'transdominant' mechanism, the authors should simply perform co-immunoprecipitation of full-length p53 protein using the C-terminal p53-specific 421 monoclonal antibody (the epitope is conserved in the elephant p53 protein). The 421 antibody will not bind to TP53RTG proteins, which lack the 421 epitope. Thus, the co-immunoprecipitation of TP53RTG proteins with full-length elephant p53 protein will unequivocally prove the formation of a protein complex with full-length p53.
This was a great suggestion and we worked for very many months to optimize our co-IP and Westerns with the 421 antibody, however, we have been unable to demonstrate that the 421 antibody recognizes the elephant TP53 protein. While this experiment would have been very informative, we have nonetheless demonstrated the formation of a protein complex with full-length human TP53 and Myc-tagged TP53RTG (Figure 10J) in support of our transdominant model.
Finally, the authors propose that the TP53RTG proteins inhibit tetramerization of p53. However, tetramerization of p53 is absolutely required for p53 transcriptional activity. In addition, MG132 seems to induce ubiquitination of p53 in elephant cells treated with DNA-damaging agents despite expression of TP53RTG12. Therefore, the model involving inhibition of tetramerization and ubiquitination is not possible. Altogether, the experiments proposed here will enable the authors to produce a more accurate model of p53 regulation by the p53 retroproteins in elephant cells.
MG132 does not induce ubiquitination of TP53 in elephant cells treated with DNA-damaging agents despite expression of TP53RTG12, rather MG132 prevents the proteasome from degrading ubiquitinated proteins leading to their accumulation. Therefore, this experiment cannot be used to determine if TP53RTG proteins protect TP53 from ubiquitination. We have edited the text to clarify this point.
As the editors and reviewers can imagine, we are very eager to test our ‘guardian’ hypothesis and are currently developing an in vitro ubiquitination assay that will allow us to test if TP53RTG proteins protect TP53 from MDM2-mediated ubiquitination. While this hypothesis is a key part of our model, a full test is beyond the scope of the current manuscript. We now provide data indicating DNA damaging agents cause a rapid and extreme decrease in TP53RTG transcripts, suggesting down-regulation of TP53RTGs upon DNA damage allows for tetramerization of TP53 and the initiation of TP53 signaling.
C) Concern about the use overexpression experiments and HEK293 cells. Reviewers were concerned about the use of ectopic overexpression of TP53RTG12 in mouse cells and human HEK293 cells. The observed phenotypes (e.g. hypersensitivity to DNA damage) could be due to artifact-prone overexpression analysis. In addition, it is well established that p53 is inactivated and stabilized by a viral transforming protein in HEK293 cells. Therefore, the value of the MDM2 experiments conducted in HEK293 cells is unclear. In order to unequivocally demonstrate that TP53RTGs regulate the p53-dependent cellular response to DNA damage, the authors must knockdown endogenous TP53RTG expression using TP53RTG-specific siRNAs in elephant cells. Since the authors have identified long nucleotide sequences unique to TP53RTG mRNAs, it is then possible to design siRNAs that will reduce TP53RTG expression without affecting TP53 expression in elephant cells. It will be possible then for the authors to test their hypothesis in elephant cells. Furthermore, transfection of TP53RTG siRNA would enable the authors to unequivocally identify the protein bands corresponding to TP53RTG proteins via Western blot.
We agree that the most convincing demonstration of the functional importance of TP53RTG genes would be to knockdown or knockout their TP53RTG expression. We tried to knockdown expression with numerous TP53RTG-specific siRNAs targeting different regions of the TP53RTG transcripts before our initial submission. While these experiments were able to knockdown TP53RTG expression they always cross-reacted with TP53 leading to reduced TP53 expression as well.
Fortunately, we have recently identified a pan TP53RTG siRNA that reduces TP53RTG expression ~70% and does not cross react with TP53. To test if TP53RTGs are functional we used this siRNA to knockdown TP53RTG transcripts and assayed induction of the TP53 signaling pathway in response to DNA damage and MDM2 antagonism. We show that knockdown of TP53RTGs in untreated cells increased baseline TP53 signaling, consistent with our ‘Guardian’ model, and also reduced TP53 signal after treatment with DNA damage inducing agents and Nutlin-3a. These data suggest that TP53RTG proteins have two distinct functions, inhibiting TP53 signaling in the absence of inductive signals and potentiation of TP53 signaling after induction of DNA damage.
D) Interpretation of the various 'protein bands' observed in elephant cells. In addition to the siRNA experiments mentioned above, reviewers pointed out that the authors cannot accurately identify and name the p53 isoforms observed in their electrophoresis experiments. The elephant p53 protein has no methionine at codon133 and p53psy has not been demonstrated in elephant cells. Furthermore, the bands above 50kD may be polymers or ubiquitinated p53 proteins or cross-reacting bands. Thus, it is essential to define the identity of these bands with TP53 siRNAs (the C-terminal region would provide ample sequence space to design these siRNAs). Also, the protein molecular weight marker is not displayed in any of the immunoblots, which prevents proper interpretation of these results.
We agree that the data supporting translation of one or more TP53RTG genes is circumstantial and that the Western blot shown in Figure 5E is far from conclusive. We note that we do not conclude from this blot that TP53RTGs are translated, rather we conclude that we “identified an elephant-specific band at the expected size for the TP53RTG12 (19.6kDa) and TP53RTG19 (22.3kDa) proteins, suggesting that the TP53RTG12 and TP53RTG19 transcripts are translated in elephant fibroblasts” and explicitly state we identified “high molecular weight bands corresponding to previously reported SDS denaturation resistant TP53 oligomers (Cohen et al., 2008; Ottaggio et al., 2000) and (poly)ubiquitinated TP53 conjugates (Sparks et al., 2013)”.
Unfortunately identifying an antibody, particularly a monoclonal, that recognizes elephant TP53 and TP53RTGs has been remarkably difficult. However, our observation that knockdown of TP53RTGs and over-expression of TP53RTG12 in mouse cells has functional consequences on TP53 signaling and the induction of apoptosis provides further support that TP53RTG is translated and functional.
E) Incomplete discussion of the impact of p53 copy number gain in organismal biology, tumor suppression and ageing/senescence. The p53 literature abounds with studies exploring the impact of additional copies of the p53 gene, including'retrogenes'. The reviewers concluded that this manuscript would be much improved by a thorough discussion of these studies. For example, the authors should discuss the p53 pseudogenes in mouse and rat, which are expressed and seem to compromise the activity of functional p53. Importantly, it is well established that an extra copy of full-length p53 in mice leads to hyperactive apoptotic activity, shortening the lifespan of the organism and also inducing neurodegenerative diseases. Thus, the authors should discuss the'super p53' mouse models (García-Cao et al., EMBO J |
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Sr. MemberActivity: 446Merit: 250 Re: [BLU] BlueCoin (ß) | First X11 PoW / PoS Hybrid | 5% Stake | Anti-ASIC August 26, 2014, 10:04:35 PM #936 BLUECOIN VERSION 1.2 DGW - HARDFORK @ BLOCK 113,000
NEW WALLETS COMING IN 24 HOURS!
https://github.com/bluecoiner/bluecoin
http://wiki.darkcoin.eu/wiki/Dark_Gravity_Wave
Changes:
1. DGW added to PoW and PoS @ block 113000
2. Coin Control "on" by default.
More about Dark Gravity Wave:
In concept, DGW is similar to Kimoto Gravity Well, adjusting the difficulty levels every block (instead of every hundreds of thousands of blocks like Bitcoin) by using statistical data of the last blocks found. In this way block issuing times can remain consistent, despite high fluctuations in hashpower. However it doesn't suffer from the time-warp exploit.
Version 2.0 of DGW was implemented in Darkcoin from block 45.000 onwards in order to completely alleviate the time-warp exploit.
Version 3.0 was implemented on May 14 of 2014 to further improve difficulty re-targeting with smoother transitions. It also fixes issues with various architectures that had different levels of floating-point accuracy through the use of integers.
Changes:1. DGW added to PoW and PoS @ block 1130002. Coin Control "on" by default.More about Dark Gravity Wave:In concept, DGW is similar to Kimoto Gravity Well, adjusting the difficulty levels every block (instead of every hundreds of thousands of blocks like Bitcoin) by using statistical data of the last blocks found. In this way block issuing times can remain consistent, despite high fluctuations in hashpower. However it doesn't suffer from the time-warp exploit.Version 2.0 of DGW was implemented in Darkcoin from block 45.000 onwards in order to completely alleviate the time-warp exploit.Version 3.0 was implemented on May 14 of 2014 to further improve difficulty re-targeting with smoother transitions. It also fixes issues with various architectures that had different levels of floating-point accuracy through the use of integers. http://bluecoin.ioA day after joining the 20/20 club, Joc Pederson stepped back to the plate with another milestone in reach.
The Dodgers' No. 2 prospect hit a go-ahead grand slam, the first one of the season for the Triple-A Isotopes, to cap a five-run rally in the eighth inning as Albuquerque stunned Fresno, 8-7, on Thursday afternoon.
"It was a pretty cool reaction," Pederson said of his teammates. "I actually didn't know it was the first [grand slam], it was pretty exciting to win on a travel day. I don't think a win is better than that."
Pederson took veteran reliever Heath Hembree deep to right field with two outs in the bottom of the eighth for his only hit of the game. The victory was the eighth in 10 games for the Isotopes (50-56).
"I wanted to get a pitch that was up. I guess it wasn't that high, but I wanted to slow it down and put a good swing on it," he said. "I had a couple opportunities early in the game where I didn't have quality at-bats, so I'm glad this one worked out and we were able to get the win."
Albuquerque took a 3-0 lead in the third, but Fresno responded with one in the fourth and five more in the fifth to grab a 6-3 edge. Trailing 7-3 in the eighth, the Isotopes rallied against reliever Dan Runzler when Jamie Romak hit a leadoff double, Mike Baxter reached on a fielding error by shortstop Chris Dominguez and both runners advanced on a wild pitch. Pinch-hitter Tim Federowicz worked a walk to load the bases and chase Runzler before Morales drew another walk to force home Romak. Pederson then golfed a low-inside 1-1 fastball into the grassy picnic area in right.
"I'm just trying to see the ball, I'm returning from my shoulder injury, so I'm just trying to get back in the rhythm of playing every day and getting used to the grind and the wear and tear," he said. "I'm just slowing everything down, putting good swings on good pitches. I think I did that well to begin off the year, so I'm trying to maintain it. It's easier said than done."
The clutch homer came a day after Pederson became the first player since 2009 to go 20/20 in the Pacific Coast League. The outfielder hit his 20th homer of the season Wednesday night while also stealing his 25th base, becoming the first PCL slugger to match the milestone since Terry Evans did it for Salt Lake six years ago. He's the second Minor Leaguer to reach the plateau this season, joining No. 3 Nationals prospect Michael Taylor, who reached the mark on July 20.
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Pederson is also the fifth player in Albuquerque history to reach the 20/20 club, joining Franklin Stubbs (32/23, 1985), Mike Marshall (32/21, '81), Pedro Guerrero (22/26, '79) and Larry Hisle (23/20, '72).
"I think you know when you get there, but I don't set a limit or standard to reach, I just go and try to help the team win and if that's 20/20 or 30/30 or even 10/10, or whatever it is, a lot of it is out of your control," he said.
"I try to stick to the process. It's cliché, but it's true, you can't get ahead of yourself. You take it day by day and come to the field and continue to perfect your craft."
The outfielder, who had stranded three runners while going hitless in his first four plate appearances, has generally been in a groove this month. Since the Triple-A All-Star break, the 22-year-old is batting.308 (8-for-26) with four homers, 10 RBIs and eight walks in eight games. His success this year has only fueled speculation he could join the Dodgers' outfield mix in Los Angeles or be shipped in a package at the trade deadline later this month. He's been linked specifically to a potential deal involving Rays ace David Price.
Rumors like that are rarely beneficial for players trying to stay focused on the field, especially an elite prospect like Pederson, but they exist and he's dealt with them.
"It definitely comes up," he said. "People text you about it or you read it online, but I just stay in the moment. I guess it's humbling to know other teams want you, but until something happens, I'm still here and I've gotta come to the ballpark and work on everything I need to work on. I can't get ahead of myself."
The California native reached the 20/20 milestone last year as well, when he hit.278 with 22 homers, 58 RBIs and 31 steals at Double-A Chattanooga. He showed signs of his power and speed in 2012, when he batted.313 with 18 home runs, a career-high 70 RBIs and 26 steals for Class A Advanced Rancho Cucamonga. A 2013 Futures Game All-Star, Pederson's home run total this season doesn't include the shot he hit at the Triple-A All-Star Game earlier this month in Durham.
Pederson is batting.313 in his last 10 games with four homers, 11 RBIs and five steals in that span. He homered on consecutive days July 18-19 against Sacramento and has hit safely in eight of his last 10 starts, owning a.511 on-base percentage in that span.
Overall, he's hitting.298 against fellow left-handers and.339 against righties. His.349 average in July marks his best month since April, when he batted.398 in 26 games.
Juan Perez, Dominguez and Guillermo Quiroz all went deep for the Grizzlies, with No. 16 Giants prospect Gary Brown walking twice and scoring a pair of runs. Recently acquired veteran second baseman Dan Uggla went 1-for-3 with a double, two walks and a run scored.Image copyright AP Image caption Sky has warned users to read any letters from Golden Eye "carefully"
Sky has warned some of its customers they are likely to receive letters demanding cash for illegally downloaded pornographic films.
The letters, from the Golden Eye company, which has previously targeted O2 customers, threaten legal action.
While Sky stops short of telling users not to pay, it advises them to "carefully read the letter".
The practice of so-called speculative invoicing has been criticised by judges and solicitors in other cases.
Speculative invoicing is defined by the Citizens' Advice Bureau as a "pay up or else" scheme in which "some unscrupulous solicitors and companies... target subscribers to internet services and demand payment from them for copyright infringement to avoid having to go to court".
Sky said Golden Eye had "successfully applied for a court order against Sky".
This required the internet service provider (ISP) to hand over the names and addresses Golden Eye had identified as being associated with downloading films illegally.
"We have written to all affected customers, advising them carefully to read the letter from Golden Eye, and if they want any further help, to contact the Citizens' Advice Bureau," Sky said.
Golden Eye director Julian Becker told the BBC that letters would be sent to "thousands" of Sky customers.
He denied that the company was involved in speculative invoicing, saying that "rights holders... both adult and mainstream producers have every right to protect their content and livelihood from internet thieves".
"We have only written to those account holders for whom we have evidence of copyright infringement," he said.
He added that the firm did intend to pursue cases in court if defendants did not want to settle and had issued proceedings against a number of people.
Rolling over
But not everyone is convinced by the firm's motivation.
Michael Coyle, who has represented hundreds of clients who have faced similar letters, said those people who receive them were in a difficult position.
"If they go to a solicitor, they will want a minimum of £500 to £700, and that is about what Golden Eye will ask for compensation, so many will think that it is easier to pay to make it go away," he said.
He advised people who received the letters to write back to Golden Eye asking what proof it had that they had downloaded the material or seek professional advice.
He said it was "unlikely" Golden Eye would take any of the cases to court as it would be very difficult for it to prove anyone had downloaded the films, without "an admittance of guilt or inspecting their hard drive".
Mr Coyle also criticised providers for "rolling over too easily" by giving IP addresses to companies who had taken infringement action previously.
"Parliament also needs to address the safeguards of this, as judges are releasing these orders far too easily," he added.
Golden Eye approached O2 customers in 2012, when it gathered a list of 9,124 IP addresses on behalf of 13 adult entertainment companies.
It was seeking £700 per film for copyright infringement.
But in the High Court, Mr Justice Arnold ruled Golden Eye could not justify sending letters demanding that amount of money.
Instead he said that each case should be "individually negotiated" and said that the letters were "capable of causing unnecessary distress because it could be read as an implicit threat of publicity once proceedings have been commenced".
The Citizens' Advice Bureau has written its own guidelines about speculative invoicing.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage of police and other emergency services around Stratford has been shared on social media
Six people have been injured in Stratford, east London, in a reported acid attack.
Police were called to Stratford Centre, opposite Westfield, just before 20:00 BST, following an "altercation" between two groups of males where a noxious substance was thrown.
Ambulance crews treated six males at the scene for their injuries, and three of them were taken to hospital.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm.
Those reported injured were believed to be in a number of different locations, sparking initial fears that people had been sprayed at random.
However, the Met Police said those injured were connected to the initial attack.
Ch Supt Ade Adelekan said: "I would like to be very clear concerning this incident.
"What initially may have been perceived as a number of random attacks has, on closer inspection, been found to be one incident involving two groups of males."
No-one suffered life-threatening or life-changing injuries.
Witnesses at the scene said an argument had broken out among a group of people.
A man who gave his name as Hossen, an assistant manager at Burger King, said a victim had run into the fast food chain to "wash acid off his face".
Image copyright PA Image caption One man said a victim ran into a Burger King to "wash acid off his face"
The 28-year-old added: "There were cuts around his eyes and he was trying to chuck water into them."
Tahseen Taj lives in one of the buildings just opposite the shopping centre and was disturbed by the noise.
"I could hear a lot of ambulances and police from around 20:45, but also there's a West Ham match today; I thought it must be a football brawl," she said.
"But after some time it just increased and increased, and there were a lot of fire brigades and ambulances and police, and it was quite chaotic to be honest.
"I was quite worried."Nitrogen mustards are cytotoxic chemotherapy agents derived from mustard gas.[1] Although their common use is medicinal,[2][3] in principle these compounds can also be deployed as chemical warfare agents.[4][5] Nitrogen mustards are nonspecific DNA alkylating agents. Nitrogen mustard gas was stockpiled by several nations during the Second World War, but it was never used in combat.[6][7] As with all types of mustard gas, nitrogen mustards are powerful and persistent blister agents and the main examples (HN1, HN2, HN3, see below) are therefore classified as Schedule 1 substances within the Chemical Weapons Convention.[8] Production and use is therefore strongly restricted.[9]
During World War II nitrogen mustards were studied at the Yale School of Medicine by Alfred Gilman and Louis Goodman, and classified human clinical trials of nitrogen mustards for the treatment of lymphoma started in December 1942.[10] Also during World War II, an incident during the air raid on Bari, Italy, led to the release of mustard gas that affected several hundred soldiers and civilians.[11] Medical examination of the survivors showed a decreased number of lymphocytes.[12] After World War II was over, the Bari incident and the Yale group's studies eventually converged prompting a search for other similar compounds. Due to its use in previous studies, the nitrogen mustard known as "HN2" became the first chemotherapy drug mustine.
Nitrogen mustards are not related to the mustard plant or its pungent essence, allyl isothiocyanate; the name comes from the pungent smell of chemical weapons preparations.[citation needed]
Examples [ edit ]
The original nitrogen mustard drug, mustine (HN2), is no longer commonly in use in its original IV formulation because of excessive toxicity. Other nitrogen mustards developed as treatments include cyclophosphamide, chlorambucil, uramustine, melphalan, and bendamustine.[13] Bendamustine has recently re-emerged as a viable chemotherapeutic treatment.[14]
Nitrogen mustards that can be used for chemical warfare purposes are tightly regulated. Their weapon designations are:[15]
Nor-mustard can be used in the synthesis of piperazine drugs. For example, mazapertine, aripiprazole & fluanisone. Canfosfamide was also made from normustard.
Some nitrogen mustards of opiates were also prepared, although these are not known to be antineoplastic. Examples include Chlornaltrexamine and Chloroxymorphamine.
Mechanism of action [ edit ]
Nitrogen mustards (NMs) form cyclic aminium ions (aziridinium rings) by intramolecular displacement of the chloride by the amine nitrogen. This aziridinium group then alkylates DNA once it is attacked by the N-7 nucleophilic center on the guanine base. A second attack after the displacement of the second chlorine forms the second alkylation step that results in the formation of interstrand cross-links (ICLs) as it was shown in the early 1960s. At that time it was proposed that the ICLs were formed between N-7 atom of guanine residue in a 5’-d(GC) sequence.[16][17] Later it was clearly demonstrated that NMs form a 1,3 ICL in the 5’-d(GNC) sequence.[18][19][20][21]
The strong cytotoxic effect caused by the formation of ICLs is what makes NMs an effective chemotherapeutic agent. Other compounds used in cancer chemotherapy that have the ability to form ICLs are cisplatin, mitomycin C, carmustine, and psoralen.[22] These kinds of lesions are effective at forcing the cell to undergo apoptosis via p53, a protein which scans the genome for defects. Note that the alkylating damage itself is not cytotoxic and does not directly cause cell death.Municipal incinerators have been used to dispose of the boars, but there is a shortage of personnel needed to perform the gruelling and messy task of chopping up their bodies Shin Yoshino/Corbis
Communities in northern Japan are being overwhelmed by radioactive wild boars which are rampaging across the countryside after being contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The animals’ numbers are increasing as the boar breed unhindered in the exclusion zone around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, and they are causing damage to farms well beyond the area poisoned by radiation. Hunters are shooting the boars as fast as they can, but local cities are running out of burial space and incinerator capacity to dispose of their corpses.
In the city of Nihonmatsu, 56km (35 miles) from the nuclear plant, three mass graves with a capacity for 600 boars each are almost full, and the local government has run out of spare land.
Municipal incinerators have been…Two months of uninterrupted football have not only convinced William Zillman that he wants to play on in 2018 and beyond but given the Titans cause to reconsider whether they can find a place for one of the club's most loyal servants.
When Zillman suffered a calf injury in Round 1 against the Roosters and then ruptured it completely in Round 3 his recent history of injuries were mounting to the point that it looked as though his body could no longer sustain the work needed to play in the Telstra Premiership.
It would have been a cruel way to finish for one of the fittest players in the competition but not only has Zillman been able to string together seven consecutive games he has been making valuable contributions in his new position on the left wing.
Due to turn 31 on Sunday when the Titans put their finals hopes on the line against the Wests Tigers at Cbus Super Stadium, Zillman played 90 games for the Titans in his first four years on the Gold Coast but has added just 60 in the five years since.
Match Draw Widget
[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 21: Titans vs Wests Tigers
It's been something of a tortured existence of late but with the club banking on exciting young pair Tyronne Roberts-Davis and Phillip Sami graduating to the senior squad next year there is value to be found in keeping a player of Zillman's experience and standing on the roster for at least another year.
Any contract he is offered will be well down on what he has been receiving on the five-year contract that expires at the end of this season but Gold Coast coach Neil Henry has not closed the door completely on Zillman staying on for a 10th season.
"It will come down to what offers he's able to get from other clubs and whether or not we can make an offer that's going to make him happy to stay," Henry said.
"It would be around the depth that we've got. Tyronne Roberts-Davis played half a dozen games this year, he's contracted next year, we've got young Phillip Sami coming through the ranks as well so it's whether or not we could carry him in that 30.
"He's had a fairly disrupted few seasons with missing a lot of footy so it's good to see him contributing and playing consistent football and carrying the ball nice and aggressively and getting us some momentum with some quick play-the-balls."
A picture of peak physical fitness every NRL pre-season, Zillman admits that while he never doubted he could make a successful return to the Titans, the timing of his injuries became a source of frustration.
After playing the first 10 games of the 2015 season a chronic back injury prevented Zillman from featuring again that year and his 2016 season had a delayed beginning due to a calf injury that made an unwelcome return in game one of the 2017 season and saw him miss a total of 10 weeks.
"I would often think about the timing of it all," Zillman told NRL.com.
"This year I trained an entire pre-season – I didn't miss one session – and then played all the trials, the Nines and unfortunately Round 1 tore my calf.
"It's a devastating blow, not only the injury but the timing of it all but 99 per cent of footballers will have a story like that.
"It's a hard one when you are injured and they hand you the scan and tell you that you're going to be out for six to eight weeks or whatever it is.
"Wrapping your head around something like that is very tough, especially after I'd had a couple of years of injuries but it is part of the game and we're so fortunate that we've got the best of the best medical staff here and facilities as well.
"Injuries are hard and there are a hundred different thigs that go through your head, especially on something like a recurring injury. That really is the hardest thing for someone of my age."
It has become evident that with each game Zillman has played of late that his confidence has grown, slicing through the Panthers defence last Saturday in mid-field to set up Jarryd Hayne for the team's first try of the game like he did as a teenager starting out with the Raiders.
His carries from inside the Titans' half have been crucial in getting the team on the front foot and reinforced to the Rochedale Brothers junior that he still has a role to play in the NRL.
"I'm absolutely loving my football and feeling great. The body's feeling really good, definitely the best it has felt for a few years," said Zillman, who became just the second Titans player to reach 150 games for the club last weekend.
"For me it was really about getting back from my injury and putting together a couple of good months of football.
"I've been back for two or three months now and really enjoying my football so that back-of-house stuff is simmering away there and we'll see what happens.
"This is my ninth season here now and as everyone would know it has been an up and down ride for the club but I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
"I've played with some of the legends of the game and I can never thank them enough for what they've taught me about myself and how to be a professional footballer at the highest level.
"It was an honour to pull on that jersey for the 150th time, it really was."
Olive's opportunity to stake NRL claim
Hayne hints at Fiji World Cup allegiance
Titans' cause hurt further by Hurrell injury
Why players keep their good deeds secret
A year ago so many Labour MPs flocked to nominate Gordon Brown as leader that I had no choice but to concede that I couldn't get on the ballot for the Labour leadership.
Now it all looks pretty bleak. Brown is relentlessly leading the Labour party to the edge of extinction and yet again Labour MPs and trade union general secretaries appear at a loss to do anything but follow over the electoral precipice.
In the first month the euphoric reception for Gordon Brown was based firstly upon the fact that he wasn't Tony Blair and secondly that he promised change. In fact in one speech he referred to change at least 20 times.
The reason for the present scale of disillusionment in him and his government particularly among long-standing Labour supporters is that there has been no change. If anything, the policies have gone further right and the New Labour style of manipulative short-term triangulation is still being pursued but with less competence than Blair
It could have all been so different. A leadership election would have ensured a real debate on the future of Labour in government and the future of our country. For over a year I had already been on the campaign trail speaking with Labour supporters and many others in open meetings just to get people talking again.
A leadership contest would have produced this engaging process writ large, drawing people into a real discussion and testing not only the ideas but also the candidates themselves.
Labour members would have been given the chance to decide. The ideas I was promoting would have proved their popularity and 12 months on we would have all been in a different place. Just think what might have been.
British troops would have by now been withdrawn from Iraq and in Afghanistan we would be deploying every skill of conflict resolution learned in Northern Ireland, including the first stages of unconditional roundtable talks with all sides to enable troop withdrawal.
Trident would have been scrapped and arms conversion put in place to transfer skills and resources to socially productive uses.
The green revolution would be well underway with an 80% target on reducing carbon emissions firmly installed in law, feed-in tariffs introduced and a mass programme of alternative energy projects already under construction. The expansion of Heathrow would have been rejected and with rail back in public ownership the largest investment programme in high speed-rail in Europe would be moving from the drawing board to construction.
The fairness revolution would be in train to create a fair and equal society. To address pensioner poverty the first year budget would have increased the basic pension and restored its link with earnings. To achieve a historic target of abolishing child poverty, child benefits would have been increased. The minimum wage would have been lifted to a realistic level, with pay equity legislation introduced to eradicate discrimination against women and others. A fairer taxation policy would have ensured that corporations pay their way and their £100bn a year tax avoidance scams would have been outlawed. Local councils would have been empowered to build half a million new homes this year and to compulsorily purchase a significant number of the 300,000 homes that stand long-term empty to tackle the housing crisis that has seen the number of homeless households double under New Labour.
The freedom revolution would have already seen the restoration of basic civil liberties and trade union rights. ID cards would have been scrapped and detention without charge would be replaced with a normal rule of law relying upon evidence and court decisions. A draft constitution would have been published for debate extending social rights to housing, education, care and a decent environment.
The democracy revolution would have seen the ending of the privatisation of our public services, and the debate engaged on how each public service could be best managed, by those who are elected to represent local communities, those that deliver the services and those that receive them. Members of the House of Lords would be in their final session before abolition, and a new chamber would be elected by proportional representation, as people also voted on a referendum on the European constitution.
The safety revolution would be at it early stage of implementation, transferring the third of prisoners with mental health and drug problems to suitable specialist centres. At the community level, safer neighbourhood teams would no longer just comprise of police officers but would include family support workers, youth workers, play leaders and community development workers to intervene earlier and more effectively to overcome antisocial behaviour, crime, and violence at their roots.
The education revolution would have already abolished tuition fees and restored grants, class sizes would be tumbling towards public school proportions and more teachers were recruited, with teaching talent released from the burden of tests, targets and league table competitions.
The caring revolution would have been extending free childcare to all families with young children and free care for all the elderly. Elderly care standards would be under intense scrutiny and residential homes under democratic control with direct care and family representation.
The political revolution would have produced a Commons chamber where MPs were not just allowed but would be encouraged to vote on principle and personal judgment. Various coalitions on individual issues would become the norm. Democracy would have been restored within the Labour party, enabling members and affiliates once again to determine the policies of the party. Yes the political debate would have been robust and decisions difficult to pre-judge but democracy would be the better for it.
By now, Labour members and supporters would be proud again of being associated with our party and our government. I can't guarantee that this would have won us the next election but at least it would be a government worth fighting for.The PowerPot® by Power Practical works as an innovative, thermoelectric, power generator producing electricity to charge most of your USB devices, lights, speakers, smartphone, GPS navigation, GoPros, digital cameras, headlamps, radios, water purifiers, etc. The PowerPot® gives you the power to charge your electronics anytime, in any situation. Use it in the backcountry or at home during a power outage. Add water to the pot and place it on a heat source appropriate for boiling water. The PowerPot® will immediately start powering up your mobile electronics- just as fast as it does from a standard outlet. Heat the pot over a stove, campfire, wood stove, propane/butane heat source, home range, or even a hot spring! The PowerPot is waterproof, flame-resistant, and extremely portable! Unlike solar panels, it works anytime-even in bad weather, at night, and indoors! Wake up to hot coffee and some extra juice to your electronic devices, all provided by the PowerPot. Perfect for backpackers, hunters, and campers.
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Warranty: 1 Year Power PracticalThe assassination of Hamas commander Mazan Fukha, and the professional way in which it was carried out, turned the public’s attention to the Gaza Strip. But despite the buzz created by the assassination of the terrorist who had planned attacks in Judea and Samaria from Gaza, the significant strategic event we should be focusing on is the one which has yet to happen. If another war breaks out on the southern front, it likely won’t be over the current assassination which Hamas is attributing to Israel, but rather over the obstacle defense system—a major underground project aimed at eliminating the tunnel threat.
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The obstacle project is supposed to provide the unequivocal solution to the tunnel problem. The system is comprised of a defensive wall, partly overground and partly underground, along the Gaza border fence.
Israel began the construction work several months ago, on an area of just a few meters and in specific places, and is expected to speed up the work in the summer: Hundreds of special engineering tools, which will require heavy IDF security around them, will work in more than 40 different places along the fence.
IDF activity on Gaza-Israel border. Hamas will likely not accept the massive construction work and will try to torpedo the project from the start, even at the cost of war (Photo: EPA)
As Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot reported to the Knesset’s State Control Committee, which focused on the state comptroller’s scathing report on Operation Protective Edge, the project is expected to cost around NIS 3 billion (roughly $830 million), in addition to NIS 1.2 billion (roughly $331 million) that have been invested in the development of technological solutions for locating the tunnels.
According to defense establishment assessments, once the obstacle project is completed in about two years around about 65 kilometers of the border fence, it will hermetically prevent the infiltration of tunnels.
This will create a dilemma for Hamas, which the organization has never faced before: How to operate when the strategic ability it has been building for years to offset the IDF’s offensive ability is being taken away, while the rules of the game are completely changing.
We can cautiously assume that Hamas will not accept the massive construction work and will try to torpedo the project from the start, even at the cost of launching another round of fighting against Israel. As far as Hamas leader Yahya Sanwar and military chief commander Muhammed Deif are concerned, a war without tunnels is out of the question.
So in spite of the justified statements made in the Israeli defense establishment about the deterrence that has indeed been working since Operation Protective Edge, the IDF must prepare for the possibility of another round of fighting this summer. These preparations should be done while drawing all the conclusions raised in the comptroller’s report, focusing not only on handling the tunnels but also on the home front in the Gaza border area, which Hamas sees as Israel’s weak spot.
Despite the assessments regarding an impending round of fighting, the figures point to a relatively calm period. Since Operation Protective Edge, the IDF has reported about 40 incidents in Gaza. Even after Fukha’s assassination over the weekend, Israeli officials believe that although Hamas will try to respond by carrying out a terror attack in Judea and Samaria, it is avoiding and will avoid firing rockets from the Gaza Strip. Hamas prefers to maintain the calm in the strip in order to stabilize its rule there.
Nevertheless, and despite the obstacle system’s anticipated success in foiling the existing tunnels and blocking the ones that might be dug in the future, we should ask ourselves whether the State of Israel and the IDF should be investing NIS 4.2 billion against a threat, which has been defined by the chief of staff as serious, but tactical rather than strategic. Couldn’t the army have used this huge sum for a different purpose, like a dramatic improvement in intelligence or the capabilities of the Ground Force, which have been neglected? Wouldn’t it be better to invest in the tools of combat—in the defense, survivability level and lethal abilities? Or in training the reserve forces?
There are many challenges, and there are more and more abilities that will be relevant in additional and significant fighting areas—and not just in Gaza.A delivery man for the midtown (Manhattan) restaurant Mangia 57 has won a $900,000 jury verdict, payback for the anti-Semitic harassment heaped upon him by three supervisors at the eatery.
“It’s a very happy ending — I’m in another world,” said an ecstatic Adam Wiercinski, of Washington Heights.
“They would call him a ‘dirty Jew,’ and when he would say, ‘But I took a bath,’ they would laugh and say, ‘No, you still smell like Jew,’” said his lawyer Matthew Blit.
Nightshift manager Artur Zbozien often “passed gas” in front of Wiercinski, and would then joke that the gas was Zyklon B, the poison used in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust, according to the Brooklyn federal court lawsuit.
“How can I explain to you — he passed wind, loudly,” Wiercinski told The Post of Zbozien. “Everybody laughed, and then he said, ‘See? this is your Zyklon B, you stupid Jew.’
“My father had six siblings — only two of them survived in what is now the Ukraine,” he said.
“I had to explain to the members of the jury, what is Zyklon B,” he added. “Because they were very young; they do not know. When I explain how it was used in the gas chambers, they were very serious. Everybody [in the courtroom] was silent.”
Other supervisors would dock Wiercinski’s tips, call him a “Jewish pederast,” and throw pennies at him, again making anti-Semitic jokes, the lawsuit said.
Wiercinski worked at the W. 57 St. restaurant from 1992 until 2008, staying despite the abuse because, “He was 50 years old,” explained Blit. “He said, ‘Who else is going to hire a 50-year-old delivery man.’ He was afraid.”
Jurors heard just three days of testimony last week, including supporting accounts from three of Wiercinski’s outraged co-workers. Much of the testimony was in Polish, the language used by many of the restaurant’s employees. The jury reached a verdict in just four hours, Blit said.
“He’s in shock,” the lawyer said of Wiercinski’s reaction to the hefty jury award.
“He was so happy. It’s a moral victory for him.”
Employees at the restaurant and caterer, which has three Manhattan locations, have denied the harassment took place. The restaurant is expected to seek that the verdict be tossed out or reduced; calls to their attorney were not immediately returned.
Click here for more from the New York Post.The silencers – 349 of them – were ordered by a little-known US Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon called the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, charging documents show. The directorate is made up of fewer than 10 civilian employees, most of them retired military personnel. Court records filed by prosecutors allege that the US Navy paid the mechanic – the brother of the directorate's boss – $US1.6 million ($1.83 million) for the silencers, even though they cost only $US10,000 in parts and labour to manufacture. Much of the documentation in the investigation has been filed under seal on national security grounds. The records that have been made public show the crux of the case is whether the silencers were properly purchased for an authorised secret mission or were assembled for a rogue operation. A former senior navy official familiar with the investigation |
, or initiate by yourself.
And by dodge i mean completely negate. So, it will look like Tyrael is flying in you with Judgment and you Blink away at the same time. What will happen is you will blink away from his ulty, you won’t receive stun or damage, and Tyrael will have his ulty on cd. Also, if you didn’t take “Tumble” on 16, consider taking Blink. Overall Blink is better choice on level 20, as it offers a lot of utility and survivability.
Lastly, let’s talk about upgrade of Rain of Vengeance, and why no one picks it. But before that i have to describe what upgrade does. The talent will increase the number of Shadow Beast waves from 2 to 4. Well, there are some people that do take this upgrade, but that’s bad talent choice. The reasons: you have Blink on the same tier, and let’s be honest no one will stand in one place for 2 second to receive 4 waves of your ultimate. I know! On paper it looks cool, tons of damage, 2 seconds of combined stuns, but what will happen is you will hardly land 2 waves. And even if you are doing combo-wombo stuff, Blink is better. It will allow you to do a proper execution, and usually, when you are comboing, people are dead by the time 3rd wave hits.
Tips on How to play against Hungering Arrow Build
General idea is to abuse the mechanics of main damage source - Hungering Arrow ability. The damage that comes from this spell is not instant, it comes in portions. Also, the spell is designed in such way that it hits the nearest target. And it is a skillshot. Let’s put all this knowledge to a good use.
First of all, reposition yourself near some object, be it hero, minion or structure, when you are getting damaged, or see that you will be, by Hungering Arrow. This will redirect half, or even more, of the damage to that object. Second of all, learn to bait and dodge the Hungering Arrow, as it is a skillshot not a homing missile.
The finishers. Learn to anticipate and interrupt them. In case it is Strafe, or other channeling ability, saving your stun for that exact moment will be a huge deal. If it is the other hero that is finishing the burst, work around him. Depending on the hero you might need to hold some disables or saving abilities. For example, if it is classical bursting comp like Tyrael + Valla, cleansing the target, that Judgement is being used on, will prevent the burst and kill.
Lastly, cooperate with your support. If you are confident enough in your support, you can bait the whole burst with finisher and survive, as support with proper positioning will appear in the right time and heal all the burst. And this will turn the tides of team fight in your favor.
Heroes that are good with and against Hungering Arrow Build
Playing with Hungering Arrow Valla
Setups for Initiation
For such setups current top Tanks are very good. I’m talking about Johanna, Anub and Muradin. The classical burst setup with Tyrael is also good, but has fallen off a bit since the introduction of Cleanse on each major Support hero. So, with Tyrael you ulty in the target, then throw your “Q” in the direction the target will flee, at the end of a stun, to teleport on it, and apply slow, and body-block. Finally, finish off the target with “E”. But usually the target is long dead before that, as Valla combo, without Heroic, will leave target with 30-20% of its HP.
With other heroes you repeat this pattern, but with different initiations, lockdowns, and finishers. One thing to notice is Johanna is one of the best heroes for that kind of play style, as her ultimate hits few targets. And that can result in lockdown of half of enemy team, negating the possibility to help or heal your target.
Setups for Burst down and Poking
If you like playing bursty Valla and are thinking how to improve your team comp, try adding another hero with poking or bursting capabilities. Effect will be hilarious, as you will find yourself melting down enemy heroes like ice-cream. The general idea is to remove the HP of target before, or in the process, of Valla burst, and do so from relatively safe distance. Good examples of such setups would be Valla + Zeratul, or Valla + Kael. This strategy will, of course, require more coordination, and has it weak spots and counter plays, but so do many strats in HOTS.
Setups with other heroes
You can also use other heroes, than mentioned above, for the different kind of setups. There are plenty of heroes that can do the job, but are less popular, harder to execute, or not in the meta right now. I will only mention few, such as Sonya and Sylvanas. Sonya’s Heroic will act similar to Tyrael’s ulty, but is AOE stun, and Sylvanas will look to disable escape abilities of your target, and also to hit enemy support, with her ultimate.
“I don’t know this man”
Whether you are playing solo, or don’t want to play any setups, or don’t want to communicate, there are plenty of ways to help your Valla teammate. Saving some spells for Valla’s target can be a game changer. Many spells will do the trick, be it disable or finisher. And I’m also talking about different classes. Even a support hero like Uther can contribute a lot to the outcome of the fight by landing his “E” at the right time. Burst builds are about the momentum and team play, so keeping those things in mind will lead you to victory.
“You are my Valentine Symbiote”
Logical decision. Expected outcome. This is special part of the tips about Valla + Abathur setup, which is amazing. For a long time, we’ve seen Abathur + Illidan setups in the competitive matches, but believe me, Valla instead of Illidan is also a great choice. As a Valla you will feel yourself unkillable, to a certain degree. However, unlike Illidan, you don’t need to be in a melee range to do the damage or regen HP. Also, mistakes you make are not punished so hard, as setup requires less micro, and in general is easier to play. Abathur will buff your damage output and survivability even more! Depending on the talent choices he can also provide additional benefits like movement speed increase, slow, and so on. Damage output will be crazy: on level 7, together with Abby, you are able to do 1350 damage just with spells, not counting Abathur damage talents here! ((Valla) 429x2 (2xHA) + 165 (Multishot) = 1023, (Abathur) 112*2 (2xStab) + 102 (Spike Burst) = 326) And that is the magical number of HP that most Assassins have on level 7.
Playing against Hungering Arrow Valla
Escapes and minions
Heroes that have escapes, or saving abilities, will be great choice against HA Valla, as they always are versus most burst oriented heroes and setups. However, heroes with summons will also be good. Such heroes will be able to absorb portion of damage that will come from Hungering Arrow. Not only minions will provide additional survivability, but also additional damage, and that is also important. Valla is Assassin hero - she doesn’t have huge HP pool or tons of self-sustain. So, summons will allow you to trade effectively your HP, and in some cases help kill her.
Buffs and disables
Providing additional HP with shields, or granting buff, to hero that is being focused will greatly help against burst. Valla doesn’t have infinite amount of damage. Her damage output is limited by some number, so increasing the HP of your teammate higher than that number will push out teammate from danger zone.
The HP buff is not the only savior. Valla’s spells have exact range, so buffing movement speed of the ally will also help. And finally the disables. They are good counter to stop the burst, or zone Demon Hunter out, to potential target.
Burst healing supports
Supports that offer burst healing, Rehgar and Uther, are your best friends. Also, you can try Li Li, but she is not so good, as she can’t use her healing prematurely. Lastly, one great thing to mentions about the supports is that “Shrink Ray” talent reduces the damage from Strafe and other spells.
Game mechanic abuse
(There is nothing wrong with this mechanic or such tricks, you won’t get banned or whatever, it is just how it is called in the community)
What I’m talking about is invulnerability frames. IF is a period of time, in which hero won’t receive any damage. Spells like Zeratul’s “Void Prison” or Tassadar’s “Phase Shift” are good examples. Tassadar is invulnerable during PS, and Zeratul’s VP makes anyone who is inside it invulnerable. The damage from Hungering Arrow, and a spell itself, will disappear at the time target becomes invulnerable. So, saving your allies from burst with VP, or dodging all HA damage with Phase Shift is a real thing!
This is the end of the guide. Other parts of the article, that will highlight Multishot and Auto-Attack builds, will arrive soon. They will also contain Battleground specific tips and Conclusions to the whole guide.
Part 2, about Multishot Build, can be found here:
http://www.keengamer.com/article/12026_in-depth-valla-guide-part-2-multishot-build1
Part 3, which will highlight Auto-Attack Build, is situated here:
http://www.keengamer.com/article/12029_in-depth-valla-guide-part-3-auto-attack-buildPhilip Hammond sent a text to Boris Johnson offering his backing for a leadership bid as the humiliating results of the snap general election became clear, it has been claimed.
The Chancellor is one of four of Theresa May’s most prominent Cabinet figures who plotted to oust her in the wake of the humiliating snap general election result, according to the Sunday Times.
Mrs May managed to lose her Commons majority in the election - meaning her big gamble in calling it utterly backfired.
Mr Hammond reportedly sent the message to the Chancellor at about 4am on results night, signalling he would be prepared to support him if he ran for the leadership, the paper says.
“I know on that first day he thought Boris could be the answer because he’d have this reach and appeal,” an ally of the Chancellor said.
A source close to Mr Hammond told the paper they would not “quibble” with the claim he was ready to back Mr Johnson.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd meanwhile also said she was keen to run for the job after moderates linked to David Cameron agreed that she would be their candidate, the paper says.
And Brexit Secretary David Davis was reportedly involved in a name-gathering plot after the outrage at Mrs May’s response to the Grenfell Tower disaster – but it was ended due to lack of support.
The revelations come in a new book - Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem - by Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman.
A former minister told the paper: “The next time she makes a mistake the wheels will turn and something will happen.”The long-running political crisis in Ukraine has had a negative impact on the country's economy overall. But out of all of Ukraine, the Donbas region in the southeast of the country has been affected the most. And the situation is only deteriorating as pro-Russian separatists continue to destabilize the region.
According to the Donetsk office of the Ukrainian Statistics Bureau, in the first quarter of 2014, losses by companies in the region were 37 percent higher than the national average. Losses in the Donbas region in the first three months of this year alone were estimated to amount to the equivalent of 1.8 billion euros ($2.4 billion) - more than the reported losses in all of 2013 (1.3 billion euros). Compared to the same period in 2013, industrial production dropped by 13 percent. That's due to a decline in export orders as well as weakening domestic demand.
Large companies are still producing
Managers of large factories in the eastern Ukrainian crisis region said their production is still running normally. But the forecasts for the next two months are disappointing. "We're still doing normal operation for now. But the order situation has of course deteriorated," Volodymyr Shooliy, head of marketing for the Novo-Kramatorsk machine factory, told Deutsche Welle.
A road block in Kramatorsk after fighting
The city of Kramatorsk is situated in the area where Ukraine's government forces are involved in an anti-terror operation. Since April, they have been fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the southeastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk who have proclaimed "people's republics" there. Shooliy blamed the companies' dire economic forecasts on the separatists. "Which foreigners will come to us if they have to pass 13 road blocks first?"
Massive slump in trade with Russia
Several orders have been cancelled because of the unstable political situation in the country, Yury Makohon from the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies told DW. New orders will be difficult to procure in Donbas in the near future, he added. "The most important heavy industry firms are still producing, but they're no longer used to capacity."
Factories in eastern Ukraine have focused on the Russian market, he said. But they've now lost access. "Trade volume between Russia and the Donetsk region has seen a massive slump since the beginning of this year," Makohon said. Industry and freight traffic were experiencing extreme differences because the railway system has been damaged in the areas of the fighting.
Air traffic has come to a complete halt, incurring major losses for the region's economy. The airport of Donetsk, a city of several million inhabitants, is to remain closed until June 30th, according to Ukrainian authorities. Travel operators have said all flights for the entire summer have been cancelled. "Our staff can't access the airport safely at the moment," Dmitry Kosinov, the airport' spokesman, told DW, adding that shots are still being fired regularly near the airport.
Many small business owners have taken flight
Small and medium-sized companies have been worst affected by the crisis in the Donbas region. Makohon said they make up some 10 percent of the region's economy. One in two has shut down over recent weeks due to increasing tension, leading to a considerable rise in unemployment.
Separatists raiding a bank in Donetsk
There are reports that separatists have pressed business owners for money, raided shops and kidnapped people. Many small business owners have left the region as a result- to avoid assaults by militants from the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, social scientist Yaroslav Pasko told DW.
Developments in Donbas have seen a negative trend since 2008, economic expert Makohon pointed out. "But, of course, the political crisis and the fighting make the situation more difficult," he said. Even if there is a swift and peaceful solution, Makohon said it may take years before the economy in the Donbas region can return to its 2013 level.Saskatchewan member of Parliament Kevin Waugh has drawn heated criticism for his recent comments that female athletes have been treated the same as men.
Several times during a Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Saturday, Waugh said female athletes have always been treated equally to their male counterparts. In one reference, he said female athletes are treated better than men. As Waugh spoke, some in the crowd shook their heads or began to whisper among themselves.
In my own career, the inequity was grotesque. There remains a gross disparity. - Ann Peel
Vera Pezer said Waugh's comments "kind of made the hair on my neck stand up."
"I don't think that's accurate at all. [The comments] were unfortunate and uncalled for," said the four-time national curling champion.
Waugh, who represents the Saskatoon-Grasswood riding, is a longtime sportscaster who now sits on the Canadian parliamentary committee examining women and girls in sport. He should know better, said Pezer and other critics.
"That does concern me if this is the kind of [national] leadership that's going to be addressing the issue," said Pezer.
World record holder Ann Peel wasn't impressed either.
"It was very disappointing," said Peel, who won 20 Canadian race walk championships but retired just as her event was included in the Olympics in 1992.
"In my own career, the inequity was grotesque. There remains a gross disparity."
Discrimination no longer a problem: Waugh
In an interview Monday, Waugh said he was simply emphasizing the great job Saskatchewan has done in promoting gender equity in sport. He said discrimination used to be a problem, but he didn't see it as a major issue anymore.
He cited the strong female football programs and prominent coaching positions occupied by women at the University of Saskatchewan.
Kevin [Waugh] shoots off the cuff. He gets onto a roll and he just keeps on going. - Keith McLean, Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame board chair
"We think we're doing some things right in Saskatchewan. That is not the case in other provinces," he said.
Waugh added that he has forcefully advocated during committee meetings for including more women in prominent coaching positions.
Waugh also said he meant his comments to refer to the way the media treats female athletes equally.
Inequality remains, say athletes
Pezer and Peel said Waugh is downplaying past and current sexism.
Today, the less successful men's squads at the University of Saskatchewan play in the prime-time slots.
At the Olympics, there are still fewer medals available for women in cycling, weightlifting and other sports.
And at times female athletes continue to be noticed more for their appearance than their performance.
It wasn't only women in the audience who noted Waugh's comments.
"For a moment I thought that Saskatchewan had decided to turn the clocks back on Saturday night... to 1952!" five-time Olympian Tim Berrett wrote in an email.
Tim Berrett was one of a few athletes who were unimpressed with MP Kevin Waugh's comments at a Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Chuck Stoody/Canadian Press)
Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame board chair Keith McLean said Waugh's claims of historic equality "weren't really true," but were likely not meant to be negative.
"Kevin shoots off the cuff. He gets onto a roll and he just keeps on going," McLean said.
Encouragement for women in sport
Olympic bobsledder Jamie Cruickshank, one of Saturday's Hall of Fame inductees, said every effort must be made to encourage girls and women in sport.
"I definitely don't think it's an issue we should forget about," said Cruickshank, who volunteers for girls' sports organizations.
She declined to comment on Waugh's remarks, saying she'd rather focus on mentoring girls and addressing the high dropout rate of girls in sport.
Waugh's committee unveils its first report on women and girls in sport early in the new year, with a broader report to follow.We sometimes take for granted that which is right before our collective noses. Creative destruction caused by technology is so rampant that it is practically a cliche. It is easy to ignore not only the speed at which disruption caused by technology is affecting society, but the acceleration in the pace of change. This acceleration and its effect on markets, companies and labor is astonishing.
I was reminded of this during the holiday weekend, when I saw the film "The Big Sick." Loosely based on the real life of Kumail Nanjiani, perhaps best known for his role as Dinesh on HBO's "Silicon Valley," it accidentally reveals how quickly things are changing.
Nanjiani plays an aspiring stand-up comedian who now is also an Uber driver during the day. Much of the film is based on events that took place a decade earlier. It's noteworthy that during this period, Uber did not yet exist. The iPhone, also a minor reference point in the film, had recently been introduced and was far from the near-ubiquitous device that it is today. Consider for a moment how astonishing that simple data point is: The iPhone, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary, and Uber are so omnipresent today that they serve as props in films and almost pass without notice.
Ignore the melodrama in Uber Technology Inc.'s executive suite and instead consider how quickly the app has altered the way so many people get around major urban areas. In my home port of New York City, it has totally disrupted the calcified medallion taxi industry and its monopolistic regulator, the Taxi & Limousine Commission. Morgan Stanley estimated that the yellow cab market share fell 25% from summer 2015 to summer 2016, and the value of taxi medallions has plummeted more than 50%. In January 2017, "medallions accounted for 48% of total trips logged by yellow taxis as well as cars dispatched by ride-hailing companies. That's down from 68% in January 2016," according to CBS. Medallion owners are defaulting on their loans and bankruptcy has become increasingly common. Taxi medallions, once a license to print money, have become unsellable.
The delicious irony is that the TLC and the medallion owners openly conspired to limit the number of medallions in New York, creating the opening for Uber to answer the demand they chose to ignore in favor of their regulatory monopoly.
Score one for free markets.
Similar changes have occurred in other cities.
Of course, Uber couldn't have come into being without large numbers of people having a powerful, location-aware, mobile technology in their collective pockets. Apple Inc.'s iPhone is another game-changing tech innovation that we now take for granted. It has been disruptive in so many ways, perhaps none more so than the pace of change itself.
Consider a simple measure of the time it takes for a new product or technology to reach a significant milestone in user acceptance. The Wall Street Journal noted it took the landline telephone 75 years to hit 50 million users. Vala Afshar, the "chief digital evangelist" for Salesforce.com Inc., tweeted that it took airplanes 68 years, the automobile 62 years, light bulbs 46 years, and television 22 years to hit the same user milestones.
But to really see how the pace of change has accelerated, consider the impact of technology since 2000. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter hit that 50-million user mark in four, three and two years, respectively. That may sound astonishing when compared with cars, television and light bulbs, but it's nothing when compared with the "Angry Birds" app, which took a mere 35 days. Of course, the ubiquitous platform the iPhone App Store provided was needed to achieve that astonishing result.
Similar digital platforms are precipitating even faster changes. More than merely creating a singular invention, these platforms allow entrepreneurs, inventors and coders to produce ever-more innovative and disruptive creations. New platforms such as Glitch allow even novice users to remix other people's software code.
Lots of other industries are being disrupted. Consider the combination of genomics and molecular biology, and what this might mean for longevity and the treatment of diseases. We are seeing it in materials science and architecture, in chemistry and energy storage, in fracking technology and the demise of coal. Big data and artificial intelligence are also changing the way the world works.
Which brings us back to Uber: Having disrupted the taxi industry, Uber's self-driving cars are poised to disrupt demand for drivers in Pittsburgh and Arizona. It is only a matter of time before autonomous vehicles disrupt demand nationwide for drivers (who, after all, helped to disrupt the cab business in the first place). Maybe taxi medallion owners will have the last laugh after all.
We have no idea exactly how much technology will affect labor markets, but we do know it will be significant.
Heraclitus, a philosopher of flux who lived 2,600 years ago, wrote, "Nothing endures but change." We underestimate its pace at our own peril.
Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg View columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He blogs at the Big Picture and is the author of “Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.”Sarah wrote to a birth email list: Just a question to everyone. What is your position on circumcision? Do you try to talk your clients out of it? If you feel strongly against it, would you make it a condition of your practice not to take on clients who plan to do it?
Hi Sarah, I speak to EVERYONE about ending circumcision. The only people who cut the genitals of infant boys are those who do not have all the facts. It’s a matter of education. It’s also a human rights issue. The question to ask clients is: “Do you plan to leave a boy intact?” If the clients say “Yes, I want my son kept intact”, it’s important to give them information about not EVER retracting the foreskin. The boy should be the only one doing that. There’s a very good information pamphlet at http://www.circumstitions.com/Itsaboy.html If the parents say “Yes, I plan to cut my son’s genitals”, it’s important to find out what their reasoning is. You can then direct them to this video which explains the role and function of the foreskin: http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/video/prepuce.html
There are websites for Jewish and Muslim parents to support them in keeping their son intact and more and more religious families are abolishing this cruel and archaic practice. I have an email list called prepuceprotectinprofessionals@yahoogroups.com if anyone wants to join a support list for professionals where we share resources to protect baby boys. Gloria Lemay, www.glorialemay.com/blog
Sarah wrote in reply: I’m new to being a doula and this is the one thing I’m most nervous about–when I get a client, and I can’t change their mind what do I do?
Gloria wrote: I had a hard time when I started out doing childbirth work especially when people were religious. It was a matter of getting informed and more confident as I went along. I learned a lot from being on the forums at www.mothering.com Have you checked out their discussions at “The Case Against Circumcision”–the men and women there were really great at educating me and now I have no hesitation even going toe to toe with Jewish grandmothers–the most formidable of all! There are two expressions that come up there a lot: 1. Circumcision, the more you know, the worse it gets. 2. (When women say they’ll let their cut husband make the decision) YOU are the only one in the family with intact genitals so it’s YOU who should decide. Thanks for caring enough to be scared. We have a lot of work to do to turn the tide on male genital mutilation and each and every birth worker makes a difference.
Sarah wrote: I’m so glad to hear that. I guess what I’ll do is just take everybody, and try to show them the light every step of the way. If they don’t like it, they can find another doula 🙂 that way, I’ll know I tried.....it seems like such a cop-out to turn a client away, right?
Gloria wrote: that’s right, you never know what will change someone’s mind. I like to tell the resistant ones “If you’re going to do that, you’ll have to drive over my body which will be in front of your car tires as you leave the house.” I don’t make bad friends with people if they do it. I just had clients who cut their first two sons against my strong objections and kept their third son intact. I think that third boy would have been cut, too, if I wasn’t in their lives.
Sarah wrote: Thank you so much! it’s been so hard to get a straight answer out of other midwives and doulas I know. Most of the responses are along the lines of, “present the info, let the parents decide”, etc. and I know I couldn’t do that–be “unattached” that is. That’s wonderful about the 3rd boy. I think that’s the kind of story I needed to hear–that it’s better to keep trying, because you never know what will sway someone or at what point. I’m HONORED you want to use our conversation on your blog as an example! I hope it will help others like me who need encouragement.Beaks here...
Our good friend El Mayimbe of Latino Review has been on a scooping tear lately. Given his nearly perfect track record (and the fact that I know and respect him personally), I trust his reporting implicitly, and link to his stories the minute they're posted. I'll continue to do this. I mean, on rare occasions, even the trades get stuff wrong. It happens.
And this time, it happened to our pal El Mayimbe.
A few days after Mayimbe broke his big Super Bowl story (which detailed Marvel's Phase 2 and 3 plans for the Hulk), I had a discussion with an extremely well-connected source who claimed the scoop was "1,000% inaccurate". Mayimbe's story claimed THE AVENGERS 2 would conclude with Earth's Mightiest Heroes exiling an erratic Hulk to the planet Sakaar, thereby setting up a standalone PLANET HULK movie (in which Hulk would go all John Carter on some aliens). This would lead to a vengeful Hulk returning to Earth in THE AVENGERS 3, where he would likely do battle with some version of The Illuminati (i.e. the members to which Marvel owns the rights). According to my source, this just isn't happening - not as long as Marvel's got Mark Ruffalo committed to a six-picture deal as Bruce Banner. And that's the primary issue with PLANET HULK: Banner isn't in it at all (unless you count the WHAT IF... story where Banner is immediately killed upon reaching Sakaar).
To make sure, I went to a another source for confirmation, and they backed up every detail. PLANET HULK isn't happening.
I couldn't get either source to spill on Marvel's specific plans for a standalone Hulk movie post-AVENGERS 2, but I'm told that Ruffalo-as-Banner will be an integral part of that film. After two false starts with Banner, Marvel is thrilled with Ruffalo. The last thing they want to do is reduce his role. Sure, they could have Ruffalo play Hulk in mocap, but the Banner element would be gone - and this evidently is important to Marvel.
Just don't expect Marvel to comment officially on any of this. Their m.o. right now is to ignore rumors. In the future, when they've got something to announce, they'll probably do it via press release. At least they'll try to. And the non-trades will keep trying to make their lives miserable.England's leading clubs are determined to challenge the financial rewards on offer in French rugby in a bid to prevent a post-2015 World Cup player drain.
Rugby Football Union (RFU) chief executive Ian Ritchie has highlighted the importance of making it commercially feasible for members of Stuart Lancaster's squad to reject an approach from the Top 14.
It is current RFU policy to only select those playing at non-English clubs in exceptional circumstances, a position Ritchie views as "fundamental" to retain control of England internationals.
So far the stance has succeeded but with the financial rewards in French club rugby at an unprecedented high due to the increased revenue from a new TV rights deal, it is feared there may be an exodus after next year's World Cup.
But Ritchie believes playing for a Premiership club and England should be financially competitive, if not superior to the prize for competing elsewhere.
"We should not be behind in making it economically right for people to continue to play in this country," he said.
"I don't like a scenario where someone says 'I can get blank when I go overseas'. We should be able to match all of that over here.
"We should be absolutely at the top of the pile here. We should help to try and achieve that and we should be unashamed of that."
Premiership clubs operate under a salary cap that increases to £5 million next season, while England players benefit from a match fee of £15,000.
The current agreement between the RFU and Premiership Rugby, who represent the 12 top flight clubs, over player release is due to expire in June 2016.
Negotiations are to begin soon with Ritchie hinting at a collaborative approach to convincing England players to remain at home.
"The Premiership salary cap is not a matter for me, it is a matter for Premiership Rugby," he said.
"Players get what they get from the club, from England, which is not an insignificant contribution, and then there's the commercial stuff that he generates off the back of that.
"What we have to do is make that as attractive as possible."
Ritchie played the critical role in brokering an agreement over establishing the successor to the European Cup, the European Champions Cup.
Some view the club-led governance of the new competition as representing a shift in the balance of power from unions to club, but Ritchie sees only a strong partnership.
"I want to see really successful club rugby and that applies across all levels," he said.
"We want to see that and that means they need to be commercially successful.
"We shouldn't be seen as being in competition with that, we should be seen as helping and assisting it."
AFP
PV: 39It is hard not to be impressed by the sheer number of radical cafés, bookstores and social centres in Copenhagen. Despite its relatively small size (approximately one million residents), the city has at least a dozen different radical centres, not including the semi-autonomous area of Christiania, which is currently fighting a last ditch battle with Denmark’s right-wing government to stop the state reclaiming the area and selling it off to property developers.
This huge infrastructure is not a recent development; a fascination with the idea of fristeder (free places) has long been a dominant tendency in the Danish radical left. This tendency dates back to the squatters’ movement, the slumstormere, that developed in the 1960s. This died down after the authorities allowed squatters to live in the buildings they had occupied until they were demolished, but it has been revived in recent years.
Despite this background, radical centres in Copenhagen tend not to be squatted buildings. Tough laws make squatting difficult, while there are many legal alternatives for groups attempting to establish a space. On the one hand, many former squats still have plenty of space that can be repurposed for new projects, while on the other, it is possible to get grants from government cultural funds for radical social centres and other such projects. All of these different spaces have something to say about contemporary and historical radicalism in Copenhagen.
It’s well worth getting a bike to visit Copenhagen. It is one of the best cities in the world to cycle in and its wide bike lanes and sensible drivers offer a welcome relief from the perils of cycling in more car-centred cities. Unfortunately, it is hard to find bikes to rent and the city-bikes provided for tourists are clunky monstrosities, designed to be as unattractive as possible to steal.
Any radical tour of Copenhagen starts in Nørrebro. Historically a workers’ quarter and later a home to the squatters’ movement, it is now rapidly being colonised by an array of raw food restaurants, posh cafés and gourmet beer bars. Despite this development, Nørrebro is still studded with left-wing outposts.
A good place to start is Demos, an anti-fascist bookstore in a prime location on the corner of the now uber-trendy Sankt Hans Torv with a good selection of books, magazines and t-shirts. The shop is run by an anti-fascist collective, who publish a magazine of the same name.
From here, one can walk ten minutes down the road to Cikaden, a café, library and bookstore run by the International Forum, a group that organises international solidarity work. There you can browse the library, buy a souvenir t-shirt, or have a chat with the activists on duty. The building next door is the headquarters of the Socialist Youth Front. On a typical Friday evening passers-by might be greeted by the sounds of pop music and heated arguments about the Spanish Civil War.
At this point, it might be worth taking a break for a coffee at Café Under Konstruktion (CuK), on the ground floor of Folkets Hus (The People’s House). Open five days a week, CUK was started as part of the wave of activism that followed the eviction of the Ungdomshuset (Youth House) autonomous youth centre in 2007. During weekdays it offers a relaxed atmosphere for meeting friends and hanging out, without the price tag attached to most café culture, while on weekends there are often concerts and film showings. On a Sunday, you can get your bike fixed at Cykelværkstedet 71, a cooperative bike workshop also on the ground floor of Folkets Hus.
After a coffee, it might be worth buying a few flowers on Nørrebrogade and walking to Jagtvej 69, the site of the evicted Ungdomshuset. The building that formerly stood at Jagtvej 69 was first built by the workers’ movement in 1897, and functioned as a headquarters and social centre for the labour movement, hosting dances and boxing matches, as well as speeches by guests such as Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg.
In 1982, the then-derelict building was gifted to the squatters’ movement by the city council for use as an autonomous youth cultural centre. For nearly 30 years it functioned as a concert venue and a home for Copenhagen’s ‘autonome’ movement.
However, in 2007, after a protracted court battle and failed negotiations, the building was evicted by a huge force of police and torn down to prevent it being re-occupied. Riots lasting several days broke out across Copenhagen. Despite thousands of arrests, the police failed to kill the movement and a year later the city council offered the youth a new building as compensation.
This new building is located at Dortheavej 61, in the Nord Vest area, further out of |
Major works [ edit ]
Nalacharithre (ನಳಚರಿತ್ರೆ) Haribhakthisara (ಹರಿಭಕ್ತಿಸಾರ) Nrisimhastava (ನೃಸಿಂಹಸ್ತವ) Ramadhanyacharithre (ರಾಮಧಾನ್ಯಚರಿತೆ), a rare work on class struggle Mohanatarangini (ಮೋಹನತರಂಗಿಣಿ)
Kanakadasa wrote about two hundred forty Karnataka Music compositions (Kirtane, Ugabhogas, padas and mundiges or philosophical songs)[5] besides five major works. His compositions are published in many languages. For example, about 100 songs in Kannada[6] and 60 songs in English[7] are published in popular books.
His writings were unique in style. In Ramadhanyacharitre, an allegory on the conflict between the socially strong and weak castes and classes, presented as an argument between two foodgrains, rice and ragi, is a most creative literary piece with a powerful social message, In the work, rice represents the socially powerful and ragi (millet) represents the working people. The two grains come before Rama to argue their case and establish their superiority. In the end Rama sends both of them to prison for six months. At the end of the period, rice has turned rotten while the hardy ragi survives, earning Rama's blessings. This shows the intelligence of Kanakadasa in trying to reform the society. He was blunt in criticizing those who opposed the good practices. In one of his compositions he says,"Eternal hell is for those who criticize noble men, for those who condemn teachings of jagadguru...".
Nalacharitre (Story of Nala)
(Story of Nala) Haribhaktisara (crux of Krishna devotion)
(crux of Krishna devotion) Nrisimhastava (compositions in praise of Lord Narasimha)
(compositions in praise of Lord Narasimha) Ramadhanyacharite (story of ragi millet) and an epic
(story of ragi millet) and an epic Mohanatarangini (Krishna-river).
Kanakadasa rationalized bhakti (devotion) by giving worldly similes. His writing has intimate touch that identifies the reader with the poet himself. His two famous compositions in translation are given below. One condemns caste system in a refined poetic way and the other wonders at the colorful and baffling creation of God Almighty in childlike wonder.
His Nalacharite is based on the famous love-story of Nala and Damayanti, which appears in Mahabharata. Though a great devotee of Lord Krishna, Kanakadasa gives his own interpretation. Nala who is in love with Damayanti, exercises restraint in the svayamvara (choosing bride/bridegroom) ceremony to win over Damayanti by allowing Indra and other gods a chance to win over her. When he loses everything in a dice-game and gets exiled to the forest, stubbornly followed by Damayanti, he deserts her in sleep, hoping that she may go back to her parents and have a better life. He later drives king Rituparna to the second svayamvara of Damayanti, to see his wife married to a suitable person and be happy! Lord Krishna appears only once casually to rescue the caravan in which the hapless Damayanti was traveling and was attacked by wild elephants.
Nrisimhastava is a work dealing with glory of god Narasimha (half human and half lion).
Kanakadasa's Ramadhanyacharite has quite an unconventional theme. It is about a battle of words between ragi (millet) and rice, each claiming superiority. They go to lord Rama for justice. With the help of the sages, Rama proves the superiority of ragi over rice. Ragi becomes blessed by absorbing the qualities of Raghava, another epithet of Rama. It is interpreted as poverty and humility being upheld by the poet above material wealth. Even today ragi is food of the poor which has high nutrition value compared to rice. Ragi is a good source of nutrition for people with diabetes for its low sugar content and nutrition value.
Mohanatarangini, although a kavya (poem in classical style) written with all conventional eighteen descriptions, deals with eroticism. Pleasure-based eroticism of Shri Krishna with the consorts. The eroticism between Aniruddha and Usha form the main theme.
It excels in depicting contemporary life. The description of Shri Krishna's Dwaravati (Dwaraka) is very similar to that of Vijayanagara, under Krishnadevaraya as noticed by foreign travelers. The market place with colorful stalls with various commodities, well demarcated lanes brimming with craftsmen, clients and merchants, royal garden parties and glory of the palace find their place in Mohanatarangini. It echoes the contemporary Portuguese travelers' accounts. A drinking bout of men and women of working class is very picturesque. The reader feels as if Kanakadasa is providing a commentary of a live event. It is for such unconventional and down-to-earth descriptions as also for social awareness that the great poet-saint has become immortal.
===Nee Mayeyolago (ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೋ)
The following is the translation of 'Nee Mayeyolago' (ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೋ), one of his Kirtanes:
The full text of the verse with more explanation in:
Kannada version English version From Kannada site :ಕನಕದಾಸರು 1.ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೊ, ನಿನ್ನೊಳು ಮಾಯೆಯೊ 2.ನೀ ದೇಹದೊಳಗೊ, ನಿನ್ನೊಳು ದೇಹವೂ 3.ಬಯಲು ಆಲಯದೊಳಗೊ, ಆಲಯವು ಬಯಲೊಳಗೊ 4.ಬಯಲು ಆಲಯವೆರಡು ನಯನದೊಳಗೊ 5.ನಯನ ಬುದ್ಧಿಯೊಳಗೊ, ಬುದ್ಧಿ ನಯನದೊಳಗೊ 6.ನಯನ ಬುದ್ಧಿಗಳೆರಡು ನಿನ್ನೊಳಗೊ ಹರಿಯೆ 7.ಸವಿಯು ಸಕ್ಕರೆಯೊಳಗೊ, ಸಕ್ಕರೆಯು ಸವಿಯೊಳಗೊ ಸವಿಯು ಸಕ್ಕರೆಯೆರಡು ಜಿಹ್ವೆಯೊಳಗೊ 8.ಜಿಹ್ವೆ ಮನಸಿನೊಳಗೊ, ಮನಸು ಜಿಹ್ವೆಯೊಳಗೊ 9.ಜಿಹ್ವೆ ಮನಸುಗಳೆರಡು ನಿನ್ನೊಳಗೊ ಹರಿಯೆ 10.ಕುಸುಮದೊಳು ಗಂಧವೊ, ಗಂಧದೊಳು ಕುಸುಮವೊ 11.ಕುಸುಮ ಗಂಧಗಳೆರಡು ಘ್ರಾಣದೊಳಗೊ 12.ಅಸಮಭವ ಕಾಗಿನೆಲೆಯಾದಿಕೇಶವರಾಯ ಉಸುರಲೆನ್ನಳವಲ್ಲ ಎಲ್ಲ ನಿನ್ನೊಳಗೆ
1)Are you imbedded in Maya the Illusion (Primordial Nature)? Or is that Maya within YOU (God)? 2) Are YOU reside inside the body? or Is the body inside YOU? 3) Whether the Space is inside the habitation 4) Or are both habitation and Space in the sight of the eye? 5)Is the vision an ability of mind (knowledge), or the mind is in the eye (depending on eye)? 6)Or O God (Hari -Vishnu) both the mind and the eye dwell in YOU? 7)Does sweetness lie in sugar, or sugar in sweetness? Or do both sweetness and sugar lie in the tongue?₧₧₨₪₮ 8)Is the tongue (taste of sweet)in mind or the mind in the tongue (mind depending on the ability of the tongue). 9)O! God Hari, is the tongue (sense of taste) and the mind within YOU (God is the real source of knowledge)? 10) Does fragrance is in the flower? Or the flower in fragrance? (is the flower exist because of its aroma?) 11)Whether both aroma and flower in the olfactory organ the nose? 12) O Lord Adikeshava of Kaginele, O! peerless one (God Keshava is 13) NANDEESH above comparison) Reality is- all things are within you! To explain it, is beyond my ability!
previous text
Are you a creator of illusion? or illusion your creation? Are you a part of the body? Or is the body a part of you? Is space within the house? Or the house within space? Or are both space and the house within the seeing eye? Is the eye within the mind? Or the mind within the eye? Or are both the eye and the mind within you? Does sweetness lie in sugar, or sugar in sweetness? Or do both sweetness and sugar lie in the tongue? Is the tongue within the mind? Or the mind within the tongue? Or are both the tongue and the mind within you? Does fragrance lie in the flower? Or the flower in fragrance? Or do both the flower and fragrance lie in the nostrils? I cannot say, O Lord Adikeshava of Kaginele, O! peerless one, are all things within you alone?
In tribute to the great saint, the Government of Karnataka has declared his birthday as a state holiday. All the government offices, schools and colleges around the state celebrate the birth anniversary of Shri Kanaka Dasa.
Legendary Kannada actor and singer from the Kannada movie industry Dr. Rajkumar enacted as KankaDasa in the movie Bhakta Kanakadasa and the movie received good response from the public.[8]
Film director and playwright Girish Karnad made a documentary film titled, Kanaka-Purandara (English, 1988) on the two medieval Bhakti poets of Karnataka.[9][10]
Kanaka Dasa Fort and Palace, Baada
In January 2013, the Kaginele Development Authority – Kaginele, Haveri District, Government of Karnataka, India - re-dedicated the newly built Kanaka Dasa Fort and Palace to the general public, at Baada, Bankapur. The tourist spot is open for general public, and highlights the life and sainthood of Kanaka Dasa
The Kannada movie Lucia starts with Nee Mayeyolago recited and is based on an abstract idea of the same theme.
Another Kannada movie Ramadhanya [May 2018] based on his life and most famous work - Ramadhanya charithre - beautifully encapsulates the saints karmic journey, and the relationship between two staple food of South Indians (1) Raghava Dhanya or Ragi and (2) Bhattha or Rice....
See also [ edit ]7.52am GMT
There are some themes swirling around this evening as the blog rolls to a close.
In a week when the government placed deregulation squarely on the legislative agenda, Tony Abbott is asking us to ponder what sort of government we want. The PM would say the alternatives are a lean, streamlined, get-outta-the-way type of government or a molly-coddling, overbearing nurse kinda government that wraps its citizens in cotton wool. Or as he so fondly says, “shackles” business. It has a lot of traction in small business where owners are suffering administrative fatigue, hence his war against red tape. Tomorrow he will start to wind back laws for Repeal Day, including the Fofa laws that offer consumer protections for people taking advice from financial advisors. And there’s the rub. One person’s red tape is another person’s protection.
Of course the minister who has carriage of these changes is none other than assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos, who has been under the spotlight for allegations heard in Icac on Monday regarding his directorship of Australian Water Holdings colliding with his presidency of the NSW Liberal Party.
Education was also in focus as Gonski supporters organised by the Australian Education Union came to Canberra to urge the Abbott government to fund the reforms in full. Labor used it to remind voters that Abbott promised to guarantee the same funding to schools as Labor had committed but over four years instead of six. This was on top of a consistent Labor campaign on the removal of income support bonuses for 1200 veterans orphans among thousands of others on the bonus. Abbott was implaccable. We said we would cut it and we will cut it.
Add to that, Abbott telling his party room that the government was starting to hit its stride, six months in. Ponder this. We used to hear the refrain that the major parties were both the same, stealing each other’s policies and offering voters two shades of grey. Yet the more we see of the Abbott government, the more we see him staking out his turf, drawing a deep line in the sand, puffing up his chest and daring his opponents to cross the line. You won’t be able to say there are not some clear policy choices at the next election.
So that is your lot for the night. Don’t forget tonight, Alan Joyce will appear before Senate economics committee at 7.30pm and you can watch it live via the parliament’s website. My colleague Daniel Hurst will have all the Joycy bits for the news. As for me, see you on the morrow.In the midst of all the excitement in the fighting game community about a new Marvel game and the much anticipated Dragon Ball Fighter Z, it’s easy to overlook smaller publishers like Sirlin Games, a company started by infamous the Street Fighter 2 player and author of Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion, David Sirlin.
A brief history of Sirlin and the FGC
It may be unfair to blame this all on Sirlin as an individuals behavior ultimately comes down to one's own decisions. However, there is a case that can be made that seeing as how Sirlin was the one who wrote a book on what he believes to be the mindset necessary for one to compete at the highest level and helped encourage a type of conduct that became toxic at locals. Whether it is fair or not to place blame on the influence of Sirlin's work, his reputation in the FGC has still held true until today.
Eleven years after the release of this book, Sirlin seems to be ready to make amends and reforge the bridge between casual fans and hardcore competitors that he helped to tear down with the release of his new game, Fantasy Strike.
What is Fantasy Strike?
The three most notable qualities of he game are the aesthetic, the controls, and how the game teaches and supports good fighting game habits through its mechanics.
What about the aesthetics?
How are the controls?
The Learning Curve
Players new fighting games are prone to panic when put on the defensive and are likely to just smash buttons or try to pull off the moves without the proper setup. Fantasy Strike looks to break new players of this habit and ease the shock of a steep learning curve by training them to remain and observe the state of the match. Such an approach would obviously not work in any other game but the training has some merit.
In Street Fighter V, the only way to counter a throw is by also putting in a neutral throw command, but while you do that you are vulnerable to normal attacks and mix ups. If you freak out and just smash buttons chances are you may find yourself being infinitely thrown by someone who knows what they’re doing. Fantasy Strike looks at these fledgling players and tells them, “slow down, keep calm, and think.” Once you learn to be confident in your game knowledge and understand the limits of your personal abilities, you will be rewarded.
Another learning tool used is a very limited health state, with each player only getting between five and eight “chunks of health”. As you can see in the videos, many combos will take two to three chunks, meaning you must be equally focused on hitting while not getting hurt. This sounds rudimentary but many new players are willing to take risks and give away hits if it means landing that perfect spin kick, however; in a game where any combo means half your life, players will be much more reserved and hopefully patient.
The down side to this as one might expect is a scenario where people only block and wait for an opening. The possibility of players leaning towards such a mentality has also been accounted for by Sirlin. If your block is hit with three special attacks in a short interval of time, you will lose a chunk of life. This feature disallows a turtling behavior and forces players to rely on their individual skill as opposed to built-in blocking mechanics. Tricks like these may seem overly simplistic at first glance but it’s actually very "Mister Miyagi" of them. You “wax on, wax off” enough times and pretty soon you have the correct muscle memory to build upon and reach new heights.
The other added benefit to this kind of simplistic mechanic is that it helps to bridge the gap between fighting game players that has prevented the community from properly developing as a whole. Many fighting games use completely different mechanics from each other, but usually they are rooted in the same general principles. What Fantasy Strike is attempting to do is boil the mechanics down to the kind of universal language applicable to all fighting games, the FGC Periodic Table if you will. This way, no matter what you call your projectiles (Hadokens, Batarangs, or Ice Balls) you still understand that a round ball of pain is coming your way and whatever training you have from your individual game to deal with it will still stand up.
While we are not likely to see a finished game until later next year, you can check it out for free this weekend as part of a limited release campaign to raise interest for the project.
Fantasy Strike is currently being crowd funded on fig.co., and if you like the demo consider donating and help create a game that can be for everyone, not just the elite. I for one am excited about the prospect of an approachable fighting game for newcomers. As someone who has recently entered the scene, I can attest to the fact that the fighting games in their current state have an extremely steep learning curve and can be intimidating, because of this it seems like the FGC as a whole is stagnating, considering EVO registration was down 40% across the board. Fantasy Strike may just be the shot of adrenaline the FGC needs to bring in new blood and reinvigorate the community.
Check out the rest of the game and download the demo at FantasyStrike.com/freeweekend, and follow the Fantasy Strike team and the rest of the Sirlin Games team on twitter @FantasyStrike and @SirlinGames respectively.
Image Credit: Fantasy Strike👊Goblin Giant Meta Decks 0.22% 21
Current Clash Royale Meta Decks - What we do and why
This page is a snapshot of the current Clash Royale metagame. It's an up to date view on what meta decks the top players from the top 20 clans (almost 1000 players!) are using right now.
By looking at the top Clash Royale players' deck, we can get some insight on what meta decks might be the best positioned deck at any given time, taking card level out of the equation (since players in this range will almost always have their decks maxed out). Make sure you keep this in mind when trying to use these decks on ladder, as lower card levels may severely affect a deck's performance.
If you want to brew a deck, this list can also help you figure out what decks you should try to counter.
The meta decks in Clash Royale are constantly shifting around to gain some advantage over each other. As balance changes are made and new cards are introduced, you need a way to stay on top of the latest meta in 2018. Knowing what strong decks are out there now will let you make a good decision on what deck to play on ladder and in challenges.
If you're not sure what deck is best for you, take a look at what the top players are using today. It should give you a good idea of what you're likely to face, which can help you to pick a new deck or tweak your own list to win more games. You'll also see the changes that top players are making to their Clash Royale decks to beat the current meta.
We really hope to help everyone using our site to win more games of Clash Royale, but if nothing else, it's a great resource to understand what's going on in the meta Clash Royale 2018, and to find some fun new decks to try.
Whether you like control, beatdown or siege, whether you play giant decks, golem decks, lavaloon decks, dark prince decks, 3 musketeers decks, P.E.K.K.A. decks, x-bow decks, mortar decks, log bait decks, miner decks, graveyard decks, or bridge spam decks, the latest build for your deck is here. Follow your deck in the current 2018 meta Clash Royale and see how it evolves!ALEXANDRIA, VA -- The big 2016 elections have come and gone, but the upcoming Virginia governor primary on June 13 is just as important, or arguably more so.
Virginia is only one of two states with elections this year, so the results will be one of the first voter responses to how the Trump administration is doing. The state usually leans red like its neighbors to the south, but has turned blue for presidential elections since 2008. This year, Virginia went blue for Hillary Clinton although Donald Trump won the presidency.
These changing voting tendencies have even more significance because Virginia law prohibits governors from serving consecutive terms. Because Gov. Terry McAuliffe cannot run, Lieutenant Gov. Ralph Northam is running against former Congressman and President Obama appointee Tom Perriello in the Democratic primary. A primary victory for Northam would be indicative of how voters feel about the McAuliffe administration.
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On the other hand, a Republican victory would likely give the party full control in Richmond, because the state legislature has a Republican majority. Former Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie, Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair Corey Stewart and State Sen. Frank Wagner are vying for the Republican nomination. The state Senate does not have elections this year, but all House seats are up for election. Democrats would need to flip 17 seats to gain control of the House.
The most recent Quinnipiac poll shows Gillespie leading with 28 percent over Stewart (12 percent) and Wagner (7 percent). The Democratic race is tighter, with Perriello slightly edging Northam 25 - 20 percent. In a general election matchup, Gillespie loses to Perriello 46 - 33 percent and Northam 44 - 33 percent. But 51 percent said they were undecided for both Democratic and Republican primaries.
Already the race is becoming a platform to discuss the future of the Affordable Care Act. Perriello and Northam are out to prove their commitment to protecting the health care law. While Northam has touted his medical experience, Perriello released a campaign video crushing an ambulance to symbolize the effects of Republicans' repeal bill.
Democrats are also campaigning on Medicaid expansion, which McAuliffe unsuccessfully tried to pass in the Republican-controlled General Assembly. But another Democratic governor would be just as powerless on this issue if Republicans keep the House majority.
Republicans try to appeal to people that feel the health care law has failed. The latest talking point is news of Aetna pulling out of Healthcare.gov plans in Virginia next year. A number of companies have said without guaranteed federal subsidies, the companies would have to raise rates or stop selling plans.
Of course candidates are also discussing a number of issues with more of a local focus. Here's full list of governor and lieutenant candidates on the ballot and links to their campaign websites:
Governor
Lieutenant Governor
As Virginia voters learn more about candidates' positions on the issues, they can make sure they are registered, or even begin voting now.
Absentee Voting
For voters that are not able to vote in person on the Primary Election Day, absentee voting is now open. This includes voters who are:
Working and commute for 11 or more hours, between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. on June 13
Physically unable to go to the polls because of an illness or disability
Caregivers for disabled or ill family members
First responders
To apply for an absentee ballot, visit the Virginia Department of Elections website and fill out an online form or deliver a paper application to your local voter registration office. See a full list of eligibility for absentee voting online.
When the absentee voting application is approved, you will vote absentee in person or return a ballot by mail, fax or scanned copy by email to the local registrar. Here are some dates to remember for absentee voting:
April 28-June 10: In-person absentee voting. You can vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary, but not both. Check with your locality for early voting locations and hours. Photo identification is required by Virginia law.
In-person absentee voting. You can vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary, but not both. Check with your locality for early voting locations and hours. Photo identification is required by Virginia law. June 6: Deadline for requesting an absentee ballot.
Deadline for requesting an absentee ballot. June 13: Deadline for returning an absentee ballot.
Primary Election Day Voting
For all other voters, the deadline to register for Election Day is coming up on May 22. If you are not registered to vote, you can fill out an online application or take a copy to the local voter registration office. Applications can also be mailed to the Department of Elections at 1100 Bank Street Richmond, VA 23219. Once submitted, you should receive a response confirming your registration status.
Here are the dates to remember for the primary:
May 22: Voter registration deadline 11:59 p.m. online and 5 p.m. in person (or mail postmarked by that date).
Voter registration deadline 11:59 p.m. online and 5 p.m. in person (or mail postmarked by that date). June 13: Primary election: 6 a.m.-7 p.m. Find your voting location online through the Virginia Department of Elections' search tool. You can vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary, but not both. Photo identification is required by Virginia law.
Follow Patch in the coming weeks as we provide coverage on candidates' positions on the issues leading up to the primary.
Image via ShutterstockCrystal Palace still want Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho — but have been told they will have to meet the Reds £30million valuation to land him.
The 27-year-old centre-back played a key role in saving the Eagles from relegation last season, after arriving on loan from the Anfield giants in the January window.
Palace have asked to have him back for another campaign and - even though Spanish club Sevilla are also keen - Sakho wants to return to South London.
But the Eagles have been told there is ‘zero’ chance of them taking the player on loan again as Liverpool are only interested in a permanent deal.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
(Image: Instagram/mamadousakho3)
Sakho is particularly excited at the prospect of working with manager Sam Allardyce’s successor, Frank de Boer.
But the Dutchman shares the belief of the Palace hierarchy that the £30m asking price is too much money for one of Liverpool's fringe players.
Sakho’s eight-game loan spell was ended last season by a knee ligament injury.
(Image: Getty)
He has been back at Liverpool’s Melwood HQ to continue fitness work this month.
Palace have already signed versatile centre-back Jairo Riedewald for £7.9m from Ajax, De Boer's former club.
They are negotiating with Arsenal for Calum Chambers, for whom the Gunners want £20m, with the new manager intent on building from the back.
De Boer told MirrorFootball: “My work at Ajax — my team was always the team that conceded fewest goals.
"I am good at that and hopefully we can see that at Crystal Palace. It starts there.”OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- The Baltimore Ravens will have a five-week break before reconvening for training camp at the end of July.
Ravens coach John Harbaugh will enjoy watching his daughter play lacrosse and kicking back at the beach. But Harbaugh acknowledges it's a challenge to really check out in the NFL.
On the final day of minicamp, Harbaugh was asked if there are days when he's not obsessed with football.
John Harbaugh admits it's hard to get away from football, but he's trying to do it a little more. Patrick McDermott/USA TODAY Sports
"No. I would like to say that there were," Harbaugh said. "There are days where you get distracted better than other days, which is good. I get distracted by my family, which is great. But it will always be 1A and 1B for sure."
Harbaugh is trying to do better at appreciating his time outside the always demanding world of football. He is finding his Zen, even though he would never use that term.
He has had more awareness of how life is short and how it's important enjoy the long days because the years are going to fly by. This type of introspection hasn't typically been part of Harbaugh's media sessions.
"I’m learning how to enjoy the car ride home," Harbaugh said. "I’m learning how to enjoy a phone conversation with a friend and just enjoy that moment -- be in that moment. It has been good for me personally to become more aware of thinking like that. I am going to try to do that for the next five weeks. Football is OK if it is there, but I am going to enjoy those moments."
Football has long been ingrained in Harbaugh's life. Growing up, he watched his father coach college football. He then played football at Miami (Ohio) University before getting hired as an assistant coach at 22.
Harbaugh, 54, is now entering his 10th season as an NFL coach. Only five active coaches were hired before him.
So how did Harbaugh learn to enjoy the little things beyond the sport?
"Just take a deep breath and say, ‘That is a pretty good song on the radio.’ It is OK," Harbaugh said. "If that guy wants to pass me, OK. Pull over a little bit and go, buddy. It is not a competition on the highway. There is plenty of competition in life without fighting on the highway."
Before you think of him as the Phil Jackson of NFL coaches, Harbaugh remains as passionate as ever about a Ravens team looking to rebound from last year's disappointing finish and return to the postseason for the first time since 2014.
"I can’t wait for this season; I can’t wait to get started with this team," Harbaugh said. "I can’t wait to put pads on. I can’t wait for the first preseason game. I can’t wait to see who emerges. I can’t wait to see how our schemes develop. You can’t wait for that stuff. But there is a time for everything."Let's say we want register copyright for all the new pages on the web, in real time as they're posted. Every article, blog post, and comment. Maybe we're going to store them all in Swarm now. How do we do it?
We could use a contract like this:
contract Registrar { mapping (bytes32 => address) public hashes; function register(bytes32 hash) { if (hashes[hash] == 0) { hashes[hash] = msg.sender; } } }
(There's a security flaw here; see my last post. But we're going to move on from this anyway.)
That works, at least at small scale, but it's storage on the blockchain for every registration. You have to pay 20K gas for it. It bloats the chain. Can we do better?
One way is to use events instead of storage. The registrations are mainly for human consumption anyway, it's not like other contracts have any use for the data. (I think. Any ideas?)
So we could switch to using events:
contract Registrar { event logOwner(bytes32 indexed hash, address owner); function register(bytes32 _hash) { logOwner(_hash, msg.sender); } }
That's a little better (though it has the same security flaw). We save about 19K gas. There's nothing to prevent multiple registrations of the same hash but we can do a search and find the oldest. Events barely add to the blockchain size; the transactions are in the blockchain anyway, and if you store an event, all Ethereum does is squish it down into a bloom filter. You can query the bloom filter to see whether the data's there (with some risk of false positives, which are fine), and if the bloom filter says yes, the node just reruns the transactions and calculates the event data from scratch. Indexes add a little but still, it's pretty cheap.
If we want to look up any hashed data and find its owner, that's pretty much the best we can do. Find the oldest event registering the hash and see who claimed it.
But it doesn't really prevent plagiarism. Anyone can get a new hash by altering a single bit in the source file. To check for plagiarism we need some kind of approximate hashing to find near-matches of content. If you download a song and want to see who owns it, you can't just hash it and look it up. You need perceptual hashing to see whether someone else registered similar content.
Since plagiarism is so easy, we're just pretending we can look up the real owner of the content from the hash, using the blockchain alone. We can get even cheaper registrations if we don't pretend. Instead of doing lookups on chain, let the copyright owner (or supposed owner) hang onto the proof. He can present us a document saying "I registered a hash of X on block Y" and we can verify that that's true. That's all the consensus we really need; plagiarism detection can be off-chain.
With that approach, here's our registrar contract:
contract Registrar {}
Seriously, that's it.
If you want to register a copyright, you send a transaction to this contract, with a hash in the transaction data. You could just send sha3(content), but we still have the security flaw mentioned above; namely, anyone could copy your transaction and maybe get theirs in the blockchain first, with themselves as sender. So instead we use this:
sha3(ownerAddress, sha3(content))
Paste the result into the data field of any client, send the transaction. Get back the transaction hash.
Now publish the following on your website, Swarm, whatever:
the transaction hash
the owner address
the content
Anyone can run the content and address through the hashing formula, then look up the transaction hash on the blockchain with this javascript:
web3.eth.getTransaction(transactionHash);
This will return a javascript object which includes:
the block number the transaction went in
the address of the sender
the data sent along with the transaction (in this case just the sha3 hash)
Now you've really got minimal registration. You're sending 32 bytes of message data to the network, and you're not even logging it. You're not adding anything to blockchain storage other than the transaction itself.
But...we're still not there yet. We still have one transaction per article. That might be ok when we've got massive sharding and we're doing 100,000 tx/sec but right now, 10 tx/sec is more our speed. We can't copyright all the pages that way.
If you're copyrighting a batch of your own stuff, it's easy. Say you're copyrighting three pages, send this hash in your transaction message:
sha3(signerAddress, sha3(page1), sha3(page2), sha3(page3))
Same process, but with just one transaction, anyone can verify that you registered all three pages. You just have to publish the list of pages
But remember, because the hashed data includes your address, |
the complex who had jumped 16 stories to her death sometime during the night. They called Benjamin, whose shift had ended by then, and told him to come back. He was stunned when he was told that it was a person.
Benjamin, who was fired by his bosses, sounded deeply troubled and contrite when the Times asked him about the mistake. He assumed that because the bars had just closed down for the night, some reveler was having fun with a mannequin:
"I'm telling you, I swear to God, the face looked like a rubber mask," he said as he sat on his couch stroking his aging Yorkshire terrier on his lap. "If I thought for one instant it was a real person I would have called the police, my manager, everyone I could think of."
Experts said the fall could have distorted the features of the woman, who was not identified, but who had left a suicide note and was described by an acquaintance at her nursing home as a "refined" woman.SANTA ANA — Corinthian Colleges, the troubled Orange County for-profit college operator, announced Sunday that it will end operations and close its remaining schools, affecting more than 16,000 students in California and other states.
In the wake of state and federal investigations into its job-placement practices, Corinthian had already sold the majority of its schools to a nonprofit student loan servicer last fall. But the company had still been seeking a buyer for more than two dozen campuses in California and other Western states.
Corinthian said in a news release Sunday that it has had trouble selling the remaining campuses because federal and state authorities were “seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions” that would affect potential buyers.
The announcement by Corinthian will be effective Monday at its 13 remaining Everest College and WyoTech campuses in California, along with 10 Heald College campuses in California, Hawaii and Oregon. In the Bay Area, Heald has campuses in San Jose, Concord, Hayward and San Francisco.
The company said in a news release that it would work with other schools to provide “continuing educational opportunities” for the remaining students.
“Unfortunately the current regulatory environment would not allow us to complete a transaction with several interested parties that would have allowed for a seamless transition for our students,” Corinthian Chief Executive Jack Massimino said in a statement.
In an email to remaining employees, Massimino wrote: “We had worked very hard for a better outcome that would have allowed many of you to continue working under new ownership. Unfortunately, we were unable to achieve that goal and effective today your position will be eliminated.”
Students attending a school that shuts down suddenly, as in this case, are typically eligible for a full discharge of student loan debt.
Other Corinthian students have pushed for the U.S. Department of Education to discharge loans for all current and former Corinthian students, citing multiple investigations and lawsuits from state attorneys general alleging fraudulent job placement and marketing techniques.
The company has been in financial turmoil since last summer, when the U.S. Department of Education restricted Corinthian’s access to federal student aid, amid concerns that the company had falsified the job placement rates it advertised for its graduates.
The department last week levied a $30-million fine against Heald College, which operates primarily in California. The department alleged the company boosted official placement rates by paying temporary employment agencies to hire students for brief stints after graduation.
The federal investigation echoed one of the central allegations made by California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s office in a 2013 lawsuit against Corinthian: that it inflated job-placement numbers to get more students and their tuition dollars in the door. For example, a food-service job at Taco Bell — started years before the student even graduated — was counted as a position in the accounting field, according to the investigation.
“This should be a wake-up call for consumers across the country about the abuses that can exist within the for-profit college sector, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement last week.
A statement from Heald last week had called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and said it had no opportunity to review the claims before they went public.
Staff writer Katy Murphy contributed to this report.Reading before bed can reduce stress by 68%. Viviana Calderón/flickr We're all commitment phobes. We scan, we skim, we browse, but rarely do we read.
Our eyes pingpong back and forth from Facebook posts to open chat boxes, unclicked emails to GIFs of dancing cats, scanning for keywords but barely digesting what we see. Average time spent on an online article is 15 seconds.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center revealed that one-quarter of American adults hadn't read a single book in the previous year.
And that's a shame because those who read consistently exhibit significantly greater memory and mental abilities at all stages in life. They're also better public speakers, thinkers and, according to some studies, better people in general.
Cracking open a book before you go to bed could help combat insomnia, too: A 2009 study from researchers at University of Sussex showed that six minutes of reading reduces stress by 68% (more relaxing than either music or a cup of tea), thus clearing the mind and readying the body for sleep.
The reasoning, per psychologist and study author Dr. David Lewis is that a book is "more than merely a distraction, but an active engaging of the imagination," one that "causes you to enter an altered state of consciousness."
It doesn't matter if your book of choice is by James Patterson or James Joyce, fiction or fact, so long as it you find it fully absorbing.
Because when the mind is engaged in a world constructed by words, tension evaporates and the body relaxes, paving the way for sleep.In June 2014, Steam saw record concurrent usership during its summer sale. Over 8 million people flocked to the site at the same time during the heat of June. Now, in the early hours of 2015, a that number has been surpassed.
At approximately 11:30 a.m. Pacific / 2:30 p.m. Eastern on January 1, usership hit 8,466,441. Dota 2 remains the top-played game by a wide margin, with perennial favorites Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Football Manager, Skyrim, and Civilization taking spots on the top ten list.
Click to enlarge.
Overkill’s crime fantasy, Payday 2, anchors the list at number 10. What caught our attention though, is that with one exception the ten most played games are the same franchises (June 2014's list).
We’ve reached out to Valve for comment and certification that the 8.46 million concurrent users represents a new record. We’ll update should we receive a response.
Update: Valve has responded to our request, confirming that this concurrent usership number is a record.
[Source: Valve via NEOGaf, MCV]
Our Take
The PC market is alive and well, but not fully saturated. Steam Machines could disrupt the living room gaming market, but for that to happen, the selling proposition needs to be clear.
Right now, I’m unclear what “problem” (in the marketing definition of the word) Valve’s console-like hardware solves. If Valve hopes to make a dent in marketshare held by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, it will need more than guarantees of inexpensive software. I’m eager to see how Valve deals with the problem of positioning the Steam Machines.United Nations: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has raised the Kashmir issue with almost every world leader he has held talks with on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, but his efforts to internationalise the dispute with India appeared to have gained no traction.
Sharif raised the issue with the leaders of the US, the UK, Japan and Turkey and sought their intervention to resolve the matter. He met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.
"PM Sharif briefed Japanese PM about the grave turn that the situation in occupied Kashmir is taking. Reminded him about UNSC resolutions," Pakistan's envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi tweeted.
"PM Nawaz Sharif also apprised his Japanese counterpart of the human rights violations being committed by Indian occupation forces in Kashmir," Lodhi said in another tweet.
Erdogan and Sharif "agreed that OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation)Comm on Human Rights should send a fact-finding mission" to Kashmir, Lodhi said.
On Monday, Sharif held bilateral talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
According to a readout of his meeting with Kerry by the Pakistan mission, Sharif told him that more than 107 people have been "assassinated" in Kashmir, thousands injured and "worst human rights violations are being committed at the state level."
In his meeting with May, Sharif urged her to play her role in convincing India to stop the use of force against the people in the region.
He said Pakistan's support for Kashmiri people "in their legitimate struggle for self determination and its commitment to the Kashmir cause are non-negotiable."
However,Sharif's repeated calls to the UN to help resolve the Kashmir dispute appeared to be gaining no traction as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made no reference to Kashmir in his final speech to the UNGA as the UN chief.
At the opening session of the General Debate yesterday, Ban touched upon a cross-section of global issues including the Syrian crisis, the Palestinian issue, the refugee and migrant movements and tension in the Korean Peninsula.
Kashmir will be the focal point of Sharif's address to the UN General Assembly tomorrow.
Tension have heightened between India and Pakistan in the wake of the attack by heavily-armed militants, suspected to be from Pakistan, on an army base in Uri in which 18 jawans died.
Ban has repeatedly said his "good offices" are available to help resolve the Kashmir dispute only if both India and Pakistan request for it, a clear indication that the issue is bilateral and should be solved by the two countries only.<![CDATA[In hockey, you can not physically abuse an on-ice official. Today, the National Collegiate Hockey Conference suspended St. Cloud State Huskies defenseman Will Borgen for two games for shoving an official during Saturday's 2-1 loss to the Colorado College Tigers. Borgen's suspension sends a message to other conference players that the league office, will not tolerate abuse of their on-ice officials.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.–The National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) has issued a two-game suspension to St. Cloud State sophomore defenseman Will Borgen, in accordance with the conference’s supplemental discipline policy, the NCHC announced on Tuesday, March 7. The suspension stems from an on-ice incident with an official during the Huskies game against Colorado College on Saturday, March 4. Borgen was suspended after a review of an incident at 16:04 of the third period Saturday at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minn. He was assessed a slashing minor and game misconduct at that time. Through the conference’s supplemental discipline review process, it was found that Borgen violated Rule 40 (Abuse of Officials) and Rule 41 (Physical Abuse of Officials) of the NCAA Rules and Interpretations. In addition, the actions were found contrary to the NCHC Student-Athlete Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct explicitly states that student-athletes are to be respectful of officials at all times and should not demonstrably question the decisions of game officials. Borgen will be required to serve the two-game suspension during St. Cloud State’s NCHC Quarterfinal series March 10-11 against North Dakota in Grand Forks, N.D. Borgen is eligible to return for the Huskies, should there be a decisive third game in their best-of-three quarterfinal series on Sunday, March 12, or should SCSU advance to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff in two games, he is eligible to return for the semifinal game on Friday, March 17.
Sophomore defenseman Will Borgen of @SCSUHUSKIES_MH has been suspended 2 games for abuse of officials by @TheNCHC — Mick Hatten (@MickHatten) March 7, 2017
Borgen Isn’t a Victim
I’ve seen a few fans defend Borgen’s actions on twitter. First, Borgen’s actions are indefensible and unacceptable, in the NHL abuse of an officials carries a stiffer penalty. In my opinion, a two-game suspension is too short. Borgen should have been given a longer suspension. If I was the commissioner, Borgen wouldn’t touch the ice again this season and he’d miss the first series of the next season.
Borgen isn’t the victim here. He made a mistake and he’s going to pay for it. At the 3:56 mark of the third period, Borgen was assessed a two-minute minor for slashing and a Game Misconduct. Earlier in the game, Borgen was also given two minor penalties for roughing.
If you haven’t seen the play in question, I am including the video so you can watch it again.If you judge people by the company they keep, it’s fair to question Hillary Clinton’s commitment to Israel.
That’s because one of her biggest money men, George Soros, was just exposed as heavily funding groups dedicated to slurring Israel as “racist and anti-democratic.”
Last weekend, Soros’ Open Society Foundations was hacked and its confidential reports published on an anti-Jewish Web site with links to Russian intelligence.
The disclosures show Soros gave $10 million to groups whose aims include delegitimizing Israel, pressuring governments to sever ties with the Jewish state and attempting to undermine its Jewish character.
One group, which got $2.7 million in Soros grants, accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and spread the since-discredited lie that Israeli soldiers massacred Palestinian civilians at Jenin in 2002.
Soros has criticized Israel before. He even blamed Israeli policies for the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe (and compared the United States to Nazi Germany). And earlier reports found that his Open Society has given tens of millions annually to groups that wage “political warfare” against Israel.
But the documents show he now prefers to “maintain a low profile and relative distance” from his Palestinian grants, “particularly on the advocacy front.”
He’s also funded Ploughshares, which created the echo chamber that spread the White House lies on its Iran nuke deal.
Soros spent $13 million this cycle alone to send Clinton to the White House and Democrats to Congress. That includes $8 million to pro-Clinton super PACs.
Will they, and Hillary in particular, repudiate his support and return his money? Not likely. Rather, Clinton says, “We need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.”
Soros has certainly stepped up against Israel. And unless Hillary Clinton publicly and clearly says otherwise, voters should assume she stands with him.We here at Yahoo have been ranking the top searches since 2001, our way of providing snapshots into our collective fascinations and fixations from the year. In 2013, quite a few familiar faces return to our annual list of Top 10 Searches, although you wouldn't be blamed for not quite recognizing them. Whether they were coming of age or coming into motherhood, the celebrities who made the list all went through a startling metamorphosis in 2013.
While the 2013 list isn't as news-heavy as last year, when "elections" and "political polls" dominated search terms, people weren't just ogling actors and musicians. Online focus homed in on the Obamacare rollout, a murder trial and — one more time — a smartphone.
[Related: Get an eyeful with 2013 Top 10 Searches on Yahoo slideshow]
Digital revelations
Two different digital revolutions make the Top 10 this year. Of course, given the breakneck pace of tech these days, the Apple smartphone isn't as revolutionary but can still be revelatory. The iPhone returns with daunting regularity on Yahoo lists, and the iPhone 5 (No. 9) hit No. 2 last year, even though it wasn't out yet. While the new iteration might not have been a monumental evolution, its GPU prowess proved up to snuff, the new ID access brought biometric technology literally to users' fingertips, and iOS7 design marked a big philosophical break from skeumorphism.
The video block-building game Minecraft (No. 4) has won rapturous praise for being at once simple yet limitless, and for bypassing the long build-up time of other gaming companies. In 2011, the Swedish company's smartphone app leapt to the No. 1 spot in a month, and its beta launch opened to an audience of 16 million registered users. Sales now are above 33 million and growing.
Players — many children — survive attacks by monsters by crafting weapons and creating shelters that become entire worlds. More important, it's a game without rules and without end that has inspired real-world applications, from collaborative school projects to architecture design. Its monumental access has inspired a documentary (recently published on YouTube), a New Yorker profile, and a book about its founder Markus "Notch" Persson.
Trial and error
Despite the battles directed at Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare (No. 6), its search average had been moderate until its Oct. 1 launch. With a federal Jan. 1 deadline for all Americans to have health insurance, and the massive (negative) publicity from the shutdown to the national website, people finally went en masse to figure out just "what is obamacare," "affordable health insurance" and what health exchanges were available to them. The intense search surge for the act and site pushed the term into the Top 10.SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s new governor has been sworn in as the U.S. territory prepares for what many believe will be new austerity measures and a renewed push for statehood to haul the island out of a deep economic crisis.
Ricardo Rossello was sworn in Monday and proposed several measures aimed at alleviating the crisis. Among them is a proposal to hold a referendum that would ask voters whether they prefer statehood or independence.
“The United States cannot pretend to be a model of democracy for the world while it discriminates against 3.5 million of its citizens in Puerto Rico, depriving them of their right to political, social and economic equality under the U.S. flag,” Rossello said in his inaugural speech, delivered in Spanish. “There is no way to overcome Puerto Rico’s crisis given its colonial condition.”
The new governor said he would hold elections to choose two senators and five representatives and send them to Washington to demand statehood, similar to what Tennessee did in the 1790s in its push for statehood.
Rossello also aims to boost public-private partnerships and use that revenue to save a retirement system that faces a $40 billion deficit. Rossello has pledged to work closely with a federal control board that U.S. Congress created to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances. He said he supports negotiations with creditors to help restructure a nearly $70 billion public debt.
Rossello announced that he has already signed six executive orders, among them are efforts to promote bilingual education and to eliminate the wage gap for female government employees.
Supporters rallied outside the Capitol on Monday cheering the new governor, many waving U.S. flags.At a meeting in Singur on Saturday, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee issued an open appeal to the Congress to join hands with the Left Front to defeat Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in the assembly elections due later this year.
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The thought of a broad coalition against the Trinamool has occupied the minds of a significant section of the CPM leadership in recent times; the appeal to the Congress by Bhattacharjee, who is also a former Politburo member, is the first from a public platform.
“What is the Congress leadership thinking today? We are not alone. Come and join us. Every opposition party should come and join hands to dislodge this undemocratic government,” Bhattacharjee said.
The Congress reacted with caution, saying decision-making of this kind must follow a “system”. On Bhattacharjee’s appeal for a joint front, C P Joshi, general secretary in charge of West Bengal, said: “That is the perception of the CPM. Congress will take a decision after giving due weightage to views of workers and the leadership. Congress has a system to come to such decisions.”
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The CPM state committee is likely to make a formal proposal to the Politburo on approaching the Congress for a tie-up in the coming weeks, it is learnt. CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury had said earlier that once the state unit takes a decision and sends a proposal, the central committee would discuss it before taking a decision. His comments then focussed on technicalities of the process of decision-making, and did not rule out an understanding with the Congress.
The other key signal from the CPM meeting appeared to be the emergence of a consensus on a “reassessment” of the Bhattacharjee government’s line on the Tata Motors plant.
The entire Left leadership present at Singur iterated that the policy had been right — and if followed through, could have brought in sweeping changes and prosperity to Bengal. Bhattacharjee’s attempts to acquire land for the plant had triggered a wave of protests that have been seen to have led ultimately to the downfall, in the elections of 2011, of the 34-year-old Left regime in the state.
Left leaders from Bhattacharjee to Politburo member Biman Bose resolved to “do it again” in Singur, “once the people of Bengal hoist the red flag on Nabanna, the seat of Mamata Banerjee’s power”. The Left Front and 113 mass organisations aligned to it kicked off a padayatra that will cover 192 km through seven South Bengal districts before ending in Salboni in West Midnapore on January 22.
Bhattacharjee, who visited Singur for the first time since 2006, when land acquisition for the Tata project began, said the state had become a “graveyard” for industry under the Trinamool government. “Like Singur, Salboni too was set to get a Rs 35,000 crore steel plant. Where is that now?” he asked.
Months before the elections — the term of the West Bengal assembly ends on May 29 — the Left chose Singur for a public meeting to highlight the continuing stalemate over the return of land to farmers who had been unwilling to part with it — the first promise made by the Mamata Banerjee cabinet.
“You were twice unlucky. You have neither got compensation nor your land back,” speakers told the meeting that saw a significant attendance of Singur villagers. A farmer who said he had lost land, said: “We wanted our land back but we now regret having refused to give our land. We have lost land and now live on the charity of the government, on Rs 2,000 a month and some subsidised foodgrains.” The farmer declined to be identified.
Congress sources in New Delhi said that while the party’s leadership in Bengal was dead against an alliance with the Trinamool, it was largely silent on an understanding with the Left. The Congress central leadership, on the other hand, appears inclined towards joining hands with Mamata — preferring the force that could be its alliance partner in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019, and win the largest number of seats in the state.
The Congress high command has mostly agreed with the views of the state units on forming alliances for state elections. Despite being in favour of an alliance with the JMM in Jharkhand, for example, it had gone alone because the state unit had wanted it that way.
“We are seized of the matter,” Joshi said. “The question of alliance or no alliance is before us. The process (of arriving at a decision) is continuing. We will consider the views of the workers and leaders and the political scenario in the country before taking a decision.”
In Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress mocked Bhattacharjee’s call for industrialisation, and said it was the erstwhile Left Front regime that had “destroyed” the industrial atmosphere of the state, PTI reported.
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“We too believe that there is need for industrialisation and have taken up plans for it. We don’t believe in fake slogans like CPM. It was CPM which destroyed the industrial atmosphere of the state,” TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee was quoted as saying. “Criminals”, Chatterjee said, “always have the tendency to visit the crime spot again. So the place where heinous crimes like loot of farmland, killing of people and rapes were committed, has been revisited by them (CPM)”.
(With ENS New Delhi and PTI)As foreign minister in the current government, where his party is the junior partner to the center-left Socialists under Chancellor Christian Kern, Mr. Kurz has taken a tough line on Turkey, insisting that the European Union drop membership talks.
Few doubt Mr. Kurz’s political talents. He has built support for the New People’s Party to more than 30 percent from less than 20 percent in 2016. He has managed to criticize the government in which he was serving at the time for allowing tens of thousands of immigrants into the country in 2015. Among his campaign promises is that those in Austria illegally will be returned to their home countries.
Many Austrians fear that the roughly 90,000 refugees who arrived in the country of 8.4 million from 2015 to 2016 are draining its resources, Mr. Kurz has said. “That is why I am proposing that refugees, who have never paid into the system, receive lower benefits,” he argued on Thursday in a final television debate among the five leading candidates. “And further drawing on the system by more immigrants will be halted.”
Mr. Kurz’s emphasis on immigration has helped him siphon support from the Freedom Party, which has been polling at around 27 percent of the vote. He has campaigned heavily on ensuring the social welfare system remains viable for those Austrians whose contributions, drawn from their paychecks, helped create it.
Mr. Kurz is expected to invite the Freedom Party to join the government, but few believe such a move would create a firestorm similar to that seen 17 years ago, when it joined a center-right government. Back then, when the party’s charismatic leader, Jörg Haider, was known to express sympathy for Nazi policies, its entrance into government met with weeks of protests in Vienna, worldwide outrage and economic sanctions from Israel and some members of the European Union.
“Should it result in a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, of course, there will be a lot of attention on Austria, especially from foreign media,” said Julia Ortner, a journalist and political commentator for the newspaper Vorarlberger Nachrichten. “But after what we have experienced elsewhere in Europe, especially in Hungary and even in the United States, it is no longer a taboo. It has already happened that rightist-populists have come into power, here and elsewhere in the world.”Nitin Gadkari
Raipur/Ranchi, Jan. 13: Jharkhand stands to get road and bridge infrastructure worth Rs 640 crore from the Centre's road requirement plan (RRP), an ambitious strategy to combat Naxalism by linking remote areas that serve as rebel hideouts.
At a meeting between chief minister Raghubar Das and Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari in Raipur today, it was decided that among the eight Maoist-hit states, Jharkhand will get 11 new roads and complete its pending ones on "mission mode". The state will also get three new bridges.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes that to solve the Maoist problem, road network is required," Gadkari said at the high-level meeting, attended by Das, his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh, other state ministers and senior bureaucrats.
"The Prime Minister has asked to take the road restoration project, phase-II, on fast track. Hence, the ministry has included it on a mission mode. We will build roads as a mission in Maoist strongholds," Gadkari added.
In all, 7,294km roads in red zones will be constructed with an estimated cost of Rs 10,700 crore in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the eight states the RRP, now in phase-II, covers. Forty-eight bridges have been proposed.
"At the meeting, the ministry agreed on all Jharkhand's proposals worth Rs 640 crore," home secretary N.N. Pandey told The Telegraph.
The proposed roads include Hunterganj-Pandeypura-Pratappur in Chatra district, Goelkera-Saitba road in West Singhbhum, Kowali-Asta road in East Singhbhum, Kotam-Kumurgarh road in Gumla district, Chainpur-Ramkanda - Bhandaria road in Garhwa, Kunsua-Ludai-Gudri block road in West Singhbhum, Balumath-Murpa road in Latehar, Balumath-Herhanj-Panki road, again in Latehar and Palamau.
"This apart, three bridge projects would be taken up in Chatra, Palamau and Gumla districts," added Pandey. "Now, we hope funds are released early."
Also, out of 24 road projects taken up in Jharkhand during 2010-11 under the scheme, work on seven-eight projects is pending.
"The meeting discussed pending projects and how to go ahead on them. We are feeling positive about them. The Centre has told us funds would not be a constraint," a senior state government official accompanying the chief minister said.
Besides Das and Pandey, chief secretary Sajal Chakraborty, road construction department secretary Rajbala Verma and her building construction counterpart Sukhdev Singh, among others, attended the Raipur meeting.Phoenix, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / October 27, 2014 / Bitcoin Brands Inc. (CEHC) announced that it is one of the presenting sponsors of tonight's Detroit Bitcoin Expo which takes place from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the Westin Book Cadillac.
The featured speakers are Tony Sakich from Bitpay and attorney Pamela Morgan, who provides legal and educational services on Bitcoin.The event is being produced by the Michigan Bitcoiners and open to the public.
“We look forward to Detroit being a hub of bitcoin activity. It is exciting to be a part of an event that highlights the possibilities of bitcoin as a catalyst to the rebirth of Detroit,” added Peter Klamka President of Bitcoin Brands Inc.
"Bitcoin is a technology poised to significantly improve the lives of people across the globe. Detroit and Windsor are communities of trailblazing innovators who anticipate aqthe positive benefits that will be provided to both cities." stated Daniel Bloch Cofounder of the College Cryptocurrency Network and Michigan Bitcoiners.
Bitcoin Brands develops and markets consumer focused bitcoin products including payment services, tablets and ATMs.
Contact:
1-844-VEND-BTC
media@bitcoinbrandsinc.com
Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. While these statements are made to convey Company progress, business opportunities and growth prospects, readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements represent management's opinion. Whereas management believes such representations to be true and accurate based on information and data available to the Company at this time, actual results may differ materially and are subject to risk and uncertainties. Factors that may cause actual results to differ include without limitation: dependence on key personnel and suppliers; changing regulations, ability to fund growth of equipment; material and component costs; bitcoin prices, competition; economic conditions; and consumer demand for bitcoin. Additional considerations and risk factors are set forth in reports filed with the SEC and other filings. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon these forward-looking statements; historical information is not an indicator of future performance. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements.
Source: Bitcoin Brands Inc.If you’re disappointed you’ll no longer be able to see James Franco‘s interview skills in The Interview next week, maybe True Story can help scratch that itch. Directed by Rupert Goold, the Sundance drama sees Franco engaging in an entirely different kind of interview, from the other side of the coneversation.
Franco plays Christian Longo, a man wanted for murdering his family. He goes on the run and assumes the identity of New York Times reporter Michael Finkel — much to the surprise of the real Michael Finkel, played by Jonah Hill. Watch the True Story trailer after the jump.
Yahoo debuted the first True Story trailer.
The premise of True Story sounds pretty wild but, as the title suggests, it is in fact based on a true story. Finkel published a memoir about his bizarre encounter with Longo in 2006, and it serves as the source material for the film. Goold and David Kajganich wrote the script.
While Longo was fleeing from the authorities, Finkel was facing a fall from grace. The day after Longo’s arrest by the FBI, Finkel was fired from the New York Times for fabricating parts of an investigative article. Nevertheless, Longo insisted that he only wanted to speak with Finkel, so the journalist reached out to the prisoner to find out the truth.
The first True Story trailer looks intense and interesting. It’s not at all funny, but there is some amusement in seeing Franco and Hill go dead serious since they were fending off demonic penises and Hollywood egos the last time we saw them together.
Felicity Jones co-stars as Finkel’s long-suffering girlfriend. True Story has its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month. A theatrical release is scheduled for April 10, 2015. Here’s the Sundance synopsis:Suffering from its worst drought in over 84 years, the city of Sao Paulo is in the midst of a crisis. For as of this weekend the city’s primary reservoir — the Cantareira — had dropped to just 5 percent capacity putting millions at risk of losing access to water.
The fall prompted the city’s governor — Geraldo Alckmin — to again ask for permission to draw emergency water supplies from below flood gates to alleviate catastrophic losses from the Cantareira and ensure water supplies to the region’s 20 million residents. The move would tap a river system that feeds two other states also facing water shortages — Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. But the draw is only a temporary stop gap and, without rain, the Cantareira will continue to fall — bottoming out sometime this November.
(Dam and section of Cantareira Reservoir high and dry under incessant drought conditions. Image source: Linhas Populares.)
Don’t Use the ‘R’ Word
The Cantareira provides water to nearly 50 percent of Sao Paulo’s residents. But ever since February of 2014 the multi-year long drought, a drought that has featured less and less seasonal rainfall over time, has triggered reduced water access by city and state residents.
Those living within areas served by the Cantareira have been treated to increasing periods of dry taps — being forced to go for longer and longer without available water supply. The intermittent lack of water service has put a strain on businesses and residents alike with many people living in Sao Paulo being forced to abstain from washing, cooking and brewing. For now, water for drinking can be stored during times when the faucets flow. But that time could come to an end all too soon without a change in the weather.
“Sometimes I have no water for two days, then it comes back on the next day and the day after that, I have no water again,” said Zeina Reis da Cruz, a 55 year old resident of one of Sao Paulo’s lower income neighborhoods in a September 25 interview with The Globe and Mail.
Despite an ongoing and growing failure to provide water services, the city refuses to use the word ‘rationing.’ Such an admission of failure would have weighed heavily on Alckmin’s re-election campaign (Alckmin was just recently elected to a new term as governor). Instead, irate citizens and businesses making calls to utilities are simply told that there is nothing wrong with the water supply and to wait until the water comes back on.
Regardless of politically-motivated denials, water rationing is the most accurate way to describe what many Sao Paulo residents have been experiencing for 9 months now under a regime of systemic drought that just grows steadily worse with time.
Climate Change Spurred by Deforestation, Worsened By Atmospheric Heating
The great forest of the Amazon provides a rich source of water for both Brazil and surrounding countries. It captures as much as 80 percent of the tropical atmosphere’s heavy moisture load and re-circulates it locally – providing ongoing and consistent rains. A critical means of replenishing regional water sources.
But, over recent decades, a combination of clear cutting and human-spurred warming of the climate have been adding severe stresses to the Amazon. During the period of 2000 to 2010, the great rainforest lost 93,000 square miles of wooded land alone to clear cutting. By 2014, government restrictions had brought down the rate of loss to around 2,300 square miles per year, but by this time warming-related impacts to the Amazon were looking even more dire.
As the 2000s progressed, it was becoming ever-more-clear that a heating climate driven by human fossil fuel emissions was taking an increasing toll. For, during recent decades, the Amazon has been warming at a rate of around 0.25 C every ten years — about twice as fast as the global climate system. The added heat increased evaporation, pushing soil moisture levels below critical thresholds.
(It’s not just Sao Paulo, most of South America is showing ongoing rainfall deficits. Map provided by NOAA shows percent of normal precipitation received by South America this summer. Note the severe drying over much of the Amazon Rainforest and broader South America coupled with drought over Sao Paulo. Image source: Climate Prediction Center.)
This loss has, in turn, increased the prevalence of forest-destroying understory fires. And, according to a 2012 NASA study these understory fires have been burning away the Amazon at the rate of more than 30,000 square miles every ten years for nearly two decades. By late this Century, business as usual fossil fuel emissions and related warming of 4 degrees Celsius is expected to destroy about 85 percent of the Amazon, resulting in widespread desertification of a once-lush region.
Today, this period of initial drying caused by a human heating of the atmosphere appears to be putting the stability of Brazil’s most populous city at risk.
A Major Humanitarian Disaster
Typically for October, Sao Paulo receives between 80 and |
ap and Leonard in the way of his murder investigation at every turn.
Hap & Leonard was created by director-writer Jim Mickle and writer Nick Damici based on Joe R. Lansdale’s novels. Season 2 will be based on Lansdale’s 1994 book Mucho Mojo, the second in the Hap & Leonard series, which revolves around the death of Leonard Pine’s Uncle Chester.
Two-time Tony winner, Golden Globe winner and six-time Emmy nominee Dennehy most recently guest-starred in NBC’s The Blacklist, recurred on TNT’s Public Morals, and had a starring role in Amazon pilot Cocked opposite Jason Lee. His most recent feature credits include Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups and Michael Mayer’s upcoming film The Seagull, starring alongside Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, and Annette Bening. Dennehy will begin rehearsals later this year on Samuel Beckett two-hander Endgame to be directed by Gordon Edelstein, set to open early 2017 at the Long Warf Theatre. He is repped by ICM Partners and Sanders.Armstrong.Caserta Management.
John Wirth (Hell on Wheels, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) is showrunner and executive producer for Season 2, and Mickle, Damici, Jeremy Platt, Linda Moran, and Nick Shumaker return as executive producers, along with co-executive producers Lansdale and Lowell Northrop. Season 2 is slated to premiere in 2017.Juventus will not meet Gonzalo Higuain's £78.5m Napoli release clause, says Giuseppe Marotta
Juventus are not prepared to meet the £78.5m release clause for Gonzalo Higuain, their chief executive has said.
Sky sources reported on Monday that Napoli will not sell the striker for anything less than that amount and Juve CEO Giuseppe Marotta says the deal is closed at present.
According to Sky in Italy, Napoli are also aware of interest in Higuain from Arsenal, but there has been no contact from the Gunners over a deal for the 28-year-old.
Giuseppe Marotta says the Higuain deal is closed at present
"For now the Higuain matter is closed. I can confirm that we will not pay the clause," said Marotta.
Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis had earlier described Juventus' pursuit of the 28-year-old as a "lost battle".
"Marotta told me that Juventus won't activate the €94million clause for Higuain," said De Laurentiis.
"Juventus are very intelligent and they understand that they cannot do this. They know perfectly well that it is a lost battle."
Higuain ended the 2015/16 season as the top scorer in Serie A with 36 goals.
Higuain, who joined Napoli from Real Madrid in 2013, has two years remaining on his contract in Naples. He ended the 2015/16 season as the top scorer in Serie A with 36 goals.St George Illawarra hooker Heath L'Estrange retires after 90-game NRL career
Posted
St George Illawarra hooker Heath L'Estrange has brought down the curtain on his 90-game NRL career.
The 30-year-old rake, who won a premiership with Manly in 2008 and also spent five seasons at the Sydney Roosters, announced his retirement on Friday.
"I'm so lucky to have played 12 years of professional rugby league and I've loved every second of it, if I could play forever I would," L'Estrange wrote on Instagram.
"It's not the way I wanted to go but I'm doing what's right for my family and will now look forward to what lies ahead."
L'Estrange provided great impact off the bench in the first half of 2015 for the Dragons but was relegated to reserve grade when coach Paul McGregor opted to replace him with the younger Craig Garvey.
The dummy half also spent four years playing in the English Super League, where he played 102 matches for Bradford.
AAP
Topics: nrl, rugby-league, sport, kogarah-2217, nsw, australiaOTTAWA — Jim Flaherty is out and Joe Oliver is in.
Flaherty — one of the longest serving finance ministers Canada has ever had and the only one to ever serve Prime Minister Stephen Harper — quit Harper’s cabinet Tuesday.
His replacement, to be named Wednesday morning in a ceremony at Rideau Hall that will be closed to the media, appears to be Oliver. Sources tell QMI Agency Oliver is the man for the job and several other media outlets are also reporting the same thing. Aides in Harper’s office were not responding to messages Tuesday night.
Oliver, though, was seen as one of the likely contenders to take Finance the minute news of Flaherty’s resignation broke shortly after stock markets closed Tuesday afternoon.
Oliver is a bilingual 73-year-old Toronto MP who spent years on Bay Street as an investment banker.
It has been an honour to serve Canada. Thank you for the opportunity. pic.twitter.com/vIbBNgT0wY — Jim Flaherty (@JimFlaherty) March 18, 2014
He understands and speaks the world of money markets and central bankers and, from a political standpoint, is unlikely to aspire to succeed Harper one day.
Oliver will be responsible for designing the 2015 budget, one in which a surplus of several billions will mean Oliver’s toughest job will be to decided whether to shower Canadians with tax cuts or new spending — all of it in an election year.
Jim Flaherty tries on new shoes at the Roots Factory in Toronto prior to the federal budget announcement in this combination of file photos from March 20, 2013. (Stan Behal/QMI Agency)
Flaherty, unluckily perhaps, recorded just two surplus budgets in the 10 he delivered since 2006. His most famous budgets were the first two when he cut two points off the hated GST.
Oliver had been Harper’s natural resources minister. It’s not yet clear who will take that key post as the point person on the Keystone and Northern Gateway pipelines and other energy issues.
Flaherty had told reporters several times in the last several months that he was staying to fight the 2015 general election but, in fact, he and his family had decided months ago to let go of the job and look to return to the private sector.
Flaherty has spent two decades in politics in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park. His aides said he plans to stay on as the MP for Whitby-Oshawa "for the time being."
Thank you @JimFlaherty – the best Finance Minister in the world – for your years of dedicated service to Canadians. #cdnpoli — Stephen Harper (@pmharper) March 18, 2014
Flaherty has suffered over the last year from a rare and painful but treatable skin disorder. In his statement, Flaherty said his health did not play a part in his decision to quit politics.
In a statement, Harper thanked Flaherty for his service.
"It is with great reluctance that today I accepted the resignation from cabinet of Jim Flaherty," Harper said.
Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, who shares Irish ancestry with Flaherty, also thanked him for his service.
In his resignation statement, Flaherty said that he was most proud to be part of a government that lowered corporate taxes to the lowest level in the G7, introduced the tax-free savings account and reduced taxes 160 times.
But Flaherty will also be remembered for bringing in the single largest deficit in Canadian history, a response to the financial crisis of 2008-09. Of the ten budgets Flaherty tabled since 2006, all but two were deficit budgets.
In the 2013 budget he tabled this spring, Flaherty predicted the federal government would be back in balance next year.Share Tweet Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:
What in the name of sanity did I just watch???? Of course my revulsion must be shared with the world. Because I’m generous like that.
I think this is supposed to be making fun of the Clintons, but considering how nutty the liberal base is, I’m not really sure. They idolize Beyonce, for crying out loud! And for all I know, this could be a group of feminists celebrating their Queen by making female-empowering sexual commentary about her shoes and pantsuits. And goodness knows how many liberal women think Bill Clinton is a sex symbol. *gag*
Watch at your own risk. Hide the kids. Hide the dog. Hide the cat. Hide your spouse. And be prepared to be scarred for life. What has been seen cannot be unseen –
Before you make up your mind about who to vote for.. You have to see #Hilaryslighterside We want friends not enemies… Posted by Darren Kendrick on Tuesday, March 1, 2016
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Sir Michael Fallon has sensationally resigned as Defence Secretary following allegations over his behaviour.
The 65-year-old Tory minister admitted his actions in the past had "fallen short" of those expected of the very soldiers he represents.
It brings a dramatic end to the ministerial career of one of the most high-profile Tory ministers in the government. Married Sir Michael is a former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party who has been an MP for three decades.
Previously seen as “safe pair of hands”, he apologised this week for repeatedly placing his hand on the knee of political journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer in 2002.
He was the first Cabinet minister to be named as claims of sexually inappropriate behaviour swirled round Westminster.
It is understood he was braced for more possible allegations to emerge.
(Image: Carl Court)
Tonight Ms Hartley-Brewer repeated that she did not consider herself a victim - and if he'd quit over 'kneegate' it would be "the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a cabinet minister ever in the history of the world."
But Sevenoaks MP Sir Michael was under mounting pressure after Theresa's May’s official spokesman repeatedly refused to say she had full confidence in him.
Friends of Sir Michael tonight said he would be “mortified” at any suggestions he was “some kind of sex pest”.
But they conceded there may be more women who had similar experiences to Ms Hartley-Brewer.
The friends admitted times had changed from when such incidents would be seen as “flirtatious”. “It isn’t now, he gets that now,” they said.
(Image: Steve Back)
The friends added: “Are there going to be other people who have issues with that? I don’t know, we can’t guarantee it. He will absolutely concede that some of the flirtation has been inappropriate.”
Asked if he was worried more allegations would come out, Sir Michael told the BBC: "The culture has changed over the years. What might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now.
“Parliament now has to look at itself. And the Prime Minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff at Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment."
He added: "I have behaved in the past clearly in way that has occasionally been below the standards we require of the Armed Forces... There are always things you regret, you would have done differently."
Just 33 hours after she refused to back him, Sir Michael wrote to the Prime Minister: "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct.
"Many of these have been false but I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces that I have the honour to represent.
"I have reflected on my position and I am therefore resigning as Defence Secretary."
He added in a statement: "It has been a privilege to have served as Defence Secretary for the last three and half years, and I have nothing but admiration for the professionalism, bravery and service of those men and women who keep us safe.”
A source said resigning was “one of the most difficult decisions he would have to take in his life”.
But Mrs May did not try to talk him out of it, it is understood.
No 10 previously said it was “right” that Sir Michael had apologised.
(Image: AFP)
(Image: PA)
Theresa May said in her letter: "I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others."
Mrs May said he had "a long and impressive ministerial career" stretching back to his first frontbech job as an assistant whip in 1988.
Since then he has been a science, business and energy minister and a shadow Treasury spokesman when Labour was in power.
Mrs May said: "You have combined these roles with diligent service to the public in two constituencies and I know you will continue to represent your constituents in that manner.
"On behalf of all those you have helped throughout your time in government, I thank you for your service."
Julia Hartley-Brewer told Sky News: "I'm incredibly shocked.
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
(Image: Evening Gazette)
(Image: PA)
"If this is over 'kneegate' and him touching my knee 15 years ago, me not having any issue with it today, then this is the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a cabinet minister ever in the history of the world.
"However, I don't think that is the reason. As he said in his statement he talked about his previous conduct. He said 'I've fallen below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces.'
"I doubt very much if the standards they require of the Armed Forces is that no man in the military has ever touched the knee of a younger woman.
"I'm assuming there are more allegations to come, whether in a tabloid newspaper tomorrow or sooner than that."
Ms Hartley-Brewer stressed she had no knowledge of any new allegations.
In 2014, it was revealed Sir Michael was at the centre of an explosive row over claims he called journalist Bryony Gordon a “slut” in a bar.
Sources close to Sir Michael confirmed he had been drinking and had apologised after using a “wrong” term towards Ms Gordon in connection with her private life.
But they denied he called her a “slut”.
At the time, the Cabinet Minister also faced questions over a separate incident in which his party “minder” intervened to get him away from an attractive Russian blonde, after he gatecrashed a party.
Sir Michael was first elected to Parliament in 1983 as MP for Darlington but lost his seat in 1992.
He won the seat of Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1997 and has been MP ever since.
He was Business Minister before being elevated to the Cabinet as Defence Secretary in 2014.A young man accused of paralyzing his former friend will be punished by full paralysis in a brutal eye-for-eye sentencing in Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi Gazette.
Imprisoned since the age of 14 on charges of stabbing a former friend, leaving him paralyzed, Sunday's court decision has 24-year-old Ali Al-Khawahir facing a sentence of full paralysis unless he can pay the equivalent of nearly $270,000, said the Gazette.
More from GlobalPost: Britain urges Saudi Arabia not to paralyze convict
The original amount of compensation was double that, but it has been lowered, said ArabianBusiness.com.
The Gazette said a campaign helped raise money for Ali Al-Khawahir after he missed his father's funeral due to his long imprisonment, but it was not clear whether that was the reason the amount had changed.
It's still an impossibly high amount for Ali Al-Khawahir's 60-year-old mother, who told Al-Hayat daily she sympathizes with the victim of her son's attack but can't afford to fully compensate his family and free her son.
“Ten years have passed with hundreds of sleepless nights," the Gazette quoted her as telling Al-Hayat. "My hair has become grey at a young age because of my son’s problem. I have been frightened to death whenever I think about my son’s fate and that he will have to be paralyzed," she said.In an understated speech to the Democratic Party convention in North Carolina, the President told struggling voters: "The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place". However he warned it would take "more than a few years" to arrive there.
Styling himself as the heir to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he said that amid their ongoing economic pain, Americans must choose between “two fundamentally different visions for the future”.
He claimed that while “ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known,” his Republican challenger would reheat the deregulation and tax cuts for high-earners that had “got us into this mess”.
Boasting that thanks to his leadership, “Osama bin Laden is dead”, he also attacked Mr Romney for showing his inexperience in foreign affairs by questioning London's preparedness to host the Olympic Games during a visit in July. “You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you cant visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally,” said Mr Obama.
However, he returned repeatedly to the differences between their economic philosophies, and to implicit contrasts between his own humble upbringing and Mr Romney's childhood as the son of millionaires in Michigan, which he suggested left him best-placed to understand voters' economic woe.
Rejecting a central Republican claim that he did not appreciate entrepreneurs and business-owners, Mr Obama said: “We also believe in something called citizenship … the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations”.
“We're not entitled to success,” said Mr Obama, using a word frequently equated to financial earnings by Mr Romney. “We have to earn it”.
He reiterated that households earning more than $250,000 a year should pay more in income tax, and attacked Mr Romney for having plan that a non-partisan study claims will create a $360 billion black hole that must be filled by the elimination of middle-class tax breaks.
“I refuse to ask middle-class families to give up their deductions for owning a home or raising their kids just to pay for another millionaire's tax cut,” he said. Mr Romney, a former private equity executive, has an estimated fortune of $250 million and pays a below-average rate of income tax.
Discussing education, Mr Obama said: “No family should have to set aside a college acceptance letter because they don't have the money”. Earlier this week, Mr Obama's wife, Michelle, recalled the couple's struggles to repay their student loans.
By contrast Mr Romney's wife, Ann, has said she and her husband paid their way through university using profits from stockholdings given to Mr Romney by his father, which they would “sell off a little at a time”.
Amid a sluggish economic recovery and an unemployment crisis that has left 23 million people jobless or seeking more work, the prime-time speech seen by tens of millions of viewers amounted to an appeal for patience from the public amid Mr Romney's claims that his policies “made things worse”.
In a statement responding to the speech, Matthew Rhoades, Mr Romney's campaign manager, said Mr Obama had “made the case for four more years of the same policies that haven't worked for the past four years”.
Mr Obama rejected their charges, citing the rescue of the American motor industry as an example of success. But he conceded: “I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy – I never have”. His wife, Michelle, told voters earlier this week: “Change is hard and change is slow”,
Confronting claims that he had deceived voters with empty rhetoric, Mr Obama recalled his address to the 2004 party convention in Boston as “a younger man” who “spoke about hope”, adding: “Eight years later, that hope has been tested”.
However he insisted he had never offered “blind optimism or wishful thinking” and said: “You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”
None the less, he said: “If you turn away now – if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn't possible, well, change will not happen”.
The President invoked the post-Depression “New Deal” to claim that the country would succeed again with the sort of “common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one”.
Insisting that Democrats “don't think government can solve all our problems”, he added that they also “don't think that government is the source of all our problems”, in a rebuke to the anti-government Tea Party movement that has risen to prominence within the Republican party in recent years.
He said: “Know this, America: Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future. I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country”.
Under pressure to match a barnstorming speech on Wednesday night by former president Bill Clinton, Mr Obama, who holds narrow leads over Mr Romney in most battleground states, instead delivered a relatively sombre address that might suggest a cautious confidence that he is on a path to victory.
He boasted that he and his party had the positive plans that had been missing from Mr Romney's speech to the Republicans’ own gathering in Florida last week. In a bid to paint Mr Romney as a policy lightweight, Mr Obama also offered a string of clear policy goals throughout his speech.
Among other promises, he pledged to create "one million new manufacturing jobs" by 2017, to "support 600,000 natural gas jobs by the end of the decade" and to revive the economy by doubling US exports by 2015. He also pledged to slow the growth in university tuition fees and reiterate his commitment to cutting $4 trillion over the next decade from the $1.2-trillion-per-year budget deficits.
Mr Obama drew one of the loudest roars from 20,000 supporters in the Time Warner Arena in Charlotte by hailing his prize achievement in national security. “A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead,” he said, also boasting of his ending the war in Iraq and successfully taking part in the military intervention in Libya.
By contrast, he painted Mr Romney and his vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, as novices in foreign affairs who showed they were stuck in a “cold war time warp” by declaring Russia the country's “number one foe”. He warned that they would return the US government to the neo-conservative thinking of former President George W. Bush.
“My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy,” he said. “But from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly”.
Mr Obama's re-election campaign hopes that the party convention will provide the President with a bigger “bounce” in opinion poll ratings than the below-average boost enjoyed by Mr Romney following his own party gathering. Any significant shift could end a virtual deadlock in national surveys that has lasted for several months.
However, official data on jobs created in August were due to be released this morning, hours after Mr Obama’s appearance, with a disappointing report likely to kill off any excitement generated.
More from US election 2012...The government's attempts to placate Muslims will cause long-term damage to communities, a charity said yesterday.
The warning came from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, chair and co-founder of the British Muslims for Secular Democracy, a new organisation claiming to represent the "silent majority who feel no conflict between their faith and democracy".
Speaking before the launch, attended by Baroness Kishwer Faulkner and former Islamist Ed Husain, the journalist said the government was pandering to Muslims by granting too many concessions, fuelling their separation from the rest of society.
"The government has found a way of placating Muslims in a way that will only damage us in the long term, Muslims wanting separate schools or different measures. There must be one law for all.
"This differential accommodation leads to us being pushed to the edges. How is it that the Sikhs and Hindus can live in democracy but not Muslims?"
She added: "The perception is that Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of attention and funding and that perception is justified. This ridiculous, distorted, exaggerated single identity has made us no friends."
The group cited an IPSOS Mori review of surveys, conducted since 2005, that revealed most British Muslims believed their faith to be compatible with democracy.
The group's projects include publishing a booklet for teachers on how to negotiate with Muslim parents who ask for special treatment and citizenship workshops.Why millennials are getting stuck in low-paid jobs for longer
Updated
Brendan Evans' introduction to working life will feel familiar to many. A trolley boy at 14, then a pizza boy at 16, he now works as a kitchenhand at The Dunkirk pub in the inner-Sydney suburb of Pyrmont.
"It can be a bit of a rush, especially on Fridays … We do about 200 meals an hour, hour-and-a-half, on a good day. That can be strenuous because I'm running to get food for the chef and trying to keep up with the plates, stuff like that," the 19-year-old said.
More than 40 per cent of Australia's kitchenhands are males aged 15-19, according to the 2016 census. Only two other occupations have higher concentrations of teenage workers. (We'll look at these later.)
The kind of work we do can change dramatically over a lifetime — especially as the notion of a "job for life" is fast losing currency. Nevertheless, the evolution of our working lives often follows a similar pattern, with particular jobs typically done at particular ages, census figures show.
The charts below show the top occupations for men and women at different ages, ranked by the concentration of workers that age.
Each chart shows the age distribution of workers in the job. The higher the peak, the more workers that age (as a percentage of all workers in that job).
Hit play, use the slider or enter an age to see the jobs dominated by people your age.
Australia's youngest workers are increasingly concentrated in a handful of hospitality and food preparation jobs, 2016 census figures show.
Workers aged 15-34 make up 84 per cent of fast food cooks (up from 75 per cent in 2006), 79 per cent of bar attendants and baristas (up from 73 per cent) and 66 per cent of cafe workers (up from 56 per cent).
This chart shows the age distributions for more than 280 occupations in the census, all on one chart. (It excludes those with fewer than 5000 workers.) Each line represents a job.
Australia's restaurant kitchens and supermarket checkouts are packed with teenagers.
More than half of the country's fast food cooks and one third of its checkout operators and office cashiers are aged 15-18.
Ever dreamed of being a sports star? The most common ages for professional sports people are 19, 20 and 21. The same is true for bar attendants and baristas, while defence force members and veterinary nurses are commonly in their early 20s.
Australia's tech industry is dominated by workers in their thirties. For example, 30- to 35-year-olds make up 14 per cent of all workers but 30 per cent of multimedia specialists and web developers.
Work in management? Chances are you're in your forties.
As for baby boomers, the highest percentages are found among school principals, library and museum technicians, bus and coach drivers, and caretakers.
Notice how the peaks to the left of the chart were much taller and sharper than the bumps to the right? This tells us the jobs we work when we're older employ a wider range of ages, while the jobs we work as teenagers employ very few older workers.
If you've ever worked as a fast food cook or checkout cashier, you probably have a good idea why.
"These are low-skilled occupations that are very easy to enter … which also means they're very, very routine jobs," Angela Knox, from the University of Sydney business school, said.
"Unless you were someone who thrived on routine work, you'd go out of your mind with the monotony if you were doing it full-time, so you get out of there relatively quickly and move on to something that offers you more of a challenge."
But jobs for young people weren't always like this, according to Johanna Wyn, director of the University of Melbourne's Youth Research Centre.
"Instead of having a broad area of tasks people might do, many industries are breaking jobs down into smaller components. People get one area of work and are told to just do that," Professor Wyn said.
"It's almost less professional — and it's very, very unsatisfying. In the past, jobs were more rounded and they might evolve … People could build something and work out their gifts and skills."
This has helped to widen the divide between those with qualifications and those without, and may be part of the reason young people are increasingly concentrated in certain jobs.
Between the 2006 and 2016 censuses, average ages decreased in many occupations already dominated by young workers, bucking the trend in more than 90 per cent of jobs.
The average age of fast food cooks, for example, fell nearly two years to 24.9. The average age of cafe workers fell 1.5 years to 29.1, while bar attendants and baristas dropped 0.6 years to an average age of 28.7.
The key driver? An increase in workers aged 25 and younger, according to census figures.
"Some of it is credential creep," Professor Wyn said.
Young Australians have more formal education than at any other time, and it is increasingly the norm for jobs to require formal qualifications. "The longer time spent in education means more competition for the jobs that finance their study, and these are largely in hospitality and services," she said.
And even those with qualifications are often required to undertake an internship or traineeship on very low wages or no wages at all. Sometimes these can last for a year or longer, Professor Wyn said. "They're desperate to get a start so they might hold that together by doing a part-time job in a cafe or bar."
Back at The Dunkirk, Mr Evans says his work as a kitchenhand pays the bills while he devotes the rest of his time to study and music. He has two years to go on his Bachelor of Composition and Music Production at the Australian Institute of Music, and hopes to move out of the kitchen and into the bar or bottle shop — again, jobs that workers his age dominate.
"I don't want to be too long in the kitchen," he said. "It's not too bad but I'm always soaking wet when I walk out, so that's not so fun. It can get very hot in there."
Data notes
The 2016 census asked employed people aged 15 or older about the main job they held in the week before census night.
Millennials includes people aged 15-34. Gen X includes people aged 35-53. Baby Boomers includes people aged 54-71.
"Top jobs for people age X" graphic excludes jobs with fewer than 2000 male or female workers.
Credits
Topics: work, community-and-society, youth, business-economics-and-finance, economic-trends, australia
First postedMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Celia Hatton said Chinese investors went on microblogging website Weibo to vent their frustrations
Chinese shares continued their sharp fall on Monday as concerns over the country's slowing growth and volatile markets sparked panic among traders.
The mainland benchmark index, the Shanghai Composite, closed down 8.5% at 3,209.91 points, extending last week's losses.
The sell-off continued despite Beijing's latest attempts to reassure investors.
China's dramatic tumble has dragged down markets across the region.
The Hong Kong Hang Seng index ended the day down 5.2% at 21,251.57, while the region's biggest stock market, Japan's Nikkei 225 closed 4.6% lower at 18,540.68 points, its lowest level in nearly five months.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 finished 4.1% lower at 5,001.30, while South Korea's Kospi index wrapped the day 2.5% lower at 1,829.81 points.
Beijing's latest intervention, to allow its main state pension fund to invest in the stock market, failed to reassure traders both in China and abroad.
Under the new rules, the fund will be allowed to invest up to 30% of its net assets in domestically-listed shares. By increasing demand for them, the government hopes prices will rise.
Analysis: Celia Hatton, BBC News Beijing Correspondent:
"Every time I look at what's happening in the stock market, I feel sick and I can't eat. China, please save my money," a panicked Chinese investor wrote online.
Many others are voicing the same desires: if the mainland's stock markets are faltering, they want the state to come to the rescue. It's not just a hope, it's an expectation.
And that's where the government's problem lies. Beijing's economic reform plan hinges on its pledge to withdraw from the market economy. China's stock markets will never mature if the state is always hovering in the background, like an anxious parent.
However, 80% of China's investors are individuals managing their own portfolios. In contrast, foreign stock exchanges are usually dominated by large, institutional investors. Of course, China's stock market wealth is concentrated among the elite. China's rookie investors don't have the ability to sway the markets on their own, because the values of their portfolios are relatively small.
But that still leaves millions of ordinary people dangerously exposed to the fluctuations in the market. And, as China's internet forums indicate, those are people who believe the government can and should guarantee their investments.
If millions of angry citizens lose their life savings in the stock market and the state does nothing to ease their pain, the government may face its greatest fear: widespread social unrest.
A 'one-trick pony'?
Simon Littlewood, president at business advisory firm ACG Global told the BBC there were concerns that the world's second biggest economy was "a one-trick pony as they have been trying repeatedly over the past few months to put more liquidity into their economy", yet so far have failed to calm markets.
Over the past week, China's benchmark Shanghai Composite fell 12%, adding up to a 30% drop since the middle of June.
The sharp fall sparked a global sell-off, with the Dow Jones in the US losing 6%, while the UK's FTSE 100 posted its biggest weekly loss this year of 5%.
Earlier this month, the Chinese central bank devalued the yuan in an attempt to boost exports.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Chinese traders have seen equities drop some 30% since June
IMF: 'No crisis'
Over the weekend, the International Monetary Fund weighed in on the global sell-off in an attempt to avoid further market panic.
China's economic slowdown and fall in equities was not a crisis but a "necessary" adjustment for the economy, a senior IMF official said on Sunday.
"It's totally premature to speak of a crisis in China", Carlo Cottarelli, IMF executive director representing countries such as Italy and Greece on its board, told a press conference, reiterating the international lender's forecast for a 6.8% expansion of the Chinese economy this year, below the 7.4% growth achieved in 2014.
On Friday, figures showed China's factory activity in August shrank at its fastest pace in more than six years.
This came after official figures showed the country's economic growth continuing to slow. For the three months to the end of July, the economy grew by 7% compared with a year earlier - its slowest pace since 2009.“Mr. Churchill, if I was your wife I’d poison your tea.”– Lady Astor
“Madame, if I was your husband I’d drink it.” – Winston Churchill
No one knows if that exchange is true, but it is true that Nancy Astor and Winston Churchill had their differences. It is also true that they were both famous for their wit — reportedly he once asked her what disguise he should wear to a masquerade ball and she replied, “Why don’t you come sober?”
And it is true that they both served in the House of Commons. Indeed, this week (Nov. 28) in 1919 Lady Nancy Astor became the first woman ever to sit in that august chamber, having run for, and won, the seat her husband vacated to claim his inherited seat in the House of Lords. This was even more remarkable because Astor was American born.
She moved to England after divorcing her first husband, then met and married Walter Astor, whose political and social connections thrust her into the limelight of English society. At their country estate in Clivedon the Astors entertained frequently and attracted a following that became known as the “Clivedon set,” which increased their influence both socially and politically.
In Parliament, Lady Astor made women’s rights her main cause, but she was also rabidly anti-Catholic and anti-Communist, which distorted her view of the Nazis as they rose to power in the 1930s. Although she had criticized the Nazis — once joking that Hitler looked too much like Charlie Chaplin to be taken seriously — she supported Germany’s decision to re-arm even though doing so violated the WWI-ending Treaty of Versailles, because, as she put it, Germany was surrounded by Catholic countries. And like many in England, she saw Germany as a bulwark against the Communist Soviet Union.
She also was passionately opposed to Britain being dragged into another world war, which led her to support many of the appeasement policies that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted. That put her at odds with the most vocal critic of appeasement, Winston Churchill.
Once World War II began she recanted many of her positions, but like most appeasers she was treated with suspicion, and as she aged her skills declined, her political views were ignored and her famous wit deserted her. Still, she kept getting elected by her constituency, remaining in Parliament until 1945.
Which brings us to the question you are probably asking |
person in the world—that I believe understands me—I have been many places—in my life and done many things of which you did not approve—or understand, nor did I understand myself—at the time.” He contended with his old sins, acknowledging how much pain he had caused Ellen, his second wife, and their children (“these three who I have hurt deeply”) by abandoning them. “It is hard to understand but I love them very deeply and think of them often,” he wrote. Ellen had filed for divorce, on the ground of desertion. “I don’t expect she has much faith or love for me any more,” Morgan wrote. “And probably she is right.” Yet he wanted his mother to understand that he was no longer the same person. “I am here with men and boys—who fight for... freedom,” he wrote. “And if it should happen that I am killed here—You will know it was not for foolish fancy—or as dad would say a pipe dream.” The friend who had also smuggled weapons to the rebels later told the Palm Beach Post, “He had found his cause in Cuba. He wanted something to believe in. He wanted to have a purpose. He wanted to be someone, not no one.” Morgan had composed a more philosophical statement about why he had joined the rebels. The essay, titled “Why Am I Here,” said: Why do I fight here in this land so foreign to my own? Why did I come here far from my home and family? Why do I worry about these men here in the mountains with me? Is it because they were all close friends of mine? No! When I came here they were strangers to me I could not speak their language or understand their problems. Is it because I seek adventure? No here there is no adventure only the ever existent problems of survive. So why am I here? I am here because I believe that the most important thing for free men to do is to protect the freedom of others. I am here so that my son when he is grown will not have to fight or die in a land not his own, because one man or group of men try to take his liberty from him I am here because I believe that free men should take up arms and stand together and fight and destroy the groups and forces that want to take the rights of people away. In his rush to overturn Cuba’s past as well as his own, Morgan often forgot to pause for periods or paragraph breaks. He acknowledged, “I can not say I have always been a good citizen.” But he explained that “being here I can appreciate the way of life that is ours from birth,” and he recounted the seemingly impossible things that he had seen: “Where a boy of nineteen can march 12 hours with a broken foot over country comparable to the american Rockies without complaint. Where a cigarette is smoked by ten men. Where men do without water so that others may drink.” Noting that U.S. policies had propped up Batista, he concluded, “I ask myself why do we support those who would destroy in other lands the ideals which we hold so dear?” Morgan sent the statement to someone he was sure would sympathize with it: Herbert Matthews. The Times reporter considered Morgan to be “the most interesting figure in the Sierra de Escambray.” Soon after receiving the statement, Matthews published an article about the Second Front and its “tough, uneducated young American” leader, citing a cleaned-up passage from Morgan’s letter. Other U.S. newspapers began chronicling the exploits of the “adventurous American,” the “swashbuckling Morgan.” The Washington Post reported that he had become a “daring fellow” by the age of three. The accounts were enough to “make schoolboys drool,” as one newspaper put it. A retired businessman from Ohio later told the Toledo Blade, “He was like a cowboy in an Ernest Hemingway adventure.” Morgan had finally willed his interior fictions into reality.
One day in the spring of 1958, while Morgan was visiting a guerrilla camp for a meeting of the Second Front’s chiefs of staff, he encountered a rebel he had never seen before: small and slender, with a face shielded by a cap. Only up close was it evident that the rebel was a woman. She was in her early twenties, with dark eyes and tawny skin, and, to conceal her identity, she had cut her curly light-brown hair short and dyed it black. Though she had a delicate beauty, she locked and loaded a gun with the ease of a bank robber. Morgan later said of a pistol that she carried, “She knows how to use it.” Her name was Olga Rodríguez. She came from a peasant family, in the central province of Santa Clara, that often went without food. “We were so poor,” Rodríguez recalls. She studied diligently, and was elected class president. Her goal was to become a teacher. She was bright, stubborn, and questioning—as Rodríguez puts it, “always a little different.” Increasingly angered by the Batista regime’s repressiveness, she joined the underground resistance, organizing protests and assembling bombs until, one day, agents from Batista’s secret police appeared in her neighborhood, showing people her photograph. “They were coming to kill me,” Rodríguez recalls. When the secret police could not find her, they beat up her brother, heaving him on her parents’ doorstep “like a sack of potatoes,” she says. Her friends begged her to leave Cuba, but she told them, “I will not abandon my country.” In April, 1958, with her appearance disguised and with a tiny.32 pistol tucked in her underwear, she became the first woman to join the rebels in the Escambray. She tended to the wounded and taught rebels to read and write. “I have the spirit of a revolutionary,” she liked to say. When Morgan met her, he gently teased her about her haircut, pulling down her cap and saying, “Hey, muchacho.” Morgan had arrived at the camp literally riding a white horse, and she had felt her heart go “boom, boom, boom.” “I am a great romantic, and I was so moved that someone from another country would care enough about my countrymen to fight for them,” she says. Morgan repeatedly sought her out at her camp. She would sometimes prepare him rice and beans (“I’m a guerrilla, not a cook”), and he would complain, “Too fast!” as she spoke, in gunfire-patter Spanish, about the need to hold elections and build hospitals and schools. She seemed unlike so many of the women whom he had impetuously taken up with. Like his mother, she had a deep sense of conviction, and it was her influence, Menoyo says, that furthered “William’s transformation,” though Rodríguez saw it differently: Morgan was not so much changing as discovering who he really was. “I knew William had not always been a saint,” Rodríguez says. “But inside, I could tell, he had a huge heart—one that he had opened not just to me but to my country.” Morgan recognized the risk of surrendering to a flight of emotion in the midst of war. The Batista regime had placed a twenty-thousand-dollar bounty on him—“dead or alive,” as Morgan put it. Once, when Morgan and Rodríguez were together, a military plane shut down its engines, so that they could not hear its approach until bombs were falling upon them. “We simply had to dive for cover,” Rodríguez recalls. They barely escaped unharmed. During other bombing raids, they would hold each other, whispering, “Our fates are intertwined.” When Robert Jordan is overcome with love for a woman during the Spanish Civil War, he fears that they will never experience what ordinary people do: “Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pajamas, not the morning paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she’s there and that you’re not alone. No. None of that.” As long as Morgan was fighting in the Escambray, there could be no past or future—only the present. “We could never have peace,” Rodríguez says. “From the beginning, I had this terrible feeling that things would not end well.” Yet the impossibility of their romance only deepened their ardor. Not long after they met, a boy from a nearby village approached Rodríguez in camp, carrying a bunch of purple wildflowers. “Look what the Americano has sent you,” the boy told her. A few days later, the boy appeared again, holding a new bouquet. “From the Americano,” he said. As Morgan later told her, they had to “steal time.” In one such moment, a photographer caught them standing in a mountain clearing. In the image, both are wearing fatigues; a rifle is slung over his right shoulder, and she leans on one, as if it were a cane. With their free hands, they are clutching each other. “When I found you, I found everything I can wish for in the world,” he later wrote her. “Only death can separate us.”
“MORGAN WAS KILLED THE PREVIOUS NIGHT IN THE COURSE OF A FIGHT WITH THE CUBAN ARMY.” So read an urgent cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Havana to Hoover, at F.B.I. headquarters, on September 19, 1958. The Batista regime, which had already leaked the news to the Cuban press, mailed the F.B.I. two photographs of a fractured corpse, shirtless and smeared with blood. Morgan’s mother was devastated when she heard of the reports. Several weeks later, she received a letter from Cuba, in Morgan’s hand. It said, “The Cuban press last month sent out word that I was dead but as you can tell I am not.” Just as Batista’s regime had falsely declared Castro’s death, it had made the mistake of believing its own propaganda about Morgan, becoming trapped in the closed circuit of information that isolates tyrants not only from their countrymen but from reality. Meanwhile, Morgan’s seeming emergence from the dead, like one of Mulholland’s magical feats, created a potent counter-illusion: that he was indestructible.
In October, Che Guevara arrived in the Escambray, with a hundred or so ghostly-looking soldiers. They had completed a six-week westward trek from the Sierra Maestra, withstanding cyclones and enemy fire and sleeping in swamps. Guevara described his men as “morally broken, starving... their feet bloodied and so swollen they won’t fit into what’s left of their boots.” Guevara—whom another rebel once depicted as “half athletic and half asthmatic,” and prone to shifting in conversation “between Stalin and Baudelaire”—had dark hair nearly to his shoulders. During the march, he had worn the cap of a dead comrade, but, to his distress, he had lost it, and so he began wearing a black beret. The ranks of the Second Front had grown to more than a thousand men. Morgan wrote to his mother, “We are much stronger now,” and said that his men were “getting ready to come down from the hills and take the cities.” Guevara had been sent to the Escambray to take control of the Second Front, as Castro was eager to eliminate any threat to his dominance and to accelerate the assault on Batista. But many rebels there resisted having their authority usurped, and submerged tensions between the groups rose to the surface. When Guevara and his men tried to enter a stretch of territory, they were confronted by a particularly combative leader of the Second Front, Jesús Carreras. After demanding a password from Guevara, Carreras refused to let him or his men pass. Morgan and Olga Rodríguez, in 1958. Their relationship, she says, was “un gran amor.” Courtesy Olga Morgan Goodwin Courtesy Olga Morgan Goodwin Morgan and Guevara, the two foreign comandantes, bitterly distrusted each other. The boisterous, fun-loving, anti-Communist American had little in common with the ascetic, erudite, Marxist-Leninist Argentine doctor. Morgan complained to Guevara that he had misappropriated weapons belonging to the Second Front, while Guevara dismissed Morgan and his defiant guerrillas as comevacas—“cow-eaters”—meaning that they sat around and lived off the largesse of peasants. Although Guevara and the Second Front reached an “operational pact,” friction remained. In November, 1958, before a climactic push against Batista’s Army, Morgan slipped away with Rodríguez to a farmhouse in the mountains, where they arranged to get married. They wore their rebel uniforms, which they had washed in the river. They didn’t have rings, so Morgan took a leaf from a tree, rolled it into a circle, and placed it on her finger, vowing, “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.” Rodríguez said, “Hasta que la muerte nos separe”—“Till death do us part.” After the ceremony, Morgan picked up his gun and returned to battle. “We barely had time to kiss,” Rodríguez recalls. As the fighting intensified, she had a growing sense of unease. To keep her company, he had given her a parrot that cried “We-liam” and “I love you!” But one day it flew off, and never returned. In late December, Guevara and his party launched a ferocious assault in the Santa Clara province, winning a decisive victory. That month, Morgan and the Second Front seized the tobacco town of Manicaragua, then pressed onward, capturing Cumanayagua, El Hoyo, La Moza, and San Juan de los Yeras, before reaching Topes de Collantes, a hundred and sixty miles southeast of Havana. One of Batista’s colonels warned, “Headquarters can’t resist anymore. The Army doesn’t want to fight.” The Second Front had earlier issued a statement declaring that “the dictatorship is nearly crushed,” and the U.S. government tried to push out Batista, in a futile attempt to install an acquiescent “third force.” Batista resisted the Americans’ pressure, but his hold on power was nearly gone. At 4 A.M. on New Year’s Day, David Atlee Phillips, a C.I.A. agent stationed in Havana, was standing outside his home there, drinking champagne, when he looked up and saw a speck of light—an airplane—receding into the sky. Realizing that there were no departing flights at that hour, he telephoned his case officer, and offered a gem of information: “Batista just flew into exile.” “Are you drunk?” the case officer replied. But Phillips was right—Batista was escaping, with his entourage, to the Dominican Republic—and word rapidly spread throughout Cuba: “Se fue! Se fue! ” He’s gone! Meyer Lansky was in Havana at the time, and was among the first people there to be tipped off. “Get the money,” he commanded an associate. “All of it. Even the cash and checks in reserve.” After dawn, Morgan was preparing to battle for the city of Cienfuegos when the cry reached him and Rodríguez: Se fue! Se fue! Morgan ordered his men to take the city immediately. Everyone, including Rodríguez, jumped into cars and trucks, racing into a city where they had expected an intense battle but where Batista’s Army, once impregnable, dissolved before them as thousands of jubilant residents poured into the streets, honking horns and banging on makeshift drums. The crowds greeted Morgan, who wrapped a rebel flag around his shoulders like a cape, to shouts of “Americano!” Morgan, who told reporters, “I’m forgetting my English,” cried at the crowds grasping at him, “Victoria! Libertad!” In an interview with Look, Morgan said, “When we came down from the mountains, it was a shock to all of us... to find how much faith the Cuban people had in this revolution. You felt you simply couldn’t betray their hopes.” Morgan was put in charge of Cienfuegos. He had finally become somebody, he told a friend. On January 6, 1959, at one in the morning, Castro paused in Cienfuegos during his triumphant march to Havana. It was the first time that Morgan had met with Castro in Cuba, and the two former delinquents shook hands and congratulated each other. In interviews, Castro repeated his opposition to Communism and promised to hold elections within eighteen months. Before a gathering of thousands in Havana, he vowed, “We cannot become dictators.” Whatever doubts Morgan had about Guevara, he seemed to harbor none about Castro, who once declared, “History will absolve me.” “I have a tremendous admiration—a tremendous respect—for the man,” Morgan later told the American television broadcaster Clete Roberts. “I respect his moral courage, and I respect his honesty.” Morgan cast the revolution in his own distinctive terms: “It’s about time the little guy got a break.” Roberts observed that Morgan’s life, including his romance with Rodríguez, sounded “like all of the movie scripts that were ever dreamt about in Hollywood.” Morgan insisted that he had no interest in selling his story: “I don’t believe that you should cash in on your ideals. I don’t believe I was an idealist when I went up into the mountains, but I feel that I’m an idealist now.” Morgan had not slept for two days after Batista fled, and he welcomed the chance to shave and wash the jungle grime off his body. Rodríguez soon changed out of her uniform, confident that “the war was over and that we would raise a family and live in a democracy.” In Cienfuegos, they exchanged proper wedding rings. Rodríguez says, “I cannot describe the happiness I felt—we felt.” Rodríguez had become pregnant. For Morgan, it suddenly seemed that he and Rodríguez could have everything: a house, children, the morning paper. As Morgan put it, “All I’m interested in is settling down to a nice, peaceful existence.” THE CONSPIRACY
In March, 1959, a mysterious American suddenly appeared at the Hotel Capri, where Morgan and Rodríguez were staying temporarily. The man, who was in his late forties, had stiff black hair and thick glasses, and looked like he could be an employee of NASA, the new space agency. In the lobby, he called Morgan and said that he needed to see him. His name was Leo Cherne. “I’m sure he never heard of me before,” Cherne recalled, in an unpublished oral history. Imposing, learned, and discreet, Cherne was a wealthy businessman and a power broker who had advised several U.S. Presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt and Eisenhower. In 1951, he became chairman of the International Rescue Committee. Over the years, there was speculation that, under Cherne, the I.R.C. had sometimes served as a front for C.I.A. activities—a charge that Cherne publicly denied. In any case, he was enmeshed with people in intelligence circles, a man who relished being privy to a cloak-and-dagger world. In his oral history, Cherne said that he had once been “deeply attracted” to Castro, rivalling Herbert Matthews in his “blind enthusiasm.” But Cherne had grown apprehensive after the revolution. With disturbing coolness, Castro had dispatched several hundred members of Batista’s regime “to the wall,” and his indeterminate ideology, his instinctive defiance, and his gargantuan ambition posed serious risks. And so the C.I.A. sought to put more eyes and ears around Castro, eventually assigning him the cryptonym AMTHUG. Morgan must have seemed like a tantalizing target for recruitment. He had a built-in cover and access, spoke Spanish, and, as a U.S. citizen, seemed easier to turn: he would not have to become a traitor to his country. Morgan’s support for Castro and the revolution presented an impediment, but, as any seasoned case officer knew, virtually everyone had a “soft spot”: greed, jealousy, sexual temptation. One simply needed to find the spot and inflame it, until the target breached a system of beliefs for a system of information, for silent calls and dead drops. It seemed that Morgan had a spark of resentment that could catch fire. Castro, wary of rivals, had denied prominent government positions to many members of the Second National Front of the Escambray, including Menoyo. Adam Clayton Powell, a congressman from New York, had just returned from a fact-finding mission in Cuba, where he had overheard Morgan—whom he described as “a sweet guy, but very tough”—criticizing the new regime. At the Hotel Capri, Cherne was surprised to find that Morgan occupied a small, sparely furnished room. Rodríguez had gone out, but armed barbudos—bearded guerrillas—kept entering and exiting, as if the cramped room were a makeshift headquarters. Morgan wore his rebel uniform, the star of a comandante emblazoned on each epaulet. His revolver rested on a dresser. Cherne told Morgan that he had sought him out to promote the I.R.C.’s work in Cuba and to obtain an audience with Castro, but Morgan was wary. He knew that Havana had become a city of spooks, and Cherne had shown him an I.R.C. brochure featuring William Joseph (Wild Bill) Donovan—the famous spymaster of the Second World War, who was an honorary chairman of the committee’s board. Morgan suspected that Cherne was an American intelligence officer representing “very substantial and powerful forces.” As they conferred, Morgan, perhaps believing that his secrets would be safe with a professional keeper of them, confessed something that he had not revealed even to his closest friends, including Menoyo. Morgan admitted that the story he had told about an American friend being killed by Batista was a fabrication—a sleight of hand that had allowed him to sneak himself into the narrative of history. “Morgan told the truth, trusting that I would not take it public,” Cherne recalled. Morgan touched on his troubled past, and Cherne believed that Morgan was “courageous, tough, able, resourceful but a bad boy.... And it was this bad boy who found in the developing events in Cuba something exciting.” Cherne observed how well Morgan spoke Spanish, how he commanded respect from the rebels passing through the room, and how bright he seemed, despite having only an eighth-grade education. “I’ve rarely met a person as genuinely articulate, as clever, in some ways brilliant, as I found him to be, all by instinct,” Cherne noted. He soon returned to the Capri for another meeting. This time, a barbudo lay sprawled on the bed, apparently dozing. Morgan, even then the loose-lipped Gabby, said that he wanted to disclose something “very important.” Cherne looked around anxiously, and asked, “How do you know the room is secure?” Morgan assured him that it was, but Cherne pointed to an air-conditioning vent, where a bug might be installed. “I must apologize,” Morgan said. “You are absolutely right.” He picked up a transistor radio, placed it in front of the vent, and cranked up the music. Cherne was still concerned about the Cuban on the bed. Morgan’s “blithe willingness to take risks was not altogether to my taste,” Cherne recalled. But, sensing that Morgan had “irresistible” information, he let him proceed and, with his permission, even used a miniature recording device that he had brought with him. Morgan confided that Guevara and Raúl Castro were Marxist-Leninists who threatened the revolution. Guevara had enlisted someone to kill him, but Morgan had captured the agent and, before letting him go, obtained a written confession, which he had stashed away. “That is the insurance policy which will keep me alive,” Morgan claimed. Cherne asked Morgan if he thought that Fidel Castro was a Communist. Morgan said no and emphasized that many Cubans were committed to democracy. Cherne found Morgan’s tale of intrigue “filled with perceptive fact.” Morgan expressed the hope that Cherne could use his influence to secure foreign economic aid for some three thousand families in the Escambray who had been “bombed out” during the war. And he said he was worried that the U.S. government would revoke his citizenship, as some anti-Castro elements were clamoring for. Cherne suspected that he had pinpointed Morgan’s soft spot: the Yankee comandante wanted to make sure that, if things grew too dangerous, he could return to America with his family; he feared being left out in the cold. Cherne believed that Morgan was not seeking personal advantage. Rather, Morgan was hoping to “even the score” with his beloved country, where he had fallen short as a citizen and a soldier. “This was his act of expiation,” Cherne concluded. Morgan handed Cherne a 1946 five-centavo coin. Its edge had a small notch. If Cherne wanted to send someone to see him in the future, he should give that person the coin for presentation to Morgan—a sign of trustworthiness. After Cherne left the hotel, with the coin and the recording of their conversation tucked away, he grew anxious that he had been spied upon. Why had he taken such a foolish risk? Cherne scribbled on paper what he had learned, put it in an envelope, and slipped it to a trusted friend in Havana. “Just in case I didn’t get out,” he recalled. Cherne returned to his hotel and remained in his room. The phone rang, but he did not answer it. “I heard footsteps outside my door, and I sweated freely,” he recalled. Finally, he rushed to the airport, waited an “interminable period,” and “wasn’t relieved until the plane took off.” On March 20th, Cherne went to C.I.A. headquarters—then a complex of shabby buildings on E Street, in Northwest Washington, D.C. A sign saying “U.S. Government Printing Office” had once hung out front, but, after President Eisenhower and his driver struggled to find the entrance, it was replaced with the C.I.A.’s emblem. Cherne was ushered through security and into the French Room, a conference space used by senior C.I.A. officials, where he met with the acting chief of the Western Hemisphere Division. Cherne debriefed him about his encounter with Morgan, which he considered one of the “most incredible and fascinating accidental exposures to political reality in my entire life.” The C.I.A. cultivates its own private language, and Cherne, who was identified in a classified document about Morgan simply as “HQS contact,” was serving as a spotter—someone who identifies a potential asset for recruitment. Cherne told the C.I.A. that Morgan could be very valuable, as he was on excellent terms with Castro. And Cherne passed on Morgan’s coin—the kind of object that the magician Mulholland called a “recognition signal.” A C.I.A. report concluded that Morgan had “KUCAGE possibilities.” In his 1975 book, “Inside the Company,” Philip Agee, a former C.I.A. officer who turned against the agency and allegedly assisted Castro’s regime, revealed that KUCAGE stood for highly sensitive psychological and paramilitary operations. “They are action rather than collection activities,” Agee wrote. “Collection operations should be invisible so that the target will be unaware of them. Action operations, on the other hand, always produce a visible effect. This, however, should never be attributable to the C.I.A. or to the U.S. government.” Not long after Castro took power, the C.I.A. began to seek out action operators who could press the “magic button”: assassination. In addition to commissioning Mulholland’s manuals, the C.I.A. had created a document titled “A Study of Assassination.” After noting that the “morally squeamish should not attempt it,” the study laid out various techniques: The most efficient accident... is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve.... The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [lifting] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the subject is deliberately run down, very exact timing is necessary and investigation is likely to be thorough.... The subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation. At the end of March, the C.I.A. authorized a background investigation of Morgan—“a.k.a. ‘El Americano.’ ” Its agents needed more “biographical data” before trying to recruit Morgan. On March 30th, the agency’s Central Cover Division requested that it be advised immediately when Morgan had been “activated.” Two weeks later, Castro arrived in Washington, D.C., on what he billed as a “good will” tour. President Eisenhower declined to meet with him, but, when Castro appeared in public, wearing his rumpled green fatigues and empty pistol holster, he was cheered by Americans who saw him as a folk hero. “Viva Castro!” they shouted. Around this time, as Aran Shetterly, the biographer, recounts, another curious guest appeared at the Hotel Capri. He was a reputed bagman for the Mob named Frank Nelson. The Mob feared, correctly, that Castro planned to shutter its casinos and night clubs. (“We are not only disposed to deport the gangsters, but to shoot them,” Castro later proclaimed.) Nelson said that a friend in Miami was interested in Morgan’s “services.” “In my services?” Morgan asked, confused. It was Nelson’s turn to look around the room nervously. In a hushed voice, he said, “My friend is ready to pay you well if you help him.” He paused. “A million dollars.” The conversation continued in Miami, where Morgan met in a secure hotel room with Nelson’s “friend.” It was the Dominican Republic’s consul there, who was serving as yet another go-between, in order to conceal the true identity of the plotters. One of the masterminds was Rafael Trujillo, the tyrant who had ruled the Dominican Republic for three decades, and who was even more sadistic than Batista. His security chief likened his rule to that of “Caligula, the mad Caesar.” One of Trujillo’s maxims was “He who does not know how to deceive does not know how to rule,” and he had a penchant for scheming to kill his opponents abroad. In 1956, Trujillo allegedly orchestrated the kidnapping, in New York, of a lecturer at Columbia University who had served in the Trujillo government, and was about to publish a doctoral thesis critical of the regime. After being taken back to the Dominican Republic and delivered to Trujillo, the scholar was believed to have been stripped naked, tied to a rope on a pulley, then lowered, slowly, into a vat of boiling water. Now Trujillo wanted to eliminate Fidel Castro. In the hotel room in Miami, Trujillo’s consul was joined by Batista’s former chief of police. (Batista, still in the Dominican Republic, was helping to bankroll the operation.) Also present was a broad-chested, dapper man whom Morgan recognized from his days in organized crime: Dominick Bartone. After the revolution, the gangster had sought out Morgan, trying to sell the Castro regime several Globemaster military cargo airplanes. Bartone was now trying to sell the planes to the plotters seeking to overthrow Castro. Bartone’s ally Jimmy Hoffa had allegedly attempted to siphon three hundred thousand dollars from the Teamsters’ pension fund to float the deal. One of Hoffa’s aides later informed the government that the scheme “was purely and simply Hoffa’s way of helping some of his Mob buddies who were afraid of losing their businesses in Cuba.” The men in the hotel room represented interests tied to the Mob, the Teamsters, Batista, and Trujillo, a longtime ally of the United States. These divergent lethal forces had found coherence in a single audacious plot. As they tried to persuade Morgan, they, too, probed for his soft spot. “I understand that you and your people have been treated badly,” Nelson had said in his pitch. “Besides, a million dollars is always a million dollars.” To the rest of the world, Morgan might have become the Yankee comandante. But the plotters were confident that, deep down, he was still good ol’ Billy Morgan. “We’ll give you everything you ask for,” Batista’s former police chief said. Morgan soon got back to them. He let them know that he had consulted with Menoyo, and that they had given careful thought to what had happened in Cuba since the revolution. And Morgan said that he, along with members of the Second Front, was ready to join the conspiracy.
Hoover sensed that something was afoot. There were reports from informants that, in recent months, Morgan had received tens of thousands of dollars from the Dominican consul, the cash often stuffed in “common paper bags.” There were whispers that Morgan, who had moved with Rodríguez into a house in Havana, was being ferried messages from a priest acting in the interest not of God but of Rafael Trujillo. And there were rumors that, in Florida, Morgan had met with Johnny Abbes García, the head of Trujillo’s secret police, who was a master at extracting information (he had studied Chinese methods of torture) and at concealing it (he reputedly had an affair with Trujillo’s half brother). “JOHNNY went to Miami to make contact with MORGAN,” an F.B.I. report said, adding that Abbes García and his bodyguard had “a good time in a calypso nightclub.” Hoover and his men tried to detect a hidden design in the data they were collecting. They were witnessing history without the clarity of hindsight or narrative, and it was like peering through a windshield lashed with rain. As Hoover confronted the gaps in his knowledge, he became more and more obsessed with Morgan. A former fire-eater at the circus! Hoover hounded his evidence men to “expedite” their inquiries, homing in on Morgan’s ties to Dominick Bartone. The mobster, whom the bureau classified as “armed and dangerous,” had recently been arrested with his associates at Miami International Airport, where they had been caught loading a plane with thousands of pounds of weapons—a shipment apparently destined for mercenaries and Cuban exiles being trained in the Dominican Republic. The incident had not only intensified Hoover’s scrutiny of Morgan and the plotters; it also aroused the interest of the Senate Rackets Committee and its chief counsel, Robert F. Kennedy, who was investigating links between Hoffa’s Teamsters and organized crime. At a hearing in June, 1959, Kennedy demanded, “Do we have any background on Mr. Morgan?” When a Teamster official was questioned by the committee about the weapons scheme, he said, more than once, “I decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer may tend to incriminate me.” Another witness, however, acknowledged that Morgan had “worked for Bartone in years past.” While the F.B.I. tracked Morgan’s movements, he made repeated forays to Miami, where he met with his conspirators. That summer, he also travelled to Toledo for a visit with his mother and father, whom he had not seen since leaving for Cuba, a year and a half earlier. His parents savored the brief reunion, but they could tell that Morgan was feeling “heat and pressure,” as he later put it. When his mother looked at his clothing and belongings, she noticed that there wasn’t any identification on him—he’d become a man from nowhere. She asked him what kind of trouble he was getting into now. Nothing, he assured her. But she sensed that he was planning to pull off, as she later put it, yet another “trick.”
The hand is not “quicker than the eye,” Mulholland warned in his spy manuals. The key to an illusion is to make the audience explain away the fact that it has been deceived in plain sight. On July 27, 1959, Morgan flew again to Miami, this time with Rodríguez. Eight months pregnant, she provided some cover. Still, Morgan was stopped by authorities at the airport in Miami and taken to a holding room, where he was confronted by two men with close-cropped hair, dark suits, and dark ties: Hoover’s agents. After apprising Morgan of his rights, the agents pressed him about why he had come to Miami. He insisted that he was there to have fun with his wife for a few days, but, under further questioning, he admitted that a representative of a foreign government had contacted him about leading a counter-revolution in Cuba. “Subject refused to identify the individuals with whom he was in contact,” the agents wrote in a report. Morgan said that he was in a “precarious position.” The agents eventually let him go, but Hoover ordered his men to monitor Morgan’s movements by “employing physical surveillances and utilizing other confidential techniques.” The F.B.I. reported that “subject’s pregnant wife was seen being driven from the Montmartre Hotel in a 1959 blue Cadillac.” The agents traced the car: it belonged to Dominick Bartone. On July 31st, Morgan phoned the F.B.I., letting its agents know that Rodríguez had returned to Cuba. He said that he planned to go back himself, on a Pan American flight, in two days. Within hours of the call, though, he took off, leaving his belongings in his hotel room. The agents tried to pick up his trail, but he had vanished. On the night of August 6th, the F.B.I. subsequently learned, Morgan boarded a small fishing vessel, in a “clandestine manner,” and rendezvoused off the coast of Miami with a fifty-four-foot yacht manned by two mercenaries. The vessel was stripped of any name or registration number, and was loaded with machine guns, explosives, and other armaments. With Morgan aboard, the yacht set off for Cuba and, after eluding the U.S. Coast Guard and nearly running out of fuel, slipped into Havana Harbor, on August 8th. Hoover believed that he was worming his way inside the conspiracy. One F.B.I. source reported that Morgan was planning to “assassinate Castro.” Another said that the plot was to take out Fidel and Raúl Castro. According to multiple sources, a strike force of nearly a thousand Cuban exiles and mercenaries would be |
geek culture due to being designed with video games in mind, preventing it from going mainstream, and thus preventing it from actually sustaining itself in the industry as a viable language.
It's important to note that languages are organic; there's no telling whether in time, when exposed to new cultures and situations, Esperanto won't grow to accommodate the other continents as well.
Why not Zoidberg?
Get out.
Where do we start?
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Esperanto could easily make a smooth transition as the main language in Sci-Fi video games. For those who have seen the series Firefly, you would have noted that despite the fact that the cast is largely European (And North American), one of the primary languages is actually Mandarin (though Mandarin is portrayed only in the background or via cursing). The premise is that when all of Earth had upped and left their home planet for uncharted space, the way politics works took a dramatic shift in lawless territory. New laws had to be formed under the influence of the Alliance, largely governed both by the Americans and Chinese.
A very similar situation could arise for Esperanto. In fact I'm surprised the possibility of it being implemented in Firefly hasn't been considered. If humanity's status quo had been completely reset, why wouldn't Esperanto be a logical language to learn? Nobody would have to fight to preserve their language and culture, and this is especially important because if something drastic had happened to reset human politics, I doubt humanity would have much left in them to start up a fight so soon over a means of communication.
Why Video Games?
Video games are possibly the best medium to begin presenting Esperanto, primarily because nearly all story driven video games are expected to at least have English subtitles to explain what is going on when somebody is speaking a foreign language. For example, in Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko Bellic is speaking in Serbian/Croatian with his cousin Roman, while the subtitles below are presented in English. Why this would work better in a video game better than a movie would be because video games focus primarily on providing great gameplay, meaning that more people would be willing to sit through reading subtitles to play the game if the gameplay is good enough.
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Additionally, it's also considerably easier to provide an audience with an alternate language dubbing on a video game than it is to provide it on a feature film (particularly a live action one). Mostly due to the fact that a majority of the lines of dialogue in video games aren't always present during cutscenes; oftentimes characters will actually speak in game, and rarely will you actually see their mouths move.
Finally, video games is the best medium for bringing creativity to the masses. Hollywood movies very often have to follow a formulaic standard, forcing them to be monotonous in order to appeal to the masses. On the other hand, indie games which strive to be different in one way or another are often widely praised for not following the same formula, day in and day out. After all, titles such as Minecraft, DayZ, and as early as Resident Evil went so far as to generate new genres let alone new gameplay, and they all became successes in their fields just for being different. So isn't it possible that Esperanto would thrive in such a flexible environment?
What do you think? Is it time for Esperanto in video games to become a reality? Is it worth the time and effort to put it in video games at all?There are sad tidings in Ireland this week with the news that Professor Alex Montwill, Ireland’s best-known particle physicist, has died. Alex was an outstanding physicist in the field of experimental particle physics and the best teacher I ever had, inspiring generations of physics students with his legendary undergraduate lectures on the physics of the elementary particles and the puzzles of the quantum world. If I can pass on even a morsel of his great knowledge to my own students, my career will have been worthwhile.
Professor Alex Montwill of the UCD particle physics group
The biography below is reproduced from the Institute of Physics
Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics at UCD, Alex Montwill was one of the first Irish scientists to work at CERN in the late 1950’s. From about that time onwards he was head of the Fundamental Particle research group at UCD which later became members of the European Nuclear Emulsion Collaboration. The collaboration carried out extensive studies in hypernuclear physics and subsequently made the first observation of the creation and decay of a particle containing a charmed quark. Apart from over 40 years’ teaching at UCD, Alex lectured at City College New York and at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He presented some 150 Science slots on RTE1 radio in 1980’s and 1990’s. He is co-author with Ann Breslin of the book entitled ‘Let there be light’ which was published in 2008 by Imperial College Press. Alex’s hobbies were bridge and chess in both of which he represented Ireland in international competition.
I would like to add: Alex and Ann published a second book ‘ The quantum adventure’ just this year. It’s a fantastic read for anyone with an interest in quantum physics. Also, Alex chose the title ‘The laboratory of the mind‘ for his radio show, a title that gives you a feel for his deep interest in the philosophy of physics, an interest he passed on to generations of students. On a personal note, he knew my father well as a physicist and must have got a shock when I came along and was a very ordinary student! Yet both Alex and Ann were extremely supportive of my work in communicating the ideas of physics from the beginning.
As well as the countless students he inspired to take up physics as a career, Alex’s legacy can also be seen in today’s thriving particle physics group at UCD. This group, led by Professor Ronan Mc Nulty, is heavily involved in experiments at the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider; these experiments probe the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, a puzzle of fundamental importance in particle physics.
Finally, a most interesting ‘life-in-physics’ interview with Alex recorded by Dr Tony Scott on behalf of the IoP is available at:
http://www.iopireland.org/resources/audio/page_50891.html
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anamA FIXTURE revamp that would see 18 games in the regular season before a playoff series and then finals has been raised as a possibility during discussions surrounding a new fixture model.
The idea canvassed would allow each team to play each other once but would enable blockbuster fixtures such as local derbies and the Showdown to be played twice each season.
It would also satisfy the clubs' desire to continue selling membership packages that admit members to 11 home games and corporate packages related to home games.
The four-week playoff structure under such a scenario remains open to debate with consultation about the possibilities expected to broaden to more stakeholders in the next month.
Two games between Adelaide and Port Adelaide have been held every year since the Power entered the competition in 1997 with each game a feature of the Australian sporting calendar.
Similarly, West Coast and Fremantle – who play their 45th Western Derby on Saturday – have played each other twice a year since 1995.
Such games are important to clubs, venue operators and the supporters of competing clubs.
With rivalries growing between Greater Western Sydney and the Sydney Swans and the Brisbane Lions and the Gold Coast Suns expected to grow in importance there is a reluctance to limit their encounters to one a season.
The extra round could see traditional Victorian rivals clash for the second time in a season.
Several options have been discussed during the process with the 17-5 model being the most widely debated during recent seasons and AFL.com.au understands it is among a range of potential options that remain on the table.
Although change is not expected to take place in 2018, AFL.com.au reported on Thursday a fixture revamp remained firmly on the agenda.
The possible implications for fans, clubs, venues, broadcasters and players of any revamp means it is a complicated process that will take time and consultation before a final decision is made.
However, the AFL remains motivated to continue to explore ideas in order to ensure something is hanging on the result of as many games as possible, while balancing the need to maintain a credible system to determine the premier and also maintain competitive balance.
The AFL Commission was briefed on the progress of the working party on fixture reform last Friday with the next stage being for the AFL to consult relevant parties on potential ideas.Wrestling Inc has confirmed that former UFC Fighter Matt Riddle will be participating in a WWE tryout next month in Orlando.
The 29-year old Riddle has been training at the world famous Monster Factory since late last year, and has also started working on the school's independent shows. This weekend Riddle took on Ring of Honor contracted talent Rhett Titus.
Riddle is billed at 6'2, 225 pounds, quite the jump from the 170 pounds he cut to often throughout his MMA career. Riddle's wife Lisa, a former gymnast at Louisiana State University has also been training alongside him, but we have no word on if she'll be participating in a tryout as well.
See also: Matt Riddle talks leaving MMA for Pro Wrestling
We spoke to Riddle in an interview ran earlier this month, and the former UFC fighter said the rigors of professional wrestling travel isn't something he's concerned about. Injuries and contractual issues limited Riddle to only two MMA fights throughout 2013 and 2014.
Riddle was released UFC off of four consecutive wins after two of them were overturned due to positive tests for marijuana. Riddle would go on to be contracted by Bellator MMA and Titan FC, but fought only once under the Titan FC banner before hanging up his gloves. Riddle told us that he isn't sure an MMA return is in the cards, but won't rule it out.Second-half goals from Barr Corr and substitute Shaquile Coulthirst earned Blues all three points over Portsmouth, in a well-earned 2-0 victory at Roots Hall in Sky Bet League 2.
Southend United manager Phil Brown made four changes following last weekend’s 1-1 draw at home to Oxford United, with Jerome Williams coming into the side to make his debut replacing Ben Coker.
Meanwhile, Corr, Kevan Hurst and Gary Deegan were called into the starting 11 replacing Coulthirst, Will Atkinson and Conor Clifford respectively.
Portsmouth created the first chance of the game in the second minute, but Ricky Holmes’ cross was cleverly cut out by Luke Prosser, before the ball was cleared away to safety.
The visitors continued to pile the pressure on Southend’s back line, but couldn’t create any clear-cut chances with both Holmes and Danny Hollands firing their efforts straight at goalkeeper Daniel Bentley.
Blues started to become more involved in the match and had their first opportunity in the ninth minute as Hurst’s corner was met by a Williams header who was denied by Pompey shot-stopper Paul Jones, as the midfielder’s second attempt was nodded over the bar.
On 17 minutes, Weston linked up well with John White, but his curling long-range effort was comfortably saved by Jones.
Despite a lively start to the afternoon, it became a sloppy game with both side’s failing to maintain possession for long periods of time, as Blues failed to take advantage of a corner on the half hour mark, with White heading wide.
Southend went close moments later as Weston’s cross to the back post was met by Jack Payne’s head, but the midfielder’s effort went wide before Hurts’ speculative dipping effort before half-time went over from 25 yards.
Pompey started the second-half brightly, when Miles Storey went on a pulsating run passed the Southend defence, before Bentley palmed away his powerful strike.
This was a wakeup call for Blues, as they quickly reacted, catching the away side out on the break as Williams’ low cross was met by a first time effort from Payne who was denied by Jones.
Payne was in the thick of the action again just minutes later, with his acrobatic overhead kick being comfortably saved by the ever-impressive Jones once again.
Southend’s pressure deservedly paid off on 56 minutes, when Corr headed Blues ahead from close-range following a Hurst corner.
Skipper White then almost doubled Blues’ advantage in the 63rd minute, following his shot being stopped by the leg of Jones in a goalmouth scramble, as Pompey cleared their lines once more.
Pompey desperately searched for an equaliser, testing Bentley on a number of occasions, failing to cause the Southend number one shot-stopper any major problems.
However, with five minutes to go, a well worked move from the visitors almost found its way to Holmes, but Ryan Leonard superbly produced a last ditch tackle to deny the opposition midfielder any sniff on goal.
Whilst Portsmouth continued to push forward, Blues caught their opponents out on the counter-attack as substitute Coulthirst carried the ball forward 20 yards before placing his shot home, securing all three points for Blues, lifting them up to eighth place in League 2.
Attendance: 7,023
Corr headed Southend ahead in the 56th minute from a Myles Weston corner, before Coulthirst wrapped up all three points in the final moments of the game after Pompey were caught out on the break.by
Photo by Mike Maguire | CC BY 2.0
“The populace may hiss me, but when I go home and think of my money, I applaud myself.” —Horace, Epistles
It’s been a month since the election, and in the mirrored halls of the news and social media the contributors of uplifting opinion have been telling themselves that no matter what else might be said about the campaigns and the vote, it was a great day for Democracy. Rough and tumble democracy in the raw, free-range, artisanal and organic, the will of the people trampling out the vintage of political correctness, emerging from the ash heap of vicious cant, texting “yes” to the Declaration of Independence, “no” to an uncivil transfer of power. Cue the music, roll the camera and the flag. The people have spoken. Our democracy lives. Government of the people, by the people and for the people is not perished from the earth.
Which might have been the case had Bernie Sanders been on the ballot. He wasn’t, and neither was democracy. What was on the ballot was plutocracy, complacently stupefied and transparently corrupt at the top of the Republican and the Democratic ticket. Two gold-plated names on the same boardroom door, both candidates representative of and privileged by a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich that for the last thirty years has been arranging the country’s political and socioeconomic affairs. The election campaign was the struggle for control of corporate management, Hillary Clinton seeking to fend off a hostile takeover by Donald Trump, the lady and the lout both standing four square and true blue for the freedom of money, steadfast and vigilant against the freedoms of movement and thought.
Clinton lost the election because she tried to pretend what she was not—a caring friend of all the people, ardent believer in the rule of law. She could talk the prerecorded talk, but she couldn’t walk the walk, her prior record, like her every move and gesture, showing her to be in it for herself, deserving of the deference owed to the Queen of England, the jack of diamonds and the ace of spades.
Trump won the election because he didn’t try to sell the Gettysburg Address. Upfront and fascist in his scorn for the democratic idea, he declared his candidacy on June 16, 2015, a deus ex machina descending by escalator into the atrium of Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, there to say, and say it plainly, democracy is for losers. Money, ladies and gentlemen, is power, and power, my friends, is not self-sacrificing or Democratic. Never was and never will be; law unto itself, and the only one that counts. Name of the game, nature of the beast.
The mogul could afford the luxury of truth because he was really, really rich, un-bought and un-bossed, so selfishly and fearlessly rich he was free to do and say whatever it came into his head to do and say, whatever it took to root out the cowardly incompetence in Washington, clean up the mess in the Middle East, plant well-paying jobs in the American heartland. His was the greatest brand on earth come to make America once again the greatest show on earth, revive it with the sweet smell of his signature men’s colognes, Empire and Success.
Trump didn’t need briefing papers or policy positions to refine the message. He embodied it live and in person, an unscripted and overweight canary flown from its gilded cage, telling it like it is from the inside looking out. Had he time or patience for messing around with books, he could have sourced his wisdom to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis, who in 1933 presented the case to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the outset of the New Deal:
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
In the world according to Trump, as it was in the worlds according to Alexander Hamilton and Ronald Reagan, democracy is a tip on a dead horse. An idea as far past its sell-by date as FDR’s straw hat, not up to the task of keeping America safe or running the trains on time. Too long-winded and slow, soft in the head and weak in the knees, no match for the barbarians (Mexican and African, radical Islamic and leftist academic) at the gates of Westchester County and Palm Beach.
Not the exact words in Trump’s self-glorifying mouth, but the gist of the commandment he brought down from his Mount Sinai penthouse suite in June 2015, the one that for the next eighteen months he tweeted to phone and shouted to camera in red states and blue, pandering to the popular resentment and loathing of the Washington politicians and Wall Street masters of the universe who for two generations have been playing ordinary Americans for suckers.
Trump never tired of trash-talking the system of which he was a proud and ornamental figurehead, and the fans on fairgrounds in Kentucky and Ohio screamed and stamped in agreement because what he was saying they knew to be true—not as precept from a high-minded think tank but from their own downwardly mobile experience. Up close and personal they had suffered the consequences of the plutocracy’s ongoing and bi-partisan slum clearance project—class warfare waged by the increasingly frightened rich against the increasingly debt-burdened, disenfranchised and angry poor, the bulk of the nation’s wealth (actual and virtual, animal, mineral, vegetable and intellectual) amassed by 10% of its population, more laws restraining the freedom of persons, fewer laws limiting the license of property, the systematic juggling of the public light and land and air into the private purse, a national security apparatus herding sheep into the shelters of heavy law enforcement and harmless speech, every occupant of the White House from Reagan to Obama pleased to hold himself above the law, both houses of Congress reduced to impotent paralysis, a political discourse made by a news media presenting presidential candidates as game show contestants mounted on selfie sticks and played for jokes until brought to judgment on election night before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they are produced.
The camera doesn’t do democracy; democracy is the holding of one’s fellow citizens in respectful regard, not because they are beautiful or rich or famous but because they are one’s fellow citizens and therefore worth the knowing what they say and do. The work is tedious and slow; too many words with too little action doesn’t sell tickets. What sells tickets is celebrity, and because the camera sees but doesn’t think, it makes no meaningful or moral distinction between a bubble bath in Las Vegas staffed by pretty girls and a bloodbath in Palmyra staffed by headless corpses. The return on investment in both scene settings is the bankable flow of emotion drawn from the bottomless wells of human wish, dream, ignorance and fear.
It didn’t matter what Trump said or didn’t say, whether he was cute and pink or headless. The journalists on the road with the mogul’s traveling circus weren’t covering a play of ideas; like flies to death and honey, they were drawn to the sweet decaying smell of overripe celebrity, enchanted, as is their custom, by the romance of crime.
Blind to homespun shoes on common ground, the camera gazes adoringly at leather boots on horseback. So does the America movie-going public. Always a sight for sore eyes, the boots on horseback. They ride into town with the lonesome pine hero in the trail-weary saddle, knight errant, deadly and just, up against the odds and the system, come to remove the corrupt sheriff and redeem the God-fearing settlers, clean up the mess in the Middle West saloon, set the crooked straight, distribute moral fabric, civic virtue and a fair share of the loot to the storekeep, the shepherd and the school teacher.
Trump pitched his campaign on the storyline the movie-going electorate likes a lot better than the one about Honest Abe Lincoln. The networks, the cable channels and the self-adoring social media, hoisted him up there in lights with robber-barons Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, gunslingers Eastwood and Stallone, mafia dons Corleone and Soprano. November 8, 2016 may become a night to remember, but it wasn’t a great day for democracy.
This essay originally appeared in Lapham’s Quarterly. It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.Preliminary meetings with residents, city staff and developers set the stage for what he dubbed “Project 20/20 — A Perfect Vision for our Community.” The lofty goal: To create a blueprint for revitalization that everyone could get behind.
Expectations couldn’t have been higher in Mimico in 2005, when Councillor Mark Grimes jump-started an ambitious effort to unlock the potential of southern Etobicoke’s long-neglected waterfront.
After nearly a decade, the policy framework intended to guide Mimico’s transformation over the next 20 years could soon be in place. Last Tuesday, the Mimico-by-the-lake Secondary Plan passed at Etobicoke York Community Council. It’s expected to go to Toronto city hall for approval in July.
But around Mimico’s lakeside strip, what was once shared excitement has been replaced by disappointment. From disenchanted developers to residents so fearful of losing their neighbourhood to condo towers that they are petitioning the city to intervene, it seems few are happy with the vision that was supposed to please them all.
“It was such a promising process. It was incredible at the beginning,” she said. “I have lost faith in the city — lost faith in the process.”
When asked about the 20/20 plan, Madeleine Pengelley, who owns Birds and Beans, a coffee shop in the heart of the waterfront, buries her head in her forearm, and sighs.
Reinventing Mimico’s waterfront is a challenging proposition. The plan focuses on a 1.4 km stretch of Lake Shore Blvd. W. that is best known for what locals call “The Great Wall of Mimico” — a row of squat, half-century-old apartment buildings that obscure views of the waterfront, but also contains increasingly rare affordable housing for families.
The comprehensive, block-by-block guidelines approved at community council on Tuesday aim to create “a vibrant, mixed-use neighbourhood” with “exemplary parks and open spaces” and a “thriving retail and commercial main street.”
Where tall buildings are permitted, heights are capped at either 15 or 25 storeys, depending on location, and the plan notes that they should generally be situated in the middle of the block, as far as possible from the street and the lake. There are also provisions for protecting heritage buildings, and replacing existing rental units.
“There are big things that are achieved in this secondary plan that are a little bit overwhelmed by the rhetoric on both sides of the conversation,” said Toronto chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat. “There are a lot of people who participated in this process over a very long period of time who are quite pleased or satisfied or hopeful with the outcome.”
The voices of the detractors, however, are difficult to ignore.
One is resident Kyle Gojic, who believes the plan will set the stage for a new Great Wall. Instead of affordable rental units, the mother of three young boys fears that glass condos will crowd the shoreline in Mimico as they do in nearby Humber Bay Shores, pushing out families and disconnecting the neighbourhood from the lake.
“The whole plan is just about maximizing profit on the waterfront. It’s not about community building,” said Gojic.
She is among those urging Keesmaat and Toronto city councillors to improve the policies by reducing height limits, expanding the number of family-sized units and increasing funding for public transit. Her online petition has so far amassed nearly 1,000 signatures.
“This should have been stopped a long time ago. That’s what’s so frustrating,” said Gojic during a recent stroll through her neighbourhood. “We’ve wasted seven years on a plan that no one wants.”
Dino Longo, principal of Longo Development Corp., shares Gojic’s discontent, albeit for entirely different reasons.
Hoping to redevelop a 2.6-hectare property in the study area, Longo said he was keen to participate in what began as a positive, productive public consultation process.
But as the years dragged on, “the vision got lost, basically as a result of the naysayers that were concerned about any change in the area,” he said.
After submitting a series of alternate plans to staff and getting “nothing but blank stares in return,” Longo recently sold the property to capitalize on current market conditions.
For landowners drawing a cash flow from rental properties on the waterfront, the guidelines impose too many demands and restrictions to justify the economic risk of redevelopment, he said.
“It’s a nice-looking plan, but I don’t think it’s one that’s going to create any impetus for change or transformation, which was the whole goal of the whole exercise,” Longo said. “It’s a great opportunity, and I think they blew it.”
Grimes did not respond to calls from the Star. But as Councillor Peter Milczyn sees it, the opposition to the guidelines has more to do with the promises that were made than the plan itself.
“It was oversold to everybody in that community as being this massive trigger for reinvestment in the neighbourhood,” Milczyn said. “How do you develop a perfect vision? That’s a tall order.”
Milczyn, who grew up in one of the nondescript lakeside apartment buildings, said new parkland is one example of the slow-but-steady organic change that has significantly improved the area over the years.
As he sees it, the plan lays out a balanced framework for continued revitalization in a diverse community with “great aspirations.”
“If nobody is happy,” he said, “it might actually mean it’s a relatively good document.”Virender Sehwag: 'Had I also retired while playing international cricket, I could have given a retirement speech' © AFP
Virender Sehwag has said that he had wanted to retire several years ago, but it was Sachin Tendulkar who stopped him from calling it quits after he was dropped from the Indian team in 2007. Sehwag finally retired on his 37th birthday, on October 20, more than two-and-a-half years after his last appearance for the national team.
Sehwag backs Dhoni to continue as ODI captain Virender Sehwag backed MS Dhoni to continue as India captain till the 2019 World Cup despite the recent ODI reversals against Bangladesh and South Africa. Sehwag felt Dhoni's presence as a leader and batsman was vital to a middle order in transition. "He should continue as captain till the next World Cup," Sehwag said. "If he does so, he can leave behind a good World Cup team. And if he retires... you can imagine. Even now when Dhoni is there, people have to think about who should bat at No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7. If Dhoni is not there, those slots will become absolutely [vacant] and you cannot expect somebody to finish the match properly."
"Every player wants to retire at the top of his international game. Had I also retired while playing international cricket, I could have given a retirement speech," Sehwag said. "But fate had something else in store for me.
"I was planning to retire in 2007, when dropped from the team, but Tendulkar stopped me from doing so."
Sehwag missed out for most of 2007 before being recalled for India's tour to Australia at the end of the year. His international career effectively ended after he was dropped from the Indian squad following the second Test against Australia in March 2013; he could never find his way back.
"The selectors did not ask me about my future plan before dropping me during Australia series in 2013," he said. "Had the selectors told me about their decision, I could have announced my retirement in that series."
Sehwag may get a chance to give a retirement speech at the Feroz Shah Kotla, with the BCCI mulling giving the senior batsman an official farewell during the fourth and final Test match between India and South Africa, scheduled to be held in the capital from December 3 to 7.
Sehwag rated Anil Kumble as the best captain he had played under: "Anil Kumble was the best captain I have played with. He used to boost our confidence level."
About his future plans, he said, "I will always be connected with this game. If I get an offer from the BCCI or any commentary offers, I will consider it. My commentary would be straightforward like my batting."
Sehwag will still be seen captaining Haryana in Ranji Trophy and playing the Cricket All-Stars - a T20 tournament involving former players in the USA, which is being organised by Tendulkar and Shane Warne.
© PTINational Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, left, and senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, listen to President Trump address a meeting at the White House on Jan. 23. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Inside the White House, they are dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”
Outspoken, worldly and polished, this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around President Trump.
Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s elder daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.
On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.
As Trump’s administration enters its third month, the constant jockeying and backbiting among senior staff is further inflaming tensions at a time when the White House is struggling on numerous fronts — from the endangered health-care bill to the controversial budget to the hundreds of top jobs still vacant throughout the government.
(Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)
The emerging turf war has led to fights over White House protocol and access to the president, backstabbing and leaks to reporters, and a heated Oval Office showdown over trade refereed by the president himself.
This account of the internal workings of Trump’s team is based on interviews with 18 top White House officials, confidants of the president and other senior Republicans with knowledge of the relationships, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.
For the most part so far, the ideologues are winning. One revealing episode came as Trump weighed where he would travel this past Wednesday following an auto industry event in Michigan.
Would he jet to New York at the invitation of Canada’s progressive hero, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to attend a Broadway performance of “Come From Away,” a musical that showcases the generosity of foreigners?
Or would he fly to Nashville to dip his head in reverence at the gravesite of Andrew Jackson and yoke himself to the nationalist legacy of America’s seventh president?
Some of his New York-linked aides urged him to go to the play with Trudeau and Ivanka Trump, according to four senior Trump advisers. But Trump opted instead to follow his gut and heed Bannon’s counsel.
“Absolutely not,” the president said later of going to the play, according to one of the advisers.
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Instead, Trump journeyed to Tennessee, where he laid a wreath at Jackson’s tomb to celebrate what would have been the former president’s 250th birthday and delivered a fiery speech.
Trump aides pointed to his deliberation over what was a banal scheduling matter as an example of the Bannon-Priebus axis prevailing, as it has on many policy fronts — from national security to the budget to climate.
“Trump’s intention is to be Trump,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal adviser to the president. “Being tough on trade. Recentering the country on American nationalism. Taking on illegal immigration. Strengthening our military. Decentralizing the system. Radical reduction in regulations.”
He added, “It would be interesting to see to what degree the New York liberals change Trump and to what degree Trump changes the New York liberals.”
[Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’]
An unexpected political marriage has formed between Bannon, with his network of anti-establishment conservative populists, and Priebus, who represents a wing of more traditional Republican operatives.
They are often at odds with the New Yorkers, led by Cohn and Powell, who are close to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, arguably the most powerful White House aide.
The lines can be blurred. Kushner and Cohn are particularly close with the Cabinet’s industry barons — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — as well as Chris Liddell and Reed Cordish, two businessmen recruited by Kushner to work on long-term projects. Bannon and Priebus have their own relationships with those figures.
Still, many people inside and outside the White House frequently note the growing visibility of Cohn and Powell and wonder if they might eventually gain influence over Trump’s message and moderate it from Bannon-style populism, especially if the president’s popularity wanes further.
“They’re more involved than ever,” Larry Kudlow, a Trump ally and longtime CNBC economic analyst, said of the group. “Trump is instinctively drawn to them, but that doesn’t mean he’s losing his populist message. It means that in terms of day-to-day business and grinding out policy changes, he’s drawn to the business people that are around him.”
Tensions between Bannon and Priebus ran hot in the early days of the presidency, suggesting that their outsider-vs.-establishment feud would be the central division. But Priebus forged an alliance with Bannon, which they see as mutually beneficial because either or both could be sidelined if others, such as Cohn or Powell, ascend further, according to three White House officials.
The tug at Trump forces near-daily decisions between following his tendency to gravitate toward those he considers highly successful in business and maintaining the combative political persona cheered by many conservatives.
[Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations]
Internal competition has been a mainstay of every Trump enterprise. One top Trump adviser posited that, on a scale of one to 10, fighting between former aides Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort during the campaign would score an eight, while that between the Cohn and Bannon blocs at the White House would be a two.
The ongoing tension is real, this adviser said, but so far not debilitating: “We chose to hire a lot of alphas. People in politics are insecure and will either adapt to the fact that this is an entrepreneurial White House and survive, or they won’t. The cream will rise and the [expletive] will sink.”
Sometimes when staffers feud, Kushner summons them to his office, a few doors down from the president’s, where the 36-year-old adviser sits them on the couch and mediates as though he were a couple’s therapist, officials said.
Priebus said there were benefits to a staff with diverse viewpoints and backgrounds.
“We have an incredible team that is talented, unified and focused on advancing the president’s bold agenda,” Priebus said in a statement. “The greatness of this team comes from the unique strengths each member brings to this administration.”
By most appearances, the New Yorkers are accumulating more power. Trump expanded Powell’s portfolio this past week, naming her deputy national security adviser for strategy in addition to her post as senior counselor for economic initiatives.
Born in Egypt and fluent in Arabic, Powell is taking on a more visible role in foreign affairs. At Friday’s bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Powell sat two seats from Trump, with only Vice President Pence between them.
Powell has tapped the network she cultivated as a George W. Bush administration official and as president of Goldman’s philanthropic foundation to invite guests for meetings with Trump. She dominated one such gathering on human trafficking, conversing with the authority of an expert, which impressed the president, aides said.
[From order to disorder: How Trump’s immigration directive exposed GOP rifts]
Cohn, meanwhile, influences a wide range of policies domestic and foreign as director of the National Economic Council. Colleagues say he is opinionated and sharp-elbowed, walking between offices with the swagger befitting a banking titan. He is seen internally as a contender for chief of staff should Priebus exit, though one senior official noted, “Nobody wants Reince’s job here. I can tell you that with certainty.”
Cohn and Powell huddle regularly with business executives, both on the White House campus and at glitzy off-site events. Several other senior staffers have groused that they are rarely invited to attend — and often don’t know about the meetings. Their networking creates what one associate called “a positive feedback loop”: The executives often sing Cohn and Powell’s praises in their meetings with Trump.
Last month when two dozen manufacturing chief executives visited the White House, Trump singled out Cohn by noting his vast wealth.
“You all know Gary from Goldman,” Trump said. “Gary Cohn — and we’re really happy — just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way.”
The executives from such behemoths as General Electric and Johnson & Johnson laughed.
Cohn is a registered Democrat, though he is known by many Republicans through his work at Goldman or summer parties in the Hamptons.
Trump enjoys having the rich and powerful reporting to him, irrespective of their political affiliations, his associates said. This may be one of the reasons he reached out to Jonathan D. |
she's very fit," Cibulkova said. "I'm not saying anything bad. I'm just saying she's playing like a man."
Story continues
"I mean nobody has a serve like her," Cibulkova added. "She's kicking the serve so much so she gets me out of the court, and her topspin from the forehand, nobody is playing topspin like her. It's more men's style, so it's what I meant."
Cibulkova's backtrack was about as successful as her backhand. She still comes out of the press conference saying Stosur is like a man! Why didn't she just say, "I didn't mean to say she's a man, but she's fit, muscular, plays a little mannish, so yeah, she's basically Tom Selleck in a visor and sunglasses."
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Atlanta Hawks
After trading Dwight Howard to the Charlotte Hornets for Marco Belinelli, Miles Plumlee and a second-rounder, then letting Paul Millsap go in a sign-and-trade to the Denver Nuggets, the Atlanta Hawks have plunged firmly into a rebuild. General manager Travis Schlenk isn't quite willing to call it that, but let's not dance around too much.
This is, unequivocally, a rebuild.
The Hawks can boost up Dennis Schroder, John Collins and Taurean Prince as their featured long-term pieces, but that's not the extent of their youthful talent. DeAndre' Bembry is an intriguing piece, and there's no telling how much production they could squeeze out of Dewayne Dedmon and Diamond Stone.
Brooklyn Nets
Kudos to Sean Marks for engineering a fantastic offseason, one in which he kept absorbing salary to land talent.
He first did so by accepting Timofey Mozgov's deal to acquire D'Angelo Russell from the Los Angeles Lakers. Then he somehow managed to turn Andrew Nicholson into Allen Crabbe, essentially completing the offer sheet to which he'd originally signed the swingman last summer.
All of a sudden, the Nets could be staring at a starting five of Jeremy Lin, Russell, Crabbe, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Jarrett Allen—not bad for a team that entered the offseason with no noteworthy draft picks, precious little free-agency appeal and a stunning dearth of talent and potential.
Dallas Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks aren't truly rebuilding, but they're still in the process of acquiring talent. Even at full strength, the current core isn't enough to compete with the true juggernauts in the Western Conference, nor will it be enough to make a serious playoff push.
Sure, head coach Rick Carlisle is a master of milking production out of overlooked and written-off players, but the upside just isn't there. Dirk Nowitzki's return on a bargain of a contract helps; it's still not enough when he's joined by Harrison Barnes, Yogi Ferrell, Dennis Smith Jr., Seth Curry, Wesley Matthews and (maybe?) Nerlens Noel.
Dallas doesn't have any reason to be desperate during the tail end of Nowitzki's career, and it's doing the right thing by continuing to chase after upside and talent.
Phoenix Suns
Kudos to the Phoenix Suns for their continued investment in youthful pieces. They have untapped potential at every part of the lineup, given the presences of Tyler Ulis, Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, TJ Warren, Marquese Chriss, Dragan Bender and Alan Williams.
Are the Suns going to be any good in 2016-17? Probably not.
But at this stage, that's irrelevant, so long as they continue to let their up-and-coming talents develop on the floor during action that matters.
Sacramento Kings
Even after Buddy Hield blossomed during the second half of his rookie season, the DeMarcus Cousins trade was a mistake. The Sacramento Kings simply didn't squeeze enough talent out of the New Orleans Pelicans, especially now that Tyreke Evans and Langston Galloway have departed. Factoring in the first-round pick that changed hands and was subsequently dealt to the Portland Trail Blazers, they turned Cousins into Hield, Justin Jackson and Harry Giles.
But since that initial decision that firmly forced Sacramento into a new era, the Kings have done a fantastic job acquiring talent and veteran leaders who can help facilitate growth from their tutees.
George Hill, Zach Randolph and Vince Carter can help both on and off the floor. More importantly, Hield, Jackson, Giles, De'Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Skal Labissiere, Willie Cauley-Stein and Georgios Papagiannis could all prove worthy of featured status in the coming months.What is branding?
There are many ways to define branding. With 100 days until graduation, SVA Masters in Branding student Sarah (Fudin) Hermalyn was inspired to gather 100 definitions of branding from 100 different people in various industries: marketers, designers, strategists, authors and more. These definitions are original and have been acquired through email, phone calls and in-person meetings. This project will be ongoing through July 15, 2014.
So, what is your definition of branding?
Sarah Hermalyn
Sarah Hermalyn is a 2014 graduate of the Master of Professional Studies in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Definition of branding:
Branding is uncovering a human truth and then creating something that speaks to that truth.
Brian Collins
Brian Collins is Chairman and co-founder of Collins, an innovation-led firm dedicated to inventing branded experiences that shape both companies and people for the better. His creative work has been featured in The New York Times, Creativity, Fortune, Graphis, NBC News, ABC News and Fast Company, which named him one of five American Masters of Design.
Definition of branding:
1. Brand:
A unique promise kept over time.
2. Branding:
A profession that increasingly confuses fame for mastery.
And pomposity for profundity.
So don't confuse hacks for heroes.
Fortunately, it's easy to identify hacks.
They drop words like:
"Human!"
"Authentic!"
"Innovative!"
These are empty words. They mean nothing.
Another way to identify them: When defending bad work they say: "It's what the client wanted."
Yup, that's a hack.
They should not let people make lethal mistakes.
As for heroes?
Several of them are included here.
Elizabeth Talerman
Elizabeth Talerman is the chief executive officer and managing partner of Nucleus, a brand strategy collaborative. Elizabeth teaches at Columbia University’s Strategic Communications Master’s Degree program, the SVA Brand Masters Degree program, Barnard’s Pre-College Entrepreneurship-in-Training program, and serves on the board of the VCU Brandcenter Graduate School.
Definition of branding:
A brand is a simple mental model that represents, collectively, what people feel, think and say about a product, service or company, and where meaning is established over time through consistent positive experiences and engagements.
David Fudge
David Fudge is the Director of Brand Marketing for Bonobos, the largest Internet-launched apparel brand in the U.S. He leads the brand’s marketing efforts across all consumer touch points from social media to emails and brand campaigns.
Definition of branding:
Branding is defining a distinctive set of characteristics and crafting stories across a variety of mediums that communicate and contextualize those characteristics in unique and immersive ways.
Dana Arnett
As a founding principal of VSA Partners, Dana has established a three decade career steeped in design leadership, business and brand consulting, and industry policymaking. In his current role as CEO of VSA, Dana leads enterprise activities including strategic planning, growth initiatives, people development, and the integration and delivery of the firm's diverse set of creative and strategic capabilities.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the meaning within. It dares to go wider by shaping understanding, inspiring belief, and creating enduring human connections.
Mary van de Wiel | Van
A Dutch sea captain's daughter, Van learned at an early age how to scope out the horizon and interpret the invisible clues – no matter what the country, culture or language. It seemed the best way to sense one's place in the world - and give it meaning.
For the last 30 years, she's been successfully interpreting the clues for thought leaders, change agents and restless creatives. Van is the founder and creative captain of an award-winning agency in New York and Sydney where she initiated its global start-up division with the launch of The Macau International Airport in China, People Weekly in Australia & The National Constitution Center in USA.
Now straddling Brooklyn & Sydney, and running ZingYourBrand.com, Van is teaching Critical Thinking in Business at The University of Sydney's Business School Masters Program.
Definition of branding:
(i) It's just a feeling others have about you, what you do, why it matters -- and why anybody else should give a damn.
(ii) It's about the kind of energy you bring to the table. When's the last time you checked the pulse of your brand? (Definitely want to avoid falling into the Dead Brand Walking trap.)
(iii) It's about saying you are who you say you are. (Keeping people at arm's length is no longer an option.)
Cameron Campbell
Cameron Campbell is a principal strategist working closely with the brand and marketing teams of some of TEAGUE’s biggest clients, developing strategies that drive category growth, increase brand awareness and engage consumers worldwide. Prior to her arrival at Teague, she spent fifteen years developing brand and product strategies in the design community, working with notable clients such as Herman Miller, Apple, Nike, and BMW/MINI.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the ratio between leadership, vision, communication, culture and user experience.
Paul Brogna
Paul is a designer and entrepreneur currently launching his first startup, UrbanBuddy, in Brooklyn, NY. He and his identical twin brother (8 siblings in total) hail from the beautiful city of Burlington, Vermont, USA. After graduating from Syracuse University, Paul moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he lived and worked in design, architecture and landscape for nearly 5 years. Since moving back stateside--to Chicago in 2012--he and his business partner, Pete Stam, have been building the love that is now brand UrbanBuddy.
Definition of branding:
Branding is about sharing the love of an idea, product or service with an audience who needs it and will identify with, and rally behind, that love.
Veronica Parker-Hahn
Veronica Parker-Hahn is the Vice President of Marketing at Oscar, a health care startup company in New York City.
Definition of branding:
Branding is convincing that voice in someone's head to be on your side.
Joe Gebbia
Joe Gebbia is a multi-disciplinary designer, creative entrepreneur, and global explorer. He is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Airbnb, which began in 2008 out of the necessity to pay his rent.
Definition of branding:
Branding is a visible representation of our invisible desire to self actualize.
Chris Goward
Chris Goward is the founder of WiderFunnel—the full-service marketing optimization agency that pioneered landing-page and conversion-rate optimization methods for companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, Iron Mountain, Magento and BuildDirect.com. He is the author of “You Should Test That!," an Amazon best-selling book that shows how leading companies are using marketing optimization techniques to dramatically lift their website revenue.
Definition of branding:
The goal of branding is to own the one feeling that motivates your prospects to act.
Mark Dudlik
Mark Dudlik is the Director of Operations & Graduate Advisor for The Masters in Branding Program at The School of Visual Arts. He is also Executive Director of Lost Creature.
Definition of branding:
“The things that make me different are the things that make me.” - A. A. Milne
Adam Braun
Adam Braun is a New York Times bestselling author and the Founder of Pencils of Promise, an award-winning "for purpose" organization that has broken ground on more than 200 schools around the world.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the sum of the look and feel and voice of a company or organization that transfers into people's experiences and perceptions of the company or organization itself.
Liza Enebeis
Liza is a partner and Creative Director at Studio Dumbar. She is directly involved with all main projects such as the online presence of Polytechnic University/School of Design in Hong Kong, Amsterdam Sinfonietta and NGO Alzheimer Nederland.
If anybody eats, drinks and sleeps design, it’s Liza. Her ‘extra curricular’ activities include: Letters to LoveLiza – an ‘agony aunt’ column where Liza dispenses wisdom, wit and advice to designers all over the world; Design_Rhymes – a series of pathetic poems about design; Books LoveLiza – an ongoing catalogue of images and reviews inspired by her bibliophilic tendencies; and Typeradio.org – the world’s most popular typography and design podcast channel with 2 million listeners a year, which she co-founded and hosts.
Definition of branding:
Branding is an exaggeration of the truth.
Gerry Bonomi
President of Madden Girl / CEO of Mad Love
Definition of branding:
Creating a consistent point of view within a given market that utilizes trend and consumer awareness.
Mark Kingsley
Mark Kingsley… received a personal lesson in branding from Ralph Lauren… traveled with the punk band Bad Religion… counts some of the greatest cultural institutions in the United States as his clients… co-owned an award-winning design studio for over 15 years… designed packages for musicians like John Coltrane, Jewel, Ethel, Yes, Phil Collins, and Pat Metheny… helped Central Park SummerStage become one of the premier events in New York City… was an author on SpeakUp, the first significant design blog… was at Ogilvy's Brand Innovation Group (BIG) during its height… worked at Landor as the global creative lead on the Citi account… knows the dark arts of corporate America… led the creative team for a credit card now found in millions of wallets across North America… licked a Jasper Johns painting… had Isabella Rossellini come to his rescue… performed in an avant-garde opera at Lincoln Center… is creative director at Lendoor… teaches in the Masters in Branding program at SVA… is creative lead at Malcontent.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the process in which the black box of creativity is rendered safe for the risk-adverse.
Dafna Garber
Dafna Garber is a Minnesota native who never forgot her roots, at least that’s what she says to make people think she is humble. She’s worked as a writer, first at Modernista! then at Publicis, and now at CP+B. Her work’s been recognized by the One Show, Cannes, and NBC Nightly news, as well as absolutely hated on by YouTube trolls. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she does everything she can to stay out of the sun.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the business of finding and celebrating the most interesting truth about a good or service in a way that the world won’t hate.
Paula Payton
Paula Payton is the Academic Director of the Department of Strategic Communication, Marketing and Media Management Programs at New York University.
Definition of branding:
Aaker is the guru on all this, and said everything important to be said about branding, in my opinion...
One of the interesting considerations today about branding is how so many companies today must build and position their brands for growth and success in a much more integrated fashion, moving beyond the identity of the products / services (e.g., performance and benefits) being sold, to the experience being delivered, to the employees - on the front line and otherwise - that are ambassadors of the brand, to the end users - consumers - and their personal communities. Good brand strategy comes from knowing all of this, and accurately factoring it all in… We teach integrated marketing at NYU, and this is discipline and approach is more important than ever. Brands must communicate in an integrated way, or be lost in the shuffle…
Michael Bierut
Michael Bierut is a graphic designer, design critic and educator. He is a partner in the New York office of Pentagram. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 he studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning and then worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.
Michael has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, all in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal.
Definition of branding:
"Find out who you are and do it on purpose." - Dolly Parton
Dan Formosa, Ph.D.
[email protected]
Dan is a consultant in design and design research. He started his design career at the Eliot Noyes office designing IBM’s first personal computer. In 1981 he helped establish Smart Design, exploring how design can positively impact people’s lives.
With an undergraduate degree in product design and a doctorate in ergonomics and biomechanics, his approach calls for first understanding people. Through design he has increased fuel efficiency in automobiles, improved drug compliance, and made people’s day-to-day lives easier.
Dan’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. In 2010, on behalf of Smart Design, he received the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. Also that year he helped establish the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City – the first program of its kind. In 2012 Dan received IxDA’s first annual Interaction Design Award for the design of Ford Motor Company’s SmartGauge. He also co-authored the bestselling book Baseball Field Guide, explaining the complex rules of Major League Baseball.
In addition to consulting Dan frequently writes and lectures on various aspects of design research, the future of design, and the human experience.
Definition of branding:
Branding (meaning, the act of branding) is an attempt to shape someone's opinion.
Rand Fishkin
In 2004, Rand Fishkin co-founded Moz, an inbound marketing software company and host of the web's most vibrant community of online marketers. Based in Seattle, WA, Moz's focus is on serving professional marketers with analytics and recommendations to improve their web traffic and customer acquisition through inbound channels such as SEO, social media, content marketing, and more.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the process, tactics, and result of creating connections in people's minds between an organization, product, or concept and a set of characteristics. Some branding is intentional, but much of it is not. The job of a marketer in branding is to align the desired associations with the actual ones and amplify the associations' reach.
Jordan Hruska
Jordan Hruska is the former Executive Director, Creative, at Fab.com. He has written articles and essays for the New York Times, The Economist, Vogue Italia, Monocle, and Rizzoli books among other publications. He is also the co-author of The Library of Philip Johnson: Selections from the Glass House.
Definition of branding:
Branding is strategically engineered identity applied to a company, entity, person, or even a concept/idea, intended to commodify it and render it easily recognizable, and thus, easily shared, traded, reproduced, and purchased by potential consumers. It is a capitalist conceit that weaves storytelling and myth-making into a commodified value oftentimes greater than the sum of its physical parts, assets, or offerings.
Joe Marianek
Joe Marianek is a designer, educator, and partner at Small Stuff, a design studio based in New York. Prior to co-founding Small Stuff, he lead integrated branding projects at Apple in California, and was an Associate Partner at Pentagram in New York. Joe serves on the board of AIGA’s New York Chapter, and teaches at the School of Visual Arts.
Definition of branding:
Branding is a means of manipulating identity in order to manage perceptions.
Dinah Fried
Dinah Fried is a designer, educator and partner at Small Stuff, a design studio based in New York. She teaches courses at the School of Visual Arts, and is the author of Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literature’s Most Memorable Meals (Harper Collins, 2014).
Definition of branding:
Branding is like cooking in that it requires a bit of skill, a lot of intuition, and the right ingredients. You shouldn’t always follow a recipe, and if you’re lucky, people love what you make.
Bennett Peji
Bennett Peji is a strategic communications planner, brand strategist, designer and frequent international speaker. His expertise includes Civic Branding (the branding of cities, neighborhoods and districts) and Community-centered Design. He has extensive experience facilitating planning retreats and community workshops that inspire all attendees to achieve a common vision.
Bennett is Principal at Civic Branding where his goal is to find the key ingredients to help communities, cities and districts become and remain relevant and competitive in the face of constant change. His TEDx talk on branding can be seen here.
Definition of branding:
The branding that matters to me is community-centered branding, specifically “civic branding,” which is about uncovering the heritage and unique qualities of a community in order to make its identity central to the development plans of a community, city or district – to serve as the platform on which the strategies and tactics of the organization are built. This is done by working with the community to establish insights that:
1.Create a distinct and authentic sense of place
2. Weave together the places, businesses, people and their stories
3. Help restore the pride of local culture and history
4. Enhance the city’s ability to attract business and investment.
Shelly Fireman
Shelly Fireman is the founder and CEO of the Fireman Hospitality Group. Fireman has created and operated some of New York’s most acclaimed restaurants, including Trattoria Dell’Arte, two Brooklyn Diner outposts, Redeye Grill, and Bond 45.
Definition of branding:
I don’t think there’s a clear definition of branding. It surely isn’t clear to me because the label or tag that is used loses its meaning. It’s a word like love or sex, it comes in so many shapes and sizes that it’s impossible to label.
If push comes to shove, after millions dollars of advertisement, after having a unique product that millions know, that has consistency to it, that you need to have, that serves a useful purpose, so much so that it’s on shelves everywhere or millions have put it in their stomach or wore it. There’re very few products like that except Coca Cola, Colgate toothpaste and McDonald’s. It is a word that I strongly believe is used by advertising and PR people to get more money out of the client. It’s like language used by lawyers, they create their own language so they can charge you extra. It’s Miller beer; it isn’t your local restaurant. It can be localized and it can be nationalized and personalized. It is, in my opinion, like pornography, sometimes I’ll understand it and most of the time I won’t.
Larry Sombke
Larry Sombke is a cookbook author and specialty food entrepreneur. He founded Larry’s Southwestern Sauces, a line of cooking sauces inspired by the distinctive flavors of southern Mexico and the Southwest United States.
Definition of branding:
Branding is creating a distinctively authentic recipe that brings people to the table again and again to tie memories with flavor and great conversation.
James Heaton
For the past 17 years James Heaton has run Tronvig Group, a brand strategy consulting firm that helps museums, zoos, arts organizations, and other mission-driven non-profit and for profit brands with marketing strategy, brand strategy and organizational alignment.
Organizations succeed when they have both the strategic and tactical means to effectively carry forward their mission and achieve their goals.
Definition of branding:
A brand is whatever your consumers have in their minds about you.
Emmelie De La Cruz
Emmelie De La Cruz is a personal branding strategist and entrepreneur. After working in various areas of marketing and communication, she launched her personal brand consultancy, The Branding Muse, specializing in brand identity development, digital brand management and design. Emmelie has spoken at over 15 organizations and trained hundreds of millennials on building a brand. Her insights have been featured in Clutch Magazine, the Miami Herald, PR Daily, Hot 97 and Forbes named her site one of the top career websites in 2013.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the process in which we shape our reputation and the expectations people have of us. It is that way that you communicate your unique value and contribution to the lives of others. A brand is not a logo or tagline; it is a strategically formulated message that speaks to your passions and helps to develop a relationship with your audience.
Gail Anderson
Gail Anderson is a designer, writer, and educator. She has served as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, and worked at Rolling Stone magazine as associate art director, deputy art director, and finally, as the magazine’s senior art director. She is currently a partner at Anderson Newton Design.
Anderson is co-author of eight books on design and popular culture with Steven Heller, and serves on the boards for The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee and the Type Directors Club. She is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Medal from the AIGA, and has received awards from organizations including The Society of Publication Designers, The Type Directors Club, The Art Directors Club, and Communication Arts.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the promise of a relationship with the consumer. And like any relationship, it could turn into love, or...
Bobby C. Martin Jr.
Bobby C. Martin Jr. is a designer and educator. He is the co-founder of OCD (The Original Champions of Design) with Jennifer Kinon. Together they develop brand identity systems for a broad range of clients that include the National Basketball Association, Girl Scouts of the USA, and Friends of the High Line.
Definition of branding:
A mission.
A message.
A name.
A nickname.
A symbol.
A character.
A color.
A statement.
A method.
A commitment.
A feeling.
A belief.
Maggie Weinberg
Maggie Weinberg is the Creative Services Director at Fast Company.
Definition of branding:
A brand is shorthand for what we can expect from a given company. This includes both the tangible (i.e. the quality and style of products and services) and the intangible (i.e. a company's ethos, purpose, and relationship with their community).
A brand’s meaning is earned through action. Branding is the art of presenting a brand in the best possible light. Marketing is the art of sharing a brand message in the best possible way.
Lee Cockerell
Lee Cockerell is the former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World® Resort. For 10 years Lee led a team of 40,000 Cast Members and was responsible for the operations of 20 resort hotels, four theme parks, two water parks, a shopping & entertainment village and the ESPN sports and recreation complex in addition to the ancillary operations which supported the number one vacation destination in the world.
Lee is currently dedicating his time to public speaking, writing about leadership, management and service, and consulting for organizations around the world. He just launched an online learning site, thrive15, a very unique way to learn about leadership, management and customer service.
Definition of branding:
Branding is simply the reputation of a product, person or organization.
Su Mathews
Su is a senior partner in design at Lippincott’s New York office. For over two decades, she has thrived at the intersection of graphic design and brand strategy. Using the power of design to develop inspiring creations while solving business problems, Su has worked with a broad range of notable clients including Chick-fil-A, eBay, Hayneedle, Hershey’s, Hyatt, IHG, Liz Claiborne, New York Public Library, RadioShack, Red Robin, Samsung, Shutterstock, the U.S. Department of State and Walmart.
She currently serves on the AIGA National Board of Directors where she will be spearheading a Women’s Leadership Initiative.
Definition of branding:
A great brand is compelling and true. Branding is the art and science of building connections through authentic stories, signature innovations, and inspiring experiences both inside and out.
Armin Vit
Armin Vit is a graphic designer and writer. He is the co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design enterprise in Austin, TX, that runs a network of blogs, publishes books, organizes live events and judged competitions, and designs for clients.
Definition of branding:
Branding is building and establishing expectations about the experience a person will have with a product, service, or company and, ideally, meeting those expectations in a manner that is so positive that the same person will want to have that experience again. And again.
J'aime Cohen
With a focus on consumer experience, J'aime Cohen recently created brand identities for Top Chef host Tom Colicchio and restaurateur Donatella Arpaia's newest endeavors.
A former Managing Partner of The Apartment Creative Agency and an even former celebrity Publicist, Cohen has over 15 years of diverse professional experience.
She is a founding member of The Masters in Branding Program at The School of Visual Arts, where she created the department's visual identity. Cohen also created and designed the facilities interiors, all in an effort to develop an emotionally connective environment and build awareness of the importance of branding education.
J'aime Cohen has been a juror for the iF Design Awards in Germany, is the Director of Admissions for the Masters in Branding Program at The School of Visual Arts and is a member of the AIGA.
Definition of branding:
Simply put, a brand is a promise. It is a tool that we use to connect to those around us. When used effectively it can provide tangible growth and tremendous value.
Peter Buchanan-Smith
Peter Buchanan-Smith is a designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Best Made Company.
Definition of branding:
At a quiet bus stop, a woman waits. She casually glances upon the ad next to where she sits, and for a split second she vanishes, seemingly removed from the everyday.
Jory Benerofe
Jory Benerofe is the Vice President of Branding at vineyard vines, a lifestyle apparel brand. He originally joined the company as a tie designer, but quickly focused his efforts to help shape the visual presentation and voice of the company.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the art of communicating the essence of what a company stands for, looks like and acts like; culminating in shaping the experience an end user has when interacting with it. If a company’s branding is effective, the end result is one where the audience will develop an emotional connection that aligns with their own life experience(s) and state of mind. That emotional connection serves to link like brand enthusiasts with each other creating a community. That community then shares it, supports it and grows it.
Nic Faitos
Nic Faitos is the founder and senior partner at Starbright Floral Design.
Definition of branding:
Branding is our signature on the art created by our life’s work, on our product or service. Branding is the whole of the mental image that others have of us when the name of our organization or our person pops into the theater of their mind. It is the first thought, good or bad, that others have of us when our name is mentioned. While many strive for a coherent and uniform branding image for all to see, it is rare that any two people see the same entity the same way.
Monte Lipman
Monte Lipman is the founder and CEO of Republic Records.
Definition of branding:
Branding is weaving a narrative into pop culture.
Johnny Earle
Johnny "Cupcakes" Earle is the CEO and founder of the brand Johnny Cupcakes, an experience-based, retro bakery-themed t-shirt shop in Boston, Hull, Martha’s Vineyard, Los Angeles and London. He speaks world-wide on how to start or grow a unique business, passion or idea with little-to-no start up money and believes that real success is being happy doing what you love.
Definition of branding:
Anybody can start a company, but a brand can't be started overnight. Branding is when you turn a business or a project into a living, breathing thing; something that provokes feeling.
Matt Britton
Matt Britton is the founder and CEO of MRY, a world leading social media and youth marketing agency that has worked with some of the world's leading brands – including P&G, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Visa – to help them connect with this rapidly evolving and highly elusive consumer.
Definition of branding:
Branding is the art of building an emotional component to how a person, place, or thing is widely perceived.
Jennifer Kinon
Jennifer Kinon is a designer, educator and co-founder of OCD (Original Champions of Design). She has helped to develop brand identity systems for clients that include: the National Basketball Association, Girl Scouts of the USA and Friends of the High Line. Her work has won awards from the Art Directors Club, D&AD, AIGA365, Type Directors Club and Print as well as Best of Show and Judge's Pick in the 2011 Brand New Awards.
Definition of branding:
A person has a soul. A product has a brand.
Anthony Rotolo
Anthony Rotolo is a technologist, futurist, author and professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University where he serves as director of the Master's in Communications program. Anthony is also a leading expert on emergent media and digital technologies and author of The Book on 3D Printing, an easy-to-understand guide to the exciting new field of 3D Printing and digital fabrication.
Definition of branding:
A brand is the experience of a shared idea or set of values made real through products, communication and action.
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996 and prior to that, he was a reporter at the Washington Post.
Definition of branding:
An identity attached to an inanimate object.
Nadia Tuma
Nadia Tuma is Deputy Director of Truth Central - McCann Worldgroup's global thought leadership think tank - where she works to uncover the world's untold truths. Nadia also teaches Brand Strategy at the School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding program, where she hopes to inspire her students to ask the right questions, rather than search for quick answers.
Definition of branding:
A brand is the literal manifestation of a specific set of aspirations - targeted to resonate with the deep, underlying personal desires of a specific set of people. If done correctly, this manifestation resonates with those people in such a profound and intimate way, that it can cause them to behave in ways they themselves would consider irrational if observed in others.
Stanley Hainsworth
Stanley Hainsworth is the founder and CCO of Tether, the creative, cross-discipline studio that masterminds brand-to-consumer love affairs.
Definition of branding:
I'm a prisoner of my hairdo. A brand is a person.
Tom Guarriello
Tom Guarriello was born in The Bronx at the beginning of the Baby Boom. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in psychology from the University of Dayton and earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Duquesne University. Tom specializes in helping individuals and organizations develop the creative ideas, innovative methods and customer-focused products needed to succeed in rapidly changing environments. He has worked with a wide variety of companies (from Victoria's Secret to Harvard Business School) in the apparel retail, publishing, insurance, health care, transportation, and communication industries.
In late 2009, Tom was invited to become a founding faculty member for the Masters In Branding program at New York's School of Visual Arts. He currently teaches “The Meaning of Branded Objects,” a course in the psychology of branding and serves as one of Thesis advisors for the program's students. Read Tom's full bio.
Definition of branding:
I’d say that a brand is a container—or nexus—for the complex network of personal/social/cultural meanings that have become attached to the sounds, flavors, smells, textures, images and stories that pervade specific objects.
Josephine Eke
As a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design Josephine’s first roles were on the agency side of branding working in print, packaging, and video. This experience transferred into leading large cross-functional brand creative teams for global billion-dollar corporations including Estée Lauder, Mattel and Hasbro.
In 2010 Josephine received a scholarship to attend the Executive Masters of Business Administration program at Northeastern University and graduated with an MBA in Global Business and Innovation.
Inspired by her love of painting and the environment Josephine developed Ekeoart as a creative vehicle for contributing funds to land conservation in New York and Rhode Island.
Definition of branding:
Brand is an intangible asset on the balance sheet - Branding is the guidance & management of relationships that build value - allowing successful brands to create wealth for their companies and become a valuable asset.
Noah Brier
Noah Brier is the co-founder of Percolate, a thoughtful technology company that helps brands create content at social scale.
Definition of branding:
A brand is the sum-total of interactions a person has with a company's products, people, and communications.
Christine Mau
EMEA Design Director
Kimberly-Clark
Christine Mau is driving the design transformation for Kimberly-Clark’s Consumer Brands in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In this role she is responsible for integrating design thinking into the innovation pipeline for product, packaging, communication and most importantly, the culture.
Christine began building a career by leveraging strategic design against business objectives and consumer behaviors to create unexpected solutions. Today she enjoys working with a diverse team to re-vitalize commoditized products that drive growth, as demonstrated Kleenex® Ovals, U by Kotex and Cottonelle Flushable Cleansing Cloth launches. She currently lives in London, England with her partner, an artisan, and 16 year old son. Proud that their oldest son is studying Design in the states!
Definition of branding:
Branding: A promise. Product: The delivery of the promise.
Melanie Wiesenthal
Melanie Wiesenthal is a Partner at Deerfield, a boutique branding studio focused on retail, fashion and beauty based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Before her in-house experience, Melanie worked for award winning design firms Carbone Smolan Agency and The Valentine Group.
Melanie is on the AIGA/NY Board of Directors and serves as the Education Chair. She |
very honest and credible and knows what he's doing. Nice guy!
Okay, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Nhuan Lam doesn't possess the greatest interpersonal skills, but I, myself, deal with customers of all ethnicities and culture, and can understand when someone doesn't act exactly like we'd expect them to. Now, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Lam is Vietnamese. I've read a lot of articles pertaining to Vietnamese culture, and this has enabled me to understand that, generally speaking, they take time to warm up to strangers. But, when you transform from stranger into their friend, literally everything changes. They're sweet, curious and welcoming. I've been to Mr. Lam's AA Smog shop more than once, and he's become more friendly with me, even asking me about my car's stereo and making small talk. However, at the end of the day, what matters to me most is a smog test that's done quickly and at a fair price, where I don't have to wait in line for 30-45 minutes.
5 stars for AA Smog! The owner is honest and did not charge me when my car didn't pass inspection. Great experience and great costumer service!
Number one smog guy! I always bring my vehicles here as the price is always reasonable and the service is good. I rarely have to wait long. If he's busy, he'll let you know so you don't have to wait. I've smogged at least four cars here over the last couple of years and have been very satisfied. Today, I was outta there in about 15 minutes!
GET A PHONE QUOTE FIRST! Two stars are generous; and only for price. When I called around for prices, I was quoted some astronomical prices for smogging my 2007 BMW. This place was the cheapest - 4 years ago. When I arrived, the owner yelled at me and was very aggressive, as I didn't know where to park due to all the spaces being full. He was trying to tell me to double park the other cars (which I would never normally do), but I couldn't understand his English very well. When it came time for this years' smog, I didn't feel like getting quotes again, so I reluctantly returned. I called in the AM, told him my car and year, and was quoted $40.00. When I arrived in the afternoon, I was greeted with a bill for $50.00. I explained that I'd called in the AM and was quoted $40.00. He then asked me for cash, but I only had $22.00. I told him this was not communicated, but would pay him $22.00 and the balance on the card. He seemed angry, and begrudgingly took my card and charged me $40.00. I doubt I'll return again.
The shop is behind the 76 gas station, in the same lot. After reading the bad reviews below, I know going in to be very polite to the Smog Test guy. You know, I want my $25 off coupon to be used. So I called in advance and he quoted me the price for my 1994 Nissan Altima, which has an extra charge cuz it is an old car. Other places were going to charge my car $70+ which is way too expensive for me. I went to the shop, waited for my turn, I was very nice to the gentlemen and always smiled to show in good faith how appreciative I am for him doing this way past closing. He even offered to help me find another smog cap cuz I was going to fail. He charged me the normal price of what he charges everyone, so I showed the cash first and then gave him the $25 off coupon, and he applied to coupon to my car. Which totaled to be only $47 cash, which includes the certificate, smog test and the extra test for older cars. Like I said before, I was really appreciative and so he was really nice to me. Definitely will go to him again.
Great honest place. Get coupon on-line/call for price usually he quotes you with coupon already discounted so ask! Trucks, SUV'S, cars 1999 and older always more at most places-So be prepared and ask so you know exactly the cost. Now here is what i like most ask Ken for best time-you will be Ken's priority/Forget about negative reviews he's good, straight forward and honest. Women won't be taken advantage of. I found this place when I moved here last year and will always come back. Both times I was in and out. Cars 1999 or older are more and I checked around, its a little longer and more involved. He is honest and if your car is passable he will pass it. Doesn't fix cars, so no reason to try to charge extra. Forget about negative reviews There is just cultural and language differences. He is honest and straight forward. His advice even after my old car passed: check your hoses for cracks or small holes-many times this is a cause for engine light or fails. Also the more aftermarket extras the more chance to fail.
My favorite smog place, I am dealer so I smog many cars a month cheapest fastest and most headache free smog station around. Doesn't try selling you tune up and gas cap or coolant flush like the one across the street from here, over all an awesome guy
Here's a little yelp justice for everyone who's ever been screwed over at this establishment. The shop itself is behind a 76 gas station and car wash, which makes parking a little bit difficult sometimes, and a bit hard to find. But there are ample signs, so you'll know where you're going. I tried getting a price quote by calling, but kept getting hung up on whenever I mentioned I had a coupon. The man who runs the shop is very rude, very Asian, and a hard-ass. The online coupons are only redeemable when you pay in CASH, which means I had to go and pull money out of the ATM in the 76 station. The coupons are also misleading because it is not $34.95, it is $44.99 for Trucks/Vans/and SUV's a detail that is not mentioned on the coupon. Not to mention the certificate comes out to $8.25. When I tried to tell him that there was no indication of the upcharge fees, he got flustered and grabbed the coupon out of my hand, tore it, and told me that I could go somewhere else. This was aggravating, but I've learned that the best way to deal with this type of prick, is be humble and kiss ass. I told the man, that I wasn't prepared for this, and didn't have enough money. He told me that I can go get money at the ATM. I argued that he has a Visa and Mastercard sign on his window, but was informed that there is a $3 charge for using credit cards. I asked him if he could do it for $34.95 (instead of the $44.99) and then I'd just tip him really well. I also told him I was in a hurry (not really, it was raining and I didn't want to stand around for that long). He was pretty reluctant, but agreed when I showed him the cash I had (about $50), and said he'd have it done in 20 minutes. 20 minutes later, he gives me the keys to the car, my receipt for $43.20 (including the certificate), and just stuck out his hand for the money. (again, rude and barely professional) I counted out $43.20 to the penny, and handed it to him. He then got angry and told me that I had promised him a tip. I acted surprised and totally apologetic, and responded "Oh, of course. I forgot, I'm so sorry." I then grabbed a stick of gum from my glovebox and handed it to him. "It's double-mint." I smiled and drove off.
Just took my car for smog check, the guy who helped me was pretty straight forward, He wasn't busy so he took my car right of way and got it done in less than 20 minutes
I read through the reviews while I was waiting for the work to be completed. I was in and out in 15 minutes. The price was very competitive and less than the last time I had a smog check in Mission Viejo where I waited an hour. It is a one man shop and yes the guy seems very Vietnamese. He is there to get the work done and not to make a friend. However, i did get him to smile and all I had to do was smile back at him when I could not understand his heavy accent. If you live in Laguna Niguel and you want a convenient place to get a smog check this is it. If you pay cash it is cheaper than the Chevron across the CVP.
Great and quick service. Inexpensive. No complaints! My smog check was done in 10 mins.How To Play Game Arts Adorable Belt Action RPG Picotto Knights
By Spencer. August 2, 2012. 5:57pm
Game Arts, makers of Ragnarok Odyssey and the Dokuro, are working on their third PlayStation Vita title. Picotto Knights is a quite different since it’s 1.) network focused and 2.) free to download.
The game is described as a "belt action RPG" so it’s kind of like Capcom’s Dungeons & Dragons arcade games or Dragon’s Crown. You move your custom Cocoroid Knight with the left analog stick or the d-pad. The square button is for weak attacks and the triangle button is for strong attacks. Circle makes your knight use his/her shield to block and X is for jump. Hold L/R and you can toggle skills assigned to the face buttons. Players can set skills using the touch screen. Players learn new skills as their character levels up…
… and there are eight different weapons to master.
From left to right: blade, spear, axe, hammer, claw, chakram, rod, bowgun.
Picotto Knights supports online multiplayer through Wi-Fi and 3G connections. When you’re offline CPU controlled knights will fill in the empty party spots so you have a full group of four knights. While Picotto Knights is a free download the game will have virtual items for players to purchase. Details about item pricing hasn’t been announced. Neither has a North American release, but Picotto Knights sounds like it’s going to be pretty easy to pick up and play.0
M. Night Shyamalan has hired Buried screenwriter Chris Sparling to pen the thriller Twelve Strangers for Shyamalan’s genre production company, The Night Chronicles. Deadline says that the Twelve Strangers is about “a jury deliberating a case involving the supernatural.” [Insert joke about a twist ending that reveals the jury has been dead the whole time even though Shyamalan isn’t writing the movie or attached to direct] For those who don’t know, Buried stars Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive with a lighter and a cell phone as his only resources. The film received positive notices at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will be released on October 8th.
Earlier this week, we reported that Shyamalan was shopping around a new script with Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Bruce Willis loosely attached. Deadline says that “Cooper would play a father on a desperate search for his missing child. It might stray into Taken terrain, but the father taps into some supernatural powers to aid the search.” [Insert joke about the father being dead the whole time] Hit the jump for more on Shyamalan’s deal regarding Night Chronicles.
Twelve Strangers is the second picture of a three-picture deal where Night Chronicles makes one movie a year with Media Rights Capital based on an idea from the Sixth Sense director. This was done because he’s a visionary and it’s 1999. The Night Chronicles-MRC deal has already yielded the thriller Devil directed by John Dowdle. That’s due to be released on February 11, 2011.
Shyamalan is putting the finishing touches on his slightly-racist and joyless-looking The Last Airbender, which is based on the not-racist and highly-enjoyable Nickelodeon animated series. It hits theaters on July 1st in 2D and 3D.FFRF sent a letter to the Rowlett City Council in June, asking it to end its discriminatory practice of scheduling exclusively Christian prayers before its governmental meetings. In the alternative, FFRF called on the Council to permit atheist and nonbelieving citizens to be given the opportunity to occasionally open meetings. It is now clear that Rowlett plans to hide behind the murky legal landscape resulting from the Supreme Court's unfortunate decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway rather than altering their discriminatory policy. Now its time for grassroots action!
Below follows a press release from Metroplex Atheists, which FFRF has been assisting, announcing plans to hold a protest at Rowlett's Tuesday Sept. 16th City Council meeting at 7PM at the City Hall Municipal Building (4000 Main Street
Rowlett, TX):
The City of Rowlett, following consultation with Liberty Institute, a farright Christian legal entity, has chosen to reject Metroplex Atheists Rowlett members' requests to give an invocation before the City Council meeting, in violation of the recent Town of Greece v. Galloway Supreme Court decision. This decision legalized sectarian prayer before government meetings, at least in circumstances where there was no discrimination regarding who can give the invocation.
Metroplex Atheists Rowlett is calling for a protest at the city hall on 9/16 at 7PM, which is 30 minutes before the council meeting officially begins. The intent of the protest is to bring attention to the discrimination against atheists giving the opening invocation and not the fact that the meetings are opened with an invocation. Resident Rowlett atheists will then speak to the council during the citizens input portion of the meeting.
On June 24, 2014, Freedom From Religion Foundation staff attorney Sam Grover sent a letter to the mayor of Rowlett requesting that the city update its policies to reflect the recent Town of Greece v. Galloway decision by the Supreme Court. The decision allowed the Town of Greece, NY to have sectarian invocations before its meetings while noting that the town "at no point excluded or denied an opportunity to a would-be prayer giver," including a "layperson of any persuasion" or even an atheist! Metroplex Atheists Rowlett followed with a formal request that two of its own members be added to its list of approved celebrants.
"The City of Rowlett's policy regarding invocations is pretty clear," said Randy Word, president of Metroplex Atheists. "Despite the Supreme Court's decision, Rowlett intends to continue with policies that discriminate against any religious tradition other than Christianity."
Metroplex Atheists Rowlett is a division of Metroplex Atheists, a state/church separation advocacy group based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
For more information on the protest please contact:
Randy Word, President of Metroplex Atheists
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (972) 3427958
Chad Aldridge, Metroplex Atheists Rowlett press contact
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (241) 5667299
If you can't make the protest but want to lend your support, you can contact the Rowlett City Council directly:
Email:
Todd W. Gottel, Mayor — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
City Secretary’s Office This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Michael Gallops, Mayor Pro Tem, City Councilmember Place 6 —This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Robbert van Bloemendaal — City Councilmember Place 1 — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tammy Dana-Bashian — City Councilmember Place 2 — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Carl Pankratz, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem, City Councilmember Place 3 —This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Debby Bobbitt, City Councilmember Place 4 — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Rick Sheffield, City Councilmember Place 5 — This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mailing address:
Rowlett City Council
4000 Main Street
Rowlett, TX 75088An expert on insider threats says White House efforts to punish staffers could backfire and exacerbate the administration's leaking problem.
Matthew Bunn, co-editor of the new book “Insider Threats,” warns that White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s reported efforts to perform spot checks on staffer phones risks making disgruntled employees even more unhappy — and more likely to leak.
“An aggressive approach to insiders will increase disgruntlement,” he said.
Bunn, a Harvard professor, edited the book with Stanford professor Scott D. Sagan. It includes submissions from academics and experts around the world who trace inside threats ranging from Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her guards to the Fort Hood massacre to famous leakers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
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Manning, noted Bunn, was punished for tardiness three weeks before she started downloading secret State Department cables she would eventually release to WikiLeaks.
There are, obviously, other contributing factors.
Manning had ideological motivations and had begun to show signs of extreme stress — at the counseling meeting where her weekly day off was revoked in response to lateness, she flipped a table over and had to be restrained from reaching for weapons, her lawyer said during sentencing at her trial.
Bunn has studied how the professions most susceptible to insider threats — including casinos, pharmaceutical companies and nuclear plants — have adapted to the challenge of preventing leaks.
He said there are a variety of factors that lead to insider threats beyond ideology, including disgruntlement, coercion and the desire to demonstrate how smart someone is. But while leaks are common in any administration, the frequency of leaks in this administration might point to endemic dissent among executive branch staff.
“If people think secret work they are doing is important and worthwhile, they are usually able to keep a secret. When you see this amount of leaking, it suggests that a lot of people are concerned,“ he said.
President Trump has blasted leaks from his administration, as have staff from the White House.
“The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?” he tweeted after reports circulated that former national security adviser Michael Flynn talked about sanctions with Russia — after telling Vice President Pence that he had not. Flynn resigned after the story broke.
On Monday, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed his own worries about the spate of leaks. “We can't run a government like this. A government can't function with massive leaks at the highest level,” he said.
Across industries and governments, Bunn’s research demonstrates that employee disgruntlement is a common preventable cause of insider threats. Though there is no evidence it is the cause of the Trump leaks, Bunn said one major factor is disrespectful bosses.
One of the easiest preventative measures against inside threats, he said, was to post a simple employee complaint box and occasionally pay reverence to it.
Insider threats can be avoided in a variety of cases by treating them as a serious problem, he said. Employers need to be vigilant about putting too much faith in personnel, as often times the urge to trust coworkers blinds people to signs they are a risk.
Many of the things employers can do to prevent inside threats will also prevent external ones.
The facility Snowden worked at had not installed software that monitored networks for unusual downloads — something that would have both caught Snowden and any hacker that had stolen employee credentials.
Like many security experts, Bunn advocated "segmenting networks" by ensuring that employees don’t have access to data they don’t need access to. Manning was only a private when she downloaded all of the State Department’s international cables.With Toronto facing an estimated $106-million cleanup bill after last month's devastating ice storm, some on council are asking why hydro lines can't be buried underground where they are safe from ice-laden limbs knocking out power.
Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong put forward a motion Thursday asking senior city staff — in consultation with Toronto Hydro and provincial bodies — to look at the cost putting wires underground.
Arriving three days before Christmas, the ice storm knocked out power to 300,000 Toronto Hydro customers. Many were without power in freezing temperatures for more than a week while hydro crews worked around the clock to restore power.
And while Minnan-Wong was circulating his motion at city hall on Thursday, Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines was addressing the question at a media briefing held to discuss technical issues arising from the storm.
Haines said it would cost an estimated $15 billion to move Toronto's 15,000 kilometres of power lines underground. Burying lines in residential areas alone would cost $5 billion, he said.
"It's a substantial financial cost," said Haines, estimating that such an undertaking would mean a 300 per cent rate increase.
At Thursday's technical briefing Toronto Hydro had on display some of the old materials they were tasked with repairing during last month's ice storm. This is an old service wire with cloth insulation that had flaked away, exposing bare wire. (Andrew Lupton/CBC)
Haines and other Toronto Hydro officials also said moving lines underground may solve the tree problem, but would create new challenges for hydro crews. Underground lines are harder to access and repair during an outage. Also, lines in the ground can come into contact with water, which caused problems during last July's rainstorm.
"[Burying lines] is not a perfect solution," said Haines. "During the floods, people were saying 'why are the lines underground?'"
Resistance from residents
Toronto Hydro construction supervisor Rob Milner, who worked with crews to restore power during the storm, also said moving lines underground isn't a cure-all.
He spoke of headaches Toronto Hydro faced during a project five years ago in the Forest Hill neighbourhood.
The project was a "backyard conversion," and involved pulling a run of power lines out of backyards, where they are difficult to access, and moving them underground.
Bringing underground lines into a house means digging an access pit below the hydro meter. Milner said Toronto Hydro faced resistance, and some lawsuits, from residents who didn't care to see their gardens dug up.
Underground access also isn't easy in densely populated neighbourhoods where the power lines compete for space with existing gas, water, sewer and fibre optic lines.
Also, underground lines require large switch boxes, about one on every block. They take up a footprint of more than two square metres and stand almost two metres high. In a new subdivision they can be located in ways that are unobtrusive, but that's difficult to do in Toronto's older, densely populated neighbourhoods.
This is a porcelain insulator, known as a house knob, damaged in last month's ice storm. (Andrew Lupton/CBC)
"The question becomes where do you locate that?" said Milner. "Because no one wants one of those in front of their house. You run into resistance."
Many new subdivisions are served by underground power lines. Milner's home in Milton, Ont., has them but he was still without power for four hours during the storm.
That pales in comparison to thousands who were without power for days but Milner said it's proof subdivisions with underground lines aren't immune to outages.
Still, many are wondering if moving wires underground is worth the staggering cost.
Coun. Joe Mihevc, in a recent opinion piece in the Toronto Star, suggested that moving the wires underground may be worth the staggering cost, especially if it's spread over the long term.
"It is now clear that the cost of these kinds of storms needs to be a part of the calculation," he wrote.Design is often cited by developers as one of the hardest aspects they face in completing a project. When you’re first starting out and picking up freelance projects, your clients might expect you to be a one-stop shop for both their design and development needs. If you have a background or training in design, that’s just fine and dandy.
For the rest of us it can present a whole boatload of problems.
But designing and programming don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and working on both skills at the same time can put you ahead of the game when it comes to finding a job.
This article will provide you with a load of resources you can use to simplify the process of designing your sites and projects. It includes everything from Photoshop tutorials for designing site mockups to courses you can take to deepen your understanding of good design practices.
Now, let’s learn the basics of how to be a good designer so that you can really focus on your code.
General Inspiration
The Patterntap site is dedicated to providing designers with visual inspiration. What’s awesome about this site is that you can filter through specific site elements, such as lists, article layouts, testimonials.
It’s a great way to get ideas for how to organize these elements within your own development projects if you’re someone who (like me) struggles to understand what makes for a good-looking layout.
Whether you’re trying to get inspiration for your freeCodeCamp portfolio page, or looking for a simple design to base one of your CSS Daily Images on, Dribbble is the place to look.
Described as ‘show and tell for designers,’ this site is a great place to browse popular designs and even share some of your own.
Color Palettes
Color schemes can make or break a website. It’s one of the first things people notice when they visit your site, and it can impact your visitors’ mood and psychology, the ability of your site to achieve conversions, and overall readability.
The following sites will help you generate awesome color combinations that are sure to impress.
The Coolors interface allows you to lock onto colors that you like and generate palettes around them, export color palettes as PDFs and image files, filter your palette through a color blindness simulator, and so much more.
If there’s a color I want to base a design around, or I need to create a color scheme around a logo, I’ll use a color picker to get the hex code. Then I’ll paste it into one of the Coolors palette spaces, lock it in place, and press spacebar to generate a complete palette around that color. How easy is that?
Created by designer Gal Shir, Color Hunt features beautiful color palettes that you can use to really make your projects pop. The palettes are user-created and you can filter them based on popularity and date of creation.
Stock Images
The above sites are perfect for finding high-resolution images you can use for hero images, or for padding your portfolio site with sophisticated, crisp images of creative workspaces, coffee mugs, and whiteboards.
Both offer free high-resolution images that are licensed under Creative Commons Zero. That means you can copy, modify, distribute, and otherwise use these images for any purpose (including commercial) No permission or attribution needed.
Icons & Things
When you’re putting together a portfolio website, it can be nice to throw in some logos and icons that show the frameworks and languages you know.
Or, you might want to include some adorable icons chock-full of mechanical gears, laptop screens overflowing with binary, and programmers hard at work in their home offices.
Whatever your goal, it’ll be easy to find the assets you need using the resources below.
Note: Many of the downloadable assets are in Illustrator/Photoshop format and individual icons may need to be manually separated out of the packs. If you’re looking for good introductory courses on working with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, I highly recommend Treehouse (discussed in the Course section of this post).
This subreddit is a great resource for free typefaces, Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials and assets, icons, website templates, and so much more.
Font Awesome is an amazing, fully open-source icon collection that was originally designed for use with Bootstrap. You can use CSS to easily style any of your icons. Because they are scalable vector graphics, they look great at any size.
There are 675 icons in Font Awesome 4.7.0, and new icons are released in each version.
This site boasts around 35,000 icons. These hardworking designers and coders produce all of their icons in-house, and the time they put into their work really shows. Take a look at all of their fantastic programming icons! Not only are the icons beautifully designed, you can also:
Add text, overlays, and backgrounds to any icon
Download the icon in any color, size, or format
All they ask is that you add a link to their site on any page where you use their icons.
Freebie Supply is a catalog of free design resources curated by a small team of creatives. If you’re looking to jazz up your web project with great icons and vector images, you’ll probably get the most use out of are the Free Vector and Free PSD Icon pages.
However, if you want to practice your HTML/CSS skills, browse the Free PSD Website Templates and try to recreate some of the designs for your own portfolio.
Articles
Books
The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
This book is often used in college-level Intro to Design courses and for good reason. Knowing how to implement these very basic principles can make your projects shine.
The book is a thorough introduction to some of the most important concepts of design: proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast. Not only will you get a good idea of how to implement these designs in your sites, you’ll be presented with a great deal of examples of design faux pas and how to correct them.
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Steve Krug’s book is a classic, no-nonsense treatise on web design and usability. Web design expert Jeffrey Zeldman insists that “after reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.” (Emphasis mine.)
Krug’s countless nuggets of insight will have you nodding your head and ascribing to his advice to keep it simple. The book is chock-full of simple but powerful thoughts like:
The fact that the people who built the site didn’t care enough to make things obvious — and easy — can erode our confidence in the site and the organization behind it.
And this:
Another needless source of question marks over people’s heads is links and buttons that aren’t obviously clickable. As a user, I should never have to devote a millisecond of thought to whether things are clickable — or not.
Overall, it’s a great reference book that you’ll constantly be turning to for guidance.
Courses
We all know Code School (which is a Pluralsight company) has awesome content. Their quirky course jingles are an adorable introduction to the subject matter, and their quizzes and challenges let you test your understanding of their educational videos.
Code School has two great design courses for you to check out:
Fundamentals of Design —You’ll learn how to really improve the look of your sites with this class. This course has three levels: typography, colors, and layout. Only the typography level in this series is free, but you can gain a lot from just that one class.
The Elements of Web Design — Like the other course, only the first level is free. The focus of this course is on designing user-centered, mobile-friendly sites. You will also learn about organizing your content and navigation.
HackDesign is a free design course with resources curated from some of the best designers out there. It features 50 lessons on everything from designing with whitespace and grids to responsive web typography. It’s kind of like what The Odin Project is for web development.
All you need to do is provide your email address and create an account, and you can have complete access to the Hack Design curriculum.
Treehouse is the only paid resource I subscribe to. The reason is that their basic membership is extremely affordable, and the content is fantastic. I use it 1000 times more than the Lynda subscription leftover from my undergrad days.
Some of the design courses that will be invaluable to developers include:
Design Foundations
Photoshop Foundations
Creating Wireframe and Photoshop Mockups
Web Typography
Adobe Illustrator for Web Design
And so many more…
If you’re just starting out and trying to get freelance jobs for your portfolio, especially as a front-end developer, it can be difficult to pitch to a client without a professional-looking mockup. Clients might also want you to use their assets, and you’ll need to know how to optimize them for the web.
That’s where Treehouse has your back. Their courses are video-based and completely up-to-date. And if you’re on the fence, you can always give them a try with a free trial.
This is a great (free) article series on web design specifically catered to developers. It has helpful tutorials on creating color schemes, working with brand and design guidelines, improving layout with rhythm and grids, and so much more.
I hope this article can help some of you web developers out there with the ever-confounding problem of design! Let me know what some of your favorite resources are!
Note: Links to Amazon and Treehouse are affiliate links, but rest assured that I stand behind these recommendations 110%. Your purchases help to fund my coding (and coffee) habits. 🙂
Like this: Like Loading...There’s a line in ‘Pulp Fiction’ where the character of Brett, played by Frank Whaley, says to Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson), “We came into this with the best intentions.” Winfield doesn’t respond and instead, shoots Brett’s friend, ‘Flock of Seagulls’ dead.
The moral is, Winfield had no interest in hearing about Brett’s “intentions” because, in the end, it didn’t matter.
It is a similar situation with the school lunch nutrition program concocted by former First Lady Michelle Obama. She’s not happy at all the Trump administration is rolling it back:
Michelle Obama criticizes Trump administration's decision on school lunch rules: “Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap.” pic.twitter.com/Yac03GaSfi — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 12, 2017
There is nothing wrong with ending a program that did not work. But to people with the mindset of Michelle Obama, they had the best of intentions. Therefore the program is a “success.”
The problem is, the program is not anywhere near a success. Here are three reasons why it’s a failure:
1. School cafeterias are losing money with the program – The government nanny program costs too much money. Over two years ago, food providers were surveyed about the program:
The School Nutrition Association, which is planning to demand changes to the meal requirements to make the food more attractive to students, found that 50.35 percent of cafeteria officials surveyed expect that serving the food will “exceed revenue” next year. “Of the 92 percent of respondents reporting that rising costs pose a ‘serious’ or ‘moderate’ challenge to their programs, 70 percent indicated ‘serious,’” said the survey from the group that represents 35,000 school nutrition professionals.
It’s hard to feed kids at all when there’s no money to do it.
2. Kids dropped out of the school lunch program after implementation of the new standards – After participation in school lunch programs had increased over a decade, Michelle Obama’s new rules made it so that over a million kids dropped it:
The National School Lunch Program saw a sharp decline in participation once the healthy standards went into effect during the 2012-2013 school year. A total of 1,086,000 students stopped buying school lunch, after participation had increased steadily for nearly a decade. The report found that 321 districts left the National School Lunch Program altogether, many of which cited the new standards as a factor. The decline was “influenced by changes made to comply with the new lunch content and nutrition standards,” state and local officials said.
3. Kids are not eating the food and why should they? It’s disgusting. – The food was so bad, kids started tweeting photos of the food and tagging Michelle Obama:
All we get for lunch today. Thank you Michelle Obama pic.twitter.com/1rACNXM9aP — Brady Justice (@BradyJustice2) March 12, 2014
@MichelleObama my school lunch while eating with my daughter. Only other choice was a scoop of salad. This is sad! pic.twitter.com/5iPvg2nsAa — Megan Howell (@Howelady) March 14, 2014
Look! A ketchup packet! Ask Paulie Walnuts and Chris Moltisanti just how nutritious they are, seeing as that’s all they had to eat while lost in the Pine Barrens.
Keeping something around due to best intentions is a waste of time. There is nothing that shows Michelle Obama’s program was successful. It deserved to get the hook.Last weekend, several internet users in India discovered that they could no longer access popular porn websites. Confusion reigned initially, with users in different cities and across various ISPs giving conflicting reports about the extent of the "outage." By Monday morning, however, it became clear that the Indian government had issued an order late last Friday to all ISPs calling for "disablement" of 857 sites. The fact that some could still access the websites was later put down to the timing of the order, as many ISPs didn’t have the necessary staff to implement the ban over the weekend.
Viewing porn isn’t illegal in India, so you can imagine that the news of the ban invoked sharp criticism from users and activists alike. A copy of the order leaked soon enough, and a closer inspection of the list of blocked websites revealed that popular humor site 9gag and some torrent sites like KickassTorrents were also caught in the crossfire, further fueling the outrage.
The news of the ban invoked sharp criticism from users and activists alike
The uproar prompted the government to offer an explanation, with the Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad saying, "The instant action is basically in obedience to the observation of the Supreme Court where the court asked the department to take action on the list of alleged porn sites provided by the petitioner."
That’s a reference to a petition pending before the highest court in the land, one that seeks to block access to porn sites in India. The country’s chief justice, H.L. Dattu, had refused to issue an interim order banning all porn sites citing right to personal liberty.
During the course of the same case, the court had asked the government what action had been taken to block child porn |
the Union’s singleness. EU processes would have to be duplicated and reworked accordingly to fit into the then-detached euro order, while non-euro states would effectively be excluded from the club or, at any rate, be forced into accepting all sorts of faits accomplis.
The Maastricht Treaty which paved the way for the euro as the most pronounced form of differentiated integration, did so on the premise of expedience. Some countries were supposed to proceed with monetary integration, with the understanding that others would join later. That is, in part, why the Eurogroup is an informal entity and why, despite the resulting complexity, the ECB is an EU institution (not euro-specific) that is, inter alia, subject to judicial oversight by the CJEU (another EU institution). It also is for that very reason that all laws, including the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack, come through the ordinary legislative procedure rather than some specialised, euro-specific mechanism.
The gist is that the euro area is part and parcel of the EU at-large. There are differences, but these are ones of degree not category. The longer term outlook of the integration process is to preserve the singleness of the venture. Reforms to the EMU architecture should thus be consistent with the objective of keeping the Union in tact.
3. The European Parliament should not be sidelined
The crux of the T-Dem proposal is a bespoke Assembly for the euro area, which will mostly consist of members of parliament from the Member States. In principle, this idea is consistent with the way in which economic governance unfolds: at the intersection of national and supranational spheres. The current design does indeed engender asymmetries, in particular by weakening national parliaments that cannot exercise effective scrutiny over a de facto supranational (intergovernmental) entity due to differences in scope of authority (national vs supranational).
Lest we forget, this state of affairs, which is admittedly suboptimal, is the product of ad hoc measures which are expected to be streamlined and optimised in the coming years. The problem we are dealing with is not only about sufficient parliamentary control. It concerns the vertical separation of powers. What economic governance practically does is blur the lines between national and supranational affairs. Decisions are adopted at the EU level and yet the expectation is for them to be legitimised at the national one. In practice, this disturbs the delicate balance provided by the principles of conferral, subsidiarity, and proportionality, while it creates what I have referred to as a sovereignty mismatch (in short: rules for the system as a whole which are not validated by a commensurate demos).
As such, the solution is not a symmetrically compatible framework of accountability; yet another ad hoc system. The vertical separation of competences should be restored by means of granting more power to the European Parliament, while also making the decision-making aspects of economic governance accountable. The former could, given the circumstances, come in the form of a euro affairs sub-committee of ECON open to all MEPs (sub-committees are standard for the European Parliament). As for the latter, it should, at the very least, involve the Eurogroup in a more formal capacity, where its Presidency would be accountable, and thus dismissable, by the Parliament. In the future, the plan should be for a European Finance Minister to lead economic governance, with the Eurogroup being turned into a proper Council formation.
More generally though, solutions should remain in line with the objective of keeping the EU in tact.
4. The Monetary Dialogue is the business of the European Parliament
The suggestion of T-Dem is for the ECB to be held accountable by the proposed Euro Area Assembly. As was noted above, the ECB is an institution of the EU, not the euro itself. It would be contrary to the singleness of the Union to have the ECB speak only to a fraction of parliamentarians.
As things currently stand, the ECB participates in the so-called “Monetary Dialogue”, where a member of its executive council attends a hearing of the European Parliament’s ECON committee. Any reform should improve upon this platform, such as by granting more powers to the EP, while demanding greater transparency from the ECB.
The reason is that the European Parliament is the co-legislative institution of the EU. All legislation, including laws that affect the functioning of the euro area, passes through the EP. It is only natural to expect the legislators, who are well aware of the content of the laws they pass, to exercise scrutiny over their implementation. Besides, the EP is on the same horizontal magnitude as the ECB. Both are EU institutions, which operate within the framework of the horizontal separation of powers (i.e. checks and balances).
Taking powers away from the EP, either by creating new institutions or bespoke inter-state arrangements, sets a very bad precedent. It fragments the Union but, more importantly, it partialises normative issues. National parliaments are, more often than not, voting for their government. An inter-state parliamentary assembly would thus be more of an echo chamber than a robust check on the decision-makers of economic governance.
The singleness of the Union extends to the uniformity of its democratic foundation. This has to be safeguarded at all costs. The European Parliament, as a supranational institution that is not tied to any particular national or governmental agenda, is well equipped to scrutinise everything that pertains to European policy. What we need is an even more powerful EP, a ubiquitous one; one that can even become a pain in the back of inter-governmentalists.
Canonical EU reform is what we need
T-Dem wants to address a real problem: the asymmetries of Europe’s economic governance. However, the means it seeks to employ are predicated on a false premise: that it is desirable to further fragment the Union by turning differentiated integration into distinct path dependencies of integration; different scopes of Union.
At present, the conditions that gave birth to the Fiscal Compact and the ESM Treaty, do not exist. The global environment that forced such modalities of integration was one of economic duress and radical uncertainty about the very foundations of the Economic and Monetary Union. The policies adopted in the midst of th euro crisis are justifiable, even if their content is far from desirable. There is no equivalent crisis of democracy which would necessitate another round of ad hoc inventiveness that would duplicate EU structures and further fragment the Union.
We now stand at a point were momentum is building up towards a thorough reform of the EU as a whole (assuming all goes well in the French elections and elsewhere). What Europe really needs is a careful, well-planned, extended process of deliberation on the amendment of the Treaties. Rather than continue on the dangerous precedent of the Fiscal Compact and the ESM Treaty, European leaders should seek ways to iterate on the EU architecture, improve existing institutions and regularise any set of measures/procedures that currently is outside the proper order of things.
The longer term objective, the guide to concerted action at the supranational level, should always be the integrity and sustainability of the Union. This means that differentiated integration, whenever it is pursued, should not undermine the singleness of the Union. Maintaining multiple Unions may seem to solve the problems in the short term, yet it will definitely lead to friction, inconsistencies, and contradictions further down the road. Moreover, it will effectively weaken EU institutions by partialising and perhaps outsourcing part of their competences (such as the Euro Area Assembly doing part of the European Parliament’s job). Such a potential turn of events would be to the detriment of European citizens, for it would effectively increase the conduits through which dubious decisions could be ‘legitimised’.
In conclusion, and to recapitulate, my four-fold critique against the T-Dem, and the reason why I would not approve of it even if I agree with the need of fully democratising the EU/EMU, is as follows:
There is no democratic crisis, certainly not in the form of a sudden, largely unexpected concatenation of events that poses an immediate existential threat to the euro area or the Union in general. Any future reform of the EU, any amendment to the Treaties, should follow the canonical procedures, not be modelled after the Fiscal Compact and the ESM Treaty. Those were ad hoc agreements that should be treated as one-off events. Reforming the EU must also mean correcting what those agreements did wrong, including at the level of the modal features of decision-making. From now on, EU reform must be carefully-considered and broad-based. The euro area is not a distinct entity, but rather a subset of the broader EU edifice. The euro area as such would amount to very little without the EU, without its institutions and its achievements, such as the single market and the four freedoms. Treating the euro as a category unto itself is factually incorrect and strategically mistaken. It can lead to the fragmentation of the EU institutional landscape, the possible duplication of republican functions, and, worse, the partialisation of competences with democracy being the ultimate loser, both in terms of content and the overall transparency of the resulting architecture. The European Parliament is the Union’s most democratic institution in terms of input legitimacy. It represents the interests of the European citizens at-large and, thus, is the best instrument we currently have for realising anything close to an outright European democratic will-formation. Circumventing the EP can have deleterious implications, such as an overall degradation of democracy, in spite of intentions to the contrary. The Monetary Dialogue, and generally everything that pertains to the horizontal distribution of power among the EU institutions, ought not be undermined. Instead, the focus should be on further reinforcing the democratic structures of the EU order, so that, for example, the EP can exercise better oversight over the monetary function. The flip side of maintaining the balance among EU institutions, is a sensible approach to the vertical distribution of competences. Decisions at the supranational level should be legitimised at that level. Matters of national import should fall within the democratic loop of the nation state, and so on.
The above granted, I do think that the T-Dem and similar proposals are excellent contributions to the debate on the future of the European Union. What we need as Europeans is for as many people as possible to be engaged. The integration process no longer is the elitist, technocratic exercise in dismantling trade barriers and other impediments to the free movement of goods. Today we are also concerned with the normative features of the EU and, perhaps for the first time in the history of the integration process, we are contemplating the realistic possibility of turning the Union into a modern federal republic. To that end, we should treat inter-governmentalist methods as a relic of the past, at best the last resort to tackling various issues. Our focus should be on making the existing EU institutions work better in line with republican constitutional norms. There is no need for inventiveness, for new and ever more complex institutional arrangements and overlapping international relations within and beyond the confines of EU law. We can do just fine with reforms that reinforce the input and output legitimacy of each institution within the current setup, all while preserving the singleness of the Union.TILLAMOOK, Ore. (AP) Police revoked the concealed-weapons permit of a 61-year-old Tillamook man after he wriggled in his theater seat during a showing of "The Hobbit" and shook loose a loaded handgun.
A 7th-grade student found the weapon on Wednesday with a round in the chamber and the safety off.
Gary Quackenbush says he's embarrassed that the gun fell out of his holster.
Quackenbush says he always keeps the gun loaded with a round in the chamber because he never knows when he may have to use it.
"In a time of crisis like somebody barging into a mall or a theater, you don't have time to do a two-handed cocking of the weapon," Quackenbush said. "It is my mindset everywhere I go."
Quackenbush said he lives in a rural area where bears and cougars abound. He said he's had to fire his weapon to scare off animals, but in more than 40 years of gun ownership, hasn't had to fire it another person.
The student notified adults and local police cleared the theater on Wednesday.
Quackenbush said mass shootings in recent months, including a Colorado movie theater, could have been averted or the casualties lessened if someone had had a loaded weapon.
"If somebody had been prepared, they could have stopped those perpetrators long before they were able to commit those horrific acts," Quackenbush said.
Tillamook County Sheriff Andy Long said the case was handled by city police and information was forwarded to the county district attorney, who is considering whether to press charges.
Quackenbush can reapply for a concealed-weapons permit as long as criminal charges aren't pending, Long said.
"He shouldn't apply for it soon," Long said.
Quackenbush said no one answered the phone when he called the theater late Tuesday after he realized the gun had fallen out of his holster.
He said he spent a sleepless night pacing and drove to the theater early Wednesday, but police were already on scene.
"I'm totally appalled at the incident and embarrassed and regret that I gave people distress," Quackenbush said.
Of the movie "The Hobbit," his review in a letter to news media organizations explaining the incident was brief: "Overly long," he said, "and fairly boring."
You can reach reporter Nigel Duara on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/UKvVDo
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.Can Music Videos Live On Vimeo? Posted by Adam Fairholm on March 10, 2014 in News Staff Post Tweet
Update 3/17: Several music video directors are reporting that their music videos are back up.
Friday night on Twitter we began noticing a number of high-profile directors reporting that they had been notified that some of their music videos had been removed from Vimeo. The first tweet we noticed was from Director David Wilson, who had his video for "Take A Walk" by Passion Pit removed:
Boo My @VimeoStaff-picked @passionpit promo 'Take A Walk' got pulled from @Vimeo for copyright infringement. Directors have no ownership :-(? David Wilson (@hidavidwilson) March 8, 2014
Other directors chimed in on Facebook and Twitter, saying that they had also received emails from Vimeo saying that their music videos had been removed that night as well:
@hidavidwilson @Vimeo same shit just happened to our Foster the People video. What you guys doing over there, Columbia??!? Daniel Kwan (@dunkwun) March 8, 2014
. @Vimeo has begun taking down music videos that I'm legally allowed to use. This is a breach of trust. Answer for yourself Vimeo.? VINCENT HAYCOCK (@vincehaycock) March 8, 2014
Joseph Kahn is even having his videos taken down:
Hey @vimeo stop removing my videos from my page. Yes I directed them. Ain't got time to deal with that.? Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) March 9, 2014
Music videos on Vimeo have always seemed to be on uncertain legal ground, but this is the first time we've seen multiple takedowns of music videos by high-profile directors (some of them staff picked).
As a number of directors have pointed out on social media, Vimeo's hand is obviously being forced, and in fact, this morning the @VimeoStaff twitter account responded to Vincent Haycock and mentioned that his video was removed as a result of a DMCA takedown request:
@vincehaycock We are required to remove videos if we receive a valid DMCA takedown request. You can read more here: https://t.co/za2LvSdHqT? VimeoStaff (@VimeoStaff) March 10, 2014
In the last few years, Vimeo has successfully positioned itself as the hosting platform of choice for filmmakers, and music videos represent an especially challenging content issue since they are attached to a piece of copyrighted music by definition. They exist at an intersection between commercial promo and art, making them an awkward mix for Vimeo to deal with when it comes to issues such as music licensing and copyright.
The legal issues involved in this are a little above our pay grade, but we do know that in September of last year, a US judge ruled that Vimeo's safe harbor (essentially their protection against liability for hosting copyrighted works) could not be called into question in instances where it is provable that employees of Vimeo were aware of the video, such as in cases where a video is "liked" or staff picked by Vimeo employees. This ruling was related to a suit brought against Vimeo by some records labels, including EMI. As we understand it, Vimeo's safe harbor is only in tact if they respond to takedown requests, hence the recent takedowns of music videos. Vimeo even has a three strikes DMCA policy, which could potentially result in director Vimeo accounts being removed as a result of multiple DMCA claims.
Vimeo is a crucial piece of the music video ecosystem online, so we're hoping this isn't the beginning of seeing less music videos on Vimeo's platform, or the end of staff picking of high-profile music videos. We also have an interest in seeing music videos thrive on Vimeo - our site uses Vimeo as a source (along with YouTube), and we curate our own music video channel on Vimeo.
This brings up the question of what the future looks like for music videos on Vimeo. As an ad-free environment, views directed to music videos hosted on Vimeo that have monetized sources elsewhere are lost revenue for labels, which also need to protect their copyrighted material. Directors, production companies, directors of photography, and other music video creating entities all use Vimeo as a hosting platform of choice to showcase their work. These interests seem to be at odds, so if there is a solution to this, we hope we see it soon. In the mean time, directors who have had this happen to them can file a counter claim.
Update - March 11
As we see more and more directors tweeting about their videos being pulled from Vimeo, we're adding those tweets below. If you see any, please let us know at @imvdb.
Just had a bunch of my music videos removed from @Vimeo for copyright infringement. It's hard out here for a director.? isaac rentz (@isaacrentz) March 8, 2014
Just got a video pulled off of @vimeo. Now it's personal.? Josh Forbes (@bestjoshforbes) March 11, 2014
Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Google+ is now available for teenagers. Unlike some of its competitors, Google always insisted that the users of its social network were 18 or older, Today, however, the company lifted these restrictions and teenagers (13+) can now sign up for accounts as well. To support this change, Google also introduced a number of new safety features that are meant to keep teens safe.
New Safety Measures for Teens
As Google's Bradley Horowitz notes, "today’s most popular online tools are rigid and brittle by comparison, so teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called 'friends.'" To avoid this, Google+ now pops up a little warning that warns teenagers when they are about to share something publicly on Google+. Given that Google had its own problems with responsible adults also sharing content outside of their circles, maybe the company should display this message for adult users as well, though.
In addition, Google also ensures that Hangouts – the video calling and group chat feature on Google+ – remain relatively safe for teens by automatically kicking the young adult off the chat when a stranger outside of a teen's circle joins the hangout.
Some parents, however, aren't quite happy with these changes, especially because teens can still post publicly if they want to do so and because they can still join public hangouts hosted by others, it seems.A Facebook screenshot of the RM200,000 sponsorship by Pelaburan MARA.
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 12 ― An unnamed person with the title of “Tan Sri” forced MARA and its entities to sponsor the Kelantan Red Warriors football team, said the Johor crown prince today.
Challenging the “Tan Sri” to explain the decision, Tunku Ismail Tunku Ibrahim also appended photographs of documents showing a RM500,000 sponsorship by University of Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) and an additional RM200,000 by Pelaburan MARA.
UniKL is wholly owned by the federal agency.
“When the nation's economy is weak and when there are fiscal cuts here and there, you still proceeded to use the funds meant for Malaysians to fund The Red Warriors as the chairman of Mara,” he said in a Facebook posting today.
Tunku Ismail did not specifically name the individual, but the current MARA chairman is Tan Sri Annuar Musa, who is also a former president of the Kelantan Football Association.
The prince then pointed out that the move came at a time when UniKL cut its scholarships from RM2 billion to RM1.3 billion in 2016.
In the same Facebook post, he also warned that he will summon a minister whom he said was once intoxicated to explain his relationship with a woman in the state.
“Remember, don't wake a sleeping tiger. I don't disturb people, so don't disturb me.”
Tunku Ismail wrote on Tuesday to urge Malaysians not to allow the Puskas Award won by Mohd Faiz Subri convince it that the state of football here is anything other than dire.
* Editor's note: A previous version of this report incorrectly stated that Tan Sri Annuar Musa is Kelantan FA president, when he in fact resigned in November.Representative Keith Ellison came to the House floor tonight to explain what the Progressive Caucus stands for. In the process, he drew some sharp, biting, well-deserved distinctions between conservatives and progressives. It should be required viewing for every Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh fan.
In this short excerpt, Ellison gets very specific about his view of the American Dream. You should watch the whole speech if you get the chance over on CSPAN, but this was where he really got passionate and animated.
The American Dream, but the dream I'm talking about is rooted in the Pledge of Allegiance. I've got to confess to you, Mr. Speaker, I love coming here to say the Pledge of Allegiance whenever I'm privileged enough to be on the House floor at 10 AM or 12 or whenever we open. I always feel good about saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I teach it to my children.
Note: for those who still doubt Muslims' loyalty to this country, please read that and view the clip over and over till you get it.
The Pledge of Allegiance. And my favorite part of it -- and of course I love the whole thing -- my favorite part of it is when we say "liberty and justice for all." I love that part of it! For ALL.
Now see, the conservatives in this body, they like to talk about liberty. And then when they're talking about liberty they're not talking about a woman's right to choose, 'cause that's liberty. They're not talking about the freedom of worship -- to be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Bahai, no religion at all -- they don't believe in that. They believe in only one way to seek the divine and they get more radical with it every single day. They don't believe in liberties like that. They don't believe you should be able to say whatever you want to say, they don't necessarily believe in the liberties that I'm talking about.
They believe in property rights. That's the liberty they're talking about. They mean that you ought to be able to own as much as you want and if you can buy the whole state of Texas, Oklahoma, or Minnesota and you've got the money for it you ought to be able to do it. That's what they're talking about.
They're talking about property. They're talking about -- now, I believe in property rights, too. I'm a very firm believer that you ought to own your home, you ought to own your business, you ought to be able to have some things that are yours and not for the government to control. I share that belief with them, not to the extreme they believe it, but I do believe there is an important role for property rights and I also believe that there's a right for personal liberties, too. And, they're not so hot about that.
But it seems like they end the whole discussion after "and justice for all." They're ok with the liberty part as long as it's property rights. But they're against the "and justice for all."
It says "and justice." Not "or justice." And justice.
Justice has to do with treating people equally. All colors, all cultures, all faiths.
Justice means that you marry who you want to marry in America. It's not the government's business.
Justice means treating people with fairness. That's what it means.
Justice in the economic sphere means that all of us have to share the burden and expense of this great country of ours and that none of us can reap all the goodies of being in America but don't have to pay anything when it comes to footing the bill.
That's justice. Justice.
Now, this last part in some ways is the best part. For all. For every one. Last week we had some hearings in the Homeland Security Committee where one particular religious group was pointed out for persecution, actually. That was a sad day.
For all, though. America is about for all. For everybody. All Americans. Of whatever faith group, of whatever color, of whatever -- rural or urban. Straight, gay, all of us.
Liberty and justice for all. It ought to make you feel good. And when you think about liberty, this means you can do what you want to do. My conservative friends think it only means property. But it really means property or personal liberty.
Justice means we treat people fairly in America. [Note, the final line refers to the right to a fair trial. I cut it off a little choppily]CRISPR-Cas9 had captured the imagination of the world when it first became public—scientists and health professional were suddenly wondering aloud if this mean the end of genetic diseases. (Image: Reuters)
CRISPR-Cas9 had captured the imagination of the world when it first became public—scientists and health professional were suddenly wondering aloud if this mean the end of genetic diseases. So, when Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his team of researchers at the Oregon Health Sciences Center published a report on how they were successfully able to eliminate a disease-coding mutation in ova and create viable zygotes with CRISPR-Cas9, the genetic disease-free future suddenly seemed very near. Then, another research questioned Mitalipov’s findings, and explained how its action, even if the end result of the editing is the same, could be imprecise. Now, US scientists have again fuelled optimism over gene editing with two new tools. David Liu of Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has developed a ultra-precise point-mutation editing tool—point mutations or single-letter mutations occur when the wrong pair of DNA bases, adenine (A)-thymine (T) or cytosine (C)-guanine (G), is present at a locus on a codon—that can correct the error.
Point mutations cause diseases like sickle-cell anaemia, colour blindness, cystic fibrosis and are believed to be responsible for some cancers as well. The second technique, developed by Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute, edits the RNA—the genetic messenger for coding proteins—without altering the DNA. Given how the human genome consists of 6 billion DNA bases (A,T,C & G), the precision these tools bring is mind-boggling. And this is also where they score over CRISPR Cas9, though they are built off it. CRISPR edits out entire genes by cutting them out, enabling their replacement by a healthy gene. But the two new tools reach a level much finer than this.
Liu rightly says CRISPR is a scissor while base editors are fine-tipped pencils. Liu’s base editor uses an enzyme that can convert an A-T pairing to a C-G pairing, something that hadn’t been done in a lab before. Zhang’s REPAIR, on the other hand, works on the mRNA strand to repair base errors. But given mRNA are an intermediary in transcription—they later become one strand of the double-stranded DNA—the fixing of the error is unlikely to be replicated as the cell divides. These tools have considerable potential in to help eradicate some of the most dreaded diseases, but both researchers are not ready for human trials just yet.Google Maps launched 10 years ago, on February 8, 2005, and it's become the gold standard for apps that help get you from point A to point B. But it's also the greatest prank platform ever designed. Here are some of the best deliberate (and non-deliberate) ways that Maps has been borked over the past decade.
When Google Maps Got a Feline Best Friend
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Sure you can doodle all over Google Maps by measuring distances, but this enterprising prankster took it to the next level by creating a cat out of actual trails. For a second, we thought maybe Google Maps adopted a new mascot, but they soon wiped the kitty from existence. Sad day.
When Google Maps Welcomed the "Internet Cock Advisory Committee"
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Google Maps didn't just annihilate the competition when it came to digital mapping, it also made a telephone book completely useless—that is until people discovered that it's pretty easy to make a fake listing. Like last year when the Internet Cock Advisory Committee made an appearance in Washington D.C. Or how about way back in 2008 when the Microsoft Corporation was renamed to Microsoft Escort Service. Spamming is almost ubiquitous to all technology, but only on Google Maps is it more hilarious than annoying.
When the Hollywood Sign Disappeared, Reappeared, and then Disappeared
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Google Maps, of course, makes things infinitely easier to find, and for 99.999% of us, that's a good thing. But if you're in the extreme minority of people who, say, live right next to one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world, then it just gets reeeeeaaalll annoying. Exhibit A is the Hollywood sign perched up in the hills of Los Angeles. Tourists flock to Google Maps to find it, and residents don't want them to...thus, the Hollywood sign's disappearing act continues.
When Google Maps Walks People Into Highway Traffic
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Back in 2010, when Google Maps was half as old and therefore half as wise, you didn't want to put too much faith in the platform's walking directions. In fact, even Google didn't and would accompany walking directions with this friendly, "please, don't kill yourself" reminder:
Walking directions are in beta. Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.
Only problem was that the message didn't show up on BlackBerrys, specifically Lauren Rosenberg's BlackBerry and she followed the directions to the letter, walked on to a highway and was hit by a car. Actually, now that I write this, this is everyone's fault except Google Maps'.
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When Google Maps Creates Its Very Own Islands and Cities
In 2012, the drama Lost played out completely on Google Maps. A small island known as Sandy Island appeared and then disappeared. The reason? Well, it never really existed in the first place. The same is true for the phantom city of "Argleton" in 2009, which thankfully isn't a real city and restores my faith in humanity's ability to name things.
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And Completely Ignores Real Ones
Back in 2012 for nearly a month, the sunny town (I would assume) of Sunrise, Florida just didn't exist on Google Maps. Instead, any query searching for the very real town would be redirected almost 200 miles away, which brings up an important question: If you don't exist on the internet nowadays, do you exist at all?
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When Google Maps Misplaced a Mountain
Hey man, I get it. Geography can be tough, but when you're all about maps you probably shouldn't misplace the largest mountain in the lower 48. I mean, it's not exactly easy to miss. Sure, if you move some podunk town with a population of 12 a couple miles in the wrong direction, no big deal. But a mountain? C'mon.
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When Google Maps Sent Legions of Park Goers to a Woman's House
"NOT Park Entrance... Private Driveway... Google Maps is wrong!" That was a sign that a poor New Jersey woman needed to erect in her front yard when Google routed all traffic to a local park to her driveway. Google Maps has the power to create convenience...and also destroy it.
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When Google Maps Almost Incited a Border War
Google Maps has even gotten itself into some international troubled waters. In 2010, a Nicaraguan commander conquered part of Costa Rica and ordered the country to take down their flag all based on an error made on Google Maps. You'd think there would be a more strict fact-checking policy before launching your own micro-war, but this is the "if it's on the internet, it must be true" world we live in.
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Happy Birthday, Google Maps!Character by * curran (c) HasbroOriginal character vector - [link] By * Arctic-Sekai Background and environment by ` vest So after a bit of discussion, * curran and I decided that we needed just one more piece of artwork to complement Starstruck with. The first couple chapters were received quite warmly, even getting a feature very early on in its life cycle.But now that it has been received and has an established base of readers wanting more content, our rate of production on Starstruck will be ramping up.This is the header image that will be used for chapter 3, which is going up tonight. It's an image of protagonist Devon Bookmark getting that last errant ray of sunlight before commencing his eventful and psychologically draining adventure deep into the trap-laden corridors of gnarled death beneath the Canterlot Archives.Much as you'd expect from a story tagged "adventure" and "romance!"If you're the kind of person who has any curiosity at all overfanfiction, and apparently there's a ton of you (much to my delighted surprise) head on over and READ IT HERE!Ben Carson said in an interview published Tuesday that President Obama was “raised white” and can’t understand the African-American experience the way he can.
“He’s an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white,” he told a Politico podcast. “I mean, like most Americans, I was proud that we broke the color barrier when he was elected, but … he didn’t grow up like I grew up … Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks during a town hall meeting Sunday, Feb. 21, 2016, in Reno, Nev. Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP
The Republican presidential candidate finished sixth out of six in South Carolina; after peaking in November, he’s been polling at the bottom of the pack and struggling to turn supporters into voters. Carson’s rags-to-riches journey from impoverished the inner city of Detroit to an internationally renowned career as a pediatric neurosurgeon first got him on the national stage, but it’s this kind of inflammatory criticism of the president that got him on the radar of conservatives nationally and drafted him to run for president.
Carson long dismissed questions about race as divisive and downplayed his own race, but in these final days he’s dug into race as a campaign issue, running ads against affirmative action in South Carolina and condemning black crime as “a crisis” that only he knows how to overcome.
These attacks are nothing new: critics have been arguing that the president is too black – or not black enough – since he appeared on the political stage. Rupert Murdoch came under fire earlier last year for suggesting that Carson could be the “real black President who can properly address the racial divide,” while Rush Limbaugh has argued that Obama “disowned” his white side.
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The president himself has addressed the issue at length.
“Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of “acting white”—which sometimes is overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that? Or why are you speaking so properly?” he said in the summer of 2014. “And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.”With a 2-1 win over the Chicago Fire last night, and some other results going their way yesterday and today, Toronto FC is once again the top team in the East. This time, they will be looking to hold on to that lead for the rest of the season.
As the 2016 season draws to an end, the MLS Eastern Conference has in many ways become a three horse race between Toronto and the two clubs from New York. The Philadelphia Union and Montreal Impact are at least in the conversation as well, but have a lot of ground to make up and are running out of time.
Toronto FC definitely has the inside track to the title, as all but one of their remaining games will be played at BMO Field. Their next game might be the biggest of the season, hosting the New York Red Bulls with a chance to cement themselves at the top.
Here’s a look at the race for the Eastern Conference crown, and the three teams fighting to win it.
Toronto FC
Record: 13-7-8 (46 points) 41 Goals For 29 Goals Against (+12 GD)
Matches Remaining: 6
Matches at Home/Away: 5 Home/ 1 Away
Key Matches: Sept 18 vs. New York Red Bulls, Sept 24 vs. Philadelphia Union
Matches vs. East/West: 6 vs. East
Remaining Schedule: Sept 18 vs. New York Red Bulls, Sept 24 vs. Philadelphia Union, Sept 28 vs. Orlando City, Oct 1 vs. D.C. United, Oct 16 @Montreal Impact, Oct 23 vs. Chicago Fire
As mentioned above, Toronto FC certainly has the easiest of the remaining schedules. The fact that five |
most of this information.”
Officials, including CIA officers, were still decrypting and analysing the flash sticks when Abu Hajjar’s prophecy was realised. Isis swept through much of northern and central Iraq over three stunning days, seizing control of Mosul and Tikrit and threatening Kirkuk as three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.
The capitulation of the military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in Iraq, crippled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, allowed Kurdish forces to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk and galvanised a Shia fightback along sectarian lines, posing a serious threat to the region’s fragile geopolitics. On Sunday Isis published photographs that appeared to show it capturing and killing dozens of Iraqi soldiers.
“By the end of the week, we soon realised that we had to do some accounting for them,” said the official flippantly. “Before Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875m [£515m]. Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks and the value of the military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5bn to that.”
Isis fighters, pictured on a militant website verified by AP. Photograph: AP
Laid bare were a series of staggering numbers that would be the pride of any major enterprise, let alone an organisation that was a startup three years ago.
The group’s leaders had been meticulously chosen. Many of those who reported to the top tier – all battle-hardened veterans of the insurgency against US forces nearly a decade ago – did not know the names of their colleagues. The strategic acumen of Isis was impressive – so too its attention to detail. “They had itemised everything,” the source said. “Down to the smallest detail.”
Over the past year, foreign intelligence officials had learned that Isis secured massive cashflows from the oilfields of eastern Syria, which it had commandeered in late 2012, and some of which it had sold back to the Syrian regime. It was also known to have reaped windfalls from smuggling all manner of raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state, as well as priceless antiquities from archaeological digs.
But here before them in extraordinary detail were accounts that would have breezed past forensic accountants, giving a full reckoning of a war effort. It soon became clear that in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band of extremists to perhaps the most cash-rich and capable terror group in the world.
“They had taken $36m from al-Nabuk alone [an area in the Qalamoun mountains west of Damascus]. The antiquities there are up to 8,000 years old,” the intelligence official said. “Before this, the western officials had been asking us where they had gotten some of their money from, $50,000 here, or $20,000 there. It was peanuts. Now they know and we know. They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don’t need one.”
The scale of Isis’s resources seems to have prepared it for the improbable. But even by its ruthless standards, occupying two major cities in Iraq in three days, holding on to parts of Falluja and Ramadi, and menacing Kirkuk and Samara, was quite an accomplishment.
Social media postings throughout last week revealed the group’s shock at its successes. Some posting showed extremists weeping with joy as dozens of Iraqi army humvess were driven through a sand berm on the border into Syria.
Foreign jihadists, many from Europe, were among those who stormed into Mosul and have spread through central Iraq ever since. Most of their names were already known to the intelligence agencies which had tried to track their movements after they arrived in Turkey, then disappeared, initially across the Syrian border. But noms de guerre given to the new arrivals had left their trails cold. Now officials had details of next of kin, and often phone numbers and emails.
Whether the intelligence haul can do much to reel in Isis after the fact seems a moot point, with the group having already wrought so much carnage in such a short time. “We will eventually find them,” said the Iraqi official. “We knew they had infiltrated the ministries and the most frustrating thing about that flash [stick] was it only had initials. We are focusing on the initials that had the annotation ‘valuable’ next to them.”
Other names were clearly of lesser use, he said. They were marked with “lazy”, “undecided” or “needs monitoring”.
More than ever before is now known about how Isis has gathered steam. The past week has also been an advanced education in its capabilities and ambitions. “Now we have to catch up with them,” the official said.As Kentucky cruised through its season, claiming the No. 1 ranking early and holding onto it most of the way, the bulk of the attention went to Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb — or freshman, freshman, sophomore, sophomore.
All turned to Miller for guidance. Teammates said Miller helped them to find their classes, guided them through workouts, listened to their problems and dispensed advice. He did all of that even when Calipari benched him; he was the top reserve for all games save one since Jan. 21.
To Chris O’Hearn, who coached Miller at Mason County High School, that sounded like the player who still ranks among his favorites. Miller was always deferential, sometimes to a fault. In the state championship game, the other team guarded Miller, a potential N.B.A. draft pick, with one player, yet he managed only a handful of points by halftime. Prodded by O’Hearn, he scored 19 in the second half.
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This deference continued at Kentucky, which further exasperated Calipari on occasion. In February of last season, Miller twice received the ball in the final minute and twice passed up open shots against Mississippi State. A year later, again against the Bulldogs, Calipari benched Miller for not taking an open shot. When Miller came in later, he shot often, made one 3-pointer, then another, then two more. Kentucky won, again.
On Saturday, in the national semifinals against Louisville, Miller played decisively, deferred to no one. His 3-pointer extended the Wildcats’ lead to 58-51 late and prompted a Louisville timeout. At the Kentucky bench, Miller wrapped Calipari in a bear hug, one veteran to another. The game seemed in hand after that.
“What he’s done is make each one of those 40 teammates at Kentucky better,” O’Hearn said. “He epitomizes the word unselfish.”
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Miller said he remembered each of the guys he had played with, from the biggest stars to the last players on the bench. He said dozens of former teammates had sent him text messages last week.
He did not criticize the teammates who left early for N.B.A. riches. That is how Kentucky basketball has worked under Calipari, who used one of his favorite one-and-done diatribes again Sunday, continuing his criticism of the rule that high school players cannot immediately enter the draft and must wait at least one season.
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“I don’t apologize,” he said. “It’s not my rule. I don’t like the rule. I mean, Steve Jobs left, Bill Gates left. The integrity of their schools were at stake when they left.” The delivery of the last sentence dripped with sarcasm, as did this one: “They should have stayed and not changed the world.”
On Monday, Miller is set to break the Kentucky record for games played, a testament to his longevity and to the success of the program since Calipari arrived. The freshman season Miller hardly remembered ended in the National Invitation Tournament. In the three years that followed under Calipari, Kentucky advanced to the final eight, the Final Four and now the final, period.
For a player from Maysville, Ky., about 65 miles from Kentucky’s campus, whose favorite Wildcat was Tony Delk, there could not be a more perfect ending. Calipari took a crack at Miller’s legacy: “Has won a ton of games. Is going to graduate. Is Kentucky’s own. They love him. He’s beloved. Fifty years from now, they’re going to be talking about him.”
Talking about the senior, part baby sitter, part role player, an honest-to-goodness upperclassman, who could lead Kentucky, the freshman factory, to the title.We are extremely saddened to announce today that Sound On Sound Fest 2017 is being cancelled. This is one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make. Due to several recent roadblocks outside of our control and in an effort to do right by our fans, the decision to cancel the event was our only real option.
All ticket holders will be 100% refunded for the costs of their tickets. That refund process has already been initiated through our ticketing partner, Eventbrite, for all attendees who purchased ticket(s) through their site. There is no action necessary on your end and you can expect to see the refund on your credit/debit card statement within the next 5-7 business days.
If you bought a physical ticket, please email info@soundonsoundfest.com to process your refund.
If you have questions about this entire process, please contact us at info@soundonsoundfest.com. We are dedicated to answering any questions and concerns that you might have.
We are currently in the process of rescheduling the majority of the artists who were set to play Sound On Sound Fest at other venues in the area, and will be announcing the shows and individual show tickets available for purchase very shortly. There are many acts who were touring through November 10-12 who are still performing as well as a number of artists who will be flying back in for new dates this year. For all these rescheduled shows, fans who purchased Sound On Sound tickets will get the first chance to purchase single tickets to any makeup shows this fall. Fans will be emailed a link with details in advance of the public onsale with a limited time to purchase before tickets open to the general public. We will announce the schedule for shows on Monday, October 16. The private presale exclusively for all Sound On Sound Fest ticket holders will start on Monday, October 16 and run until Thursday, October 19 at 8 a.m., when the public onsale begins.
We truly love our fans. We appreciate you sticking by us while we work hard to make this right. Be on the lookout for new show announcements from Sound On Sound Fest artists and ticket links for these replacement shows.
Sincerely,
Sound On Sound FestThe Arkansas legislature has just passed a sweeping pro-discrimination bill, and is sending it to their Republican governor's desk.
On Monday the Arkansas Senate passed a sweeping bill that bans every town, city, and municipality in the state from passing or enforcing non-discrimination ordinances. The legislation just passed the House today, and now is on its way to Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson's desk, where it is expected to be signed into law.
The legislation, billed as an "emergency" bill, is being masqueraded as a commerce bill, designed to make doing business across the state easier, and more inviting to out-of-state companies.
"This bill creates uniformity for business, and citizens for that matter, that our employment laws will be the same throughout the state," GOP Rep. Bob Ballinger said today, as Buzzfeed reported. "There are some things on a statewide basis we deal with all the time, such as murder and fraud — a variety of things that need to be uniform."
Arkansas State Senator Bart Hester, whom NCRM profiled yesterday, defended his legislation, saying, "civil rights need to not be a volatile situation."
LOOK: 'Singled Out' GOP Lawmaker To End All LGBT Protections 'Because I Am Married To One Woman'
He also, now infamously said, "I am singled out as a politician. I am singled out because I am married to one woman," he told Buzzfeed. "I want everyone in the LGBT community to have the same rights I do. I do not want them to have special rights that I do not have."
What it actually does is strike down all local ordinances that prohibit discrimination, effectively amounting to a war on the LGBT community, which already faces serious discrimination in The Natural State.
Sen. Hester, who last year spoke at an anti-gay marriage rally, had said he was "infuriated" that local cities and towns were passing legislation to protect their LGBT citizens from being discriminated against in housing, employment, and education.
Image via Flickr
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]#Manintree Mom Heartbroken By Years Of Trying To Help Son
Lisa Gossett was home in Alaska when her sister called about a YouTube video. Gossett’s son had climbed an 80-foot sequoia tree in downtown Seattle, stayed there for 25 hours and inspired an international hashtag, #manintree. “I was shocked, heart-broke,” she told KUOW’s Bill Radke from Wasilla. “My daughter and I were watching it and shed a lot of tears. This is not the kid we knew.” Her son is Cody Lee Miller, 28. Last Gossett knew, he was living in Oregon. He was clean cut – he didn’t have that infamous bushy beard – but he was growing increasingly paranoid. It wasn’t always like this.
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“He was a rambunctious little kid,” Gossett said. “He was always outside playing and climbing to the top of trees. He was picking up every lizard and spider – just a kid that loved nature and that was pretty happy.” More KUOW: Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox And My 7-Year-Old Daughter Miller had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, but his mom said he didn’t have many behavioral problems. Mostly, he had a lot of energy. She started noticing a shift in her son’s behavior about six years ago. That’s when Miller was staying with Gossett and her husband after fishing in the Bering Sea. Gossett was alarmed when she found knives under his pillow. “I would ask him, ‘Why you got knives under your pillows?’” she said. “He would say, ‘Just to keep us safe.’ And I would say, ‘We are safe.’”
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When they went downtown, Miller refused to enter stores. When he did, he pulled up his hood, convinced people were staring at him. Once in the night, he cried out for Gossett. “There’s an evil presence down here,” he told his mom. “It’s terrible. It’s evil and it scares me.” He ended up moving into a motorhome on his grandmother’s property in Roseburg, Oregon. But he quickly unraveled further, painting a large X at the edge of her property. More KUOW: When A 14-Year-Old Chooses To Die Because Of Religion, Can Anyone Stop Him? And then, more worrisome behavior:
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Miller walked down the street in high socks and clown glasses. He spread deer bones on the road. He hit a guy who had a flat tire. He did cartwheels in the field. “Every other month he was in jail,” Gossett said. Miller had dreams of killing his grandmother. He set her woodshop on fire. Although it pained her, his grandmother got a restraining order. “His grandmother cries to me all the time that she had to put him out on the streets,” Gossett said.
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Gossett called everyone she thought could help – the Alaska governor’s office, mental health evaluators, probation officers. Sometimes she would travel to meet her son but miss him because the jail would have released him. More KUOW: The Story Behind Seattle's Obsession With Craftsman Homes “They just put these people back on the streets,” Gossett said. “I feel hopeless. It’s so frustrating because I see his brothers and sisters crying for him. People are scared of him. He’s paranoid and violent. I’ve pretty much prepared myself for his death.” Gossett said she wants laws to change. It doesn’t help her son – or taxpayers – to have him cycle through prison and the streets, she said. “He gets in trouble for not checking in with his parole officer – he doesn’t even know the time of day,” she said. “How is he supposed to check in once a month? So he goes back to jail, gets thrown out back on the streets. It’s just a Band-Aid. Let’s fix this problem.”
SponsorChiefs quarterback Alex Smith saw receiver Tyreek Hill sprinting downfield in single coverage on Sunday, and Smith, who routinely peppers defenses with short and intermediate passes, didn’t hestitate. He uncorked a beauty downfield, right up top, and let his blazing fast rookie — who ran a 4.24 40-yard dash at his Pro Day — run up under it and haul it in.
Touchdown, Chiefs.
The 38-yard second-quarter strike gave the Chiefs a 14-point lead in their 27-21 win, and while Hill caught it with a bit of flair — his one-handed catch was worth a round of applause from the crowd at Arrowhead Stadium — it wasn’t like it came out of nowhere.
“Yeah, I’ve made the catch before,” Hill said afterward. “It wasn’t a surprise to me or anyone on the team.... Alex and I have been working together a lot, and it’s working out.”
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That’s right. Because throughout organized-team activities in May and June, and training camp in August, Smith and Hill routinely connected on deep balls. Smith, who is famously risk-averse, does not attempt dangerous throws unless he feels the odds are in his favor. Downfield throws can qualify as dangerous, but the frequency with which he tried to connect with Hill suggested a burgeoning comfort that was coming surprisingly quickly.
“He’s a guy that tracks the ball really well... in the air and down the field,” Smith said. “Some guys just play bigger with the ball in the air. There are smaller guys that play the deep ball really well, and it has to do with body positioning, tracking the ball, timing. There’s so many things that go into that.
“Certainly you saw it there, with him going up strong, timing that ball well downfield.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid agreed, noting that being a consistent deep threat takes more than pure speed.
“You have to have a whole game to do that, so he’s been working on that part of it,” Reid said. “If you just run down the field, they’re gonna cover you. He’s got other things he does that he’s getting better at.”
One of those areas is aggressiveness, something Smith requires from a receiver — barring him being wide open — to give him a shot on a go-ball. The thought process is this: an aggressive receiver — someone who attacks the ball in the air — reduces the chance of something bad, like an interception, happening. That, in turn, skews the odds of a favorable play occurring toward the offense, something Smith is always conscious of.
“More often than not, you avoid the negative play,” Smith said. “The advantage is to the offense — catch, pass interference and at worst, an incompletion.”
Still, Smith is aware that even in the absence of that trust, going up top every now and then still helps — though the Chiefs currently rank last in deep attempts to the left (eight), 19th in deep attempts down the middle (eight) and 23rd in deep attempts to the right (13).
“As far as stretching the field, putting that in (the defense’s) minds that you’re willing to do it,” Smith said.
But if you’re someone who hopes to see Smith go downfield more, that quote is still not necessarily an invitation to criticize his decision-making.
When Smith eschews an open deep shot — or what at least appears to be an open deep shot — keep in mind that within each playcall, there’s an unspoken communication of what they’re trying to get done. And within that, some of those plays — Andy Reid’s plays — allow for deep shots and some don’t.
SHARE COPY LINK Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill said extra work with quarterback Alex Smith paid off with a touchdown reception Sunday against the New Orleans Saints.
Remember, Reid has lots of confidence in his playcalling ability, and Smith just last year received freedom to change plays at the line of scrimmage.
“Some plays, you get more leeway than others,” Smith said. “Some are... really kind of a structured play where I don’t have as much freedom, sort to speak.”
The good news, Smith added, is that he when does have the freedom, he feels comfortable going up top to his other receivers, like Jeremy Maclin and Chris Conley, as well.
But Hill, who logged more snaps Sunday than No. 3 receiver Albert Wilson for the second week in a row, is certainly someone he’ll feel comfortable throwing it up to more going forward.
“You just rip it,” Smith said, “and let him go up. To be able to add that component to his game has been nice.”Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the stop-and-frisk numbers in New York City, as of March, had dramatically declined, but the NYPD was arresting increasing numbers of subway dancers, panhandlers and those caught on minor violations such as drinking beer in public. The long fight against the unconstitutional stopping, questioning and frisking of black and brown youth had yielded results, but the NYPD simply shifted strategies to ensure their continued criminalization. Ad Policy
The week before that, Anna Lekas Miller wrote here at The Nation about the disbanding of the NYPD’s Zone Assessment Unit—the outfit responsible for spying on Muslim communities. Again, the work of activists and grassroots organizers resulted in what appeared to be progress. But Lekas Miller wrote at the time:
Yet, as much as the demise of the Zone Assessment Unit signals a step in the right direction, many Muslim community members question how significant the move really is. They worry that the change is more cosmetic than actual, a splashy declaration that obscures the way surveillance continues by other names. And after more than a decade under the NYPD’s watchful eye, who can blame them for the suspicion?
And, as luck would have it, this weekend we learned about the Citywide Debriefing Team, described by The New York Times as “a squad of detectives [that] has combed the city’s jails for immigrants—predominantly Muslims—who might be persuaded to become police informants.” Here’s more:
Last month, the Police Department announced it had disbanded a controversial surveillance unit that had sent plainclothes detectives into Muslim communities to listen in on conversations and build detailed files on where people ate, prayed and shopped. But the continuing work of the debriefing team shows that the department has not backed away from other counterterrorism initiatives that it created in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
These informants differ from traditional police informants, who are often asked to provide police with information about criminal activity. The Citywide Debriefing Team recruited people solely on the basis of their Muslim identity, with no prior knowledge of any crimes necessary. So while the NYPD has ended its practice of mapping and spying on Muslims using plain clothes police officers, it’s producing the same results with a different tactic. Not much different from what has happened with stop-and-frisk.
And this keeps happening because we, as American citizens, refuse to question the fundamental goals of policing.
We often find ourselves caught in a debate about the particularities of certain egregious police tactics. And while it’s important to protect communities and people in the here and now, what we miss is a larger discussion about the role police should have in law enforcement. Right now, we seem to have conceded that the police ought to play a preventive role, pre-empting crime by aggressively seeking out potential lawbreakers. That means that the police are granted discretion to determine who constitutes a potential lawbreaker. In a country built on suspicion of the “other,” that more often than not means black and Latino youth, and in a post-9/11 world, Muslims of Middle Eastern descent. As such, police are given tools (stop-and-frisk, surveillance) that abuse the rights of the already marginalized, under the auspices of serving and protecting the greater good.
Then those communities fight back. They take to the streets and to the courtrooms in a fight to be treated like human beings and not presumed to be thugs or terrorists, under whatever definition of those terms that is being used to justify police overreach. And sometimes they win. But the wins are fleeting because the police adopt new, some may say more refined, approaches to doing the same job of terrorizing these communities.
The cosmetic changes to the police state give us the false impression that the nature of policing has changed, that somehow it isn’t about monitoring, arresting and locking away the “other” as a way of “protecting” the true citizenry. We honestly believe that if we do away with the most blatantly destructive, racist, xenophobic, sexist etc. police practices then we do away with the problems of police abuse. Not if the philosophy doesn’t change.
Yesterday, it was reported that the “New York Police Department will significantly limit the practice of seizing condoms for use as evidence in prostitution-related cases, ending a procedure that health officials had long criticized as undermining their efforts to protect [sex workers] from disease.” Now, how long before the police find a way around this, too?Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is being interviewed Thursday by the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, as they hone in on whether political bias tainted the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
A key topic is expected to be discussed is whether senior FBI officials discussed attempting to prevent Trump’s election. A text message sent by senior FBI official Peter Stzrok to another official suggested that they had discussed in McCabe’s office Trump’s election and said they couldn’t “take that risk.” “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” he added.
Andrew MCCABE has arrived for his judiciary/oversight committee closed door interview. pic.twitter.com/5ZWxqF2fuE — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 21, 2017
A day before, McCabe was interviewed by the House intelligence committee, where he reportedly gave answers that conflicted the testimony of previous witnesses, and could not confirm the Trump dossier’s allegations, according to Fox News.
His conflicting answers prompted Republicans on the committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel, likely DOJ official Bruce Ohr and FBI General Counsel James Baker. Ohr was demoted at the DOJ for concealing meetings he had with the Trump dossier author and the co-founder of the firm behind it, Fusion GPS. Ohr’s wife, Russia expert Nellie Ohr, was later found to have worked for Fusion GPS during the campaign.
Democrats during the interview reportedly pressed McCabe — unsuccessfully — to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice. McCabe also discussed how hard the FBI worked to verify the contents of the dossier, but could only confirm that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow — a trip that was reported on in the press.
There are reportedly documents that McCabe signed that establish his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and source — the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, but when asked when he found out that the dossier had been funded by them, he said he could not recall.
The House intelligence and Judiciary committees have been raising the pressure on the FBI and the DOJ. The intelligence committee has been working to uncover whether the Obama DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the salacious and unconfirmed dossier to obtain spy warrants on the Trump campaign and launch their investigation against the Trump campaign.
The Judiciary Committee recently uncovered anti-Trump texts by senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who worked on the Clinton email investigation and on the Russia special counsel. Strzok was removed after the texts were found by the Justice Department’s inspector general and Page ended her assignment on the Special Counsel before they were found. They had discussed with Mwere also found to be having an affair.
McCabe is also under scrutiny, for working on the Clinton investigation and recusing himself only a week before the election, while his wife received donations in her run for a Virginia state senator seat from Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe.
The FBI and DOJ have been stonewalling congressional investigators for months, but have recently begun cooperating, as public pressure has built.
McCabe appearance before the Judiciary Committee comes as Republicans on the committee, most notably Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have threatened subpoenas of FBI and Justice Department officials and documents.The use of instant replay is officially allowed in the state of New York, and was indeed used to determine the controversial finish of Gegard Mousasi’s victory over Chris Weidman at UFC 210, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) to MMA Fighting.
The statement addresses a question that has been mired in debate since referee Dan Miragliotta called a stop to the controversial contest midway through the second round at UFC 210 after Mousasi twice kneed Weidman in the head while Weidman was attempting to make himself a grounded opponent by placing both of his hands on the mat. Believing the blows to be illegal, Miragliotta gave Weidman extra time to recover, however he then reversed course and Mousasi was granted a TKO victory after the knees were discovered to be legal.
Several key UFC figures on the pay-per-view broadcast, including UFC regulatory head Marc Ratner, stated that the use of instant replay was not allowed in the state of New York. Nonetheless, Miragliotta appeared to consult fellow cageside referee John McCarthy during the stoppage in action, and McCarthy — having seen a replay — correctly deemed the knees to be legal. In-cage doctors then deemed Weidman no longer fit to continue, and due to the knees not being considered a foul, Mousasi was awarded a TKO victory.
Confusion has since reigned over the legality of instant replay under NYSAC jurisdiction. And on Tuesday, the commission confirmed to MMA Fighting that instant replay is not only allowed in the state, but was also used to reach the NYSAC’s decision for Mousasi vs. Weidman.
“Mr. Weidman was determined to be unable to continue the match due to legal blows received, resulting in a TKO,” the NYSAC said in a statement. “In New York State, it has been held that the Commission may review video evidence in order to meet its obligation to render correct determinations and act in the best interest of the sport.
“After the referee initially ruled the strikes from Mr. Mousasi illegal, he consulted with the alternate referee during the physician assessment of Mr. Weidman and determined that the knee strikes by Mousasi were not illegal. During the examination of Mr. Weidman by Commission medical staff, it was determined he was medically unfit to continue and the referee ruled a TKO victory in favor of Mr. Mousasi.”
The question of instant replay use in New York was previously murky to the point that not only were several UFC officials unaware of the rule, but the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board also issued a statement on Monday strongly encouraging all other regulatory bodies to implement the use of video review.
At UFC 210’s post-fight press conference on Saturday, a frustrated Weidman indicated that he planned to file an appeal regarding the NYSAC’s decision in the Mousasi bout. Weidman’s longtime coach, Ray Longo, also voiced displeasure about the ruling during a Monday appearance on the Anik Florian Podcast.
“Stick to your f*cking decision,” Longo said of Miragliotta. “I want to know who the hell convinced him to change his mind.
“Take it step by step. Stick to your call and that’s it. Whether the knee was legal or illegal is really irrelevant. Because the other thing that I think people are missing is [Weidman] didn’t go down when he got kneed. He would have kept fighting.”Have you heard? Amazon lost more money than Wall Street expected! The stock is down 10% in pre-market trading wiping out $15 billion in market value! Is Wall Street getting fed up with Jeff Bezos?
All the hyperventilating raises two questions for investors: Why does Jeff Bezos manage Amazon as he does? Does that make today's plunge a buying opportunity?
Before getting into those questions, let's look at the financial report that has Wall Street in a tizzy. Amazon lost 21 cents a share more than the 74 that analysts had expected. And though revenue rose 20% to about $20.6 billion -- that number was $280 million lighter than Wall Street expected. Moreover, Amazon said revenue would only grow 7% to 18% in the fourth quarter.
Bezos acts as though Wall Street is missing something. “As we get ready for this upcoming holiday season, we are focused on making the customer experience easier and more stress-free than ever,” he said in a statement to accompany Amazon's earnings.
Amazon did have some bright spots in the form of new products and positive reviews. According to the New York Times, "Amazon’s tablet line was refreshed during the quarter to enthusiastic reviews. Transparent, an original [comedy] production for the Prime membership club, got good notices. [Streaming box] Fire TV, introduced in the spring, [is popular]."
Amazon also expanded its grocery delivery service to Brooklyn and acquired "Twitch, a popular streaming site, to bolster its gaming opportunities," according to the Times.
Amazon also made some bad investments. Its Fire phone was an expensive flop. Of 500 Amazon customers surveyed, not one owned a Fire; reviewers on Amazon gave the product the lowest possible rating, thousands of employees worked on the Fire, and Amazon has $83 million of Fire inventory it is trying to get rid of, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, Amazon is investing $2 billion on video and music content in 2o14 and will boost that to $2.5 billion in 2015, according to Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.
What investors are conveniently forgetting is that Bezos is an entrepreneur of a high tech company, not a manager of a predictable utility. Though he has less hair on his head than he did in the 1990s when he drove from New York where he worked for a hedge fund to Seattle where he started Amazon -- he is the same person who started the company, took it public, and has been keeping it growing despite years of periodic scoffing by investors about its finances.
He, Reid Hastings, and Mark Zuckerberg are among the few CEOs who are both entrepreneurs and effective leaders of their now publicly-traded companies.
What I think of as an effective leader is not what Wall Street always wants, though. That's because running a high technology business successfully requires a willingness to keep reinventing it so that it maintains its lead.
After all, no high technology CEO wants to lead the cliché of a company that rests on its laurels and gets taken over by an upstart with a better way of doing things. Bezos has proven his ability to prevent that -- maintaining pretty consistent 20% revenue growth -- an amazing feat for a $75 billion company.
Along the way, he has infuriated all sorts of people. Hachette authors probably detest him, there are legions of current and former employees who do not sound very happy about the company (in April he offered warehouse workers who didn't like the company $5,000 to quit), and of course there are the cries of people who are fed up with Amazon always losing money.
But Bezos is oblivious to all this because a simple idea seems to have taken over his mind: gain market share by offering consumers the lowest prices on an ever-expanding variety of products and services along with efficient delivery and helpful customer service.
In order to put that simple idea into practice, Bezos invests the capital he enjoys thanks to being a public company into what he thinks are good bets that will enable Amazon to win in more markets. Sometimes the bets pay off, sometimes they fail.
When they fail, he writes them off and moves on. If investors don't like that, they can sell their shares. If they do, they can buy Amazon after it has a bad quarter and take a chance that his current bets will lead to better-than-expected results in the future.Image copyright IHS Jane's Image caption Satellite images of Fiery Cross Reef (CNES 2015, Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image / IHS)
China will complete a series of controversial land reclamation projects in the South China Sea "soon", the foreign ministry says.
The US and countries with competing claims in the area maintain that China is creating artificial islands to use as military bases.
The ministry says they are for defence, but also maritime search and rescue, disaster relief and research.
China claims most of the South China Sea.
Last year, China increased its land reclamation activity |
longer match time and to be given more meaningful story lines and to have deeper character development. Our fans said with their voices very loud and clear that we want more from our female performers."
The WWE knew they had to do something but there wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to what the fans were asking for. Sure, they gave their female performers more air time the following week. After all, 30 seconds wasn't a difficult hurdle to cross. But they knew there was going to be a significant shift for females in the company in the not-too-distant future thanks to four women who were establishing themselves as superstars in NXT, the WWE's developmental division based in Winter Park, Florida.
Current WWE women's champion Sasha Banks took part in a triple threat match at WrestleMania 32 in April that nearly stole the show. Miller Safrit/ESPN
"We started slowly but surely featuring our female [talent] a little bit more prominently," Stephanie McMahon said. "All you had to do was look at what was happening in NXT with the 'Four Horsewomen' of Charlotte, Becky Lynch, Bayley and Sasha Banks and what they were doing and how they were elevating women's wrestling. It was to the point that the fans were chanting, 'This is wrestling!' and 'Women's wresting!' Our fans were saying so loudly and so clearly that this is what we want. This is amazing and we want more."
NXT was founded in 2012 by Stephanie McMahon's husband, Paul Levesque, who is better known to WWE fans as Triple H. It was a way for the company to recruit and develop new talent during a time when WWE doesn't have any real competitors in the market space. Many current WWE superstars got their start in NXT, such as Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, but perhaps the biggest impact NXT has made was in redefining the role of female performers and giving them a chance to show what they could do in the ring.
In October at "NXT TakeOver: Respect," which was the biggest NXT show at the time, the main event was a 30-minute "Iron Man Match" for the NXT Women's Championship between Sasha Banks and Bayley. It was the first time in WWE history that women participated in such a match and headlined such a significant card.
"NXT is truly Paul's baby and his vision and he treats the men and women performers exactly the same," Stephanie McMahon said. "The female performers are given the same amount of time and the same opportunity as the male performers and I think it's that opportunity that has allowed these women to really hone their craft. Professional wresting is like performance art. It truly is. You're taking the crowd on a ride, on an emotional roller coaster. It is a craft that takes time to perfect and I think the advantage of NXT is they are given that time to do just that."
"I feel such a shift in the way our women are portrayed, the opportunity they are given and when given that opportunity, these women are tearing the house down and stealing the show with every chance they get." Stephanie McMahon
After honing and perfecting that craft, Charlotte, the daughter of two-time WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair, joined Becky Lynch, who hails from Ireland and is the self-proclaimed "Irish Lass Kicker," and Sasha Banks, who is a first cousin of Snoop Dogg, to make their Raw debuts on July 13, 2015, in Atlanta when McMahon signaled in the "Divas Revolution."
The timing of their debut was no accident -- July 2015 was arguably the most notable month in the history of women in sports.
The U.S. women's national soccer team not only won the World Cup, but did so in front of an average TV audience of 25.4 million viewers in the final. It was the largest viewership ever for a soccer game in the United States, men's or women's, and it was also a larger number than any NBA Finals game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors drew that year. Ronda Rousey became the first woman and MMA athlete to win the ESPY for best fighter during a run in which she was headlining UFC pay-per-views that were garnering almost double the buys of shows she wasn't on. Serena Williams won her sixth Wimbledon and 21st career Grand Slam singles trophy. Becky Hammon, the first full-time female assistant coach in NBA history, became the first female head coach in the NBA Summer League and went on to win the summer league title with the San Antonio Spurs in Las Vegas. And the Arizona Cardinals hired Jen Welter as an assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason, making her the first female coach of any kind in the NFL.
"I had an opportunity to go to the ring and bring to light on 'Monday Night Raw' the 'Divas Revolution,' which was based on the fan response," Stephanie McMahon said. "I talked about what was happening in the world with the evolution of women in sports from Ronda Rousey in the UFC to Serena Williams winning Wimbledon to the U.S. women's soccer team. There was this revolution happening and I said I want this revolution to happen here in WWE. So I introduced Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks to the main roster and everyone in the arena knew exactly who they were. They stood on their feet and the ovation was deafening. It was pretty obvious to anybody watching that these women were game-changers and that's exactly what they've been."
Stephanie McMahon, right, the WWE's chief brand officer, took part in a memorable segment with former UFC champion Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania 31 in 2015. Don Feria/AP Images for WWE
The trio not only breathed new life into the show and completely changed the way women were utilized but they broke through a barrier that didn't seem possible during the Super Bowl of professional wrestling. At WrestleMania 32, in front of an announced crowd of 101,763 in Arlington, Texas, the largest in WWE history, Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks were featured in a triple threat match most considered to be the best match on the card. Their images were plastered outside of the football stadium and on the cover of oversized programs along with main event performers Brock Lesnar, Dean Ambrose, The Undertaker, Shane McMahon, Triple H and Roman Reigns.
"They absolutely deserved to be there and there wasn't that much of a conversation at all because they had earned their place there," Stephanie McMahon said. "They had one of the greatest matches that I've seen in a long time at WrestleMania. It was really an emotional and compelling story."
Before the match, the WWE announced they would be retiring the term "Divas" in reference to their women's performers and would be retiring the pink and bedazzled "Divas" championship in favor of a WWE women's championship that looked similar to the WWE world heavyweight championship held by the men. The introduction elicited a standing ovation from the crowd at AT&T Stadium and chants of "women's wrestling!"
"We were evolving our female performers into superstars," Stephanie McMahon said. "No longer were they being branded separately from the men. Both men and women would now simply be branded as superstars."
Stephanie McMahon, former WWE women's champion, serves as the chief brand officer of the WWE. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
McMahon, who turns 40 in September, actually held the women's championship in 2000 but laughed at the prospects of getting back in the ring with today's current performers.
"Anything can happen in the WWE and if the WWE Universe wants it I'm sure we can make it happen," she said.
Even if she doesn't, it might not be long before we see another McMahon female in the ring trying to run the family business. McMahon and Levesque have three daughters, Aurora (10), Murphy (8) and Vaughn (5), and her oldest already knows what she wants to be when she grows up.
"Aurora absolutely wants to be the women's champion," Stephanie McMahon said. "She has been trained by Natalya. She has got her heart set on it, but we'll see what happens there.
Editor's Picks Raw Recap: WWE keeps major storylines moving Raw came back down to earth Monday after a few stellar post-draft episodes, but there was still positive forward movement in all of the primary storylines.
SmackDown Live Recap - Wyatt lights up the night Bray Wyatt and the recent NXT call-ups stole the show on Aug. 9 as SmackDown Live continues to develop the profiles of its new roster. 1 Related
"I just want them to see unlimited opportunity and potential in themselves. I grew up with a very strong role model in my mom, [Linda McMahon], who was the CEO of WWE and I never thought women couldn't do anything. I never thought gender was a barrier but that wasn't reality at that time. Now there are so many more opportunities for women and it's absolutely imperative to me as a mother for my three daughters to know they can be anything in this world that they want to be as long as they believe in themselves and they're willing to work hard for it."
The women's movement in the WWE was born from the hard work put in by female performers who tried to make the best of whatever small opportunities they had and grew from the noise made by fans who recognized that hard work and wanted to see more of it. It was a revolution that is now simply a part of the WWE with men and women recognized equally for what they are to their fans -- superstars.
"I feel such a shift in the way our women are portrayed, the opportunity they are given, and when given that opportunity, these women are tearing the house down and stealing the show with every chance they get," Stephanie McMahon said. "Sasha said, 'I'm going to prove that I belong by being so good they can't ignore me.' That just about sums up Sasha Banks and what she has been able to do. The greatest part is these women are only just getting started."First to Last is a biweekly column where the pilot episode and series finale of a TV show are examined. But there’s a catch—the author has never seen a single episode of the show before viewing these two episodes! This week’s show: Dexter.
Dexter is a show that I’ve avoided for a very long time for absolutely no reason. The concept sounds cool as shit: a serial killer that kills serial killers. The only cooler thing I can imagine is like, a porn star who has sex with porn stars—which exists, and is what I’d been watching for the past nine years instead of Dexter. But it’s Halloweentime and I figured it was time to bring a little serial killin’ into First and Last. Also, I just made a short horror film about murder and this seemed like a great way to promote it and this new-fangled Paste Cloud thing. Additionally, I’d always heard that Dexter had a godawful final season, which I thought would make it perfect for this column, so I watched S1E1 “Dexter” (2006) and S8E12 “Remember the Monsters?” (2013).
The first episode, which was titled “Dexter” as opposed to the usual “Pilot,” started with Dexter killing somebody, which I was glad for. Everybody knows the show is about a killer who kills killers, and there’s no reason to have to watch 15 minutes of exposition before we get to it. And it makes sense to forego the exposition—what is there to expose? Dexter is a sociopath. He doesn’t have feelings. He navigates social situations by saying the things that you’re supposed to say, not what he feels—he feels nothing. You guys have all seen American Psycho, I don’t need to explain how sociopaths are portrayed in media. Not to accuse this show of being a rip-off of American Psycho though. While it’s clearly inspired by the film, it adds the factor of the character having a moral compass. Actually that doesn’t really make sense for a sociopath, but it seems original, so there’s that. Also he has a boat named “Slice of Life.” Get it? “Slice” like with a knife? “Life” like the life that is ended by the knife? His lack of feeling and emotion makes him capable of both dry wit and buffoon-like obliviousness—certainly an odd combination, especially when paired with a hubby of murdering. Hiding in plain sight, he works for the police, doing forensics. Neat.
Despite being about a murderer, Dexter isn’t all sex and violence: it’s just violence, no sex. Dexter, as an unfeeling sociopath, is uninterested in sex. And he’s got a girlfriend who hates sex. Suspiciously convenient, but kinda neat nonetheless. I’d predicted that the girlfriend would eventually come to want sex, and I was more right than I could have ever imagined—the writers blew their wad and made this happen in the first episode.
Of course, the prospect of a murderer murdering murderers with a hefty dose of murder, cool as it may be, would eventually become stale, so at episode’s end we are given another factor: the serial killer he has been hunting at work is now hunting him as well. I mean, I doubt the killer is going to get Dexter, since there’s eight whole seasons where he is presumably alive, but this doesn’t guarantee the safety of Dexter’s girlfriend or his sister, who happens to be a cop. On to the final episode.
While the first episode opened with Dexter stalking a victim, the last episode begins with Dexter on the lam. He is trying to flee the country along with his new girlfriend (the girlfriend from the first episode is no longer here, presumably having been killed by a serial killer) and his young son (apparently he’s okay with sex now). They’re also avoiding being caught by a generic bad guy. Or is it a generic good guy? I really don’t know who’s supposed to be good or evil, but I know that Dexter is the protagonist, so fuck that generic guy no matter what side he’s on.
While this is happening, Dexter’s sister, Debra, is in the hospital being treated for a gunshot wound. She mentions having left the police force in the past and also having done bad things. Did she work with Dexter, committing murders and then solving those very murders in order to help her career? I think that’s probably what happened, and if it isn’t, it should have. If I’m wrong, please yell at me on Twitter.
As I mentioned, Dexter has a son now and therefore has learned to like sex, but that’s not the only change: he is clearly a real person with real feelings by this point in time. So, that’s kinda lame. That’s not what we signed up for, y’know? His killing has also gotten worse, lesser, and sloppier, which I assure you is no coincidence. Pretty interesting arc, regardless of the fact that the finale was much less fun to watch than the pilot. By the end he is no longer committing calculated murders, but rather a single crime of passion. He was perhaps meticulous in the way he got the man who shot Debra to stab him first, in order to call the murder self-defense, but not a fully premeditated plan like the three murders we saw in the first episode.
Dexter and his kin again attempt to leave the country, but he is hesitant, because he wants to make sure his sister is okay. But he sends his son and girlfriend out of the country anyway. I think the idea is to demonstrate that he has gained compassion by showing him worrying about Debra, but it still seems pretty sociopathic to send his toddler son out of the country with a woman who I don’t even think is his mother. At the hospital, Dexter pulls the plug on his sister rather than leaving her in a vegetative state. It’s almost poetic, really: rather than killing somebody as a punishment, he is ending somebody’s life to end their suffering. He steals her body from the hospital and takes it on his boat (which I will remind you is wackily named “Slice of Life”). Like, there’s people around and everything, but nobody says anything or stops him. He throw Debra into the ocean, and then he… fakes his death and goes off the grid? What the fuck is that? If he’s gonna fake his death, why doesn’t he just go to South America with his girlfriend and son? He just leaves them together? Seriously, I really don’t think the girlfriend is the mother. It seems more like she’s just some criminal he met.
I see the last season of Dexter getting a lot of hate, and I found the “Remember the Monsters?” to be disappointing as well, but I must say that Dexter had the most natural story arc of all the shows I’ve watched for this column. The first episode, “Dexter,” was an appropriate introduction and escalated the urgency towards the end, and the final one, “Remember the Monsters?” had lots of tensions and thrills and, most importantly, a conclusion, regardless of how infuriating that conclusion was or how baffling Dexter’s decision became.
Matt Pass is a writer and comedian who just released a short horror film called Kevin is Dead. Watch it, and follow him on Twitter.When Peggy Carter heads out west, she won’t be alone.
EW has learned exclusively that James D’Arcy and Enver Gjokaj—who play Edwin Jarvis and Agent Daniel Sousa, respectively—have signed on as series regulars for season 2.
While Marvel declined to comment, we hear deals for Chad Michael Murray (Agent Jack Thompson), Bridget Regan (Dottie Underwood) and Lyndsy Fonseca (Angie Martinelli) are forthcoming. Hayley Atwell, naturally, is already slated to return.
Here’s the description of the new season: “Dedicated to the fight against new atomic age threats in the wake of World War II, Peggy must now journey from New York City to Los Angeles for her most dangerous assignment yet. But even as she discovers new friends, a new home — and perhaps even a new love — she’s about to find out that the bright lights of the post-war Hollywood mask a more sinister threat to everyone she is sworn to protect.”
Agent Carter is slated to return midseason on ABC.On Tuesday, June 29, 2015 ABC News-15 based in Arizona reported, “ US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix before Benghazi rep ort.”
According to the report the meeting was not a chance encounter but was apparently an arranged meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch on board her government airplane.
The appearance this meeting creates, in and of itself, calls into question the judgment of the Attorney General of the United States - America's "Top Cop" who sets the tone for law enforcement for the entire federal government and, as a consequence, for law enforcement agencies at all levels from coast to coast and border to border.
And make no mistake - appearances can be critical. This was a message that was repeatedly hammered home by my bosses when I served as a Special Agent for the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).
Let me describe two such instances in order to properly set the stage and provide a bit of context to the meeting between the former president of the United States and the Attorney General.
When I began my career as a special agent back in the 1970's one of my bosses, a gentleman by the name of Frank Johnson who was the section chief for the Frauds Unit where I was assigned, would hold what were known as "Payday Meetings" because every other Thursday we would stand on line and be issued out paychecks- this was long before direct deposit was implemented. These meeting provided management with an opportunity to inform the agents about any changes in priorities and to provide us with whatever information they deemed was essential to enable us to to our jobs effectively and safely. These meetings also provided agents to inform each other about any information that they might need as they pursued their assigned investigations.
At the conclusion of each of those meetings, Frank Johnson would accentuate each syllable by jabbing his ever-present cigarette in the air as he looked around the room and said, "As federal agents, it was not enough that we never engaged in wrong doing- but that we must never give the illusion of doing wrong!"
We knew that Frank was not just spouting a slogan- because he held himself to a higher standard than he held those of us who worked under him- this is what true leadership is all about.
As for the second incident - I had become an agent just months earlier and was eating lunch at a local restaurant located across the street from our offices in lower Manhattan, when an attorney I had met when I was assigned as an Adjudications Officer or Examiner as those who adjudicated various applications for immigration benefits were known. The attorney had represented several aliens I had interviewed in that earlier assignment and conducted those marriage interviews you likely have seen in various movies about aliens who marry citizens to acquire lawful immigrant status.
I had just order desert at the end of my meal when the attorney who, like myself, was sitting at the counter of the restaurant move next to me to engage in innocuous banter. Suddenly one of my supervisors noticed me as he was walking by the restaurant and quickly entered the restaurant. He walked up to me and whispered in my ear, "Mr. Cutler, when you are finished with your lunch you are to report directly to my office." He quickly left the restaurant and I quickly headed back to my office and went to his office- with quite a bit of consternation. Clearly he was not happy.
He sat me down in his office and told me that by sitting next to that lawyer in that restaurant, I created the illusion that I would be less than totally objective in investigating the cases that the attorney was involved with. This, he sternly told me, creates the impression of corruption and must never, ever happen again.
I explained that the lawyer had approached me and that I paid for my food and he had paid for his food and that the conversation was brief and had nothing to do about work.
His response was quick and to the point - he told me that simply creating an appearance of impropriety could create enough of a problem to call my ethics into question and in so doing, destroy my career!
He explained that I always needed to be mindful of appearances and that the next time an attorney tried to sit next to me I had the choice of telling him to not change his seat or simply paying my check and leaving the restaurant. There was no "wiggle room." He concluded our conversation by telling me that he believed I unwittingly got caught in an unfortunate situation and admonished me to be careful in the future.
Now we come back to the meeting between Mr. Clinton and Ms Lynch. According to the published accounts, Bill Clinton knew in advance that the Attorney General was going to be arriving on her government airplane and visited with her in that aircraft for 30 minutes.
While Lynch claims that nothing was discussed that involved Hillary Clinton- we only have her word for that. Furthermore, as the Attorney General she would certainly have to cognizant about the appearance of a major impropriety that her meeting with Bill Clinton created. The obvious question is why would she do this?
Was she so fascinated about Clinton's golf game or his grandchildren that she was willing to create the illusion of wrong-doing? Was the meeting conducted on her airplane to make certain that no one would be able to overhear what was said? If so, what was the true topic of the conversation?
We can not and, indeed, must not lose sight of the fact that Loretta Lynch has the authority to authorize criminal prosecutions. Hillary Clinton is currently under investigation for a series of serious allegations emanating from the disaster at Benghazi and as a result of her having a private e-mail account and private server which, as it has been shown, was used numerous times to transmit highly classified information in violation of laws, regulations and procedures.
She has also provided contradictory information about these issues which may be found to rise to the level of perjury - a felony. The person who will ultimately have to decide whether or not that line has been crossed is none other than Loretta Lynch.
This administration has, time and time again, acted with contempt for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. I have addressed the many ways in which the administration has undermined any shred of integrity to the immigration system.
Even as the president insists that our borders are secure heroin is available in such abundance that notwithstanding the historic levels of heroin addiction in the United States, the price of heroin has never been lower. Heroin is not produced in the United States and is totally illegal. The only way for heroin to be present in the United States is for it to be smuggled across those supposedly "secure borders."
A series of Congressional hearings have shown how tens of thousand of criminal aliens have been released back onto the streets of towns and cities and have gone on to kill and assault many innocent people.
The administration has taken to the unprecedented practice of issuing executive orders and misused "prosecutorial discretion" to provide hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens with lawful status without any legal justification.
In the face of unambiguous statements about the inability of our officials to vet Syrian refugees and the clear warning of John Brennan, the Director of the CIA, that ISIS is seeking to infiltrate terrorists into the United States by embedding them among those claiming to be refugees, the administration is admitting tens of thousands of aliens who claim to be Syrian Refugees- but there is no way to verify their identities, their true countries of citizens or their claims of being refugees.
These and other actions have undermined the trust of the American people where this administration is concerned.
Now we add to all of this the Attorney General's meeting with the husband of the apparent Democratic Party's candidate for the presidency who may face criminal charges- if the Attorney General decides that the evidence provided by a small army of FBI agents assigned to the investigation, meets the standards that require that the prosecution proceeds.
The stakes could not be higher - yet Loretta Lynch acted in a way that she should clearly understood created that illusion of wrong-doing.
I know some federal agents who worked with Loretta Lynch when she first became a federal prosecutor. They all had positive impressions about her abilities and commitment to her job.
It is impossible to understand her motivation or what she was thinking as she sat on her airplane meeting with Bill Clinton - but one thing is now perfectly clear, she must recuse herself from any involvement in the decision making process where the investigation/prosecution of Hillary Clinton is concerned.
There is a good reason that "Lady Justice" wears a blindfold!There are few things sadder than an abandoned amusement park. Photographer Jordan Liles came across this site in Gatlinburg, Tenn., while exploring the remains of the nearby Wonderland Hotel and documented his find through photographs and video.
On a walk up a hill, the Tennessee native-turned-Brooklynite followed a rusty, rotting chair lift. Liles discovered that the airborne seats (probably for taking visitors up the mountain to enjoy the view) were part of the Fun Mountain theme park, which was built in the 1990s. It struggled financially and shut down in 2000.
"From 2001 to 2008, the rides just sat there, rotting," Liles explained to Yahoo in an email. Most of the rides were sold at auction in 2008 to carnivals and collectors.
Just before the equipment was dismantled, photographer Brandy Amos captured images of the ghostly park. The local had grown up nearby, and wanted to "record it with my lens before it was scattered to the winds," Amos told Yahoo by email. Images include a halted Ferris wheel, stalled bumper cars, a grounded Tilt-A-Whirl, and a carousel that looks as if it's just waiting for some children to hop on.
Now, since those were carted away, only the lonely chair lift (Gatlinburg's longest, according to an old ad) remains, along with the outlines of destroyed buildings and an empty pool.
As the photos and video show, the yellow metal chairs hanging from wires make for an eerie viewing experience. Not surprisingly, much of the ride appears to be in serious disrepair. At some points, the chairs, high above street level, disappear into the overgrown tree branches that surround them.
This area has been a tourist attraction for decades, Liles noted. "On the same property the Mountain View Hotel was built in the 1920s. It kicked off the tourism boom in Gatlinburg," he told Yahoo.
The hotel, a grand building pictured in historical photos, closed in the 1980s and was demolished in the 1990s after almost being saved with a proposal to use it for the town's chamber of commerce. When that didn't happen, Fun Mountain theme park entered the scene.
Although the family-owned theme park never caught on, it might have been an impossible task to compete with Dolly Parton's popular Dollywood, located the next town over.
Despite the area's tourism draw, the property has yet to be used since the park was sold off for parts. "The land right now is abandoned," Liles said.This is going to be a blast. Crypticon has a Horror Film Festival to Die for. Let's not forget the Comedy show and Biohazard Parties! Woot Woot! No matter if you come one day or all three, ghoulish memories will be had.
Official Press Release:
Crypticon Seattle, the largest horror convention in the Pacific Northwest, returns May 25th-27th to the Hilton Seattle Airport and Conference Center.
This year, we welcome Doug Bradley (Hellraiser), Don Coscarelli (Phantasm), Marilyn Burns (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and more!
Our expansive vendor room is full of a wide variety of unique collectibles, art, comics, games, and household horror décor. Take a walk down the Author’s Alley to meet some of the genre’s best authors and have a first look at some of the fresh meat!***The major talking point heading into this race weekend has been a revised series Balance of Performance, Appendix A 95-revised, which was released Tuesday (September 8). In that update, in GT, the Ferrari 458 Italia GT3 received a 15 kg minimum weight reduction, and the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 received increased boost of 0.2 bar (20 millibar), which had been taken off prior to Sonoma.
***Per the series’ VTS Appendix A Rule Change Process, this revised BoP was issued after the standard deadline of Monday before a race weekend. Rule 4.2 of Appendix A states: “The final Appendix A must be released one week before the race event on Monday.” All requests for change must be submitted three weeks prior to the race event, per Rule 2.0 of Appendix A.
***The BoP change has caused some consternation in the paddock, with a heated team manager meeting occurring on Thursday regarding the change. Per the series, the revised BoP was intended for Friday release, but was held up due to both the volume of data and the holiday.
***A series statement issued to Sportscar365 regarding Appendix A 95-revised reads: “The series began evaluating data from Nissan and Ferrari three weeks ago. Due to the volume of data received, it took longer than expected to create and approve the Appendix A 95-revised change.”
***Ferrari is bolstering its lineup for this race with NGT Motorsport running pro drivers Alessandro Pier Guidi and Alessandro Balzan in the Nos. 29 and 30 Ferrari 458 Italia GT3s this weekend. The team moves up from GTA to GT for this race per the different driver classifications.
***Dane Cameron makes his World Challenge return in Turner Motorsport’s No. 95 BMW Z4 GT3, as a late replacement for Bill Ziegler. Cameron tested the car on Thursday and was confirmed on Friday for his first start in the series since St. Petersburg, 2014.
***The new KTM X-BOW GT4, announced by ANSA Motorsports last week for GTS next season, is on display in the paddock this weekend (pictured above).
***One notable other new thing in the paddock spotted this weekend is ex-INDYCAR president of competition and operations Derrick Walker, who told Sportscar365 he was “just scoping around.” Walker has not formalized any role for either he or his Walker Racing team, whose stint running the Team Falken Tire TUDOR Championship program will end in two races.
***Ryan Dalziel returns to EFFORT Racing after missing the Sonoma weekend due to his FIA World Endurance Championship commitments at the Nürburgring. Although EFFORT announced its 2016 two-car program with the new Porsche 911 GT3-R earlier this week, the team has not announced its driver lineup.
***While listed on the entry list, Nick Catsburg won’t be at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend. Catsburg has a commitment in the World Touring Car Championship in Japan.
***Tim Pappas will make his final World Challenge start before his Black Swan Racing shifts to the TUDOR Championship. Pappas brings out the No. 54 Dodge Viper GT3-R for the first time since Road America.
***Jon Fogarty’s laps Thursday in the No. 99 GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing Hyundai Genesis coupe were his first ever in the car, after Jeff Harrison handled the car’s shakedown and race debut two weeks ago in Sonoma.
***Some five Maserati GranTurismos have been added to GTS, driven by Vafa Kordestani, Jeff Courtney, Patrick Byrne, Freddie Hunt and Derek Hill. The latter two, Hunt and Hill, are sons of past World Champions James Hunt and Phil Hill respectively.
***With September serving as Prostate Cancer Awareness month, more than 70 of the 110-plus cars across all classes have a #Racing4ProstateCancer ribbon decal on their cars. Touring Car B-spec driver Johan Schwartz and wife Karen asked the paddock to show support; Schwartz has used the season to raise awareness.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An 89-year-old Cleveland man was arraigned on six counts each of rape, kidnapping and gross sexual imposition in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Thursday.
Jolly B. Smith pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts. Smith is accused of molesting a 32-year-old developmentally disabled woman that he befriended.
The victim said that the abuse started in June 2009 and continued until March of this year. Police learned of the abuse when they were called to the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities Center.
Smith's bond was set at $10,000. He has been ordered to take an HIV test and to stay away from the victim.
Smith has posted his bond and is set to appear in court for a pre-trial hearing May 19 at 9 a.m., four days before his 90th birthday.12.08.2014 66210
Один тактический просчет Путина и в Украину будут введены «голубые каски» ООН, а за их спинами украинская армия выстроит «линию Маннергейма». Вместо «Новороссии» Кремль получит алчущий российского бюджета Донбасс.
1. Наличие утечек. Что Путин действительно сделал в России - так это поставил под контроль утечки о своих планах. Люди, которым я доверяю, рассказывали мне, что их знакомые украинские олигархи получили из инсайдерских правительственных источников в Москве информацию о том, что вторжение российских войск неизбежно.
Это сознательная дезинформация, распространяемая Кремлем. Обмануть людей, полагающих, что имеют надежный доступ к инсайду, проще, чем обмануть простых людей. Когда Путин хочет, чтобы утечек не было, их не бывает. Никогда. Если бы он на самом деле планировал вторжение, утечки об этом были бы ему невыгодны, так как это дает возможность украинской армии подготовиться к нему. Но если утечки есть, это значит, что Путин добивается, чтобы дополнительные резервы Вооруженных Сил Украины были не переброшены в зону проведения АТО, а растянуты по всей украинско-российской границе.
2. Возможность только локального вторжения. Путин - крайний формалист, ему нужно, чтобы формально все было оформлено «красиво». Конституционное право на свободу собраний в России формально не отменено - просто все обставлено так, что воспользоваться им фактически невозможно. То же самое и насчет цензуры: «какая цензура, что вы? это всего лишь споры хозяйствующих субъектов!» А нафига нужны были эти позорные «референдумы» в Крыму и на Донбассе? Все для того же - для соблюдения формальностей.
«Соблюсти формальности» в случае со вторжением в Украину Путин может только в одном случае - если оформит вторжение как «гуманитарную миссию», которую «для ее безопасности» будут сопровождать российские «миротворческие войска». Но ни в Харьковской области, ни в Херсонской, Черниговской, Сумской и Полтавской областях, ни, тем более, в Одесской области (куда «гуманитарная миссия» могла бы войти из Приднестровья) «гуманитарной катастрофы» нет даже на экранах российского ТВ. А значит, ввести войска «в ответ на нападение миротворцев» он сможет только на Донбасс. А это повлечет за собой не только вооруженный ответ со стороны Украины и жесточайшие санкции со стороны Запада, но и целый ряд других неприятностей, о которых пойдет речь в следующих пунктах.
3. Я сейчас скажу непопулярную вещь, однако постарайтесь воспринять ее не эмоционально, а прагматично. Дело в том, что Украине было бы гораздо легче выкарабкиваться из того места, где сейчас находится ее экономика, без той части Донбасса, которая находится сейчас под контролем террористов. Туда нужно будет вбухивать огромные деньги на восстановление разрушенной террористами инфраструктуры, там глубоко убыточные шахты, которые нужно закрывать |
seen their positions in the Middle East decline precipitously, giving both a strong impetus to reconcile their differences and cooperate in the region.
Iran’s rising fortunes following the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been partly fueled by the sharp rise in the price of oil. High oil prices also allowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make good on his campaign promises and adopt an expansive and populist economic policy at home. The sharp drop in oil prices following the global financial crisis greatly strained national finances, delivering a huge blow to Iran and Ahmadinejad.
Iran’s situation only grew worse in 2009 following the disputed presidential election. On one hand, the harsh crackdown on Iranians protesting the election badly tarnished Iran’s image in the Arab world. More importantly, the election set off an unprecedented degree of infighting among the Iranian political class, which crippled its ability to carry out its foreign policy.
One consequence of this was that Tehran turned down a nuclear deal offered by the P5+1 in late 2009. This created the perception among many states, including Russia and China, that Iran was at fault for the continued dispute over its nuclear program. These changed attitudes created an environment in which the U.S. and Europe could impose unprecedented sanctions against Iran, which have significantly curtailed Iranian power.
The global financial crisis was a transformative event for the United States as well, including for U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Already weary from a decade of war in the region, the global financial crisis hardened Americans’ attitudes that their political leaders should focus on domestic issues. This has constrained the Obama administration’s ability to shape events in the Middle East, and forced it to concentrate instead on “nation building at home.”
For both Iran and the U.S., the Arab Spring has brought these trends into sharp relief. The revolts that began in early 2011 have forced Washington to abandon some of its autocratic allies, deeply unsettling the remaining ones. It also laid bare just how constrained American leaders are in a post-financial crisis world.
The seminal event of the Arab Spring for Iran has been the Syrian civil war. The uprising against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad forced Iran to take drastic action to save its oldest ally in the Arab world. While Assad’s grip on power has stabilized, he remains extremely weak. Moreover, the effects of the Syrian civil war have spread to neighboring countries, where they have weakened Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Iraq. More generally, the Syrian civil war has greatly heighted sectarian tensions in the region, which bodes poorly for Shi’a Iran.
Repairing bilateral relations would provide a much needed boost to both America and Iran’s positions in the Middle East. For the United States, a détente would allow it to reduce its regional military presence and give it some much needed leverage over its Sunni Arab allies. It would also reduce Washington’s dependency on some of its more autocratic and unstable partners in the region.
For Iran, improving ties with the United States would greatly enhance its economic power and remove an important advantage its Sunni Arab rivals currently enjoy. As the tragic bombings of the Iranian embassy in Lebanon demonstrated, Washington and Tehran would also benefit by cooperating against the rising tide of radical Islamists in the Arab world, as well as the Sunni threat to the balance of power in the Middle East.
None of this guarantees that a U.S.-Iran détente will be realized. Geopolitics shape but do not dictate events. A number of obstacles — including the nuclear dispute, U.S. allies, and hardliners in both countries — could still derail the process. Yet when P5+1-Iran talks reconvene in Geneva today, centrifuges and nuclear reactors won’t be the only factors shaping U.S. and Iranian behavior.From a report at NPR:
People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia. A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people — more than one a week — died in the decade ending 2011 “defending their human rights or the rights of others related to the environment, specifically land and forests.” They were killed, the environmental investigation group says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife poaching.
The Global Witness report indicates that 106 activists were killed last year alone. In 2010, the figure was 96.
Stunning, alarming — and not without precedent. Similar tactics have been used to intimidate and blunt efforts by democracy and labor activists for years. But the struggle here isn’t limited to political considerations. As resources become increasingly scarce and habitats shift due to global warming, these figures can be expected to get worse, not better.
Targeted assassinations, disappearances followed by confirmed deaths, deaths in custody and during clashes with security forces are being reported. The killers are often soldiers, police or private security guards acting on behalf of businesses or governments. Credible investigations are rare; convictions more so. “It’s so easy to get someone killed in some of these countries. Decapitate the leader of the movement and then buy off everyone else — that’s standard operating procedure,” says Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director of Human Rights Watch.
Thankfully, activists — like this newly galvanized group in Malaysia — remain undeterred.A giant dust-busting astronomical telescope in Chile has zoomed in on the heart of our Milky Way galaxy and captured more than 84 million stars. An international team used Europe’s VISTA survey telescope to produce an incredibly detailed mosaic formed from thousands of separate images and made up of nearly nine billion pixels.
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VISTA’s camera is especially sensitive to the warmth of infrared light which allowed it to record many stars that would normally be hidden behind vast clouds of dust and so invisible in optical light.
The image is so large (108,200 by 81,500 pixels) that if it were to be printed at the resolution of a typical book, it would be nine metres long and seven metres high. But it wasn’t just taken as a pretty picture, of course.
Cataloguing the many millions of stars in this one small central region of the Milky Way will help scientists understand more clearly what lies at the centre of our galaxy and how it developed.
Chile’s Roberto Saito, who led the study, said: “By observing in detail the myriads of stars surrounding the centre of the Milky Way we can learn a lot more about the formation and evolution of not only our galaxy, but also spiral galaxies in general.”
VISTA stands for the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy and it stands at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal site high in the Atacama Desert, not far from the domes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The writer visited last year and took the accompanying photo of VISTA, with its powerful light-gathering 4.1-metre mirror.
Our Milky Way resembles most other spiral galaxies in having a huge concentration of ancient stars at its centre in what astronomers term the bulge. But it is a region that is normally very hard to see. Data from one of the telescope’s surveys, the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV), was used to produce the picture.
Co-author of the study Dante Minniti, also of Chile, said: “Observations of the bulge of the Milky Way are very hard because it is obscured by dust. To peer into the heart of the galaxy, we need to observe in infrared light, which is less affected by the dust.”
Information collected from this image, one of the biggest ever taken in astronomy, was used to compile the largest ever catalogue of the central mass of stars in the Milky Way. To analyse it, the brightness of each star was plotted against its colour to created a graphic diagram produced from ten times more stars than in any study before and covering the entire bulge. The results help astronomers to study the stars’ different properties, such as their temperature, age and size, or mass.
Minniti added: “Each star occupies a particular spot in this diagram at any moment during its lifetime. Where it falls depends on how bright it is and how hot it is. Since the new data gives us a snapshot of all the stars in one go, we can now make a census of all the stars in this part of the Milky Way.”
Astronomers will be mining the data for many years to come. But one surprise already from the survey was the number of faint red dwarf stars detected. These will be prime targets to examine in the search for transiting exoplanets.
VISTA was conceived, designed an built by UK astronomers and engineers, overseen by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh. Jim Emerson from Queen Mary, University of London, which leads the VISTA consortium said: “This gigantic image is an impressive testament to the quality of the images being taken at the VISTA telescope.
“The unprecedented detail on numbers, types, and locations of stars towards the centre of our Galaxy is giving us exciting new tools to test competing models for how our galaxy is really structured and came to be as it is.”
Professor Richard Holdaway, Director of RAL Space in Oxfordshire where the camera was built, said; “Sometimes in astronomy there are moments when you simply think, wow! This is one of those times. The detail unveiled through the scale of the image and the technical excellence by the teams who helped achieve this is incredible. It really will allow us to push the boundaries of what we know about our home galaxy.”
Roberto Saito represents the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Valparaíso and The Milky Way Millennium Nucleus, Chile. Dante Minniti is also from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. You can go here to view the whole enormous picture. The results are reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.Two Romanian cities volunteer to host the Central European University
The Romanian cities of Arad and Oradea, both located in Western Romania, close to the border with Hungary, announced their availability to host the Central European University CEU after Hungary passed legislation that places restrictions on the functioning of foreign universities in the country.
Under the new legislation, foreign universities based in Hungary need to be approved through a “contract” between the Hungarian government and the country where they are accredited, and have a campus there. In the case of CEU, which is partly financed by Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros, the country of accreditation is the US. The university only has a campus in Budapest.
Ilie Borojan, the mayor of Oradea, wrote yesterday a message on his Facebook page, arguing it would be “a good idea to make an offer to this prestigious university to function in the future in Oradea,” News.ro reported. According to the Oradea mayor, the city would gain an international excellence center by hosting the university and would reinforce the city’s Central-European vocation.
Earlier the same day, Gheorghe Falcă, the mayor of Arad, sent a solidarity letter to the rector of the CEU Michael Ignatieff, together with an offer for the university to relocate in the city. The mayor said the city hall can offer two Arad buildings totaling over 6,000 sqm to be used for educational spaces and student accommodation, according to News.ro. One of the buildings is a 75-room dormitory, with 2,000 sqm available space.
According to Falcă, CEU could also receive spaces in the Citadel of Arad, once the site is reintroduced in civil use in a few years.
The mayor of Vilnius, a former CEU graduate, also sent a letter to the CEU rector inviting him to move the university to Lithuania's capital. However, the CEU director said the university in Budapest would not close or move from the city, according to RFI.
Former Romanian culture minister Kelemen Hunor, the leader of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) – the main party representing the Hungarian minority in Romania, argued this week that the closing of the Central European University (CEU) would be a huge loss for the whole region.
editor@romania-insider.com
(Photo source: CEU Facebook Page)WITH the blockbuster season coming to a close, The Hollywood Reporter has published a list of all those films that the studios want to squeeze more money out of.
The hits getting sequels include Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spider-man, 21 Jump Street and of course the biggest superhero film of all, The Avengers.
But also getting the green light for another outing is Prometheus.
Ridley Scott's is-it-or-isn't-it prequel to Alien made a so-so $303 million at the box office but Fox is keen to further the story, which ended with a familiar creature bursting onto the screen.
Scott and the film's stars, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, are all expected to return but screenwriter Damon Lindelof is not.
Fans will no doubt fill the internet with speculation about how Scott will continue the story but what's more interesting is what they'll call the sequel. Here's hoping for Prometheus 2: Prometheuses.Portrait of the General as a Not-So-Young Grad Student
What does Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi really think about democracy in the Middle East? From the moment President Mohamed Morsy promoted Sisi as Egypt’s defense minister in August 2012, rumors have swirled about his supposed Islamist leanings. The army chief was said to be particularly devout, and the fact that Morsy passed over more senior generals in selecting him fueled claims that Sisi was a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. Even after he deposed Morsy, observers of Egyptian politics have wondered whether he hopes to use his newfound power to implement an Islamist agenda.
A 2006 paper Sisi wrote while studying at the U.S. Army War College, titled "Democracy in the Middle East," has garnered much attention in this regard. Naval Postgraduate School professor Robert Springborg contended in Foreign Affairs that the document "reads like a tract produced by the Muslim Brotherhood," and "embraces a more radical view of the proper place of religion in an Islamic democracy."
This view of Sisi as an Islamist may prove accurate, because little is known of the sunglass-sporting general who is now Egypt’s de facto leader. But after thoroughly examining Sisi’s paper — which you can download here — I found little evidence of Islamism. If anything, the paper reflects the boilerplate, nationalistic rhetoric of Mubarak-era Egyptian officials — not the theocratic rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The paper is not a strident manifesto, but rather reads like the sort of work graduate students routinely produce when a rote assignment is due. It weighs in at 11 loosely-spaced pages — less than half the length of the paper that his deputy Sedki Sobhy wrote for the same assignment — and is quite disorganized.
Sisi penned this paper just as President George W. Bush’s "Freedom Agenda" peaked. The previous year witnessed successful elections in Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon, while Washington also successfully pushed Hosni Mubarak to hold Egypt’s first-ever multi-candidate presidential elections (sham though they were). But in 2006, much of this progress was reversed: The Iraq War’s violence derailed hopes the country would quickly emerge as a stable democracy, and Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. The Mubarak regime highlighted these failures to resist further pressure to liberalize, arguing that America’s attempts to bring democracy to the Middle East were not only intrusive, but undermined the very stability that democracy required.
Sisi’s paper echoes the Mubarak regime’s arguments. It primarily lays the blame for the persistence of Middle Eastern autocracy at the feet of outside powers. Given the region’s "huge oil and natural gas reserves," the general writes, "the Middle East is under constant pressure to satisfy multiple country agendas that may not coincide with the needs or wants of the Middle Eastern people."
Sisi argues that the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also undermine the prospects for democracy in the region. "[T]he existing conflict and tension needs to be resolved before democracy can be more fully accepted by the people of the area," he writes. U.S. foreign policy, Sisi argues, has only enhanced Middle Easterners’ skepticism about democracy, due to concerns "that the Global War on Terrorism is really just a mask for establishing Western democracy in the Middle East." He also highlights American support for non-democratic regimes, and proceeds to list them — without, of course, mentioning Mubarak’s Egypt.
What, you may ask, does the war in Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to do with whether Egypt holds fair and free elections? Sisi never really says. At one point, he tries to link these conflicts to socio-economic factors: "Poverty in the Middle East is driven by a number of factors that include war, for example, Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran-Iraq war, Morocco-[Western] Sahara conflict and Syria-Lebanon, to name a few," he contends.
But Sisi doesn’t really flesh out in any detail how such conflicts have contributed to the region’s poverty. And the inclusion of the rarely mentioned Western Sahara conflict — as a cause of regional poverty and thus autocracy, no less! — suggests Sisi is trying to satisfy a grad school paper word count, not offering a meaningful view into his ideological outlook. Moreover, the very notion that democratization cannot occur until all the region’s conflicts are solved is a classic Mubarak-era can-kicking strategy.
Sisi does not only focus on war and poverty — he also lists a host of internal factors that undermine democratization in the Middle East. Some of these are particularly interesting in light of recent events: Sisi notes, for example, that "many of the nation’s [sic] police forces and military forces are loyal to the ruling party," and that "there is no guaranty [sic] that the police and military forces will align with the emerging ruling parties" in nascent democracies. That latter argument may be the only point on which Sisi and the Muslim Brotherhood can now agree.
Sisi was not blind to the failings of Middle Eastern governments. He notes that weak economies force people to "do what they need to do to get by," which catalyzes corruption and "creates cultural behavior that is contrary to the values upon which a democracy is based." And he admits that "bloated public payrolls stifle individual initiative and tends [sic] to solidify the powerbase of ruling parties."
But for the most part, Sisi falls back on the Mubarak-era pabulum that Middle Easterners are just not ready for democracy. "Changing a political culture is always hard," he writes. "It is one thing to say that a democracy is a preferred form of government, but quite another to adjust to its requirements and accept some of the risks that go along with it."
He notes that democracy will affect the economic, religious, media, and legal systems of the region — and that adjusting to these changes "will take time." He warns of trying to move too fast on any of these fronts: Rapid change "can affect the stability of the region as American motives may be perceived as being self-centered and not supportive of the Middle Eastern way of life," he cautions.
It’s in the context of declaring the Middle East unready for democracy that Sisi argues that Islam is at odds with Western democracy. "Democracy, as a secular entity, is unlikely to be favorably received by the vast majority of Middle Easterners, who are devout followers of the Islamic faith," he writes.
Sisi argues that the people of the Middle East only view democracy "as a positive endeavor so long as it builds up the country and sustains the religious base versus devaluing religion and creating instability." For this reason, Middle Eastern democracy "is not necessarily going to evolve upon a Western template." This is a jumbled way of saying what Egyptian officials routinely told Westerners under Mubarak: If you push democracy, our people will view this as an affront. Let us define democracy for ourselves — when we’re ready.
This is when Sisi begins sounding a bit like an Islamist. "Democracy cannot be understood in the Middle East without an understanding of the concept of El Kalafa [the caliphate]," he writes, referring to the historic era covering the first four decades of Islam (he writes, incorrectly, "seventy years"). This period, he says, reflected the values of "fairness, justice, equality, unity and charity."
Sisi then argues that restoring the ideals of this period "is always at the forefront of the Middle Eastern society," and proposes two Islamic concepts that, in his view, could reconcile Islam with democracy. The first is al-bayaa, which he incorrectly defines as "the election process" for choosing a caliph — in fact, it’s a process through which one swears allegiance to the caliph. The second is shura, which he defines as "an advisory and oversight body" for the caliph.
But more than reading like an Islamist tract, this section reeks of typical grad student laziness. Sisi never explains how bayaa and shura can be incorporated into democracy, transliterates these concepts with remarkable imprecision (he uses the definite article twice), and cites this entire section to a single source — a book by prominent Salafist Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abdel Khaliq, whom he fails to mention in the footnotes.
Meanwhile, the phrases and ideas that are standard in true Islamist discourses are nowhere to be found. For example, Sisi never talks about implementing the sharia (Islamic law), or having a sharia reference. Nor is there any echo of the Brotherhood’s "Islam is the solution" slogan.
Sisi’s paper, in other words, doesn’t reflect Islamists’ obsession with constructing an Islamic state — it reflects Mubarak’s obsession with preventing Western pressure to democratize. For Sisi, the question is not whether Islam and democracy can coexist, but "whether the rest of the world will be able to accept a democracy in the Middle East founded on Islamic beliefs."
It’s an especially ironic sentence to read today. For better or worse, the international community was prepared to accept a state in Egypt "founded on Islamic beliefs." Sisi and millions of his fellow Egyptians, however, were not.Wolves must keep the faith in under-fire boss Kenny Jackett
by/ 16 November 2015, 18:41
Wolverhampton Wanderers have been struggling for form of late, leaving boss Kenny Jackett in full glare of the dreaded managerial spotlight. But, guest writer Mike Holden (@Ratings_Mike) constructs a compelling argument as to why the Midlands club should keep faith in the diligent 53-year-old.
When Steve Morgan spat his dummy out and put Wolves up for sale, all he managed to do was chuck Kenny Jackett a ticking time bomb. It was a needless, counter-productive statement of intent, designed to unsettle a fanbase displaying what Morgan considered to be a lack of appreciation for eight years of endeavour and financial investment.
Just a few days earlier, Wanderers supporters had voiced their discontent towards the owner as their team toiled against nine-man Preston. Morgan's reaction was knee-jerk and immature - in many ways, typical of his time at Molineux. If you're going to sell a football club, just sell it. There's no need to be such a diva.
But since the very day the Liverpudlian walked into the club, his heart has always ruled his head and that's essentially the crux of most of Wolves' problems. When the man at the top has misguided instincts and is continually making rash decisions, the value of his money diminishes. Strong, sensible owners are always much preferred.
So now Jackett is piggy-in-the-middle and taking the brunt of the fans' frustrations. Instantly, all of his good work over the past two years, remedying the problems accumulated under Morgan's watch, has been undermined. Through little fault of his own, Jackett's currency as a manager is beginning to fall because he is being judged by different criteria.
It's no longer about the progress made over the past two years compared to the mess he inherited, Jackett is now being measured according to a larger cycle, by events since the last takeover in 2007. How does the current team compare to the Mick McCarthy era? Have the past eight years been a complete waste of time? How attractive is the club to any potential investor?
Having started out on a mission to rebuild the team from the bottom up, promoting players from the academy and recruiting others in the under-23 category, Jackett is now up against an imminent deadline and being judged on the here and now. The job is no longer a cultural restoration, suddenly it's boiling down to the minutiae of his tactics on a week to week basis.
It's a shame because the pervading mood no longer plays to his strengths. Jackett is an introvert and an altruist, his personality promoting certain values in players that enable them to perform instinctively. And his humility ensures that many of his greatest qualities remain under the radar. Longevity is the only real clue to the fact that Jackett's not quite as ordinary as he seems.
With Jose Mourinho on the brink at Chelsea, it's suddenly fashionable to talk about managers having ten-year lifespans. Meanwhile, with every passing dismissal, the LMA remind us that the average managerial tenure is around 14 months. Yet Jackett has been managing since 1993, his average tenure is four years and he remains highly-regarded at each of his previous clubs. With good reason.
His people skills and ability to detect problems before they arise keep him ahead of the game in ways that go unnoticed. For example, it's no coincidence that a couple of veteran campaigners have arrived on loan within a month of Morgan's bombshell, providing a pre-emptive solution to a potential problem regarding experience, leadership and motivation.
Nobody will ever really know how crucial a part Mike Williamson and Grant Holt will play in shaping the mood of the Molinuex dressing room over the coming weeks because the issues they prevent won't have surfaced in the first place. But it's a fine example of Jackett adapting quickly to a change of circumstances, going against his prior ideology and doing what's best for the club in a given scenario.
It's just a shame that the club, particularly under Morgan, continues to deviate from any grand plan they put in place and bring turbulence on themselves, mainly due to a lack of endurance in adversity. Until they have a new owner, the Molineux crowd should be under no illusions that things could soon spiral out of control if their frustration with the current hiatus urges them to push Jackett towards the door.
Follow @thesackraceJackie (2016)
History and drama often make awkward bedfellows, as you might find in the bio-pic Jackie (2016). The assassination of JFK is one of the defining moments of the 20th century and any dramatization of the immediate aftermath is a risky venture. History buffs may fault it and others may struggle with its melodramatic interpretation of Jaqueline Kennedy’s life-defining event. But look beyond the cinematic limitations and you find a complex portrait of a remarkable person who endured an unimaginable horror with rare strength and dignity.
The film’s starts with the motorcade in which John F. Kennedy was assassinated and ends with his funeral. The narrative is framed around a journalist’s interview conducted a week after the event and a confessional talk with a priest at the funeral. It uses their questions and comments to trigger flashbacks to the short JFK presidency, with dramatisations that craft together archival footage and historical photographs. The title of the film makes it clear that this is a portrait of Jackie (played by Natalie Portman) so her words, her emotions, and her actions are the primary focus. The film’s narrative tension comes entirely from the depiction of her inner world of private trauma and her struggles with the political and public reaction to the event.
The most striking aspect of Portman’s portrayal is her ability to present several sides of the one persona as if she and Jackie shared multiple personalities. Once you recover from the distraction that Portman barely resembles Jaqueline Kennedy, she takes you on an emotional roller-coaster, from terror, anger, hate, confusion, mental vacillation and disorientation to calm resolve about her role in history. Throughout it all she remains committed to turning a tragedy into national mythology based on political heroism, the Kennedy legend, and the Camelot fairy tale. While there is a commendable support cast, this is a one-woman performance and Portman’s portrayal is a tour de force.
Some will find this film an unflattering interpretation of Jaqueline Kennedy while others will find that it helps them to sympathetically understand the person behind the mask. The film steers a fine line in avoiding judgement and it is Portman’s dramatic ability to step into Jackie’s soul and to capture her mental trauma that ultimately shines. No bio-pic is perfect. If you overlook scenes where the film struggles with period authenticity you will be rewarded with a memorable performance about an unforgettable event.
Director: Pablo Larraine
Stars: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Great Gervig, John HurtThis article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 25, 2016.
SHAH ALAM: Proton Holdings Bhd is retreating from several of its existing international markets amid intense competition within the automotive industry, as the national carmaker strategises for better growth and presence in its next export markets.
“Exports this year have been very challenging for us,” said its chief executive officer Datuk Ahmad Fuaad Mohd Kenali. “Therefore, we are retreating from several of our markets.”
“We are now studying our export figures and looking at ways to increase our competitiveness before entering new markets or re-entering existing ones,” he told reporters at the launch of the Proton Ertiga MPV EEV yesterday.
Though Proton has been applauded for aggressively turning itself around by launching four new models this year alone, and being one step closer to selecting its foreign strategic partner, Ahmad Fuaad said the group is not resting on its laurels just yet as it strives to reaffirm its presence internationally.
Proton currently exports its cars to at least six countries.
“Due to several circumstances and the regulatory environment of certain foreign markets, we had to withdraw ourselves and slow down our export activities. Notwithstanding this, our export department is actively studying potential markets that might be willing to accept our products,” said Ahmad Fuaad.
Meanwhile, the price of the Proton Ertiga has been fixed between RM58,800 and RM64,800, with the carmaker setting a sales target of 1,500 units per month for this model.
The model, which is a rebadge of the Suzuki Ertiga, is assembled at Proton’s manufacturing plant in Tanjung Malim, Perak, with vehicle parts and components provided by Suzuki Indonesia.
Proton, together with its parent company DRB-Hicom Bhd, in 2015 forged a partnership with Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp.
Asked when Proton hopes to achieve profitability seeing that it has been making losses since 2012, Ahmad Fuaad said the group aims to “achieve better numbers” in a year’s time, given the positive reception of its recent models including the Perdana, Persona and Saga.
Based on RAM Credit Information’s website, Proton posted a net loss of RM646.3 million for 2015, which was 39.9% higher than the RM462.03 million it lost a year earlier.
“As far as products are concerned, we are confident of turning around and achieving greater sales and profits in a year or so. Bookings and sales of the models launched this year have been very encouraging,” said Ahmad Fuaad.
“Previously, we were forced to [resort] to heavy discounting on ageing models just to push our sales further. But with what we have launched this year, including the Ertiga, we are giving customers better products with better quality and pricing,” he added.
Meanwhile, responding to a question on the latest developments of Proton’s search for a new partner, its chairman Datuk Seri Syed Faisal Albar said that under “current circumstances”, Proton would only be able to announce its decision by the first half of 2017 at the earliest.
“It is still premature for us to mention any names as this involves DRB-Hicom, which is a public-listed company. Our candidates might also be public-listed,” Syed Faisal said.
Earlier this month, The Edge weekly named French carmakers Groupe PSA (formerly known as PSA Peugeot Citroën), Renault SA (part of the Renault–Nissan Alliance) and China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd as possible suitors.
DRB-Hicom’s share price closed unchanged at RM1.12 yesterday, valuing the group at RM2.22 billion.Qualcomm's been bitten by the bounty bug, signing on with HackerOne to offer up to US$15,000 for vulnerabilities in modems and processors.
The bounty covers Snapdragon 400, 615, 801, 805 808, 810, 820 and 821 processors, and its X5, X7, X12 and X16 LTE modems.
A vulnerability in any one of these would reach a long way into the wild. The Snapdragon X20, to pick one example, is in current-generation smartphones from Google, Samsung, Motorola, LG, ZTE, Sony, Asus, HTC, and HP.
Because the company has about 65 per cent of the LTE market, the Quadrooter bug that landed during Def Con in August was thought to affect up to 900 million devices.
Qualcomm's note at HackerOne gives white hats a pretty wide brief: Linux kernel code 3.14 or newer in the Android for MSM project, written by the Qualcomm Innovation Center and not in an end-of-life branch.
There are also rewards for bootloader bugs, anything that has root or system, privileges, the modem, networking firmware (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), or the Qualcomm Secure Execution on Trustzone.
Merely crashing a process isn't enough; the bug has to then let the attacker get to code execution. ®Story highlights Christie demurred when asked about his concerns over Trump's senior staff
Christie also pushed back on the charge that Trump's executive order amounted to a "Muslim ban"
(CNN) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday slammed the rollout of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, saying it was "terrible" even if the President's intentions were good.
"The rollout of this executive order was terrible," Christie told reporters in Newark, New Jersey. "The right people were not involved or consulted. There was confusion in the enforcement that went on here."
Christie was one of Trump's most prominent and ardent supporters after his own failed presidential campaign, but his role was diminished after the election when he was dismissed as transition chief and turned down a number of roles in the Trump administration.
"The President deserves much better than the rollout that he got of this plan," Christie said Tuesday. "A lot of the mistakes were made and those mistakes are unacceptable."
However, Christie demurred when asked about his concerns over Trump's senior staff.
Read MoreTheir music may sound as if it falls easily from their fingers, but Sigur Rós's new film Inni shows just how hard the band work to create their sound
Sigur Rós are one of those bands that provoke long, sombre, painfully poetic tributes from people who have either forgotten – or would rather avoid – the truth that they are four blokes in a pop group who like getting drunk and making a racket. When I mention to the gently hungover guitarist and singer Jónsi Birgisson a quote from an American magazine that described how his "angelic falsetto coasts like a hang-glider riding the breeze to the edge of the sea", he and bass player Goggi Hólm almost fall off the sofa laughing.
"I just don't understand why anyone would even write that," Birgisson says, noisily stirring a cappuccino.
"This person should hear our sound-checks," Hólm nods. "They are fucking crazy. We just play all these big heavy metal songs – nothing is played straight." There are no pellucid, glacial towers of crystalline something or other then, I ask?
"No!" yells Birgisson. "And no golden tears falling from heaven, either. It used to be difficult for us, five interviews a day full of these very intense discussions about frozen landscapes and all of that, and we can't explain or describe the music any better than anyone else; it's really only the feeling that comes from it in the end that matters."
Hólm leans in. "Sometimes during those interviews I'd sit there and think: 'What the fuck has happened to my life?'"
Birgisson and Hólm are in London to talk about Inni, their new concert film and double-live album. The film, directed by Vincent Morisset, takes the concept of up-close-and-personal and makes it all a bit more up close and personal. Shot in black and white, with almost no audience footage, the film is a multi-camera homage to a band that, far from freewheeling around on thermals, clearly have to work hard to create their music, despite it sounding as if it just falls out of their fingers.
When I ask them how they prepare for such a show, Birgisson says: "Drinking a lot helps." Hólm thinks it's even simpler. "You just turn it on," he says. "It's like pushing a button. You walk on and do it."
So instruments are hit and stroked and kicked and bowed and tapped and rattled, but they're all so busy there's no time for anyone to quickly place a foot on the monitor and "gun down" the audience with their guitar, or cup their hand to their ear and provoke a rowdy singalong.
"We never even throw a pick into the audience," Birgisson admits. "We're not quite Iron Maiden yet. We're saving all that stuff for our retirement shows."
"When we play together we're in our own space," Hólm says. "We zone out from each other completely. Our music is all about the very tiniest, most minute details and they must be played exactly right or it will sound different, wrong."
Each of the limited, special-edition box sets of Inni will include, among other things, light-sensitive paper, etched 7in singles, an exclusive short film called Klippa and what's described as a "unique concert artefact", which I'm hoping doesn't mean old bits of gaffer tape pulled from the stage floor. "Oh no," Hólm says. "It's sweaty socks! It's like, we're done with all this, you can have it."
"We're moving on," Birgisson says. "In Klippa |
absolute garbage. Here's a clip to him trying to kill Anthony Bourdain with food. The poutine is @ 5:37.)
So how can America step up its poutine game? midnightpoutine.ca
In short, we need a lot more normal poutines and a lot less foodie poutines. Some cities are doing better than others. Portland's thriving food cart scene has some decent poutines (however, I find the existence of "vegan cheese curds" unsettling). I also hear that New York also has handful of solid offerings. But other cities are desperately lagging (LA's poutines are absolutely the worst). We just need more. In a perfect world, any restaurant in America that serves french fries would also have steaming-hot brown gravy and cheese curds on hand. I know this country has a lot of problems on its hands — the deficit, unemployment, income disparity at an all-time high, etc. But maybe it's time that all of us, from our leaders in Washington to the media to everyday citizens, took a stand on an issue we can actually resolve: the epic shortage of quality poutine. Once that's fixed, everything else should fall into place.
Henry GoldmanCalling for reinforcements to travel to Iowa!
Hi, my name is Alexander and I’m a volunteer with the Bernie Sanders campaign. I’m tasked with helping to funnel new volunteers into Iowa during the home-stretch up until the February 1st caucuses.
So, what is this?
The campaign has other channels to bring in new volunteers. If you have submitted your information to one of those, great! Hopefully, they will get in touch with you. But many people have expressed interest and haven’t been followed up with yet, or have heard from the campaign once but have yet to gotten any assignment or instructions yet.
Think of this project as the “fast track” into Iowa. This is for people who are ready and willing to jump into Iowa head-first. I have direct contact with field officers within the state and can place you into an area as soon as… right now.
We need your help. We’re pretty well-off in the big cities, but those make up only a number of caucus events. There are dozens of other caucuses throughout the state and those regions are currently significantly understaffed.
This project is intended to bring much-needed reinforcements into the understaffed rural areas of Iowa. If we can get enough volunteers into these areas, we will win Iowa. You can absolutely make a difference in this campaign and swing the momentum into Bernie’s favor.
FAQs
What will I be doing in Iowa?
You’ll probably be canvassing, or going to visit people who are open to the idea of caucusing for Bernie Sanders. At the field office, you’ll get a list of addresses to visit within an area. You’ll drive (or ride along) to the area, park, and walk to the addresses that need to be visited.
Once you are there, you’ll answer any questions that the caucusgoer has about Bernie Sanders and encourage them to attend their local caucus event on February 1st. Most of these people have been visited before, but some of them might be new leads found through phone banking.
All incoming volunteers will receive training upon arrival. Other administrative or organizational tasks might be requested as well.
What if I have free time, but can’t afford to get to Iowa?
There is currently no way for the campaign to provide any direct financial assistance to volunteers. The campaign will be providing housing to out-of-state volunteers, but you will be responsible for food (there are grocery stores and all of the usual food places) and transportation to Iowa.
If you cannot afford food and transportation to Iowa, you might still be able to volunteer. Several Redditors have expressed interested in sponsoring trips to Iowa. If you would like to request financial assistance to volunteer in Iowa, please head on over to our new subreddit /r/BernieSponsors and post a new thread, or find an existing thread where people are offering sponsorship.
Click here to find a sponsor to pay for your ticket to Iowa.
After you have found a sponsor, please return to this page and continue to sign-up to volunteer.
Does the campaign provide food?
There is currently no infrastructure in place to regularly provide food to volunteers, sorry. Please bring along some cash and cards to purchase food at local supermarkets and/or restaurants.
Does the campaign provide lodging?
Yes. While we cannot provide money for food or travel expenses, what we are happy to provide you is a warm bed to sleep at night.
Where will I be sleeping?
It depends on where you are volunteering but generally, volunteers will be sleeping in areas donated to us by Bernie Sanders supporters. Many local Iowa residents have volunteered to house Bernie Sanders volunteers in their extra bedrooms. When you get here, we will absolutely provide you with a place to stay.
In a worst case scenario, you might be on an air mattress on a floor. But nobody said the political revolution was going to be easy ;-). While we cannot offer you a 5-star hotel room, we can guarantee that you will have a warm and safe place to stay.
Where should I travel to?
If you are flying, bussing, or taking the train in, travel to Des Moines. From there you can get a rental car. For those without the ability to drive or rent a car, we’ll send the Bernie van to pick you up and drop you at your field office. We’ll be emailing you an address of a field office to report to.
What if I have a group of people?
That’s great. Please just indicate that while signing up. Yes, you can stay and work together if you want.
Do I need to have a car?
You don’t need to have a car, but it is definitely preferred. However, if you don’t have a car, we definitely still need you! The sign-up form has a spot to indicate whether you can use your car (or a rental) or not. If you don’t have a car, we’ll likely pair you with somebody who does upon arrival or have you canvass in a major city with great public transportation.
I would like to pay for somebody’s travel expenses. Or I have frequent flier miles and would like to use them to fly somebody else to Iowa.
Please head to the /r/BernieSponsors subreddit to see people who are requesting funds. Please avoid sending money directly, instead opt for booking their tickets yourself. Please communicate with the person closely, and once they’re booked, have them report to this page to get assigned in Iowa.
For more information on sponsorship, see the subreddit.
When do you need me?
We could use you as early as right now. Seriously, indicate that you’re free “today” on the sign-up form and we’ll get you assigned today. In an ideal world, you can come help out for an entire week or longer, up until the end of caucus day on February 1st (you can either head home then or stay until the morning of February 2nd). But we are also looking for a large number of people to come in on Thursday, January 28, and stay until the morning of Tuesday, February 2.
Those are ideals. If you can only come during the weekend, we can definitely use you. Just please indicate your availability on the sign-up form. We need any and all of the help that we can get.
Getting Started
Please fill out this form and we’ll be in touch within a day, often the same day. People who can come sooner will be prioritized to the front of the line.People who signed up for the Steam Music beta received the notification that Valve’s new music-management system is live this past weekend. I was one of those people, and I spent part of my weekend exploring Steam’s new addition.
On opening Steam in its Big Picture mode (or simply booting into your Steam Machine’s primary interface) and clicking on Library, users will be asked whether they want to view their games, or their music. After selecting music, the relevant folders are searched for and albums and songs added to Steam.
The process takes a bit of time, longer if you have a lot of music files, but the end result is your music arranged by album in a format that very closely resembles Big Picture’s Games layout.
Playing songs is as simple as double-clicking them, which brings up the only disappointing element of Steam Music I’ve seen so far: A simple dialogue box that overlays the album art while music plays, showing basic controls (Play, Pause, Next Track, Previous Track, Shuffle and browse music) and a timer. It’s also where you’ll see the tracks you’ve queued up via right-clicking and selecting Add to Queue, and sadly, it’s all more than a little ugly.
Other gripes are that album art appears to be pulled directly from your music folders as opposed to obtained automatically by Steam, and Steam Music doesn’t appear to do anything about oddly-named tracks or artists it can’t identify, either, like ask for additional information from the user to find the missing details.
Steam Music also doesn’t respond to the media controls on my Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard, and finding what’s currently playing isn’t possible once you’ve clicked away from the window with the controls. The only way to get back to what’s playing is to play a new song, an action that erases your current playlist.
These gripes are to be expected, of course, since this is just a beta programme.
There is also some good, however: the Steam Music beta brings with it a complete overhaul of the Steam overlay that comes up with you press Shift and Tab while in a game. Now, that interface looks like elements from Steam’s Big Picture mode, and you can see things like your recent achievements and which friends play the game you’re in and of course manage whatever music is playing. That part of Steam’s new features looks very nice, at least.
If you’ve signed up and are using Steam Music and you’d like to give Valve some feedback, the best place to do that is on the Steam Music section of the Steam forum.
These are my first impressions of the service; expect more once the beta ends and Steam Music goes live for everyone.Perth Wildcats' NBL title hopes have been dealt a blow with guard Hugh Greenwood walking out on the club to have a crack at breaking into the AFL ranks.
Greenwood informed the club on Thursday and Wildcats managing director Nick Marvin said he was very disappointed to receive the news.
Leaving: Perth guard Hugh Greenwood during his US college stint with the University of New Mexico.
"Unfortunately Hugh Greenwood's decision not to honour his contract poses a significant challenge for us. Whilst he leaves with our best wishes, it does require us to revise our recruiting strategy immediately," he said.
"We made numerous decisions based on his commitment to us, so we are disappointed to lose him.
"However, the Wildcats family has always dealt well with adversity and this occasion will be no different."
Greenwood was in the first month of a three-year contract with the Wildcats.With the January transfer window now open for business clubs will be working hard to try and strengthen their squad for the second half of the season, so we’ll keep you up-to-date with all the latest news, gossip and rumours. Today, Julian Draxler is understood to have been shown around Arsenal’s training ground.
German starlet Julian Draxler was left impressed after being shown around Arsenal’s training facilities ahead of a potential €45m summer move, according to the Mirror.
The 20-year-old is considered as one of the most sought-after young players in Europe after breaking in to the Schalke first team two years ago and has since become a regular in Joachim Low’s senior German international team set up.
His impressive displays for both club and country have caught the attention of several top European clubs with reports in the summer claiming that Arsenal and Chelsea tried to lure him to the Premier League before he eventually opted to remains with Schalke in fear a move would jeopardise his chance of featuring at the 2014 World Cup.
However, the Mirror claim the Gunners are now in pole position to sign the talented attacker in the summer after he was left impressed following a tour of the clubs training facilities at London Colney.
German pundit and agent, Jan Aage Fjortoft – you used to be a professional footballer with Middlesbrough – has also claimed that Arsenal remain favourites to sign Draxler with the north Londoners German contingent seemingly playing their part in luring him to the Emirates.
Arsenal still favourite to get Draxler (Clause: summers-45 mill euro)
– Impressed by Arsenal training ground
– German players #afc crucial — Jan Aage Fjortoft (@JanAageFjortoft) January 5, 2014
The player has also recently hinted he could make a move to Arsenal after admitting he has spoken with German team-mates Mesut Ozil and Per Mertesacker about life in London, whilst also praising Arsene Wenger’s team’s playing style:
“I have always said English teams are very big clubs and Arsenal is of course one of them. “Of course I sometimes speak to Mesut or Per about the team, about the club, and they always have good words and they tell me nice things. You never know what happens in the summer but Arsenal is a very, very nice team.” “They always have very young players, they play attractive football and that’s what I like.” [source: Mirror]
Arsenal proved with the signing of Mesut Ozil in the summer they are now ready to pay big-money to sign the top talent and they will need to dig deep once again if they want to land Draxler, with the newspaper stating he has a €45m (£37.5m) buy-out clause in his current contract with Schalke.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE –> Arsenal transfer news | Chelsea transfer news
The bookmakers have Arsenal as favourites to sign Draxler with the latest odds on Willian Hill offering 4/1 that the German attacker will end up at the Emirates. Obviously things can change very quickly in football but I’m sure Gunners’ fans would be delighted if the youngster makes his way to North London as he’s one of the hottest prospects in European football right now.
Do Arsenal supporters rate Draxler? Do Chelsea fans think their club should try and sign him? Share your views below.VANCOUVER -- How good was Mike Richards in his first playoff game for the Los Angeles Kings?
Forget scoring his team's first goal on a 5-on-3 power play, pouncing on a turnover to set up the go-ahead goal with 3:14 left or adding a third point by assisting on an empty-netter in the dying seconds of L.A.'s 4-2 Game 1 victory in Vancouver on Wednesday.
The true measure of Richards' effectiveness came when Canucks coach Alain Vigneault was asked about his matchup with his own second-line center Ryan Kesler, who also happens to be the reigning Selke Trophy winner.
"I'm not sure I like that matchup," Vigneault said, breaking into laughter before adding he might change it up for Game 2 on Friday night.
When the best defensive forward in the NHL last season isn't a good matchup, you know you are doing something right. And that's exactly why the Kings acquired Richards from Philadelphia in a blockbuster five-player trade just before the NHL Draft last June. It's why coach Darryl Sutter insisted he wasn't worried Richards had just 44 points in his first season in Los Angeles -- his lowest point total in five seasons and 35 below his average the previous four.
Richards was acquired for his playoff pedigree -- he led the Flyers to the Stanley Cup Final in 2010 as captain after they made the conference finals in 2008. Just 27 years old, Richards leads the young Kings with 64 playoff games and 53 points on his resume, and is being openly looked to for postseason leadership
He showed why on Wednesday night.
"He's been known throughout his career to play big in big games and he showed that last night," captain Dustin Brown said. "He's not a fun guy to play against, and that gets magnified when you're playing in him in a seven-game series."
So what is it that makes Richards so effective in the playoffs?
Brown cited a unique combination of offensive skill and physical play, especially since the latter comes out of a guy listed at just 5-foot-11. But there are other reasons, added Brown, that Richards gets under so many opponent's skin.
"He can hurt you offensively, he's good defensively and he can play mind games with some of your top players," Brown said. "Playing against Mike, even dating to back when we played against each other in junior, he has a little bit of that rat mentality -- but he also has the skill and the killer instinct to go with it. Look back across his career and he's not the biggest guy, but he's physical and he delivers big-time hits; that's what makes him really good in these big games."
Richards, who was also a big part of Canada's Olympic gold medal-winning team in 2010, never doubted his best performances would come out once the playoffs started.
"It's a new opportunity, everyone starts at zero," Richards said after skipping the Kings' optional practice Thursday. "I never lost confidence in what I could do as a player. I always felt that even though the points were coming I was getting good opportunities and just stick with the game plan. It's not cheating offensively, playing good defense, and it was nice to have a game like that last night."
For Richards, the game plan also includes plenty of physical play, including a crushing blow on agitating Canucks forward Alexandre Burrows while trying to hold onto a 3-2 lead and Vancouver pressing in the dying minutes of Game 1 -- a time when most players would be focused strictly on defending.
"He's going to hit me so you're better off trying to get a lick on him," Richards said. "That's playoff hockey. This is why we play. It's fun, it's heated, the crowd was electric – it's just a good time to play hockey and you want to play hard."
And not say too much.
"It's just one game last night," Richards stressed several times. "It's a marathon. After one game you have to move on to Game 2, not only as a team, but personally too."
Spoken like a true playoff leader.PlayStation Japan revealed today four different limited edition PS4 consoles specially-branded to commemorate Street Fighter V.
Priced at at 37,480 yen ($320) plus tax, each PS4 features a uniquely designed HDD bay cover inspired by the game.
The first of the four comes in glacier white and features the Street Fighter V logo design on the cover.
The second also comes in Glacier White, but features both Chun-Li and Laura.
There are also two Jet Black versions, the first featuring Ryu.
And the second featuring both Ryu and Necalli.
Additionally, all four versions come with a custom theme and a sleeve designed by One Punch Man illustrator Yusuke Murata.
What the consoles don't come with is a copy of the game, which will be sold separately. All four Street Fighter V limited edition PS4 consoles are available for pre-order and will release in Japan on February 18, alongside the game. There was no mention of a Western release, but our fingers are crossed as these designs are stunning.What is Humanism?
Humanism is defined as:
“a rationalist outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.”
Humanists are people who believe in the scientific method as a way of understanding the universe. They attach little significance to and theory or idea that is not based on scientific research. Reason, logic and morality are important to humanists. To help you understand humanism in full, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 books on this area of philosophical thought.
5 Essential Humanism Books
Also subtitled: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself.
This book is one that you will breeze through quickly. Although, after nearly every page you want to tell every single person you know what you have learned. It fully explains how the tenants of psychology apply to your life, even though you never realize it. Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart, and this book will tell you why.
Albert Einstein was undoubtedly the most famous and revolutionary scientist of the 20th Century. But he also had wide-ranging beliefs about politics and social affairs. This book is a collection of 43 essays and talks that were written for specific occasions. They cover a variety of humanistic topics that interested him and in several cases provide useful lessons for our own time.
This is a deep, thoughtful book for people who are interested in knowing the case against religion. In the second part of his book he presents an argument for Humanism, about which Grayling has a great deal to say.
“Humanism”, he says, “is the concern to draw the best from, and make the best of, human life in the span of the human lifetime, in the real world, and in sensible accord with the facts of humanity as these are shaped and constrained by the world. This entails that humanism rejects religious claims about the source of morality and value.”
There are few American philosophers better qualified to write on secular humanism than Paul Kurtz, and his What Is Secular Humanism? This small book is actually the text of an article Kurtz wrote for the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. It is a very good primer on the conceptual structure of secular humanism. Perhaps because he’s a philosopher, Kurtz doesn’t merely offer assertions and descriptions. Instead, he seeks to provide arguments that defend humanism’s basic conclusions.
Demons, UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, fairies and the like are all investigated in this incredible non-fiction book by the late Carl Sagan. Pseudoscience, and those who perpetuate it, find their place in today’s society among those who want to believe in the impossible. However, science today has not been able to prove that such things exist.
“The siren song of un-reason is not just a cultural wrong but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.”
This book challenges the reader to critically scrutinize information professed by supposed experts, and be more of a skeptic. By using the scientific method combined with a little bit of logic and common sense, one should find that it is much more difficult to be mentally taken advantage of by pseudoscience “experts.”
For more information about Humanism, check out some of the links below:
The British Humanis Association
American Humanist AssociationThe Clintons (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post) Time Line The drama now known as Whitewater has a definitive starting point: a land purchase in 1978. It has taken a complicated course ever since. Follow the unraveling of allegations with this timeline. 1978
Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton join with James B. and Susan McDougal to borrow $203,000 to buy 220 acres of land in Arkansas' Ozark Mountains. They soon form the Whitewater Development Corp., intending to build vacation homes. Clinton is elected governor. 1980
Clinton loses his reelection bid and enters private legal practice. James McDougal, who served briefly as Gov. Clinton's economic development director, quits government to buy a small bank in Kingston, Ark. He loans $30,000 to Hillary Clinton to build a model house on a Whitewater lot. 1982
McDougal buys a small savings and loan and names it Madison Guaranty. After two years as a private citizen, Clinton is once again elected governor. 1984
Federal regulators begin to question the financial stability and lending practices of Madison Guaranty, criticizing Madison's speculative land deals, insider-lending and hefty commissions paid to the McDougals and others. Clinton is reelected. 1985
James McDougal holds a fund-raising event at Madison Guaranty to help pay off a $50,000 Clinton campaign debt. Investigators later determine some of the money was improperly withdrawn from depositor funds. McDougal hires the Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton is a partner, to do legal work for the ailing savings and loan. Hillary Clinton and another Rose lawyer seek state regulatory approval for recapitalization plan for Madison. 1986
McDougal borrows $300,000 from a company owned by David Hale, a former Little Rock judge. Hale's company receives federal funds from the Small Business Administration to lend to disadvantaged business owners, but an investigation 10 years later alleges that he lent up to $3 million to political figures instead. Citing improper practices, federal regulators remove McDougal as Madison Guaranty's president, but he retains ownership. 1988
Witnesses from the Rose Law Firm say Hillary Clinton requested the destruction of Madison land contract files. Hillary Clinton writes James McDougal to ask for power of attorney to sell off remaining Whitewater lots and clear up bank obligations. 1989
Madison Guaranty collapses after a series of bad loans and a change in government accounting procedures. The federal government shuts it down and spends $60 million bailing it out. James McDougal is indicted on federal fraud charges related to his management of a Madison real estate subsidiary. 1990
McDougal is acquitted. 1992
The Clinton presidential campaign gathers information on Whitewater and Madison Guaranty. A report commissioned by the campaign claims the Clintons lost $68,000 on Whitewater, an estimate later adjusted down to somewhat over $40,000. The Federal Resolution Trust Corp., investigating causes of Madison's failure, sends a referral to the Justice Department that names the Clintons as "potential beneficiaries" of illegal activities at Madison. January 1993
Clinton's first term as president begins. May 1993
White House fires seven employees in the travel office, possibly to make room for Clinton friends. An FBI investigation of the office ensues, allegedly opened under pressure from the White House to justify the firings.
June 1993
Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster files three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns. July 1993
Foster is found dead in a Washington area park. Police rule the death a suicide. Federal investigators are not allowed access to Foster's office immediately after the discovery, but White House aides enter Foster's office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files were removed from his office. September 1993
First of three meetings in which Treasury Department officials tip off Clinton aides about the progress of the RTC investigation. October 1993
RTC's criminal referral is rejected by Paula Casey, U.S. attorney in Little Rock and former law student of Bill Clinton. December 1993
The White House agrees to turn over Whitewater documents to the Justice Department, which had been preparing to subpoena them. These documents include files found in Foster's office. January 1994
Attorney General Janet Reno names New York lawyer and former U.S. attorney Robert B. Fiske Jr. as special counsel to investigate the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater. Fiske announces he will also explore a potential link between Foster's suicide and his intimate knowledge of the developing Whitewater scandal. February 1994
Republican attorney Jay Stephens is appointed to head the Resolution Trust Corp.'s investigation of the failure of Madison Guaranty. March 1994
Webster L. Hubbell abruptly resigns as associate attorney general after allegations are raised about his conduct at the Rose Law Firm. Two of Clinton's top political advisers call business friends and line up more than $500,000 for Hubbell, including $100,000 from the Lippo Group. Hubbell is later convicted of fraud and serves 18 months in jail.
Summer 1994
The House and Senate Banking committees begin hearings on Whitewater. Twenty-nine Clinton administration officials are subpoenaed or testify at congressional hearings. All are cleared of any wrongdoing. August 5, 1994
A U.S. Court of Appeals panel refuses to re-appoint Fiske as special counsel, citing a possible conflict of interest because he was appointed by Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. Kenneth W. Starr, a former federal appeals court judge and U.S. solicitor who worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations, succeeds Fiske as the independent counsel to investigate Whitewater-Madison matters. He reissues subpoenas for documents, such as the Rose billing records of Hillary Clinton. Continued: 1995-1998 © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Back to the topOn the night of Feb. 6, 1975, Marine Reserve Squadron Capt. Larry Jividen was piloting a T-39D Sabreliner (see image above) combat trainer and utility aircraft with five Naval officer pilots on board for a special training flight. He didn't know the evening would evolve into a game of "tag" with an unidentified flying object.
Jividen hasn't spoken about that experience from nearly 40 years ago -- until now.
The nine-year Marine Corps officer -- and later commercial airline pilot -- had taken off at twilight for a two-hour roundtrip that began and ended at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.
"At about 9 o'clock, we were descending from a high altitude -- around 33,000 feet -- and I looked off to the right side of the airplane where I saw a solid red light at our 1:00 o'clock position and altitude," Jividen told The Huffington Post.
"It was not flashing like normal anti-collision lights flash on airplanes. I thought it might be some other traffic, but I wasn't sure, so I called Pensacola Approach Control and said, 'Understand we're cleared for the approach, but we have traffic off to our right, and who's first for the approach?"
The traffic that Jividen and the other five crew members saw was mutually described as "a solid, circular object about the relative size of a kid's marble held at arm's length," Jividen recalled.
When they were informed that ground control had no other traffic in their vicinity, Jividen became concerned that the mysterious object hadn't shown up on radar. So he asked for clearance to deviate from their approach and turn directly toward the bright red UFO "just to see what it does."
As he turned toward the object, Jividen says it turned toward his plane.
"It suddenly flew from right to left, across the nose [of our plane], and just stopped at our 11:00 o'clock position. At that point, I started to speed up to see if I could close on the object, and as I [did that], it was pacing me in front. In other words, as I'd speed up, he'd speed up.
"So, I decided to descend to place the object against a star field to make sure that it was actually solid, and then I climbed so that I could silhouette the object against the Gulf of Mexico."
Jividen says the five-minute encounter came to an end when the reddish UFO flew away at a very high rate and disappeared over the horizon in the direction of New Orleans.
After the crew returned to Pensacola, Jividen filled out an incident form and that was the last he heard of the episode.
And nobody else heard about it for more than three decades.
Jividen's story is now being told in a new edition of "UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities," written by retired Army Col. John Alexander.
"I did some background checks on [Jividen] and one of the first things that came back was his distinguished flying crosses for doing really heroic things. He is who he says he is and very straightforward," Alexander told HuffPost.
"I don't think there's any doubt that it was something. I take him as a highly credible witness, much more so than many other ones."
Alexander's unique top-secret clearance granted him by the U.S. government gave him access in the 1980s to a variety of official documents and first-person UFO accounts. He also created a special group of top-level government officials and scientists who studied the UFO phenomenon.
In the end, Alexander determined that the U.S., indeed, had evidence pointing to UFO reality, but he couldn't find any signs that the government deliberately kept this information from the public, or that contact had been made with alien life.
"One of the things we are seeing are physical characteristics that we don't understand, capabilities that are beyond our technological options at this time, i.e. extremely fast acceleration and high-G turns that living organisms, as we know it, would not survive," he explained.
Watch these amazing pilot close encounters with UFOs:
A larger issue going on with regard to UFOs seen by military, commercial and private pilots may turn out to be potential safety hazards, says at least one respected scientist.
"My friends who are scientists say, 'Well, there's nothing to UFOs. If there were, we would have the data and we'd look at it.' That's partly a valid statement, and it's pilots who are unwittingly preventing us from getting the data to analyze scientifically," said Richard Haines, a former research scientist from NASA's Ames Research Center.
Haines -- who prefers to use the term unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, to UFO -- is a former UFO skeptic who now heads the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, or NARCAP.
"Our objectives are to make flying safer for the flying public, specifically in regard to UAP, and we're convinced there's a potential threat posed by nearby UAP to commercial and private airplanes," Haines told HuffPost.
Working with a staff of nearly 40 people, including international affiliates, Haines is NARCAP's chief scientist. He addresses the issue of pilots who have a fear reporting UFOs or UAPs while they're still actively flying.
"To me, that's a serious inhibiting factor for scientists like myself to collect the data."
Haines suggests that the fear factor surrounding pilots doesn't have as much to do with them being afraid of the objects they encounter as it does with the fear of losing their jobs if they talk about it.
"Exactly. I don't think it's a physical fear. NARCAP comes along with the objective of trying to make flying safer for the public, and the airlines don't want to hear that because it implies it's not safe! For obvious reasons, many of the reports I have are from retired pilots."
Like the one from Jividen, who filed a report with Haines last year -- almost 40 years after the fact, but it was still impressive.
"First of all, it had a number of witnesses," said Haines. "There were six guys on board and they're not all going to mistake a common illusion.
"After several minutes [the object] didn't change size, shape or intensity, which means that it not only accelerated in front of him and stopped at his 11:00 o'clock position, but it then maintained his forward velocity. We have to ask what kind of natural phenomenon can do that?"
Former NASA scientist Richard Haines describes a harrowing pilot encounter with a UFO:
Haines still isn't sure what these unusual objects are that so many pilots over decades have reported.
"I honestly don't know, and as a scientist, I want to keep all the doors open until I've got sufficient evidence, but until that time, I'm not going to speculate."
Alexander's research leads him to at least one important conclusion about the truly unexplained UFO or UAP cases.
"If you get to the fundamental issue -- if there is an intelligence behind this, and it certainly appears to be true -- things like energy have to be key. Certainly understanding a different form of energy would be incredibly useful."
Whatever the red circular object was that Jividen and his crew encountered that night in 1975, two things made a lasting impression on him.
"First, there was no radar contact with it. Clearly, by the silhouette and movement of my aircraft, this was a solid, self-propelled object.Frances D'Emilio, The Associated Press
GROSSETO, Italy -- The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia, now on trial over the deadly disaster, blamed his helmsman Monday for botching a last-minute corrective manoeuvre that he contends could have prevented the massive cruise ship's collision with a reef along the Italian coast.
Capt. Francesco Schettino is charged with manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship before the luxury cruise liner's 4,200 passengers and crew could be evacuated on Jan. 13, 2012. Thirty-two people died that night. Last week, the capsized ship was raised upright in a major salvage operation.
Critics have depicted Schettino as a negligent coward. But Schettino insists he is being made a scapegoat and that errors by other Costa Crociere SpA crew and mechanical problems exacerbated the tragedy that occurred near the Tuscan island of Giglio.
The Concordia crashed into a reef, took on water and capsized when Schettino steered it dangerously close to Giglio. It was an off-route manoeuvre that the captain is alleged to have taken in part because he wanted to impress his passengers with a close-up view of the island's twinkling lights.
Schettino told the court that as the Concordia came perilously close to Giglio's rocky coastline, he ordered his helmsman to steer the rudder to the left, but the crewman reacted too slowly and shifted to the right instead. The jagged reef sliced a 70-metre gash in the ship's hull.
"If it weren't for the helmsman's error, to not position the rudder to the left... the swerve (toward the reef) and the collision wouldn't have happened," said Schettino, who risks 20 years in prison if convicted. Schettino also has said the reef wasn't on his charts, and that the company should shoulder some blame.
Investigators have said language problems between the Italian captain and the Indonesian-born helmsman may have played a role in the botched manoeuvre. A maritime expert, however, told the court that although the helmsman was slow to react and had indeed erred, in the end it didn't matter.
"The helmsman was 13 seconds late in executing the manoeuvre, but the crash would have happened anyway," Italian naval Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone said Monday.
The helmsman, Jacob Rusli Bin, is one of five Costa Crociere SpA employees who were granted plea bargains in return for mild sentences in a separate proceeding. He was sentenced to one year and 8 months, but because of a law to reduce prison overcrowding, none of the five defendants is likely to serve time behind bars.
Those upset by the relatively light punishments had cause for optimism Monday. A Florence-based prosecutor lodged a formal challenge to the plea bargain deals, and Italy's highest criminal court will have to rule on it at a later date.
The ship, now resting upright on a man-made platform on the seabed, is expected to be |
Helens Road/Hwy 30 and St. Johns Bridge closed due to rail fire. Follow @pdxfire for updates. #pdxtrafficpic.twitter.com/24o3KGi1TY — Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 13, 2015
The local holiday half marathon has also been canceled with runners being transported out of the area by buses.Why does America try to get high on April 20, ideally at 16:20 hours? Everyone knows the answer. April 20 can be written 4/20, and 16:20 hours is 4:20 p.m. We wait only for a future U.S. Congress to officially declare 420 National Pot Smoking Day. But how did this time and date get permanently inscribed in the minds of stoners? Holiday, as we all know, comes from "holy day." In parts of the world, St. Patrick's Day still has strong religious connotations related to Ireland's patron saint. In others, it is solely dedicated to the veneration of leprechauns and alcohol.
The new holiday of 420 may be secular, but like St. Patrick's Day, featuring drinks ranging from Guinness to Irish Car Bombs, 420 has its own sacrament, the wacky weed. Just as it's always 5 p.m. somewhere in the world, as the drinkers among us rationalize, any time of the day can be 420, the perfect moment to wake and bake.
In Los Angeles, it sometimes seems that the majority of dispensaries, delivery services, recommendation-granting doctor's offices, cannabis-finder websites, hydroponics outlets and other parts of the marijuana ecosystem are packed with 420 references. Phrases such as "420-friendly" appear in roommate ads on Craigslist, indicating that the occupants are officially licensed medical marijuana recipients and probably won't freak out over bong-water spills.
Continue Reading
Indeed, a recent Google search for "420" brought up 913 million hits. But where did "420" actually come from?
The Huffington Post asked Warren Haynes, an Allman Brothers Band guitarist who also plays with the current Grateful Dead, where the term "420" comes from. "I don't know the real origin. I know myths and rumors," he says. "The first time I heard it?...?it was like a police code for'smoking in progress,' or something. What's the real story?"
Haynes put his finger on it. There are a lot of crazy stories about the origins of 420. Let us clear it up for you:
Q: Does 420 commemorate the death of Bob Marley?
A: No. It is not the date Bob Marley died (he died on 5/11/81), nor is 4/20 his birthday. It is also not the date that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison died.
Q: Isn't there some kind of Grateful Dead connection?
A: Yes! Deadheads spread the wake-and-bake message of 420 around the country. However, the Grateful Dead did not always stay in Room 420 in hotels on the road.
Q: Isn't 420 Adolf Hitler's birthday?
A: Yes. Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. But 420 hardly commemorates that genocidal murderer. April 20 is also the anniversary date of another horrible buzzkill, the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Fortunately, that is definitely not 420's origin, as references to 420 date back to the 1970s.
Q: Doesn't 420 refer to the number of chemical compounds in cannabis?
A: Wrong again. There are reportedly 315 chemicals in cannabis.
Q: OK, isn't 420 the number of a bill in the U.S. Congress to legalize weed?
A: Hah! Interesting but wrong. In 2003, California Senate Bill 420 (SB 420), also known as the Medical Marijuana Program Act, established guidelines for Proposition 215, such as how many plants and how much processed cannabis a medical marijuana patient is allowed to have. Oddly, the specific legislator, clerk or aide who apparently numbered the bill in a nod to the 420 tradition has never been identified.
Q: A lot of people say 420 is a police radio code for marijuana.
A: "All units, all units available, please respond to a 420, marijuana smoking in progress." No. But interestingly, 420 is the radio code for homicide in both fact (the Las Vegas Police Department) and fiction (CSI).
Q: Doesn't 420 refer to the section of the California penal code relating to marijuana?
A: No again. According to noted urban mythbuster Snopes.com, Section 420 of the California penal code refers to obstructing entry on public land.
Q: How about "teatime" in Holland? Don't cannabis smokers light up at exactly 4:20?
A: Sorry. Nor is 420 the date that cannabis was legalized in pot paradise Amsterdam.
Q: Isn't April 20 the best time to plant weed?
A: Hardly. The best time would vary from region to region, and with modern grow houses, you could plant successfully on Feb. 2, even if it's 20 degrees outside.
Q: OK, this one has to be true: Doesn't 420 come from a Bob Dylan song?
A: This is the most charming tale of all. In "Rainy Day Woman #12 and 35," Dylan repeatedly chants, "Everybody must get stoned!" Even more convincingly, 12 multiplied by 35 equals 420! Sorry, no. Points for creativity, not reality.
If all these stories are false, what's the real deal? The true birth of 420 dates back to the early 1970s, when it became the hour of cannabis consumption among high school students in San Rafael. Even in mellow Marin County, stronghold of the Grateful Dead, no concessions were made to allow puffing during school hours.
So a group of stoners calling themselves "the Waldos" — because they liked to hang out in front of a wall — would pass each other in the halls, exchanging knowing glances and muttering "420 Louis!" One told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, "It was just a joke, but it came to mean all kinds of things, like, 'Do you have any?' or 'Do I look stoned?'?" They used 420 as a code word for their activities and the time said activities would take place.
The group met in front of the statue of 19th-century French scientist Louis Pasteur, as well as other spots on school grounds, to get high at 4:20 p.m. It's said that the pack of teens would sometimes roam the campus, searching for a rumored marijuana patch.
The term "420" was widely in use by the end of the 1970s. Deadheads spread it outward like a virus from their San Rafael ground zero. Within a decade, pot smokers were using it across the country and around the world.
The stoner bible High Times started using the term "420" as early as 1990, and later bought the website 420.com, which includes videos, news, horticulture tips, activism and conspiracy links ("Will the LAPD Have Armed Drones Hunting Suspects?").
Various members of the Waldos have surfaced over the years, showing letters with postmarks from the 1970s that refer to "420" to authenticate their claims. Sources as reputable as Wikipedia and Snopes.com have also confirmed this origin story.
Pop culture is chockablock with references to 420. The clocks and timepieces in Pulp Fiction and later in Lost in Translation are all set to 420. And is it an accident that the score on the football scoreboard in stoner classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High reads 42-0?
An episode of animated comedy Family Guy, naturally titled "420," is dedicated to the subject. The plot has Stewie and Brian attempting to legalize marijuana. The show includes the classic song-and-dance performance "A Bag of Weed," which can be seen on YouTube.
Snoop Dogg (now Snoop Lion) said in 2009, "Me and Willie Nelson recorded [a] song in Amsterdam on 4/20, 2009. It was a beautiful day, it was a roomful of smoke. It was historic." The song, of course, was "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me (When I'm Gone)".
Awareness of 420 has even spread to Australia. A smoker calling himself "Max Stone" told the Brisbane Times, "You'd go on a job and you'd say to someone in the afternoon that it's going to be 4:20 soon. If they give you a blank look, then you don't take the conversation any further. But if they say, 'yeah,' then you're instantly tuned into the 420 culture that's inside every workplace. It's not as secretive as it used to be."Did it get hot in here all of a sudden or is it just this extremely sexy prototype we're looking at? Yes, the Dell Thunder that boomed onto your internet screens back in April is back, and this time we've got video of it too. Our tipster reports an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash on the back -- which includes 720p video capture capabilities -- along with a removable 1,400mAh battery. His prototype's running vanilla Android 2.1 at present, though the final units can probably be expected to ship with Dell's custom skin on top. Screen resolution is purportedly 800 x 480, though judging by that 7 x 4 icon grid up there and our tipster's own experience, it could be even higher; the 4.1-inch display looks to indeed be of the OLED variety, as our earlier leak had indicated. All that and it has the looks of a pocket-sized supercar. Enough teasing, skip past the break for the video.P.S. With Thunder now confirmed as an honest to goodness device (and not just renders), the rest of the April leak would seem to be validated including the Windows Phone 7 Lightning handset, the 7-inch Looking Glass Android tablet, and the two mid-range Flash and Smoke Android devices.[Thanks, Fahad]Gladiators unlocked the first clip from Scandal’s mid-season 3 premiere on Facebook today, and it features Olivia and Mellie.
In the scene, Fitz’s wife Mellie invites Olivia to lunch, and the latter is confused about why she received an invite. “We’re sharing a meal, being gal pals, talking about boys.”
“Mellie,” Olivia says after detecting sarcasm.
“I’m making a respectable woman out of you,” she replies with a smile.
Mellie is obviously talking down to Olivia and looking to get her straightened out in some way. Is it so that Olivia can work with Fitz on his re-election campaign without romance being involved?
It may be hard to notice, but we think we can spot a hint of Kerry Washington’s baby bump poking through her long white jacket. We know that Washington has continued to film while pregnant, and show runners are avoiding writing the bump into the storyline by keeping it hidden in ways like keeping the camera’s eyes off her lower half.
Washington’s pregnancy actually caused Scandal season 3 to reduce its number of episodes by four.
Despite having our first clip from the mid-season premiere, episode 11 does not air until Thursday, February 27 on ABC at 10 p.m. eastern/pacific.
What do you think Mellie is up to in the first ‘Scandal’ clip of 2014?
According to a calendar posted on the show’s official Facebook page, a new poster for season 3 will be revealed on Tumblr tomorrow.Alaska may soon become the first state that will allow the use of marijuana in public spaces, like retail stores.
This proposal was approved during a vote by Alaska’s own Marijuana Control Board creating the opportunity to allow for this change in local regulations.
This would allow people to consume marijuana products at approved public spaces, with the consumption taking place in an area specially designated for cannabis.
This approach, to allow public consumption at something like a “marijuana bar” area in a retail space, will be a welcome change for all marijuana-loving consumers.
This proposal by the Control Board surprised many people since most recent discussions were about ways to sanction the use of marijuana in public spaces.
But here is why the proposal is still not as relaxed as it seems – marijuana social clubs will still be considered illegal.
Why? Because people bring their own marijuana to the club, which is purchased at a different location, to consume it.
That is why this proposed amendment allows the business to sell marijuana and immediately allow people to enjoy it in specially created spaces after it is purchased.
After cannabis was legalized in Alaska, many marijuana social clubs appeared as an answer to the question of where people could enjoy their bud-based products.
Still, authorities consider the clubs to be illegal, because the use of marijuana in public spaces was not allowed.
At the moment, there are four types of licenses concerning the subject of marijuana, including cultivation, manufacturing, testing and retail.
These facilities previously mentioned, in which marijuana consumption would be allowed, will all fall under the retail license.
If the facility is selling the product and people go there to buy it, then they will also have the chance to enjoy it there as well.
Even if this new proposal for public consumption of marijuana has restrictions, it is something unseen in the rest of the country. No other states allow this type public use, retail or not, not even in clubs.
The new amendment was voted for and passed by the majority of the Board’s participants.
Even though the amendment passed the Marijuana Control Board, it will still have to be approved by the Alaska Department of Law before becoming entirely valid.Disclaimer: I am an atheist and I am used to talk about religious figures as if they were fictional characters. Do not read any further if it might cause discomfort.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AS JESUS
There are some parallels between Sherlock Holmes and the figure of Jesus, in particular regarding the events of Series 2.
Jesus is arrested because he claims to be the Son of God, but he’s considered a fraud by the authorities.
Sherlock is arrested because he’s believed to be a fraud and have faked the resolution his cases.
Jesus is requested by the Devil to jump off the Temple in Jerusalem to prove he’s the son of God.
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU’ and ‘ON THEIR HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.’ ”.
Matthew 4: 5-6
James Moriarty asks Sherlock to jump from Bart’s rooftop as requested by James Moriarty.
Another parallel can be seen with Jesus being crucified for the sake of mankind.
Sherlock fakes his death in order to save his friends.
But both tombs are actually empty. Jesus resurrects…
…and Sherlock’s actually not dead.
Sherlock and Moriarty also make a number of references to hell and to being on the side of the angels throughout The Reichenbach Fall.
MORIARTY: You’re on the side of the angels.
SHERLOCK: Yes, but I’m not my brother, remember? I am you, prepared to do anything; prepared to burn; prepared to do what ordinary people won’t do. You want me to shake hands with you in hell? I shall not disappoint you.
MORIARTY : Naah. You talk big. Naah. You’re ordinary. You’re ordinary. You’re on the side of the angels.
SHERLOCK: Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.
After the resurrection, Jesus is tipically depicted in a the burial shroud.
In A Scandal In Belgravia, Sherlock is seen wearing only a sheet.
There’s also a background halo visual metaphor for Sherlock:
Jesus was executed by the means of crucifixion.
In Series 3 we have a scene reminiscent of crucifixion.
After Jesus resurrected three days later, his tomb was found with the stone blocking its entrance moved and empty inside, thus becoming known as the Empty Tomb.
Sherlock comes back from the dead in and episode called “The Empty Hearse”. Since ACD canon Sherlock Holmes returns in a story called “The Empty House” after three years, this parallel is probably coming from Doyle.
To note that the episode title appears over the closing doors of an empty carriage in the London Underground, which can be a parallel the door of the Empty Tomb moving.
Upon his death, Jesus had famously five wounds, two in the hands, two in the feet and one in the chest, usually depicted in the proper right side.
A picture of said Jesus exposing this wound has also been posted by Gatiss during the hiatus before series 4.
In his Last Vow, Sherlock gets shot in the chest in the proper right side.
JOHN WATSON AS JOHN THE EVANGELIST, APOSTLE JOHN AND THE BELOVED DISCIPLE
Another thing that Jesus and Sherlock have in common: a biographer called John.
Sherlock’s adventures are reported by his companion John Watson.
One of Jesus’ most famous biographers was John the Evangelist, author of The Gospel of John. He’s symbolically represented by an eagle and his account of Jesus’ life was guided in part by his own witnessing of the events and in part by divine inspiration.
John Watson is the person Sherlock Holmes loves the most.
Traditionally, John the Evangelist is identified with Apostle John, even if the authorship of the book is debated by modern scholars.
Apostle John is believed to have been the favourite among the Twelve Apostles and he’s also often identified with the one who is called “the disciple whom Jesus loved”.
Some have proposed the possibility of a homoerotic reading to the relationship between John and Jesus. Evidence of this kind of interpretations goes as far as the 16th century, when the suggestion that John could be Jesus’ catamite started (and who ever suggested such a thing would obviously be tried for it). The speculation is still alive in our days.
A similar rumour, as we are well aware, persists since the 19th century and concerns the love life of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
One may wonder if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s choice of name wasn’t quite so coincidental.
Another interesting fact is that Apostle John had a brother called James (who was another member of the Apostles) and that this was the given name which Doyle once erroneously used for Watson.
John has a background halo visual metaphor too, in the same scene as Sherlock’s:
JIM MORIARTY AS THE DEVIL
As noted before, there are similarities between the scene in which Moriarty asks Sherlock to jump off Barts’ roof and the story in which the Devil asks Jesus to jump from the roof of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The following lines of dialogue let us know Sherlock owns Moriarty a fall.
MORIARTY: It’s gonna start very soon, Sherlock, the fall. But don’t be scared. Falling’s just like flying, except there’s a more permanent destination.
SHERLOCK: Never liked riddles.
MORIARTY: Learn to. Because I owe you a fall, Sherlock. I … owe … you.
The Devil was a former angel fallen which God cast out from heaven.
Moriarty declare Sherlock owes him a fall. He might resent a fall that he believes to be Sherlock’s (Son of God) or one of his parents’ (God) fault.
The I O U painted outside of Bakerstreet is surrounded by black wings.
In The Hounds of Baskerville, Sherlock hallucinates Moriarty in Dewer’s Hollow, which, as Henry informs as at the start of the episode, is an ancient celtic name for the Devil.
just-sort-of-happened discovered some other parallels beween Moriarty and the Devil, read her full metas here:
Here’s a brief description of the parallels.
The Devil takes the form of a snake and tempts Eve by offering her an apple.
John’s mug in A Study in Pink is located next to an apple and has a picture of a snake wearing regalia. Moriarty will wear regalia in The Reichenbach Fall.
In The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty offers Sherlock an apple, which has IOU written upon.
In The Abominable Bride, Sherlock has Mrs. Hudson referring to Moriarty as the Devil:
MRS. HUSON: He says he’s waiting.
LESTRADE: For what?
MRS. HUDSON: The devil.
Still in The Abominable Bride, Moriarty hisses and launches forward like an attacking snake.
MYCROFT HOLMES AS JUDAS
More parallels, most concentrated in Series 2, can be drawn between secondary characters, like Judas and Mycroft Holmes.
Judas sells his friend to his enemies and this ultimately leads to Jesus’ death.
Mycroft spills all of Sherlock’s life story to Moriarty, information which Moriarty later utilizes to establish Sherlock as a fraud as part of his plan to have him commit suicide and die in disgrace.
This parallel might not be over yet, there is speculation in the fandom that Mycroft could be eventually revealed to be, probably unwillingly, working for the side of evil.
IRENE ADLER AS MARY MAGDALENE
Even if not originally depicted as such, during the centuries Mary Magdalene became renowned as a sinner and prostitute, who was probably saved by Jesus, to later became the most important among the women who followed him.
Comparably, Irene Adler is a dominatrix professionally known as The Woman, who makes her way through the world by misbehaving. She gets in really serious trouble, but gets saved by Sherlock Holmes.
In iconography Mary Madgale is often portrayed with:
A perfume bottle, because she’s associated with the sinner who poured perfume on Jesus’ feets.
The red egg that she gives as a gift to Emperor Tiberias.
Perfume bottles appear next to Irene Adler while she’s preparing for meeting Sherlock.
And she gives as a Christmas gift her phone to Sherock in a little red package.
Mary Magdalene is also the first “tart with a heart of gold”.
Considering the phone = heart metaphor, she has a really valuable heart.
GREG LESTRADE AS PETER
Gregg Lestrade is a firm believer of Sherlock’s, but when Sherlock gets exposed as a fraud, he denies the extent of his involvement with the latter.
In a similar fashion, after Jesus is accused of being a fraud, Peter denies ever being acquainted with him.
Moreover, in The Hounds of Baskerville, he appears:
In front of a door;
With the sign “The Cross Keys” above his head.
The cross keys are the official symbol for the Keys to Heaven.
Peter, who is Heaven’s gateskeeper, traditionally:
Stands before the entrance to Heaven;
Is in possession of the Keys to Heaven.
In the first part of A Scandal in Belgravia he appears next to a car tag which starts with PYO3, followed by a space and other letters.
There are some languages in which PYO3 could be read as Peter, considering that the number 3 could stand for the TR or TER sound, depending on the language.
For example, in Russian, the name Peter (and the name of Apostle Peter) is translated Pyotr. Here the link to the name’s page on Behind The Name.
3 in Russian is pronunced TREE, so it may as well be that PYO3 stands for PYOTR, the Russian name for Apostle Peter.
Pyotr is also the first name of Tchaikovsky, the homosexual composer mentioned in The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes.
TO NOTE: It is improbable that they were actually able to choose between many tags, so this is probably a coincidence.
At the start of The Reichenbach Falls, Lestrade appears next to the name Peter.
Finally, we can see Lestrade before a painting featuring a sky with clouds.
That’s the typical representation of Heaven, which Saint Peter guards.
Another clue could be the fact that Apostle Peter was the first Pope and:
Gregory is the 2nd most common name for popes.
Gregory is the 1st most common name for popes starting with G.
I suppose that, if the wanted to name him after Peter but keep the initial G set by Doyle, Gregory was as close as they would get.
TO NOTE: Greg is probably a reference to DI Gregson from ACD canon.
THE THREE MARYS
Considering the characters added in Season 3 and the associations already made, we have three Marys:
Irene Adler as Mary Magdalene;
Sherlock’s Mother as Mary, mother of Jesus (her initials are M.L., so she might as well be called Mary);
Mary Morstan.
Alternatively, one of the three Marys could be Molly, which is the diminutive of Mary and to whom John says at Christmas:
Traditionally, different sets of women have been refferred to as The Tree Marys and the identity of the Marys is uncertain as there are multiple interpretations.
Another possible Mary is Marie Turner.
MARTHA HUDSON AS MARTHA OF BETHANY
For Mrs. Hudson there were no significant parallels in Series 2, but there are a couple of similarities with the character and possibilities concerning plot lines.
Mrs. Hudson full name is Martha Louise Hudson (neé Sissons). Her first name is not given in Doyle’s books, but some identify her with another character named Martha.
In the bible we can find the character of Martha of Bethany, sister of Mary and Lazarus.
Sherlock made sure that Mrs. Hudson’s husband was executed.
Jesus made Lazarus, Martha’s brother, come back to life.
SHERLOCK AS JESUS IN THE DIALOGUE
After Sherlock apparently dies and the body is surrounded by people, John says:
Also, the dialogue itself tells us the Jesus!Sherlock characterization is true.Security Considerations¶
Web applications usually face all kinds of security problems and it’s very hard to get everything right. Flask tries to solve a few of these things for you, but there are a couple more you have to take care of yourself.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)¶ Cross site scripting is the concept of injecting arbitrary HTML (and with it JavaScript) into the context of a website. To remedy this, developers have to properly escape text so that it cannot include arbitrary HTML tags. For more information on that have a look at the Wikipedia article on Cross-Site Scripting. Flask configures Jinja2 to automatically escape all values unless explicitly told otherwise. This should rule out all XSS problems caused in templates, but there are still other places where you have to be careful: generating HTML without the help of Jinja2
calling Markup on data submitted by users
on data submitted by users sending out HTML from uploaded files, never do that, use the Content-Disposition: attachment header to prevent that problem.
header to prevent that problem. sending out textfiles from uploaded files. Some browsers are using content-type guessing based on the first few bytes so users could trick a browser to execute HTML. Another thing that is very important are unquoted attributes. While Jinja2 can protect you from XSS issues by escaping HTML, there is one thing it cannot protect you from: XSS by attribute injection. To counter this possible attack vector, be sure to always quote your attributes with either double or single quotes when using Jinja expressions in them: < input value = " {{ value }} " > Why is this necessary? Because if you would not be doing that, an attacker could easily inject custom JavaScript handlers. For example an attacker could inject this piece of HTML+JavaScript: onmouseover=alert(document.cookie) When the user would then move with the mouse over the input, the cookie would be presented to the user in an alert window. But instead of showing the cookie to the user, a good attacker might also execute any other JavaScript code. In combination with CSS injections the attacker might even make the element fill out the entire page so that the user would just have to have the mouse anywhere on the page to trigger the attack. There is one class of XSS issues that Jinja’s escaping does not protect against. The a tag’s href attribute can contain a javascript: URI, which the browser will execute when clicked if not secured properly. < a href = "{{ value }}" > click here </ a > < a href = "javascript:alert('unsafe');" > click here </ a > To prevent this, you’ll need to set the Content Security Policy (CSP) response header.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)¶ Another big problem is CSRF. This is a very complex topic and I won’t outline it here in detail just mention what it is and how to theoretically prevent it. If your authentication information is stored in cookies, you have implicit state management. The state of “being logged in” is controlled by a cookie, and that cookie is sent with each request to a page. Unfortunately that includes requests triggered by 3rd party sites. If you don’t keep that in mind, some people might be able to trick your application’s users with social engineering to do stupid things without them knowing. Say you have a specific URL that, when you sent POST requests to will delete a user’s profile (say http://example.com/user/delete ). If an attacker now creates a page that sends a post request to that page with some JavaScript they just have to trick some users to load that page and their profiles will end up being deleted. Imagine you were to run Facebook with millions of concurrent users and someone would send out links to images of little kittens. When users would go to that page, their profiles would get deleted while they are looking at images of fluffy cats. How can you prevent that? Basically for each request that modifies content on the server you would have to either use a one-time token and store that in the cookie and also transmit it with the form data. After receiving the data on the server again, you would then have to compare the two tokens and ensure they are equal. Why does Flask not do that for you? The ideal place for this to happen is the form validation framework, which does not exist in Flask.
JSON Security¶ In Flask 0.10 and lower, jsonify() did not serialize top-level arrays to JSON. This was because of a security vulnerability in ECMAScript 4. ECMAScript 5 closed this vulnerability, so only extremely old browsers are still vulnerable. All of these browsers have other more serious vulnerabilities, so this behavior was changed and jsonify() now supports serializing arrays.One week on from its controversial launch, the Xbox One version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been patched, featuring a range of bugfixes and what the patch notes describe as a 'first pass' at visual and performance improvements, along with'slightly improved' anti-aliasing. So what's actually changed? From our perspective, this patch is definitely a case of two steps forward, one step back.
PUBG is an inherently dynamic game, which makes like-for-like performance analysis from one version of the game to the next practically impossible, so all we can offer are some more general observations. As with our first test, we played the game simultaneously on Xbox One and Xbox One X, buddying up in the lobby area and negotiating various games as a team, capturing our progress in tandem. The truth is, the variable nature of PUBG changes from game to game, from moment to moment, but at least using this technique, we have both consoles running from the same server, usually rendering very similar workloads.
One thing that does stand out straight away is that while the visual quality is still poor, the vast gulf in texture quality between the standard and X units seems to have lessened this time around, though bad quality art is still in abundance on both systems with incidental detail - like ground debris - reduced to a cluster of barely filtered pixels. Anti-aliasing does look different - most notably on the base Xbox One - where the blurry nature of the filter has been dialled back, giving a crisper look.
But it's performance that's the key point in need of improvement, and while we can say that frame-rate averages have improved from the launch code to this week's patch, there are still profound issues. PUBG still has a tendency to kick off with poor frame-rates from the lobby to the parachute drop-off, only stabilising minutes later into gameplay at the required 30fps. But there are still random issues that send performance plummeting and an abundance of foliage still seems to cause problems. Xbox One X now seems more able get a better lock on the target performance level, while the standard model is clearly more prone to dropping hard at stress points. Meanwhile, some areas of the map still cause issues, while high-speed traversal in a vehicle also causes choppiness on both systems. Across our tests, we've also had a couple of freezes, leading to crashes to the console front-end (thankfully you can jump straight back into the server you crashed out of).
Here are the highlights of our re-testing of PUBG on Xbox One X and the standard Xbox One. There are improvements but it's still far from the required quality.
But the biggest issue we've encountered in returning to PUBG is that netcode is far less stable than it was during the launch last week. According to some of our followers on Twitter, micro-teleporting and 'rubber-banding' started to occur before Patch 1 was deployed, but it definitely persists into the new version. Again, this can seemingly happen at any given point, but occurs most often at the beginning of the game. At its worst, we get network connection blackouts, but the inability to simply walk through a door is commonplace at the time of writing. Based on our experiences, the issue kicks in most noticeably when other players are present - which is obviously less than ideal, as that's when control really shouldn't be compromised. As things stand, the experience, as fun as it can be, is still frustrating enough to make paying for the product a big ask.
Input latency also feels unchanged from when we first played it. Thanks to Nigel Woodall and his innovative controller lag monitoring set-up, we have some measurements here - and they're not great. Across a range of tests using multiple weapons, the time from button press to result on-screen is eight to nine frames - 133ms to 150ms. When the game isn't running at 30fps, you can expect further latency on top of that, plus whatever lag your display adds. For a first-person shooter, the lowest possible latency is essential and given the 30fps limit, the developers should be aiming for a realistic 83-100ms as the target here. In short, there's a long way to go in getting PUBG into shape - and it's not just about the graphics and the netcode, as crucial as they are.
Having played both the initial release and the updated version now, we're conflicted about this title. There's no doubt that the concept and many aspects of the execution are excellent - and despite the array of issues, every time we play it, we have a great deal of fun. However, the mass of technical problems makes the concept of paying £25/$30 for the game difficult to swallow. Yes, it's early access, but at the same time, it's difficult to understand why the game didn't receive any kind of public access beta when it so obviously needed it. It could have provided the developer with useful information in optimising the game before launch, while users would get a chance to sample the current state of the game before forking out the money for what is obviously very early code.
And at the same time, with Microsoft so closely involved with the title, we do have to wonder where the threshold is now with quality control. Is slapping 'Game Preview Edition' on a retail box enough to justify shipping out a game that's poor in so many respects and surely wouldn't make it past the QA procedures required of a standard game? Are the micro-teleporting and 'rubber-banding' issues acceptable when an Xbox Live Gold subscription is still required to play the game? Optimistically, there's months of work required on the Xbox One version of PUBG, so as brilliant as the concept is, our advice for now is to hold fire until its many teething issues are more comprehensively addressed.You must sign in or register to continue reading content.
SNOHOMISH — A label is taped on the dashboard above the instrument panel.
It says, “Check oil level daily,” in capital letters. The refrigerator is buckled to the wall. The coffee pot, once it gets going, can produce 30 cups in minutes.
The old police tactical van was converted about 20 years ago into a food truck for Snohomish County Volunteer Search & Rescue. The volunteers bring the truck on nearly every mission, about 100 annually. The truck is used to feed first responders, volunteer rescuers and the families of the missing.
Now it is nearing the end of its life.
Debra Draper calls the truck “Myrtle the Turtle.” She is the treasurer and cook for the Search & Rescue operations support unit. She describes her volunteer work as “nutrients and compassion and distraction.” The families of missing hikers often spend time with her while they wait for news.
Replacing the food truck is the goal of a new fundraising drive for Search & Rescue, and the volunteers are hoping donors will step up. Much of their equipment and vehicles are paid for with donations and grants.
A new food truck might run $120,000. If they can’t afford that option, they’ll find a used truck to refurbish. They hope to get it figured out before next year’s hiking season.
Their usual fundraising avenues could take five years to reach that goal, volunteer John McKeon said.
A food truck is “something we can’t live without,” said Tim Dehnhoff, president of the operations support unit.
This year, volunteers with Search & Rescue logged more than 10,280 community service hours on missions from January through early September. That doesn’t count the time spent in training, fundraising, or representing the team at events..
McKeon and his wife joined as volunteers after their son was rescued from a local mountain in 2008. He’s seen the food truck in action as a family member and as a rescuer.
McKeon knows that bad weather, a broken bone, or a lack of preparedness can change a life. The volunteers will drop everything to come help, he said, and they bring home-cooked meals.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @rikkiking.
Snohomish County Volunteer Search & Rescue is seeking donations for a new food truck. The group also has other ongoing donation and volunteering needs. Volunteers with backcountry experience are welcome, but support |
all Ts – any actual H is as unlikely as any actual T – which is why H and T are equally likely to occur. In short, probabilities apply not to specific actual events but to types of events – reduced, in the cases of tosses, to the dichotomous possibilities H or T. The mathematics of ‘Either H or T’ applies only to a future reduced to branching logical possibilities: a material future reduced to a logical one.
While the probability of 50/50 Hs and Ts is built into the job description of coin-tossing, its realisation – and the apparent pressure for it to be realised – is in events that are in possible futures reduced to either H or T. In addition, the past also has to be present in the gathering up of these strictly stand-alone events into a (retrospective) series pointing to this prospective future. The mobilisation of all three tenses of time – which do not have a foothold on the material world – itself betrays that with probabilities we are a long way from the material world. Material events are what they are, and not what they were or will be.
Improbable Realities
In short, the mathematical logic of probability deals with events slimmed down to forks of logical branches, and draws on retrospective and prospective views that have no place in the material world. Could this be a source of some of the problems quantum mechanics has with time and change? When causation is replaced entirely by probability, defined logically or mathematically, there is no obligation for anything in particular to happen, because actual events – macroscopic, real events like real coin-tosses – are beyond the reach of probability. A 50/50 probability of an event such as H is not a 50/50 probability of any real, messy, fat event. Real events are necessarily more than logically defined possibilities (though they can be logically reduced to them), and they do not exist in sequences that encompass past and present.
Many physicists trying to unite probabilistic quantum mechanics with general relativity lose time and change altogether, instead envisaging a frozen 4D universe in which nothing happens. Physicist Carlo Rovelli has even welcomed the possibility that quantum mechanics will become “a theory of the relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time” (‘Forget Time’, FQXi Essay, 24th August 2008): in short, a theory of the eternal relations between kinds of possibilities rather than between actual events in time. If this were true, we would be justified in concluding not only that the universe couldn’t give a toss about us, but that it couldn’t give an actual toss. The lack of contamination by actual events is the necessary condition of the purity of a mathematical vision of the world based upon probabilities. As mentioned, a minority of physicists invoke a ‘many worlds’ version of quantum mechanics, in which every fork of possibility is taken. This seems a very expensive way of melting a universe frozen as a consequence of replacing causation with probability. This may be why a few physicists now think physics need philosophy; although many more would add “like a hole in the head.”
© Prof. Raymond Tallis 2013
Raymond Tallis’s new books are Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur (Acumen), and (edited with Jacky Davis), NHS SOS: How the NHS Was Betrayed and How We Can Save It (One World).Cryoshell (often stylized as C R Y O S H E L L) is a Danish rock band from Copenhagen formed in 2006. The line-up consists of lead vocalist Christine Lorentzen, guitarist Kasper Søderlund and keyboardist Mikkel Maltha.
In the band's early years, they produced several songs that featured in promotional material for the Lego toy series Bionicle. In the wake of the line's 2010 discontinuation, they released their self-titled debut album. A sophomore effort, Next to Machines, is currently in production.
Cryoshell's musical style has been classified as alternative rock, hard rock and metal, and labelled similar to bands like Delain, Evanescence (both also fronted by a female singer), Linkin Park and Within Temptation.
History [ edit ]
2006–08: Formation and early work [ edit ]
The group that would later be called Cryoshell was formed in Copenhagen, Denmark in late 2006. Music composer Mikkel Maltha was commissioned by the Lego Group to produce a song designed to be used in the promotional campaign of a forthcoming release of Lego toys. Maltha wrote "Creeping in My Soul" with fellow composer Anthony Lledo and produced the track with Eddie Simonsen and musician Kasper Søderlund. Vocals were provided by Christine Lorentzen – a former TV presenter and employee of the creative agency Advance – after she auditioned for the part.
"Creeping in My Soul" featured in commercials, online games and other mediums advertising Lego's Bionicle Barraki wave of 2007. When the song was released as free MP3 download, it became the number-1 most downloaded file from the official Lego website and reached over one million views on YouTube across various videos encompassing the song. Riding on this success, Maltha, Søderlund and Simonsen went on to produce "Face Me" and "Gravity Hurts" with established Danish singer Niels Brinck for the campaigns of Bionicle's 2007 Mahri and 2008 Phantoka waves, respectively.
Lorentzen rejoined Maltha and Søderlund to record "Closer to the Truth" for Bionicle's Mistika wave of mid-2008. The song served as the group's first official release under the band name Cryoshell, with plans to record a full-length album. However, despite a promised release for late 2008, production was pushed back into the following year.
2009–14: Cryoshell [ edit ]
Cryoshell spent the majority of 2009 recording their self-titled debut album with producer Jacob Hansen. Its lead single "Bye Bye Babylon" was released in July 2009, simultaneously serving as the band's fifth and final campaign song for Bionicle. A re-recorded version of "Creeping in My Soul" was released as a second single in November, followed by an EP baring the same name in January 2010. The album was released on June 7, 2010 solely in Scandinavia due to difficulties in securing an international distribution. Cryoshell wasn't available overseas until at later dates.
Lorentzen took maternity leave from the band between November 2011–October 2013. In her place, Tine Midtgaard, a runner-up on the 2010 series of the Danish incarnation of the talent show The X Factor, provided vocals for two new songs – "Breakout" and a remix of "Gravity Hurts" – the former of which received a singular release in December 2012. When Lorentzen rejoined, it was stated that both songs would be included as bonus tracks on an international reissue of Cryoshell's debut album under Greek record label The Leaders. However, as a release date was never announced, the plans are thought to have been scrapped.
2015–Present: Next to Machines [ edit ]
In February 2015, concept artist Christian Faber confirmed that Cryoshell would produce the soundtrack to Rebel Nature, a multimedia project that he is currently developing. Recording began the following September for a mobile app game called Escape RIG21.[1]
Songs inspired by Rebel Nature will make up Cryoshell's second studio album, Next to Machines. Production was originally going to be crowdfunded via Kickstarter, however, the band managed to secure their own finance prior to the campaign's May 2017 launch.[2] Four singles were released ahead of the album in 2018 – a remix of "Gravity Hurts" featuring Lorentzen and the Budapest Art Orchestra, "Nature Girl" (a cover of "Nature Boy" by Nat King Cole), "Don't Look Down" and "Slipping". The "Gravity Hurts" mixes featuring Brinck and Midgaard also received singular releases in December 2018.
Band members [ edit ]
Timeline [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Studio albums 1 Music videos 6 EPs 1 Singles 9
Cryoshell have released 1 studio album, 1 extended play, 9 singles and 6 music videos.“Retailers are going where the shoppers are,” Tucker Reed, the partnership’s president, said. “They’re not making decisions based on the color of the shoppers’ skin, but by where there’s demand for a product.”
Marty Markowitz, the departing borough president, said the new chains were returning the street to its peak mid-20th century years, when it had half a dozen department stores like Abraham & Straus and Mays that catered to both Brooklyn’s more affluent residents and those looking to stretch a dollar.
“H&M is the first wave of the diverse shopping experience of Fulton Street,” he said. “When I was a boy, there were opportunities at every income level. My mom used to drag me to Mays at the lower end and A&S at the upper end.”
Mr. Shapiro said that recent development had already pushed out more than 100 smaller businesses that provided a solid livelihood for merchants, an option for lower-income shoppers and hundreds of jobs to young strivers.
“For people of color, it’s been such a successful economic model,” he said.
Fulton Street has been Brooklyn’s marketplace since the early 19th century. At its peak it had half a dozen department stores, but in the 1970s and 1980s, it became somewhat raffish, the scene of news-making robberies and shootings. Still, it drew working-class families shopping for shoes, televisions and clothing.
Today Macy’s, which replaced Abraham & Straus, is the lone department store, but there are branches of local and regional chains like Jimmy Jazz and Modell’s and more than 300 small businesses. By some estimates, 100,000 people a day pass through the eight blocks between Adams Street and Flatbush Avenue. There are occasional concerts and a farmers’ market every Thursday.A new UT Dallas study found that teen driving curfews might do more than reduce car accidents. They also may prevent teens from committing crimes.
Arrests among teens ages 16-17 fell by as much as 6 percent in states with laws that restrict nighttime driving hours for teens, according to the study.
The research by Dr. Monica Deza, assistant professor of economics in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, and co-author Daniel Litwok of the firm Abt Associates, was published online by the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Most states' graduated driver licensing programs have nighttime restrictions. The programs typically include supervised learning and intermediate stages before young drivers receive full-privileged licenses. They have proven successful at reducing risky behaviors that cause accidents. The new study is one of the first to examine the programs' potential impact on crime.
"Being able to drive or having friends who can drive is the difference between going out and staying home on a Saturday night," Deza said. "It seemed intuitive to us that having a curfew on driving hours affected the probability that teenagers would get themselves into trouble."
Deza and Litwok, senior analyst and economist at Abt Associates in Maryland, analyzed the FBI's Uniform Crime Report arrest data from 1995 to 2011. They compared arrests of 16- and 17-year-olds to arrests of young adults ages 18 and older in states with the nighttime driving curfew for new drivers.
Overall, arrests of the younger teens decreased by 4 to 6 percent. The reduction was even higher in the states with the strictest laws. In those states, arrests of 16- and 17-year-olds declined 5 to 8 percent.
The biggest crime reductions occurred in states that had graduated license programs in place the longest. The types of crimes most affected were manslaughter, murder and larceny. Arrests of 16- and 17-year-olds dropped 11 percent for manslaughter or murder, 5 percent for larceny, and 4 percent for aggravated assault.
Driving restrictions keep teens off the roads, lessen the influence of peers and change teen behavior, which may have contributed to the reduction in arrests, Deza said.
The researchers found that the laws were most effective when gasoline prices were at their lowest, when teens were likely to drive the most. The restrictions prevented those teen drivers from taking full advantage of the affordable gas prices, according to researchers.
"As policymakers become concerned with how low gasoline prices affect risky behaviors among teens, they may want to take into account the role of graduated driving licensing in keeping teenagers off the streets, even in periods in which the cost of driving is particularly low," Deza said.
Deza said that analyses of the costs and benefits of graduated driving license programs should include the policy's impact on crime. She said that previous analyses may have underestimated graduated licensing programs' benefit by not factoring in crime.
Deza and Litwok initially conducted separate studies. The authors combined their research after yielding identical results. Litwok received support from Abt Associates and an Institute of Education and Sciences Grant for his research.
###San Francisco, California-based alternative cab service Uber is raising $2.1 billion at a post-money valuation of $62.5 billion, according to a report today.
Uber has already submitted paperwork to the state of Delaware, according to the report today from Bloomberg.
Investors in the round include T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global, the report said. In pitches, Uber was telling investors that it had a $10 billion gross revenue run rate, Bloomberg said.
The company seems to be constantly raising money, having reportedly raised a $1 billion round back in July.
Competitor Lyft, whose investors include Carl Icahn, was reported to be raising a $500 million round at a $4 billion valuation last month. Lyft said recently that it was expecting to have a $1 billion gross annual revenue run rate.
Today Lyft is announcing a new partnership with other ride-hailing companies: Southeast Asia’s GrabTaxi and India’s Ola.
Uber’s Chinese competitor Didi Kuaidi was reported to be raising a $3 billion round in September.
Uber needs a lot of money for a lot of reasons. There are competitors to outmarket. Uber has a nascent self-driving car initiative. And Uber has legal issues to contend with.
Uber declined to comment.
Update at 2:39 p.m. Pacific: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the funding round could actually give Uber a post-money valuation of $64.6 billion.A host of animal work demonstrates that the retention benefit for emotionally aversive over neutral memories is regulated by glucocorticoid action during memory consolidation. Particularly, glucocorticoids may affect systems-level processes that promote the gradual reorganization of emotional memory traces. These effects remain largely uninvestigated in humans. Therefore, in this functional magnetic resonance imaging study we administered hydrocortisone during a polysomnographically monitored night of sleep directly after healthy volunteers studied negative and neutral pictures in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subjects design. The following evening memory consolidation was probed during a recognition memory test in the MR scanner by assessing the difference in brain activity associated with memory for the consolidated items studied before sleep and new, unconsolidated items studied shortly before test (remote vs. recent memory paradigm). Hydrocortisone administration resulted in elevated cortisol levels throughout the experimental night with no group difference at recent encoding or test. Behaviorally, we showed that cortisol enhanced the difference between emotional and neutral consolidated memory, effectively prioritizing emotional memory consolidation. On a neural level, we found that cortisol reduced amygdala reactivity related to the retrieval of these same consolidated, negative items. These findings show that cortisol administration during first post-encoding sleep had a twofold effect on the first 24 h of emotional memory consolidation. While cortisol prioritized recognition memory for emotional items, it reduced reactivation of the neural circuitry underlying emotional responsiveness during retrieval. These findings fit recent theories on emotional depotentiation following consolidation during sleep, although future research should establish the sleep-dependence of this effect. Moreover, our data may shed light on mechanisms underlying potential therapeutic effects of cortisol administration following psychological trauma.Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard stood before a bank of reporters in April after a judge sentenced former Atlanta educators for their roles in a districtwide cheating conspiracy and promised to right the wrongs done to thousands of children.
“What we plan to do is rather simple,” he said in announcing the creation of the Atlanta Redemption Academy: identify students who were harmed by the cheating, assess the damage and then fix it with tutoring, GED classes or job training.
Six months later, there’s little evidence that Howard has moved to make those plans a reality.
The Redemption Academy is “on hold,” Howard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, admitting that his initial plans may have been too ambitious. He has not been able to raise the millions he estimates it would cost.
Even the Atlanta Public Schools’ separate program to help children affected by cheating won’t be completely up and running until at least January.
That leaves some parents with the sense that, once again, Atlanta is cheating its children.
The delay in establishing the Redemption Academy, which would work only with students no longer in Atlanta schools, has caused problems for the 11 former educators convicted in the cheating scandal: Their sentences include thousands of hours of community service. Prosecutors, who must approve any community service, have said much of that work should be with the Redemption Academy.
“We would love to work with the Redemption Academy, if it existed,” said attorney Gerald Griggs, who represented former Dobbs Elementary School teacher Angela Williamson. “But it doesn’t exist. Hopefully the judge will accept what we’re doing now and will hold the District Attorney’s Office accountable. You have to ask, was this really about the children?”
Read the full story on MyAJC.com.
Subscribe to the AJC’s Georgia School News, a weekly email with top news about Georgia schools, colleges and universities.When U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner admitted June 6 that he sent sexually explicit text messages and photographs of himself to several people before and during his marriage, the calls for his resignation came swiftly and sharply.
But when news broke that Kenner City Councilman Joe Stagni sent a picture of himself in his underwear to a city employee and had an "inappropriate" relationship with her, the reaction was muted. The council's two at-large members, for example, said Tuesday they are not taking a stand on their colleague's future.
"I'm never going to cast stones on anyone," Councilwoman Jeannie Black said. "I'm not going to be a judge."
Councilwoman Michele Branigan said now is not the time for judgment. "My concern right now is for his family," she said. "His wife and his children are the only thing I'm thinking about right now."
Stagni, 47, released a prepared statement after city officials retrieved the underwear image from a government computer and gave it to the news media Monday, in response to public records requests.
"I had an inappropriate but consensual relation with an adult female and we exchanged improper electronic communications which ended (in) 2009," Stagni said.
The electronic exchange took place 18 months ago. Stagni would not identify the woman or say whether she is a city employee.
However, public records show Stagni's personal smartphone was used to send a text message and the picture to Annamaria Pizzolato, who was Kenner's internal auditor, on Dec. 23, 2009. The message carried the subject line: "I'm n trouble - serious conversation wwife."
"He's lucky he doesn't have a sexual harassment suit against him," said Arthur Tudela, a longtime political ally.
Indeed, Tudela's reaction was the strongest public comment on Stagni's actions.
"I suggested to him that he consider resigning for the good of the city, the good of the district and most of all for the good of his family," said Tudela, treasurer of Citizens for a Better Kenner and a resident of Stagni's council district.
Pizzolato forwarded the underwear image to the work e-mail account of Danna Morris, who was Kenner's information technology director at the time, according to the records.
"Once you do that, it's stuck in the city server," said city attorney Keith Conley, who released the image and messages. He said it is the only such image that he knows about.
Pizzolato could not be reached for comment. Mayor Mike Yenni, with no public explanation, fired her in September.
That was five months after Morris and her husband, Mason Morris, a senior systems specialist in her department, abruptly resigned amid a criminal investigation of computer irregularities at City Hall.
A Republican, Stagni was elected to the council in 2006 and won a second four-year term last year.
News of his underwear picture and relationship comes after Weiner, a New York Democrat, admitted sending sexual text messages to several women. He resigned June 21.
"Whether he can politically survive this is an open question," Ed Chervenak, political scientist at the University of New Orleans, said of Stagni. The timing of the photo's release "couldn't be worse... given the fiasco involving Rep. Weiner is still fresh in people's minds."
"Much relies on how his family responds to this as well as how good a relationship he has with his colleagues and constituents," Chervenak said.
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Tudela said he spoke Tuesday morning with the vacationing Stagni, after news of the underwear picture broke. He said he is not calling for Stagni's resignation, asking only that the councilman consider it.
But Walt Bennetti, president of Citizens for a Better Kenner, said that's going too far. He said the picture and inappropriate relationship are not grounds for resignation "since it didn't happen on city time, and the councilman was not representing the city and... wasn't using city equipment.
"It's a personal matter and not indicative of the councilman's performance on the council or his stance on any issues," Bennetti said.
Stagni said he asked for "God's mercy and forgiveness."
"I apologized to my wife and family and asked for their forgiveness as well. My actions and bad judgment had nothing to do with my duties and responsibilities as a public official. They were private acts, but I take full responsibility for my irresponsible behavior. This matter has been a painful experience for my family, and I pray that everyone will allow our family to continue to heal. I am sorry."
.......
Mary Sparacello can be reached at msparacello@timespicayune.com or 504.467.1726.The next time your smooth drive to work is interrupted by a red traffic light you might reflect on the fact that it was a man from Nottingham who devised the most important system of traffic management.
Engineer John Peake Knight was a railway manager. He specialised in designing signalling systems for Britain's growing railway network. He saw no reason why these couldn't be adapted for use on the road.
A life on the rails
Knight's love of trains dates back to when he was only 12. He dropped out of his Nottingham grammar school and joined his two brothers in the parcel room of the Midland Railway.
Before long he'd left the East Midlands to work in the Brighton area. By the time he was 25 he was Superintendent of the South Eastern Railway.
He continued to rise through the railway ranks until a stroke cut his life short at the age of 59.
The great adaptor
John Peake Knight wasn't really an inventor but he could spot a good idea and use it.
He's credited as being one of the first to introduce emergency brake cords in trains. In 1865 he approached the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police with an idea to use a railway signalling system on the roads of London.
At the time there were no cars on the road but there was growing concern at the number of horse drawn carriages and danger to pedestrians.
A plaque to John Peake Knight Signalling the way Knight's proposal was to use a semaphore system - a method where an arm was either in a horizontal position or at an angle. This determined whether a train could pass or not.
The Notts engineer decided to treat main roads and side roads as if they were main and branch railway lines.
The semaphore method would be used during the day and at night red and green lights would be operated instead. These would be powered by gas.
An explosive end
It would take three years before the plan was implemented but on 9 December 1868 the world's first traffic lights were installed at the junction of Great George Street and Bridge Street in the London borough of Westminster, close to Westminster Bridge.
Policemen would stand next to the signals all day in order to operate them.
It was an immediate success. Knight confidently predicted more signals would appear in the centre of London.
But a month into the project disaster struck. One evening a leaky gas mains resulted in one of the traffic lights exploding in the face of the policeman who was operating them. He was badly burnt.
The project, so enthusiastically greeted, was immediately dropped.
A long wait
It would be 40 years before traffic lights reappeared and this would be in America.
They would only become a common sight in London in 1929 when the first electric signals were introduced.
But it was a Nottingham man who had the inspiration.Ghulam Mohammad Mir's daughter walks with a photo of her father
The body of a sarpanch, who was kidnapped by suspected militants, was found in the fields in in Sopore in north Kashmir's Baramulla district this morning.Police sources say multiple gunmen barged into the house of 62-year-old Ghulam Mohammad Mir in Tarazoo village in the district last evening and kidnapped him."There were 7 or 8 people in our backyard. There were perhaps more outside too. All of them were armed and wearing khaki-coloured uniforms. One man said, 'we are your kin, don't be afraid. An officer wants to meet him. He will be back soon and we will leave him till the gate.' My elder sister protested and one man pushed her away and took my father away. We don't know what happened after that," said the daughter of the sarpanch or village head.Police and security forces had launched a manhunt soon after the family of the sarpanch lodged a complaint, but could not track down the kidnappers."The body of the slain headman has been recovered from a field Saturday morning away from the place where he was kidnapped. An FIR has been lodged," a senior police officer said.Security agencies believe Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen militants operating in the area, may be responsible.Militants have been targeting village headmen in Jammu and Kashmir ever since the panchayat polls were held in the state after 20 years in 2011.Yesterday's incident comes three days after Assembly elections were held in Sopore as part of the third phase of polling in Jammu and Kashmir. Sopore saw a turnout of 30 per cent, 10 per cent higher than the 2008 assembly elections. Polling for the fourth phase in which 18 constituencies will vote in Srinagar, Anantnag, Shopian and Samba districts begins tomorrow."I'm only 26, so I didn't think my career was going to end right away," Cunningham said. "For me, if you look on the positive side, I got a head start on everyone else. Eventually your career comes to an end, there is a life after hockey as a player that you have to be prepared for."
He may be scouting for the Arizona Coyotes instead of playing, but being back in a rink evaluating prospects 10 months after he nearly lost his life is a welcome return to normalcy.
It's early September, the NHL season is around the corner, and Cunningham, 26, is in a hockey rink preparing for the upcoming season.
Cunningham collapsed on the ice and sustained a cardiac rhythm disturbance that stopped his heart before an American Hockey League game in Tucson, Arizona, on Nov. 19, 2016. While medics performed CPR, Cunningham's condition continued to worsen and he received a life-saving procedure where a pump circulated blood and was hooked up to an oxygenator, which served as an artificial lung.
Cunningham's heart didn't beat on its own for two days after he collapsed. But he started to recover when doctors at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson used a left ventricular assist device, called an Oxy-LVAD, which allowed his heart to recover.
The procedure saved his life, but impacted the circulation in Cunningham's left leg. The limb was partially amputated on Dec. 24, when doctors had to make a choice to save a life or a limb.
"You go through sometimes where I get some anxiety about what happened," Cunningham said. "But I've talked to some guys who have dealt with cardiac arrest, and they say, 'You've beat it already. You aren't even supposed to be here.' So that's the way I'm looking at it now."
He's also focused on being the best he can be after signing a two-year contract with the Coyotes to serve as a pro scout and assist in player development on May 24.
"The last year has been a real cycle of things I'm not used to," Cunningham said. "But it's been a lot of fun. Arizona has been great to me and given me a really good opportunity, and showing me the ropes and how it works."
Cunningham has always had a sharp mind for the game -- he played in 63 NHL games and captained three different AHL teams during his playing career. Now it's a process of applying that to scouting. He said he's already picked up some minor tricks of the trade and worked to gather information during the 2017 Traverse City Prospects Tournament.
The tournament, which was first hosted by the Detroit Red Wings in 1998, has turned into an annual pilgrimage for scouts from all 31 NHL teams.
"Been eight or nine guys here already that have reached out to me and told me if you need any help, just let me know," Cunningham said. "I think that's the great thing about the hockey world, it's a big business but it's such a tight group."
Cunningham has had a chance to catch up with Rich Peverley and Jiri Fischer in Traverse City about the sudden transition to a post-playing career.
Fischer's career ended in 2005 when his heart stopped on the bench, he is now the Red Wings director of player development. Peverley's ended in 2014 when he was playing for the Dallas Stars and he also collapsed on the bench because of a cardiac issue caused by an irregular heartbeat. Now he is their player development coordinator.
"Those guys have been great. It's always nice to talk to someone else that's been through the same thing as you and know you're not alone," Cunningham said. "I think it's special thing about being a hockey player and being involved in hockey, is there is so many people around, but everyone really does care about individual guys."
The most difficult part of the new job? The paperwork.
"I think the hardest thing for us as former players is figuring out the computer system and how to write stuff down and do things like that," Cunningham said.
And that's nothing compared to what Cunningham has conquered in the past 10 months.The Kragujevac massacre was the mass murder of between 2,778 and 2,794 mostly Serb men and boys in Kragujevac[a] by German soldiers on 21 October 1941. It occurred in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II, and came in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district that resulted in the deaths of 10 German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others. The number of hostages to be shot was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded, a formula devised by Adolf Hitler with the intent of suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe.
After a punitive operation was conducted in the surrounding villages, during which over 400 males were shot and four villages burned down, another 70 male Jews and communists who had been arrested in Kragujevac were killed. Simultaneously, males between the ages of 16 and 60, including high school students, were assembled by German troops and local collaborators, and the victims were selected from amongst them. The selected males were then marched to fields outside the city, shot with heavy machine guns, and their bodies buried in mass graves. Contemporary German military records indicate that 2,300 hostages were shot. After the war, inflated estimates ranged as high as 7,000 deaths, but German and Serbian scholars have now agreed on the figure of nearly 2,800 killed, including 144 high school students. As well as Serbs, massacre victims included Jews, Romani people, Muslims, Macedonians, Slovenes and members of other nationalities.
Several senior German military officials were tried and convicted for their involvement in the reprisal shootings at the Nuremberg trials and the subsequent Nuremberg trials. The massacre had a profound effect on the course of the war in Yugoslavia. It exacerbated tensions between the two guerrilla movements, the communist-led Partisans and the royalist, Serbian nationalist Chetniks, and convinced Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović that further attacks against the Germans would only result in more Serb civilian deaths. The Germans soon found mass executions of Serbs to be ineffectual and counterproductive, as they tended to drive the population into the arms of insurgents. The ratio of 100 executions for one soldier killed and 50 executions for one soldier wounded was reduced by half in February 1943, and removed altogether later in the year. The massacre is commemorated by the October in Kragujevac Memorial Park and the co-located 21st October Museum, and has been the subject of several poems and feature films. The day the massacre took place is commemorated annually in Serbia as the Day of Remembrance of the Serbian Victims of World War II.
Background [ edit ]
Encirclement and invasion of Yugoslavia [ edit ]
Following the 1938 Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria, Yugoslavia came to share its northwestern border with Germany and fell under increasing pressure as its neighbours aligned themselves with the Axis powers. In April 1939, Italy opened a second frontier with Yugoslavia when it invaded and occupied neighbouring Albania. At the outbreak of World War II, the Yugoslav government declared its neutrality. Between September and November 1940, Hungary and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact, aligning themselves with the Axis, and Italy invaded Greece. Yugoslavia was by then almost completely surrounded by the Axis powers and their satellites, and its neutral stance toward the war became strained. In late February 1941, Bulgaria joined the Pact. The following day, German troops entered Bulgaria from Romania, closing the ring around Yugoslavia. Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, German dictator Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis. On 25 March 1941, after some delay, the Yugoslav government conditionally signed the Pact. Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers deposed the country's regent, Prince Paul, in a bloodless coup d'état. They placed his teenage nephew Peter on the throne and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by the head of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force, General Dušan Simović. The coup enraged Hitler, who immediately ordered the country's invasion, which commenced on 6 April 1941.
Yugoslavia was quickly overwhelmed by the combined strength of the Axis powers and surrendered in less than two weeks. The government and royal family went into exile, and the country was occupied and dismembered by its neighbours. The German-occupied territory of Serbia was limited to the pre-Balkan War borders of the Kingdom of Serbia and was directly occupied by the Germans for the key rail and riverine transport routes that passed through it, as well as its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. The occupied territory covered about 51,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) and had a population of 3.8 million. Hitler had briefly considered erasing all existence of a Serbian state, but this was quickly abandoned and the Germans began searching for a Serb suitable to lead a puppet government in Belgrade. They initially settled on Milan Aćimović, a staunch anti-communist who served as Yugoslavia's Minister of Internal Affairs in late 1939 and early 1940.
Occupation and resistance [ edit ]
Map of German-occupied Serbia
Two resistance movements emerged following the invasion: the communist-led, multi-ethnic Partisans, and the royalist, Serbian nationalist Chetniks, although during 1941, within the occupied territory, even the Partisans consisted almost entirely of Serbs. The Partisans were led by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito; the Chetniks were led by Colonel Draža Mihailović, an officer in the interwar Royal Yugoslav Army. The two movements had widely divergent goals. Whereas the Partisans sought to turn Yugoslavia into a communist state under Tito's leadership, the Chetniks sought a return to the pre-war status quo, whereby the Yugoslav monarchy—and, by extension, Serb political hegemony—would be restored. Communist resistance commenced in early July, shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union, targeting both the Germans and the puppet authorities. By late August 1941, the Partisans and Chetniks were carrying out joint attacks against the Germans. The Partisans were well organised and many of their commanders had ample military experience, having fought in the Spanish Civil War. Within several months of the invasion, they had 8,000 fighters spread across 21 detachments in Serbia alone. Many Chetniks were either veterans of the Balkan Wars and World War I or former members of the Royal Yugoslav Army. They boasted around 20,000 fighters in the German-occupied territory of Serbia at the time of the massacre.
On 29 August, the Germans replaced Aćimović with another fervent anti-communist, the former Minister of the Army and Navy and Chief of the General Staff, General Milan Nedić, who formed a new puppet government. In September, the Nedić government was permitted to form the Serbian Volunteer Command (Serbo-Croatian: Srpska dobrovoljačka komanda; SDK), an auxiliary paramilitary formation to help quell anti-German resistance. In effect, the SDK was the military arm of the fascist Yugoslav National Movement (Serbo-Croatian: Zd |
fight to protect that stipulation.”
However, the government will likely put their plans into action as soon as they can. “I expect that the first bill on the first day the House of Representatives is in session will be a repeal of the Affordable Care Act,” Donovan says. "The first step will be the House vote, which then would send the bill to the Senate," Donovan says. There will likely be a Democratic filibuster that may bar a full repeal, but Republicans will still be able to dismantle much of Obamacare and put forth their own vision instead.
"Since regular procedure would require 60 votes in the Senate, which the GOP does not have, the bill would have to go through reconciliation, which would only require 51 votes," Donovan says. In order to use this process, every item in a reconciliation bill must have a direct, measurable impact on the federal budget, Donovan explains.
"A reconciliation bill would take away funding for Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies, along with repealing different taxes that helped fund the original bill, like a tax on tanning and certain high-cost insurance plans," she explains. According to Trump's website, he also wants to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines, allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premiums from their taxes, and require more price transparency, among other things.
"Keep in mind, our only certainty is that there will be a repeal," Donovan says. "We don’t know anything else, because with each clause of the bill, legislators will need to write when it takes effect, and they can choose any time. They may choose to put it into effect immediately, but a more reasonable expectation might be in 2019, which would give people time to prepare to lose their coverage—and would take place after the midterm elections in 2018. The bottom line, though, is that nobody knows."
Which benefits would I possibly lose?
3. Will I get kicked off my parents’ health insurance?
Current law, under Obamacare: Adult children under 26 are legally allowed to be covered by their parents' health insurance plans.
If Obamacare is fully repealed: In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that he likes this Obamacare provision "very much" and may be open to keeping it.
Otherwise, losing your parents' coverage is a distinct possibility, says O’Leary. “If the Affordable Care Act is repealed by Congress and signed into law by the president, adult children will not be guaranteed the option to stay on their parents' insurance plan,” she says. For large corporations that are self-insured, this decision will be made by the employer, O’Leary says. In all other situations, the decision will be up to the insurer, but she’s not hopeful: “If insurers don’t feel it will benefit their bottom lines, it will go away. This could leave potentially millions of young adults without insurance.”
4. At what point will my birth control stop being free without a co-pay?
Current law, under Obamacare: Each person covered by Obamacare gets one of each type of FDA-approved birth control for free, although some plans have exemptions.
If Obamacare is fully repealed: “Without [Obamacare's contraceptive provision], it will be up to the insurance company to decide if they want to cover the contraception, and if so, how much it will cost the patient,” O'Leary says.
It’s also important to note that if Obamacare is repealed, insurers can choose not to cover pregnancy and childbirth and could charge women more for their health care than men, as some have done in the past, she adds. “If the cost and/or access to contraception become a barrier to entry, we might see an increase in pregnancies,” O'Leary says.
5. Will my insurer be able to refuse me for a pre-existing condition?
Current law, under Obamacare: Your insurance provider cannot deny you based on pre-existing health conditions.
If Obamacare is fully repealed: In today's Wall Street Journal interview, Trump also mentioned that he was receptive to this portion of Obamacare, so it may remain intact. It's hard to think insurers would legally be allowed to turn people away due to pre-existing conditions, Peterson says: "That is a settled value in this country."
However, O’Leary is less optimistic. “Just as was the case prior to the Affordable Care Act, insurers will be able to pick and choose who they want to insure in most if not all states,” she says. “Prior to enactment of the ACA, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan listed acne and erectile dysfunction as 'pre-existing,' along with three pages of other conditions.” In that kind of situation, people who take acne medicine and have a heart attack might be cancelled (what's known as "a rescission" of their coverage) because their insurer sees acne as a pre-existing condition, she says. That could leave the patient and their family fully responsible for the cost of the unrelated heart attack.
6. What about things like preventative appointments and breast pumps?
Current law, under Obamacare: Things like preventative appointments and breast pumps are available at no cost to the patient.
If Obamacare is fully repealed: These options will likely cost money, says Donovan. “Nobody, not even those who will be writing the law, know when these features will sunset,” she says. “But people who have been enjoying access to the preventative care and services made available to them through the ACA, particularly women, should start planning for things to change quickly over the next four years.”
What if I don’t know what to do about health care next year?
7. Since I would get penalized on my taxes for not having insurance, if I don’t get a policy now because of uncertainty, will I get taxed on it next year even if Obamacare is repealed?
Current law, under Obamacare: As it stands now, people who don’t have health insurance have to pay a penalty for not having coverage. According to Healthcare.gov, you owe the fee for any month you don’t have coverage, and you pay it when you file your federal tax return. The fee is calculated two different ways—as 2.5 percent of your household income and as $695 per person—and you have to pay whichever is higher.
If Obamacare is fully repealed: It’s a “99.9 percent certainty” that you will be penalized if you decide to forgo health insurance in 2017, O’Leary says. “Even if the ACA is repealed in 2017, you still risk tax liability,” she says. “It’s better to be safe and insured, for your financial and physical welfare, than to bet on the unknown.”
Donovan agrees. “It depends on when Republicans sunset the individual mandate, [but] the better answer is to buy your health insurance,” she says. “Legislators could let the individual mandate expire retroactively, dismissing penalties for those who are uninsured, or they could let it go two years in the future. The law still stands today, and consumers should work under the laws we have, not under those that do not yet exist.”
8. What happens if you sign up for Obamacare, part of it gets repealed and the subsidies go away, and you can’t pay your premiums?
Current law, under Obamacare: Failure to pay your monthly insurance premiums can result in your health insurance getting canceled, O'Leary says, and failure to have health insurance means you have to pay a penalty for each month you’re without it.
If Obamacare is partially repealed: Most experts agree that even a partial appeal of the ACA won't happen until 2018. “Insurers as well as the public will need time to transition into new plans,” O’Leary says.
The majority of people who risk significant tax penalties don't qualify for subsidies and purchase their individual/family polices on the open market, not government-run exchanges, she points out. “They must decide if the risk of a major health event and tax liabilities are worth going forward without insurance,” she says. “For most professionals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, especially those with families, going without insurance is simply too great of a risk.”
Donovan says it’s important to keep in mind that should subsidies remain intact while the mandate is repealed, you would still need to maintain your health insurance. “In the highly unlikely reverse scenario, in which subsidies are repealed while the mandate remains intact, then yes, you would get kicked off your insurance plan for nonpayment and then fined later for not being insured during the year,” she says. “But once again, it’s a very improbable scenario.”
If you have more questions, you can reach out to non-profit organizations, like the National Patient Advocate Foundation, at action@npaf.org or 202-347-8009. You can also contact independent healthcare advocacies like Exhale Healthcare Advocates at breathe@exhalehealth.com or 800-381-4741.
Update: We have updated this story to address reader questions about tax penalties in the event of Obamacare being repealed and to include information from a new Wall Street Journal interview with Donald Trump.
Related:
Watch: The Realities Of Breast Cancer Treatment That Nobody Talks AboutReality of Immigration In Alabama Jail
A detainee looks out over the common area at the Etowah County Jail Tuesday, December 4, 2012 in Gadsden, Ala(Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)
(Eric Schultz)
The Etowah County Detention Center holds about 300 undocumented immigrants in conditions that lack natural light, healthy food or regular medical care, according to a report released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The report focuses on immigrant detention facilities across the South, where asylum-seekers face long odds in court and difficult conditions behind bars while awaiting immigration proceedings. Researchers, who interviewed hundreds of detainees and scoured reams of documents, found widespread allegations of inadequate medical care, poor legal services, abusive treatment and contaminated food.
"The South has kind of been a black hole for detention," said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "A lot of immigrants who are arrested on the West Coast and the East Coast end up shipped to the South."
Bryan D. Cox, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in an email that none of the allegations contained in the report have been substantiated.
"ICE is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody," Cox wrote. "ICE has a strict zero-tolerance policy for any kind of abusive or inappropriate behavior in its facilities and takes any allegation seriously. The facilities named in these allegations have all been subject to regular inspections during the time period covered by these allegations, and in all instances the facilities have been found to operate in compliance with ICE's rigorous national detention standards."
Detainees in the South are held in facilities far from families and legal resources for immigrants, Graybill said. The number of immigration attorneys is much lower in Gadsden than New York City, she said. Attorneys and immigrant advocates have long heard that conditions are harsher in Southern facilities, so Graybill's organization partnered with the National Lawyers Guild and Adelante Alabama Worker Center on the expansive investigation.
In some cases, conditions in the facilities might have contributed to the deaths of immigrant detainees. Immigrant advocates in Alabama point to the case of Teka Gulema, an Ethiopian national held at Etowah since 2012 who contracted an infection that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He died in January 2016, soon after he was officially released from ICE custody but after he slipped into a coma, according to the report. Because his death occurred outside ICE custody, it did not trigger an investigation.
Cox said ICE could not comment on individual cases due to privacy concerns.
Etowah County officials charge federal authorities $45 a day to hold immigrants awaiting trial and deportation - less than any other detention facility in the country and far below the national average of $164 per day. As a result, the county jail has become a destination for immigrants stuck in the system for years at a time.
Jessica Vosburgh, director of Adelante Alabama Worker Center, said the Etowah County Detention Center has come under fire several times in the past, and almost lost its contract with federal authorities about six years ago. The latest report includes several allegations that have come up in the past, documented in interviews with almost 70 detainees. Poor conditions inside the facility are driven in part by the low reimbursement rate from the government, Vosburgh said.
"Certainly, when you're paying that low per detainee per day, you're going to get very poor services and conditions," she said.
The report follows the election of President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Any effort to increase deportations will require expansion of detention facilities, raising concerns about the conditions in private prisons and county jails that hold thousands of immigrants awaiting hearings or deportation.
According to the report, detention centers in the South hold one out of six immigrant detainees. Immigration courts in the region rarely provide legal counsel to detainees facing deportation. Unlike criminal defendants, who are entitled to legal representation in court, detainees held for the civil violation of immigration laws are not entitled to attorneys who can help navigate the complicated immigration system.
Detainees in the Etowah County Detention Center spend the longest time on average in detention, often longer than a year. The facility has no outdoor recreation area, so men kept in confinement can go for long periods without exposure to fresh air and sunshine, according to the report.
The facility also provides little access to legal information, according to the report, and detainees often spend months waiting for information about immigration proceedings that drag on for years. In one case, researchers interviewed a detainee who claimed to be an American citizen from Puerto Rico who has been held for three years.
Officials from Etowah County have not yet returned calls seeking comment, but in the past, they have said the facility has passed all inspections by federal authorities.
Cox said ICE provides several levels of oversight for detention facilities, including on-site managers.
"ICE's civil detention system ensures quality medical, mental health and dental care, reduces transfers, maximizes access to counsel and visitation and improves conditions of detention," he wrote.
Researchers focused on Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, two detention centers in Georgia, two in Florida and one in Louisiana. Three of the facilities are privately-run prisons and three, including Etowah, are county facilities under contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Graybill said researchers originally hoped the research might convince officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stop relying so heavily on private prisons and contract facilities. She said the system gives private prison companies and county governments incentives to skimp on services to generate greater profits. The U.S. Department of Justice announced earlier this year that it would stop using private prisons to house federal inmates.
"There's no need for this incredible amount of people to be detained," Graybill said. "There are plenty of alternatives to detention that are incredibly less expensive."
Updated at 10:15 a.m. on Nov. 28 to include a response from U.S. Customs and Immigration EnforcementTurkish authorities have detained two generals and a colonel for their alleged role in the January interception of trucks belonging to the country’s intelligence agency that were reportedly carrying weapons to the Takfiri terror groups operating in neighboring Syria.
On Saturday, Turkish police arrested Ankara Gendarmerie Regional Commander Major General Ibrahim Aydin, former Adana Gendarmerie Regional Commander Brigadier General Hamza Celepoglu and former Gendarmerie Criminal Laboratory Head Colonel Burhanettin Cihangiroglu.
The report came only two days after a prosecutor in Turkey demanded that Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of center-left Turkish daily newspaper, Cumhuriyet, along with the paper’s Ankara representative, Erdem Gul, appear in court in Istanbul to face charges of “espionage and treason.” The two journalists had earlier revealed Ankara’s arms delivery to militants in Syria in their reports.
Cumhuriyet says the charges carry up to 45 years in prison altogether.
A handout picture released by Turkish Cumhuriyet daily shows Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar (C) speaking to the press before attending a court hearing in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 26, 2015.
Outside the courthouse, Dundar told reporters that the government wants to cover up their paper’s revelations, stressing, “There is a crime that has been committed by the state that they are trying to cover up.
On May 29, Cumhuriyet posted on its website footage showing trucks of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) being inspected by security officers.
The inspectors then spotted cardboard boxes inside the metallic container with the “fragile” marking on them. They opened the boxes, and found a considerable amount of munitions hidden in crates below boxes of medicine.
Cumhuriyet said the trucks were carrying around 1,000 mortar shells, hundreds of grenade launchers and more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition for light and heavy weapons.
A still image grabbed from a video published on the website of the Turkish Cumhuriyet daily on May 29, 2015 shows mortar shells in boxes intercepted on a truck destined for Syria.
Several security officials, who had intercepted the trucks back in January, are currently being tried for “spying” charges.
The incident triggered a huge controversy in Turkey with many bashing the government for explicitly supporting terrorism in Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to link the case to his top challenger, Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric.
Erdogan accuses Gulen of running a “parallel state” and says the interception of the Syria-bound consignment and the ensuing controversy were directly orchestrated by Gulen and his followers in the judiciary and police, a charge Gulen and his supporters have repeatedly dismissed.The Tim Burton “Batman” movies and the Joel Schumacher “Batman” movies exist in the same universe. To explain how and possibly why, let’s answer a real quick question:
Who is the real Batman?
Is it Christian Bale? Ha, that’s a laugh (or a scream).
Adam West?
Maybe.
But what if the “real” Batman is Michael Keaton, who appeared in 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns? Both of which are Tim Burton films, by the way.
The Batman Theory is that Michael Keaton’s version of Batman is the “original” Batman. And the subsequent movies featuring Val Kilmer and George Clooney in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin are simply movies about Batman taking place in Tim Burton’s version of Gotham.
Now this isn’t my theory, to be clear. In fact, I’m having trouble pinpointing the originator of this theory, but here’s how I came across it. Cracked author Adam Wears recently highlighted this theory in an article. He cites a Redditor who brought it up in r/fantheories, though he claims it’s not his theory either.
Wears greatly expands the Redditor’s idea in the article, and I’m going to expand further. But here’s the basic rundown.
The Tim Burton movies starring Michael Keaton were the first “serious” Batman movies after years of the character being seen as a campy, comical superhero. Batman and Batman Returns are gritty and dark interpretations that haven’t really been mimicked since they came out (save for Fox’s Gotham, which delivers a spiritual prequel reminiscent of Burton’s vision).
Now at the end of Batman Returns, Bruce Wayne believes Catwoman has run out of her nine lives, leading to her death. Though she was a villain initially, Bruce and Selina (Catwoman’s alter ego) developed a romantic relationship. Even though she (as Catwoman) plotted to kill Batman at one point.
At the end of the movie, Bruce believes she is dead, though we see she is still alive. Heartbroken, this would lead Bruce to “retiring” as Batman and confessing he is Batman to the rest of the world. Personally, I just think he died or was killed eventually. And from his remains, people figured out who he was.
The theory is that someone would come along and make a movie out of his life, which would lead to the Joel Schumacher movies. These “movies” would be based on the Michael Keaton version of Batman.
This would explain why there is such a tonal and stylistic change between the two sets of films, and why there are different actors for Bruce Wayne in both movies (even though other actors like Chris O’Donnell stay the same, and Harvey Dent goes from being Billy Dee Williams to Tommy Lee Jones).
And of course, it explains why the Joel Schumacher movies suck…unless you were a kid when they came out. And why we should never regard them as canon ever again.
Wears brings up that these changes are apparent when you compare the screenshots of the Tim Burton movies against the Joel Schumacher ones.
These screenshots capture a city that is very “industrial and gothic,” as Wears puts it. Contrast that with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin:
And of course these “re-imaginings” of Gotham are more vibrant and colorful. For a city that is so bankrupt morally and optimistically, it makes sense that they would have over-the-top movies that appeal to kids, showing off a lighter, campier version of Gotham.
But what of Alfred? Michael Gough plays Alfred in all four of these dang movies. Same goes for Pat Hingle playing Commissioner Gordon in all of them.
Are we really supposed to believe that these guys would play themselves in movies about Batman?
Well, sure. One thing we know about Gotham is that it’s the opposite of the land of opportunity. Not everyone has a Batman Credit Card, so if your one job was working for the Batman but he suddenly died, then what else are you going to do? (Oh yeah, this is why the retirement idea doesn’t work for me).
So Alfred would carry on the Batman legacy by helping produce these films, inspiring the children of Gotham that crime is bad. Same goes for Commissioner Gordon, the super cop who is not actually incompetent and should be seen as the hero of law enforcement.
After all, the news of their connection to Bruce Wayne would instantly elevate them to celebrity status. What would you do with that level of fame? Probably what other people do. Make movies.
Basically, the Joel Schumacher movies are propaganda that are used to carry on the effectiveness of the cowl beyond the grave. Of course, this is assuming Bruce Wayne/Michael Keaton would really be dead, when really, he’s probably just off with Catwoman (who’s also believed to be dead) in another country. Hey, what does that remind you of?
Checkmate, Mr. Wayne.
Thanks for Reading! You can subscribe to this blog by email via the prompt on the sidebar. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@JonNegroni). I’ll follow you back if you say something witty and awesome.
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Like this: Like Loading...Ken Troop is a designer and writer at Wizards of the Coast. He has written the short story "Five Brothers" for the Shadowmoor anthology and has written "Talrand, Sky Summoner" and "The Consequences of Attraction" for Uncharted Realms.
Previous Story: Endure
The Gatewatch, outraged by the mounting devastation that has overtaken Amonkhet, confronts Nicol Bolas to bring him to justice for his atrocities across the Multiverse. However, Nicol Bolas has plans of his own.
Damnation | Art by Zack Stella
Nicol Bolas flew toward the heroes, eager to kill someone today.
Either he would have deaths, screams, and blood, or he would, perhaps, have something better.
He did not expect to have both. One could not have everything. Not even Nicol Bolas. He was not greedy. Greed implies wanting something you didn't deserve.
Everything Nicol Bolas wanted was entirely deserved.
Several decades ago he had come to the world of Amonkhet, a blighted, superstitious backworld of interest to no one who mattered, to no one who was paying attention. He had prepared—layer upon layer of preparations. Miserable lives that would soon have ended anyway ended just a bit sooner, with a touch more violence.
Hardly worthy of the effort, normally. Except... except several decades were an eyeblink when he was fully himself, able to wield the divinity due him. But as he was now, merely a shadow of a shadow of a god, those several decades had seemed an eternity.
Ruminating on all he had lost fanned the glowing ember of hate burning in his chest. The growing flame felt good. The hatred felt right. Today, Nicol Bolas thought, it begins.
He flew down to the center of a ruined plaza. Rubble and broken bodies garnished the toppled statues and cracked obelisks. At the edges of the plaza, five planeswalkers stood arrayed against him, grim determination on their tiny faces. He knew each of them intimately. He had scouted them, studied them, analyzed and categorized them. Chandra Nalaar, pyromancer. Liliana Vess, necromancer. Jace Beleren, telepath and illusionist. Nissa Revane, elementalist. Gideon Jura, invulnerable soldier.
They fancied themselves The Gatewatch. As though for some bizarre reason there were gates scattered throughout the Multiverse. That deserved watching.
The heroes, Nicol Bolas thought. Bless them, each and every one.
Clouds of yellow dust spun into the air, stirred by the beating of his massive wings. He saw the slight widening of Chandra's eyes as she realized, seemingly for the first time, just how large Nicol Bolas was. Her naiveté amused. Not for the first time, he wondered if these heroes would be suitable for what he required.
No matter. There were others, if need be.
Tiny perturbations prickled his mind, a cautious but insistent probing from Jace. Yes, my dear boy, find your footing, Bolas implored silently. He landed with a soft thump, his wings flexing with a final, ponderous beat. He had not needed wings to fly for a very long time, but he loved the way it felt, his majesty fully unfurled and on display.
He lifted his head to the sky and roared, a throaty cry that shook buildings and quailed hearts. His roar echoed the cries of countless other predators throughout the eons, predators who have no more need to be silent. Over the long years, Nicol Bolas knew it served him poorly to be too much the dragon. But it was no fun to be the dragon too little.
The five planeswalkers stood uncertainly around him. He extended his mind outward and could feel the ripples of their telepathic communication, orchestrated by Jace. He could intercept it if he wanted, but thought it would be more interesting to see what plan they had come up with. Given their hesitation and dawdling, he was growing ever more certain they would disappoint.
Oh, they probably had a plan. A plan, charitably, could consist of kill the dragon. Or, you burn it, you zombie it, you elemental it, you illusion it, you block it. These were all, given enough leeway, plans. And plans of similar competence had served them well enough in their recent escapades. Nicol Bolas could appreciate efficiency. Why bother being smart when the Multiverse so conveniently conspired to keep your idiocy alive?
Chandra and Nissa began circling around him in each direction. Yes, tactics, assuredly. He wondered how much it would crush their spirits if he applauded. Metaphorically, of course. His talons did not clap together well.
Not for the first time, he marveled at how these planeswalkers had managed to stay alive as long as they had. They were children of a civilized and gelded age, these planeswalkers, this Gatewatch. They had no idea of the dangers lying in wait, ready to kill them... or worse. Their lack of actual power had somehow protected them from all the ways they could have died. Or rather their lack of knowledge of what actual power should be. None of them except for Liliana had tasted true power.
Nicol Bolas ran a slithering tongue over his lips. It was purely for effect, but that did not make it any less necessary.
Charmed lives, these planeswalkers had led. The problem with charmed lives, though, as Nicol Bolas had ample reason to know, is eventually the luck turns. Fate darkens. Charm abandons. It helps, in those moments of misfortune and unfairness, to have a very well-prepared and meticulous plan. Several, really. More than several, ideally, but unless you are a brilliant elder dragon archmage planeswalker, several would suffice.
Or one. Just one plan. Even a snippet of genius, tactical or strategic, would have given Nicol Bolas hope for their future. But he saw the plan written on their faces, in their narrowed eyes and tensed muscles, in the growing ripples of their telepathic chatter.
They had chosen kill the dragon. Bolas sympathized, to a point. Simple plans were often underestimated, especially by the brilliant. Far too often, an intelligent opponent had lost a battle because of an over-complexity of design. Simple plans wielded by a master were often devastating.
But simple plans wielded as the desperate last resort of the simple? The consequences of that approach were about to be displayed. He would have either blood or better, and either way he was hungry to begin.
Jace
The dragon landed softly in the plaza, and Jace was afraid.
Nothing about this day had gone as planned. There had been too much horror, too much death, too many lives they could not save. They had tried to help as they could, but they were gnats fighting a thunder storm. Jace had never seen so much death.
He felt empty inside, his mind dulled to the endless pain and grief it had been subjected to. For a moment, the images came: children screaming, people running futilely as they were slaughtered from behind, the incessant buzzing... no. He walled the images off again. There was a mission to complete.
But it was more than a mission now. Jace had pressed Gideon for an actual plan, had warned they could not engage Nicol Bolas unprepared, but Gideon had lashed out, his raw pain suffusing each word as he demanded to face the dragon now.
"He will pay for everything he has done. He has to." It was that last sentence that so concerned Jace. But he did not argue with Gideon. None of them did, not even Liliana. They were all empty, all seeking meaning in the slaughter, in the cries of children. They wanted justice.
Justice had to exist somewhere, for it had yet to be found on Amonkhet today.
Are you sure? Jace reached out to Gideon one last time, hoping there was a better plan.
We hit him with everything we've got. He will fall, Gideon thought back at him. Jace had never felt such an undercurrent of rage in Gideon, could feel his anger wrapped in Gideon's normal stubborn determination. Jace was swept in its current, willing himself to believe they could be triumphant today.
They began. Gideon charged, his golden force shield shimmering, while Chandra launched gouts of flame. Seedlings burst from the ground, courtesy of Nissa, becoming roots and vines that twisted and knotted around the dragon's legs. Liliana began raising the dead; there was no shortage given the carnage of the day.
Jace tried to attack Nicol Bolas's mind.
The walls around the dragon's mind were smooth and featureless, like dark obsidian. There seemed to be no entry, nothing to even latch onto. Jace had never encountered a mind so impenetrable, except for... the merest moment of a memory surfaced of a mind as smooth and dazzling as a wall of crystal. But even as the thought entered his mind, it erased itself, and he could not remember where he had seen such a thing—or even what kind of thing it was.
What... Jace shook off the sudden fugue that had overtaken him. It hadn't seemed to come from Bolas, but rather from inside himself. What was I thinking about? But he could not recall. Bolas's mind still loomed in front of him, closed and locked, as he futilely sought purchase.
His friends were not doing any better.
Nicol Bolas's tail whipped around, lightning-fast, and its end slammed into Gideon and his invulnerable shield with the force of a charging baloth. Gideon sailed into a thick brick wall lining one side of the plaza. His shield kept him unharmed, but he had no leverage to do anything more than be whacked against the wall by Bolas's tail like a ball hit by a stick, over and over as bricks flew and shattered with each impact.
The wall would crumble before Gideon did, but neither would be going anywhere for a while.
Bolas ignored Chandra's fire, trampled Liliana's dead, and broke Nissa's vines. He did not move to attack them, merely continuing to fling a helpless Gideon against the wall. He stared at Jace, knowing what the telepath was trying, and failing, to do.
The voice blasted into Jace's mind with all the subtlety of an avalanche, shredding several of his defenses effortlessly. You have been alive for all of an eye-blink, and because of a thimble of natural talent you presume to touch my mind? And some have called me arrogant. Bolas's laughter was acid, scarring Jace's mind.
He frantically strove to erect stronger psychic shields, shocked at how easily Bolas had penetrated his outer walls. But perhaps, in his arrogance, the dragon had made a mistake. Bolas had left a trail, a metaphysical string connecting his mind to Jace's. Perhaps this was the handhold Jace needed.
He followed the trail, desperate to break through, desperate to save his friends.
It was working! He found a small crevice in the otherwise featureless obsidian shields. He concentrated on opening it wider, he just needed to...
If you wanted in, child, you merely needed to ask. Each word from Bolas was like boulders crashing down a mountain.
The obsidian shield disappeared, and Jace fell unexpectedly into Nicol Bolas's mind. There the dragon was waiting, smiling.
Nicol Bolas clutched Jace's mind as he tried to fight him off. He crumpled over with pain, livid with himself at how easily he had fallen for Bolas's ruse. I have to do better. He could still escape this trap, he just needed more time. Seconds, he only needed seconds...
Seconds you do not have, Bolas whispered inside his mind. The Multiverse only suffers fools briefly. A useful lesson, if you survive. The dragon held Jace's mind roughly, and squeezed.
Synapses crumbled. Pain blossomed. Insanity beckoned. A towering wave of darkness rose in the distance. Jace knew the crash of that wave meant dissolution. Mind-death. Without conscious thought, he began planeswalking away blindly, not knowing or caring where. He had to avoid that darkness.
He felt himself being pulled across the Blind Eternities as the wave of darkness struck, and then he knew nothing at all.
Liliana
Liliana stared in shock at the empty space that Jace had occupied just moments before. The fight against Bolas was a disaster, as she had feared it would be. She had still been hoping Jace could come up with some plan when he screamed in agony. It was a scream she knew well—the scream of the dying. The primal scream of life not wanting to end.
Liliana shivered. He can't be dead. He planeswalked away before the end. I saw it. He's alive.
"That was your mind expert, I believe? Do you have a spare? I can wait, or I promise not to listen if you shout at each other." Nicol Bolas lingered on each word, his voice rumbling through the open plaza, punctuated only by the continued thwaps as he bounced Gideon off the wall.
Liliana raged inside. She had known this fight with Nicol Bolas was a terrible idea, and every misguided intervention and distraction trying to help the doomed inhabitants of this plane only furthered her certainty. The group was ragged and reeling and in no condition to confront a planeswalker as powerful as Bolas. She would have left already if she hadn't pushed the group past its breaking point with her machinations to defeat Razaketh. Several times she had weighed staying with the group against abandoning them, but she felt her investment in them justified staying.
Perhaps she had made the wrong choice.
But that wasn't the only reason for her rage. A long time ago, back on Innistrad, she had compared her feelings for Jace to those she would have toward a dog, a house pet. The boy had been stung, as she had intended.
Liliana cared about her pets. Usually tampering with anyone who belonged to her was a fatal choice. She hungered to show Bolas the consequences of his folly.
Yes, use us. Unleash your full power, whispered the Chain Veil hanging at her side.
You have never been such a fool as to think you can win this battle, Liliana, whispered the Raven Man.
And perhaps that was the biggest reason for her rage. She wanted her mind to be hers alone again.
If she was going to fight Bolas, she knew she would have to use the Chain Veil, and with it the spirits of the Onakke dead. It gave her great power, but that power always came at a cost. Every time she used it, she risked death or complete subjugation to the Onakke spirits within. Neither fate was tolerable.
There was a lull in the fighting as Chandra and Nissa dealt with their own shock at the loss of Jace. Nothing the three of them had done so far had been effective against the dragon. Nicol Bolas turned toward Liliana and smiled, a grotesque display of teeth and arrogance that Liliana found repulsive, not least because she recognized that she was prone to giving the same smile to vanquished enemies.
"Liliana Vess. It is so good to see you again. Your complexion looks remarkably... healthy." Bolas did not even try to mask his condescension.
Her fingers twitched toward the Veil. "I'm going to kill you, Bolas. I will see you die and then reanimate your corpse to—"
"Oh, please," Nicol Bolas cut her off. "These children lost this battle before they were even born. You know this. You alone amongst them know what true power was. You alone amongst them know what true power can be again."
The dragon did not lie, but she thought again of Jace's final scream, of the boy planeswalking blindly away. The etched runes on her body and face glowed |
under armed guards, in holes in the ground, with extremely scarce rations,” writes Mandelbaum. At least 3,500 of them died in the camps.
In his book, Adolf Hitler (p. 202), John Toland wrote that “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history.” Hitler “admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and even combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”
Hitler was apparently “very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations.” And the Nazis did force hundreds of prisoners in their concentration camps on death marches where many of them starved or froze to death.
Adolf Hitler was infatuated in his youth with tales of the American West. “His favorite game to play outside was cowboys and Indians,” wrote David A. Meier in Hitler’s Rise to Power. He read 70 of novels about the American West by the German author Karl May, who “had never been to America” and “invented a hero named Old Shatterhand, a white man who always won his battles with Native Americans.” Hitler “continued reading [May’s novels] even as Führer,” wrote Mandelbaum, even referring to the Russians as “Redskins” during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and ordering his military commanders to read May’s books.
The U.S. government’s war of genocide against all the Plains Indians, not just the Navajo, would indeed be a “good” example for any psychotic, murderous tyrant like Adolf Hitler. It was prosecuted by all of Lincoln’s generals, including Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and various other “Civil War luminaries” such as John Pope, O.O Howard, Nelson Miles, Alfred Terry, E.O.C. Ord, Edward Canby, Benjamin Garrison, and Winfield Scott Hancock, wrote John Marszalek in Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (p. 380). Sherman and Sheridan adopted the motto, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” as their armies murdered at least 45,000 Indians from 1864 to 1890, including thousands of women and children (See Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival). The survivors were placed in concentration camps euphemistically called “reservations,” where many of their descendants remain to this day.
Lincoln’s generals were not shy about announcing their intentions to commit genocide. John Pope announced that “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux.... They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made” (David Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians, p. 87). “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” General Sherman announced, calling his policy “a racial cleansing of the land” (See Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 264). “Sherman gave [General Phil] Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages,” wrote Fellman (p. 271).
So it is not a stretch to believe that Adolf Hitler, who fancied himself to be a serious student and admirer of U.S. military history from the Lincoln regime to the end of the nineteenth century, would have been “inspired” by Lincoln’s maniacal, murderous, genocidal generals like Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Custer, as the historians John Toland and David A. Meier maintain. Indeed, Hitler was a rabid admirer of Lincoln’s compulsion to destroy state sovereignty and of the military tactics (i.e. waging total war on civilians) that he employed to achieve it. On page 566 of the 1999 Mariner/Houghton Mifflin edition of Mein Kampf Hitler repeated Lincoln’s historically false and absurd argument from his first inaugural address that the states were never sovereign. “The individual states of the American union... could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own,” wrote Hitler, paraphrasing Lincoln. He did this to make his own case for the abolition of states’ rights or federalism in Germany and the creation of a centralized, monopolistic state.
The arguments in favor of states’ rights that were being made in Germany, wrote Hitler, were “propagated by the Jews” and should therefore be dismissed. “The mischief of individual federated states... must cease,” the dictator bellowed. “A rule basic for us National Socialists,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “is derived: A powerful national Reich.” The only real difference between this statement and Lincoln’s theory of the American union is that Hitler referred to a “national Reich” whereas Lincoln, ever the master of slick political rhetoric, called the same thing “the mystic chords of union.”
The Best of Thomas DiLorenzoOn February 25th a group of eleven renowned law professors from around the country sent a letter to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) warning that SB1062–the bill “which amends Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA)–has been “egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics.”
The mix of eleven professors consists of Republicans and Democrats, religious and non-religious, “some…[who] oppose same-sex marriage [and] some… who support it.” Their letter was obtained exclusively by Breitbart News ahead of its public release.
Their letter focuses on the important role RFRA plays in “[enacting] a uniform standard to be interpreted and applied to individual cases.” And the professors said such a “standard makes sense” as “we should not punish people for practicing their religions unless we have very good reason.”
SB1062 amends Arizona’s RFRA in two ways:
1. “It provides that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their business.” 2. “It would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion.”
Countering misrepresentations, the professors pointed out that “SB1062 does not say that businesses can discriminate for religious reasons.”
In concluding, they urged Gov. Brewer to be sure SB1062 is “accurately considered,” so that in passing judgment on it she is not “misled by uniformed critics.”
The eleven signatories:
Prof. Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia School of Law
Prof. Helen M. Alvare, George Mason University School of Law
Prof. Carl H. Esbeck, University of Missouri School of Law
Prof. Christopher C. Lund, Wayne State University Law School
Prof. Gregory C. Sisk, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)
Prof. Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law School
Prof. Michael W. McConnell, Stanford Law School
Prof. Thomas C. Berg, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)
Prof. Richard W. Garnett, Notre Dame Law School
Prof. Mark S. Scarberry, Pepperdine University School of Law
Robert Fretwell Wilson, University of Illinois College of Law
(“Institutional affiliations are for identification only. [The] institutions take no positions on these bills.”)
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.Buy Photo Prescription drugs confiscated by the Dutchess County Drug Task Force include the narcotics Suboxone, pink pills on left, and Oxycontin, green pills on right. (Photo: Spencer Ainsley/Poughkeepsie Journal)Buy Photo
Proposed state policies intended to control the opioid abuse epidemic over the past decade have faced a $3.7 million roadblock — the amount of money spent by drug companies and related advocacy groups to influence New York lawmakers.
A joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity found members of the Pain Care Forum, composed of drugmakers and allied advocacy groups, spent more than $880 million on campaign contributions and lobbying over the past decade as they worked to influence state and federal policies.
The groups have an array of political interests that include opioid advocacy, and their spending was eight times that of the gun lobby during the same period. By comparison, groups advocating for limits on opioid prescribing spent about $4 million.
Of that total, $37 million was spent on contributions to state-level elected officials and party committees. And in that time period, less than one-quarter of the 800 bills introduced in state houses nationwide that would have imposed limits on opioid prescriptions have been approved.
In the mid-Hudson Valley, between 2006 and 2015, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, got $4,500; Sen. George Amedore, R-Rotterdam, Schenectady County, got $2,000; Sen. John Bonacic, R-Mount Hope, got $2,000 and Sen. William Larkin, R-Cornwall, got $500.
At the federal level, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand led with $298,848 in donations. Sen. Charles Schumer followed with $179,550. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, received $46,899, while Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, got $25,650.
Among those no longer in office, Hillary Clinton received $36,520 while in the U.S. Senate; state Sen. Stephen Saland got $5,800; state Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk got $2,000; state Sen. Greg Ball got $2,400; Rep. John Hall got $11,000; Rep. Nan Hayworth got $37,341; Rep. Sue Kelly got $24,000; and Rep. Maurice Hinchey got $7,000.
Drug companies "are spending a fortune, and there's nobody out there with deep pockets to fight them," said Andrew Kolodny, a medical doctor, research professor and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. The group advocates for "cautious and responsible prescribing practices," and has been in frequent opposition to the Pain Care Forum on the federal level.
New York data analyzed by the USA Today Network finds:
The state had an average of 184 lobbyists hired annually by Pain Care Forum members between 2006 and 2015 — the most of any state and more than twice the total of the No. 2 state, Pennsylvania.
New York ranks fourth in the proportion of Pain Care Forum political contributions to overall political giving.
Top legislative beneficiaries of Pain Care Forum largesse include the state Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which collected $1.2 million from 2006 to 2015, and its Democratic counterpart, with $560,000.
Top individual legislators include Republican Kemp Hannon, of Nassau County ($53,000), former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos ($43,000), and Joe Morelle ($22,000), the Assembly's Democratic majority leader, of Rochester.
Some of the elected officials who received Pain Care Forum money have sponsored and supported legislation friendly to the opioid drug industry, and some of that legislation reflects language in similar bills passed in more than 20 other states in the past two years.
A spokesman for the senate's Democratic campaign committee declined multiple requests to comment for this article. A Republican spokesman referred questions to Hannon.
"I have consistently and successfully worked to cut the use and availability of opioids and enhance access to recovery from opioids," Hannon said. "No other legislator has anywhere near such an effective record."
As examples, Hannon pointed to legislation he has introduced in past sessions that limit initial opioid prescriptions and establish physician review committees to evaluate prescribing practices.
Those are among several New York laws signed in the past few years intended to curtail opioid abuse. In 2013, the state adopted the I-STOP prescription monitoring program, designed to prevent doctor-shopping. The Republican-led Senate created a task force that recommended 48 opioid-related policy changes this year, some of which made it into alegislative package signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo this summer.
Yet other recent legislative efforts have aligned with the Pain Care Forum's priorities to expand access to certain kinds of opioid drugs.
The Albany numbers
Overall, the data show Pain Care Forum members have directly supported nearly 200 New York state legislators and party committees since 2006, to the tune of $3.7 million. That represents a full 10 percent of all such spending in the 50 state houses, and trails only California.
Democratic legislators took in $800,000 in contributions, while Republican members took in $506,000. Average contributions, though, were $9,200 for Republicans and $6,100 for Democrats, due to the imbalance of power in Albany.
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing drug companies and a member of the Pain Care Forum, was the top industry contributor to New York political committees. Its $1.8 million accounted for nearly 30 percent of spending, according to The Associated Press and Center for Public Integrity data.
PhRMA gave $949,000 to the Republican senate and assembly committees, and $810,000 to the legislative Democratic committees. The top individual contributions were to Republican Sen. Hannon ($6,500) and former Republican Sen. George Maziarz ($2,250), whose district went from Niagara Falls to Rochester. He now is a lobbyist.
Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drugmaker, was No. 2, contributing $770,500 to 170 state-level politicians and party committees over the past decade. Pfizer makes one opioid drug, Embeda, a mix of morphine and naltrexone.
Members of the Pain Care Forum advocate for issues beyond opioid prescriptions, so some fraction of their contributions were likely made in support of policies outside of access to pain medication.
Yet the data likely also under-report the amount of contributions to individual legislators. Some of the funds were distributed to candidates by the party committees, and thus were not recorded in a legislator's total.
Furthermore, the data do not include independent expenditures — spending on a politician's behalf by a party or trade group — or so-called "dark money," which is unlimited contributions to politically active nonprofits that can spend at will without reporting their donors.
Meanwhile, only Phoenix House, one of the handful of nonprofits identified by the Associated Press and Center for Public Integrity analysis as spending to advocate tighter restrictions on opioid drugs, has made contributions in New York. The funds, totaling only $6,800 over 10 years, went exclusively to members of Congress, not to state legislators.
New pill technology
A recent priority of many drugmakers and their allies — reflected by bills advanced in at least 20 state houses, including New York's — has been to expand access to so-called abuse-deterrent formulations for opioid prescriptions.
Abuse-deterrent formulations (ADFs) are opioid drugs chemically identical to the typical versions but with features that make them harder to pulverize, melt or dissolve. That is intended to reduce the chance for abuse by snorting or injecting, though swallowing the pills gives the expected effect.
Opponents have countered they are, in reality, a solution to a largely nonexistent problem.
"Our opioid crisis isn't a crisis of people crushing pills and sniffing them," said Kolodny, who is also a medical adviser to Phoenix House. "While some who are addicted sniff them or inject them, addiction almost always begins with swallowing pills whole."
To date, seven brand-name opioid drugs with abuse-deterrent qualities have won approval by the U.S Food and Drug Administration, starting with Purdue Pharma's OxyContin in 2010. The agency has issued guidelines for drug manufacturers that want to develop generic versions, but it is likely to be years before the first abuse-deterrent generic hits the market.
For that reason, the opioid pharmaceutical industry supports expansion of abuse-deterrent formulations. Purdue Pharma extols its virtues on a section of its website aimed at physicians and pharmacists. While noting the science behind abuse deterrence "is relatively new," it calls the availability of prescription opioids with abuse-deterrent properties "an important advancement toward the goal of providing responsible pain management for appropriate patients."
The State Pain Policy Advocacy Network, which describes its mission as working "to effect positive pain policy on the state level," maintains advocacy partnerships with numerous members of the Pain Care Forum, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Chronic Pain Association and the U.S. Pain Foundation.
The network advocates for the development of abuse-deterrent formulations, and for restrictions on substituting non-ADF generics for brand-name ADF prescriptions. Its list of 2015 legislative priorities included tracking bills dealing with abuse-deterrent formulation drugs nationwide.
New York's legislation
One such piece of legislation passed the New York Senate and Assembly this past session and is awaiting delivery to Cuomo's desk. Senate Bill 6962 would require insurers to offer at least one abuse-deterrent formulation for every class of opioid drug they include on their formulary.
Hannon sponsored the bill.
He and the four co-sponsors have received $63,000 from Pain Care Forum members between them, according to the finance data. The Assembly version was sponsored by Democrat Michael Cusick, of Staten Island, and cosponsored by Republican Peter Lopez, of Schoharie, who together have received $5,400 in Pain Care Forum member contributions.
That legislation is one of at least 20 identified by the Associated Press and Center for Public Integrity analysis to reach state houses from coast to coast with nearly identical language.
For instance, bills passed or considered in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and West Virginia all identically state that insurance companies "shall provide coverage for abuse-deterrent opioid analgesic drugs as preferred drugs on their formulary, preferred drug list, or other lists of similar construct."
Whereas an insurer "shall provide coverage on its formulary, drug list or other lists of similar construct for at least one abuse-deterrent opioid analgesic drug product," according to the language in the New York bills.
"Like many other bills, the New York proposal was drafted off of model legislation used in other states," Hannon said. "With the opioid epidemic plaguing the nation, many states have looked to abuse-deterrent formulations to help."
In the 2012-13 session, Hannon sponsored a similar bill that passed the Senate but faltered in the Assembly. The sponsor memo said the bill's purpose was "to help prevent the abuse and diversion of opioid drugs by ensuring that opioid drugs which incorporate abuse-deterrent technologies are dispensed whenever possible."
Related bills last year — the Senate version was also sponsored by Hannon — would have prevented pharmacists from substituting a generic for a prescribed opioid with abuse-deterrent properties. That sort of legislation is also in line with the State Pain Policy Advocacy Network's stated priorities.
Cuomo vetoed the 2015 bills, writing in a veto memo that the research on abuse-deterrent drugs "is still in its infancy."
Developing abuse-deterrent formulation versions of existing opioids is also profitable for drugmakers. An abuse-deterrent formulation of an exiting generic or brand it owns allows a drugmaker to secure a new patent and extends protections from other generic competition.
By pushing the abuse-deterrent formulations, drugmakers are "trying to profiteer on our concern about the opioid crisis," Kolodny said. "They're trying to exploit the very problem they helped create."
Follow John R. Roby on Twitter @PSBJRoby.
More online
For more on the Poughkeepsie Journal’s extensive heroin coverage, go to pojonews.co/nyheroin.
Read or Share this story: http://pojonews.co/2cyQH5rIn a year of grim statistics in the drug overdose crisis, the City of Vancouver now averages seven overdose deaths per week, the city said in a news release.
Vancouver police recorded three suspected drug overdose deaths in the week ending Oct. 9, which is less than that average, but brings the overall toll to 275 deaths to that date in 2017 with more than two-and-a-half months left before the end of the year.
Related
Across the province, the B.C. Coroners Service reported Oct. 12 that 1,013 people had died from suspected drug overdoses up to the end of August, surpassing the 982 total for all of 2016 and eclipsing the 547 suspected overdose deaths over the same period of last year.
In Vancouver, the city highlighted some of its increased efforts to combat the ongoing opioid crisis, such as Megaphone Magazine’s “How to Save a Life: Frontline Stories” series.
Megaphone is one of the city groups to receive a grant from $600,000 set aside for community organizations to collaborate on overcoming the overdose epidemic.
In the news release, said Megaphone has held two neighbourhood events to date, one at the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House and one at the West End’s Gordon Neighbourhood House, to help counter the stigma towards addictions illicit drug use by telling the stories of drug users and peer overdose responders.
“Our team of storytellers and overdose responders are sharing perspective and training with people across the city,” said Megaphone executive director Jessica Hannon. “At each event they offer overdose prevention training, supplies and perspective to help ensure communities respond to addiction and overdose in their community with skill and compassion.”
Megaphone will hold additional events until Nov. 13, which it is advertising on special Facebook page for the initiative and registration is still open for the remaining dates.
More information on the trend of overdose deaths in B.C. can be found in the B.C. Coroners Service’s latest report, which covers 2007 to Aug. 2017.Each year between Halloween and Christmas we are barraged with reports taking the economy’s pulse based on holiday spending. Are we spending enough to stimulate the economy? Are we on track to beat last year’s numbers? And, indeed, holiday spending is important for retailers, many of whom sustain themselves on activity between the goblins’ departure and Santa’s arrival. While December is only one-12th of the year, it brings at least a sixth of the year’s business at department and jewelry stores.
But is holiday spending even good for the economy? The surprising answer is somewhere between maybe and not really. The problem is that gift-giving is a very sloppy method for matching stuff with people. As an economist, I look at the estimated $65 billion in holiday spending coming this year, and I see an orgy of value destruction.
To understand this, consider that every transaction in the economy has two parties, a seller and a buyer. Sellers benefit from a transaction by getting a price that covers their costs and delivers some surplus in the form of profit. Similarly, the sellers’ employees and suppliers get some surplus that brings them to work chipper. In normal - nongift - transactions, buyers also get some surplus. They see an item for, say, $50 and only buy it if it’s worth at least $50 to them. This surplus is a big deal: When your child is crying with an ear infection, you’d gladly pay hundreds or perhaps even thousands of dollars for a cure. Antibiotics, available for a few dollars, provide enormous surplus for buyers.
Compare this to what happens when you give a gift: When you spend $50 on me, you’re operating at significant disadvantage. You don’t know what I like. I might not have been willing to pay anything for the item you purchase for me with $50. While $50 in spending normally produces at least $50 worth of satisfaction, there’s no guarantee that $50 in gift spending will produce nearly as much satisfaction for the recipient. And if you buy me something worth nothing to me, you have destroyed at least $50 worth of value. You may as well have lit that sweater on fire.
Over the years, I’ve conducted numerous surveys to compare the satisfaction derived from gifts with items people purchase for themselves. The answer that emerges is that people value items they buy for themselves nearly 20 percent more. This means that the $65 billion in annual holiday spending generates about $12 billion less satisfaction than it would if we spend the money on ourselves.New Horizons
Fighting the Good Fight in San Francisco
Danny E. Olinger
Thirty-one years ago, the Rev. Charles McIlhenny accepted a call to serve as pastor of First Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Little did Chuck or his wife, Donna, know what the Lord had in store for them as they began to serve First Church and the community in which they lived. In 1978, Chuck fired the organist for First OPC when he learned that the organist was a practicing homosexual. The organist sued the McIlhennys, First OPC, and the Presbytery of Northern California for violating a city ordinance banning discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation. As far as many scholars can determine, this was the first time in U.S. legal history that immorality had taken on the church for fulfilling its God-given responsibility within the parameters of biblical worship.
With the help of attorney John Whitehead and the financial support of hundreds of individuals and churches across the country to pay for the legal costs, the McIlhennys won the case by arguing protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits governmental interference with the free exercise of religion. As a result of their stand, the McIlhennys have endured great suffering. Particularly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a result of the negative media coverage surrounding the lawsuit against them, they were vandalized, had graffiti sprayed on their property, received death threats, and suffered a firebombing of their home and church from which they had to flee with their three young children in hand. And yet, throughout such persecution, they counted it a blessing to have the opportunity to give witness to Jesus Christ in such a hostile environment.
In recent months, the allowance of "same-sex marriages" in San Francisco has put the McIlhennys back in the spotlight. Along with the Rev. Carl Erickson (pastor of New Covenant OPC in South San Francisco) and elder Ralph Montgomery, they have found themselves again on the front lines in that city. Although California law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sanctioned same-sex marriages in February. In doing so, Mayor Newsom cited the California Constitution, which bars discrimination, and claimed that he was duty-bound to follow this higher authority rather than the state laws prohibiting same-sex marriages.
The California Supreme Court halted San Francisco's gay marriages in March at the request of Attorney General William Lockyer. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger worried that Mayor Newsom's precedent, if allowed to stand, would encourage legal anarchy, with local officials determining autonomously which laws to obey. McIlhenny and others petitioned the California Supreme Court to halt the marriages, and Mr. Montgomery filed suit in the Superior Court in San Francisco to do the same.
On April 14, Chuck and Donna, along with a group of ministers, met with Mayor Newsom and confronted him with biblical teaching on this issue. During the meeting, Chuck presented Mayor Newsom with a copy of the McIlhennys' book, When the Wicked Seize a City, and told him about the lawsuits, vandalism, firebombing, and attacks against their church and family. From Romans 13, Chuck told Mayor Newsom that as mayor of the city he functioned as a minister of God. He further told the mayor that he needed to repent, believe in Christ, and stop supporting same-sex marriages.
That same day, the McIlhennys participated in a press conference on the steps of the city courthouse. Then, on April 25, they helped to organize a public demonstration against same-sex marriages, which an estimated seven thousand people attended. Chuck also had the opportunity to debate this issue at the University of California in Santa Cruz.
Before Mayor Newsom, during the press conference, at the demonstration, and during the debate, Chuck essentially delivered the same message. First, he issued a call to repentance. Second, he admonished the authorities to stop same-sex marriages. Third, he urged that the law of God be obeyed. And, finally, he proclaimed the need to turn to Christ.
This has been Chuck's consistent message over the years in his efforts to reach the city of San Francisco for Christ. He repeatedly tells others that homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin. As sinful as such behavior and attitudes are, homosexuals are not beyond the supernatural power of God to bring them to saving faith in Jesus Christ. The message to homosexuals in San Francisco from the McIlhennys has always been the same: You must repent of your sinful ways and turn to Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
However, in a city billed as a model of tolerance, San Francisco is intolerant of anyone who opposes the gay rights movement or any of its objectives. It is part of the gay agenda to vilify anyone who stands against the political and social normalization of sexual behavior that the Bible clearly condemns as sinful. But such vilification has not deterred the McIlhennys, First OPC, or the Presbytery of Northern California from standing up for Christ. They take comfort from the words of the apostle Paul, "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake" (Phil. 1:29).
Part of the Presbytery of Northern California's response to the events in San Francisco was to formulate a resolution against same-sex marriages (see sidebar). The Seventy-first General Assembly commended the Presbytery of Northern California for taking a faithful stand against such marriages. Please continue to pray for the McIlhennys, First OPC, and the Presbytery as they bring forth the good news that is found in Jesus Christ to those living in spiritual darkness in San Francisco.
The author is the editor of New Horizons. Reprinted from New Horizons, August/September 2004.Touchdown: B-2 stealth jets return after epic 11,500 mile journey to bomb Libyan aircraft shelters
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Pilots in the cockpit for a stamina-sapping 25-hour mission
They dropped 45 satellite-guided bombs weighing 2,000lbs each
Six hero pilots return home safe and sound from a bombing mission to Libya which saw them in the cockpit for an incredible 25 hours.
Three B-2 Spirit bombers, piloted by two men each, made it back after the 11,418-mile round trip from the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri - where they are kept in special hangars - to Libya, where they hit targets on forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi and back again.
At $2.1bn, they are the most expensive warplanes in the world and rarely leave their climate-controlled hangars. But when it does, the B-2 bomber makes a spectacularly effective start to a war - including during this weekend's aerial attack on Libya's air defences.
One of three Air Force Global Striek Command B-2 Spirit bombers returning to base at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri
The two pilots of the B-2 bomber flew for 25 hours on the 12,000 mile round trip to bomb Gaddafi targets
Touchdown: The skin of the bombers is so sensitive that it has to be kept in special climate controlled shelters where it is taped and cured after every mission
WHY THE B-2 IS SO DEADLY
Cost: £2.1bn Range: 6,000 miles Special features: radar absorbing skin to make it near-impossible to detect. Can carry the GBU-37 'bunker buster' 5,000 lib bomb that can bore 20 to 30 ft through concrete
Capabilities: Two B-2s armed with precision weaponry can do the job of 75 conventional aircraft. Can carry 16 2,000 lb satellite guided bombs
Max speed: 630mph at 40,000 ft Cruise speed: 560mph at 40,000 ft Dimensions: 69ft long, 17ft high, 172ft wingspan Major drawback: Heat and moisture sensitive skin that needs taping and curing after every mission and climate-controlled hangar
Its mission is to penetrate heavily defended enemy territory and 'kick down the door' on the opening night of a conflict. One of its special features is its ability to carry eight GBU-37 'bunker buster' bombs, weighing in at 2.27 tonnes that are capable of boring 20 to 30 ft of rock or reinforced concrete before detonating.
After the first wave of more than 110 Tomahawk missiles launched from allied warships in the Mediterranean, they struck yesterday morning on 'a variety of strategic targets over Libya', according to the US Air Force.
They dropped a total of 45 one-tonne satellite guided missiles on Libyan aircraft shelters before making the 5,709 mile journey back to the Missouri. The B-2 stealth bombers were first used in the Kosovo and Serbian war and have been used more recently in Afghanistan.
The long-range, heavy bomber capable of penetrating sophisticated and dense air-defence, and with one refuelling, is able to fly to any point in the world within hours.
The aircraft is famous for rather ominous-looking bat-like silhouette: The leading edges of the wings are angled at 33° and the trailing edge has a double-W shape. It is manufactured at two Northrop Grumman facilities in Pico Rivera and Palmdale in California.
The aircraft also are deadly and effective: An assessment published by the USAF showed that two B-2s armed with precision weaponry can do the job of 75 conventional aircraft.
That makes it a powerful weapon to strike targets including bunkers, command centres, radars, airfields, air defences.
The B-2 can carry 16 2,000 pound (900 kilogram), satellite-guided bombs, including an earth penetrating version.
Surveying the damage: Libyan army soldiers stand amid the wreckage of the administration building inside Bab Al-Aziziyah, Gaddafi's heavily fortified compound in Tripoli
As well as the eight 'bunker busters', its bomb bays can carry 16 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), which have been tested at ranges 180 miles from the target, or the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), a glide bomb that releases cluster bombs.
A major drawback, however, is the intensive maintenance required by the B-2s, whose heat and moisture sensitive skin must be painstakingly taped and cured after every mission.
In previous conflicts, the maintenance requirements kept the B-2s tethered to their home base at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
In Afghanistan, that meant 44-hour bombing runs for their two-member crews, the longest air combat missions in history. It also meant few B-2 missions.
But the air force has built special climate-controlled shelters at bases on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and at Fairford, Gloucestershire, for B-2s, which were built by Northrop Grumman and first flew in 1989.
Staying awake for the 25-hour mission while being in control of bombs that weigh nearly a tonne is a difficult task and one that tests the mettle of the pilots that take part in such journeys.
It isn't clear how the six pilots on Operation Odyssey Dawn managed to stay awake, but in the past they have used a fold-out bed behind the seats at the controls. It is also possible that they used auto-pilot for the majority of the journey but used manual controls while bombing so that they could keep concentrating on the task at hand.A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (usually referred to as just Civic Biology) was a biology textbook written by George William Hunter, published in 1914. It is the book which the state of Tennessee required high school teachers to use in 1925 and is best known for its section about evolution that was ruled by a local court to be in violation of the state Butler Act. It was for teaching from this textbook that John T. Scopes was brought to trial in Dayton, Tennessee in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. The views espoused in the book about evolution, race, and eugenics were common to American Progressives (especially in the work of Charles Benedict Davenport, one of the most prominent American biologists of the early 20th century, whom Hunter cites in the book).
Excerpts [ edit ]
Excerpts from the book give its general tone and approach to controversial topics regarding mankind:
Evolution of Man. – Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave. The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized. The Races of Man. – At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.... Improvement of Man. – If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which we as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment. Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.... Parasitism and its Cost to Society. – Hundreds of families such |
. “What the Google work had indicated is that if you train a larger model on more data, you do better on hard AI (artificial intelligence) tasks like image classification.
“We wanted to see if we could build a much more scalable, much more efficient system to train much larger models on larger amounts of data. Would we also see improvements in task accuracy? That was the overarching research goal, to build a scalable training system to prove that systems trained on large amounts of data is a promising path to follow and that you don’t need to be a machine-learning expert to get good accuracy in some of these tasks. A system-driven approach by using brute-force computing, scale of model, scale of data is a viable approach.”
What made that confirmation all the more satisfying is that there were many who said it couldn’t be done.
“There was a lot of skepticism when we started out from machine-learning experts around using the distributed system to do machine learning,” Chilimbi says. “The fundamental machine-learning training algorithms are synchronous. They’ve typically been run on a single machine. They said, “Yes, you can do this distributed, but the synchronization cost will make it so slow that it’s never going to be high-performance or scalable.
“One of the innovations we came up was saying that not only can we make it asynchronous, but we went whole hog and decided not to pretend it’s synchronous in any way. We figured out a way to make the asynchrony not just learn but learn better, because it adds a level of robustness. Learning is not so much about optimizing on the training set of data. It’s about generalizing well on unseen data.”
The asynchronous technique offers an additional benefit.
“The asynchrony also helps us escape from ruts where the task accuracy does not improve much,” Chilimbi says, “much like how humans learning a new task often find themselves plateauing after a period of rapid improvement.”
Apacible expands on the Project Adam approach.
“As a child, you’re shown pictures of an entire car,” he explains, “but as an adult, sometimes in the corner of a window you see only part of a car, but you still know it’s a car. You get trained. When the car is moving fast, then the picture becomes a little bit blurry, but you still know it’s a car.
“This is what the system does. It allows it to train with different types of data, with different types of situations, and it makes the model more robust.”
When the project began 18 months ago, its goals were far from modest. It was scoped to deliver the vision of a full-functionality system with an end-to-end scenario and a successful sustained operation spanning multiple days. And it needed to achieve world records in the size of the models, the speed of the training, and its accuracy in classifying the massive ImageNet collection.
But with such lofty ambitions also came plenty of support.
“This wouldn’t have been possible,” Apacible says, “if the lab under Peter Lee (head of Microsoft Research) had not invested in these types of disruptive projects and had Yi-Min Wang (managing director of Microsoft Research Technologies) not provided initial backing and acted as an angel investor.
“The goal was to come up with a very risky, highly disruptive project and just support it end to end. And because of the trust and the support provided to all of us, we were able to come up with a big success.”
Not only that, but the project also underscored the fact that deep learning, previously shown to work effectively in the speech domain, also can perform wonders on vision tasks. And the researchers gained more understanding about how DNNs actually work.
“What we found,” Chilimbi says, “was that as you add levels to the DNN, you get better accuracy—until a certain point. Going from two convolutional layers to three convolutional layers to five or six seems the sweet spot. And the interesting thing is that people have done studies on the human visual cortex, and they’ve found that it’s around six layers deep in terms of layers of neurons in the brain.
“The reason it’s interesting is that each layer of this neural network learns automatically a higher-level feature based on the layer below it. The top-level layer learns high-level concepts like plants, written text, or shiny objects. It seems that you come to a point where there’s diminishing returns to going another level deep. Biologically, it seems the right thing, as well.”
To return to Project Adam’s ability to identify our corgi friends, the layers would work like this: The first layer learns the contours of a dog’s shape. The next layer might learn about textures and fur, and the third then could learn body parts—shapes of ears and eyes. The fourth layer would learn about more complex body parts, and the fifth layer would be reserved for high-level recognizable concepts such as dog faces. The information bubbles to the top, gaining increasingly complex visual comprehension at each step along the way.
Asked about the disruptiveness of DNNs in today’s computing environment, Chilimbi refers back to what he calls the two ages of computing up to now, the first driven by computers getting faster and Moore’s Law, and the second being the age of the Internet and communications and connectivity.
“These two eras were very transformative, and people would say that a lot of things came out of these,” he says. “I think we’re in the very early days of going to some form of true AI. I think it’s going to be transformative in a similar sense, in that it needed the previous revolutions, the computing-power increase to be able to power it, and the connectivity and availability of data to be able to learn things that are interesting.
“Computers until now have been really good number crunchers. Now, we’re starting to teach them to be pattern recognizers. Marrying these two things together will open a new world of applications that we couldn’t imagine doing otherwise. Imagine if you could help blind people see by pointing a cellphone at a scene and having it describe the scene to them. We could do things like take a photograph of food we’re eating and have it provide us with nutritional information. We can use that to make smarter choices.”
For Apacible, the transformation that deep learning enables is all about scale.
“When computers started,” he says, “people were programming with vacuum tubes, and then there was assembly language, which helped a bit. Then there was the C language, which helped tremendously in terms of getting more and more code written. We’re now in the age of data. We’ve got more and more data. A product like Bing requires hundreds of machine-learning experiences to be able to come up with good relevance models.
“If you look at the scale of millions of images, that would require hundreds, if not thousands, of machine-learning experts to even come up with a model. What this system has proven is that, with DNN, you could scale that. You don’t need machine-learning experts trying to figure out what makes this look like a dog. The system learns that on its own. There is this promise of massive scale.”
That scale could be used to train a system to represent, understand, and help explain the world around us by supplying the system with vast quantities of data across multiple modalities such as images, speech, and text.
The researchers are quick to note that these insights would not have been possible without the contributions from Suzue and Kalyanaraman.
“Yutaka and Karthik are both distributed-systems engineers,” Apacible says. “Yutaka especially likes to work at the bit level, where he can optimize everything, and Karthik likes to think big in terms of how you design things. They make a great team, because Karthik can think about something complex, like the parameter server and how all the machines exchange data between them, while Yutaka deals with how he can optimize each box to the fullest.”
Each time the subject turns to DNNs these days, the discussion rarely fails to refer to the mystery behind some of the wondrous things deep learning is able to achieve.
“The deep, mysterious thing that we still don’t understand,” Chilimbi says, “is how does a DNN, where all you’re presenting it is an image, and you’re saying, ‘This is a Pembroke Welsh corgi’—how does it figure out how to decompose the image into these levels of features?
“There’s no instruction that we provide for that. You just have training algorithms saying, ‘This is the image, this is the label.’ It automatically figures out these hierarchical features. That’s still a deep, mysterious, not well understood process. But then, nature has had several million years to work her magic in shaping the brain, so it shouldn’t be surprising that we will need time to slowly unravel the mysteries.”
The situation, though, is not entirely unique.
“It’s like in quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century,” Chilimbi says. “The experimentalists and practitioners were ahead of the theoreticians. They couldn’t explain the results. We appear to be at a similar stage with DNNs. We’re realizing the power and the capabilities, but we still don’t understand the fundamentals of exactly how they work.
“We tend to overestimate the impact of disruptive technologies in the short term and underestimate their long-term impact—the Internet being a good case in point. With deep learning, there’s still a lot more to be done on the theoretical side.”Tom Greaves appointed new Manager at FC United
First Posted ~ 08:52 Tue 21 Nov 2017 News ID ~ 7684 Last Updated ~ 17:00 Fri 24 Nov 2017
We are delighted to announce that Tom Greaves has been appointed the new Manager of FC United - Joining Greaves will be Jack Doyle as Assistant Manager and Tom Conroy as First Team Coach.Tom Greaves (32) took over as caretaker player/manager on 25th October 2017 following the departure of Karl Marginson, FC United’s one and only manager since the club was formed in 2005.Since taking temporary charge, assisted by Doyle, Conroy, Luke Podmore (FCs Women’s Team Manager) and Paul Chapman (goalkeeping coach), FC United have won 4 and lost 2. Making some immediate changes, Greaves first brought in some of our talented young players (the average age of the team in our recent fixture against Telford was 22), and secondly he changed the formation to play two-up-top and play with wing backs, leading to a more exciting style of football.Pictured left to right: Luke Podmore, Paul Chapman, Tom Greaves, Jack Doyle, Tom ConroyHaving been given the opportunity to look after first team affairs over the last month, Tommy, Jack and Tom have made no secret of their desire to take on the role on a permanent basis and are all relishing the challenge ahead.explained Greaves.added Greaves,Following the departure of Karl Marginson last month, FC United was inundated with applications for the vacant role, though FC’s CEO Damian Chadwick and the FC United Board vowed to take their time over this important appointment. Following a two week period of interviews, the decision was made to appoint Greaves as the next FC United Manager, together with Doyle as Assistant Manager and Conroy as first team coach. All of the roles are on a part-time basis and will be reviewed at the end of the season.FC United CEO Damian Chadwick said "We’ve been really impressed with Tommy over the past 4 weeks since he took temporary charge. Naturally there were concerns over his football managerial experience having never managed before, but of what we have seen so far, of what Tommy conveyed in his interviews and also knowing the quality of Jack Doyle and Tom Conroy, we have no doubts that we have made the right decision.""What struck me the most though was the respect and trust that every player had for Tommy, Jack and Tom. From their very first training session the players have been right behind them. We’ve got a talented young squad more than capable of keeping us in this league, but I’ll be supporting Tommy as much as I can should we need to bring in new players to strengthen the team further.""Tommy is popular figure amongst the FC faithful, evident at Stockport a couple of weeks ago - despite being 4-1 down a long rendition of ’Tommy Greaves Red and White Army’ rang out from the FC United support. I know every single one of them will get behind him and the lads as we approach a crucial point in the season with some tough games ahead."Greaves’ task got even harder at the weekend following the departure of leading goalscorer Jason Gilchrist, who signed for Southport for a record club fee. Speaking to FCUM Radio after Saturday’s disappointing 1-0 defeat away at Gainsborough, Greaves highlighted the need to bring in a replacement goalscorer at the earliest convenience, as only himself and Connor McCarthy are now the club’s only two recognised forwards.On behalf of everyone at FC United we’d like to welcome Tom Greaves as the club’s second ever Manager, and to say a huge congratulations to Jack Doyle and Tom Conroy who have worked hard behind the scenes, developing their coaching skills, at the club for a number of years.FC United have a break from league action on Saturday with an away trip to Marine in the FA Trophy 3rd Qualifying Round. Greaves incidentally netted a hat-trick for FC United away at Marine back in February 2013, a month after joining the Reds.’Tommy’s Terriers’, as the team is now being referred to by its supporters, return to league action at Broadhurst Park against second placed Harrograte Town on Saturday 2nd December ko 3pm. Admission is £10 Adults, £6 Concessions and £3 u/18s.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------, born 23rd April 1985, joined FC United in January 2013 and has gone on to make 245 appearances for the club, scoring goals just for fun so it seems; 98 goals in total (one goal behind Rory Patterson’s Club goalscoring record of 99).Prior to playing for FC United, Greaves had 3 spells at Bradford Park Avenue in between playing for Ossett Town, Bridlington and Garforth. For most FC United fans, their first memory of Tom Greaves was his 119th extra-time winner for Bradford PA against FC in the Northern Premier League Play-off Final in 2012 which denied FC promotion to the Conference North.Outside of FC United, Tom Greaves together with his brother James set up Fisical Sports Coaching, which currently employ 15 fully qualified staff all working throughout the West Yorkshire area. Fisical Sports is now involved in over 25 pre-school and primary schools providing children from the ages of 2 to 15 with specialised sports coaching.Tom Greaves has accumulated a vast amount of coaching experience having spent several years studying at Notre Dame Sports College and continuing his coaching education by successfully completing his FA Level 1, FA Level 2, FA Youth Award Level 3, Module 1 and 2. Tom has also achieved his Level 1 Handball qualification and The FA Coaching Disabled Footballers Award. Tom’s coaching experiences have been heightened by his time playing semi-professional football.(27) (previously known as Jack Dickenson) has been involved with community coaching at FC United for over 5 years. Jack is currently our Academy and Senior Community Coach. In December 2016, Jack enrolled to do his UEFA B licence, which he is currently undertaking.(32), was appointed as Community Sports Development Officer at FC United in July 2016. Tom is currently responsible for the planning, delivery and management of sports participation programmes, as well as working closely with various community and sporting organisations.Tom Conroy is a highly experienced sports development officer, most recently employed as a tutor for Hopwood Hall College. He graduated with an honours degree in Sports Development from Salford University in 2010 and is a UEFA B Licence coach with over 10 years’ experience of working in schools, colleges, centre of excellence and academy. He was head coach of the girls centre of excellence for Lancashire FA as well as academy coach for Manchester City and centre of excellence coach for Oldham Athletic.Says David Vitter "answered a prostitute’s call minutes after he skipped a vote honoring 28 soldiers who gave their lives in defense of our freedom."
U.S. Sen. David Vitter entered the Louisiana governor’s race this year as the clear front-runner. But a prostitution scandal from years ago has left Vitter, a veteran Republican with widespread name recognition in the deep red state, in a difficult race against a lesser-known Democrat, state Rep. John Bel Edwards.
In Louisiana’s open primary on Oct. 24, Edwards finished first among four candidates; Vitter was a distant second. Two weeks later, Edwards’ campaign released an ad called "The Choice." It highlights Vitter’s connection to "D.C. Madam" Deborah Palfrey, which was revealed in 2007 when an investigator working for Hustler obtained phone records from Palfrey and identified Vitter’s number.
Vitter’s connection to Palfrey isn’t new. For years he avoided the issue after obliquely addressing it in 2007. It apparently had little effect on his 2010 bid for a second term in the Senate, which he won easily. But his connection to the D.C. Madam has percolated in this year’s governor’s race as new allegations emerged.
Edwards’ ad, released the day before early voting began for the general election, put the issue on TV screens throughout the state. After it was released, "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd said it "might be the most vicious negative ad ever."
The ad features a female narrator who says:
The choice for governor couldn’t be more clear. John Bel Edwards, who answered our country’s call and served as a ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division, or David Vitter, who answered a prostitute’s call minutes after he skipped a vote honoring 28 soldiers who gave their lives in defense of our freedom. David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots. Now the choice is yours.
The ad makes two claims about Vitter: He skipped a vote for a resolution honoring American soldiers killed in the line of duty, and he answered a call from Palfrey’s phone soon after. It then concludes that Vitter "chose prostitutes over patriots," suggesting the two are related.
The basics are not hard to substantiate.
Then-U.S. Rep. David Vitter did, in fact, miss the vote in question. On Feb. 27, 2001, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution to honor 28 soldiers killed in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, with 395 votes in favor. Two congressmen answered "present" but did not vote. Vitter was one of 35 marked absent.
We asked Vitter’s campaign where he was that day, but the campaign declined to answer.
There were no other roll-call votes that day, according to House records, nor were there any the day before, the first day after a congressional recess.
That vote was recorded at 5:27 p.m. ET. Thirty-nine minutes later, at 6:06 p.m. in Washington, a call was placed from Palfrey’s cell phone to Vitter’s, according to her cell phone records. It lasted about a minute.
However, the presence of a call on a phone bill doesn’t mean that Vitter picked up, rather than his voicemail. (If you find this fascinating, we recommend the podcast "Serial," which explores such issues in detail.)
Vitter has never directly admitted or denied patronizing Palfrey’s service, though he’s come close. In 2007, after media outlets reported Hustler’s findings, he apologized in a statement for a " very serious sin " but didn’t elaborate. He’s been similarly evasive during this year’s governor’s race.
In an ad his campaign released after "The Choice," Vitter says, "Fifteen years ago, I failed my family," but it elaborates no further. Asked this week during a debate if he took the call, Vitter refused to answer.
Likewise, Vitter’s campaign did not respond to our questions about the ad. Edwards’ campaign did not respond to a request for additional evidence beyond what’s cited in the ad. (Palfrey died in 2008.)
With Vitter unwilling to talk, we wondered if he was even in Washington that day, considering that Feb. 27, 2001, was Mardi Gras.
That’s a big deal in Louisiana, and Vitter has expressed great personal fondness for the holiday. Considering that Carnival coincided with Congress’ winter break, it was possible that Vitter was back in Louisiana.
But he was in Washington that night. As Louisiana State University Professor Robert Mann noted in a recent Salon column, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. Vitter is visible in the audience about 24 minutes in and a half-hour later.
Moreover, a House report, detailing members’ use of congressional funds for office and travel expenses, shows that Vitter claimed an airfare expense that day. Flight records from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics show five direct flights from New Orleans to Washington-area airports that day prior to Bush’s speech. Arrival times ranged from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
There, our reporting on this track reached a dead end.
Our ruling
Edwards’ ad says Vitter took a call from a prostitute minutes after skipping the vote. The only thing we don’t know is if Vitter answered his phone. Even if he didn’t, he has still been connected to the D.C. Madam.
"The Choice" doesn’t quite close the deal in suggesting that Vitter missed the vote because of his dealings with a prostitute, which is what it suggests when it says he "chose prostitutes over patriots."
But the key parts of the statement in question — that Vitter "answered a prostitute’s call minutes after he skipped a vote" — are accurate. We rate this statement Mostly True.Hillary Clinton, John McCain, David Petraeus and other hawks have long called for a no-fly zone over Syria.
The U.S. is now sending F-15 jets to Syria.
That should terrify Al Qaeda and other baddies, right?
Nope … Al Qaeda leaders are actually begging for a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone.
American reporter Reese Erlich interviewed several top Al Qaeda leaders in the area including Abu Qatada, and they told him they feel that the U.S. has been too weak in Syria, and America should have introduced shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down Assad’s planes, and set up a no-fly zone over Syria.
Erlich says that Al Qaeda sides with Clinton, McCain and Petraeus in calling for a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone.
Why?
The A.Q. leaders explained to Erlich that – in the short run – increased U.S. intervention would topple the Syrian leader Assad, who is one of Al Qaeda’s main enemies.
In the long run, they explained, Al Qaeda would end up with all of the U.S.-provided weapons, and so they would be able to take over in Syria.
Strange bedfellows …I wrote up an RFC to add the necessary APIs to allow redirecting stdin/out/err of subprocesses spawned via Command to arbitrary open file handles. Right now its possible to make the child process use the parent’s stdio, send it to /dev/null, or pipe them back to the parent. The changes proposed in the RFC would allow child processes to use opened File s as stdio, as well as allow for piping data directly between two child processes.
The challenge for designing the API largely comes down to balancing unsafety while remaining backwards compatible with the stabilized Command and Stdio APIs.
@alexcrichton and @aturon have proposed an even simpler solution which would not requier introducing a new API, however, I feel like a public API will become necessary in the future so we might as well consider one right now.
I’d appreciate any additional feedback on what others may think! (Please post comments on the RFC!)Emily Richmond has been mistaken for Christ, had close shaves with pirates, speared her dinner and made water from a solar still to survive. We caught up with her in Borneo.
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IndefinitelyWild: Where has the five-year journey taken you so far?
Emily Richmond: Five years ago, I left Los Angeles, sailed down the coast and hopped through Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and then, from there, out to the Galapagos, then Easter Island and even Pitcairn Island. That's a really crazy island in the middle of the ocean, only accessible by private boat and full of really crazy people.
Then, I went to Samoa and New Guinea, where I staying for a year, then East Timor. More recently, I've been sailing around the eastern part of the Indian Ocean, through the Indonesian Archipelago and now I've come around Borneo, which is this huge island.
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In the coming year, I plan to sail over to Sri Lanka, then East Africa, where I plan to stay for a couple years, working my way up and down the coast.
IW: Why did you decide to sail around the world?
ER: In a word? Romance. Everything about sailing around the world seemed logical and beautiful and smart. It is a really essential way to live. It's a huge project, but it doesn't cost a huge amount of money to do; you travel with the wind. Also, you can access places you couldn't access otherwise.
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IW: How do you pace yourself? Is there a schedule you're trying to keep?
ER: When I left, I was coming from a world of schedules and I thought they were important. I realized they are not. Schedules are actually quite impractical in my life, my progress is directed by weather, repairs and what have you.
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IW: Where have you spent the most time?
ER: In New Guinea, partly because I love the place and partly because my boat was taken out of the water and stranded there. On the way there, I'd been stuck in the doldrums for a while with no motor. There was nothing I could do except wait it out. So, I decided to install an engine on board when I got to New Guinea. Bobbie (my boat) was hauled out of the water by a construction company who promised they would have me back on the water in two weeks. A couple of days later, they decamped their machinery to the rainforest to raze trees for a palm oil plantation. And so my boat and I were marooned for nine months. I actually loved my time there.
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Rafting America's Most Difficult River With 15 class V rapids in under 9 miles, Cherry Creek and the Upper Tuolumne River are considered… Read more Read
IW: Bobbie looks a little sketchy.
ER: While my boat isn't in complete disrepair, it is an old workboat and there are tons of things that I need to maintain on it. When you're traveling with an ongoing project or there's something you need to get done, you meet way more people. Whenever I turn up at ports and have a major thing to fix, I feel sheer delight knowing that it will require me to collaborate with a bunch of new people. Most of my social circles have been built around that. If there was nothing going wrong, I'd be super bored and lonely.
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IW: Do you feel like a total badass, out there all by yourself?
ER: I really like the word "badass," but I would never describe myself that way. I feel like a baby most of the time. But, I guess if you just keep going, people get the impression that you're badass.
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IW: How prepared would you say you were when you departed?
ER: Well, when you leave to sail around the world, you don't have to do it all at once. A big trip is really just a bunch of small trips put together. You just have to make it to the next port, fix what's broken, make it to the next port, fix what's broken and so on. I had what I needed when I started, so in that sense I was prepared. Parts are easy to come by in Central America, that got me on my way even though the boat wasn't perfect.
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IW: What have you experienced that you can only get on a boat?
ER: Right now, I'm in this region that is this mashed up border between the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia and there's a lot of lawlessness and sketchiness. There's a shitload of piracy going on. There are hardcore jihadists named Abu Sabaya that have kidnapped Americans for ransom. Being the only American here, it's definitely a concern. It's not something that's reported on. Neither are the more than one million Bajau sea gypsies that live here in a stateless limbo, unable to go to schools or hospitals or to vote.
IW: Tell us about the time you were mistaken for Christ.
ER: Not Christ as we think of Christ, but their Christ. They have a Black Jesus in New Guinea. It's a cult, not Christianity. There's a belief that, when you die, you come back with white skin. And there are no white people there, so me turing up was pretty shocking to them. They killed a pig and had a big celebration and dancing. They gave me lot's of stuff and, to be honest, I was really uncomfortable with it all. I didn't really know how to handle it. I was like, "It's not me!"
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The spiritual leader cried hysterically when I left. They gave me all sorts of stuff to take.
IW: How do you sleep at night when you're solo sailing?
ER: Depends on where you're sailing. If I'm crossing the open ocean, I just go to sleep relatively confident that there won't be any ships to take my boat out. For the past year though, I've been in shipping channels everywhere I've gone. Ships going to and from China, crossing all over, it's a constant stress. In those situations, I sleep for ten or twenty minutes, wake up to check for ships, then go back to sleep.
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There have been a few close shaves. I've had times where I've awaken to feel of the bow wake of a massive ship and realize I've come a couple seconds from death. But you have to sleep, sleep deprivation will make you go crazy. You lose your mind and make bad decisions during the day or slip and fall overboard.
There's not much you can do. People make radar reflectors, but the ships just aren't looking for small vessels like mine. Most of the time when I call them by radio, they aren't even on the bridge. It's a total crapshoot.
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IW: Tell us a pirate story.
ER: There've been times when I've come across guys in pairs of motorboats at sea who have no fishing equipment. That's pretty indicative of pirates, but nobody's tried to kill me yet. When I see them approach, I usually cross dress and put rags in my jacket shoulders and act like a guy. It probably helps that I don't have some flashy yacht, there are rust stains and you can see I don't have big radars or navigation systems or any of that fancy shit.
IW: Have you met other sailors?
ER: I thought I was going to meet other young sailors out on the sea, but I haven't. I'm worried about our generation. It used to be people in their twenties and thirties going to all these wild places and having big adventures. I've been halfway around the world and the only other young sea travelers I've seen I met on Easter Island.
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The first thing people ask me about is, "Where are you going next?" It's like you're not allowed to go slow and enjoy and learn about where you are. Too many people our age are more about ticking boxes.
IW: Do you fish for food?
ER: A friend of mine in Papua New Guinea left a bamboo and metal spike spear on my boat that I use to fish for food occasionally, when I need some protein. It's kept me fed when I've run out of supplies. The fish are pretty easy to catch, but normally I don't have time to gut them and prepare them while I'm sailing.
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IW: How are you funding all this?
ER: Mostly, I just try to be very frugal. I don't dock in marinas and the cost of living here in Southeast Asia is very inexpensive. You can get by very well on $30 a week, even with eating out. In the beginning, I got a little money from Kickstarter, but that didn't last very long. I still get sponsorships through my website, but mostly I make money from working in places I've stopped.
IW: How healthy is the ocean you've seen?
ER: I've seen a lot to be concerned about. Off the coast of Panama, I discovered a huge plastic trash island that was hitherto unstudied. I charted its location for scientists. Here in Southeast Asia, there's been a collapse in the shark population — I think 98 percent are gone.
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The problem is, people aren't spending any time in nature, so they don't see this. Cousteau said that his motivation for making films and going on expeditions stemmed from the fact that people only protect what they care about. I think that's true.
IW: Have you been in any big storms?
ER: Nothing devastating, that perfect storm hasn't hit me yet. But, there have been storms where the waves have been taller than my mast, which is 45 feet. I guess that's fairly bad weather.
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You just have to get through them. They can last for seven or eight days, you wake up and think, "Surely the rain will stop today." But, it just keeps raining and stays grey and that can have a huge impact on my mood. My mental well-being is very connected to the physical world in that sense.
I wear a harness when the weather turns really nasty.
IW: What's your long-term plan?
ER: I'm going to continue on my way around the world. Some land was given to me in New Guinea and there's this one beautiful tree out there that I have imagined building a tree house in, Swiss Family Robinson style. I can see the floor pan and the materials it's made out of. I think the boat will always be close by though.
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Cameron Smith is the tallest person to ever talk about riding his motorcycle to South America without ever actually doing it.
IndefinitelyWild is a new publication about adventure travel in the outdoors, the vehicles and gear that get us there and the people we meet along the way. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.A flash mob of over 100 gay “barbarians” descended on Marcus Bachmann’s clinic Thursday morning.
A local actor posing as Marcus Bachmann was “baptized” with glitter after dancing with the barbarians to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
“Let’s be clear: Marcus Bachmann is the practitioner of an unhealthy, unscientific and dangerous practice,” event organizer Nick Espinosa told Columbus Go Home.
“The American people have a right to know: does the Bachmann family profit from bogus ‘gay reparative therapy’ or not,” he added. “The medical evidence against the practice aside, the Bachmann’s subversive marginalization of the LGBT community is despicable.”
In July, a smaller group threw glitter in the lobby of the clinic after staffers said that Bachmann was not available.
The LGBT activists were inspired by Bachmann’s claim that homosexuals are “barbarians” who “need to be disciplined.”
Watch this video, uploaded to YouTube Aug. 25, 2011.
(H/T: Political Carnival)Ontario’s books are still in the black despite increased spending on childcare and cleaning up the mercury-contaminated Wabigoon River. The treasurer tabled the province’s first quarter finances on Friday, revealing that the province’s revenues are projected to be $141.8 billion this year, an increase of $145 million.
Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa says he vows the Liberals will “continue to implement our balanced plan to build a healthy and sustainable economy for all of Ontario.” ( Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Finance Minister Charles Sousa said program expenses are expected to be $129.6 billion, which are also up $145 million due to a new agreement with Ottawa on early learning and childcare. Sousa said the treasury’s interest on the provincial debt this year is still $11.6 billion and Ontario’s $600 million in reserve funds also remains unchanged. “We are encouraged by the influx of many innovative and dynamic businesses that are investing across the province, bringing good jobs, higher wages and greater prosperity to our communities,” he said in a statement.
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The minister vowed that the Liberal government, which finally eliminated the deficit this spring after nine years in the red, would “continue to implement our balanced plan to build a healthy and sustainable economy for all of Ontario.” Among the in-year changes was $85 million for remediation of the English-Wabigoon River that has poisoned the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation and nearby Whitedog First Nation for generations. Queen’s Park moved to tackle the polluted river following a Star investigation that revealed the impact of the poisoning after decades of inaction by successive Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and NDP governments. “I have never seen a case of such gross neglect. I am embarrassed as a Canadian that this ever happened and I can’t understand how people for 50 years sat in that environment office knowing this was going on as a minister and simply didn’t do anything about it,” then environment minister Glen Murray said in June when he announced the funding. Sousa said “stronger-than-expected economic activity” from January to March has been propelled by a growing U.S. economy and low oil prices that have kept the Canadian dollar competitive against the American greenback.
Indeed, Ontario’s economy grew by 1 per cent during the quarter, outperforming Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the G7 nations. On average, private-sector forecasters now predict the province’s gross domestic product will increase by 2.7 per cent this year – up from the 2.4 per cent projected in the budget. Other changes since the spending plan was introduced on April 27, include $14.8 million to help compensate Indigenous people affected by the Lac des Mille Lacs flooding and $2.5 million for famine relief efforts in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.When Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe penned the classic 1997 episode "The Strike" he probably had no idea people would be celebrating sitcom character Frank Costanza’s made-up, anti-commercialization holiday nearly two decades later, but here we are.
A search of Facebook events shows Festivus celebrations planned across the country this month (including this local one |
Texture C, Texture D
,
UPDATE:
Full Graveyard Texture Base Stamp Set
40mm Earth Texture Base Stamp Set, Texture A, Texture B, Texture C, Texture D.
UPDATE: The round texture stamps will also fit 25mm square bases, above is the results of using the stamps on square bases
The furture plan for Miniauture-Tek is to design and launch a web site. Aside from being able to order any individual stamp or set that you want, I'm also going to be improving the range of stamps and base accessories in the coming weeks and will add new rewards to the kickstarter project.
.Pope Francis is bordering on moral relativism by refusing to berate atheists and condemn LGBT individuals, according to conservative columnist Pat Buchanan.
Writing at Townhall on Friday, Buchanan said Pope Francis was attempting to move “the Catholic Church to a stance of non-belligerence, if not neutrality, in the culture war for the soul of the West.”
Neutrality in the culture war, he wrote, citing Trotsky, meant losing the culture war.
Buchanan isn’t pleased that Pope Francis described attempting to convert people to Christianity as “solemn nonsense.” The pope has said that Christians need to listen to others and “discover new needs” rather than lecture them.
The conservative columnist was also upset that Pope Francis refused to judge people of certain sexual orientations.
“Well, he is pope. And even the lowliest parish priest has to deliver moral judgments in a confessional,” Buchanan wrote.
Buchanan is not the only conservative to have expressed uneasiness with the new pope’s tone and message.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Thursday that she was taken aback by some of Pope Francis’ comments. She later clarified she didn’t intend to be critical of the pope and accused the media of misrepresenting his real views.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said earlier this year that conservatives within the Church “have not been really happy about” Pope Francis. Chaput also recently said he didn’t intend to be critical of the pope.UPDATE 28 January: Objectify A Man in Tech Day has now been called off - you can read Leigh's post about why she's cancelling it here
From booth babes to harassment, snide comments to double standards, women have often had a hard time feeling comfortable around the tech industry.
But the fightback has begun: here at the New Statesman, Alex Hern covered the #1ReasonWhy campaign which allowed Twitter users to share the experiences they believe are putting off women from working in games. Prolific coverage of #1ReasonWhy resulted in stressful - but crucial - further conversations, in forums and comment sections, of the sort you might expect when a historically cloistered and self-protective group is prompted to consider opening up its insular club to the real adult world.
Emily Gera made an interactive text piece titled CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW A KOTAKU COMMENTER to satirise the misguided, wildly terrified and thoughtlessly hostile responses to #1ReasonWhy that emerged in the popular gaming blog’s comments sections. It's full of lines such as "Often you think to yourself, 'what ever happened to all the men?' Once prized for everything from inventing snooker to the Yorkie bar, the population of men on the Internet is now under attack by the pastel-draped world of women whose shirts don’t even have 50 percent opacity." It’s barely satire, sadly.
In this crucible of negativity and conflict, the kind of harmless compliments that female tech journalists routinely get about their appearance when writing or speaking in public hardly seem worth getting heated up about. Yet sometimes it’s the more insidious elements of sexism that deserve the closest analysis, conversation and discussion. Everyone knows that discrimination is wrong. It’s just that sometimes people need a little help to recognise when discrimination is happening.
I speak in public often, but I’m loath to share and promote any video of my appearances – in part due to normal self-consciousness, and in part due to an aversion to response. A woman who shows her face in a male-dominated space generally can’t win. If her audience does not find her attractive, she will have to hear a lot of specific criticisms of her features (searching for me on Google Images yields a picture of my face alongside Jay Leno’s, a referendum on my chin).
It’s worse on her if her audience does like her looks: In that case they’ll say she obviously used her beauty to boost her career and is seeking attention and praise for displaying even a biographical headshot. Or she’ll be the recipient of vulgar comments and image manipulations.
Difficult stuff, yes – but also problematic, and much more widespread, is an insidious breed of sycophantism. This makes it more likely for a woman in geek culture to have to hear about how gorgeous and radiant she is whenever she wants to join important discussions, make statements on issues or use her expertise.
I use Twitter as a primary avenue to promote my work, and it’s common to see readers and self-described “fans” share links to my articles accompanied by superficial compliments that, while polite, have little to do with my writing, which generally focuses on game design analysis, social commentary and entertainment culture. In an article compiling opinions from industry voices on the current game violence dialogue, it was pointed out to me that I am prettier than my male colleagues. In a video of a panel I recently participated in to give advice to game developers as a member of the press, I heard a lot about how great my hair is.
Now wait a minute, you might say – what’s so awful about a well-intentioned compliment? Isn’t it better than a vulgar one? People love compliments! (And the ‘winking’ emoticon. Always that damn smarmy winking emoticon!!)
Here’s the thing. Yes, the intention is usually harmless, even well-meaning. But superficial compliments have nothing to do with my writing, and coming from strangers, sometimes heaps of them at once, the net effect is creepy. This is the reality that many, even most women working and writing and speaking in tech fields face on a regular basis, and the reaction when we protest – please let’s focus on my work, not my face/body/hair – is telling.
People get angry. Rejecting physical compliments is considered snobby, unkind, uptight. You don’t like when men are abusive to you but you don’t like when they’re nice to you, either? Commenters sneer. I’d love to have people complimenting me and coming on to me, shrug men. I call my friends “hot” all the time, protest people with whom you are not friends. Can’t you take a compliment is a sort of menacing thing to say, like attention from men is something we’re socially obligated to receive even in our workplace, which for writers is “the internet”.
Still, we know we have to pick our battles in this landscape. So over the years, through a litany of being told I’m lovely – or the diminutive “adorable” – by people who are ultimately just trying to support and share my work, I’ve smiled tautly or ignored them.
Doing that, though, is as complicated a proposition as dealing with catcalls late at night. Shouting back is risky, potentially angering dangerous people or inviting accusations of being overly defensive toward people who were “just trying to be nice” by whistling to you from an alleyway as if you were a lost dog. But go too long ignoring it with a gritted smile and you start to break inside. Person after person is reducing you to an object, and you are tacitly accepting it.
So I got an idea, after seeing someone call me “lovely” for posting a design-oriented article on violence in games. Even though I know nobody intended anything other than respect for me, I had to act.
So I proposed the first annual “Objectify A Male Tech Writer Day”. On February 1, whenever you tweet an article, quote, comment or video from a man, add a comment about their appearance or attractiveness – “Great article on Final Fantasy XII-2 from the always-gorgeous Kirk Hamilton,” for example.
The purpose of the exercise isn’t to “get revenge” or to make anyone uncomfortable: simply to help highlight by example what a gendered compliment looks like, and to get people talking in a funny and lighthearted way about how these kinds of comments distract from meaningful dialogues and make writers online feel like their point of view is only as relevant as how attractive they are.
My friend Ben Abraham, a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney and a longtime blogger on games, helped me launch a formal campaign on Facebook. Left to my own, I’m a little embarrassed to admit I might have done nothing – the whole “pick your battles” thing has trained me to fear and avoid starting certain conversations online, and I’m afraid of backlash: You’re overreacting. You’re impossible to please. You probably don’t get that many compliments, you’re not that hot.
But Ben’s event page attracted retweets, comments both funny and serious, and over 100 attendees in its first hour. It wasn’t long before “men’s rights activists” arrived, offended at the “misandry” they saw in the act of asking people to try a playful shift in perspective or to have a conversation. The comments discussion is already fascinating, and Ben’s enlisted feminist student moderators to help engage and educate the curious. Interestingly, all the social media around the event so far has praised only Ben for his idea, even though we’re both co-hosts on the event.
We hope to see the idea shared broadly and the discussion continue on Facebook and through other social media outlets. If we all share the goal of making tech and gaming spaces for fair dialogue and respectful treatment of everyone, we should examine the way we talk to and treat one another – even when we’re “just trying to be nice.”
Leigh Alexander, gaming and social media culture journalist, is Gamasutra editor-at-large, columnist at Edge, Kotaku and Vice Creators Project, and contributor to Boing Boing,Thought Catalog and numerous others. She blogs intermittently at Sexy Videogameland.Hints of what's coming next for Skyrim may be buried in the latest patch for Bethesda's hit action/RPG.
In the lore of The Elder Scrolls V, the Snow Elves have been driven underground by the Nords. But the in-game legends about the mystical race make it sound like they're former badasses who've been laid low and are ripe for revenge.
Enthusiast site RipTen brings word of a BethSoft forum user's discovery of files related to the animation of a Snow Elf character and a crossbow weapon:
Animations\[b]DLC01\Chair_SnowElfPrinceDialogueA.HKX[/b]
Animations\[b]DLC01\Chair_SnowElfPrinceDialogueB.HKX[/b]
Animations\[b]DLC01\Chair_SnowElfPrinceDialogueC.HKX[/b]
Animations\[b]DLC01\Chair_SnowElfPrinceDialogueD.HKX[/b]
Animations\[b]DLC01[/b]\Chair_SnowElfPrinceDialogueE.HKX
Animations\[b]DLC01[/b]\Chair_SnowElfPrinceFireBall.HKX
Animations\[b]DLC01[/b]\Chair_SnowElfPrinceSitIdle.HKX
Animations[b]\DLC01\SnowElfPrinceAscensionBurning.HKX[/b]
crossbow_direction_behavior.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_1stP_Run.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_1stP_Walk.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_Aim.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_Equip.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_IdleDrawn.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_IdleHeld.hkx
Animations\CrossBow_Release.hkx
Bethesda's already on record as saying that DLC for Skyrim will be rolling out in the style of expansion packs and these files certainly make it seem like that plan will be going into effect.
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Skyrim DLC Hinted At in Latest Game Files, Includes Snow Elves & Crossbows [RipTen]Even before news broke in April that Mitsubishi Motors had been playing fast and loose with Japanese regulators over fuel economy tests, the company had been struggling to compete in its domestic market and was on life support here in the US. Nissan, on the other hand, has been doing quite well, and on Thursday it announced that the two companies will form a strategic alliance, sharing platforms, technology, and administration. Nissan will also buy 34 percent of Mitsubishi Motors for $2.2 billion (¥237 billion), paid for with profits that are up 14 percent year-on-year.
At ¥487 a share, Mitsubishi is quite the bargain. The company was worth twice that in early April before the efficiency testing bombshell dropped. A bombshell that happened to be dropped by Nissan, as it happened; the affected vehicles are the results of a collaboration between the two OEMs. (Over at Jalopnik they're wondering if this hasn't all been a little too convenient for Nissan.)
This won't be the first such strategic alliance for Nissan. It's been joined up with French automaker Renault since 1999, and both companies (as well as the Renault-Nissan Alliance) are run by the same CEO, Carlos Ghosn. Other brands in the alliance include Infiniti, Dacia—as in James May's favorite, the Sandero—Datsun, and Lada.
"This is a breakthrough transaction and a win-win for both Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors. It creates a dynamic new force in the automotive industry that will cooperate intensively, and generate sizeable synergies," Ghosn said in a statement. "We will be the largest shareholder of MMC, respecting their brand, their history and boosting their growth prospects."
It's easy to see how Mitsubishi benefits from this alliance. Nissan is an industry leader in electrification. Plus, the company has a strong presence in the US. It's a little harder to see Nissan's motivation. Nissan apparently hopes to benefit from Mitsubishi's relative strength in Southeast Asia.
And it does make the Renault-Nissan Alliance one of the biggest global carmakers out there—in 2015 its combined output (including Mitsubishi) was 9.6 million vehicles, almost rivaling the big three of Toyota, General Motors, and Volkswagen.Jack Black and Lewis at the Gramercy Hotel, during a shoot for Entertainment Weekly, 2003. © Michael Lewis
Questlove at Mama’s, NYC, for Blender, 2006. © Michael Lewis
Questlove and Lewis. © Michael Lewis
Tina Fey at Roseland Ballroom, Esquire, 2004. © Michael Lewis
Fey and Lewis. © Michael Lewis
Paul Rudd with the photographer during a shoot for Entertainment Weekly, New York City, 2003. © Michael Lewis
Jonathan Goldsmith, aka The World’s Most Interesting Man, at Bar and Books, New York City, Cigar Aficionado, 2010. © Michael Lewis
Goldsmith and Lewis. © Michael Lewis
Lewis and Melissa McCarthy, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills during a shoot for the New York Times, April 2013. © Michael Lewis
A good portrait seduces the viewer. When I set up a photograph, I ask myself: “Is the viewer going to buy it?” That window is real, light’s streaming through, it looks amazing—but of course I made it primarily because it was easier than finding it. You’re always making choices about how to control the environment, whether you’re on a set or not. It’s a challenge to reveal much about a subject in a single frame. It’s almost impossible, though, not to reveal something about yourself. Portraits can tell you a lot about a photographer. When I started working commercially my subjects were mostly solos—until I jumped into the frame myself. The first time I did that I was photographing David Hasselhoff. It was actually my assistant, Brian Delaney, who said, “Hey, you gotta get in this!” At that time I was pretty new to shooting celebrities, and Hasselhoff took to the idea quite warmly. The proof sheet is very playful, with him resting his elbow on my head, that kind of thing. Not long after that I just started stepping into these things without always telling people. I started doing it with all my shoots, celebrities or not. And people have mostly been OK with it. Over the years I just started to quickly explain, “Hey, I do this with all my shoots.” But I do feel very self-conscious, as if I’m wasting their time. I realize that they know it’s just for me, this thing I do, and they don’t mind. Still, I cut it off after two or three shots out of respect for the person’s time. I don’t really know how other photographers deal with celebrities. I never really assisted anybody who did what I do. Many of my subjects thank me because apparently I give a lot of direction. I walk them through the shoot. I’m very quick, too, even for the 15 minutes you typically get with a celebrity. But if they dig you, you can push that 15 minutes to 20. I just constantly push; I think every photographer must say “just one more” at least 100 times. But there’s a point where you realize you’ve bled the subject; they’re done. It’s got little to do with the number of frames you shoot. There’s this moment when I feel like the subject is saying, “Doesn’t this asshole have it yet? How many shots are you going to take here?” And I just sense them pulling back. I think every photographer must feel that moment. People have been pushing me toward integrating my jumping into the frame in my editorial portraits into my self-portraits, which are a long-term, personal project and actually the work I’m really proud of. In a way, the jumping-in pictures are at least as realistic as my mundane-looking self-portraits. The self-portraits are the most poignant; you really see a regular guy who was single for a very long time. They’re so ordinary, but he’s also alone. And it makes a very loud silence. I can see some similarity in tone between my self-portraits and my editorial photos, especially the ones where I put myself in the frame. But the intent of each is very different. The on-set photos are for fun; they’re like getting visual autographs. The self-portraits I consider a serious body of work, and I’m thinking they’ll stay separate, even though as my life has changed, I’ve included my partner and our son in them.
© Michael Lewis
Aesthetically, it’s all just me; I don’t know any other way. Put it this way: I’m always amazed when you go into a coffee shop and they have bad coffee. Or if you run a bakery and your cookies suck. That blows my mind. If this is what you do, you’d better do it with absolute dedication. So that’s how I think about my work. This is what I do, and I do it in a certain way, according to what I like and the ideas I developed all the way back in grad school (I studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute). If you look at my self-portraits and my editorial portraits, they share a certain feeling. And over time they’ve changed. The photographs of Questlove and the World’s Most Interesting Man are similar, but the latter I think are more relaxed, have a different kind of energy that I’ve acquired in recent years. Styles come and go. I finally have been doing this long enough that I’m starting to see many cycle through again. Like the crazy digital oversharpening—how Photoshopped things look. That’s kind of come and gone. Right now things are very bright, poppy. People don’t think of me when they think of that as much. You just have to do what you do well. There’s a part of me that idealistically wants to be authentic. But that’s also realistic: If you’re not authentic—wow, man, there’s a lot of talented people out there. So it’s good business to be authentic. And basically just be proud of your pictures. Bob Dylan wrote a few albums when he was younger—his whole career is stellar, but there was a stretch around 1965, ’66, when he made his most powerful albums in a very short period of time. And he was asked once, “Does it upset you to think that you’ll never be able to write_ Blonde on Blonde_ and Highway 61 Revisited again?” And he said something like, “Well, you can’t do something forever. I did it once; I can do other things now.” You can only do what feels true to you at the time. I tend not to shoot celebrities any differently than I do anyone else, and I think that can help build rapport and in the end get a good picture. Early on in my career, when I was first in L.A., you were judged a lot (and still are) by who you’ve photographed, and I think I resisted that. The self- portraits helped me level the playing field, too, because I was photographing myself in ways that did not do me any favors. When I was doing online dating, girls would say, “Hey, if you’re a photographer, you must have a website.” My mother was mortified at some of the pictures I had on there, especially the earlier ones. I would really let my belly just hang out. But I was very proud of these pictures. They helped me see just how much everybody is the same.
© Michael Lewis
Jack Black was one of my first shoots when I was new to L.A. I was working, but I was new. Jack Black was a pretty new guy, too. Beyond Tenacious D he hadn’t done much yet. He came over to my apartment for a shoot for Detour magazine, which gave me great access to people and great photo spreads but had no money. So I always shot in my little one-bedroom apartment. I lived in Beechwood, below the Hollywood sign, where there was a little stretch where you could pretend it was New York for like a microsecond. Comedians can be dark people, and he was kind of pensive. At one point he was in the bathroom in his underwear, his gut’s hanging out—very much like the self-portraits I was doing at the time—not the most complimentary physically, but it was good, and it was funny. And I had a little kitten, who’s still with me to this day—he’s 13 now. And the kitten jumped on the counter while Jack Black was shaving. It made an awesome picture. Later that night I got a call from his publicist, who was a powerful dude in Hollywood. Publicists are a huge thing in this industry. They are powerful people here, and magazines are somewhat at their mercy. They want the celebrity in the magazine, so they more or less conform to the image the publicist and his client are trying to project at any given time. He didn’t want that picture to run. I gave him my word that I wouldn’t run it. And he wasn’t happy with that. He wanted the negative. And I’m like, “Dude, I’m giving you my word”— I always stick with my word. Then a couple days later Rolling Stone comes out: Tenacious D on all fours wearing a diaper getting spanked with a guitar by Kyle Gass (the other guy in Tenacious D). I couldn’t believe it. Cut to about eight years later, Jack Black’s on top of his game and I’m called in to shoot him for the cover of Entertainment Weekly. So I printed that photograph and brought it to the shoot. And they liked it a lot. Everybody felt good that day. We all had stepped up in our careers. Tina Fey was terrific to work with. She was the ideal subject: smart, witty, totally into it. The whole shoot was very collaborative. She came up with one shot where she’s writing in lipstick on the men’s room mirror. It meant a lot to her at the time. After 12 years in New York, we just moved back to L.A. about eight months ago—with a 15-month-old. So things have been different from when I was shooting Jack Black in my apartment. Ironically, recently I’ve been shooting a lot for the New York Times. They put very good people in front of my camera. And they’re throwing me everybody. I’m proud of the editorial photos I make. It was always important to me that my art school buddies would look at my website and think, “Man, Lewis is still making totally cool fucking pictures.” I always wanted to kind of keep it cool. And it is an interesting thing for me, looking back, to still be photographing these portraits and realizing that no, I haven’t sold out.Robert Smith may be the most underrated rock guitarist of all time. While he was never one to shred with the same flash as some of his '80s contemporaries, his influence over droves of players and sub-genres should earn him a more revered spot in the guitar gods pantheon.
The Cure still fill stadiums with a surprisingly diverse community of adoring fans. Bands like Dinosaur Jr and the Smashing Pumpkins have recorded loving covers of Cure songs. If the recent cavalcade of boutique chorus and modulation pedals is any indication, Smith's influence as a tonal architect is alive and well.
So why is the ink devoted to his guitar craft comparatively limited?
For one, Smith's status as a pop culture emblem of angst might distract audiences from his underlying musical achievements. For the general population, Robert Smith's hair and makeup choices are a more relevant touchpoint than his guitar tone.
Perhaps The Cure's renown as a poppy synth band gets in the way of guitar worship. It's understandable considering that many of their biggest hits are flush with cascades of Roland and other string synths.
Distractions aside, Smith remains a guitar player and effect explorer first. It may just be that his affinity for the textural over the technical in his work is the real root of his underappreciation. While certainly a capable player, his innovation and influence has less to do with the notes he plays and more to do with how they sound.
Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI
Look at how popular shoegaze and its unyielding pedal worship has been over the past decade within indie rock circles. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy might be the sonic manifestos of the genre, but The Cure were swimming in similar waters with 1982's Pornography.
Even before that, Smith played a Jazzmaster modded with a pickup from a cheap department store guitar to record the group’s debut studio album, Three Imaginary Boys in 1979, and could be seen with a Fender Bass VI a couple years later. He was playing offsets with endless chorus and delay decades before this aesthetic was normalized by the skinny-jeaned denizens of your local DIY venue.
That album and the ones that followed - Seventeen Seconds in 1980 and Faith in 1981 - were angular post-punk outcrys stocked with sneer and counterbalanced with undeniable hooks and grooves. Starting with Pornography in particular, you can hear an increased textural exploration and tonal interplay. Listen to the instrumental sections of "The Hanging Garden." The layered, shifting guitar lines take the various effects of the day and forge a cohesive, iconic gothic orchestration.
Later albums proved more diverse, with radio-friendly hits like "In Between Days" and "Close to Me" on 1985's The Head in the Door and "Just Like Heaven" on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me in 1987. While these hits and other genre exercises of this era were departures from the dirges and youthful anger of earlier efforts, they reflect a constant quest for new sounds, textures, and instrumental approaches to serve the song.
Schecter Robert Smith UltraCure VI
With Disintegration in 1989, everything came together, which is a tad ironic given the album's title. The pop hook sensibilities, the gothic alienation, the deep, enveloping layers of sound all coalesced into a work that South Park fans will remember Kyle calling "the best album ever."
Cure releases since have all offered something worthwhile. They’ve toured consistently despite membership changes, most notably the addition of studio guitar ace Reeves Gabrels in 2012 (along with his slick signature Reverend solid body).
Smith for his part has played a number of guitars throughout his career, including a range of Fender offsets, various map-shaped Nationals, and a Gretsch Country Gentleman. In recent years, he's almost exclusively used a set of signature instruments built by Schecter, including the electric UltraCure (in both traditional and Bass IV-esque configurations) and the acoustic RS-1000.
As for effects, Smith primarily uses Boss pedals with the odd EHX or Dunlop option tossed in. Nothing newfangled. If it ain't broke, don't cure it.The following post is from Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft.
Many of our customers have serious concerns about government surveillance of the Internet.
We share their concerns. That’s why we are taking steps to ensure governments use legal process rather than technological brute force to access customer data.
Like many others, we are especially alarmed by recent allegations in the press of a broader and concerted effort by some governments to circumvent online security measures – and in our view, legal processes and protections – in order to surreptitiously collect private customer data. In particular, recent press stories have reported allegations of governmental interception and collection – without search warrants or legal subpoenas – of customer data as it travels between customers and servers or between company data centers in our industry.
If true, these efforts threaten to seriously undermine confidence in the security and privacy of online communications. Indeed, government snooping potentially now constitutes an “advanced persistent threat,” alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks.
In light of these allegations, we’ve decided to take immediate and coordinated action in three areas:
· We are expanding encryption across our services.
· We are reinforcing legal protections for our customers’ data.
· We are enhancing the transparency of our software code, making it easier for customers to reassure themselves that our products do not contain back doors.
Here’s a closer look at what we’re doing:
Expanding Encryption
For many years, we’ve used encryption in our products and services to protect our customers from online criminals and hackers. While we have no direct evidence that customer data has been breached by unauthorized government access, we don't want to take any chances and are addressing this issue head on. Therefore, we will pursue a comprehensive engineering effort to strengthen the encryption of customer data across our networks and services.
This effort will include our major communications, productivity and developer services such as Outlook.com, Office 365, SkyDrive and Windows Azure, and will provide protection across the full lifecycle of customer-created content. More specifically:
· Customer content moving between our customers and Microsoft will be encrypted by default.
· All of our key platform, productivity and communications services will encrypt customer content as it moves between our data centers.
· We will use best-in-class industry cryptography to protect these channels, including Perfect Forward Secrecy and 2048-bit key lengths.
· All of this will be in place by the end of 2014, and much of it is effective immediately.
· We also will encrypt customer content that we store. In some cases, such as third-party services developed to run on Windows Azure, we’ll leave the choice to developers, but will offer the tools to allow them to easily protect data.
· We’re working with other companies across the industry to ensure that data traveling between services – from one email provider to another, for instance – is protected.
Although this is a significant engineering effort given the large number of services we offer and the hundreds of millions of customers we serve, we’re committed to moving quickly. In fact, many of our services already benefit from strong encryption in all or part of the lifecycle. For example, Office 365 and Outlook.com customer content is already encrypted when traveling between customers and Microsoft, and most Office 365 workloads as well as Windows Azure storage are now encrypted in transit between our data centers. In other areas we’re accelerating plans to provide encryption.
Reinforcing Legal Protections
We also will take new steps to reinforce legal protections for our customers’ data. For example, we are committed to notifying business and government customers if we receive legal orders related to their data. Where a gag order attempts to prohibit us from doing this, we will challenge it in court. We’ve done this successfully in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future to preserve our ability to alert customers when governments seek to obtain their data. And we’ll assert available jurisdictional objections to legal demands when governments seek this type of customer content that is stored in another country.
Except in the most limited circumstances, we believe that government agencies can go directly to business customers or government customers for information or data about one of their employees – just as they did before these customers moved to the cloud – without undermining their investigation or national security. And when those limited circumstances arise, courts should have the opportunity to review the question and issue a decision.
Increasing Transparency
Just as we’ve called for governments to become more transparent about these issues, we believe it’s appropriate for us to be more transparent ourselves. We’re therefore taking additional steps to increase transparency by building on our long-standing program that provides government customers with an appropriate ability to review our source code, reassure themselves of its integrity, and confirm there are no back doors. We will open a network of transparency centers that will provide these customers with even greater ability to assure themselves of the integrity of Microsoft’s products. We’ll open these centers in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and we’ll further expand the range of products included in these programs.
Ultimately, we’re sensitive to the balances that must be struck when it comes to technology, security and the law. We all want to live in a world that is safe and secure, but we also want to live in a country that is protected by the Constitution. We want to ensure that important questions about government access are decided by courts rather than dictated by technological might. And we’re focused on applying new safeguards worldwide, recognizing the global nature of these issues and challenges. We believe these new steps strike the right balance, advancing for all of us both the security we need and the privacy we deserve.Description
Featuring a Micro USB port for go-anywhere charging, the HL60R Headlamp delivers a maximum output of 950 lumens, beam throw of up to 116 meters and runtime of up to 100 hours from just one 18650 Li-ion battery. This feature-rich headlamp is equipped with neutral white LED for better color rendering, a side switch to activate five output modes and a red light alert mode. The HL60R all-season headlamp is designed with aluminum housing, and is complete with the ANSI IPX-8 waterproof classification, it’s surely the first choice when you climb high altitudes, do cave exploration or in backcountry.
Features
·Utilizes Cree XM-L2 U2 Neutral White LED with a lifespan of 50,000 hours·Powered by one 18650 Li-ion battery or two CR123A batteries·87mm (3.4in.) Length x 46mm (1.8in.) Width x 51mm (2in.) Height·121 grams (4.3oz.) excluding battery·Digitally regulated output maintains constant brightness·Reverse polarity protection, to protect from improper battery installation·Side switch for fast and simple operation·Through Micro USB port, directly charges 18650 rechargeableLi-ion battery·Characteristic red light·Made of durable high-grade aluminum·Premium Type III hard-anodized anti-abrasive finish·Toughened ultra-clear glass lens with anti-reflective coatingIf Claire McCaskill decides to run for Missouri governor in 2016, she made sure Thursday to place some distance between herself and one of her party’s chief lightning rods.
In a move that caught Washington by surprise, the Democratic senator from Missouri opposed Harry Reid for Senate minority leader.
In doing so, she became the first of a small cadre of Democrats who publicly opposed the longtime leader of their party.
McCaskill knew going into the vote that Reid, of Nevada, would go on to win another term. So she knew her action could mean losing out on committee assignments and other perks.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Kansas City Star
But Reid is the same person mocked relentlessly by Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Republicans nationwide this fall as the man most responsible for Beltway gridlock.
On Thursday morning, McCaskill told reporters she had met with Reid the day before and told him she would not back him again.
“I heard the voters of Missouri loud and clear,” McCaskill said in a statement. “They want change in Washington. Common sense tells me that begins with changes in leadership.”
That McCaskill sought to separate herself from Reid so publicly is one reason many quickly interpreted her move as yet another sign that she is considering a 2016 run for governor or maybe laying the groundwork for another Senate run in 2018.
“For a Democrat in a state that tends to the right, being tied to Harry Reid is not a positive,” said Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political scientist.
Surrounded by reporters after the vote, McCaskill dismissed the speculation as groundless.
“At this point, I could brush my teeth and it would increase speculation about whether I was running for governor of Missouri,” she said.
McCaskill, first elected to the Senate in 2006, said she was not the only Democrat to air discontent with the status quo before Thursday’s vote by the Democratic caucus.
“There were a lot of voices in there, and it was not a unified voice,” she said. “It was a lot of consternation. … Reid took it really well and I didn’t feel ostracized.
“People came up to me afterward and said, ‘You said things that needed to be said.’”
A handful of other Democrats from Republican or Republican-leaning states — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia — told reporters they also had opposed Reid after McCaskill made her postion public.
“I just thought we needed change,” Manchin said.
McCaskill predicted that Senate Democrats are headed toward introspection and outreach to Republicans, who will command the chamber next year.
In that spirit, McCaskill on Wednesday had lunch with her Missouri colleague, Republican Roy Blunt, who was re-elected Thursday to GOP leadership as vice chairman of the party’s caucus. McCaskill told reporters she will work with Republicans “when they do things I agree with, and I’m going to fight Republicans when they’re doing things that I think are damaging.”
Blunt declined to talk in detail about what he described as a private conversation. But he said the pair discussed events |
ol"]] here."
\t\t\t<<set $factionlock.kobolFactionAlign = "zanex">>
\t\t<<endif>>
\t\t<<set $factionlock.kobolWasViolent = true>>
\t<<endif>><br><br>
\t<<if $factionlock.kobolFactionAlign eq "kobol">>
\t\t<<if $factionlock.kobolWasViolent eq true>>"Aw, c'mon," the android says. "Let's at least try to see eye to eye here, yeah? We're doin' this for everyone's good."<br><br>
\t\t\t<<if $loc_riptide.ownedBy eq "wilkin">>"Only thing is I don't buy it." Fisher levels his rifle, growling, "Back the fuck off. Now. Or this thing goes cyclic."<br><br>
\t\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. So do Fisher's Raptors.<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Ah, fuck this shit." The android reaches for its sidearm.<br><br>
\t\t\t\tWhat follows happens so fast it's hard to follow. Raptors spray bolts wildly as [[Kobol's|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] heavy weapons tear through their combat armor. Bolts wizz past too close for comfort. It's only after a moment you realize three of Fisher's men are shooting at you. Fuck knows why - you don't have time to ask.
\t\t\t<<else>>"Unfortunately, I disagree." Jalkovski levels his carbine, eyes narrowed. "Give me an excuse. Jerk. Just one."<br><br>
\t\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. Jalkovski's men ready their weapons.<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Ah, fuck this shit." The android reaches for its sidearm.<br><br>
\t\t\t\tWhat follows happens so fast it's hard to follow. [[Zanex|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Division 108"]] troopers open fire as [[Kobol's|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] heavy weapons tear through their riot armor. Bolts wizz past too close for comfort. It's only after a moment you realize two of Jalkovski's men are shooting at you. Fuck knows why - you don't have time to ask.
\t\t\t<<endif>>
\t\t<<else>>"Glad we see eye t'eye," the android says. "We're doin' this for everyone's good, not jus' our own. Word and promise. Guaranteed from all the way back in Cubix. Ain't even my call."<br><br>
\t\t\t<<if $loc_riptide.ownedBy eq "wilkin">>"I sure hope you're right," Fisher says, fingering his rifle. "We ain't got time for your shit."<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Eh, don't worry." The android cracks a grin. "Now, if ya don't mind, we gotta get to work. An' you'd better get back home, yeah?"<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Right." Fisher waves his men off. "C'mon, assholes. Show's over."<br><br>
\t\t\t<<else>>"Let's hope so." Jalkovski lowers his carbine. "Don't make us deploy here again."<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Eh, don't worry." The android cracks a grin. "Now, if ya don't mind, we gotta get to work. Ain't gonna bug you one bit."<br><br>
\t\t\t\t"Make sure it doesn't." Jalkovski waves his men away, calling, "Back to base. Show's over."<br><br>
\t\t\t<<endif>>
\t\t\tAs they receed down the passage, the android glances at you. "Nice work, jerk. Knew I'd hired you for a right fucking reason."
\t\t<<endif>>
\t<<elseif $factionlock.kobolFactionAlign eq "zanex">>
\t\t<<if $factionlock.kobolWasViolent eq true>>"Dunno if it's jus' me," the android says. "But I ain't got a good feelin' where this is heading, ya feel me?"<br><br>
\t\t\t"And I don't like your tone." Jalkovski levels his carbine, eyes narrowed. "Give me an excuse. Jerk. Just one."<br><br>
\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. Jalkovski's men ready their weapons.<br><br>
\t\t\t"Ah, fuck this shit." The android reaches for its sidearm.<br><br>
\t\t\tJalkovski pulls the trigger. The machine jerks and twitches as bolts riddle its chest. That same instant, the [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards open fire. Bolts wizz past too close for comfort. Hell knows if they're shooting at you but you aren't about to wait and find out.
\t\t<<else>>"Wow, wow," the android says. "I ain't likin' where this is going, ya feel? So let's jus' all—"<br><br>
\t\t\t"You felt right. Deal's off." Jalkovski steps up to the android, eyes narrowed. "I suggest you and your men get out of here. Jerk. Unless you want to find out what happens when you mess with the [[Division|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Division 108"]]. Understood?"<br><br>
\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. Jalkovski's men ready their weapons.<br><br>
\t\t\t"Okay, okay!" The android backs away, hands raised. "Fair play. We're going already."<br><br>
\t\t\tAs the retreat [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards into the docks, Jalkovski lowers his weapon. "Close call, Sir. You think they'll stay gone?"
\t\t<<endif>>
\t<<elseif $factionlock.kobolFactionAlign eq "wilkin">>
\t\t<<if $factionlock.kobolWasViolent eq true>>"I don't like the way yer talkin," the android says. "Bad vibes, ya feel me?"<br><br>
\t\t\t"Fuck yourself." Fisher levels his rifle, growling, "Back the fuck off. Now. Or this thing goes cyclic."<br><br>
\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. So do Fisher's Raptors.<br><br>
\t\t\t"Ah, fuck this shit." The android reaches for its sidearm.<br><br>
\t\t\tFisher pulls the trigger. The machine jerks and twitches as bolts riddle its chest. That same instant, the [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards open fire. Bolts wizz past too close for comfort. Hell knows if they're shooting at you but you aren't about to wait and find out.
\t\t<<else>>"Wow, wow," the android says. "I ain't likin' where this is going, ya feel? So let's jus' all—"<br><br>
\t\t\t"Save it. There's no deal." Fisher levels his rifle, growling, "Back the fuck off. Now. Or this thing goes cyclic."<br><br>
\t\t\tThere's a tense silence. The [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards fidget uneasily. So do Fisher's Raptors.<br><br>
\t\t\t"Okay, okay!" The android backs away, hands raised. "Fair play. We're going already."<br><br>
\t\t\tAs the retreat [[Kobol|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Sons of Kobol"]] guards into the docks, Fisher lowers his weapon. "Fucking close thing there, Boss. You think they'll stay gone?"
\t\t<<endif>>
\t<<endif>>
<<endnobr>><<endif>>
<<display 'HUD_CodexBackButton'>><strong>Oger</strong>
<<nobr>>
<div class='HUD_CodesHalfImage'>[>img[http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/combat_abom_oger_crowbar.png]]</div>Once humans, Ogers are genetically engineered brutes best known for their sheer physical strength. Despite their abominable status, most Ogers retain some form of intelligence and identity. Seldom seen in the civilized galaxy.<br><br>
<span class='redcolor'>Immunity:</span> none<br>
<span class='yellowcolor'>Strength:</span> physical bulk<br>
<span class='greencolor'>Weakness:</span> none<br><br>
\t<div id='codex-expand-area' class='HUD_PdaDisplayZone HUD_PdaDisplayZoneCodex'>
\t\t<div class='HUD_PdaExpandButton'><<click 'Show More'>>
\t\t\t<<replace '#codex-expand-area'>>
\t\t\t\tOriginally concieved of by the Talithrax Corporation to serve as front-line shock troopers during the [[Crusade of Eden|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "Crusade of Eden"]], Ogers are humans who have synthetically augmented to the point they barely resemble the people they once were. These abominations often appear unnaturally bloated and impossibly muscular, though the exact techniques used - and outcome of the specific modificatoins applied - vary from Oger to Oger. Generally speaking however, these abominations are designed with heightened physical prowess and diminished sensitivity to pain and human emotion in mind. Absolute obedience to their creators, relentless pursuit of their goals, and utter lack of empathy are also common traits displayed by an Oger.<br><br>
Contrary to the public preconception of being mindless brutes, virtually every Oger retains its intelligence and, in almost all cases, these abominations are both painfully aware of what they have become and that few - if any - humans will ever treat them as equals again. Consequentially, Ogres are seldom seen in civilized space, preferring to roam the void in starships and, occasionaly, settling on remote colonies where persecution by the public - and the [[Church of Eden|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "Church of Eden"]] - is minimal. When they are present in civilized space, they frequently serve as mercenaries or enforcers, and commonly restrict allegience to criminal organizations that will not turn them over to the [[Church of Eden|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "Church of Eden"]] for incineration.<br><br>
In extremely rare cases however, an Oger will settle for a lawful carrer, though this behavior tends to be limited to those whose physical deformation is minimal, allowing them to pass as human beings unless scrutinized closely. Over the centuries, these unusual outliers have given rise to numerous far-fetched superstitions, most notably the belief that an Oger with an unnaturally long lifespan will ammass incredible wealth and power. These fairy tales however ignore the simple scientific fact that every known breed of Oger suffers from the fatal flaw of overaccelerated cell growth that will, eventually, lead to terminal cancer. This circumstance forces Ogers to think in terms of short-term survival, as few of these unfortunates can expect to live more than a few years past their date of augmentation without extensive medical care.
\t\t\t<</replace>>
\t\t<</click>></div>
\t</div>
<<endnobr>>
<<if $hide.layer1 eq true>><div class='GameOption_Expand'>[[Expand|$currentgamepassage][$hide.layer1= false]]</div><<if $action.arrive eq "fromOutside">>You step through the...<<elseif $action.arrive eq "fromConvo">>You are standing...<<else>>You step out...<<endif>><<else>><div class='GameOption_Expand'>[[Collapse|$currentgamepassage][$hide.layer1 = true]]</div>
<<nobr>>
\t<div class='GameTextImage'>[img["http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/env_highbornpalace_outside.png"]]</div>
\t<<if $action.arrive eq "fromOutside">>You step through the hatch, into the Highborn Palace. A soft trancetune humms from speakers crammed into the disused bot racks. Below, a city of tents glistens in the glow of innumerable neon lights. Your slaves wander about in their shadows, tending the many UV tanks set up in the room. Some of them shoot you fearful glances as they pass.<br><br>
\t\t<<if $attrib.demeanor eq "agressive">>"Yeah, you're mine, bitches." A grin curls your lips as you stride on.<<elseif $attrib.demeanor eq "cautious">>"I am so sorry," you mutter, averting your eyes.<<else>>"Hell of a place," you mutter, shaking your head.<<endif>><br><br>
\t\tSpent injectors crunch underfoot. Exhausted faces hide in the shadowed interiors of their grimy tents. Ahead, two guards in psychodelic armor are surveying the goings-on.<br><br>
\t\t"Boss," they chorus as you pass.<br><br>
\t\t<<if $attrib.demeanor eq "agressive">>"Keep it up, Kids."<<else>>"Hey."<<endif>> You stop in the cery center of the biochem operation, just before your tent.
\t<<elseif $action.arrive eq "fromConvo">>You are standing amidst the many tents and UV planters of Highborn Palace. Guards move about, shoing the confused slaves back to work. Muttered apologies are offered as they stumble, delirious, toward their assignments.<br><br>
\t\t"Well, we's still here, I suppose." Pinapple pulls a face. "I'll be 'round if ya need, myeah?"<br><br>
\t\t"Sure." You wander absently through the biochem operation until you come to a stop before your tent.
\t<<elseif $action.arrive eq "fromConvoAlt">>You are standing amidst the many tents and UV planters of Highborn Palace. Guards move about, watching the slaves back work. Muttered whispers fill the air as trudges, delirious, about their assignments.<br><br>
\t\t"Well, I'll get back to it." Pinapple walks off again. "Be 'round if ya need, myeah?"<br><br>
\t\t"Yeah." You wander absently through the biochem operation until you come to a stop before your tent.
\t<<else>>You step out, into the disused bot-hangar used by the Highborn. The tent city glistens in the liminescent gloom. Slaves wander about, most tending UV planters and a hanfuly seemingly lost. One of the guards shoves them none too kindly, demanding they get back to work. Muttered apologies are offered as they stumble, delirious, toward their assignments.<br><br>
\t\t"Is a full-time job to keep 'em in check." Pinapple stops beside you, a concerned look his face. "We do what we can, Boss. But it ain't never enough for their brains."<br><br>
\t\t"Figures. I suppose it's gotta be drugs too."<br><br>
\t\tPinapple laughs. "Unless ya want 'em te run off on us, yeah. An' hell. Most of 'em like it. Fix all the time. Sex after work. What else ya want, man? What else ya fucking want?" He shoots you a sly smirk. "Except to rule, obviously."
\t<<endif>>
<<endnobr>><<endif>>
<<display 'HUD_CodexBackButton'>><strong>CalTec C2000 HALO</strong>
<<nobr>>[>img[http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/c2000_extended.png]]Modified coil accelerated carbine intended as a compact, low-cost multifunction weapon.<br><br>
- 15x9mm magazine<br>
- <span class='yellowcolor'>average accuracy</span><br>
- <span class='yellowcolor'>average stopping power</span><br>
- <span class='yellowcolor'>average rate of fire</span><br>
- <span class='bluecolor'>can launch canisters</span><br><br>
\t<div id='codex-expand-area' class='HUD_PdaDisplayZone HUD_PdaDisplayZoneCodex'>
\t\t<div class='HUD_PdaExpandButton'><<click 'Show More'>>
\t\t\t<<replace '#codex-expand-area'>>
\t\t\t\tThe C2000 HALO - shot for High Acceleration and Launcher by Orlin - is an unofficial adaption kit which transforms the [[C2000|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "C2000"]] from a coilarm intended for home protection into a low-cost multifunction weapon. It is produced and distributed by Orlin Industries and offers several improvements over the base carbine:<br><br>
\t\t\t\t- replacement grip and bolt carrier assembly, improving ergonomics<br>
\t\t\t\t- strengthening of the buttstock for use with greater acceleration<br>
\t\t\t\t- shielding of the coil assembly, allowing greater muzzle velocity<br>
\t\t\t\t- inclusion of a breech-loaded underbarrel canister launcher<br><br>
\t\t\t\tOverall, the HALO system - like the [[C2000|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "C2000"]] - remains a substandard coil carbine and suffers from its short barrel length and low magazine capacity. It is therefore suitable only for use by individuals who cannot afford or do not require more professional weapons. None the less, HALO offers considerable flexibility in a small package and is well known for its markedly improved stopping power.<br><br>
\t\t\t\tConsequently the HALO weapons system has found numerous buyers in the private security industry, especially among bodyguards and void security crews, who require a compact and efficient personal defense weapon. It has also been favorably recieved by various riot control teams and civic security details, both of whom value the ability to launch supression canisters at a low price, while retaining some semblance of rapid fire capacity. Outside of these niche sectors however the HALO system has not gained any traction, and sales figures pale in comparison to those of the baseline [[CalTech C2000|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "C2000"]].<br><br>
\t\t\t\tFollowing munitions are certified for use with the Orlin HALO launcher: [[Scattershot Canister|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "Scattershot Canister"]], [[Neurotoxin Canister|PDA][$hud.codexBack = "codex"; playContextSound("ui_blip"); $hud.currentScreen = "Neurotoxin Canister"]]
\t\t\t<</replace>>
\t\t<</click>></div>
\t</div>
<<endnobr>>
<<nobr>>
\t<<set $combat.enemy = {
\t\ttype: "human",
\t\tname: "mercenaries",
\t\tgender: "them",
\t\tposessive: "their",
\t\tdeathtype: "killing",
\t\tresulttext: "default_result",
\t\tresponsetext: "human_firearm_response",
\t\tsinglenames: ["merc", "merc", "merc"],
\t\tsinglegender: ["him", "him", "him"],
\t\tsingleposessive: ["his", "his", "his"],
\t\timages: ["images/combat_merc_syndicate_rifle.png", "images/combat_merc_syndicate_rifle.png", "images/combat_merc_syndicate_rifle.png"],
\t\talive: 3,
\t\tarmor: 8,
\t\tvulnerable: "none",
\t\timmune: "toxin",
\t\tshield: 0,
\t\taccuracy: 0.75,
\t\tcover: 0.2,
\t\tisMeeleAttacker: false,
\t\ttaunt: "As the mercs hurry into positions, one of them barks, \s"Suppressive Fire!\s"",
\t}>>
\t<<set $combat.player = {
\t\taccuracy: 0.8,
\t\tcover: 0.2,
\t\tcontinue: "b10_athena_enter",
\t\tally: "none",
\t}>>
<<endnobr>>
<<silently>>
<<set $currentgamepassage = passage()>>
<<if $action.action3 eq "object">>
\t<<set $job_conspiracy.knowledgePhase = 1>>
<<elseif $action.action3 eq "conspirator">>
\t<<set $job_conspiracy.conspiratorPhase = 1>>
<<elseif $action.action3 eq "whatdo">>
\t<<set $job_conspiracy.instructionPhase = 1>>
<<endif>>
<<endsilently>>
<div class='GameTextGreyed'><<display 'intro_start_txt'>></div>
<div class='GameTextGreyed'><<display 'intro_2_txt'>><<display'read_mission_zweili'>></div>
<div class='GameText'><<display 'intro_talk_stuffiforgot_text'>></div>
<<nobr>><div class='OptionsField'>
<<if $job_conspiracy.knowledgePhase lt 1>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Dialogue'>[[→ Ask what Object 55316 is|intro_talk][$action.action3 = "object"; $processed = false; playContextSound("ui_click");]]</div>
<<else>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Disabled'><div class='GameOption_Disabled_Text'>[You already asked about Object 55316]</div></div>
<<endif>><br>
<<if $job_conspiracy.conspiratorPhase lt 1>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Dialogue'>[[→ Ask about the Conspirators|intro_talk][$action.action3 = "conspirator"; $processed = false; playContextSound("ui_click");]]</div>
<<else>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Disabled'><div class='GameOption_Disabled_Text'>[You already asked about the Conspirators]</div></div>
<<endif>><br>
<<if $job_conspiracy.instructionPhase lt 1>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Dialogue'>[[→ Ask what you should Do|intro_talk][$action.action3 = "whatdo"; $processed = false; playContextSound("ui_click");]]</div>
<<else>>
\t<div class='GameOption GameOption_Disabled'><div class='GameOption_Disabled_Text'>[You already know what to Do]</div></div>
<<endif>><br>
<div class='GameOption GameOption_Dialogue'>[[→ Say you've Understood|intro_accept][$time.active = $time.active + 0.5; $attrib.fatigue = $attrib.fatigue + 1; $hud.newmsg += 1; $hud.messages.push($msg_zweili_mission); $hide.layer4 = true; $hide.layer5 = false; $job_conspiracy.instructionPhase = 1; $job_conspiracy.unlockedMainQuest = true; $time.billedchurch = $time.active; playContextSound("ui_click");]]</div>
</div><<endnobr>>
<<nobr>>
\t<<set $combat.enemy = {
\t\ttype: "abomination_elusive",
\t\tname: "wraith",
\t\tgender: "it",
\t\tposessive: "its",
\t\tdeathtype: "igniting",
\t\tresulttext: "abomination_wraith_result",
\t\tresponsetext: "abomination_wraith_response",
\t\tsinglenames: ["wraith"],
\t\tsinglegender: ["it"],
\t\tsingleposessive: ["its"],
\t\timages: ["images/combat_abom_wraith.png"],
\t\talive: 1,
\t\tarmor: 3,
\t\tvulnerable: "conductive",
\t\timmune: "toxin",
\t\tshield: 14,
\t\taccuracy: 0.65,
\t\tcover: 0,
\t\tisMeeleAttacker: true,
\t\tdidreappear: false,
\t\ttaunt: "The Wraith appears before you, fangs bared and claws spread wide. Anger burns in its inhuman eyes.",
\t}>>
\t<<set $combat.player = {
\t\taccuracy: 0.8,
\t\tcover: 0,
\t\tcontinue: "b33_constructionsite_altar",
\t\tally: "none",
\t}>>
<<endnobr>>
Credits:
- MoLoLu: author
- IPS: artwork, alpha testing, and conceptual advice
- VomitButterfly: alpha testing and conceptual advice
- SWR Productions: hosting
This story was created with <a href="http://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twine</a> and is powered by <a href="http://www.motoslave.net/sugarcube/" target="_blank">SugarCube</a>, which is based on <a href="http://tiddlywiki.com/" target="_blank">TiddlyWiki</a>, and was further customized by the author.
<<if $hide.layer1 eq true>><div class='GameOption_Expand'>[[Expand|$currentgamepassage][$hide.layer1 = false]]</div>You lower your weapon...<<else>><div class='GameOption_Expand'>[[Collapse|$currentgamepassage][$hide.layer1 = true]]</div>
<<nobr>>
\tYou lower your weapon, breathing hard. Around you, abominations are slaughtering with impuny, and up by the barricade muzzles flash constanty. Noise is a constant, as is death. There's blood everywhere, more bodies than you can count. It's utter chaos.<br><br>
\tBefore you can decide how to best aid the attack, three towering [[Knights of Eden|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Knights of Eden"]] bear down on you, [[Plasma Lances|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Plasma Lance"]] held ready. Even though the constructs are faceless, their scorn can be felt - scorn reserved in particular for you. Or maybe that's just your warped perception.<br><br>
\t<div class='GameTextImage GameTextSpecial'>[img["http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/env_rnd_constabulary_koe.png"]]</div>
\t"Fuck it," you mutter, eyeing the [[Knights|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Knights of Eden"]] with <<if $attrib.demeanor eq "agressive">> a cruel smirk on your lips. "This will be fun."<<else>> with mounting unease. "This really was a terrible plan."<<endif>><br><br>
\t<<if $attrib.demeanor eq "agressive">>A real challenge for once. Let the [[Church|PDA][$hud.currentScreen = "Church of Eden"]] test their best against <<firstname>> Acrel. Not that they stand a chance, but still. It will be fun.
\t<<else>>Except you can't back out now. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Not in amidst the carnage. All you can do is keep fighting - and hope like hell you don't die in the process.
\t<<endif>>
\t
<<endnobr>><<endif>>
<<nobr>>
\t<<set $combat.enemy = {
\t\ttype: "abomination_elusive",
\t\tname: "banshee",
\t\tgender: "it",
\t\tposessive: "its",
\t\tdeathtype: "igniting",
\t\tresulttext: "abomination_wraith_result",
\t\tresponsetext: "abomination_wraith_response",
\t\tsinglenames: ["banshee"],
\t\tsinglegender: ["it"],
\t\tsingleposessive: ["its"],
\t\timages: ["images/combat_abom_banshee.png"],
\t\talive: 1,
\t\tarmor: 24,
\t\tvulnerable: "conductive",
\t\timmune: "toxin",
\t\tshield: 14,
\t\taccuracy: 0.75,
\t\tcover: 0,
\t\tisLargeTarget: true,
\t\tisMeeleAttacker: true,
\t\tdidreappear: false,
\t\ttaunt: "The banshee turns to you, fangs bared and claws spread wide. Anger burns in its inhuman eyes.",
\t}>>
\t<<set $combat.player = {
\t\taccuracy: 0.8,
\t\tcover: 0,
\t\tcontinue: "b30_warren_inside",
\t\tally: "none",
\t}>>
<<endnobr>>
.GameOption_Defend {
\twidth: 98%;
\ttext-align:left;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 3px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #3f81a4;
\tmargin: 3px;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_green.png");
}
.GameOption_Defend:hover {
\tborder-color: #ffe17b;
}
.GameOption_Defend a {
\tpadding: 10px;
\tcolor: #3f81a4;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Defend a:hover {
\tcolor: #ffe17b;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Weapon {
\twidth: 98%;
\ttext-align:left;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 3px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #e35000;
\tmargin: 3px;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_green.png");
}
.GameOption_Weapon:hover {
\tborder-color: #ffe17b;
}
.GameOption_Weapon a {
\tpadding: 10px;
\tcolor: #e35000;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Weapon a:hover {
\tcolor: #ffe17b;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Die {
\twidth: 98%;
\ttext-align:left;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 3px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #e35000;
\tmargin: 3px;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_green.png");
}
.GameOption_Die:hover {
\tborder-color: #c60000;
}
.GameOption_Die a {
\tpadding: 10px;
\tcolor: #e35000;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Die a:hover {
\tcolor: #c60000;\t
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameText,.GameTextGreyed,.OptionsField,.HUD_hackutility, #ui-combat-enemyarea, #ui-combat-actionarea, #ui-combat-playerarea, #hud-combat-background,.HUD_shop {
\tpadding: 10px;
\tmargin-left: 15%;
\twidth: 70%;
}
.TimeSkip {
\ttext-align:center;
\twidth: 100%;
\tmargin-top: 0px;
\tmargin-bottom: 0px;
\tmargin-right: 25%;
\tmargin-left: 0px;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 3px;
\tborder-radius: 6px;
\tcolor: #d46dc9;
\tborder-color: #701669;
}
.GameText {
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 1px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #4e748a;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(0px);
\tbackground-color: black;
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
\tborder-left: 0;
\tborder-right: 0;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_lightblue.png");
}
.GameTextImage img {
\tfloat: right;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(30px);
\tborder: 1px solid #4e748a;
\t/* border: 2px solid #4e748a; */
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tmargin: 0;
\tmargin-left: -10px;
\tpadding: 0;
\twidth: 55%;
\tz-index: 99;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(30px) translateZ(0px) scale(1, 1);
\ttransition: all 0.5s ease 0s;
\tz-index: 1;
\tborder-left: 0;
\tborder-right: 0;
}
.GameTextImage img:hover {
\t//*transform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(30px) translateZ(10px) scale(1.45, 1.3);
\ttransition: all 0.5s ease 0s;
\tz-index: 1;*//
}
.GameTextSpecial img {\t
\twidth: 35%;
}
.GameTextGreyed {
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 1px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tcolor: #4D5F69;\t
\tborder-color: #394348;\t
\tbackground-color: #0A0B0B;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(0px);
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
\tborder-left: 0;
\tborder-right: 0;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_grey.png");
}
.OptionsField {
\tline-height: 0.8em;
\tpadding: 10px;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 2px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #928542;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(0px);
\tbackground-color: black;
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
\tbackground-image: url("http://rage-productions.com/game-content/scaffold-22/images/hud_background_yellow.png");
}
.OptionsField:after {
\tcontent:"";
\tdisplay:block;
\tclear:both;
}
.OptionsField_Dead {
\tborder-color: red;
}
.GameOption_Expand {
\ttext-align:center;
\twidth: 20%;
\tmin-width: 100px;
\tmargin-top: 0px;
\tmargin-bottom: 0px;
\tmargin-right: 25%;
\tmargin-left: -9px;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 1px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\tborder-color: #4e748a;
\tfont-size: 0.9em;
\tbackground-color: #0a0a0a;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) TranslateY(-25px);
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
}
.GameOption_Expand:hover {
\tborder-color: #3ab0cf;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) TranslateY(-25px);
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
}
.GameOption_Expand a {
\tcolor: #4e748a;
\tdisplay: block;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption_Expand a:hover {
\tcolor: #3ab0cf;
\ttext-decoration: none;
}
.GameOption {
\tmargin: 3px;
\tborder-style: solid;
\tborder-width: 2px;
\tborder-radius: 10px;
\twidth: 98%;
\ttext-align:left;
\tbackground-color: #080808;
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(0px);
\ttransition: transform 0.5s ease 0s;
}
.GameOption:hover {
\ttransform: perspective( 600px ) translateX(0px);
\ttransition: transform 0 |
her bachelorette party with friends during the Women's March on Washington. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) Rachel Ellison, 32, is heading to Washington, D.C., from Chicago on Jan. 19, 2017, to celebrate her bachelorette party with friends during the Women's March on Washington. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) SEE MORE VIDEOS
"We must equip ourselves with the wisdom of MLK, that the time is always right to do right," Ware said. "We must stand up for fear and speak up when we hear prejudices against our brothers or sisters. We must and will hold those in power accountable."
Also addressing the crowd was Cleo Pendleton, the mother of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, whose shooting death nearly four years ago made her a national symbol for the city's struggle with violence. Pendleton talked to the crowd about how women's rights — and mothers' rights — speak to the core of Chicago's gun violence problem.Vulcan Men's VTZ-900 Armored Motorcycle Jacket
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CE approved removable armor on shoulders, elbows, and back: ergonomic design, higher impact absorption, free movementJailed: Zak Grieve received a 20-year non-parole sentence, due to the NT's mandatory sentencing laws. It got more infuriating for Grieve. Ray Niceforo, the dead man, had previously threatened to kill Malyschko, the guy with the spanner. This triggered a rare exceptional circumstance, and the judge was allowed to knock a couple of years off Malyschko's non-parole sentence. The Man Who Wasn't There got more time than the killer. In January, the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory rejected Grieve's bid to have his 20-year sentence reduced. I'm in a Darwin office, fan blades whooshing, sitting across from a powerful man with a velvet voice. We're haggling over what I can call him in the story. A Man Close To The Case is as high as he'll go. "If only it had crocodiles," he says, disappointed the case never got Azaria Chamberlain-like traction. "It very nearly could have had crocodiles. They had the option of chucking him in the river, which was full of crocodiles."
Victim: Ray Niceforo, who died a violent death after being held in a headlock and hit on the head with a spanner. This is what happened instead of crocodiles. A man called Darren Halfpenny held Ray Niceforo in a headlock while Malyschko struck him with the spanner. The friends, both in their early 20s, loaded the 41-year-old Niceforo into a van. Halfpenny says Grieve was there. Malyschko insists he was not. Justice Mildren said Halfpenny was "a practised liar and clearly an untrustworthy witness". Forensic evidence placed Malyschko and Halfpenny at the murder scene, but not Grieve. The Crown explained this away by saying Grieve got lucky. Jailed: Christopher Malyschko hit Ray with the spanner. His sentence was reduced because the victim had threatened his life. Sentenced to 18 years non-parole. The original plan was to dump Niceforo in a sinkhole outside of Katherine. Instead, Niceforo ended up, badly hidden, by the side of an often-used road. One theory: this suggests Grieve was not there. The boys, realising Grieve had heard the original plan, switched locations, so he couldn't help the police trace the body.
"Halfpenny was a not particularly sharp white kid," says A Man Close To The Case. Malyschko is white, too, as was Ray Niceforo. "The trial was not only an insight into Katherine, which is like an alien planet that's somehow managed to manifest itself in 21st-century Australia, but a metaphor for the future of many young, white rural people, who are going nowhere fast." Halfpenny had epilepsy, no job and subsisted on ganja and video games. "It was, in a sense, a consequence of the mechanisation of agriculture in Australia. A hundred years before, he would be working happily away as a labourer on a farm." Jailed: Darren halfpenny held the victim in the headlock. He pleaded guilty to murder. Sentenced to 20 years non-parole. Halfpenny, Grieve and Malyschko were part of an informal circle, bonding in lounge rooms over anime, Xbox and cannabis. Grieve stood out. He had loving, married parents, a job and the charm to woo girls. A whisper seeped into the circle sometime in October 2011. Malyschko's mother, Bronwyn Buttery, wanted her fiancé dead. And she was willing to pay. Jailed: Bronwyn Buttery organised the hit, but was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter as Ray had been violent towards her. Sentenced to eight years, four years non-parole.
"Ray wasn't entirely gorgeous as a victim," says A Man Close To The Case. In the mid-1990s, intoxicated, he shot a bloke in the main street of Katherine. The gun misfired and no serious harm was done. Ray Niceforo somehow avoided prison. He started boasting he had shot a bloke and got away with it. Niceforo's violent nature was known throughout the town. In fact, when his corpse, at first unidentifiable, turned up on the side of the road, people were asking, "Who has Ray killed?" A sorry tale: The murder scene. Credit:courtesy of the Katherine Times In June 2011, Bronwyn had obtained a domestic violence order against her fiancé. She said Ray Niceforo had choked her, burnt her with a cigarette, pointed a gun at her, pinned her to a wall with a shopping trolley, forced himself upon her sexually and threatened her with a hammer. Bronwyn owned Waterworks Laundry in Katherine. Niceforo had worked there before she filed the domestic violence order. Now Niceforo, unemployed, was demanding Bronwyn hand over the business to him. He also demanded she wash tea towels for his friend. She refused to do either and Niceforo sent her a series of text messages, including: "You better realise your genetic code sitting beside you will disappear and there's no turning back," followed the next day by, "You had better think about - you are doing real quick today could be the day you lose someone close to you [sic]."
Zak Grieve's parents, Glenice and Wal Grieve. Credit:courtesy of the Katherine Times Despite these threats, fairly interpreted as threats against her son Christopher Malyschko, it was another incident that tipped her over the edge. Niceforo rushed into the laundromat, where Malyschko worked, called him a faggot and a poof and said that he, Niceforo, had "f...ed his mum up the arse and made her bleed and f...ed his mum and made her squeal". Soon after, mother and son agreed that Niceforo needed to die. Malyschko said he needed $15,000 to pay people to do the hit. This sounds more interesting than crocodiles, I think to myself. "With the money - what did they do? They certainly didn't buy any books," says A Man Close To The Case. This is one of many digs at the hicks he says I'll find on this alien planet called Katherine. Katherine is three hours' drive south-east of Darwin, past termite mounds as tall as people and bushfires no one is putting out because they will just burn out themselves. One abandoned family van on the side of the road looks as if it has smashed into a brick wall. It has actually hit a buffalo, which lies dead but otherwise in perfect nick nearby.
Katherine is a heartland of the "Intervention", the Howard government's response to allegations of rampant child abuse among Aboriginal communities. An Aboriginal woman, Chongy, who works for the local legal service, drives me through the communities. One has a lush, well-manicured footy field, which is at odds with all around. People outside tin sheds and under trees wave as Chongy drives by. The humiliating signs put up as part of the intervention, "No pornography", have been taken down. Chongy points to a recent addition, giant street lamps outside a community's entrance. Too many drunk men, Chongy says, were falling asleep on the road and being squashed by cars. There is an urban centre to tiny Katherine, with pubs and drive-through bottle shops, fast-food joints and a Woolworths. This was where Malyschko bought the rubber gloves and shower caps, accurately predicting that snuffing out a life is messy. Grieve belonged to urban Katherine, with a black mother and white father. He worked in their sunglasses shop. He joked to friends that he was the albino Aborigine. There is a huge turnover in Katherine's white population. They secure short-term government job contracts in areas like Aboriginal health, and just come and go. The Aboriginal communities and the urban centre are not the only sides to Katherine. There is a third. Beautiful farmland stretches out on both sides of a wide sandy road. Drive far enough and you reach a set of gates, grand enough for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Behind it, the yard is spotted with large and colourful animal statues. An elephant, a lion, a giraffe. Giant peacocks guard the stairs leading to the door. Ray's brother, Nino, a handsome blend of Dutch and Italian, stands between the peacocks and underneath the night sky. "The f...in' black c... was there, right?" snaps Nino. "He was there."
Grieve might have thought he was the albino Aborigine, but to Nino he was black. "Oh shut up!" Nino's wife, Tina, yells to the dogs circling our feet. "You know why I know he was there?" Nino says. "Because one of the guys that killed my brother, believe it or not, was a family f...in' friend. That's Darren Halfpenny. So why does Malyschko insist Grieve wasn't there? Threats from Aboriginal prisoners in Darwin jail, Nino explains. "A group of them black bastards run that jail. They promised Malyschko protection if he would plead Zak was not there. That he pulled out at the last minute." Nino stares at one of his dogs. "Come and have a look where Ray is buried." An old woman in a pale-blue nightie, Nino's mother, sits on the back porch. She's looking at a gravestone in the backyard, barely visible in the night.
"That f...in' slut of a bitch, right?" Nino is speaking of Bronwyn. "That misled my mum, that my mum had faith and trust in. She was drugging Ray. She drugged him that night with hashish in cookies." This was to make him woozy, less likely to fight back. Nino's not the only one accusing Bronwyn of something like this. In court, a housemate of Bronwyn said she had heard her talking of poisoning Ray Niceforo. But, as I find out, so much of this case rests on: what was hyperbole? What was joking? What was someone speaking literally? "But what's her motivation for killing him?" I ask. "Money," he says. "She wanted all the money from the laundromat." I had been told Bronwyn owned it outright, but Nino says it was more complicated than that. He had initially owned the business, and says he sold it to the couple, dirt cheap, as a favour.
Was there a lot of money in the business? "There was f...-all money: 350 grand." "Oh yeah, oh... but that's still a lot for someone." "It's nothing for me." Nino and Ray's parents came to Katherine in 1958 and set up the first general store.
"My mum and dad built this town," he says. "They've worked their arses off - seven days a week. And Katherine's been good to us. Really good to the Niceforo family. But f..., we've given a lot back to this town. Half of everything out there we owned, we built, we sold. We did the lot. Restaurants, Tosca milk bars, the bakery. Nino's Pizza Bar was mine, f...in' Sign Shops was mine." Nino was a Katherine alderman for 10 years. "She's pure evil," Tina says of Bronwyn from behind the kitchen bench. "That's all I can say." Bronwyn moved from Adelaide to Katherine in 2007, leaving her son Christopher Malyschko behind. Tina says Bronwyn lured Malyschko to Katherine some eight months before the murder with the promise of a job at the laundromat. Bronwyn consciously brought him over to organise the hit? "She did," Tina assures me.
"The thing that hurts me the most - that f...in' slut bitch, Bronwyn - she was manipulating these kids," Nino says. "She was brainwashing, giving them drugs, giving them what they wanted. She'd go over to their house, telling them things." Bronwyn would take Nino's mum to the pokies. According to Tina, on a trip in early 2011, Bronwyn yammered to Nino's mum that she was putting money away. She'd saved $10,000 but said she needed $15,000. That was the amount she handed over for the hit. More evidence, Tina says, she'd been planning it for a while. "My brother never touched her," Nino hisses. "And I'll tell you why he never touched her. Because she would come here often and pick my mother up in short-sleeved shirts and short shorts. And I never saw a bruise on the bitch. I never saw any burn marks like she's supposed to have. It was a load of shit." "Really good actor," Tina says. "She could put the tears on for anyone." If you believe Nino and Tina's version, Bronwyn got away with murder. The Crown allowed her to plead guilty to manslaughter because she had told them she was a battered woman who was at the end of her tether. If you believe Bronwyn coldly plotted the killing and Grieve never turned up on the night, Grieve's situation is more frustrating. The puppet master got eight years, four years non-parole. She can leave prison 16 years earlier than The Man Who Wasn't There.
An ex-friend of Grieve's, ex because he talked to the cops, is sipping Japanese beer on my motel balcony. "In a perfect world, I would have kept my mouth shut. But I got backed into a corner. It's always better to know nothing and to say nothing." His house was a party house, and he says Grieve was there before the murder. "Yeah, Zak and the other two would come over. Yeah, there's like, you know, playful discussion on how you would successfully dispose of a body." He still doesn't know what was Grieve clowning around and what wasn't. "You know, you get the piss on, and then you just chat about crap. The last thing you can seriously think is, 'Jesus Christ. The nicest bloke I've ever met is just about to actually go and kill someone.' " "Do you reckon," I ask, "there's any chance that, because Zak was a nice guy, who would stick up for friends, that if Christopher was saying, 'Oh listen, my stepdad is just an arsehole and he abuses me and abuses my mother,' that Zak could get caught up in it?" "Yeah. I kinda could see that. My father was the first person to bring that up to me and I only started noticing that a little more now, how impressionable Zak was."
One big thing that looks bad for Grieve: he was suddenly flush with money just before the murder. "Coming up to it, he started purchasing a lot of things, like there was a Nintendo DS 3D. And brand-new clothes, like proper Nike, and going and paying 90 bucks for a bloody Puma." "Do you think Grieve deserves to be in jail?" "I would love to say he doesn't deserve it at all." The ex-friend looks pained. "I'd love to say he wasn't there but, again, I don't know what happened after they left my house." Maybe drawing these opinions is making something murky that need not be. Unlike Halfpenny and Malyschko, no forensic evidence placed Grieve at the murder. Maybe the anguished question is: could Grieve have called the cops and stopped it? Zak's dad, Wal, has a tag dangling from reading glasses, so he can return them to his sunglasses shop later. He is always misplacing his own pair. Brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts pass around barbecued sausages on the porch of a Darwin home.
"He was a real softie," Zak's mum, Glenice, says, drawing on her cigarette. "He wouldn't harm a butterfly." "That was his grandfather's dreaming," Wal adds. "It's an Aboriginal thing," Glenice says. The animal that wanders into the family's life around the time of a child's birth becomes that child's dreaming. Zak's dreaming story sounds like hard times were pre-destined. Wal accidentally crushed a nest of blue-tongue lizards when Glenice was pregnant. "When Wal told me, I went into a gasp: 'Oh my God! That's his dreaming!' " Zak came out purple and bruised, the same colour as the squashed blue tongues. "And Wal seen him then and went, 'Oh. You weren't f...n' joking.' When Zak's mouth come, ahhh, even his tongue was blue."
Zak's brother's partner leans in. "You know," Shannon says, "had they charged everyone in the same position as Zak, with the same knowledge as Zak, they would good and well have 20 people in jail." Matthew, a friend of Zak Grieve's, has imprudently typed on Facebook that, following the logic that has locked up Zak, "I should go to jail." Glenice remembers the first murmur. Zak called to say, "Mum, you might have to come over and see Matthew, because he's just seen someone down the pub offering some money to kill someone." The talk built. One day Glenice walked into the sunglasses store. Zak was behind the counter. Matthew was there, it was like half the kids in town were there. They were discussing how much money a person should get for a hit. "I just piped up and I said, 'Youse need to stop talkin' this f...in' shit, 'cause it's something that can land you in big f...in' trouble.' Darren was hiding in the corner like I didn't see him. I've seen him. That's how much of a dingo he is. Just an absolute prick."
No crocodile, I think to myself, but at least there's now a dingo. Glenice says Halfpenny and Malyschko were trying to lure Zak in so they could blame it all on him. For the Grieves, this is a story about racism in the Northern Territory. If Ray Niceforo had been black, he would have been locked up for threatening and hurting Bronwyn. Police are driving into Aboriginal communities and plucking out men for domestic violence all the time. Then Malyschko wouldn't have been pushed into a corner, needing to defend his mum. Then Zak Grieve wouldn't have been dragged into this. The NT has Australia's highest incarceration rate: 821 people per 100,000. Incredibly, this is more than three times the incarceration rate of the silver-medal holders, Western Australia. Yet the white man from the wealthy family somehow avoided prison when he shot a man in the main street. "This is little Mississippi," Glenice says. For the Grieves, this is also a story of human folly, a tale of cops covering their arses. They say NT police had screwed up a big murder investigation not long before. So when a member of a powerful family was found dead, half a dozen cop cars came down from Darwin. Halfpenny pointed a finger at Zak. This became the story, the genie that couldn't be put back in the bottle, even when forensics didn't fit.
Wal explains Zak's spending on Nintendo and Nike just before the murder. The tax department had just sent Wal a cheque. Wal rewarded his son for his hard work in the shop. That story pushes Zak away from the crime. Not all the Grieves' stories do. "Here is a young indigenous boy," Shannon says. "Now, not through his own family, but through his people as a whole, he has seen the abuse of these women and of these children. So when someone steps forward to a boy like this and says, you know, 'Would you have my back if this guy came round and if he beat my mother up?' of course Zakkie was gonna say yes." Zak grieve is big. Glenice complains he has lost 30 kilograms since they locked him up, but when we meet in prison in Darwin he looks healthy. He sports a blue T-shirt and shaved head, chomping chips at a metal table. He tells me he is writing a book. Glenice, like a stage mother, is flouncing around the metal table, telling me I have to get the manuscript to a publisher. When he talks about his book, he is smiling and alive. He's 400 pages in, close to finished. He writes it in pencil in his cell. It's set 100 years into the future. One main character has to go off with his sister and fight a war, and fight against the darkness. He is at first calm when discussing the case. Anger takes over his eyes when he turns to Malyschko and his mother. How she was a victim of violence. And she was so small and Malyschko had told him Ray Niceforo was so big. He didn't know what Niceforo looked like until the cops showed him the bashed-in-skull photos. That upset him. He said he felt like a murderer for 16 months. He believed that in his heart, not just intellectually. It wasn't until inmates told him he wasn't a killer that he reflected "No, you're not. All you did was not make a phone call. You didn't know whether to take them serious or not." He moves on to his fourth packet of chips. Wal is bringing them from the vending machine. He was confused when Halfpenny and Malyschko were telling their stories about needing to kill a man. He wanted to get out of the situation as soon as he realised it was becoming serious. He said it was ambiguous. Like should he call the cops or not? And afterwards he thought the cops were annoyed because he didn't help out straight away. But he only didn't help out because they kept talking about a dead guy lying on the street and it was not the place Halfpenny and Malyschko spoke of. He didn't even know at that point that the two had gone through with it, and the cops weren't saying what it was about, or naming anybody's name, so he didn't connect the dots.
He says prison has been a hard wake-up call, not being able to play Xbox. But he's pretty relaxed now because he gets to read books. (I think about A Man Close To The Case, who said Katherine people don't read books.) Grieve says after he got out of maximum security, he found it comforting, finding out how many family members were in prison with him. And they would come up to him, all these people he'd never met before, and it was a new chapter in his life. He rolls up his sleeve and shows me a homemade tattoo, a symbol from Kingdom Hearts, a computer game in which you fight the blackness taking over the world. "Yeah, go on, say it," Grieve says. "It looks like a dick coming out of a heart." Later that night, his brother, Terry, tells me: "Zakkie comes from a line of lawmen." Around the time he was sent to jail, Zak Grieve was to decide whether to become a lawman himself, to take part in the secret Aboriginal initiations and ceremony. Now he'll be a boy until he's at least 40. The Grieves are searching for a lawyer that will take Zak's case to the High Court. Maybe a court, outside of Little Mississippi, will see this in a different way.
Zak Grieve's story, lacking crocodiles, may not have made headlines across Australia, but locally it has become folklore, a cautionary tale about mandatory sentencing. Two tipsy lawyers in a Darwin bar tell me to call the president of the Criminal Lawyers Association of the NT, but warns me he's a little strange. "Zak Grieve?" the president, Russell Goldflam, asks down the line. I hear him shuffling through papers. "I wrote a limerick about that case." I tell him I'd like to hear it. "Understandably, Grieve is aggrieved By the sentencing. Not disbelieved Wasn't there. He got more
Than his mate, that's the law. As for justice, that's hardly achieved."Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
The future for PlayStation versions of Minecraft was thrown into doubt on Tuesday after business sources claimed that Microsoft was preparing to buy the game's developer, Mojang, for as much as $2 billion.
However, new details have emerged from purported inside sources speaking to Bloomberg, who claim that "Microsoft will keep Minecraft available for rival products" should the deal go ahead. That would suggest, but does not confirm, that Minecraft is likely to remain on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 regardless of whether Mojang is purchased.
Those unnamed inside sources add that Markus Persson, the principal developer of Minecraft and founder of Mojang, would likely depart from the company if the deal is completed.
People said to be familiar with negotiations add that it was Persson who apparently "reached out to Microsoft a few months ago, based on a positive working relationship on Minecraft for Xbox".
It is said that Xbox business head Phil Spencer has a close relationship with the Minecraft maestro. That bond meant both parties "quickly agreed on a framework and approximate price and have been working out the details", according to Bloomberg's insiders.
These claims remain unverified, though the number of business sources claiming that Microsoft is hoping to buy the studio suggests that the speculation is not baseless.
Persson founded Mojang in 2010 following the breakout success of Minecraft. The game has since been ported to numerous devices, from phones to tablets to all the major game consoles, save for Nintendo's. Sales have surpassed 54 million units.
Microsoft's rumoured acquisition of Mojang would be particularly surprising following comments from Mojang's co-founder, Carl Manneh, last year.
"We are living the dream, really," Manneh said. "An exit would be huge, but do we really need that money? In our case, we have the cash flow. We have more money than we need."
Minecraft was most recently released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game continues to make it onto both digital and retail top 10 sales charts month after month.
Should the buyout go ahead, it is unclear if Sony would allow a Microsoft game to exist on its system.
Update: In a statement sent to GameSpot, Sony said: "We cannot comment on any acquisition, however we can confirm that we very excited Minecraft is now available on PS3 and PS4 and coming to PS Vita later this year."
Microsoft has said it does not comment on speculation.It has been three days since Microsoft released Windows 10 Mobile to non-Insiders with older devices. In that short period of time, we have seen the Windows phone fan base become angrier than ever before.
If you're reading this then you probably already know why, but just in case you don't, it's due to the list of supported devices for Windows 10 Mobile, which broke Microsoft's promise to upgrade all Windows Phone 8 Lumias or all devices running Windows Phone 8.1.
Right up until the day of its announcement, Microsoft's website continued to promise that several listed devices would be "first" to upgrade - a clear and unambiguous indication that other devices would be "second" in line. But in the days that followed, there would be more bad news, such as the fact that there will be no "second wave" of upgrades, and that third party devices that weren't on the list also won't make the cut.
Over the last three days, there have been threats from many Windows phone users of leaving the platform, and complaints about Microsoft. I'm here to tell you today that it's time to forgive them.
The thought of us all forgiving Microsoft does not come from a fanboy-ish perspective, although it certainly sounds like it, given how angry everyone is. We've certainly seen our fair share of broken promises and missteps from the firm, such as their broken OneDrive promises. By all means, if you want to stay angry with them for that one, go ahead.
Empty promises
One of the things that has been said the most frequently over the past three days is that users are now planning to leave the platform that they've supported for so long and move onto Android.
That might not be much of a solution. While fans were busy complaining about the supported devices, Android Central was praising Microsoft because the situation is so much worse on the Android side. If you think that you're more likely to get updates from Android, even from a Nexus device, you're likely mistaken.
Then again, you might not have thought about Android at all. After all, with iOS, updates are regularly and quickly made available to devices, which continue to be supported for far longer than those running Android - the iPhone 4S, for example, has received updates for four and a half years and counting.
Of course, no one spent $30 on an iPhone 4S, so it's certainly not comparable to the fact that the Lumia 520 didn't get upgraded. It's fair to make this comparison with something like a Lumia 920 or 1020; however, these devices had old specs even when they came out, particularly the Lumia 1020.
Finally, another thing that has been said quite a bit in the last few days is that this is Windows Phone 7 all over again. It most certainly is not.
When Windows Phone 8 came out, there were devices that were less than six months old (flagship devices, the Nokia Lumia 900 comes to mind) that would not receive the upgrade. After all, how could they? Windows Phone 8, at launch, only supported a handful of models of the Snapdragon S4 Plus chipset. Microsoft didn't bother with the single core chipsets in the Windows Phone 7 devices.
Comparing this to the Windows Phone 7 debacle is taking it to the very extreme. The only handsets that weren't on the supported devices list for Windows 10 Mobile were those with older Snapdragon S4 Plus processors, 512 MB RAM, or 4 GB storage, along with some third party phones, and the Nokia Lumia Icon (which the firm is still considering).
It's been almost three years since a Snapdragon S4 Plus device was released. The last 512 MB RAM device with more than 4 GB of storage was the Nokia Lumia 630/635, almost two years ago. One could make the case that they should have upgraded those particular 512 MB RAM devices, although it gets hard to make that case, given that they sat on the low end.
No, comparing this to Windows Phone 7 is certainly not fair. There was never any upgrade path for Windows Phone 7 devices. There is, however, an upgrade path for the vast majority of Windows Phone 8 devices.
It's not the end of the world
Let's be fair about a couple things. One is that Windows 10 Mobile simply requires more system resources than Windows Phone 8.1. There are a lot of reasons why Windows Phone 8.1 is a "lighter" OS, but that's beyond the scope of this article.
Also, let's be reasonable and call a spade a spade. The Nokia Lumia 520 is a horrific device. It was a decent phone for the price when it shipped with Windows Phone 8, it got a little worse on 8.1, and was absolutely unusable on Windows 10 Mobile. The same can be said for the Lumia 620 and 720, which used the same chipset and RAM.
What if Microsoft had upgraded these devices? The experience would obviously be terrible and the blame would fall on Microsoft, as it should.
Then again, no one is really upset that Microsoft didn't upgrade older and lower end devices. What people are upset about are the broken promises, as they should be.
The only issue there is, while the promise was technically broken, there's still an upgrade path for unsupported devices. Users can still upgrade their devices and get the exact same bits that supported devices got. They just have to sign up for the Release Preview ring of the Insider Preview.
Is this not the best solution? Users of these devices can still get their upgrade if they explicitly know what they're getting into and Microsoft doesn't have to take the blame for upgrading it. After all, had the firm upgraded these devices through official channels, its customers would have complained about the poor experience, and they wouldn't have even been able to roll back through the Windows Device Recovery Tool.
No, the only thing that substantially changed when Microsoft announced the supported devices was its list of those eligible for the firm's next major update, Redstone. Other than that, anyone who was previously eligible for Insider Preview builds can get Windows 10, take advantage of the UWP platform, and so on.
To reiterate, the "official" upgrade that users got three days ago is the exact same version as the latest Release Preview build. There is no special firmware bundled with it. Users who are not on the official supported devices list can upgrade through the Release Preview ring and will continue to receive updates, likely ending when Redstone is officially released later this year.
The ones left out
There are some folks who have every right to be angry, and this is where the announcement starts to seem curious.
One of the groups that are left out is devices with 4 GB of onboard storage. There is no Insider Preview option for these devices and frankly, no hope. There simply isn't enough storage space to install such a large update.
Then there's some third party devices. According to Microsoft, the only device that wasn't on the list that might still be upgraded is the Lumia Icon, and this includes third party devices, such as those made by Yezz, HTC, and LG.
The LG Lancet and HTC One M8 are both eligible for those Release Preview builds, although there's really no excuse for them not being eligible for Redstone. The HTC One M8 has a Snapdragon 801 chipset, making it flagship hardware, and making it even harder to make the case that it provides a poor experience.
HTC even promised to upgrade the device, although that was back in April, 2015. In that promise, they said that they would update the device for two years, a period of time that has not yet ended. While that promise was almost a year ago, it was only two months ago that HTC admitted that the 8X won't receive the upgrade. One would think that they could have informed us of this then.
The LG Lancet is about ten months old, so there's no excuse for that.
Finally, there's Yezz phones, such as the Billy 4.7. Yezz had promised to upgrade their devices to Windows 10 Mobile only as far back as September. Sadly, Yezz devices have never shown up in the Windows Device Recovery Tool; therefore, it's not eligible for the Insider Program.
We have reached out to Yezz, HTC, and LG about this, but the situation is certainly curious. It stands to reason that it's up to the OEM as to whether or not to upgrade the device, but it's unclear as to why these firms have chosen not to do so.
It could also be possible that Microsoft controls which devices get upgraded, even if we're not talking about first party devices. Of course, now we start to fall into speculation.
What we have here is a failure to communicate
If you're a Windows phone fan, you're probably also a Microsoft fan. Admittedly, being a Microsoft fan can be a very rough road.
This is a firm that almost never communicates things in a proper and clear way, a company that, more times than not, leaves one saying, "What the $@&% were they thinking?"
So here we are again, dealing with Microsoft's abysmal method of public relations. Ever since the two promises that they made, we hadn |
大海
Media Are
Surnamed Party
Their Souls Return
To The Sea
The editors, it seemed, were suggesting that the severe controls on Chinese media Xi Jinping outlined in his February 19 speech were a death sentence for all semblance of journalistic professionalism — the last nail in the coffin.
In its statement, the Party committee of the Nanfang Daily Group suggested the editors had merely lacked “political sensitivity,” committing a serious error that had been “interpreted maliciously by others online.”
Staff at the Southern Metropolis Daily have suggested the editors would never knowingly have taken such risks. “It can’t have been deliberate,” one anonymous journalist told the New York Times. “It’s just very, very serious. And these days no one would dare to do something like that.”
Yes, these days indeed. These days are exactly the point.
Intended or not, the message about these days comes across loud and clear between the unfortunate headlines. Xi Jinping’s controls on “news and public opinion,” and in fact on all forms of expression and dissent, have become so draconian that to many the spirit of reform in China seems, like Yuan Geng’s ashes, to be slipping into the depths.
In his February 19 speech, Xi Jinping spoke of the need for “innovation” in the arena of media control, increasing the reach, influence and “infectiveness” of propaganda. During a visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily back in December, the president described propaganda as a kraken-like monster, its arms twisting through the media-saturated lives of the public. “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles,” he said, “and that is where we find the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work.”
But the kraken induces not interest or attraction, but terror. And if the kraken inspires “innovation,” it is defensive only.
For the nearest analogy to the preposterous level of panic and paranoia at work in the recent Southern Metropolis Daily headline scandal, we must return to the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, and to the very newspaper where China’s kraken-in-chief aired his comments last December on the “innovation” of control.
The “Black Box Scandal” (黑框事件)
It was early evening on July 8, 1974. One by one, the members of the Party committee of the People’s Liberation Army Daily — the official mouthpiece of the military and one of just three publications dominating China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution — received phone calls summoning them to the newspaper’s conference room for an unspecified urgent matter.
Page one of the May 19, 1974, edition of the People’s Liberation Army Daily.
The senior editors of the PLA Daily crowded into the conference room. Finally, in walked the young deputy editor from the newspaper’s “Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius Office.” From his leather satchel he withdrew several copies of the paper and said sternly: “Comrade Hu Wei (胡炜), chairman of the military commission’s Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius Office, has sent me here with instructions from the centre. Recently, leading central Party comrades received a letter from the masses pointing out that there is an overlap between the funeral picture of Mr. Lu Han on page two of the May 19 edition of the PLA Daily, and the picture on page one of Chairman Mao meeting with a foreign guest.”
“This is a serious political error,” the deputy editor continued. “The emergence of this problem is surely not an accident.” He read out a letter, dated June 25, from Mao Zedong’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, in which she demanded a thorough investigation of this “serious political incident.”
An overlap? What could the young editor possibly have meant?
Page 2 of the May 1, 1974, edition of the People’s Liberation Army Daily, with the obituary of former KMT general Lu Han.
As it turned out, the PLA Daily had run, on page two of the May 19 edition, an obituary for Lu Han, the former Kuomintang general who had defected to the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. As was customary, editors had included a photo of Lu bordered by a thick black box, which in China symbolises death.
Page one of the paper had featured coverage of Mao Zedong’s meeting with Makarios III, the first President of the Republic of Cyprus. In an image below the fold, Mao Zedong was pictured sitting in a meeting room with Makarios III.
Separately, the pages were fine. But when the newspaper was held up to the light, the black border around the page-two photograph of Lu Han became a black box around the image of Mao Zedong.
The following composite image is an approximation of what the reportedly scandalised PLA Daily readers would have seen as light filtered through pages one and two on the morning of May 19, 1974.
As in the case of the recent Southern Metropolis Daily incident, there was an immediate question of intention in what became known as the “Black Box Scandal.” Had the editors knowingly designed the paper in such a way as to curse the unassailable Chairman Mao?
Likewise, just as the political implications of the recent Southern Metropolis Daily headlines had to be teased out by Chinese on social networks, so had the “Black Box Scandal” been illuminated — ostensibly, at least — by “the masses.”
The above account of the “Black Box Scandal” comes directly from Wu Yongchuan (吴永川), a former deputy director of the PLA Daily who was on duty with another editor, Xue Zhen (薛真), as the May 19, 1974, edition went to press. Wu gave a detailed account of the event in the December 21, 2000, edition of Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly.
According to Wu, a full investigation was conducted into the incident and both he and Xue Zhen were compelled to make full and public self-examinations. The PLA Daily was ordered to make all necessary adjustments to ensure that such offences were not repeated.
And so it was, Wu writes, the PLA Daily became the first newspaper in China to set up a special “searchlight table” (探照桌), its top made of transparent glass under which could be placed an electric bulb. As the proofs were reviewed each night, editors studied pages one and two, pages three and four, and so on, ensuring there were no political violations — real or imagined. The process was called “searchlighting” (探照).
Zhang Xinyang’s article on the “Black Box Scandal” appears in the September 2015 edition of Essays Monthly (杂文月刊)
In his essay, “The Reputation of Millions Can’t Stand Up to One’s Man’s Ruin” (万人之誉不及一人之毁), Zhang Xinyang (张心阳), one of Wu Yongchuan’s former colleagues, tells us that “searchlighting” was eventually extended to the inspection of the Chinese characters appearing on the backs of photographs of Communist Party leaders. The editor responsible for searchlighting had to ensure that no words with negative connotations — like “death,” “overthrow” or “criticise” — appeared on the backs of such images. If possible infractions were found, the pages had to be scrapped and redesigned, even if that meant the edition came out late.
“Searchlighting” at the PLA Daily continued through the end of the Cultural Revolution. For Zhang Xinyang, the process was a grotesque anomaly — “a great invention,” he writes acerbically — highlighting the political excesses of that painful time.
Zhang writes: “It entirely surpassed conventional human thought, and innovated methods of reading the newspapers in ways not seen before or since, an entry in the annals of press history.”
But history, when not properly regarded, has a way of returning, kraken-like, from the depths. Xi Jinping’s fearsome “innovations,” should they continue, are likely to spawn new and yet oddly familiar absurdities — “searchlighting” for the 21st century.
The former PLA Daily deputy director, Wu Yongchuan, closed his December 2000 account of the “Black Box Scandal” by conceding that the political context of his experience must seem remote to his contemporary readers.
“I’m afraid,” wrote Wu, “that readers today would find it difficult to imagine such trials and tribulations in getting a newspaper out, or such a way of reading a newspaper.”
Ah, Wu Yongquan!
But these days. These days...As a front-end developer, you may not have considered yourself in terms of an architect. An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings.
Now you won’t be working on a building project, but you are working to create, albeit from pixels. When a designer comes to you with a Photoshop or Sketch file that he has put his blood, sweat and tears into, he or she is going to expect the same level of care when producing the HTML and CSS.
In the same way an architect would take into consideration methods before starting work, if we think about how we are going to write our CSS, our project WILL turn out for the better.
Over the next few articles I want to look into what types of CSS architecture are available, and spend some time evaluating them.
The first type of CSS architecture I want to consider is BEMCSS.
What does it stand for?
BEM, stands for Block, Element and Modifier, and it was an idea put together by Yandex, the owners of the huge Russian search engine Yandex search.
The aims of this methodology were to:Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
This year has been one of great surprises on the international scene.
First the Brexit vote and then the results of the presidential elections in the United States, both with an impact extending far beyond the countries where these two major events occurred.
Many uncertainties and equally important surprises await us in the Middle East. Great upheavals are under way: borders are disappearing, states are collapsing and the hot spots are multiplying.The world’s major powers are militarily involved in eradicating Islamic State (ISIS) – a terrorist organization that poses a threat to the entire world.In this struggle of the free world against barbarous, cross-border terrorism the Kurds play a key role, both in Iraq and Syria. On this Middle East chessboard with its complexity of conflicts where religious, ethnic and hydro-petroleum factors are intertwined, the Kurds play a decisive role.The Kurds are not pawns but knights, with their own kingly ambitions. Not only does the central position of the Kurdish region invite them to play this role, lying exactly on the fault line which separates the Shi’ite and Sunni worlds, but also the fact that they have proved to be the most effective and credible option open to the West in its efforts to fight this barbarism.Several factors argue for support a Kurdish state: This is a tolerant society, where different religions and denominations coexist peacefully, and where women are not relegated to the background but both fight on the front line and are political leaders. Religious minorities, murdered and persecuted elsewhere, have found refuge in Kurdistan. Aramaic, a biblical language that enjoys official status, is taught in schools.Battle-hardened by their tragic history and marked by the numerous revolts against repressive states that have been trampling their rights, the Kurds have proven to be formidable warriors. They are inflicting setbacks on and defeating the terrorists, playing a leading role in the battles to retake Mosul in Iraq and Raqa in Syria.Known as the region’s breadbasket because of its fertile lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, Kurdistan is also sitting on a sea of oil and natural gas. Political maturity and extensive natural resources are the structural factors guaranteeing the establishment of institutions that can evolve toward state structures. This is taking place.Many oil giants and major international companies are now established in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the few years following the fall of Saddam Hussein Iraqi Kurdistan has rebuilt, developed and imposed itself as a major economic player in the region.Is it necessary to recall that the Kurdish nation, divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, and numbering over 40 million people, is the largest nation in the world without a state? Given the oppression endured by the Kurdish people and in the name of the free world facing terrorism, it is today a moral imperative for the international community to support the Kurdish people’s desire for independence.The great English historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote brilliantly about the most decisive, influential and pivotal periods of history. He would certainly have written about this transition from the 20th to the 21st century as the age of possibilities. This emerging state – Kurdistan – is one such possibility. Let us collectively make all the other possibilities in this highly strategic and historically rich region positive.We are entering this century by a narrow door, with too much suffering and sacrifice. Let us walk through this door holding each other by the hand.The author is a researcher and former director of the Representation of the Regional Government of Iraqi Kurdistan in Paris.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>On Sunday September 4, the day before Labour Day, the Montreal chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World union (IWW) organized a march to protest precarious working conditions, the stagnation of industrial worker’s salaries, and economic disparities in Canada. Approximately 100 to 150 people were in attendance, many of whom were “Wobblies”, an affectionate name for members of the IWW.
Protesters gathered in front of the fountain at the Maisonneuve Market, in the Hochelaga neighbourhood of Montreal, carrying banners, signs, and flags emblazoned with the IWW logo.
Prior to the march, demonstration leaders spoke of the dangers of forgetting the true meaning of Labour Day: a day to commemorate the past and current struggles of international labour movements, and to assure better working conditions, hours, and wages for the working class.
“[September’s] Labour Day is effectively the capitalist Labour Day. […] May Day, in history, is the actual labour day.”
They also addressed what they saw as a corporate takeover of Labour Day. “[September’s] Labour Day is effectively the capitalist Labour Day […] May Day, in history, is the actual Labour Day,” Tim Gauger, a member of Montreal’s IWW chapter and a McGill employee who attended the protest, told The Daily, referencing May Day’s traditional commemoration of those who died in the Haymarket Massacre of 1886.
“The ruling class doesn’t want [us] to remember that,” Gauger continued, so they moved Labour Day to September, so the memory of May Day and the struggle [wouldn’t] live on.”
As a member of Montreal’s IWW chapter, Gauger marched to show solidarity for his fellow Wobblies, notably those who were on strike that day: as of September 4, around 200 of Montreal’s Old Port workers have been on strike for 101 days, along with Frite Alors employees, a number of whom have recently unionized in an effort to assure better wages and employee benefits. Workers from both unions marched and spoke in Sunday’s demonstration.
Old Port and Frite Alors workers voice demands
“It’s now officially been 101 days since we went on strike,” said one Old Port worker to the crowd through a megaphone in French. “This is the fourth time that we have refused the management’s offer: the last offer was effectively the same as the mediator’s last offer, but with a few extra trinkets.”
The Old Port workers on strike, members of the Syndicat des employes du Vieux-Port de Montreal (SEVPM), are seeking a significant wage increase and want to boost entry-level wages from the current $10.67 an hour to $15 an hour, which they have declared a “living wage.” According to the SEVPM, the management’s latest offer proposed an entry level-wage of $12.38 an hour. They have also demanded better benefits. “As of now, all regular and occasional [Old Port] employees are not guaranteed sick days,” the speaker continued in French.
“We started this strike for better work conditions, demanding an increase in salary, a dialogue between the bosses and the workers, which as of now is inexistent, and paid sick leave,” a Frite Alors employee on strike said in French to the crowd. “The food service industry, where the majority of workers are women, relies on a model of cheap labour, and workers that are unsatisfied with their conditions are forced to look for another job in their industry rather than try to demand recognition for their rights.”
“We want to reappropriate this struggle, and put in their face that we still struggle.”
According to Montreal’s IWW chapter, Frite Alors employees on strike have demanded an increase of $2 an hour for all kitchen employees, with an additional $1.80 an hour for female employees, as well as five paid sick leave days per year, and a minimum of 20 hours of guaranteed work per week.
Reappropriating the struggle
Not all those who spoke during the march were workers on strike. Among those invited to speak at the demonstration were members of the BAILS committee, a Montreal organization that fights growing gentrification in the Hochelaga and Maisonneuve neighborhoods. Their initiatives decry the development of expensive condos and shops over affordable housing for lower to middle income families in the neighbourhood.
Liliane Dupont, a member of the BAILS committee, highlighted the superficial nature of gentrification in her speech, deploring what she sees as city initiatives that seem to help people by cleaning up neighbourhoods, but that do little to actually improve families’ social conditions.
“Yes, the new parks are beautiful, and yes, the new flowers on Rue Ontario and Rue Sainte Catherine are beautiful, and yes, Rue Ontario is now very clean, but the sidewalk still dirties your pants when you’re sitting out in the street [because rent is too high], so let’s continue our demonstration, and continue to demand better working conditions as well,” Dupont exclaimed in French.
In an interview with The Daily, Adam Veilleux, a Wobblie and construction worker, spoke on behalf of the march’s organizers about the importance of these strikes.
“We want to reappropriate this struggle, and put in their face that we still struggle,” said Veilleux. “The [Old Port] union is fighting Ottawa, and you fight this big institution, and go protest in Ottawa in front of Trudeau, [yet] the Old Port site continues running with scabs [editor’s note: people who refuse to strike], then nothing happens. The site continues to make plenty of money.”On July 1 2016, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) moved from a trial phase to a full national roll-out. In this series on Understanding the NDIS, we explore how the scheme works, why Australia needs it, and the issues to be addressed before eligible Australians, such as many Indigenous people with disability, can receive the benefits they are entitled to.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is designed to offer disability support packages – that is, money for disability support – to every Australian citizen under 65 with “significant and ongoing support needs”.
When the scheme is fully implemented in 2019, up to 10% of people with a disability – about 460,000 people – are expected to receive a disability support package.
However, many people eligible for the NDIS are likely to miss out on its benefits. These people fall into particular groups, such as those who may not think of themselves as having a disability, or people who may not know what the NDIS is or how to access it.
Do I have a disability?
Many people might not apply the label of disability to themselves, perhaps because of the discrimination and stigma associated with it. Others may not think they have a disability as defined by the NDIS because of a different understanding about diversity, perhaps due to age or culture.
For instance, research shows people from Indigenous or other cultural and language-diverse backgrounds are less likely to use a disability label or use disability services.
Many people, such as children and their families, may believe support needs are the result of a developmental stage or, in the case of older people, a consequence of ageing.
For instance, behaviours such as aggression may be influenced by what the NDIS would label as social, cognitive or psychological and social disability. If the child or their family experiencing aggression believe it to be a phase, they wouldn’t think to ask for NDIS support.
Many people with disability currently do not use disability support services or do not have family to help them find support. These include some people in the criminal justice system, especially young people who are less likely to be identified as having a disability. Others in this group are homeless or have mental health needs.
In addition to the NDIS packages, the intention is to refer people with disability to health, justice, housing and education services. All of these are state responsibilities. Whether support for a person with mental illness is a disability cost and should be paid for by the NDIS, or a general health cost covered by the state, are the kinds of details still being negotiated.
In the meantime, people are confused and could miss out if states withdraw money from these services for people with disability or do not respond to increased demand, such as for affordable housing.
Then there is the issue of disability support for people with a severe and persistent mental illness. They are eligible for the NDIS if their disability is permanent. How this permanency will be defined is still being worked out, but there is a risk people whose support needs fluctuate, such as due to periodic severe mental illness, may think they do not qualify because they do not always need support.
How to access the NDIS
The design of the NDIS relies on people requesting support and making informed choices about how to receive it. In a circle of exclusion, people who need support paid for by the NDIS first need support to work out how to use and navigate the scheme.
The group of people likely to miss out for this reason are the many who are already marginalised in multiple ways, including due to socioeconomic disadvantage.
People with multiple and complex support needs are an example of this exclusion. They may have a variety of needs from a life that could include mental illness, drug and alcohol use, poverty, poor education, criminal justice contact and cultural and language barriers.
Or they may have particular circumstances, such as living in a remote community, that do not reconcile with the market-based structure of the NDIS.
Many of these people do not receive other government support they are entitled to. That then means they are less likely to apply for the NDIS. Because without connections into other supports, they are less likely to know how to navigate the new system.
The NDIS is still in the development stage and work is being done to reduce these risks of exclusion. This includes agreements with the states on how to ensure quality social support; transforming the disability sector to meet the needs of everyone entitled to use support; and building capacity for people with disability, families and professionals to understand their entitlements under the scheme.
Apart from readying social services so that quality support is available, the most important development will be information and advocacy throughout social services, so the public and professionals know how to reach out to people who could benefit from the NDIS.
You can read today’s related article on the risk to support services for parents with newly diagnosed children with disability here.Title: Shell Better Energy Future Hydrogen Future Fuels KM
Duration: 45”
Hydrogen Future Fuels transcript
(Shell track plays)
(Animated sequence)
Open on a light purple screen with a blue text box in the centre
(Text display)
VO & super: How can a car’s only emission be water?
(Animated sequence)
The box expands to include all the copy and an animation of both a car & a water droplet, connecting to the highlighted words.
(VO)
With the number of vehicles on our roads still growing, Shell is developing cleaner ways to help people get around.
(VO)
Like cars powered by hydrogen.
(Animated sequence)
We see a Hydrogen car driving
(Super)
Cars powered by hydrogen
(VO)
Hydrogen fuel cells drive motors which give all the performance of a conventional car…
(Animated sequence)
The hydrogen car continues to drive with the fuel cell and motor being pulled out
(Super)
Fuel cell
Motor
(VO)
…that can be fully refuelled in minutes
(Animated sequence)
The car is being refuelled at a Hydrogen station, we see a Shell pump and a stop clock timing it
(VO)
…with a range of more than 500km.
(Super)
500km
(VO)
And the only emission? H20. Water.
(Animated sequence)
The hydrogen car drives and a yellow circle appears with a visual of water coming out of the exhaust onto a hand, the H20 symbol appears
(Super)
Water
(VO)
Shell is developing hydrogen fuel stations in California and across Germany and the UK…
(Animated sequence)
We see a town with the H2 symbol being pulled out along with the Shell logo. A map of the US, UK & Germany appear along side
(VO)
…in addition to developing and supplying a range of other future fuels, like Liquefied Natural Gas and biofuels……as well as charging points for electric vehicles.
(Super)
Future Fuels
LNG
BIO
E.V.
(VO)
These are just some of the ways that Shell is helping to bring better energy to everyone.
(Animated sequence)
A globe with pulling out the UK, China, India, Kenya, Brazil, Germany, and the US
(End frame)
#makethefuture
Shell Pectan
Shell mnemonicMacquarie Investment Management has reached an agreement with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to refund around $5.5 million to approximately 2300 people who were diddled out of money due to a system error on its investment platform that led to some clients being overcharged fees over a 13-year period.
The errors occurred between 2001 and 2014 on a number of products using its Macquarie Wrap Platform, a collection of financial products the institution has approved for its advisers to direct clients' money into.
ASIC commissioner Greg Tanzer said the regulator welcomes self-reporting of system errors by financial services providers. Credit:Louise Kennerley
The market regulator acknowledged the cooperative approach taken by Macquarie in self-reporting the matter in April 2014 after discovering two errors on its platform.
"We welcome the self-reporting of large system errors. Where errors do occur, entities must identify and appropriately rectify them as soon as possible. ASIC will work with entities who report issues to us to ensure consumers are compensated in a timely, effective way," ASIC commissioner Greg Tanzer said.November's unemployment numbers have started a fresh round of fretting both over the future of the economy as well as who -- in the immediate sense -- will steer the country through the crisis.
The political fireworks, such as they are this time of year, were set off yesterday when Rep. Barney Frank and others let it be known that they want Barack Obama to play a more assertive role in solving the mess.
"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time," Frank told consumer advocates Thursday. "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."
Certainly, the remark was meant more as a criticism of the current White House occupant's effectiveness than it was of Obama's cautious approach towards inserting himself into the fray. A veteran of presidential transition's past, however, says that while the urge to call on Obama to step in immediately is compelling, it is also mistaken -- not in the sense that having two cooks in the kitchen would hurt the economic recovery process, but because this crisis, constitutionally, politically and morally, rests in the hands of George W. Bush.
"This thing about one president at a time is not just a saying," said Mickey Kantor, former Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. "[Obama] is not president of the United States. He is not. He can do what I think he has done in looking strong and forcefully making statements from time to time -- trying to move forward and create the sense that we have the ability to address these issues. But he can't usurp or fill a vacuum that is existence because the Bush administration has seemingly turned the lights out already. I'm deeply concerned about that, and I'm not saying this in any partisan. But Obama has to be cautious here."
Frank and other Democrats on the Hill would not dispute the notion that Bush and his crew have largely "checked out." The current head-scratching move -- putting aside the actual policy matters -- was a trip made by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to China this week.
"The Secretary of the Treasury is in China right now," said Sen. Chris Dodd. "It's time to come home. We've got a serious problem on our hands. And I realize that he's got a meeting over there, but we need him here."
And yet, concerns that Obama should play a more assertive role are as much immediate in their focus as they are long-term. Among progressives there is an emerging fear that the agenda of the incoming president will be scrapped before it has even begun. The dread has only worsened alongside the economy's fall 0- whether it be the automotive industry's impending bankruptcy or unemployment numbers going up by nearly two million in 2008 alone.
Two weeks ago, I asked Kantor whether he thought Obama would have to scrap his presidential blueprint in light of these pitfalls. He responded by saying that the economic crisis, while daunting, would not be insurmountable.
On Friday, he dismissed the notion that things had grown worse since our last conversation, saying he always figured it would be this awful. "It bottoms out, I think, by the first quarter of next year," he said.
And while he continued to preach optimistically about the possibilities of an Obama White House, he did note that fiscal prudence and restraint would impact the early years of the president-elect's economic plans.Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
While the NBA playoffs are in full swing and the draft lottery is Wednesday evening, the talk of rumors surrounding potential free agents is starting to bubble to the surface.
Basketball fans can’t get enough scuttlebutt.
The biggest rumor so far this postseason that has any real validity is that former Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks power forward Lamar Odom wants to sign in LA, according to ESPN NBA insider Stephen A. Smith.
While Odom has made no secret about his feelings towards the team and returning to their bench as a sixth man, there were questions on how much the Lakers wanted the services of the big man. It looks like those questions may be answered.
Daniel Beurge is reporting what Smith said on the radio about the mutual interest between Odom and the Lakers:
(Odom) desperately wants to come back and wants to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. Mike Brown desperately wants him back. He’s going to talk to Buss and Lakers hierarchy to see what they can do about getting Lamar Odom back.
For those fans that want to just look at the numbers, don’t be fooled by the stats you find from last year with the Mavericks. While there is no doubting that 6.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game during his time in Dallas is terrible, Odom was emotionally ruined by the shocking trade that sent him away from LA.
While most fans would tell Odom to toughen up and take his lumps like a man, he is an emotional man and an emotional player; that’s what makes him so good and such a spark off the bench.
That’s what LA needs.
Not only will the former Sixth-Man of the Year be returning to the city where he is most comfortable, he will be returning to the team and the coaching staff that knows how to get the most out of him.
If Odom makes a comeback in LA, I expect him to average almost 15 points and at least nine boards every game; just like he was before the Lakers traded him.
There could be a late catch in the works, though; as ESPN NBA reporter John Hollinger is reporting about a stipulation that could hold this whole deal up:
Reminder: If waived Lamar Odom can't rejoin Lakers until one-year anniversary of trade, Dec. 11. — John Hollinger (@johnhollinger) May 30, 2012
While this is an odd twist in the curious case of Odom, this won’t keep the star from LA if that’s what he and the team really want. Where this hurts most is in the wallet for the former Laker.
If Odom doesn’t play until Dec. 11 for the Lakers, he will have to take a substantially less-impressive contract fiscally so the team can go out and get other players in the meantime. While it shouldn't be a big deal, money is still a factor.
The Lakers proved last year they desperately need help off the bench, so Odom will be a Laker again the second he is eligible. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.
Check back for more on the National Basketball Association as it comes, and don’t miss Bleacher Report’s NBA page to get your fill of all things basketball.
Follow @Donald_WoodBy Matt Becker
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I have to say, I have a love/hate relationship with life insurance.
When it’s done right, life insurance is one of the best ways to ensure your family’s financial security. But it’s often sold by companies and insurance agents who don’t have your best interests at heart, which all too often ends with you paying too much for the wrong type of coverage.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Life insurance can be very simple, and most of the time it can provide a lot of protection without much cost.
And make no mistake, if you have kids you almost certainly need some amount of life insurance. Because life insurance is the tool that makes sure there will always be financial resources available for them, no matter what.
This guide will help you get the right type and the right amount of life insurance, without paying more than you have to. And no, I don’t sell life insurance so there’s no incentive for me to push it on you. My only goal is to help you get what you need.
Here’s what we’re going to cover (you can click the links to skip ahead to any particular section):
Let’s get into it!
Grab the PDF: This guide is long and comprehensive, so you can click here if you’d like to download it as a PDF and work through it on your own time.
Part 1: Do you need life insurance?
The idea behind life insurance is pretty simple. If you die, your life insurance will pay a predetermined amount of money to the person or people you designate as the beneficiaries of your policy.
For example, if I have a $1,000,000 policy and name my wife as the beneficiary, she will receive $1,000,000 when I die, as long as the policy is still in place. You can also name your kids as beneficiaries, friends, other family members, and even a living trust.
So, when is this kind of protection valuable? In general, you only need to answer two questions to decide whether or not you need life insurance:
Does anyone rely on you for financial support? Do you have enough money in savings to provide that financial support?
Let’s tackle them one at a time.
1. Does anyone rely on you for financial support?
If there’s anyone who relies on you for financial support, life insurance would provide the financial resources to continue that support even after your death.
Here are a few types of people who might fall into this category:
Young children
A spouse or partner who would struggle to pay bills and save without your support
Co-signors and joint holders of debt who would be responsible for paying it back if you died
Elder parents you are caring for
If there isn’t anyone who relies on you for financial support, you probably don’t need to buy life insurance. Which means that you might not need life insurance in any of the following situations:
You’re single without any co-signors or joint debt
You’re married but you don’t have kids and your spouse could support him or herself without you
Your kids are out of college, earning money, and able to support themselves
So, that’s the first test. If you have someone who relies on you for financial support, there’s a good chance that life insurance would be a helpful form of protection.
But there’s still one more question to answer.
2. Do you have enough money in savings to provide that financial support?
If you already have enough money in savings to provide the necessary financial support, then life insurance isn’t needed. You can simply set up your estate plan to pass that savings on to the right people and avoid the extra cost of a life insurance policy.
Of course, most people with a young and growing family aren’t in that situation. Young children in particular have many years of financial dependence ahead of them, and most parents haven’t had anywhere near enough time at that point in their lives to build the savings needed to support it.
But if your children are older and you’ve had more time to build savings, you may find that the money you have in the bank is enough. In that case, life insurance wouldn’t be necessary.
Why stay-at-home parents should have life insurance
While answering those two questions is generally pretty straightforward, people do tend to get tripped up when it comes to stay-at-home parents. Because while a stay-at-home parent might not earn an income, the things they do every day would cost money to replace and life insurance would make that adjustment a lot easier.
According to the website salary.com, the typical stay-at-home mom performs the tasks of someone who should be making an annual salary of $112,962. To say it a little differently, replacing everything that the typical stay-at-home parent does every day might cost around $112,962 per year. (I’m assuming that a stay-at-home dad would have pretty much the same value.)
Now, that $112,962 is just an average and doesn’t necessarily reflect your family’s specific situation. And a stay-at-home parent does a lot of things that WOULDN’T be able to be replaced with paid help, so I wouldn’t take that number as the baseline of your life insurance need.
But it’s pretty clear that a stay-at-home parent has a lot of value that could cost a lot of money to replace, and life insurance could help your family with those costs.
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while a Western diplomat who compiled estimates put the number at 300 to 1,000.[4]
Identifying the dead [ edit ]
The Tiananmen Mothers, a victims' advocacy group co-founded by Ding Zilin and Zhang Xianling, whose children were killed during the crackdown, have identified 202 victims as of August 2011. The group has worked painstakingly, in the face of government interference, to locate victims' families and collect information about the victims. Their tally has grown from 155 in 1999 to 202 in 2011. The list includes four individuals who committed suicide on or after 4 June, for reasons that related to their involvement in the demonstrations.[167][168]
Wu Renhua of the Chinese Alliance for Democracy, an overseas group agitating for democratic reform in China, said that he was only able to verify and identify 15 military deaths. Wu asserts that if deaths from events unrelated to demonstrators were removed from the count, only seven deaths among military personnel may be counted as those "killed in action" by rioters.[110]
Deaths in Tiananmen Square itself [ edit ]
Goddess of Democracy outside of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada A replica ofoutside of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
On 19 June, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing delivered the results of the official enquiry. More than 7,000 were wounded or injured and two hundred forty one killed, including thirty-six students, ten soldiers and thirteen People's Armed Police during a riot in Chang'An Road.[169] Chinese government officials have long asserted that no one died in the Square itself in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the 'hold-out' of the last batch of students in the south of the Square. Initially foreign media reports of a "massacre" on the Square were prevalent, though subsequently journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the Square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[a] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[b] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the Square itself. Records by the Tiananmen Mothers suggest that three students died in the Square the night of the Army's push into the Square.[172] Democracy activist Wu Renhua asserted that the government's discussion of the issue was a red herring intended to absolve itself of responsibility and showcase its benevolence. Wu said that it was irrelevant whether the shooting occurred inside or outside of the Square itself, as it was still a reprehensible massacre of unarmed civilians.[173]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Arrests and punishment [ edit ]
The authorities carried out mass arrests. Many workers were summarily tried and executed. In contrast, the students—many of whom came from relatively affluent backgrounds and were well-connected—received much lighter sentences. Wang Dan, the student leader who topped the most wanted list, spent seven years in prison. Many of the students and university staff implicated were permanently politically stigmatized, some never to be employed again. Some student leaders such as Chai Ling and Wuer Kaixi were able to escape to the United States, the United Kingdom, France and other Western nations under Operation Yellowbird that was organized from Hong Kong, a British territory at the time.[174]
Smaller protest actions continued in other cities for a few days. Some university staff and students who had witnessed the killings in Beijing organized or spurred commemorative events upon their return to school. At Shanghai's prestigious Jiaotong University, for example, the party secretary organized a public commemoration event, with engineering students producing a large metal wreath.[citation needed]
According to the Dui Hua Foundation, citing a provincial government, 1,602 individuals were imprisoned for protest-related activities in the early 1989. As of May 2012, at least two remain incarcerated in Beijing and five others remain unaccounted for.[175] In June 2014, it was reported that Miao Deshun was believed to be the last known prisoner incarcerated for their participation in the protests; he was last heard from a decade ago.[176] All are reported to be suffering from mental illness.[175]
Leadership changes [ edit ]
The Party leadership expelled Zhao Ziyang from the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Hu Qili, another PSC member who opposed the martial law but abstained from voting, was also removed from the committee. He was, however, able to retain his party membership, and after "changing his opinion", was reassigned as deputy minister in the Ministry for Machinery and Electronics Industry. Another reform-minded Chinese leader, Wan Li, was also put under house arrest immediately after he stepped out of his plane at Beijing Capital Airport upon returning from his shortened trip abroad; the authorities declared his detention to be on health grounds. When Wan Li was released from his house arrest after he finally "changed his opinion" he, like Qiao Shi, was transferred to a different position with equal rank but a mostly ceremonial role. Several Chinese ambassadors abroad claimed political asylum.[177][178]
Jiang Zemin, then Party Secretary of Shanghai, was promoted to General Secretary of the Communist Party. Jiang's decisive actions in Shanghai involving the World Economic Herald and his having prevented deadly violence in the city won him support from party elders in Beijing. Having put the new leadership team in place and recognising his weakened position, Deng Xiaoping himself also bowed out of the party leadership—at least officially—by resigning his last leadership position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission later that year. He kept a low profile until 1992. According to diplomatic cables de-classified by Canada, the Swiss ambassador informed Canadian diplomats in confidence that over several months following the massacre, "every member of the Politburo Standing Committee has approached him about transferring very significant amounts of money to Swiss bank accounts".[179]
Bao Tong, Zhao Ziyang's aide, was the highest-ranking official to be formally charged with a crime in connection with 1989 demonstrations. He was convicted in 1992 of "revealing state secrets and counter-revolutionary propagandizing" and served seven years in prison. To purge sympathizers of Tiananmen demonstrators among the party's rank-and-file, the party leadership initiated a one-and-a-half-year-long rectification program to "deal strictly with those inside the party with serious tendencies toward bourgeois liberalization". Four million people were reportedly investigated for their role in the protests. More than 30,000 Communist officers were deployed to assess 'political reliability' of more than one million government officials.[180] The authorities arrested tens if not hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Some were seized in broad daylight while they walked in the street; others were arrested at night. Many were jailed or sent to labor camps. They were often denied access to see their families and often put in cells so crowded that not everyone had space to sleep. Dissidents shared cells with murderers and rapists, and torture was not uncommon.[181]
Media coverage [ edit ]
Chinese media [ edit ]
Xinwei Lianbo after the protests Du Xian (left) and Xue Fei (right) onafter the protests
The suppression on June 4 marked the end of a period of relative press freedom in China and media workers—both foreign and domestic—faced heightened restrictions and punishment in the aftermath of the crackdown. State media reports in the immediate aftermath were sympathetic to the students. As a result, those responsible were all later removed from their posts. Two news anchors Xue Fei and Du Xian, who reported this event on June 4 in the daily Xinwen Lianbo broadcast on China Central Television were fired because they displayed sad emotions. Wu Xiaoyong, the son of former foreign minister Wu Xueqian was removed from the English Program Department of Chinese Radio International, ostensibly for his sympathies towards protesters. Editors and other staff at People's Daily, including director Qian Liren and Editor-in-Chief Tan Wenrui, were also sacked because of reports in the paper which were sympathetic towards the protesters.[182] Several editors were arrested.[183]
Foreign media [ edit ]
With the imposition of martial law, the Chinese government cut off the satellite transmissions of western broadcasters such as CNN and CBS.[184] Broadcasters tried to defy these orders by reporting via telephone. Footage was quickly smuggled out of the country. The only network which was able to record shots during the night of 4 June was Televisión Española of Spain (TVE).[185][186] During the military action, some foreign journalists faced harassment from authorities. CBS correspondent Richard Roth and his cameraman were taken into custody while filing a report from the Square via mobile phone.[187]
Several foreign journalists who had covered the crackdown were expelled in the weeks that followed while others were harassed by authorities or blacklisted from reentering the country.[188][189] In Shanghai, foreign consulates were told that the safety of journalists who failed to heed newly enacted reporting guidelines could not be guaranteed.[190]
The USC U.S.-China Institute's Assignment: China series includes a segment on American media coverage of the protests and their suppression. Tiananmen Square features interviews with correspondents for the Associated Press and United Press International, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, the Voice of America, ABC, CBS and CNN.[191]
International reaction [ edit ]
A replica of the memorial in the Polish city of Wrocław depicting a destroyed bicycle and a tank track as a symbol of the Tiananmen Square protests. The original was destroyed by Security Service despite the fact that it was after the 1989 elections.
The Chinese government's response was widely denounced, particularly by Western governments and media.[192] Criticism came from both Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Australia and some west Asian and Latin American countries. Many Asian countries remained silent throughout the protests; the government of India responded to the massacre by ordering the state television to pare down the coverage to the barest minimum, so as not to jeopardize a thawing in relations with China, and to offer political empathy for the events.[193] Cuba, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, among others, supported the Chinese government and denounced the protests.[192] Overseas Chinese students demonstrated in many cities in Europe, America, the Middle East and Asia.[194]
List of 21 most wanted student leaders [ edit ]
On 13 June 1989, the Beijing Public Security Bureau released an order for the arrest of 21 students who they identified as leaders of the protest.[195][196] These 21 most wanted student leaders were part of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation[195][196] which had been an instrumental student organization in the Tiananmen Square protests. Prominent leaders such as Wang Dan, Wu'er Kaixi and Chai Ling topped the list. Immediately after the release of the list, only 7 out of the 21 Most Wanted escaped China, with assistance from the Hong-Kong based organization Operation Yellowbird.[197] Though decades have passed, the Most Wanted list has never been retracted by the Chinese government.[198]
Official release [ edit ]
The Beijing Public Security Bureau issued the 21 Most Wanted list with the following description:
The illegal organization "Beijing Students Autonomous Federation" instigated and organized the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Beijing. It is now decided to pursue 21 of its head and key members, including Wang Dan. After receiving this order, please immediately arrange investigation work. If found, immediate arrest the targets and inform the Beijing Public Security Bureau.[195]
Photographs with biographical descriptions of the 21 Most Wanted followed in this order on the poster:
The 21 most wanted student leaders faces and descriptions were broadcast on television as well and were constantly looped.[199][200] Arrests were also broadcast, such as that of Most Wanted No. 21 Xiong Yan.[201]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Each of the 21 students faced diverse experiences after their arrests or escapes; while some remain abroad with no intent to return, others have chosen to stay indefinitely such as Zhang Ming.[197] Only 7 of the 21 were able to escape, the remainder of the 21 student leaders were apprehended and incarcerated.[202] Zhou Fengsuo was turned in by his own sister and arrested on 13 June 1989 in Xi'an. He was imprisoned for one year before being released in 1990 due to international pressures, along with 97 other political prisoners.[202] Some served longer sentences than others, such as Wang Dan, one of the most visible leaders during the protests topping the most wanted list.[203] Wang Dan continued his activist efforts after his parole release and was subsequently sentenced to 11 years for subversion.[202] Liu Gang, who was arrested in Baoding in mid June,[204] attempted to organize his fellow prisoners in defiance, by conducting a hunger strike.[205][204] He had his arms lashed behind his back in a harsh position for several days while in prison.[204] Many of those who initially escaped from the most wanted list were assisted by Operation Yellowbird and fled to the West.[197] Those who escaped remain in exile today and have opened up about their experiences. Zhang Boli, number 17 on the list wrote a book titled "Escape From China" that details his experience during the protests and his escape.[206] Those who escaped, whether it was in 1989 or after, generally have had difficulty re-entering China, even up to this day.[207] The Chinese government prefers to leave the dissidents in exile.[208] Those who attempt to re-enter, such as Wu'er Kaixi, have been simply sent back, but not arrested.[208] In 2009, Xiong Yan, number 21 on the list, returned to China with a visit to Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, in order to mark the 20th anniversary the Tiananmen protests.[209] Xiong Yan spent 19 months in jail, after his release he fled to the United States where he keeps in touch with Tiananmen activists and participates in pro-democracy events.[209] Xiong was invited to the southern Chinese enclave by the Hong Kong Alliance, which has been holding annual candlelight vigils on the 4 June anniversary Tiananmen protests.[209] Many of the 21 who are in exile have joined human rights organizations or are now engaging in private business.[201][202]
Obscure dissidents [ edit ]
Not all of the 21 most wanted are as well known as Chai Ling or Wang Dan. Others such Zhang Zhiqing have essentially disappeared. After his initial arrest in January 1991 and subsequent release, nothing further is known about his situation and where he lives now.[202] Zhang Zhiqing's role and reason for being listed on the list of 21 most wanted is generally unknown; this is the case for many others on the list such Wang Chaohua. Other dissidents that are not as well known to the public include Zhou Fengsuo and Wang Zhengyun. Zhou Fengsuo was a physics student at Tsinghua University and a member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation during the protests.[202] Fengsuo was turned in by his sister and arrested on June 13, 1989 in Xi'an.[210][202] He was imprisoned for one year before being released in 1990 due to international pressures, along with 97 other political prisoners.[202] Leaving China for the United States, he attended the University of Chicago.[211] Steady in his activist roots he co-founded Humanitarian China, an organization that promotes rule of law in China and also raises money for Chinese political prisoners.[211] Wang Zhengyun was a student of the Central University for Nationalities and was the only member of the Kucon ethnicity minority group to be studying at a university.[202] Zhengyun was arrested in July 1989 and released two years later.[202] He was sent back to his village in the Yunnan countryside.[202] In December 1998, Wang was one of 19 dissidents, including Zhai Weimin, who staged a hunger strike to protest the oppression of CDP members and other dissidents.[202]
Ma Shaofang and Yang Tao are another pair of dissidents that lack public attention despite their constant activist efforts. Ma Shaofang was a student of the Beijing Film Academy during the protests and turned himself in on 13 June 1989.[202][210] In October 1990 he was sentenced to three years in prison for counterrevolutionary incitement.[212] In May 1994, he participated with Wang Dan and other dissidents in a petition to the National People's Congress calling for a reassessment of 4 June.[212] He has had issues in attempting to open a business and has had a series of short lived jobs ever since and is living in Shenzhen.[213][212] Yang Tao, who was at one time the head of Beijing University's Autonomous Student Federation, remains in China today.[212][214] He was initially charged as being an instigator of the counterrevolutionary rebellion and imprisoned for one year on 16 June 1989.[212] In 1998, he wrote an open letter asking for the release of Wang Youcai.[214] His continued efforts landed him in prison in 1999 after lobbying for the government to reverse the labeling of the protest as a "counterrevolutionary rebellion".[214] He was originally arrested on charges of "incitement to overthrow state political power."[214][212] However, he was indicted on amended charges of tax evasion on 23 December due to lack of evidence and on 5 January 2003 was sentenced to four years in prison.[212][214] He was released in May 2003.[212] Yang too has had trouble earning a living.[214]
Impact [ edit ]
Student leaders [ edit ]
Among the student leaders, Wang Dan and Zhao Changqing were arrested. As a lesser figure in the demonstrations, Zhao was released after six months in prison. However, he was once again incarcerated for continuing to petition for political reform in China. Wang Dan was sent to prison, then allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1998 on the grounds of medical parole. He eventually received a PhD from Harvard University and went on to teach modern Chinese history at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Wu'erkaixi fled to Taiwan and has since become a political commentator on Taiwanese national radio.[215] Chai Ling fled to France and then went on to the United States to study at Princeton and Harvard. She then founded an IT start-up company and a non-profit organization called All Girls Allowed, which addresses issues such as women's rights and female infanticide in China. Li Lu became an investment banker and venture capitalist on Wall Street, started his own hedge fund and became a business partner to Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway, partly through human rights contacts he was acquainted with as a result of his involvement at Tiananmen Square.[216]
Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao were arrested in late 1989 for their involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Chinese authorities alleged they were the "black hands" behind the movement. Both Chen and Wang rejected the allegations made against them. They were put on trial in 1990 and sentenced to 13 years in prison.[217]
Domestic political developments [ edit ]
The protests led to a strengthened role for the state. In its aftermath, many of the freedoms introduced during the 1980s were rescinded, as the party returned to a conventional Leninist mold and re-established firm control over the press, publishing, and mass media. The protests were also a blow to the separation of powers model established by the 1982 Constitution and by convention, whereby the President was a symbolic position (figurehead), and the real centres of power of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, the Premier of the State Council and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission were intended to be different people, to prevent the excesses of Mao-style personal rule.
However, when President Yang Shangkun asserted his reserve powers with his post of Central Military Commission and openly split with general secretary Zhao Ziyang over the use of force to side with Premier Li Peng and Central Military Commission chairman Deng Xiaoping, official policy became inconsistent and incoherent, significantly impeding the exercise of power. In 1993, the positions of General Secretary, Central Military Commission Chairman and President were all consolidated into the same office, reverting to the previous Maoist distribution of power that had previously existed since 1972.
In 1989, neither the Chinese military nor the Beijing police had sufficient anti-riot gear, such as rubber bullets and tear gas.[218] After the Tiananmen Square protests, riot police in Chinese cities were equipped with non-lethal equipment for riot control. The protests led to increased spending on internal security and expanded the role of the People's Armed Police in suppressing urban protests.[citation needed]
The aftermath of the protests saw the resurgence of conservative attitudes towards reform among policymakers, intended to slow the rapid changes that were said to have contributed to the causes of the protest.[16] Deng Xiaoping, the "architect" of the reform policy, saw his influence significantly reduced following the protests, forcing him into making concessions with socialist hardliners.[219] In dismissing Zhao Ziyang, who shared Deng's vision for economic reform but disagreed with him over politics, Deng had lost the foremost champion of his own economic vision. Facing pressure from the conservative camp, Deng distanced himself from state affairs.[16]
This slow pace of reform was met with stiff resistance from provincial governors and broke down completely in the early 1990s as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Deng's Southern Tour of 1992, designed by the ailing but influential leader as a means to reinstate his economic reform agenda.[16] On the tour, Deng criticized the leftist hardliners that had gained power following the protests, and praised entrepreneurship and other market-driven policies. Initially ignored by Beijing, the Chinese Politburo eventually sided with Deng and economic reforms again gained prominence.[citation needed]
Hong Kong [ edit ]
Candlelight vigil in Hong Kong in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the June 4th incident
In Hong Kong, the Tiananmen square protests led to fears that China would renege on its commitments under one country, two systems following the impending handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1997. In response, Governor Chris Patten tried to expand the franchise for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, which led to friction with Beijing. For many Hong Kongers, Tiananmen served as a turning point for when they lost trust in the Beijing government. The event, coupled with general uncertainty about the status of Hong Kong after the transfer of sovereignty, led to a sizeable exodus of Hong Kongers to Western countries such as Canada and Australia prior to 1997.
There have been large candlelight vigils attended by tens of thousands in Hong Kong every year since 1989 even after the transfer of power to China in 1997. The June 4th Museum closed in July 2016, after only two years in its location. The group that runs the museum, the Hong Kong Alliance, has started to crowdfund money to open the museum in a new location.[220]
Impact on China's national image [ edit ]
The Chinese government drew widespread condemnation for its suppression of the protests. In its immediate aftermath, China seemed to be becoming a pariah state, increasingly isolated internationally. This was a significant setback for the leadership, who had courted international investment for much of the 1980s as the country emerged from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. However, Deng Xiaoping and the core leadership vowed to continue economic liberalization policies after 1989.[221] From there on, China would work domestically as well as internationally to reshape its national image from that of a repressive regime to a benign global economic and military partner.[222]
Domestic trends [ edit ]
During the early 1990s, officials such as Yang Shangkun, Li Peng and others sought to return to a planned economy. Deng Xiaoping largely stayed out of politics until his groundbreaking 1992 "southern tour", which was intended to re-instate policies of economic liberalization.[223] Along with the liberalization came the loosening of state control in many areas of daily life. Privately run print media flourished. Private newspapers increased from 250 in the 1980s to over 7,000 by 2003. Provincially run satellite TV stations sprung up all over the country and challenged the market share of state-run CCTV.[224] The leadership also stepped away from promoting communism as an all-encompassing belief system. State-approved religious organizations increased their membership significantly, and traditional beliefs suppressed during the Mao era re-appeared.[225] This state-sanctioned plurality also created the environment for unsanctioned forms of spirituality and worship to grow.[226] In order to reduce the need for controversial methods of state control, while Protestants, Buddhists, and Taoists were largely left alone, the state often used these 'approved' denominations to "fight against cults" such as Falun Gong, playing sects off each other.[226]
As the party departed from the orthodox communism it was founded upon, much of its attention was focused on the cultivation of nationalism as an alternative ideology.[227] This policy largely succeeded in tying the party's legitimacy to China's "national pride", turning public opinions in its favour.[228] This is perhaps most prominently seen in May 1999, when the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.[229] The bombings saw an outpouring of nationalist sentiment and increased support for the party as the foremost advocate of China's national interest.[229]
International perception [ edit ]
Facing global condemnation for their handling of the protests in 1989, China has endeavored to demonstrate its willingness to participate in international economic and defense institutions in order to secure investment for continued economic reforms.[230] Before the end of 1991, China normalized ties with the Russian government's newly elected president, Boris Yeltsin.[231] China also welcomed Taiwanese business as a replacement for Western investment.[231] Further, China expedited negotiations with the World Trade Organization as well as established relations with Indonesia, Israel, South Korea and others in 1992.[227] Regarding defense alignments, the government signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992, the Convention on Chemical Weapons in 1993 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996.[227] Whereas China had been a member of just 30 international organizations in 1986, this membership increased to over 50 by 1997.[232] Finally, while China was a net recipient of aid throughout the 1980s, its growing economic and military role transformed it into a provider of aid, with $100 million given to Thailand in 1997 alone.[233]
Furthermore, the government has successfully promoted China as an attractive destination for investment by emphasizing the country's skilled workers, comparatively lower wages, established infrastructure, and sizeable consumer base.[234] Increased foreign investment in the country led many world leaders to believe that by constructively engaging China in the global marketplace, political reforms would inevitably follow.[229] At the same time, the explosion of commercial interest in the country opened the way for multinational corporations to turn a blind eye to politics and human rights in favour of doing business. Since then, Western leaders who were previously critical of China have generally paid lip service to the legacy of Tiananmen, but the substance of bilateral relationships focus on business and trade interests.[233]
In Hong Kong, the events of Tiananmen in 1989 have become permanently etched in the public consciousness, perhaps more than anywhere else outside mainland China. The events continue to have a strong impact on perceptions of China, its government, attitudes towards democracy, and the extent to which Hong Kongers should identify as Chinese. The events of 4 June are seen as emblematic of the Chinese brand of authoritarianism and is prominently discussed in Hong Kong's political circles, often in relation to democratic reform in Hong Kong and the territory's relationship with Beijing. Academic studies indicate that those who supported the rehabilitation of the Tiananmen Square movement had a tendency to support democratization in the territory as well as the election of pro-democracy parties.
Economic impact [ edit ]
There was a significant impact on the Chinese economy after the incident. The ramifications of the Tiananmen Square protests led to changes in China's economic direction, and these reverberated not only internationally, but also domestically from within the Chinese government themselves. These events led to the Chinese government concentrating power, especially over the direction of the economy. While there was a slowdown immediately after the massacre, the economy quickly rebounded during the 1990s.[236] After the Tiananmen Square protests, many analysts downgraded their outlook of China's economic future.[237] The Chinese Communist Party's response to the protests was one of the factors that led to a delay in China's acceptance to the World Trade Organization and China did not become a member until twelve years later on 11 December 2001.[237] Furthermore, bilateral aid to China decreased from $3.4 billion in 1988 to $1.5 billion in 1989, and to $0.7 billion in 1990.[238] Loans to China were suspended by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and foreign governments;[239] tourism revenue decreased from US$2.2 billion to US$1.8 billion; foreign direct investment commitments were cancelled and there was a rise in defense spending from 8.6% in 1986, to 15.5% in 1990, reversing a previous 10 year decline.[240]
Although the Bush administration had wanted to normalize and improve relations with China, the violent crackdown of the protests on June 4, 1989, led to his administration banning all sales of weapons to China on June 5. Similar to the Bush administrations initiatives, other countries imposed their own sanctions in response to Tiananmen.[238] By July 1989, the G7 had halted $10 billion in foreign aid, loans from Japan as well as $780 million in bank loans by the World Bank for the end of June. These coordinated actions hurt the Chinese economy, leading to a decline in international investment, a reduction in the number of tourists, as well as a decline in China's credit rating.[238] However, most of these sanctions were eased and lifted by the early 1990s and China's economy rebounded.[241]
Because of the mainly negative world reaction to China's Tiananmen response, as well as internal conflict regarding whether China should continue on a path of economic liberalization, leadership in China pursued a self-imposed enforcement of party discipline. Although political liberals were purged from the Chinese Communist Party, many of those who were economically liberal remained.[236] This led to a restructuring within the Chinese Communist Party. Even though more reformed-minded leaders such as Zhao Ziyang were purged from the Communist Party ranks by leaders like Deng Xiaoping,[242] the economically liberal side prevailed as it helped the Chinese economy regain and later surpass the slowdown it had experienced after the Tiananmen Square protests.[236] Deng was of the main forces behind China's economic reform.
Chinese Premier Li Peng visited the United Nations Security Council on 31 January 1992 and argued that the economic and arms embargoes on China were a violation of national sovereignty.[243]
European Union and United States arms embargo [ edit ]
The European Union and United States embargo on armament sales to China, put in place as a result of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests, remains in place today. China has been calling for a lift of the ban for years and has had a varying amount of support from European Union members. Since 2004, China has portrayed the ban as "outdated" and damaging to China–European Union relations. In early 2004, French President Jacques Chirac spearheaded a movement within the European Union to lift the ban, which was supported by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. However, the passing of the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China in March 2005 increased tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, damaging attempts to lift the ban and several European Union Council members retracted their support for a lift of the ban. Moreover, Schröder's successor Angela Merkel opposed lifting the ban. Members of the United States Congress had also proposed restrictions on the transfer of military technology to the European Union if the latter lifted the ban. The United Kingdom also opposed the lifting of the embargo when it took charge of the European Union presidency in July 2005.
In addition, the European Parliament has consistently opposed the lifting of the arms embargo to China. Though its agreement is not necessary for lifting the ban, many argue it reflects thAt a tax symposium at Pepperdine Law School last week, former IRS chief counsel Donald Korb was asked, "On a scale of 1-10... how damaging is the current IRS scandal?"
His answer: 9.5. Other tax experts on the panel called it "awful," and said that it has done "tremendous damage."
I think that's right. And I think that the damage extends well beyond the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, I think that the government agency suffering the most damage isn't the IRS, but the National Security Agency. Because the NSA, even more than the IRS, depends on public trust. And now that the IRS has been revealed to be a political weapon, it's much harder for people to have faith in the NSA.
Instapundit correctly notes that the current IRS scandal has tremendous implications for the NSA and other misbehaving government agencies:What we are witnessing is the ongoing self-delegitimization of the US federal government. It is impossible to pretend any longer that there is a rule of law in the USA. It is impossible to pretend any longer that the government is the servant of the people. Like the fire to which George Washington compared it, the dangerous servant has become the fearful master.This is why the American people are arming at a rate that has never been seen before. They are not afraid of crime. They are afraid of their government. On some inarticulate level of consciousness, they are aware of this: an unreasonable, ineloquent master who knows only the use of intimidation and force is bound to resort to the latter when the former fails.The conspiracy theoreticians were correct, on the whole. There is an active conspiracy and it is a conspiracy against the American people by some of the 2.79 million people who are employed by the US government.
Labels: conspiracy, decline and fallThis afternoon, the trial of Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold came to a close when retired Howard County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Sweeney found John Leopold guilty.
Leopold was initially indicted in March 2012 on 5 counts, 4 for misconduct in office and 1 for misappropriation of taxpayer’s funds for using his security detail for personal reasons. Since the indictment, Leopold has kept mum on the case saying that he looked forward to proving his innocence in court. On Friday, Judge Sweeney tossed one of the misconduct counts associated with removing the campaign sign of a political opponent citing that Leopold was acting as a “private citizen” during that act and not as County Executive; therefore it could not be considered mis-conduct in office.
It is likely that Leopold will appeal.
This trial is not the end of woes for John Leopold, he is facing several civil lawsuits alleging harassment and retaliation from former employees of the County and another one from Carl Snowden and the ACLU for maintaing a political dossier on the embattled civil rights activist.
This is a breaking story and we will be working to get more details, photos, and an interview with the defense and the prosecution.
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Category: Breaking News, Crime News, NEWS, POLITICAL NEWSWarning: This article contains spoilers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
When the dust settled and the credits rolled on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, fans were left with a lot to digest.
Much of the conversation since the film’s release has focused on the meaningless “critics versus audience” debate (even though many critics are fans), with the disconnect between its terrible reviews and box-office success becoming more and more apparent. But love it or hate it, Zack Snyder’s latest film is part of the DC Expanded Universe (DCEU) now, and we’re only going to have more questions going forward—especially with Justice League Part 1 coming out in 2017.
Superman is almost certainly coming back
While Batman v Superman took some of its cues from the most famous Batman–Superman fight in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, its ending came from an unlikely source.
Doomsday first made a cameo appearance in Superman: Man of Steel #17, but he really made his mark in the The Death of Superman, which was published in 1992. There, he beats the Justice League to a pulp, destroys everything he encounters, and becomes obsessed with Superman. With Metropolis on the line, Superman fights back with everything he has, and Superman and Doomsday end up killing each other with fatal blows to the head.
For many longtime fans of the comics, Superman’s death in Snyder’s film wasn’t so much a surprise as it was a given, considering those two characters’ infamous first meeting.
Of course, Superman probably isn’t dead. We don’t need to start a #ClarkKentLives hashtag or spy on the set of Justice League Part 1, because some clues about his survival were hidden in the movie itself.
The last 10 to 15 minutes of the film focus on the people mourning the deaths of Superman and Clark Kent (who “died” during Doomsday’s attack), while Bruce Wayne plants the seeds of the Justice League movie through his conversations with Diana Prince and Lex Luthor.
At the very end of the movie, the camera focuses in on Clark’s coffin as Lois throws dirt into his grave, and the scene reveals two key signs that the Man of Steel isn’t done quite yet.
First, the dirt that Lois tosses in begins to levitate, which could be a callback to Superman’s first flight in Man of Steel. Second, you can hear a faint heartbeat.
Henry Cavill also recently spoke about how he’s looking forward to “interacting with Aquaman, especially” during the NYC Batman v Superman premiere, though admittedly that was before it was revealed that Superman died in Batman v Superman.
If nothing else, we can take the cynical approach: there’s no way that Warner Bros. will kill off one of its biggest stars and miss out on all those merchandising opportunities.
Will Superman’s return be less super than expected?
We’ve established that Superman is probably coming back, but his return might be even grimmer than we’re expecting.
Some people believe that Batman’s final scene with Lex Luthor indicated that Darkseid—the ruler of Apokolips and a major DC Comics villain comparable for moviegoers to Marvel’s Thanos—will return for the eventual Justice League film. And a newly released video indicates that Lex |
groups on both sides of the debate."
If the U.S. Supreme Court has been paying attention, it likely saw this trend coming. Each time the high court has considered a case related to same-sex marriage, the pile of amicus briefs from religious groups supporting gay rights has inched a little taller, and the crowds protesting outside their grand marble steps has gradually grown more diverse
On Tuesday, for example, as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, a case widely expected to produce a landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, an interfaith coalition of clergy led by the dean of Washington's National Cathedral is planning to march in support of LGBT rights.
"I join with many across the spectrum of American faith communities in my hope that the Court's ruling will permit same-sex marriage in all 50 states," the Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral's dean, said in a statement. "I trust that their judgment will end discrimination against those who seek God's blessing on their marriages."
Clergy from Hall's religious denomination, the Episcopal Church, have also submitted an amicus brief in support of same-sex marriage. The brief is endorsed by nearly 2,000 faith leaders, including rabbis, Methodist ministers, Lutheran bishops, seminary professors and Congregationalist chaplains.
Another brief, submitted by the Anti-Defamation League, is signed by Jewish, Hindu and Presbyterian groups. In a reverse of traditional arguments against gay marriage, some members of these groups say their religious rights will be curtailed if states do not allow them to perform same-sex nuptials.
Prominent and powerful religious groups are lined up on the other side as well, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. Together, leaders of these faiths represent more than 120 million Americans.
But as PRRI's survey shows, there are often differences of opinion between the pulpits and the pews. Despite vocal opposition from the U.S. Catholic Bishops, for example, 60% of Catholics now favor same-sex marriage. That's a huge increase from 2003, when just 35% backed gay rights, according to survey conducted at the time by the Pew Research Center
Mainline Protestants -- so-called for their prominence in 20th century American life -- also saw a huge shift in the last decade. While 36% supported same-sex marriage in 2003, now 62% do.
At a glance, the pro-gay marriage faction is now strikingly diverse, encompassing Buddhists, Catholics, Jews and Hindus. But the pro-traditional marriage crowd is just as motley, bridging black Protestants, Mormons, Muslims and white evangelicals, according to PRRI's survey.
Same-sex marriage rights worldwide Same-sex marriage rights worldwide Legalized nationwide:
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden Legalized in certain regions:
Brazil, Mexico, United States Civil unions or domestic partnerships:
Andorra, Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Uruguay and parts of Australia, Mexico, United States and Venezuela
The survey data comes from PRRI's American Values Atlas, conducted between April and December of last year. PRRI is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group that focuses on faith and American culture.
Separate surveys conducted by PRRI and other groups show much of the newfound religious support for same-sex marriage is coming from younger Americans.
Seven in 10 Millennials, for example, support same-sex marriage and say that faith groups alienate young adults by being judgemental on sexual ethics. Half of millennial Republicans say gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry, and 43% of white evangelical millennials agree.
Those numbers could put GOP presidential candidates in a tight spot, said Jones, as they try to expand their base and appeal to younger Americans.
"The real challenge for GOP candidates is how can they plant their feet deftly enough not to offend older conservatives in the primaries but still be able to pivot in the general election to a younger generation," Jones said.
Politicians may pivot on same-sex marriage, but Bible-believing Christians should not -- even if public opinion turns against them, said Denny Burk, a professor at Boyce College, a Southern Baptist school in Louisville, Kentucky.
"For me, the number of people who come to the message is not the main issue. There are periods when the Gospel is popular and periods when it's not. You can't base your evaluation of its truthfulness on its popularity at a given historical moment."
Still, Burk said he doesn't doubt that more millennials accept same-sex marriage, and he fully expects the Supreme Court to legalize gay weddings countrywide this June when the justices render a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
But the fight is far from over, Burk said.
"Just like we've seen this decades-long culture war with abortion, we're going to see the same thing with gay marriage."Due 21st October 2016
We are extremely happy to forward the first vinyl release from Cheyne Taylor Bush AKA Tetrad, a member of LA’s B-Side collective. From the moment we heard these tunes we knew we wanted to get behind them, and behind Tetrad. It is extremely rare for us to hear music from a young, as-yet unsigned producer that immediately strikes us as this fresh, original, mature, and self-aware.
“Awaken Dub” is a 140 power stepper driven by a shimmering melodica figure, delicate guitar plucks, insistent photon torpedo snares and pure 4/4 bass and kick forward motion. “Awaken Dub” was inspired by Tetrad’s “return to dub-inspired music” after an absence, and the personal awakenings this return brought him.
“Turn 1” is among the best ‘proper’ dubstep plates we’ve heard in ages, that perfect combination of eyes-down deep hypnosis for the mind and massive body-blow to the corporeal form. All about movement, “Turn 1” is among a set of tunes that got their start on the bus and train, inspired by the “bustling motion and feel” of urban transport. From the rocking, lurching drums to the deceptively simple single-note bassline that won’t let go, sweeping you away like a wobbling lava flow, to the reverb-soaked voice that is “Turn 1"s calling card, this one will focus the dancefloor as few tunes can do.
Mastered and cut by Lewis at Star Delta Mastering in Devon.
a. Tetrad - Awaken Dub
b. Tetrad - Turn 1Attention White-Collar Workers: The Robots Are Coming For Your Jobs
Enlarge this image toggle caption Joerg Sarbach/AP Joerg Sarbach/AP
From the self-checkout aisle of the grocery store to the sports section of the newspaper, robots and computer software are increasingly taking the place of humans in the workforce. Silicon Valley executive Martin Ford says that robots, once thought of as a threat to only manufacturing jobs, are poised to replace humans as teachers, journalists, lawyers and others in the service sector.
"There's already a hardware store [in California] that has a customer service robot that, for example, is capable of leading customers to the proper place on the shelves in order to find an item," Ford tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies.
In his new book, Rise of the Robots, Ford considers the social and economic disruption that is likely to result when educated workers can no longer find employment.
Rise of the Robots Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford Hardcover, 334 pages | purchase close overlay Buy Featured Book Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?
"As we look forward from this point, we need to keep in mind that this technology is going to continue to accelerate," Ford says. "So I think there's every reason to believe it's going to become the primary driver of inequality in the future, and things are likely to get even more extreme than they are now."
Interview Highlights
On robots in manufacturing
Any jobs that are truly repetitive or rote — doing the same thing again and again — in advanced economies like the United States or Germany, those jobs are long gone. They've already been replaced by robots years and years ago.
So what we've seen in manufacturing is that the jobs that are actually left for people to do tend to be the ones that require more flexibility or require visual perception and dexterity. Very often these jobs kind of fill in the gaps between machines. For example, feeding parts into the next part of the production process or very often they're at the end of the process — perhaps loading and unloading trucks and moving raw materials and finished products around, those types of things.
But what we're seeing now in robotics is that finally the machines are coming for those jobs as well, and this is being driven by advances in areas like visual perception. You now have got robots that can see in three-dimension and that's getting much better and also becoming much less expensive. So you're beginning to see machines that are starting to have the kind of perception and dexterity that begins to approach what human beings can do. A lot more jobs are becoming susceptible to this and that's something that's going to continue to accelerate, and more and more of those jobs are going to disappear and factories are just going to relentlessly approach full-automation where there really aren't going to be many people at all.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Xiaoxiao Zhao/Courtesy of Basic Books Xiaoxiao Zhao/Courtesy of Basic Books
On the new generation of robot jobs
There's a company here in Silicon Valley called Industrial Perception which is focused specifically on loading and unloading boxes and moving boxes around. This is a job that up until recently would've been beyond the robots because it relies on visual perception often in varied environments where the lighting may not be perfect and so forth, and where the boxes may be stacked haphazardly instead of precisely and it has been very, very difficult for a robot to take that on. But they've actually built a robot that's very sophisticated and may eventually be able to move boxes about one per second and that would compare with about one per every six seconds for a particularly efficient person. So it's dramatically faster and, of course, a robot that moves boxes is never going to get tired. It's never going to get injured. It's never going to file a workers' compensation claim.
On a robot that's being built for use in the fast food industry
Essentially, it's a machine that produces very, very high quality hamburgers. It can produce about 350 to 400 per hour; they come out fully configured on a conveyor belt ready to serve to the customer.... It's all fresh vegetables and freshly ground meat and so forth; it's not frozen patties like you might find at a fast food joint. These are actually much higher quality hamburgers than you'd find at a typical fast food restaurant.... They're building a machine that's actually quite compact that could potentially be used not just in fast food restaurants but in convenience stores and also maybe in vending machines.
On automated farming
In Japan they've got a robot that they use now to pick strawberries and it can do that one strawberry every few seconds and it actually operates at night so that they can operate around the clock picking strawberries. What we see in agriculture is that's the sector that has already been the most dramatically impacted by technology and, of course, mechanical technologies — it was tractors and harvesters and so forth. There are some areas of agriculture now that are almost essentially, you could say, fully automated.
On computer-written news stories
Essentially it looks at the raw data that's provided from some source, in this case from the baseball game, and it translates that into a real narrative. It's quite sophisticated. It doesn't simply take numbers and fill in the blanks in a formulaic report. It has the ability to actually analyze the data and figure out what things are important, what things are most interesting, and then it can actually weave that into a very compelling narrative.... They're generating thousands and thousands of stories. In fact, the number I heard was about one story every 30 seconds is being generated automatically and that they appear on a number of websites and in the news media. Forbes is one that we know about. Many of the others that use this particular service aren't eager to disclose that.... Right now it tends to be focused on those areas that you might consider to be a bit more formulaic, for example sports reporting and also financial reporting — things like earnings reports for companies and so forth.
On computers starting to do creative work
Right now it's the more routine formulaic jobs — jobs that are predictable, the kinds of jobs where you tend to do the same kinds of things again and again — those jobs are really being heavily impacted. But it's important to realize that that could change in the future. We already see a number of areas, like [a] program that was able to produce [a] symphony, where computers are beginning to exhibit creativity — they can actually create new things from scratch.... [There is] a painting program which actually can generate original art; not to take a photograph and Photoshop it or something, but to actually generate original art.I saw Indie Game: The Movie when it first premiered a few months ago. I’ve been holding onto this review for a long time and I’m glad I finally get a chance to tell you about this little movie. A film about the realities of indie game development; of the blood, sweat and tears that are shed throughout the process; and how everything is worth it in the end to realize one’s dreams. So hit the jump and let me tell you about this film for gamers, dreamers, and hopefully for the public who will understand the effort put into our so often misunderstood industry.
The film focuses on the development and release of Super Meat Boy by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes that constitute the whole of Team Meat as well as the development of FEZ by Phil Fish. This is a documentary that follows the lives of these game designers, takes a look into their background, motivations, and of the industry that they work in. What follows is an intense examination of the lives of individuals who make games not for profit or fame, but for a reason far more personal.
These games are a personal journey of self-expression. A method, possibly the only method, in which these men can communicate to the world all of their fears and vulnerabilities and to be accepted for it. They achieve this by creating a world of their own and filling it with these insecurities and creative flashes of genius with the goal of perhaps creating something others can play, enjoy, and establish a connections with other human beings.
Throughout the film, the focus shifts between Team Meat struggling with a fast approaching deadline for their game Super Meat Boy, a deadline they can’t afford to miss, and Phil Fish who has to deal with an ongoing legal battle with his former partner for the rights to his own game all while dealing with the insane amount of hype and media pressure for the release of his long-delayed game. Meanwhile Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid, is brought in to give insight on the reasoning behind the question of “Why make games?” as someone who had already achieved amazing success in the indie game world.
It’s amazing to get a first hand look at these people and understand that they are more than their games. Instead we get a look at them as just people searching for the same things everyone else in the world. It’s hard in internet communities, to imagine that behind avatars, images, words, and names that we are sharing a space with billions of people who are just as complex and infinite. It’s a mistake that I’ve made before and suffered for. it’s a mistake that keeps on getting made. So for a film like this to come along and break down the barriers of separation is a truly wonderful thing.
Understanding the themes coming from the delightful Super Meat Boy are instead a result of the childhood fears and anxieties of its creators is another narrative surprise. For instance, I didn’t know that Meat Boy isn’t a wad of living meat, but instead a boy without skin whose every movements cause him excruciating pain and whose salvation lies in the arms of his lover, Bandage Girl. That Phil Fish understood the people wanted the release of FEZ, and knew of the collective anger on the internet that is downright vicious when directed towards a single individual. That Mr. Fish might not have even had a game to release had things turned out differently with his former partner, and how intensely frustrating it was to nearly lose years of work and love due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control.
This is by far the most in-depth look into the process, the business, and the people behind the independent game industry and of the games industry as a whole. How it is seemingly more vast and complicated, mechanical and human than we might have assume. Entire careers are dangling in the process and simply having a creative idea isn’t enough to survive. But it’s a risk worth taking and it’s a pain worth enduring to see the actualization of one’s goals.
[+Reaffirms a love of video games][+Surprising, emotional, dark, joyous, beautiful][+Simply inspiring]
Directors James Swirsky and Lisanne Pijot have made a film as stylish and atmospheric as the games they cover. One screening and it’s easy to see just how beautifully shot the entire film is. I’m not a film critic so some of this terminology is a bit over my head but large, sweeping panoramic shots of Santa Cruz, Canada, and PAX East create an almost cold serenity that matches well with the personal stories of their subjects. One shot in particular was truly memorable with Phil Fish at a bar waiting for the beginning of PAX East as well as the fate of FEZ and whether it will see the light of day.
Beautifully edited, perfectly timed, and wonderfully shot this is not merely a movie about video games; it is a wonderful documentary and film in its own right.
The music deserves special mention as the original score was composed by Jim Guthrie of Sword and Sworcery fame. The soundtrack is every bit as wonderful as the work previously mentioned with ambient sounds, quiet melodies, and high crescendos, the soundtrack deserves to be listened to both in context of the film and stand alone as I am now while writing this review.
[+Aesthetically breathtaking][+Beautiful score][+Stylish, Atmospheric, and Sharp]
At $9.99 sold digitally DRM-free on the official website, Steam, and iTunes it’s hard to tell you this isn’t worth your money. With audio commentary and beautiful 1080p HD (I don’t know if this is for all downloads or just on Steam) $9.99 is a bargain. Now for those of you who are interested in a physical copy, there are 4 editions coming out on disk: The BluRay regular edition for $29.99, the DVD regular edition for $24.99, The DVD special edition for $59.99, and the BluRay special edition for $69.99, all of which are currently on pre-order. Now the regular editions contain only a few more extra features but are physical copies of the download with a beautiful cover. The special editions, however, are truly something special. Over 300 hours of additional footage, bonus materials with additional interviews, scenes, press tours, and behind-the-scenes, this is a loaded special edition that is definitely worth considering for any collector, film buff, or fan. Regardless of which edition you purchase, no one (gamer or no) should miss out on this film.
[+Buy it]
And so, in the end, it boils down to video games and why we love them. To most of us it’s more than idle time wasters. These are methods of communication between those of us who have difficulty communicating with one another. Of an amount of work that goes into these insanely personal projects, and how it’s all worth it in the end when you realize that there are people out there in the world who fall in love with something you have made. It’s not a feeling of accomplishment nor is it a feeling of pride but rather it’s a feeling of relief. A relief in knowing that your existence in this world isn’t a solitary one but one that has the ability to unite millions of people around the world over a common love and a mutual understanding. Video games are special and the culture around it is special. These are things that are dear to us and definitely dear to those who work in the industry. This is the stuff of dreams and though these dreams are built on pain and suffering. In the end though, it’s worth it just to do what you love.
[+Reaffirms a love of video games][+Surprising, emotional, dark, joyous, beautiful][+Simply inspiring][+Aesthetically breathtaking][+Beautiful score][+Stylish, Atmospheric, and Sharp][+Buy it]
Purchase the movie from the official website, Steam, or iTunes
Purchase the soundtrack from Jim Guthrie’s websiteVoters bury BexarMet
BexarMet Water District Board President Guadalupe Lopez works the phones while at the Carrillo Elementary poll site on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011. Voters decided whether to keep or dissolve the water district which services residents that are not with San Antonio Water System. The BexarMet board has been in a center of controversy and alleged corruption for the past several years. Kin Man Hui/kmhui@express-news.net less BexarMet Water District Board President Guadalupe Lopez works the phones while at the Carrillo Elementary poll site on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011. Voters decided whether to keep or dissolve the water district which... more Photo: Kin Man Hui, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS Photo: Kin Man Hui, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Voters bury BexarMet 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
Voters in the Bexar Metropolitan Water District overwhelmingly approved its dissolution Tuesday.
With all votes counted in Bexar County, 74 percent were in favor of BexarMet becoming part of the San Antonio Water System.
“Golly. Jeepers. I'm really shocked,” BexarMet board President Guadalupe Lopez said.
Final results from BexarMet's service areas within Medina, Atascosa and Comal counties showed 62 percent in favor of dissolution.
“This goes to show the frustration was not just among the chattering classes or the elites,” said Christian Archer, who worked on the campaign for dissolving BexarMet. “This was real people turning out to vote.”
The dissolution will mark the end of the district's 65-year history.
For almost a decade, politicians and ratepayers have pushed to reform BexarMet or dismantle it.
A dissolution vote by ratepayers is an unprecedented occurrence and required special state laws, which took three legislative sessions to pass.
For Sen. Carlos Uresti, who sponsored the bill calling for the election, the decision by the voters was an end to his frustration with the utility.
“Three sessions ago, I stopped the bill and created this legislative oversight committee and said, ‘Let's help them,'” the San Antonio Democrat said. “But they dismissed all of our suggestions.”
Customers on the North Side have been the most dissatisfied with the service.
“It's been too bad for too long,” said Fran Christman, who lives in Stone Oak. He voted and then went to tell his neighbors to do the same, reminding them of the problems they've had with service and water pressure.
On the South Side, one voter interviewed stuck by the utility, despite its troubles.
“I want BexarMet,” said Romana Alvarado, who likes having a smaller utility. “We've had it for the longest time. When I die, you can have it.”
But that smaller size, along with disjointed service areas, are among the reasons BexarMet charges more for its water than SAWS and why it has had problems providing water.
Along with higher water rates, BexarMet also had troubles with a steady stream of scandals and embarrassments including two general managers being indicted, employees cheating on basic of certification exams, money being stolen, financial records being altered and the finance director accepting an expense paid trip to Las Vegas from a contractor.
“You just lose trust,” said Eric Gutierrez, who lives on San Antonio's South Side.
BexarMet now will begin a process to become part of SAWS that could take up to five months.
After the board canvasses the results next week, the results will be sent to the U.S. Justice Department. If approved there, which is expected due to the strong vote, the board will be dissolved by state law and SAWS will manage the utility.
That should all occur by Feb. 1.
In the meantime, SAWS will be hosting a meeting Saturday for all BexarMet employees to introduce them to and answer questions about becoming SAWS workers.
By state law almost all BexarMet employees will have their jobs protected for two years.
SAWS anticipates that by this summer, BexarMet's logo will be replaced with SAWS', and customers will be sending their checks to SAWS. In five years the rates of both utilities will be the same.When I drive, I have arguments with people in my head. I think of someone who does not realize how smart I am about what I am smart about, and I go on tirades to show them how misguided they are.
And I realized one day, while I had a particularly long car ride, that I am actually feeling like I know what women should be doing with their adult life.
Most people would be too humble to say this. But I’m the woman who, after ten years in the workforce, built a career on telling people how to manage their career. So, it makes sense that after getting to age 45 I am ready to tell all women how to live their adult life.
To be clear, I have made lots of mistakes. But I like to think I would not have made those mistakes if I had had a blueprint for adult life like the one I’m giving you, right here. The blueprint starts at age 18 and goes to 45.
1. Do less homework.
Women do better in school than men, but school is not a harbinger of doing well in life. Other stuff is. Other stuff that men do all the time. For example, involvement in sports is a foreshadow of a great career. And video games are, too, because they are both collaborative and competitive–two essential skills. So do stuff guys do, and get grades that are as bad as theirs–after all, you should not be the hardest worker, ever.
2. Get plastic surgery.
This is the must-have career tool for the workforce of the new millennium. You will earn more money and you will have more opportunities for mentoring. Also, you will have a wider choice of men, which, of course, is another way to earn more money.
3. Go to business school right out of the gate.
Everyone has always wanted to go to business school right after college, but good MBA programs didn’t allow it. Now there is an unwritten rule that women can get in earlier because it’s so clear that women who want to have kids don’t really benefit from going to an MBA program later. If you get your MBA early, you accomplish a few key things. Not only do you set yourself up for skipping entry-level jobs, but you also make re-entry after kids an easier process because you have higher level experience before you leave.
On top of that, you are more likely to marry well. Men like women who are smart but not making more than they are. (I do not have a link for this. I have instinct.) Business school is a way to show you are smart, but you don’t make any money in business school. Side benefit: You will be surrounded by men equally as smart as you are but a little older, which is a good hunting ground. (Note: I still think business school is stupid if you are using it to actually become qualified to do something.)
4. Start early looking for a husband seriously.
If you want to have kids, you should aim to be done by the time you are 35, when your eggs start going bad fast. This means you need to get started when you are 30, which means you need to get the guy you want to have kids with by the time you’re 28. People who marry too early are very likely to get divorced. But by age 25, you are safe from those statistical trends. So why not marry early? In any case, start looking very seriously for a husband by the time you are 24. Here is a blog post that summarizes this argument and links to the research to back it up.
5. Milk maternity leave for all it’s worth.
Maternity leave is a complicated political issue, but whatever: For now, it’s your right, so just take what’s yours. Use all your maternity leave, and then make it very difficult to fire you when you return. Start a year before you want to get pregnant, by getting a job at a company that legally must give you maternity leave. I’m not saying you HAVE to take maternity leave, but if you don’t have any, you can’t decide to take it. Position yourself at that company in a job you can do with your eyes closed, in case you want to go back after maternity leave and work. Because if you are taking care of a newborn baby and working full-time, you’ll be doing everything with your eyes closed.
There is an incredible amount of research to show that there should be a single, primary caregiver for the first year. I know that’s not good for feminism. But none of this post is. So look, unless your husband is taking a year off, you’re better off spending most of your time on your kid and not your job. The way to do that is to take all the maternity leave you can and then keep pushing for people to let you keep your job even if you’re not really doing it. Make them fire you. It’ll take their legal department a long time to give permission for that, and you can be collecting a paycheck the whole time. The extra cash can fund the rest of your transition.
6. Guard your marriage obsessively.
Educated women divorce at less than a quarter of the rate of everyone else. Divorce is not socially acceptable for most women reading this blog. We have decades of great data (read Judith Wallerstein) to show that divorce permanently ruins the kids. Yes, it’s true, divorce makes life better for the parents. But kids don’t care. They don’t notice. Kids notice if two parents are paying attention to them, and that is one of the first things to go in a divorce. If you love your kids, you stay married to their parent.
This means that the wife needs to just bite the bullet and maintain the marriage. Stay-at-home spouses keep marriages together more effectively. I know: this is not popular, and not fair, but you do not need to make a crusade out of your family by showing that you can get a divorce and not fuck up your kids. So just bite the bullet and make sure you are keeping your husband happy so your kids can grow up with two parents.
7. Practice austerity.
Austerity is not fun. But you can call it something trendy, like minimalism or slow food.Your ability to manage your life will be nil if you are ruled by financial problems. So that means no big house, no expensive car, no huge vacations. You need control over your life more than you need that stuff. You have more career flexibility, more time flexibility, and more personal flexibility if you can keep your expenses way below what you earn. In this scenario, you do not have to fight with your husband about money. (You can fight about sex and in-laws, which are the other two of the three most popular fight topics.) Also, you can stay home with kids if you want to. And if you don’t want to, you can just be you and admit it. Don’t say you are not with your kids all day because you need the money. That would be a lie.
8. Do a startup with a guy.
Having your own company will give you tons of control over your life. It’s nice to have a funded company because then the investors are taking the financial risk and you are drawing a nice salary even when you are not really earning any revenue. The problem is that VC funded startups require 100+ hour weeks, every week. You should only do one of these types of companies with a guy.
Smart women in their 20s are looking for husbands and cannot be 100% focused on some pie-in-the-sky startup. Women in their 30s are having kids and trying to figure out how to work less. Men are more easily focused solely on work. That’s why there is a salary gap between men and women: Because women focus on work and family, and men focus only on work. Don’t judge. Just get a male business partner. The problem is that men don’t like doing startups with women—it’s bad for them. But still, you can try.
9. If you can’t get men to do a startup with you, do a lifestyle business.
A lifestyle business is one where the revenue is yours to keep. This is good since you will need to earn money, but it’s a little more risky for you personally than a startup because you’re not in it with deep-pocketed investors. Still, a lifestyle business is attractive enough to a woman with kids and a hankering for something interesting in the business world. Also, given the choice between no work, full-time work, or part-time work, Pew Research reports that 80% of women with children would choose part-time work. And we all know that the part-time work opportunities in corporate America suck. So a lifestyle business is the best path to that goal.
10. Homeschool. Your kids will be screwed if you don’t.
The world will not look kindly on people who put their kids into public school. We all know that learning is best when it’s customized to the child and we all know that public schools are not able to do that effectively. And the truly game-changing private schools cost $40,000 a year.
It’s clear is that homeschooled kids will rule the world when Generation Z enters the workplace. So figure out a way to alleviate mommy guilt by homeschooling your kids to get them on that path. You don’t have to do the teaching yourself. You can pay someone. But you need to get your kids out of a system that everyone knows does not work. (Note: I just realized this. This month. And last week, I decided: I’m taking my kids out of school.)
11. Spend money on household help and Botox to keep more doors open longer.
Look, it’s really hard to be a parent and still have an interesting life. Not for men. We have seen enough of feminism to be certain that men are not derailed personally by kids. (In fact, Catalyst reports that having kids increases a man’s earning power. Probably because he is then more likely to have a wife at home inadvertently performing the role of pseudo personal secretary. ) So the more money to spend to get people to help you with your kids, the more time and energy you’ll have to help yourself.
Also, as women age they become more invisible. I know, this is not nice to say. And we are told it’s only true in Hollywood. But since when has something that catches on in Hollywood not been relevant to the rest of us? Even pre-nups went mainstream. So the longer you can look younger than 45 the longer runway time you will have to figure out how to raise kids, hold a marriage together and still keep things vibrant and interesting intellectually. It’s no small feat, but Botox and Restylane will be your best teammates in this part of the adventure.
12. Break the mold in your 40s.
Women get more unhappy as they age. So you can say you don’t like the advice I’m giving. But look, in order to change the trajectory of women’s happiness, we are going to have to drastically change the advice we give to women about how to run their lives. Most of the news about women in their 40s is pretty bad, to be honest. But the good news is that you can change that, by living differently in your 20s and 30s than women did before you. And, if you are in your 40s and reading this, take solace in the fact that by the time women are in their 40s they are great in bed, so if you do nothing else, figure out how to have a lot of sex to leverage your hard-earned talent."It is the rear-guard action of people who believe that just because other people are coming in with different views, different interests, and different concerns, and aren't willing to naturally accept the previous order of things, that all doom and terror and fire from the skies is happening," John Scalzi tells me.
We're talking about the most recent skirmish in a larger war, a war for the soul of nerd culture. This one involves the Hugo Awards, a literary award ceremony, but it's the latest iteration of a new battle that already feels ancient.
Scalzi is an award-winning, best-selling novelist, the author of enormously entertaining science fiction novels like Old Man's War and Redshirts. If you've read his popular blog, you'll know he's a passionate individual, and he seems incredibly frustrated by those in the science fiction and fantasy community who have launched this "rear-guard action."
It's the latest iteration of a new battle that already feels ancient
Yet if you talk to the people on the other side — who have dubbed themselves the "Sad Puppies" — they will point to Scalzi as part of a larger problem within the community. Yeah, their rhetoric might be a little over the top, but they're the ones saving the industry from political correctness and the "literati."
These Sad Puppies are, depending on whom you ask, the saviors of the Hugo Awards from mediocre books, a bunch of bigots, or part of a cynically motivated awards grab.
Tell me what happened in 100 words or less
Science fiction's prestigious Hugo Awards are chosen by a fan vote at both the nominee and winner stages. However, the number of people who vote at the nominee stage is small enough that a concerted effort by a small group can have disproportionate payoff.
That's what happened with two groups purporting to support traditional space opera science fiction and politically conservative authors, who initially made up 72 percent of all nominees. Once this happened, many accused both slates of supporting racist, sexist sentiments. These voters say — accurately — that they followed the rules.
Who are the Sad Puppies?
The term Sad Puppies is used interchangeably to refer to a group of Hugo voters and a specific slate of |
’s no one better to call you out on bad behavior than your best friend.
Preorder Break the Chains, available October 4, 2016.ReasonTV just released a new video on YouTube about a grassroots movement known as Direct Primary Care.
As a growing number of physicians are becoming fed up with the bloated regulatory environment created by the government and insurance companies, they are cutting out the middleman and going directly to patients:
One of the most profound changes to American health care brought about by the Affordable Care Act is that it drove thousands of independent doctors to throw in the towel and join large hospital networks. This is particularly true of primary care doctors. As the rules involving medical records, billing codes, and prior authorizations have gotten more complex, physicians find they can't survive without joining large health care networks — and they’re increasingly demoralized... Today, there is a small but growing movement of doctors who are opting out of the traditional health care system by no longer accepting insurance... This new approach is called Direct Primary Care, but it's essentially a throwback to an era before insurance companies were responsible for covering routine services like ear infections or strep cultures. When companies like Aetna, Blue Cross, and Oxford started signing the checks for even minor health care expenses, it had a destructive impact on the doctor-patient relationship. The Direct Primary Care movement is an attempt to reverse this damage. Dr. Ryan Neuhofel, who's been running his own Direct Primary Care practice in Lawrence, Kansas, since 2011 has a page on his website that lists the costs of each procedure, which the patient, not the insurance company, actually pays.
The video quotes Dr. Doug Farrago, who says: "If we continue to let them have all the control, there's no chance. We can aid in that, being Direct Primary Care, and not playing the game of the insurance. But ultimately the patient controls their own destiny, both in their own personal health care, as well as their health care dollar."
The video continues:
There are some changes to the tax code that could speed adoption. The IRS doesn't allow patients to use their tax deductible Health Savings Accounts to pay Direct Primary Care doctors. In fact, just having a direct primary care subscription disqualifies you from contributing to an HSA at all.
There is so much more to the video, including what these doctors are doing to try to influence policy in Washington. You can watch the video in its entirety here:
This movement is reminiscent of the ideas mentioned by health care policy expert Avik Roy. During an interview with The Daily Wire, Roy suggested a system in which routine practices are paid for out-of-pocket, and insurance is relegated to instances where catastrophic coverage is needed:
What Singapore does, which is even better than Switzerland, is they make a big effort to make sure that insurance is insurance... When people talk about health insurance in America, they are really talking about a mechanism by which they'll pay for the healthcare they're going to consume anyway. Whereas with car insurance, for example — we don't buy car insurance to pay for our gas purchases or wiper fluid. We pay for car insurance so that if we total our car, or it gets stolen, the replacement is covered by the insurance policy — the financial loss that we would otherwise incur. That's what health insurance should be, too.
Roy stated that "health insurance should be financial security such that if you get hit by bus, you have a stroke, you get cancer — those big medical bills would be covered by your insurance plan. You'd pay out of pocket for routine costs."
Additionally, Roy noted that the Singaporean system differs from the American system because it "takes the equivalent of what we pay in social security taxes, and instead of filtering it throng the bureaucracy like we do, they deposit a portion into a Health Savings Account (HSA) that you control, and can spend on the health care that you need. The system responds to your dollar."
Singapore spends approximately 14% - 20% of what the United States spends per capita, according to Roy.
As it becomes ever more clear that the health insurance mess will not be fixed by the federal government, it may be grassroots movements like the Direct Primary Care system that force change from the outside in.It’s kind of an open secret that most Christians haven’t read the Bible. Despite polls showing that 92% of Americans agree with the statement “Every word in the Bible is as true as the Bible, and also this poll wasn’t just made up by a guy who needed a quote for his lede,” most people have literally no idea what the Bible actually says.
This sort of ignorance has no place in our modern, civilized era of #reason.And the truth is, your church is desperate to keep it that way, which is why there aren’t a thousand dumbed-down English translations of the Bible floating around out there. Your pastor doesn’t want you to read the Bible, because if you did you’d realize it’s full of verses that are obviously false and also completely contradict modern values, which are obviously the correct values, because they’re the modern ones.
Like what? Well, here are just a few...
The verse: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Because it says right there, if you hear the word, you’re deceiving yourself. Even the Bible admits that it’s full of lies. I have no idea why the Bible would admit something like that, but I guess those Bronze-Age goatherders who wrote it just didn’t know any better, presumably because they didn’t have #science and #reason.
Also, in our sophisticated, modern era, we now know that “ye” isn’t actually a real word.
The verse: “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: The Bible teaches that “there is neither Greek nor Jew,” but modern science has proven the existence of both Greeks and Jews. Only a bigot would deny the existence of Greeks and Jews, but that’s exactly what Bible-thumpers want you to do. This sort of ignorance has no place in our modern, civilized era of #reason.
The verse: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: This verse, supposedly written around 1,000 B.C., directly references Thanksgiving, even though Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t invent Thanksgiving for another 3,000 years.
That is, assuming Abraham Lincoln ever even existed. Can’t wait to watch the fundies squirm as they try to explain this one.
The verse: “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Am I the only one noticing that these two verses are loaded with sex and violence? Crack the Bible open here, and your pastor’s manipulation is exposed: the Bible is a “moral” book, huh? Well, I think I could teach those OT barbarians a thing or two about #reason, just as soon as I finish watching Game of Thrones.
By myself.
In the dark.
Because I enjoy its intriguing storyline.
The verse: “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: The Bible wants you to believe the past tense form of “speak” is “spake,” but modern science has proven that it’s “spoke.” The weight of biblical inaccuracies is piling up, and we’re just getting started. Your pastor knows that if you found out about it, your faith would come crashing down like a house of cards, and not even the Kevin-Spacey-with-a-ridiculously-fake-accent kind.
The verse: “And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Because, wait, Jesus had a pet ghost? And then he was forced to give it up? Why doesn’t your church ever mention that when they’re telling you the story of Jesus? I mean, I’m just spitballing here, but could it possibly be because of a vast conspiracy to cover up the truth because the Church finds it threatening and also Leonardo daVinci was probably involved somehow???
The verse: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Because that is clearly seven words. We all know that Bible-thumpers have trouble with numbers (the earth is 10,000 years old? really?), but on this one, the writers of scripture are way behind the times. Even the ancient Babylonians knew a little something about mathematics; perhaps that’s why Jeremiah was so keen on Babylon’s destruction. Evidently these fanatical Bible defenders are nothing new; they have always gone to extreme lengths in ducking #science and #reason.
The verse: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Because this is just one more of the many places that the Bible is riddled with errors. It clearly says “all is vanity,” yet a quick trip to IKEA exposes that foolishness, stocked as it is with a variety of dressers and nightstands. Man, this is easy. The Bible’s days of authority and privilege are clearly numbered.
The verse: “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”
Why your pastor doesn’t want you to know about it: Your pastor wants you to believe that God is all-powerful, but even the Bible clearly says, “God will do nothing.” True, yes, but devastating for Christianity.
So, checkmate, Holy Rollers. You all are just lucky someone was here to read the Bible for you and tell you what to think about it before your church was able to brainwash you. As the saying goes, the #truth has set you free.
Wish I could remember where I read that.As I promised at RailsConf, we’re finally good to go on the Rails 3.1: Release Candidate. This is a fantastically exciting release. We have three new star features and an even greater number of just awesome improvements. First the stars:
The Asset Pipeline
The star feature of 3.1 is the asset pipeline powered by Sprockets 2.0. It makes CSS and JavaScript first-class code citizens and enables proper organization, including use in plugins and engines. See my RailsConf keynote for a full tour. This comes with SCSS as the default for stylesheets and CoffeeScript as the default for JavaScript. Much documentation is on the way for this.
HTTP Streaming
This lets the browser download your stylesheet and javascripts while the server is still generating the response. The result is noticeable faster pages. It’s opt-in and does require support from the web server as well, but the popular combo of nginx and unicorn is ready to take advantage of it. There’s a great Railscast on HTTP streaming and the API documentation is strong too.
jQuery is now the default
We’ve made jQuery the default JavaScript framework that ships with Rails, but it’s silly easy to switch back to Prototype if you fancy. It’s all bundled up in the jquery-rails and prototype-rails gems. Just depend on the one you’d like in the Gemfile and it’ll Just Work.
Other good stuff:
You can also check out the an even longer changelog and get a video overview from Railscast.
If you’re starting a new application, it’s strongly recommended that you do so using Ruby 1.9.2. Rails will continue to support 1.8.x until Rails 4.0, but it’s considered the legacy option. Ruby 1.9.x is where the action is. Get on board and enjoy the massive speed boost.Welcome back to Top Shelf Prospects, the daily column that brings you the next crop of professional hockey players. Each day I will bring you a new player profile or topical article in the lead-up to the 2013 NHL Draft. Be sure to bookmark the site, follow me on Twitter, and spread the word for the site that will bring you analytical and critical draft profiles and scouting reports! Last Word On Sports is your new headquarters for everything “NHL Draft”! For a Complete Listing of all our 2013 Draft Articles Click here.
Edit: Drafted 118th by the Los Angeles Kings.
In a draft absolutely filled with big, potential power forwards, Hudson Fasching is the prototype of such players. He’s got all the skill you look for in a young power forward and at this point its a matter of the him putting it all together on the ice. The Apple Valley High product has spent the last two years playing for the United States National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Michigan and is committed to attend college at the University of Minnesota next season.
The oldest of three children, Fasching was forced to grow up and mature very quickly. His younger siblings, Cooper, 14, and Mallory, 13, each suffer from a rare genetic disorder known as mitochondrial disease, which leaves them unable to walk or speak, and they require around-the-clock medical care. According to his parents, Hudson has always been a great help with his siblings, feeding them, giving them their medication, and helping to care for them throughout his own life. Growing up and seeing how lucky he is to be healthy and pursue his dreams, Fasching has an added level of maturity that is rare to see in other teenagers. His choice to attend the University of Minnesota was made in large part because it is the closest school to his parents’ home and will allow him to spend the most time possible with his family.
This maturity has translated on the ice, where Fasching is a leader on the US NTDP squad, and its clear to see how teammates gravitate towards him and follow the example he sets on the ice.
Right Wing
Born Jul 28 1995 — Burnsville, MN
Height 6.03 — Weight 213 — Shoots Right
Fasching has all the tools you would want in a power forward prospect. Still just 17 years old, he is 6’03 and 213 lbs. Fasching takes the puck to the net, and can score goals in tight, or via a good wrist shot and snap shot with a quick release. He gets to the front of the net, where he uses his big body to establish position, and his soft hands to bang in rebounds or make deflections. Fasching is a load to handle in the corners and loves to play a strong, physical game, with plenty of hits on the forecheck. He has also shown good vision and passing skill off the wing.
Fasching is a powerful skater with a long stride. He is a natural power forward who has excellent balance and is very tough to knock of the puck. His power and size allows him to fight off checks, and to bulldoze through defencemen off the rush or own the cycle. His top end speed is good, but the acceleration could be improved going forward, especially his first step. Fasching shows good agility and he has the natural athletic ability but must refine his skating technique with some work on his turning and edgework.
Fasching is also a valuable two way player, playing important penalty killing minutes for the USNTDP club. He shows very good hockey sense and anticipation, cutting down passing lanes. He shows his aggressive physical side in the defensive zone, pressuring the puck carrier and not being afraid to mix things up along the boards. He does show some inconsistency in his defensive work and intensity though, and must learn how to keep himself dialed in at all times.
Fasching’s style can best be described as being reminiscent of Andrew Ladd. His potential is very high, however this is a real boom or bust pick. If he can put all of his tools together and become a consistent forward, he can be an elite powerforward. However there is still a lot of development needed on-ice for Fasching and the bust potential is also big.
Check back tomorrow for our number 47 prospect.
Thanks for reading, as always feel free to leave comments below and follow me on twitter @lastwordBKerr. Give the rest of the hockey department a follow while you’re at it – @BigMick99, @IswearGAA, and @LastWordOnNHL, and follow the site @lastwordonsport.
Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? If so, check out our “Join Our Team” page to find out how.NEW DELHI: The BJP has maintained that the decision of demonetisation has strengthened the honest middle class, taxpayers, small traders, professionals and other such people, who were bearing the brunt of corruption and black money in day-to-day life.It also termed the aftermath of demonetisation a “sacred movement” during which the masses accepted the temporary suffering with enthusiasm and asserted that black money has now been deposited in banks that will lead to higher revenues and bigger and cleaner GDP.“In this sacred movement across the country, the common people were taking upon themselves the temporary suffering of standing in queues with full enthusiasm and positive energy but the opposition had become negative with destructive energy to defame the central government and trying to destroy the positive environment of the country,” it said.Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman shared the details of the resolution, which was presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley, keeping the entire focus on benefits of demonetisation, paying no heed to the oppositions’ strident protests over the move. “On 8th November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ensured honor to the honest people of the country and on December 31 he provided a new energy and faith to the youth, women, small businessmen, senior citizens and farmers of the country,” the party has stated in its economic resolution passed on the final day of its two-day national executive at the NDMC Convention Centre here on Saturday.“Party believes that this fight is important step in the re-making of an equitable and strong India. The step of the central government has reaffirmed the belief that patriotism isn’t just a political talk but it is a political will to take strong and decisive steps to favor the last man,” the BJP observed making it clear that demonetisation will be a key agenda in the forthcoming assembly polls in five states showcasing how the last man in the queue will be benefited by the government move, living up to the spirit of the party philosophy of “antyodaya”.The resolution has termed demonetisation as an important step towards the establishment of economic inclusion, transparent governance and equitable society. “Black money has been deposited in the banks. It has lost its anonymity.The informal economy will now increasingly integrate with the formal economy. This will lead to higher revenues with the States and the Centre. It will lead to the bigger and the Cleaner GDP,” the resolution said.“It is the transfer of black money from the tax non-compliant to the poor and the weak,” the party stated emphasising that the welfare of the poor was central to the demonetisation move.Terming “BHIM”as an important tool in the movement towards social, economic and political justice, party observed that the country’s 35 crore smart phones, 107 crore mobile connections, 117 crore saving accounts and 25 crore Jan Dhan accounts, more than 40 crore aadhar-linked accounts, more than 75 crore debit cards will make it an enabled society for digital transactions.Manitoba NDP had an ‘over-sexualized, sexist and misogynist’ culture, harassment report says – May 5
Women deserve better than the current NDP – Feb 14
NDP’s Wab Kinew not ripping off the Band-Aid – Feb 14
Jagmeet Singh talks about Wab Kinew – Jan 26
“I am happy for Wab Kinew, but...” – Oct 24
NDP shows new level of hypocrisy by choosing Kinew – Sept 29
MLA kicked out of NDP caucus over harassment allegations accuses party of double standard on Kinew – Sept 27
Kinew should explain further, says Falcon-Ouellette – Sept 25
‘It was a dark period in my life’: Wab Kinew addresses former assault, drunk driving charges – Sept 19
Court record, Kinew’s memoir offer differing versions of 2004 assault on cabbie – Sept 19
Details emerge of Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew’s assault, drunk-driving charges – Sept 19
Indigenous MLA’s attempt at damage control too little, too late – Sept 19
Kinew needs to come clean, NDP needs to speak up – Sept 18
Dark cloud won’t go away – Sept 17
Family of Kinew’s accuser wants their story heard – Sept 17
NDP leadership options have some party members feeling tentative – Sept 15
Woman who made allegations of domestic assault against Wab Kinew speaks out – Sept 15
Woman at centre of Wab Kinew domestic assault allegations says she was thrown – Sept 14
On questions of Kinew’s character, silence is deafening – Sept 14
A leadership victory may not end questions about Kinew’s past – Sept 14
Kinew’s ‘pollution plan’ simply will grow size of government – Sept 4
Domestic violence activist calls for NDP leadership candidate Kinew to ‘acknowledge what he did’ – Aug 24
Kinew must address domestic charges – Aug 24
Wab Kinew should ‘own up’ to domestic violence charge, says NDP leadership rival Steve Ashton – Aug 22
Kinew’s checkered past a steep political challenge – Aug 21President Reuven Rivlin is under fire by right-wingers for a Facebook post in which he condemned the killing of Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsha in a fatal firebomb attack on Friday in the West Bank and said he felt “shame” that the killers came from “my own people.”
Rivlin has made restoring relations between different segments of Israeli society a key issue of his presidency and has been criticized several times in the past by right-wing constituents. The conciliatory tone of the president, who was a Knesset member of the right-wing Likud for decades, has often earned him the label of “traitor,” “leftist” and “bleeding heart” on the far-right.
But comments on his most recent post regarding the death of Dawabsha escalated to genuine threats.
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Among posts praising the president for his humanism, including some in Arabic asking him to leverage the “great respect” he enjoys in Arab Israeli society to help “end the occupation,” some posters said he will “come to an end worse than Ariel Sharon,” who became comatose in 2006 after suffering a stroke while serving as prime minister.
“You bloody loser, your end will be worse than Ariel Sharon’s, you will see. I pray that another ‘Yigal Amir’ will rise to cleanse you and the Arabs from our Jewish country, and so I wish you ill health and any other suffering,” one poster wrote.
Yigal Amir assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
“You sold your soul to the devil,” another message read, adding: “my children saw me taking your picture off the wall [of my house] and asked why. I politely explained that you resigned and are no longer part of the Jewish people. You signal a green light to hurting the Jewish people. You have been disqualified!”
Rivlin, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did not shy away from labeling the perpetrators who set fire to the house of the Dawabsha family in the village of Duma as terrorists.
Among the more measured responses to his Facebook post, many felt ill at ease with his phrase “my people have chosen the path of terror,” saying it was a generalizing phrase staining the entire Jewish nation when the perpetrators are a few extremists.
“Our people did not choose terrorism – it is only a few among us who have chosen terrorism, please respect the office you hold,” wrote one poster.
While the comment by Rivlin and similar comments by Netanyahu and even Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett were welcomed by Israeli media for the moderate tone, left-wing politicians were critical.
Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog wrote on Facebook: “After we have condemned and condemned again, we cannot — again – return to daily events as though nothing happened.”
It is time for action, he wrote, “that meets the threat to Israel’s security posed by Jewish terrorists, who endanger us exactly like their brothers – Islamist terrorists.”
Herzog took aim at the political and security echelons, which he accused of ineffectual measures and of turning a blind eye to Jewish extremists. “If I were prime minister, I would instruct the Shin Bet [domestic security service] to deal with Jewish terrorism like Islamist terrorism,” he wrote. “With determination and not with a wink.”
Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On was harsher, saying that incitement by right-wing politicians laid the ground for crimes like the one perpetrated in Duma on Friday morning.
“The hatred [that led] to the killing has a name,” Gal-on said.
The Meretz leader wrote on her Facebook page that “those responsible also have names; ministers, members of Knesset, municipal rabbis, Lehava [an anti-assimilation organization], Kahanists…The hatred they spread is not general, it’s a hatred toward Arabs — whether they are Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians living in the territories.”
Rivlin is expected to speak at a rally against incitement in Jerusalem on Saturday evening.
Rivlin also spoke to Arabic media on Friday, in a bid to help calm tensions after the firebombing.
“In the face of a wave of terror against the innocent, the loss of life, and the loss of law and order, the State of Israel and Israeli society must carry some soul-searching. Introspection that will find expression not just in words but in action,” said Rivlin.
He lamented Israel’s failure to crack down on Jewish terrorists, which he said the Jewish state greatly underestimated.
“To my great sorrow, until now it seems we have been lax in our treatment of the phenomena of Jewish terrorism. Perhaps we did not internalize that we are faced with a determined and dangerous, ideological group, which aims to destroy the fragile bridges which we work so tirelessly to build,” he said.The dream of PS Vita and PS3 games working in harmony hasn't really been fulfilled. But there's a curious newcomer called Deathmatch Village intent on changing that.
It's made by Polish studio Bloober Team, which made A-Men on Vita a little while ago.
Deathmatch Village touts multiplayer three-on-three battle arenas that mix people playing on Vita with people playing on PS3.
It's free-to-play, so convincing friends to try it - or establishing a userbase - shouldn't be hard.
Deathmatch Village has cross-saves as well, so progress and Trophies travel with you across platforms. Any extra content you buy does, too (what you can buy isn't specified).
There's no footage nor are there any images of Deathmatch Village in action. The press release talked of "dozens" of weapons, items and skills; and of "arcade arenas packed with fast-paced, guns blazin' & axe-slicin' action".
Sounds like there are village hubs to roam around in between bouts where you can customise characters, modify loadouts, shop and train.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
This is the first prescription to be written in Northern Ireland for medicinal cannabis oil.
It has been signed by a GP just in time so Billy Caldwell from Castlederg can continue the treatment that has kept him seizure free for 82 days.
Billy, 11, suffers from intractable epilepsy and repeated seizures, each one potentially lethal, have left him with developmental delay.
His mother Charlotte said she was getting desperate as the number of doses of oil she had brought into the country from the US where it is legal, depleted to nearly zero.
By Friday morning the bottle will be empty and without a prescription and access to the drugs, the youngster faced the risk of potentially deadly seizures returning.
Charlotte said: "We have the first prescription for medicinal cannabis in Northern Ireland, in the UK, in Ireland and that means we have set a precedent for everyone else who could benefit from it to ask their GP for the sort of help we have had today.
"I am so delighted that my local GP was able to do this for Billy and I'm very grateful because the only alternative that was left for us was to fly to the US and have Dr Douglas Nordli prescribe it from there and bring it back into the country.
"More than three weeks ago a doctor at the Royal Victoria Hospital assured me that we would be getting the prescription from them but it has never materialised and with just a few days doses of Billy's US medication left, I was getting desperate.
"In the end I called my GP and gave him all our paperwork and he said he'd prescribe the medicinal cannabis for Billy and that's exactly what he has done.
"We went down to our surgery today and picked it up. It was as simple as that, no one has broken any laws and the meds will be with us before Billy needs them on Friday. They are being supplied by GreenLightMedicines in Ireland.
"At our meeting with the team from the Royal Victoria Hospital after a 150 mile walk to reach the appointment, I was assured that they'd agreed to allow Green Light Medicine to continue to provide Billy with the medicinal cannabis he needs to keep him alive, on prescription.
"But endless phone calls and emails from me have not been answered since we saw them on March 23 and if I had not gone to my own GP, we would still be without a prescription.
"So while I am delighted we got good news today, I feel totally devastated that the people who assured me they would help me have not.
"Billy's condition does not allow time to deal with unanswered emails and phone calls, it does not allow time for delays in medication, it does not allow for a break in his medication without risking potentially deadly seizures."
A spokesperson for GreenLightMedicines who providing the medicinal cannabis for Billy's prescription, said; "We have interesting times ahead for medical cannabis in Ireland.
"Those with epilepsy, MS or who are receiving chemotherapy are all candidates for receiving medical cannabis.
"So if you feel it would help you should start speaking to your doctor about it now.
"Undoubtedly it will take a little while to formalise and implement the system and we will do our best to keep the public informed and up to date.
"Let’s hope more indications, like chronic pain and glaucoma, are added to the scheme in due course."The victims of Queensland's devastating 2011 floods are partly to blame for damage to their properties because they didn't do enough to protect them and are guilty of "contributory negligence", dam operators claim.
Details of Seqwater's defence of a class-action suit came to light during the first week of a trial in the New South Wales Supreme Court, where law firm Maurice Blackburn is representing about 6000 victims of the 2011 deluge.
Water was released Wivenhoe Dam during the 2011 flood. Credit:Dan Saffron
It is alleged the Wivenhoe Dam operator failed to follow its own manual and should have taken into account rainfall forecasts before making extraordinary water releases, which caused extensive flooding in Brisbane, Ipswich and the surrounding areas.
Lead clients Vince and Maria Rodriguez, whose Fairfield Gardens business had to close after it lost $100,000 worth of stock, should have known their store was leased in a shopping centre that was build on land that flooded in 1974, the court heard on Thursday.Hello Cthulhu and creature fans! My name is Cassia Harries and I love to sculpt creatures and monsters, especially cute & creepy ones. I am concept artist by day and a sculptor/ creator of Monster Mind Sculpts by night. Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed of making toys. This project is to help make that dream come true.
This project will help fund the production of Baby Cthulhu sculptures that will be produced as a limited edition art toy.
In response to a high requests for Baby Cthulhu sculpts, I wanted to create this project meet the requests. You may have seen Baby Cthulhu on places like i09, FHTAGN & Tentacles, Geeks are Sexy, TOYSREVIL or even Creature Spot.
The funds for this project will allow me to hire a mold maker within the US to cast them for me, so that I can make more without compromising the quality. With your help, this will allow me to invest more time painting and make more Baby Cthulhus available to those who want to adopt one.
Be careful, he will steal your heart and your soul!
Currently all of the Baby Cthulhu sculpts have been hand cast and painted by me. I love doing the mold and casting process, but unfortunately it is too much work for one person to do alone.
Here is the process that I go through when creating an art toy:
I start out with some sketches for ideas
Then onto sculpting
Making the mold, casting, sand and clean
on to the painting...
The finished sculpt!
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* Add $130 to Rainbow Pledge Package to receive additional Light Baby Cthulhu
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Receive One 3 1/2" Baby Cthulhu of your choice from the offered colors. Hand-painted by me and signed/numbered at the bottom.*Note that Yellow, Pink, Blue are only available on Kickstarter.
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EPIC BABY CTHULHU PACKAGE
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A hand sculpted 21" Baby C |
operates multiple levels of controls to protect customers’ funds and this attack would not have been successful.”
LONG-TERM OPERATION
Detectives from the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime Unit said they had arrested 11 men at an address in west London and another man in central London on Thursday, while houses across the capital were raided.
The 12 suspects, aged between 23 and 50, are being held in custody at a London police station.
Cyber crime has become a major threat to companies and financial institutions. In July, U.S. federal prosecutors charged five men responsible for a hacking and credit card fraud spree that cost companies more than $300 million (189 million pounds), the biggest cyber crime case filed in U.S. history.
A week later, a panel of lawmakers said that Britain was losing the battle against cyber crime and needed a new crack crime unit to fight the growing problem.
The cost of cyber crime to the British economy is estimated to be between 18 billion and 27 billion pounds and British financial services firms lost a total of 5.4 billion pounds as a result of fraud last year, according to government data.
Fraud cost retail banks 475 million and online banking fraud cost 40 million pounds.
London police said Thursday’s arrests were the result of a long-term, intelligence-led operation and had been achieved by working in partnership with banks.
“This was a sophisticated plot that could have led to the loss of a very large amount of money from the bank, and is the most significant case of this kind that we have come across,” said Detective Inspector Mark Raymond.LIKE US ON FACEBOOK: Facebook.com
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Set in the year 2545, a dystopian United States relies on the most violent game show in television: "The Hunt". "The Hunt" has 24 contestants who engage in an epic free for all with traps, melee, and ranged combat in a manner very similar to works such as: "The Hunger Games", "Battle Royale", and "The Running Man". 24 enter, one leaves.
Play as one of 24 contestants in "The Hunt", a Hunger Games -esque free for all survival game.
24-Player Multiplayer Modes:
-Classic FFA
-Team Doubles
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-Zombie Wave Defense
OUTWIT your opponent with craftable traps.
OUTMATCH your enemy with upgradable weaponry.
OUTLAST your adversary with advanced survival tactics.
CUSTOMIZE your survivor with extensive character creation tools.
SURVIVE harsh conditions by hunting for food and finding clean water
RANDOM destructive events that slowly constrain the arena.
CRAFTABLE TRAPS:
-Craft snare traps and place them tactically to snatch your opponent off his feet (literally) by surprise
-Bear Traps will snap your opponents leg leaving them unable to run, take advantage of their immobility
-Landmines, though rare, can be absolutely devastating, especially if contestants begin to team up.
BRUTAL Weapons:
-Mace
-Two Handed Mace
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EXPLORE a vast network of intricate underground caves, mountainous landscapes, climbable trees, and fast-moving rapids as you fight for your life in each unique randomized arena with a full day and night cycle in environments such as: mountainous, forest, urban, and desert)
BUILD your fanbase following on Twitch, because Spectators do not just watch the game, they affect it.
Extensive Spectator Participation:
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YOUR VOTE COUNTS- Vote on which environmental disaster will occur next (Earthquake, poisonous fog, tornado)
PLAY ALONG - Bet in-game currency on your favorite contestant to win fabulous prizesKim Zolciak on Snapchat Friday raised some eyebrows - and filled-in ones, at that!
The Bravo star, who's regularly seen with a fully made-up face, showed off her latest glam look on the social media app, claiming she's ready to use less and less of it as time goes on.
'I do think the older that you get - and I am 38, almost 39 - less is more,' the mom-of-six said. 'Don't you guys think?'
Scroll below for video
Happy day: Kim Zolciak on Friday said that as she matures, she believes using less makeup is beneficial to one's appearance
She told her Snapchat followers: 'I do think the older that you get - and I am 38, almost 39 - less is more!'
Always busy: The blonde beauty also touted the upcoming production of the sixth season of her Bravo reality show Don't Be Tardy
Despite professing that she's moving in a natural direction, the reality TV star was still wearing noticeable makeup in the clip, as well as an adjacent Instagram post in which she gave props to her Atlanta-based makeup artist, Ruth Lam.
In a subsequent clip, Kim, who's married to ex-Atlanta Falcons defender Kroy Biermann, hyped up her return in front of the cameras for the upcoming sixth season of her show Don't Be Tardy.
'Can you believe that? We start taping in a couple weeks, which is just insane to me,' said the blonde beauty of her show that debuted in April of 2012, a spin-off of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Changing her ways? Kim clearly wasn't going easy on the foundation, mascara or lipstick in this publicity shot for Watch What Happens Live
Comeback? New chatter is that Kim and NeNe Leakes are speaking with Bravo about returning to The Real Housewives of Atlanta
Unwelcome? A few of the cast members have voiced their concerns over bringing back Kim and NeNe to the popular reality show, TMZ reported
And in related news, sources told TMZ Friday that a number of the show's current cast members were irate that Bravo officials were negotiating with both Kim and NeNe Leakes to return to the Peach State drama-fest, amid whispers that the duo brought 'no substance' to the program, save for overt displays of drama to keep the spotlight on themselves.
Some of the stars contacted the network Thursday to express their concern over the brewing situation, also upset that the large salaries both prominent reality stars would get in their comeback to the small screen, as it would mean a smaller piece of the pie for everyone else.
The show's current lineup includes Kandi Burruss, Shereé Whitfield, Cynthia Bailey, Phaedra Parks, Kenya Moore and Porsha Williams.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/TheKingkillerChronicle
A climactic point, possibly the end, of the third book will be Chronicler giving Kvothe his name back
This is assuming that Kvothe renamed himself Kote (disaster) in a fit of despair, and that's why everything's gone wrong for him. Chronicler is a namer and could presumably give him his name back, but to do that you have to completely understand someone. Which would be insurmountable, except Kvothe will have just spent three days telling him his life story.
Lanre/Heliax is actually Lyra.
When Lanre died during the Creation War it threatened to unravel the empire. Lyra, in a desperate attempt to preserve the hope he represented, reanimated Lanre's body. For a while she remote-controlled him (it was shown to us that being able to compartmentalize their mind is pretty much the starting point for any sympathist/namer), however controlling two bodies was too hard on her and destroyed her. This would explain how her dying happens "off-screen" without any real explanation. However only her body died and her mind got trapped in the "resurrected" Lanre's body. The reason why she betrayed the seven cities was because she got cracked by the ordeal, and it also explains how Lanre suddenly gained the power of Naming out of nowhere.
The Loeclos Box contains the One Ring.
Maer Alveron believes the box contains something precious. (Kvothe disagrees.)
The Lockless Box was the box Jax used to capture the name of the Moon.
The Cthaeh said that the Maer would lead Kvothe to the Amyr's door... is the Lockless Box what it was referring to?
Not to mention that the box smells similar to the Cthaeh (lemon and spice). Bast mentioned that Iax talked to the Cthaeh before stealing the moon, perhaps the Cthaeh even gave Iax the box he used to steal the moon's name? If the box smells similar to the Cthaeh, maybe it was made from wood from the Cthaeh's tree?
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The Lockless Box is a pretty big part of the mythology. The story of Jax stealing the Moon's name looms quite large in the story. And considering how interconnected a lot of the mythology is, this seems too good an idea to pass up on.
The Lockless Box contains the piece of stone Selitos used to poke out his eye.
Selitos had the gift of great sight and the Cthaeh is able to see the future.
Sometime after the fall of Myr Tariniel, Selitos turned evil (or, if you believe Denna, always was) and a great Namer (Tehlu? Taborlin the Great?) came along and bound the stone sympathetically to Selitos and placed it inside the Lockless box, thus binding Selitos to the tree the box was made from. Thus Selitos became the Cthaeh.
Tinkers are connected to the Amyr or the Chandrian.
I'll just put this in dot points:
The tinkers are always clearly differentiated from other traveling merchants. This implies they have a special significance.
Constant traveling lets them acquire all sorts of news from around the world. This would make them an excellent information network.
On both occasions Kvothe has met tinkers on the road, they have been leaving an area that has been recently visited by the Chandrian. The tinkers could have been there either to attempt to locate the Chandrian for the Amyr, or they could be part of the mystery of how the Chandrian move from place to place so quickly, although personally I believe that they have been using the Waystones.
Advertisement: This last bit is unrelated, but it's odd: Both times Kvothe has had dealings with the tinkers, he has refused some of the supplies offered. Both times the situation turned out badly due to the lack of those items. With the wine Denna and Kvothe would have grown closer at Trebon, and with the rope the draccus would have been killed easily. The second time Kvothe refused rubbing wax and found out afterwards that his boots weren't waterproofed and became more argumentative. He needed those things, and it's possible that the tinkers somehow knew that. Suspicious...
Kvothe is one of the kings he supposedly kills.
I think his title Kingkiller has a meaning in 3 parts, its the title of the books after all and I think he kills more than one king.
First reason for the title
Ambrose has been foreshadowed to be in a family moving up in the royal line, likely through his father and after he takes the barony his own power plays. The conflict between the two is inevitable. Ambrose is almost assuredly one king.
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Second reason for his title
His mother was a Lackless (its all but spelled out for us) and he may very well be the last male heir to that family. We know that Maer Alveron is of near equal power to the king, he has been poisoned and still has the lingering effects of heavy metals in his system. Essentially with that alone he could croak at any moment. He is without an heir. Even if his brush with death didn't kill him, he is married to a proven spiteful, ruthless Meluan Lackless. My personal feeling is she will be behind his death, if he doesn't die of his past ailments alone. (Sending Kvothe his most able servant, away out of rage induced blindness is proof that she is at the very least bad for him.) With the death of the Maer, suddenly madam Lackless is on par for power with the king. She will reinstate the hunting of ravel and Kvothe will be forced to challenge her, through discovery of his title he enters again the court games this time in a power vacuum with the death of the Maer now a blood game. He plays the game well ultimately leading to her death making him king and also killer.
Third reason for the title
Finally we know he has faked his own death and attempted to disappear through his present allusions as Kote. I think he sees the signs of war too much contempt for a king killer, a consort of demons, one of the fae, to be king and knows that he has his own encompassing revenge to attend to, so he props someone he sees as perfect for the job up as best he can and then fakes his own death.
Theory about Cinder's immortality, which I think is rather underanalyzed, along with the immortality of Haliax's men.
Cinder is immortal somehow, and that this was granted, not an original ability, which seems reasonable, as only Lanre has reign over the Doors of the Mind. (Sleep, Forgetting, Madness, Death)
Cinder is as old as Haliax, as were the rest of the Seven, as they helped him betray the Empire. As such, he was not recruited after the fact. He knows how rain falls, so to speak.
Caesura is the name for Kvothe's original sword, and Kaysera is a bastardization of that, rather than a name for Folly.Corollary: Folly is not Caesura, which I do not imagine could be shaped.
Here is the leap- Cinder, or something he possesses (For expedience, his possession, if it is one, will be his sword.) grants his immortality, and does so only because he or it has been shaped. As such, when Haliax threatened and hurt him with the Name Ferula. (Rather than his proper name, after being shaped, (Not before, or it would not ping his name-radar) which is Ferule.) I propose that this was his original name, or a variant on his new one that is not immortal.
The implication: Kvothe kills Cinder (I am convinced by his "I have killed men, and things that were more than men, every one of them deserved it." speech that he has killed one of the Seven, and logic indicates that he would kill Cinder, as he has a personal antagonism towards him, along with it providing a source for Folly.) by Shaping him, either back to who he was, or something entirely new.
The probable reality: This has to connect to how he opened The Doors of Stone. (Note: TDOS could be the Lackless door, the 4-plate door, anything. No matter what, he opens it.) As such, he either:Opens the door by Shaping (Unlikely, as we see Haliax Shape/Name, and Kvothe has a chance to do it to Felurian.)Opened the door to learn to Shape (Unlikely, as he can Shape already; all he needs is power over Cinder's Name, a easy task in the long run.)He opened the door to find Cinder. (To me, this is most likely, assuming my theory works.)
The demon near the end of book 1 was asking whether Kvothe was one of the Chandrian.
Kvothe is the Ctaeh.
Kvothe is going to die at the end of the series.
I think that telling his story and dealing with whatever is coming for him is going to make him want to actually live again. Going out and having more adventures, perhaps leading to books after the trilogy. Well, that's certainly Bast's intent.
Considering Patrick Rothfuss has said he's going to write two trilogies, one dealing with the backstory and a second one that tells Kvothe's story from this point onwards, I find it likely that Kvothe with live through this (the first) trilogy. Where did he say that?
After Kvothe leaves the Adem, a redheaded Adem will be born
Sorry dude, but he explicitly mentioned that he had been chewing a birth control herb the whole time. Unless he goes back and knocks one of them up there ain't gonna be any red-headed Adem any time soon.
Denna is already dead.
Just to be contrary, while Kvothe and Bast describe her physical features in past tense, they use "have" when describing their interactions with her. That is, Bast says something like "I've seen her once, too," and so forth in that fashion. To this Troper, that sounds like the way you'd refer to someone who's alive but you haven't seen in a long time. Of course, it's hardly conclusive either way; Rothfuss is clever about keeping secrets.
He says: Te Rhintae? and as Rhinta means Chandrian according to the Adem, and as the demon also asks another question starting with 'te', I think that te means are you.Hear me out, this is going to be a bit complicated. The Ctaeh knows all possible realities and all possible worlds but exists at the crossroads of all possible realities. Therefore, anything it says is true somewhere, but not necessarily in the reality the questioner comes from, but its answers can lead the questioner to create those events in their reality.In one reality Kvothe becomes the Ctaeh, because while existing outside all time and realities, he talks to the Ctaeh and the things the Ctaeh get him to do leads to him embarking on a path where the end is him being punished by becoming the Ctaeh.So, in the reality of the story, he changes his name, his true name, to escape that fate.The prologue straight out says that he's waiting to die, and he certainly looks passively suicidal. Almost everyone he knew already thinks he's dead. Going out alone to fight big demon spiders and leaving a note "just in case?" And clearly something is coming for him while he waits around in the inn. This is probably why he tried to talk Bast into leaving - he didn't want to drag his last friend down with him.Part of the reason the Adem never realize sex causes pregnancy is because they all have the same hair and eye color, so there's no concept of children inheriting physical appearance from their parents. But now, Kvothe has had sex with several of Adem girls, so there's a possibility that one of them will have a child who looks like him. This might be enough to make them question their current assumptions.Kvothe has been in love with her since he was fifteen and gets ridiculously touchy about her, and both he and Bast refer to her in the past tense when he's trying to describe her. Seems pretty clear cut...and it's probably a major reason he's lost interest in living.
I have a related theory based on a reread of the first book: Denna is not Denna. I noticed that her introduction didn't make sense, and I realized why: in the interlude Kvothe makes a big speech about not knowing how to describe how he met her — except he already had met her, a year ago, traveling with the caravan. At first I thought that Rothfuss was being tricky and that the unnamed "her" actually referred to Devi or Auri, but Kvothe's wording is quite specific: he met "her," for the very first time, across the river, at the Eolian. Kvothe then has trouble describing her, despite the fact that he'd already described Denna back at the caravan. It's all carefully arranged to contradict itself, and the only way it makes sense is if the Denna from the Eolian onwards is a completely different person than the Denna Kvothe met at the caravan.
"I remember your name, Denna." It sounded good to say it to her. "Why did you take a new one? Or was Denna just the name you were wearing on the road to Anilin?" "Denna," she said softly. "I'd almost forgotten her. She was a silly girl." "She was like a flower unfolding." "I stopped being Denna years ago, it seems." She rubbed her bare arms and looked around as if she was suddenly uneasy that someone might find us here. I have to disagree. Denna later remembers their first encounter, which Kvothe thought she had forgotten. What would be the sense of having two Dennas in the story? Unless Denna changes her true name (as it's suggested Kvothe did when he became Kote) and becomes in essence a different person.
Kvothe is part Fae.
I think it may be more likely to be his mother's side, if she is a Lackless as it is strongly hinted at (we know that one of the Lackless daughters ran off with a man of the Ruh and they have a mysterious box in their family that remains unopened. It could also have something to do with the man who locked away the moon).
There's Fae blood through the entire race of the Edema Ruh. He's always being identified as Ruh by his eyes, so there must be something odd about them that's consistent with the rest of the Family. What's the most noticeable feature of Kvothe's eyes (that he shares with Bast)? Yup. Maybe it's stronger in his immediate family.
I imagine that Kvothe is his mother's son, but not his father's. They both are described as having dark hair, while Kvothe's is bright red. He is also described as having his mother's eyes. Still, judging from the total lack of suspicion about it, I am suspecting that he is from a previous marriage or perhaps a passing Fairy thought she was pretty and didn't give her a choice in the matter..
Red hair is recessive, so it doesn't matter what color either of his parents' hair is. I think the blood in the Edema Ruh is probably enough (and that it was accentuated by the fae he met in "The Wise Man's Fear").
Probably from his dad's side, unless the talk about how in love his parents were was all lies or the echo of a child's wishful thinking. The owner of the Eolian jokingly calls him fae-touched. There are exactly two people in the book whose eyes change color depending on their moods: Bastas, who we know is Fae, and Kvothe. The book seems tightly put together; lots of offhand comments tie back into things even within that book, so it stands to reason that this will be important later. And doesn't either Kvothe or his father curse in a manner similar to Bast?
Alternatively: Kvothe is a dennerling. We haven't been told what a dennerling is yet, but it was implied to be related to an unruly child. Rothfuss' mythos is very much built on Western European folklore, and what's one of the most distinctive creatures from Western European folklore? The changeling: children stolen away from their parents and replaced by an identical fairy child. If a dennerling is a changeling, then our Kvothe could be a fae replacement for the real one, who could have been taken away for who knows what purposes.
"Dennerling" probably alludes to denner resin, the opium-like substance. A "dennerling" would be somebody stupid enough to get hooked on denner resin. Dennerlings are repeatedly listed along with other creatures of myth. I'm guessing he wanted something like a morphling (like morphine to denner resin, ha). But, other than showing up on lists, there's no further information given. Just doesn't feel like another name for a sweet eater.
Kvothe possesses his sympathy, but didn't use it voluntarily when the demon attacked his inn to keep his cover.
In the framing story, there are hints that Kvothe has lost his sympathy abilities, or that they are at least greatly weakened. However, he does shatter a bottle several feet away without touching it, and when Chronicler makes a binding of iron against Bast, Kvothe orders him to undo it or he will break it himself. This implies that he still possesses a degree of power, enough to counter another namer directly. Later, during the possessed bandits attack on his inn, he hurls a bottle at the demon and tries to set it on fire with a binding, without result. But what if he did this on purpose? There were several other people in the inn during the fight. If any of them saw him set an attacker on fire without touching it, it probably wouldn't be long until stories began to circulate about a red haired man who used'magic' to combat a demon. Additionally, Bast has been trying to forced a reconnect between Kote and Kvothe; if Kvothe made a show of attempting to use sympathy against the attacker, he could use that to help convince Bast he is not the man he once was. So he makes an apparent attempt to attack with sympathy, and voluntarily let the binding fail to better establish his cover as Kote.
Kvothe's mother was Netalia Lackless, the sister of Meluan Lackless
The Maer reveals to Kvothe near the end of the book that Meluan hates the Edema Ruh because her sister ran off with them. In book one, Kvothe's mother says she was a noblewoman who was lured away from the boredom of her life by his father. This would also explain why she was so offended by Kvothe singing the vulgar innuendo rhyme about 'Lady Lackless' when he was a child.
When he meets Meluan for the first time he remarks on her familiar profile, dark brown eyes and strong jaw ("...such a strong resemblance that I couldn't help but stare. I knew her, I was certain of it. But I couldn't for the life of me remember where we might have met...." [Chapter 67]). I am not even sure if that's an argument for or against, as I can't recall whether his mother was ever described in any detail. Though I suspect it might weigh in on the pro-side.
Wait, then older sister wasn't it? Making Kvothe the true heir? That would depend on the order of succession, wouldn't it? Plus, there probably wouldn't be a way to prove it (except for opening the lockless chest/door/whatever, maybe). That poem mentioning that you need "a true son of the blood" to open the Lockless treasure is way too much of a Chekhov's Gun for him not to be - there are no known male Lockless heirs right now. Depending on the definition of "true son of the blood" and depending again on how the other family trees really fared there might be a lot more of them. To me most of them having "spiraled into obscurity" sounds like genealogy-talk for Put on a Bus. I might almost be able to convince myself, that Devan "the Chronicler" Lochees is part of one of those families, almost. Though I have no plausible idea as to how that might make an interesting story.
Let us also not forget the song that Kvothe's father wrote (that ended up with him sleeping under a wagon). Stands to reason her issue with it wasn't really the rhythm, but something a bit more telling... "Dark Laurian, Arliden's wife,
Has a face like a blade of a knife
Has a voice like a prickledown burr
But can tally a sum like a moneylender.
My sweet Tally cannot cook.
But she keeps a tidy ledger-book
For all her faults I do confess
It's worth my life
To make my wife
Not tally a lot less..."
Not tally a lot less
Netalia Lockless Seems totally in keeping with his fathers sense of humor. I like it. If this is true, then for all intents and purposes, the Maer is now Kvothe's uncle. Also, note where Arliden put this little gem in: "My Tally cannot cook", at first it seems like a pun on how his wife is so good with making "tallys" but a second glance and you realize that "Tally"(note the capital) could very easily be a pet name or short form of Natalia. Add to that the "Not tally a lot less" line, as well as the remark Kvothe makes about Meluan looking so familiar... Well in my opinion it makes for an at least moderatly strong argument.
I think this is pretty telling: I walked the Lady Lackless to the table and held out her chair. I had avoided looking in her direction as we walked the length of the room, but as I helped her into her seat, her profile struck me with such a strong resemblance that I couldnt help but stare. I knew her, I was certain of it. But I couldnt for the life of me remember where we might have met...
Ambrose is the king Kvothe kills
Seems more likely to me that Lord Haliax is the slain king. Having said that, your theory is certainly more interesting, being less of a cliche. Also, just a reminder that Kvothe is not old. We perceive him as a Badass Grandpa because he's wise and lived a very busy life, but it says straight out in the first chapter that he's still in his twenties(!). Early twenties, even: Chronicler says he can't be more than twenty-five. A little jolting, since if you don't read carefully it's easy to think he's in his late thirties or forties, even. Can't be Haliax, since Haliax isn't a king, and is very assiduous about keeping everything about him secret. If Kvothe kills Haliax, no one will know. And reading through the book, you always get a sense that the Chandrian are still out there, making it possible that Haliax is still alive, and possibly the Big Bad at the end of the trilogy.
To this troper, it seems far more likely that Ambrose will be killed early in the second book. At the start of Name of the Wind, a slightly drunk traveller mentions that 'he saw the place in Imre where Kvothe killed "him"', and that the cobblestones where the unknown person was killed are shattered beyond possibility of reparation. Assuming that this incident takes place around the time that Kvothe is studying at the university (which it probably would) then it is most likely Ambrose, as Kvothe has no other enemies in that area. It is possible that Ambrose's possible death could occur shortly after he gets Kvothe expelled, which would be sure to infuriate him. In a Q&A session not long ago, a reader pointed out that Kvothe might already have been thrown out of university, being the occasion where he calls the name of the wind on ambrose and has to go to court on it, and as such might never get "properly" expelled. This would help explain why he didn't get thrown out in the second book, too. As already pointed out, Ambrose is 16th in line for the throne. I think it's possible that Kvothe kills Ambrose either causing or as a repercussion of his expulsion from The University. That still leaves his father or younger siblings, it is mentioned he was the first born, to become King. And, while I don't exactly know where in the book, I believe Kvothe mentions he's the one that caused the war with Vintas, the very country Ambrose is from/in line for the throne of. My bet is Kvothe kills the King of Vintas in the future (Be it Ambrose or more likely one of his family) thereby gaining his title and starting the war.
A bit more evidence in the second book—some of the family above Ambrose is killed off, leaving him 13th in line for the throne instead of 16th.
One of the Newarrians says they heard Kvothe's sword was called "poet-killer". Ambrose is known to practice poetry. Put two and two together... Simmon also notably practices poetry. Might or might not be related.
Ambrose will use Denna as a pawn in his feud with Kvothe. Denna will die as a result. Kvothe will murder Ambrose in an act of pure vengeance. If the WMG about one of the Chandrian being Denna's patron is true, the Chandrian might set up Denna to be killed by Ambrose in order to draw Kvothe back into his fued, and therefore away from whatever Chandrian plans that Kvothe might've interfered with otherwise.
Ambrose is the first-born son of a duke. It is mentioned, quite specifically, that he's 16th in line from the crown of Vintas. And he has reason to HATE Kvothe. My guess? Kvothe and Ambrose wind up dueling each other for many years, until Ambrose manages somehow to clear away the 15 people above him in the succession. Then he REALLY causes Kvothe problems, until Kvothe decides that he needs Ambrose dead. This is probably why he's in hiding.
Denna is not what she appears to be.
Alternately, her mysterious benefactor is a Chandrian or connected to them. His leading her off into the woods and then going back to the wedding right before everyone dies is a the most gigantic red flag you could ask for. This Troper wanted to throttle Kvothe when all he cared about was finding her for the boring romantic crap and not finding out more about the incredibly obvious sinister man.
Don't forget that Kvothe has a HUGE blind spot in regards to Denna. Whether this is because she's a Chandrian, a Fey, or just very very pretty is unclear. All her names sound similar, and several times it's mentioned that she can only act according to her nature (sound familiar?). Note: we still don't know what a Dennerling is.
At one point near the end of the second book, Denna lays down on a rock, and Kvothe can see the name of the wind spelled out in her hair. There was also the conversation where she compared Kvothe to a willow, followed shortly by him calling her words "naught but the wind". She replied something along the lines of "above all other trees, the willow moves according to the wind's desire."
Quite a bit of what Denna says could be interpeted as being extremely suspicious. When she's under the influence of the denner resin and Kvothe says that he's surprised that she noticed his eyes changing color, Denna blurts out that "It's my job to watch you." I strongly suspect that the Chandrian are using her to spy on Kvothe and make sure he doesn't learn anything about them.
And then there's the fact that in the second book, she is extremely interested in how magic works, and specifically asks if there's a type of magic that works with only words. Is this something her patron has told her about? Does it have anything to do with the fact that she knows Yllish knots?
Was re-reading the first book and something stood out to me. When asking Deoch about her, Kvothe is told "She travels, always here and gone again". That sounds a LOT like the rhyme for Alenta "Silent come and silent go". As for the silent? She never gives any notice of when she's going to disappear or re-appear. Denna is also described as being quite pale, which relates to the preceding line: "See the woman pale as snow"
Well obviously there isn't much to back this up so far, but quite a bit about Denna seems to go beyond the realm of Contrived Coincidence. First of all, we have her first reunion with Kvothe: she recognizes him immediately, just happens to have been there right when he needed an Aloine, and personifies everything he could possibly want in a woman. From then on Kvothe, a very clever fellow, is completely incapable of finding her again while Denna, who claims to have no knowledge of hunting or combat outside what her suitors have told her, repeatedly finds him without difficulty. When Kvothe finally meets up with her again she just so happens to be in the area of another Chandrian attack, and her alibi for staying with Kvothe—as pointed out by Simmon and Wilem—is full of holes. She then stupidly decides to pop a strange substance into her mouth, blurt out something to Kvothe that makes him even more protective of her, then vanishes overnight. More than a little bit, it reminds me very much of another story where the red-haired hero met up with a mysterious dark-haired waif, and considering that a) we don't know much about the Chandrian and b) they just so happen to have reappeared at a place easily accessible to Kvothe...
Kvothe has a whole lot of power with names.
Kvothe doesn't call Ambrose by name when he first meets him, he is simply using his name as he narrates the story to Chronicler. Also the stableman introduced himself in his first line. The rest of the points here are valid though, he also correctly guessed that the girl in the Inn at Trebon was called Nell. He's quite good at nicknames too, Ellie = Ell, Verainia = Nina, Skoivan Schiemmelpfenneg = Schiem.
More evidence of this in the second book. He names Auri after the sun, but not in the language he thought he used.
Could also be a knack. I completely forgot about those, since they weren't mentioned outside of the first few chapters of book 1, but it seems to be an unconscious ability, which would fly with Kvothe's accidental naming prowess, as well as his typical inability to do such things on purpose.
I would think that for a master namer, the power of being The Nicknamer with uncanny accuracy and unconsciously knowing what people call themselves just goes with the territory. Also makes ominous foreshadowing: in the first book he says he'll have to make up a name for Denna's patron, and the wind blows an ash leaf into his hand. Cinder is another word for Ash.
When attempting to make up a nickname for Denna's patron, Kvothe suggests "Fredrick the Flippant. Frank. Feran. Forue. Fordale..." While Fredrick and Frank are clearly jokes, Feran, Forue, and Fordale are remarkably similar to Ferula, which is the name Haliax |
because Salguero is going to help him get into the Hall of Fame some day.
(Fine, so I’m kidding. But not about the HOF part).
“I didn’t really know about it until somebody made me aware of it,” Suh said Wednesday. “I’m not really concerned about it. I came to play here for Mr. Ross and help this organization win games, and make this defense an elite defense. That’s my goal.”
Suh has other admirable goals and one of those is this:
“I obviously signed a long-term deal here and I look forward to ending my career here,” Suh said.
The rest of Suh’s career would obviously include the three years beyond this one that are on his current contract. That contract runs through the 2020 season.
Those are facts. That’s black and white in no way open for debate.
So now the nuance? The gray?
Well, if that erroneous October 2017 report had been published in 2016, it would have had had a strong possibility of being accurate. At that point, there were indeed people within the Dolphins organization who weren’t in love with Suh.
Oh, they liked how he played.
But they didn’t like his standing within the team. Or within the building. Or on the team’s salary cap, where the defensive tackle is paid like a veteran starting quarterback.
So, yes, there were whispers Suh would not see the end of his current deal with Miami -- perhaps as late as last year.
But something changed toward the end of the 2016 season and through last offseason.
Ndamukong Suh turned 30 and it was as if he was born again as a great player, and great teammate, and great team leader, and a much more self-aware person.
Suddenly, people who couldn’t stand Suh the first year he was with the team started warming to him in no small part because he started warming up to them.
And obviously turning 30 played a role in this change. And Suh, a self-described introvert, getting comfortable around the people within the organization played a role. And even teammate Andre Branch, who seemed to draw Suh out for everyone else to know, played no small role.
The change has been cool. And, yes, it helps that Suh is playing very, very well this season.
The five-time Pro Bowl player leads all Miami defensive linemen with 22 tackles, is second on the team with four quarterback hits, and is third on the team with 2.5 sacks. This while being double teamed on most plays.
The Dolphins, by the way, are No. 8 in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game, which is a drastic improvement from being No. 30 last season.
So there’s that.
Except Suh’s contract remains something of an issue.
Suh counts $19.1 million on the Dolphins’ salary cap this season. Yes, that is a lot.
And that’s scheduled to rise to $26.1 million next season, which is mind-boggling, particularly for a defensive tackle. So, if the team wanted to simply cut Suh, it could save up to $17 million in cap space by designating him a post June 1 cut.
The club would still be on the hook for $9.1 million in dead money in 2018 and ‘19, and another $4 million in 2020, but the savings to the cap would be substantial -- again, $17 million in 2018, $19 million in 2019 and some $18 million and change in 2020.
Financially, it would make sense to cut Suh to give the Dolphins operating cap space. And that would almost certainly be the solution if we were talking 2015 Suh.
But we’re talking 2017 Suh, who is more valuable to the team and much more appreciated than he was previously.
So my guess is the Dolphins will try to work a restructure with Suh after this season. And, you should know, there are two kinds of salary restructure: One that simply moves money around for cap space purposes and one that trims the player’s salary.
The Dolphins may try asking Suh to take a shave, but I have no sourcing on that. That’s speculation. The easier approach is simply moving money around.
The Dolphins could save, say, $10 million in 2018 cap space by converting that amount of money into signing bonus. That would lower Suh’s cap number in 2018 to around $16 million.
Now, saving $10 million in cap room is not as much as saving $17 million in cap room. But Suh would still be on the team as opposed to being on the street. And there’s value to having Suh and not looking for a replacement when the team will already be spending a lot of resources on remaking the offense.
You should know that there’s a price to pay for dipping into Paragraph 33 of Suh’s contract under the term “Automatic Conversions’ and turning base salary into signing bonus. It raises the cap figures in 2019 and 2020 by the prorated amount of money the team lopped off the 2018 base salary.
So if the Dolphins convert $10 million next spring, it adds $5 million to the 2019 cap and another $5 million to 2020. That’s atop a 2019 cap charge that is already scheduled to be $28.1 million and a 2020 cap charge that is already scheduled to be $22.3 million.
So the Dolphins would be adding to each year’s already high cap charge.
Here’s where more nuance is necessary: Suh will be 32 years old in 2019. The Dolphins can easily offer him an extension that again makes him more guaranteed money and again lowers the cap charge for that year and for 2020.
And my guess is by that time the team won’t be paying Suh like he’s a quarterback. He might be on the back side of his career and if he really means it when he says he wants to end his career in Miami, he might take less money to stay.
All that is way, way off in the future.
For now, the point is Suh wants to stay with the Dolphins. The point is the Dolphins say they want him to stay and have no intention of getting rid of him next season. The point is there is a path for doing that while still not burdening the team’s salary cap situation.
And the nuance is that course didn’t seem to be one the Dolphins were going to navigate before Suh became, well, different. Better.National Express bus company has claimed its drivers have gone on an 'unlawful' strike in Dundee.
© STV
Bus drivers in Dundee have gone on an “unlawful” wildcat strike after two high-ranking union members were suspended over an industrial dispute.
The drivers for National Express Dundee went on strike at the company's East Dock Street depot at 10am on Thursday.
This came after a meeting between Unite union officials and company management over changes to working conditions for drivers in Dundee.
It is understood that no agreement on the conditions was reached, which led to the union officials ordering their drivers to come off the road and go on strike.
However, the chairman and secretary of the Unite branch were suspended and less than an hour later the drivers returned to their work.
After a further union meeting on Thursday afternoon, the drivers opted to go out on strike again and all the buses returned to the depot, meaning no National Express Dundee buses were operating.
It is understood the action will not be lifted again on Thursday, with it likely that National Express Dundee bus services will not run in the city for the remainder of the day.
A number of the drivers remained at the depot while the strike action was taking place.
A National Express spokesman said it was in discussions with trade union representatives to bring an end to the action.
He added: “This afternoon due to unlawful and unsanctioned action by individual drivers a significant number of our services have been affected.
“We are trying to work with the trade unions to resolve this matter which is linked to an ongoing investigation.”Record Jungle | Photo by Oliver Wang.
When news outlets talk about "the comeback of vinyl," they tend to overstate the basic facts. True, sales of new vinyl records have increased four-fold since 2006 and a staggering twelve-fold over the last 20 years. However, look at the numbers vs. the percentages and what we see is that even if vinyl sales are on pace to top 4 million in 2012, by comparison, the week of Thanksgiving alone saw nearly 10 million records sold overall. Vinyl sales may be thriving... but only within a niche ecosystem.
That said, a more compelling and local measure of vinyl's resurgence can be found in the spate of record stores popping up around the Southland. For a long while, it only seemed like shops were shuttering, whether once-giant chains like Tower Records or a local legend like Highland Avenue's Aron's. However, as my colleagues have noted, there's been a notable rise in smaller, boutique stores reversing the trend. Whereas the old center for vinyl activity in L.A. clustered around Hollywood and other mid-city districts, these emergent stores have shifted their home east-ward, towards neighborhoods like Atwater Village (Jackknife), Montebello (Record Jungle), Eagle Rock (Permanent) and especially Highland Park (Mount Analog, Wombleton, The Record Hunter).
I'll come back to these neighborhoods in a moment, but location isn't the only difference between the young boutiques and the older generation of stores. Survivors of the latter camp include Pasadena's Poo-Bah, Santa Monica's Record Surplus, and the Hollywood behemoth of Amoeba Music (recently spoofed on The Simpsons as "Protozoa Records"). Though most of those stores still revolve around the core genres of rock, jazz and soul, their larger floorspace often allows for broader buying practices across many styles. The boutiques, in contrast, tend to be more specialized: Record Jungle has become an eastside hot spot for used soul, Latin and hip-hop records. Mount Analog heavily stocks new electronic and indie titles. A couple of miles away on York Boulevard. is Wombleton, which boasts vintage British and other European records you're unlikely to find elsewhere in the city.
The specialization inherent to many of the boutiques has manifested in a curious marketing trend amongst a couple of them: a self-conscious deployment of a "curatorial" concept. For example, both West L.A.'s new Touch Vinyl and Highland Park's short-lived Strictly Grooves have featured "curated collections" for sale, tagged to specific DJs/personalities. Strictly Grooves -- which had to close down after only two months but is being re-opened under new ownership as The Record Hunter after Jan. 1 -- even literally had the word "curated" written on several boxes. Likewise, in the promotional video for Touch, owner Sebastian Matthews talks about taking a "more curated" approach, contrasting that with what he calls "treasure hunting" (i.e. digging through crates of disorganized records).
In borrowing a term typically associated with the art/museum world, these stores are attempting to imbue their records with a particular taste distinction, one that communicates "selectivity" and "exclusivity." The problem is that curation has always been synonymous with preservation. Organizing things to be sold, however selectively, is arguably the exact opposite of what curation entails. A record curator, in the most accurate sense, chooses what records to keep; what they don't want is what ends up in a store's bins. (Writing "discarded" on a box isn't a great marketing term however.)
Regardless of terminology though, there's no doubt that these new stores are selective -- their limited storefront space partially necessitates that -- and most of the shops have carved out particular niches for themselves. The boutique model isn't inherently superior to the more generalized approach of older stores; each has its place. If I'm looking for a McCoy Tyner or Bob Dylan record, I'd sooner hit up Poo-Bah but if I want the new boxset by techno producer Silent Servant, Mount Analog may be the best place in L.A. to find it.
Mount Analog | Photo by Oliver Wang
Back to location: like cafés and comic book stores, record shops have become a symbol of gentrification and it's not a coincidence that most of the boutiques have landed in so-called "transitional" neighborhoods. Cheaper rent isn't just good for the stores' overhead but it also draws the ideal vinyl customer: young (at heart, at least), culturally cutting edge, with just enough disposable income to invest in a limited edition, local ska band 7" or a compilation of '70s Ghanian disco.
It's a bit of a full-circle-with-a-twist. In vinyl's heyday of the 1950s through '80s, working class neighborhoods were full of mom-and-pop stores that often stocked records by smaller, local artists ignored by the bigger Hollywood shops. The new boutiques are similarly catering to their local base, even if it's a changing one. Notably, many of these stores host neighborhood music events: Wombleton sponsors a weekly DJ event at the Hermosillo Club next door, Touch Vinyl and Mount Analog regularly schedule in-store record release and listening parties, and in their short lifespan, Strictly Grooves still managed to host a mini-concert by La Mirada's Chicano Batman.
In October, Artbound contributror Frances Anderton asked "Do Book Stores and Video Stores Build Community?" and you could easily slot record stores into that same query. Clearly, the new boutiques are attempting just that, especially in helping provide venues - even if it's only a cleared out corner - at a time when many L.A. municipalities have closed down public performance spaces because of failing budgets.
However, the best record stores also build community through less formal means than event calendars and DJ nights. Vinyl junkies constitute a motley crew of characters from across the social spectrum and a well-stocked store with reasonable prices becomes a frequent gathering point, whether by intention or not. Case in point: hip-hop producer Andy "Spaceboy Boogie X" Perez opened Record Jungle about two years ago with practically no marketing or press campaign. He simply found a modest storefront along Whittier Blvd. and began stocking it with piles of $3-5 LPs and 12"s. Word of mouth gradually spread and even though, a year in, the store still had no Yelp page, business was thriving, drawing everyone from 50-something salsa collectors to teenage hip-hop DJs. Even now, Perez still doesn't do much to market the shop, though he's an avid user of Facebook as a way to update customers on store hours, announce flash sales of recently acquired collections, or simply share real-time photos of who's in the store. In these ways, Record Jungle straddles the line between the boutique sensibilities of new stores and the around-the-way appeal of the old mom-and-pops.
It's an unusual phenomenon that vinyl is commercially marginal as a format yet record stores can stage a comeback. However, the fact that they are, at least in Los Angeles, is a validation of the continuing allure of the record as well as the power of a good record shop to anchor and promote the musical character of a neighborhood. Vinyl is dead, long live the vinyl store.
Record Jungle | Photo by Oliver Wang
Dig this story? Sign up for our newsletter to get unique arts & culture stories and videos from across Southern California in your inbox. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter.“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster”.
Friedrich Nietzsche “Beyond Good and Evil”, Aphorism 146 (1886).
It’s always dangerous to take Nietzsche’s quotes out of context (actually it’s not dangerous at all, because it’s not as though there are platoons of armed Nietzsche enthusiasts roaming the streets looking to take down anybody who besmirches the ideas of their hero) but I’m fairly certain the “monster” he was speaking of here was Major League Soccer.
When Carl Robinson began his tenure with the Vancouver Whitecaps he spoke of the need to play open and attacking football, he opined on his abhorrence of the tedious 1-0 victory and he spoke of his enthusiasm for the more beautiful aspects of what can often be an ugly game.
And then reality set in.
Oh sure, when the season began the Whitecaps were all bells and whistles and passes and movement but gradually, with the inevitability of the ceaseless tides eroding a seemingly impenetrable rock face, the Whitecaps became the monster they were constantly facing; they became an MLS team who are happy to take a point on the road.
That means avoiding defeat transcends all other considerations, it means the forwards are left isolated with no support from the midfield and the midfield become more concerned with getting the ball away from them at any cost than they are with getting the ball away from them in a constructive manner.
The defence? Well, they’re just happy to defend.
There are still glimpses of the team we used to know; the occasional foray forward by a full-back, maybe a give and go in the centre of the pitch but, if anything, there’s a cruelty in those cameos because they offer heartbreakingly elusive snapshots of what was once owned but is now lost forever and, before our reminiscing can truly engulf us, we are back to watching a forward take a heavy touch or a defender concede a foolish foul and our blissful reverie is extinguished.
Robinson may still speak of his desire for the more artful aspects of the game but the recent road performances are proof positive that the prosaic and the pragmatic have won the battle with the poetic and the pretty for once and for all.
The next line of that quote from Nietzsche is “And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you” and that’s certainly how it felt watching the Whitecaps 0-0 tie with the Chicago Fire on Wednesday evening. The coach may deserve credit for improving the fortunes of this side on the road from previous seasons, but the improvement from low scoring defeats to low scoring ties doesn’t seem that substantial when the supporters are forced to sit through a game as monstrous as that one.
The Whitecaps remain where they have been since the World Cup break; on the fringes of the playoffs without ever being able to get the elusive win to lift them higher and while a point is rarely a bad thing on the road it’s like Nietzsche also said (and I’m paraphrasing slightly here).
“That game definitely needed a goal”
You can follow me on Twitter:Twitter.com/squadplayerCould it be that the politicians and eurocrats who designed the structures of the euro zone always knew they were flawed, but reasoned that a structural breakdown would enable them to bring in the common fiscal policy that would otherwise have been politically impossible?
This writer generally has little time for conspiracy theories, but Richard Jeffrey, chief investment officer at Cazenove Capital Management, makes a compelling case.
Throughout the current crisis involving Greece and Europe’s banks, there has been a widespread assumption that the euro zone’s problems have been caused by a mistaken belief that if the political will were strong enough it would be possible to overcome the clear economic flaws in the system’s design.
The idea that the architects always knew the system would break down but reasoned that such a collapse would enable them to bring in the deeper union that many of them favored suggests something more than naivety.
“Some of the politicians who introduced the euro, who pressed for it to be introduced, realized we would come to this crisis at some stage but they also realized that the crisis would take them further towards their goal, which was fiscal union as well, and creating a United States of Europe,” Mr. Jeffrey told listeners to Wake Up to Money on BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday.
“So in a sense the reaction of euro land to say what we need now is a tighter fiscal union is exactly what people wanted,” he added. “They knew some of the risks they were taking and knew there would be a crisis at some stage.”
[More over the jump]Formosakill Calvin Godfrey
Every Sunday morning in May 2016 saw an atmosphere of martial law in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. State telecom companies blocked transmission of the words “Formosa”, “dead fish” and “protest”. Police seemed to be everywhere, and the few die-hards who turned up to protest got bundled away before they could march a single block.
A 100-ton wave of dead fish had crashed into the beaches of Vietnam’s impoverished central coast and driven the nation into a frenzy. Millions of fingers soon pointed to an enormous steel plant financed by the Formosa Plastics Group — a petrochemical octopus based in Taipei. No one in Vietnam knew much about Formosa’s history, but they feared and loathed it all the same.
The Taiwanese connection triggered memories of the last national environmental scandal in 2010. Then, a Taiwanese firm called Vedan got fingered for wiping out all life in the Thi Vai River by funnelling toxic waste through an underwater pipe for an un-interrupted fourteen years. It came to a head when the river began eating through the steel hulls of Japanese ships docked downstream. State-owned supermarkets and media organisations declared jihad on Vedan-brand MSG. But beyond that brief and successful boycott, the city generally ignored the Möbius strip of factory strikes, land battles and environmental deprivations that colour life in rural Vietnam.
Formosa’s fishkill changed all that last year. That spring, grumblings on social media gave way to street protests. Vietnam’s cloistered urban class suddenly cared again about dead fish; the shift caught the authorities unawares.By Kima
The day before yesterday, I attended my first Mizo Church Service in Mumbai this year because it was Palm Sunday.
Every Sunday, 3:30pm, the BMCF (Bombay Mizo Christian Fellowship) conducts a Church service in our local language at All Saint’s Church, Malabar hills, next to Hanging Garden.
I am not much of a Church goer as I usually work on Sundays too, but last Sunday being a special day for us Christians, I took a haircut in the morning, shaved, wore my formals and took a cab to town.
I had a memorable time – sang gospel songs, heard a couple of good testimonials and met up with old friends after the Church service. Everything went as expected. Until the unexpected happened. Something that totally shocked me and put me in a sour mood the rest of the day.
So whenever our Church service gets over, we usually walk towards the taxi stand in front of Hanging Garden, where we chat for a short while over a glass of nimbu paani, and then say goodbye to each other. As most of us are busy with our own work (or academics) and Mumbai is such a large city, that is the only time we get to catch up with our Mizo friends in Mumbai.
Day before yesterday, at the nimbu paani stall, a Police van suddenly stopped in front of some younger Mizos standing on the pavement (there were many other people on the pavement eating sev puri and aloo chaat from the roadside vendors), and the uniformed police van driver angrily shouted at them. I was talking with a friend when that happened, and all I could hear were the words 'Nepali' and 'Kathmandu'. Then the driver chuckled and drove off.
As the police van drove away, I asked those Mizos who were standing close to the police van about what the cop said. A young Mizo girl, probably in her first year in college, shivered and said, "I think he said hey Nepalis, go back to Kathmandu!" while another guy standing beside her said, "No I think the cop asked if we are going to Kathmandu?"
Appalled.
I took down the license plate number of the police van immediately – MH 01 BA 1089.
First of all, being called a 'Nepali' is something people from the Northeast are so tired of hearing. I have nothing against Nepalis, but when we are not recognised by our own fellow countrymen in spite of the number of times we protest, something is definitely not right here. Secondly, most of the times when people call us 'Nepalis', it is done so not out of ignorance but out of sheer distaste for people from the Northeast(read: those of us from the NE with Mongoloid features, because not all Northeasterners have this feature, and likewise, not all Nepalis have this feature either). That word is unfortunately uttered in a very mocking and insulting tone...
But the most important point here is that, that man was a cop. A person who was supposed to protect us minorities when we face such abuses and racial slurs, somebody we could run to in times of trouble. And yet, he was the main perpetrator.
I've heard so many stories about how people from the Northeast didn't want to approach the police because the cops would usually turn them away, and sometimes they would even get mocked at inside the Police Stations by the cops themselves when they try to file a complaint about other people who had robbed them or harassed them. You remember how there was a mass exodus of north eastern people from Bangalore recently, in spite of the cops saying they’ll protect them, right? That’s how much most people from the Northeast trust cops.
I’ve never believed cops could be that bad because the few times that I was actually inside a Police Station was when I had to file an FIR for losing my phone, which was mandatory back then if I wanted a duplicate sim card from my service provider. The cop who took my statement didn’t abuse me. He didn’t even acknowledge me. He just signed my paper with his seal and sheepishly said, 'Next'.
But the Hanging Garden incident definitely left a dent on my faith in the police. And that puts me in a quandary because I don’t know what to do now – Shall I file a complaint at a Police Station or shall I just ignore it knowing nothing will ever happen? And then wait for the cop to have an outburst on some other poor Northeasterner maybe tomorrow or day after tomorrow?
Thinking about it for some time, I now know exactly what I must do. Let’s do away with all the anger and hurt and pain. Let’s reconcile. Let’s do it the Norwegian way.
So here is me, Kima, cordially inviting the police officer who was driving MH 01 BA 1089 on 24 March, 2013 around six in the evening near Hanging Garden for a cup of tea or coffee. The drinks are on me. Location, preferably around Bandra, you name the date and time. If communication is going to be a problem, I can always bring one of my Maharastrian friends along as a translator.
We’ll discuss about this issue, about why you might hate Nepalis or people from the Northeast in general, or maybe about how all this was just a big misunderstanding and we misheard what you actually shouted (but yes, we definitely heard 'Nepali' and 'Kathmandu', so no matter what the context was, it wasn't right). I’d love to tell you about the beautiful Northeast and its beautiful people, and how there are so many of us INDIANS with Mongoloid features and we are not Nepalis.
Of course we may all have different problems back home but here in Mumbai, most of us are law abiding citizens who pay our taxes regularly and try not to be a nuisance to the public. Yes, we are all aware of how different we look, the contrast in our cultures and traditions, the things that we like and don’t. You think it is easy for most of us to live here, work here, study here, everyday among a group of people so different from us? And yet, most of us have no other choice but to struggle and stay in this city for want of better education or better job opportunities or even because we have to support our families back home.
So dear police officer driving MH 01 BA 1089, you weren't making things any easier for us with that outburst. Let’s sit down and have delicious tea or coffee together and talk about all the misconceptions you may have about us. Let’s clear all the stereotypes and hypes about us. Because if we don’t, you will never know the truth about us and continue with your blind hate and bigotry against us, and a poor fellow from the North East will be your next victim again. That person may even be more traumatized than some of those young Mizo girls you scared on Sunday. Let’s sit to prevent that, shall we? Peace.
I know this invitation may not even reach the eyes of your fifty-third cousin because I am just a small speck in a universe of bigger things, but at least this speck is willing to give it a try. And knowing I tried will at least make me sleep better tonight as I wasn't able to the past two nights.
Kima is from Mizoram, brought up in Tamil Nadu, and has been blogging since 2004. He goes by the name 'Mizohican' in the online world, and most of his posts are about the Northeast and his experiences across India. He has been working at Webchutney, a digital agency, in Mumbai till recently and now is with a gaming start up. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Update: The Mumbai Police have responded to Kima's letter. You can read their reply here.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.The latest slew of virtual reality job postings from Google suggests the company is working on dedicated consumer VR hardware that will be manufactured at large scale.
For some time now it’s been clear that Google is excited about virtual reality. The company’s ‘Cardboard‘ initiative has put low cost smartphone VR viewers into the hands of millions, and begun to introduce the Android ecosystem as a place to find entry-level VR experiences.
But the current state of Cardboard virtual reality is substantially lacking compared to the leading mobile experience pioneered by Samsung’s Gear VR headset. Gear VR sets the bar with a combination of the headset—which features on-board hardware to improve performance—as well as custom software-side development which unlocks the full power of the hardware found in Samsung’s Gear VR compatible phones.
The difference between Gear VR and the stock Android VR experience is stark, but it likely won’t remain that way for long. Google has every incentive to leverage their Android ecosystem to be the go-to place for virtual reality, establishing themselves before Apple jumps into the ring.
A new series of virtual reality job postings from Google suggests that the company is working on consumer virtual reality hardware that goes beyond a simple smartphone VR viewer. Posted over the last several days, the full-time listings for work at the company’s Mountain View, CA headquarters seek candidates who can design and deliver consumer VR hardware. Explore each listing using the drop-down lists below, I’ve emboldened parts of the listings describing work with consumer electronics manufacturing:Kelly Howlett, professional artist and ex-Wizard employee has come into conflict over Summit Entertainment, producers of the Twilight film over a trademark issue that, is quite frankly, bizarre.
She was selling one of her paintings on Zazzle.com, until they took it down, telling Kelly that “we have been contacted by the intellectual property right holder and we will be removing your product from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to infringement claims.”
Intriguing, since it is a completely original painting. Making enquiries, she was told “Your product has been removed from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to an infringement claim by Summit Entertainment. This may be due to the actual design of the product, description, search tags or character names that references the Twilight Saga which is owned by Summit Entertainment.”
She worked it out and posted her conclusions on Facebook. The painting was tagged with the date 11-20-09, “the date I created my sketch”. This was also the release date of the Twilight movie New Moon.
Summit Entertainment are claiming, it seems, that they own this date. And that no one may profit from it. And Zazzle.com folded.
Now, Bleeding Cool posted this Ben Templesmith drawing of Wolverine on that day. Do Summit Enterprises claim they own that as well?
As Kelly puts it “I doubt that anyone at Summit Entertainment even saw my image. I’m sure they just have a bot trolling Google Marketplace to issue threats. All these anti-piracy laws are scaring me because it’s just assumed that these companies are right, and if not, their army of lawyers can certainly outlast my bank account. If someone like Summit wanted to claim my artwork was infringing their intellectual property simply because it was created the same day as the release date of a movie… I couldn’t fight it if I wanted to. I’m hating the idea of a company being able to call up my website host and have my content removed simply because they objected to it.”
More for the SOPA/PIPA fighters, I’m guessing.
Kelly concluded by noting that she put the image back up on Society 6 and that Zazzle seems to have had a change of heart as well.
Still, the fact that it happened at all is a freaky one…
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundWorld Cup Update: The Countdown to Brazil 2014
Wednesday, April 9th, 2014
Brazil Feeling The Pressure
With just 64 days to go until the 2014 World Cup kicks off, Brazilian hosts are feeling the pressure to deliver on contracts and complete stadiums. FIFA spokesperson, Jerome Valcke, has already confirmed that it’s unlikely everything will be finished in time for the first match in Sao Paulo, which luckily won’t interfere with the matches going ahead as scheduled. The World Cup will open on the 12th June, with host country Brazil playing against Croatia in the group stage.
Corinthians Claims Another Life
A Brazilian construction worker has died after falling 25ft from a grandstand where he was installing seating in the Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo. This brings the total to 8 fatalities across Brazil during the construction of World Cup stadiums. This is the second accident at the Corinthians stadium – in November, two workers were killed when a crane collapsed, damaging the building during its fall. The Brazilian government has been criticised for poor working conditions and poor safety standards, with labourers speaking out against the pressure they’re being put under to reach completion – and it’s clear that safety has been shelved in favour of speed.
Official Team Kit Controversy
England have unveiled their official World Cup kit – the all white Nike design is simple and features the famous three lions crest. Critics, however, have been outraged at Nike’s pricing, with an official England shirt setting fans back £90 – which even Prime Minister David Cameron has described as too expensive. The FA have been accused of greed and, worse still, no longer being interested in the game or its fans.
The England shirt is, however, on-par with or cheaper than some other World Cup teams – the official Italy World Cup shirt is priced at a staggering £120. The FA has responded by saying that the pricing is consistent with past events and that money from the shirts goes towards the FA, which supports football development on all levels – hardly a justification when millions in profit are already made from television, advertising and ticket sales.
England Striker Out Of The Game
England striker Jay Rodriguez has been confirmed as injured and will be out of the game for 6 months to recover, meaning the World Cup hopeful has lost his chance to represent England in Brazil. Rodriguez is due to receive surgery after tearing a knee ligament, playing for Southampton against Manchester City, in a Premier League match last Saturday.
Join The Fun
Despite hiccups in the road, FIFA’s bad behaviour and some serious concerns surrounding the construction of the event venues, enthusiasm for the World Cup is at an all-time high. The countdown is well under way and gaining momentum with fans and organisers taking to social media to share their their excitement.
If you fancy getting involved in the World Cup action, head over to Panda Sweeps to organise a sweepstake with your friends, colleagues or family. Panda Sweeps takes all the effort out of organising a sweepstake and does the hard work for you. And check out our sports blog for the latest sporting news and tips, if that takes your fancy.
Win A World Cup Football!
We’re giving one lucky reader the chance to win a Brazil 2014 World Cup football every week. For your chance to win, head over to our Facebook or Twitter page to enter – what are you waiting for?
Want a free £100 to have a bet on the Cup? You’re in luck – Pepper has joined forces with SkyBet to offer you guys a chance to win a sweet £100 bet, absolutely free. To bag your chance to win, create and deposit in a SkyBet account today.This year, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), a statewide public interest environmental law firm based in St. Paul, marks its 40th anniversary. A lot has happened in 40 years and it's not only an opportunity to celebrate the tremendous environmental progress Minnesota has made to the benefit of all of us, but also to reflect on the challenges we will face over the next 40 years.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, before MCEA was founded, Minnesota's air and water were seriously polluted. The Mississippi River, as it flowed through the Twin Cities, was lifeless. Not even carp could survive. The surface was covered with slimy mats of raw sewage, industrial sludge and slaughterhouse waste, and the smell in the summer could be overpowering.
The air wasn't much better. Every car and truck on the new Interstate 94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul belched lead and carbon monoxide, as they did throughout Minnesota. Smokestacks from power plants and manufacturers poured toxic emissions into the atmosphere. A thick, yellowish-brown haze settled over the Twin Cities metropolitan area on bad-air days in summer and winter.
But beginning with the passage of the U.S. Clean Air Act in 1970, the U.S. Clean Water Act in 1972, and Minnesota-based versions of these laws that MCEA lawyers drafted and helped get passed in those early years, strong environmental regulation turned the tide. Today, the Mississippi River supports a thriving fish population and is a designated national recreational area. Concentrations of airborne lead and carbon monoxide have dropped more than 90 percent. Concentrations of particulate matter — dust and soot — have dropped more than 80 percent. Air pollution reductions alone have increased average life expectancies of Twin Cities' residents by nearly six months.
Gains from cleaning up
Despite that track record of success, we still often see business lobbies fight good environmental standards every step of the way. The refrain has been constant. Environmental regulations are "job killers." Minnesota |
Despite all this, the golden-age myth is starting to lose its sheen. The past decade has seen an explosion of music of many different genres, forms, volumes, sounds, aesthetics, origins, shapes and sizes. In an age of fragmentation, invention is to be found on the extremes, not in the middle. The baby boomers mistake the lack of a central cultural narrative for a lack of progress. They're content to sit there praising the bloke who came up with the wheel by first attaching a couple of flat slices of tree trunk to his hod, and worse, those who lamely copy him. They never celebrate those who came after and continue to come, who improve and develop or noisily and enthusiastically deconstruct the past to build anew.
Who are these bold souls who refuse to be beaten down? There's the older acts who refuse to be trapped by their own past and constantly push themselves forward: Swans, Wire, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, Neneh Cherry, Gary Numan, the Fall, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Björk, John Foxx, even Kraftwerk, who will still be a futurist group and one of the best live bands you'll ever see even in 100 years when the Rolling Stones are long dead.
In the vanguard are the new wave, who fight hostile, retro-thinking media and plough forward, opening minds as they do so. Imagine, as a 16-year-old, hearing on record or seeing live any of the following for the first time: Factory Floor, These New Puritans, the Bug, the Knife, Frank Ocean, Laurel Halo, Mykki Blanco, Islam Chipsy, Le1f, Karenn, Grumbling Fur, Perc, Teeth Of The Sea, Vatican Shadow, Omar Souleyman, East India Youth, Sunn O))), the Body, Holly Herndon, Liars. How can the baby boomers deny those who’ve come after that thrill of the new by muttering over their paunches that it's all been done or heard before?
It's ludicrous that a 20- or 30-year period in just two countries nearly half a century ago has been allowed to utterly dominate conversation on contemporary music ever since. This was a tiny blip in the history of human beings clattering things together and stretching their vocal cords in expression of the awareness of being alive. Surely it's time to end the fool's errand and admit that the golden age is over because it never existed in the first place; that instead, we're looking boldly through a glorious kaleidoscope towards a bright horizon. For there is a great deal to be positive about as I write this in the summer of 2013. More and more, when I read blogs, articles, even tweets by writers born in the late 80s and early 90s, I'm struck by how confident, wise and worldly they seem… miles from how wet behind the ears I was the same age. Even better, they seem confident and proud about their own generation, less in thrall to the past, instead exploring and exulting in the wide open culture that lies before them. Are we starting to see the powerful, suffocating grip of the baby boomers starting to fail? That sound you hear? Underfoot, the cracking of your rose-tinted round glasses.
UK, Europe etc readers can purchase the Quietus Anthology here
American readers purchase here.
Not a Kindle owner? Never fear. You can buy and read the book via the Kindle app for the iPad, iPhone and all Android devices.Image caption Making sure chips do not make mistakes has a financial and power cost
Silicon chips that are allowed to make mistakes could help ensure computers continue to get more powerful, say US researchers.
As components shrink, chip makers struggle to get more performance out of them while meeting power needs.
Research suggests relaxing the rules governing how they work and when they work correctly could mean they use less power but get a performance boost.
Special software is also needed to cope with the error-laden chips.
Call costs
The silicon industry is defined by Moore's Law, which predicts that the number of transistors that can fit on a given area of silicon, for a given price will double every 18-24 months.
This is usually accomplished by shrinking transistors and typically means that processing steadily gets more powerful.
Image caption Chips that make mistakes demand less power
Transistors are tiny switches that are used as the fundamental building blocks of silicon chips.
However, many experts point out that the relentless march of Moore's Law could stumble when components get so small they become unreliable.
The unreliability - or "statistical variability" - of chips is a problem that many researchers were trying to deal with, said Professor Asen Asenov from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Glasgow.
Variability increases as components shrink, said Professor Asenov, who has been using large scale simulations on grid computers to study how the behaviour of transistors changes as they get smaller.
For Professor Rakesh Kumar at University of Illinois the demise of Moore's Law is being hastened by an insistence on making silicon chips operate flawlessly.
Professor Kumar said variations in manufacturing, environment, and workload can conspire to make a chip suffer errors. Manufacturers try to ensure that whatever happens, he said, the chip works correctly.
"It's a case of 'if the software asks the chip to do something it does it at any cost,'" he said.
Professor Kumar's research suggests that the pursuit of perfection forces manufacturers to make some poor choices.
"To ensure correct operation you are purposefully running the chips at higher power than you need to," he said.
Error condition
That insistence on perfection also pushes up manufacturing costs because many chips have to be discarded if they fall short.
Professor Kumar said that it would become harder and harder for chip makers to ensure instructions are executed flawlessly as components shrink.
The tiny components in chips are already starting to give rise to errors. Instead of trying to eliminate this, he said, it should be embraced to produce so-called "stochastic processors" that are subject to random errors.
"The hardware is already stochastic so why continue pretending it's flawless?" he asked. "Why put in more and more money to make it look flawless?"
Through research part-funded by Intel, Professor Kumar and his colleagues are designing processors that forgo flawlessness. Instead they attempt to manage the number and type of errors so they can be coped with efficiently.
An example error, said Professor Kumar, is when a chip fails to complete a cycle of instructions within a given time. The workings of most chips are governed by a clock and the data processing they do advances with each tick of that time-keeper.
Image caption The clocks in chips keep processing co-ordinated.
The upside of using chips that can make mistakes is much reduced power consumption.
Depending on how many errors a designer is prepared to tolerate, power consumption can be cut by up to 30%, he said. With only 1% error rates, power can be cut by 23%.
In many cases the errors will not have a significant impact on the workings of a computer. In other cases, he said, they could cause a system to crash.
To cope with this, Professor Kumar and colleagues are researching ways to make applications more tolerant of mistakes.
The "robustification" of software, as he calls it, involves re-writing it so an error simply causes the execution of instructions to take longer.
In another approach, the more robust software logs a user's actions. As the software is used, this log can be consulted to spot when something unexpected occurs.
The work on applications and programs may be more immediately useful, said Professor Kumar, as it can be applied to existing applications. This should make them cope with bugs that are showing up now and prepare them for use with future processors.At the only gay bar in the most sparsely populated independent country in the world, Zorig Alima tells me he’s a “penis shaman.” The proprietor of d.d/h.z says he can confidently predict men’s penis sizes and sexual predilections. He gives my companion a disputable “reading,” and dashes away to tend to friends and customers, explaining, “This place is like my living room.”
When Zorig returns, he brings us a frozen drink with Day-Glo layers. “It’s like gay life in Mongolia,” he says. “It looks bright and sweet, but it’s difficult to swallow.”
In Mongolia, it isn’t easy for a gay bar to fly under the radar, even in the center of Ulaanbaatar, the country’s biggest city, home to more than a third of Mongolia’s total population of 2.8 million. Outside the city, the steppes are home to some of the world’s last nomadic people. When the country was under Soviet rule from 1921 to 1990, all non-heteronormative expression of sexuality was taboo. Until 1989, homosexuality was illegal and punishable by imprisonment. Gay life in Mongolia is still far from easy. For many Mongolians, gay visibility is seen as an invasion, a foreign influence corrupting traditional life. Bullying at school remains prevalent, labor discrimination is rife, police hostility abounds and healthcare and social services are frequently withheld.
Several Mongolian gay bars predate d.d/h.z., but they were forced to close due to resistance from the neighborhood or would-be clients steering clear, for fear of getting beaten up or harassed. The first, City Life, lasted just one fun but lonely summer in 2004. But d.d/h.z. is thriving. Several Mongolian men, three Europeans, and one elegantly dressed trans woman chat and make merry. Hands slip around shoulders. The blinds are drawn tight, but the atmosphere is open and casual. LED disco lights fling primary-colored-flecks on the revelers. Zorig even recently set up an LGBT Corner message board (and three dildos) to “make the message wide and open.”
D.d/h.z. Photo: Lila Seidman
Fewer than 18% of Mongolia residents have internet access, and until recently, information about anything related to gay life was nearly impossible to come by. When it does, it can be despairing. In the ‘90s, a famous and grisly incident disturbed the tiny country, when a Mongolian pop singer who was rumored to be gay was found beheaded in his apartment. Now, same-sex teen suicides crop up in the news with alarming frequency.
In 2010, Mongolia’s newly formed LGBT center reported on over a dozen hate-motivated instances of harassment, violence, and rape before the UN. In 2001, a lesbian woman was abducted, stabbed and raped by two men after the funeral of her girlfriend, who had committed suicide. In 2009, the ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi group Dayar Mongol kidnapped three transgender women in broad daylight and took them to a cemetery where they were beaten and sexually assaulted. None of the crimes were initially reported to “for fear of secondary victimization by police.”
Zorig “heard stories” about the existence of gay people growing up, but didn’t meet another gay man until he moved to Japan at 19. There, Zorig worked as an investment banker for 15 years “having a nice time enjoying my gay life” before moving back to Mongolia in 2012. “Coming back to Mongolia but not having a place to party is kind of sad,” he says. “So I thought, ok, let me just create that.” Gay men could meet at “secret parties,” but Zorig said he was tired of hiding. He knew that there were enough people living in the shadows to constitute a clientele.
He opened the dance club Hanzo, in mid-2012, and hosted drag shows, go-go dancing and karaoke. Police frequently raided the bar and physically assaulted club-goers.
“Back in 2012, it was not cool,” Zorig says. “People were like, ‘What the fuck is that?’”
During Hanzo’s three-year existence, local police who interacted with Zorig and his clientele on a weekly basis gradually warmed to the bar. Members of Mongolia’s artistic elite, including the rock band The Lemons, frequented the bar. Because of their potent social influence, their acceptance informed wider, albeit measured, public acceptance.
Zorig in drag. Photo courtesy Zorig Alima.
Zorig notes that police in Hanzo’s centrally located Chingeltei District tend to be more familiar with the LGBT community—and therefore more accepting—than police in more far-flung districts. Just last year, police interrupted Ulaanbaatar’s Equality Walk and harassed participants.
The previous November, one of the most prominent trans men in Mongolia, Anaraa Nyamdorj, opened the now-defunct gay bar, 100%. Like Hanzo, the bar attracted grateful clientele seeking a safe haven, along with opposition. In February of 2012, Anaraa’s sister’s ex-boyfriend stormed into the bar and punched him in the face, fracturing his eye socket. At the time, hate crimes were not recognized under Mongolia’s Criminal Code and the case was dismissed.
Anaraa waged a three-year battle alongside local colleagues and the National Human Rights Commission against state authorities to register the LGBT Centre, Mongolia’s first and only LGBTI human rights organization. The roadblocks seemed innumerable, beginning with the Mongolian Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs denying official registration to the NGO and requiring that the LGBT Centre to obtain “a linguistic definition” of the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual” and “transgender” from the Linguistics Institute of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Then, the State Registration Agency refused to register their name because its meaning “conflicts with Mongolian customs and traditions and has the potential to set a wrong example for youth and adolescents.” The Centre was finally officially recognized in 2009, just in time present their distressing report to the UN.
Anaraa now serves as the Centre’s executive director. On Dec. 3, 2015—Anaraa’s birthday—Mongolia passed a new Criminal Code that effectively recognizes “crimes of discrimination,” in large part due to the Centre’s international advocacy with UN treaty bodies and the UN Human Rights Council.
The law will take effect Sept. 1, and that’s “when we will see how much the police are able to understand [the law],” Anaraa says, acknowledging that the term “crimes of discrimination” is somewhat vague. To ensure that the police understand the law and apply it properly, the Centre will be training the police on what hate crimes are, how to recognize them and the kind of assistance hate crimes victims require. The U.S. State Department is funding the project and the U.S. Embassy reserved the money for three years while LGBT advocates and activists waited for the law to pass. According to Anaraa, Mongolia is the first Asian country to have hate-crime and hate-speech regulations in its Criminal Code. (Some countries, including Hong Kong, Japan and Macau offer partial protection.)
Anaraa now calls d.d/h.z “home” after 100% closed, in December 2012, after the landlord found out that the tenants had sublet the space to members of the LGBT community and subsequently terminated the lease.
“Back in 2012, it was not cool. People were like, ‘What the fuck is that?’”
Zorig believes d.d/h.z and Mongolia’s LGBT Centre have “big synergy”: as legal reforms beget social détente, those in the community “feel free and safe to go out – or come out.” Zorig thinks the bar’s visibility “made the straight community understand that these people are not monsters. They are not pedophiles and they are not perverted. They are just people.”
The same year as the Dayar Mongol neo-Nazis staged their transphobic attack, the LGBT Centre produced a film called “Lies of Liberty,” featuring an interview with one of the victims. According to Anaraa, the film helped stoked a public outcry. “What the ultra-nationalists did was shameful because they were targeting their own flesh and blood,” he says.
A mining boom in 2008 brought a deluge foreign investment and cultural influence, which triggered the rise of several ultra-nationalist groups. Far from embodying the Aryan phenotypic ideal, Mongolian neo-Nazis tend to emphasize their reverence of Hitler’s obsession with national identity and ethnic purity, and have notoriously wrought violence against the LGBT community and foreigners, especially those in the company of Mongolian women. Recently, the ultra-nationalists have focused their ire on foreigners, in particular, the Chinese, who they believe are exploiting their economy and natural resources. Some groups, including Tsagaan Khass (White Swastika), have rebranded themselves as environmental groups fighting pollution generated by foreign-owned mines.
About a year after the attack, Dayar Mongol issued a formal apology to the victims. Anaraa says he hasn’t heard a single report of violence carried out by the ultra-nationalists against the LGBT community since the public apology.
Late on a Saturday night, the music is subtle and the lights relatively bright. There’s more of a café than “party” ambiance. At 3:30 am, people are still streaming in and out. Men sit at the bar, poised to cruise. Groups—dressed almost exclusively in tight jeans and black shirts and black zip up jackets—huddle into wooden booths. A belligerent drunk man stumbles in and Zorig escorts him out.
Not long ago, Zorig says he spoke with the leader of umbrella ultra-nationalist group Khukh Mongol (Blue Mongolia), which includes Dayar Mongol, who told him the group no longer sees the LGBT community and proprietors like Zorig as their enemies. The leader’s friend, an older trans woman, came out to him last year. The leader and other members of Blue Mongolia even visited Hanzo a few times themselves.
The leader told Zorig, “If anyone comes into your place and threatens you, just call me.”Eggs are traditionally thought of as being very fragile, but in fact the physics behind their shape is astounding.
Ingredients:
raw egg
plastic bag or glove (for the unconfident!)
Instructions
Challenge audience members to break the egg just by squeezing it. Let them wrap the egg in a plastic bag or wear a glove if they're worried… Believe it or not, it can't be done!
How Does it Work?
The shape of an egg is actually one of the strongest designs possible. The curved structure means that applying pressure to any particular area actually spreads the force out over the entire egg. So just squeezing it won't cause it to break. Of course applying a very sharp force to one point WILL cause it to break – which is why we usually tap the egg on the side of a bowl to break it when cooking.
Tips for Success
Ask your volunteers to remove any rings etc. before trying this trick – the sharp uneven force from such metal objects can cause the egg to break. Check your eggs for hairline fractures before attempting this trick – if there is any existing damage to the egg it won't work.
Did You Know?
The ornate and intricate arched doorways and ceilings in many old buildings aren’t just there for their aesthetic qualities. Arches are in fact one of the strongest building structures. In effect, every brick or piece of masonry within the arch is falling on all the others, distributing the weight evenly over the structure.Nico Rosberg claimed victory while Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa completed the podium. F1Zone.net provides its driver ratings from the Austrian Grand Prix.
44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | G: 1st | R: 2nd | 7/10
Hamilton held provisional pole before pirouetting as he braked for Turn 1 – somewhat fortunately, Nico Rosberg also erred. A poor start set the tone for the rest of the race as he didn’t have the pace to match Rosberg and then collected a penalty for a clumsy mistake at the pit exit. One to forget.
6 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | G: 2nd | R: 1st | 9/10
Rosberg was level with Hamilton’s time towards the end of Q3 and knew he had to push, with the consequent error a result of him taking one too many risks. He made amends at the start by claiming the lead and after fending off Hamilton into Turn 2 he never again looked like being troubled.
3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull | G: 18th | R: 10th | 7/10
Ricciardo’s woes continued in qualifying as he skated into the gravel in Q2, citing brake problems for his struggles. Ricciardo stayed out long on Prime tyres in the race before switching to Options, even then he could manage only 10th of the 14 classified runners.
26 | Daniil Kvyat | Red Bull | G: 15th | R: 12th | 6/10
Kvyat did well to set the eighth best time and the application of penalties also suited the Russian comparatively well, as he only dropped seven positions. Unfortunately that proved to be the sole stroke of good fortune as he picked up damage at the start which compromised the remainder of his race as he finished 12th.
19 | Felipe Massa | Williams | G: 4th | R: 3rd | 8/10
As in 2014, Massa got the better of Bottas in qualifying but Williams’ pace was good enough for fourth, rather than pole. He remained there in the first stint but a slow stop from Sebastian Vettel promoted him to third and he used his experience to stay there until the end.
77 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams | G: 6th| R: 5th | 7/10
Bottas conceded that the yellow flags in Q3 hurt him especially and as a result he could manage only sixth place. He dropped behind Max Verstappen at the start and once clear of the youngster, diced with Nico Hülkenberg, passing him on track before falling behind through the stops. He got back ahead, by which time he was adrift in fifth, where he remained, as brake problems led to a preservation drive.
5 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | G: 3rd | R: 4th | 8/10
Vettel set the pace in two practice sessions but come qualifying Mercedes turned up the wick and he was left to collect third place. Vettel was cruising around in third place but a desperately slow stop demoted him to fourth, where he remained.
7 | Kimi Räikkönen | Ferrari | G: 14th| R: Ret | 2/10
Räikkönen’s terse response to his Q1 exit was indicative of where Ferrari still has to make progress, as it’s not the first time a Saturday error has compromised the Finn. However, such qualifying errors remain irrelevant when you lose control and crash out – Räikkönen was fortunate that Alonso’s floor did not cause him harm.
14 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren | G: 19th| R: Ret | 6/10
Alonso spent much of the weekend in a downbeat mood – understandably so – as he knew his race would be compromised by penalties. He ran the new aero package but didn’t get a chance to serve his time penalty when Räikkönen veered left and gave Alonso probably the most fun he’s had all year.
22 | Jenson Button | McLaren | G: 20th | R: Ret | 6/10
To give Button his credit, he remained in a perennially optimistic mood while adding some gallows humour about McLaren’s predicament. A 25 place grid penalty summed up his season but the car failed early on in the race anyway.
27 | Nico Hülkenberg | Force India | G: 5th| R: 6th | 9/10
Riding the crest of a confidence wave fresh from his Le Mans triumph, Hülkenberg pulled a lap out of the bag to go fifth quickest in qualifying. He stayed there at the start and embarked on a battle with Bottas; Force India’s strategy was initially superior as it gave Hülkenberg back track position but he couldn’t defend for long and slipped to sixth – a nonetheless top result.
11 | Sergio Pérez | Force India | G: 13th| R: 9th | 6/10
Pérez missed out in qualifying as he got stuck between Alonso and Räikkönen and was unable to improve his time. Pérez made a good start on the Prime tyre but a slow stop compromised his progress and vibrations made his day worse; ninth was still a solid result.
33 | Max Verstappen | Toro Rosso | G: 7th | R: 8th | 8/10
Verstappen looked at ease in the wet conditions during the final practice session and when conditions dried stormed to seventh on the grid. He moved up to sixth at the start and provided some robust, but clean, defending and took a well-deserved eighth, his first points since Malaysia.
55 | Carlos Sainz | Toro Rosso | G: 12th| R: Ret | 6/10
Sainz explored the circuit during the wet in order to get a good feel and went with a rain-dependant set-up, which explained his deficit to Verstappen. In the race he received a drive through penalty for pit speeding following a stop in which he lost time, after which the car packed in.
8 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus | G: 9th | R: Ret |6/10
Grosjean was optimistic of a similar qualifying result to Canada but a hydraulics issue left him out of Q3 and understandably frustrated. There was further irritating in the race as he was nudged wide by Sainz, couldn’t get by on Pérez and then the gearbox failed and spat him off track and into retirement.
13 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus | G: 10th| R: 7th | 7/10
Everyone should take a moment to consider that Maldonado was almost sideways at full speed on the pit straight and not only avoided the mother and father of all accidents but still managed to pass Verstappen. You probably won’t see a better piece of car control in Formula 1 all season.
28 | Will Stevens | Manor Marussia | G: 17th | R: Ret | 6/10
Stevens went for a wild ride through the gravel at Turn 7 in qualifying, which went a long way to explaining his uncharacteristic deficit to Roberto Merhi. Unfortunately for the Briton an oil problem put him out early on. At least he has a unique record of having a DNP (did not participate), DNS (did not start) and a DNF (did not finish) all in the same season.
98 | Roberto Merhi | Manor Marussia | G: 16th | R: 14th | 7/10
Aside from a brief trip into the gravel Merhi had a typically anonymous weekend but one in which he appeared to find more confidence in the car. He outqualified Stevens but didn’t have a chance to race the Briton after his early failure; a lonely run to 14th beckoned.
9 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber | G: 11th| R: 13th | 4/10
Ericsson didn’t have Nasr’s pace throughout the weekend and put himself on the back foot further by jumping the start, copping the obligatory drive through penalty. A loss of power while exiting the last corner indicated retirement but the Sauber sparked back into life.
12 | Felipe Nasr | Sauber | G: 8th | R: 11th | 7/10
Nasr looked comfortable all weekend at a circuit where he thrived in GP2 last year, despite Sauber’s expected struggles. Unfortunately in the race Sauber regressed to the back of the midfield pack, with Nasr’s day made more difficult by overheating brakes.First up, here’s a quick test of how well you know what sort of allowances and payments attract CPF contributions:
1) Cash gift (e.g. hongbao) given to employees during festive seaon – Is CPF payable?
2) Grooming and haircut allowance for employees – Is CPF payable?
3) Fixed payment to employees for vacation expenses – Is CPF payable?
4) Payment to employees for laundry expenses on personal clothing – Is CPF payable?
5) Make-up pay given by MINDEF/SCDF/SPF for NSmen employees during their NS training period – Is CPF payable?
6) Wages for employees on probation – Is CPF payable?
7) Cash award for staff productivity – Is CPF payable?
8) Service charge collection by hotels/restaurants and distributed as part of wages to employees – Is CPF payable?
If you answered “YES” to ALL THE ABOVE, you are correct! 😀
People often ask me why I quit my previous full-time job to become a blogger, and the conversation usually involves my experience of being wrongfully denied my CPF monies (a total of S$14,653). I’ll share more in a bit if you have not heard the story before. However, other people have also shared their own similar instances of being shortchanged when it comes to CPF contributions.
This blogpost post is for you, if you are an employee taking up a part time job, internship, full time employment, freelance job, etc, to help you understand your rights better and protect yourselves from the lies that employers spin when they want to evade paying the CPF monies due to you.
Source: AsiaOne
CPF non-payment with regard to freelance jobs or part time jobs Singapore citizens (and especially students) sign up for usually involve the lie that it is better to take home 100% of their pay and not have any CPF contributions. Very tempting too, if I may add, when I was earning just S$4 an hour more than 10 years ago as a retail assistant.
~ The 8 Common Lies Employers Tell Jobseekers ~
LIE #1: It Is In Your Best Interest If You Take Home 100% Of Your Pay And Not Have Any CPF Contribution
One example shared with me is of a Mr Tan, who is an odd-job labourer in his late 50s. He left his ex-company to join another company. His new boss told him that this company doesn’t provide CPF contributions and mentioned that Mr Tan can take home the full S$1,900 he earns instead of contributing 13% of his wages to CPF.
What his boss did not say is that the company will also get away with not contributing the employers’ portion of 12% of Mr Tan’s wages, and that Mr Tan will not receive Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) too because there is no record of CPF contributions from either employer or employee!
After 3 months, Mr Tan realized he didn’t receive the WIS. His boss said since Mr Tan had agreed that there would be no CPF contribution, the company will not back pay the CPF. Thus, Mr Tan quit and found another job that pays CPF.
LIE #2: (Not Providing CPF Contributions And Keeping Silent About It)
This is especially crucial when it comes to part time jobs for students who probably have inadequate knowledge about CPF contributions. Even adults can sometimes be “conned” without knowing.
Madam Lam Yook Chan worked as an outsourced factory line leader in a pharmaceutical company for five years, working long hours and drawing a monthly salary of S$1150.
She did not even realize that she had never received CPF contributions from her errant employer till her husband spotted a newspaper ad about the launch of NTUC’s U Care Centre and called in to inquire.
Madam Lam visited the U Care Centre at NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) where the consultants’ investigations revealed that she was owed CPF contributions of over five years!
Source: The Straits Times
With the MOM and CPF Board’s help, Madam Lam managed to recover over S$10,000 worth of CPF contributions. Through further investigations, another 113 of Madam Lam’s colleagues’ CPF was also recovered. In addition, 45 workers also received higher Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) allotment totaling about $13,000.
During this ordeal, Madam Lam was even offered a private settlement of $9,000 in cash from the company to silence her but she refused it after consulting U Care Centre.
Madam Lam has since resigned from the company and found a new job. She is still a factory worker in the same industry but earns a higher pay. She has also decided to sign up as a union member with her new job.
There are many other workers like Madam Lam who are unaware of their rights and who are missing out on their rightful CPF contributions and their WIS payouts.
LIE #3: “You Decide: You Want CPF OR Your Job?”
I’ve shared about this earlier (read the full post here). A 65-year-old cleaning lady was told by the cleaning contractor she is working for that she could either choose to receive more take-home pay (S$800) without CPF, or get CPF but with less pay. On top of that, she was not offered a contract of service, thus she was not entitled to annual leave, medical leave and other Employment Act benefits.
Her son, aged over 40, suffers from schizophrenia and lives with her. He has trouble holding down a job but has medical bills of up to S$200 per month.
When she realized her friends were receiving Workfare but she wasn’t, she called the NTUC hotline 1800-255-2828 to enquire about how to sign up for Workfare, not realizing that it is an auto-inclusion scheme by the government as long as the employee gets CPF.
She was referred to the CPF Board, which helped her retrieve 3 years’ worth of employer CPF contributions, amounting to S$2940. Although she gets less take-home pay, the CPF contributions can go towards the rent for her rental flat and foot part of her son’s medical bills. She can now receive Workfare too.
Unfortunately, without a contract of service, the company will not be reimbursing her for the annual leave, medical leave, etc, that she should have gotten during the 3 years she worked for them.
LIE #4: “Don’t Worry! I’ve Put In The Correct CPF Amount!”
Mdm Lau is a part-time cleaner at a coffee shop, earning a few hundred dollars a month. She is a 79-year-old widow who works to keep active as she gets bored watching TV at home the whole day.
Her employer told her that he will contribute to her CPF account. She trusted him to contribute the “proper” percentage of 20% of her pay. She then received her yearly CPF statement but cannot read English so she asked her grandson to translate for her, and he asked her why there is a monthly $2 CPF contribution from her employer. It prompted her to check with her employer regarding the low S$2 contribution.
LIE #5: “Our Company Does Not Pay CPF On Commissions And Bonuses”
Click here to read about my earlier post on my own (unfortunate) experience of this. In 2010, my income for the whole year was S$114,000. The bulk of it was from sales commissions. There was an unwritten company policy that employer CPF contributions on commissions would come from the employee. So employer AND employee CPF contributions were deducted from my salary – do the math and you’ll know it was quite a large sum.
I asked the CPF Board for help in retrieving my money, and the company even wanted to contest this by engaging a lawyer. Thankfully, the CPF Board told them that they have “no case” and to hand over the monies please.
LIE #6: “Only Full-timers Get CPF”
Your employer is required to pay both the employer’s and employee’s share of CPF contributions every month if you earn more than $50/month. He/she is entitled to recover the employee’s share from your wages.
CPF contributions are payable for Singapore Citizens (SC) and Singapore Permanent Residents (SPR) who are:
1) working in Singapore under a Contract of Service; and
Source: Singapore Business Review
2) employed under a permanent, part-time or casual basis.
However, if you are a SC or SPR working overseas, CPF contributions are not mandatory.
LIE #7: “If You Earn Less Than $60 A Day, You Won’t Get CPF”
[As above] As long as you earn more than $50 per month, your employer should pay your CPF contributions.
LIE #8: “You Are Employed By More Than 1 Employer So You Won’t Get CPF”
If you are concurrently employed by more than one employer, all your employers must pay CPF contributions based on the wages paid.
However, if your total wages exceed the Ordinary Wage ceiling, you may apply to limit your share of contributions on Ordinary Wages by sending in your application to employer@cpf.gov.sg.
All your employers have to pay the usual employer’s share of CPF contributions on the full amount of wages, subject to the Ordinary Wage ceiling. The prevailing Ordinary Wage ceiling is $5,000 per month. Thus if you earn a monthly wage of $6,000, only $5,000 would attract CPF contributions; the remaining $1,000 would not.
From 1 Jan 2016, the Ordinary Wage ceiling will be raised to $6,000 a month.
This means if you’re below 50 years old and earn more than $6,000 a month, you will receive extra employer’s CPF contribution of 17% x $1,000 = $170 more every month!
~
Now that you’ve read this and know your rights when it comes to CPF contributions, please share this article with your family and friends, so NO ONE, especially the older folks and those who are less educated, has to fall prey to these 8 lies ever again. 🙂
Here’s an Infographic that neatly summarizes this blogpost:
Feel Free To Share It With A Link Back To This Post 🙂
~ Brought to you by the Labour Movement ~NCHS Data Brief No. 200, May 2015
PDF Version (604 KB)
T.J. Mathews, M.S.; and Sally C. Curtin, M.A.
Key findings
Data from the National Vital Statistics System
The highest percentages of births occurred during the morning and midday hours.
Births on Saturday and Sunday were more likely to occur in the late evening and early morning hours than births Monday through Friday.
Compared with induced vaginal deliveries and noninduced vaginal deliveries, cesarean deliveries were the least likely to occur during the evening and early morning.
Noninduced vaginal births were more likely than cesarean and induced vaginal births to occur in the early morning.
Cesarean deliveries with no trial of labor were much more concentrated during the day than were cesarean deliveries with a trial of labor.
Births delivered in hospitals and all |
Trump signed the first version of his travel ban, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement that the German leader "explained" refugee convention requirements, among them that the international community take in war refugees on humanitarian grounds.
“She is convinced that the necessary, decisive battle against terrorism does not justify a general suspicion against people of a certain origin or a certain religion," Seibert said in a statement.
A White House readout of the same call made no mention of the immigration ban being discussed.
Last week, a White House official said he expects the issue to come up but that the two leaders have already spoken on the phone and at this point, it's a question of how to "move forward" on the issue.
With few tangible policies to expect deliverance on, the truest measure of the meeting will likely come during a planned joint press conference.
It is the fourth time Trump has fielded questions side by side with a world leader — the United Kingdom's Theresa May, Canada's Justin Trudeau, and Japan's Shinzo Abe have all joined Trump for press conferences since his White House tenure began.
Climate
Germany could look to Trump on issues like the Paris Climate Agreement, which Dröge says would signal intentions for further international collaboration. The agreement marks a global commitment to combating climate change, but could be in jeopardy of the U.S. pulling out.
The decision comes at a time when Trump's own Environmental Protection Agency administrator says he's not sure that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.
Sources close to Trump and those within the White House have previously signaled that the president will pull out of the agreement, reversing one of President Barack Obama's lasting works on climate change.
But last week, White House officials declined to get out in front of the president on this issue, noting that it would possibly be brought up by the German chancellor but that "internally the United States is still working on that issue."
The European Union
There's also the question of the role of the European Union (EU) in the wake of the Brexit vote for the U.K. to leave the bloc last summer.
Trump congratulated himself during the campaign for predicting the outcome of the Brexit vote, and has sought counsel from "leave" proponents such as Britain's Nigel Farage during the campaign, transition, and now in the White House. Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, is known for his anti-immigrant stance and for being a prominent purveyor in the push for Britain to leave the EU.
But the White House has already laid the groundwork to assure Merkel and the EU that they are committed to the relationship. Merkel met with Vice President Mike Pence last month in Munich, where White House officials say he gave a "clear message" that the United States will maintain its "strong enduring partnership" with the EU and recognize its "significant contributions to global peace and prosperity."
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. Philipp Guelland / EPA
NATO Spending
White House officials did walk the president's hard line on NATO defense payments, repeating that the burden must be shared among partners and that the White House is "heartened" by Germany's commitment to ratchet up its spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
German officials stress this call for more spending is nothing new, but remain committed to the above spending goals outlined in 2014 at the Nato Wales summit.
While in Munich last month, Vice President Pence targeted countries who "do not have a credible path" toward paying their share of the NATO burden.
"The time has come to do more," he said, signaling Germany, France, and Italy to increase spending without naming them outright. At that same conference, Merkel made clear that Germany would not be bullied over this spending and that they'd already promised to ratchet up their monetary commitment.The Apple iPhone 8 Plus has a main camera system truly worthy of a flagship phone. Similar to the iPhone 7 Plus, it features two cameras — a wide-angle 12MP main camera, and a 12MP telephoto camera with a slower lens for zooming in on subjects and for special effects such as Portrait mode. Comparing the camera datasheets of the older iPhone 7 Plus and the new iPhone 8 Plus make the two look almost identical; however, under-the-hood upgrades have given the 8 Plus an image quality and camera performance boost in almost every one of our tested categories.
Key camera specifications:
12MP main (wide-angle) camera with BSI sensor, f/1.8 lens
12MP telephoto camera, f/2.8 lens
Optical zoom, with digital zoom up to 10x
Portrait mode
Portrait Lighting (beta)
Optical image stabilization (main camera only)
Quad-LED True Tone flash with Slow sync
Autofocus with focus pixels
Wide-gamut color capture
Body and face detection
AutoHDR
Test summary
The Apple iPhone 8 Plus is the best-performing mobile device camera we have ever tested. Its overall DxOMark Mobile score of 94 sets a new record, beating out the 90 points for both the Google Pixel and the HTC U11, as well as the 92 that its sibling iPhone 8 just scored. Its Photo score of 96 is also a new record, blowing past the Pixel’s 90. For Video, its score of 89 is among our highest, but tied with the HTC U11 and slightly below the Pixel’s 91. Of course, the Pixel is nearly a year old now, so it makes sense that Apple’s new flagship is breaking new ground.
Bright light
Images captured outdoors with the iPhone 8 Plus are generally stunning, with excellent detail preservation, accurate color, and impressive dynamic range. The iPhone 8 Plus builds on the excellent performance of the iPhone 7 family with even better results in bright light. In particular, it has improved exposure calculation, and excellent ability to capture HDR (High Dynamic Range) scenes.
This scene has proved challenging to many of the smartphones we have tested, but the 8 Plus handles it like a champ. If you didn’t know that the image came from a phone, it would it would be very hard to tell.
Compared to the iPhone 7 family, the iPhone 8 models do a better job of capturing HDR scenes. In this comparison, you can see that they offer better detail preservation and overall exposure than the iPhone 7 Plus. Overall, their performance matches that of the Google Pixel for the scene (click on the individual images to bring up the full-resolution versions for easier comparison):
iPhone 8 Plus Google Pixel iPhone 8 iPhone 7 Plus
Low light and Flash
Low light: Exposures are generally accurate, although there can be some underexposure in very low light. The 8 Plus’s strong performance in low light and with flash, combined with its excellent ability to recognize and properly expose faces, make it a natural for anyone wanting to easily create memories of their indoor events.
Even in tricky mixed-lighting situations, the iPhone 8 Plus does an excellent job of providing an accurate and detailed rendering of indoor scenes.
Zoom and Bokeh
While the iPhone 8 Plus camera is amazing overall, it is in our new test categories of Zoom and Bokeh where it really stands out. While the technical specifications for the second camera that help make these features possible are very similar to the specs for the second camera on the iPhone 7 Plus on paper, upgrades to the image processing software have raised the 8 Plus’s performance to a new level. Especially important for those looking to capture portraits with their phones, or to create artistic effects in macro and other closeup shots, zoom and bokeh used to require standalone cameras. But phones like the 8 Plus are changing that.
Zoom: The dedicated telephoto camera on the 8 Plus gives it a large advantage over most traditional single-camera designs when it comes to zoom. At 51, it has the highest Zoom sub-score of any mobile device we have measured — a full 5 points better than its predecessor, the iPhone 7 Plus. Here you can see that at 2x (full-frame equivalent of about 56mm), the iPhone 8 Plus does an excellent job of both framing and detail preservation (click on individual images to get a full-size version for easier comparison):
iPhone 8 iPhone 8 Plus Google Pixel iPhone 7 Plus
Bokeh: Overall, the 8 Plus is the highest-performing phone we’ve tested when it comes to bokeh. Despite the relatively small changes in the actual camera specs, additional development and processing power allow it to beat out the 7 Plus by 5 points, putting it even further ahead of the Google Pixel, with a score of 55 compared to 30.
You can see the improved depth effect on the iPhone 8 Plus compared to the older model, showing that the dual-camera system now does a better job of blurring the foreground like a true optical blur, instead of blurring only the background. The images below also show how the second camera of the 8 Plus provides a much more artistic rendering of the image than the single camera on the iPhone 8 (click on individual images to get a full-size version for easier comparison):
iPhone 8 iPhone 8 Plus
Google Pixel iPhone 7 Plus
Video
Apple continues to up its game on Video. With a score of 89, the 8 Plus has the best video quality of any Apple device, starting with the best exposure calculation. In particular, exposure is more stable while panning or walking than on previous iPhones. Its HDR capabilities are also very good, but highlights are sometimes blown out. There is still room for improvement, as the iPhone 8 Plus’s Video score of 89 still only ties the HTC U11 and is still behind the Google Pixel’s 91 points. This said, the 8 Plus camera does an excellent job of face tracking when shooting video in bright light.
Photo scores explained
Our Overall Photo Score is a composite of a number of category sub-scores. Here we detail how the 8 Plus performed in each of those categories.
Exposure and Contrast (89)
The 8 Plus does an excellent job of accurately calculating exposure, improving on the performance of the iPhone 7 family. Its ability to represent high-contrast scenes is also improved, probably at least in part due to additional processing power and improved software for combining multiple frames into a single image. Apple’s AutoHDR technology is some of the best on the market for rendering high-dynamic-range scenes. The 8 Plus also does an unusually good job at recognizing and properly exposing faces in an image.
This HDR scene tests the boundaries of what a mobile device camera can capture. The 8 Plus does an excellent job of keeping the highlights visible while still showing detail in the shaded foliage in the foreground.
Color (78)
Color is pleasing both outside and indoors. White balance is also quite good. The 8 Plus improves slightly over the iPhone 8 in its color performance by completely avoiding visible color shading, even in low-light conditions.
The iPhone 8 Plus accurately renders pleasingly colorful outdoor scenes like this one.
Color saturation in iPhone 8 Plus images remains very good, even under low-light conditions. However, in low light and in typical indoor (tungsten) light, 8 Plus images pick up a noticeable color cast that you can see in this chart of test sample patches:
Using the reference patch on the far right, notice that the light gray patch nearly turns peach under very low-light conditions (left-most “H” column, luminosity similar to candlelight).
A note on color white balance evaluation: Apple has clearly made a choice to provide a slightly warmer white balance than Google for some situations. For example, in this outdoor scene, the image from the 8 Plus has a bit warmer yellowish cast than the Pixel’s image. Both versions are pleasing, so which you prefer is a matter of taste. In the case of our color scoring system, we allow for a slight variation in color from what is perfectly accurate to accommodate some style choices on the part of camera makers.
iPhone 8 Plus, showing a slight yellow cast Google Pixel
Autofocus (74)
Although the 8 Plus doesn’t always focus quickly, once it focuses, it is remarkably accurate. In both our long- and short-delay tests, the 8 Plus was able to repeatably capture an in-focus scene. The sometimes longer delay — which occurred periodically in both bright and low light — can mean that users miss the shot they intended.
Detail (64)
The 8 Plus does an excellent job of capturing detail under a wide variety of lighting conditions, especially when there is no motion in the scene. That makes it especially good for landscape images. There is a noticeable loss of detail when there is motion, especially in low-light — as you can see in this chart of detail preservation versus light level:
It is easy to forget how far smartphone cameras have come in just a few years. These tight crops of an area in our standard natural test scene demonstrate how much more detail the iPhone 8 Plus captures than previous generations of iPhones:
The images were all taken under very-low light (5 Lux) handheld conditions, showing the improvement in detail preservation and noise suppression in successive iPhone models.
Noise (68)
Similar to its detail score, the 8 Plus features a very low level of noise when capturing static scenes, outperforming every other phone in our database. Even the darkest areas in HDR scenes have very low levels of noise, and blue skies are almost without noise. There is some slight luminance noise indoors and in very low light, but well within acceptable limits. In this indoor test target scene, for example, the 8 Plus is a little further off in exposure than the Google Pixel, but has lower noise:
This next comparison image is another that shows how quickly smartphone camera technology is advancing. This image was shot with the iPhone 7 Plus and the 8 Plus, both in Portrait mode. The newer model does a much better job of suppressing noise, especially on the model’s face:
iPhone 7 Plus version of the image. iPhone 8 Plus version, showing better detail and lower noise; note, however, the slight bokeh artifact visible around the hair.
Artifacts (73)
The 8 Plus, like most iPhone models we’ve tested, has very few artifacts in its images, achieving an excellent artifact sub-score as a result. Interestingly, the iPhone 8 outscores the 8 Plus in this area. Slight flare in harsh light and moiré when repeating patterns are present reduced its score somewhat. Some visible ghosting can also occur.
Flash (84)
Flash-only photos with the iPhone 8 Plus feature accurate white balance and good color rendering. With both flash and flash combined with ambient light, there is low noise and good detail preservation. There can be a slight yellow cast when flash is mixed with a low level of ambient light, and exposure and white balance can vary from shot to shot in a sequence.
This portrait, lit with only flash, shows a slight yellow cast.
Zoom (51)
The iPhone 8 Plus sets a new standard for zoom performance in a smartphone, a tribute to its dual camera design, and the image processing improvements Apple has made since the introduction of the 7 Plus. There is still some room for improvement: when shooting several images in a row using zoom, some (but not all) images show artifacts.
Even with the 8 Plus’s stunning Zoom and Portrait mode performance, photographers still need to watch out for possible side effects. For example, these images show that subject motion can detract from an otherwise excellent portrait:
This Portrait mode image is sharp and also blurs the background to help make the subject pop. However, the same scene with the subject waving his hand shows that the 8 Plus hasn’t addressed the resulting motion blur.
Bokeh (55)
The bokeh effect on the 8 Plus is remarkably reliable, as the 8 Plus is not fooled nearly as often as other smartphone cameras when it makes estimations of depth, even compared to competitors with similar dual-camera systems.
In low light, the iPhone 8 Plus does a much better job of rendering a bokeh effect than the Google Pixel, although at the cost of some noise. Further, the Pixel version of the image has strong artifacts (click on individual images to get a full-size version for easier comparison):
iPhone 8 iPhone 8 Plus
Google Pixel iPhone 7 Plus
Key to the 8 Plus’s excellent Bokeh score is very good depth estimation and facial recognition. These technologies help ensure that blurs are created naturally and effectively. There is room for improvement, though — in particular, when the subject touches the edges of the frame, the camera can mistake portions of the subject for part of the background, and ends up blurring those portions accordingly.
This type of artifact is visible in the portrait in this review, in which some of the subject’s hair is blurred — an unfortunate and sometimes unpleasant effect on an important part of the portrait.
Video scores explained
The Apple iPhone 8 Plus achieves a total Video score of 89. As with the photo scores, this is calculated from the sub-scores it achieves in a number of categories of tests that help define its overall video capabilities, specifically: Exposure and Contrast (81), Color (87), Autofocus (84), Texture (50), Noise (68), Artifacts (81), and Stabilization (91). Of particular note, stabilization is excellent, color rendering is very accurate, and exposure is greatly improved over previous models. Exceptionally good face tracking also aids in accurate subject exposure. Video suffers from some judder, and a small amount of frame-rate inaccuracy.
One thing the iPhone 8 Plus’s video lacks somewhat is good exposure in low light. As light falls off, the 8 Plus tends to underexpose, as you can see from this chart:
Conclusion: The best smartphone camera we’ve ever tested
Overall, the Apple iPhone 8 Plus is an excellent choice for the needs of nearly every smartphone photographer. It features outstanding image quality, zoom for those needing to get closer to their subjects, and an industry-leading Portrait mode for artistic efforts. It is at the top of our scoring charts in nearly every category — and in particular, its advanced software allows it to do an amazing job of capturing high-dynamic range scenes and images in which it can recognize faces.
We look forward to testing the iPhone X and comparing it against the iPhone 8 Plus, as the X’s wider aperture and its OIS on both cameras should place it on the cutting edge of zoom and portrait performance — enhancing the iPhone shooting experience for memory makers and image lovers even more.
94 mobile Apple iPhone 8 Plus mobile
96 Apple iPhone 8 Plus photo 89 Apple iPhone 8 Plus video
Pros One of the best HDR performances of any device we have tested
Excellent use of face detection to accurately expose faces
Overall, the best zoom we’ve tested
Best Bokeh we’ve seen in a mobile device, but still room for improvement Pros Very good stabilization
Best exposure of any Apple device, but still not industry-leading
Very good color rendering under almost all lighting condtions
Good face tracking in bright light
Cons Color cast in low and indoor (tungsten) lighting
Some autofocus issues Cons Some exposure issues
Visible noise in low-light conditions
A note about image formats for this review: The iPhones 8, 8 Plus and X record photographs in the DCI-P3 colorspace, which their displays also use. DCI-P3 is newer and larger than the sRGB color space that most devices use and most web browsers assume. So to ensure that the images we used in the review display properly on a wide variety of browsers and devices, we converted the originals from DCI-P3 to sRGB using Photoshop (which is why the published test photos show Photoshop as the creator). This can slightly reduce the richness of color in some cases from what you would see when viewing the original images on a DCI-P3-calibrated display with appropriate software. We also captured the original images using the new HEIF (High-Efficiency Image Format), but then converted them to very high-quality JPEGs for viewing in standard browsers and image editing software. (HEIF is very similar to JPEG, but provides better compression for similar image quality, so the conversion makes the sample image file sizes larger than they were when shot.) Please note, however, that unlike our test images, some of the comparison photos used in this review were shot in JPEG and used as-is for illustrative purposes, and were not used to compute scores.Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that refusing to take in Muslim migrants is a “danger for Europe.” Merkel as usual had it backward. It’s her program of taking in Muslim migrants that represents the gravest threat to the freedom and future of Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Merkel may have already doomed Germany. The Bild newspaper published a leaked secret government document estimating that the number of migrants invading Europe this year might reach 1.5 million.
And that bad news gets much worse because the document estimates that each migrant will bring in as many as eight family members once they’re settled in, bringing the year’s true total to 7.36 million.
That’s almost 10 percent of the population of Germany. In just one invasion.
And the migrants are mostly young men entering a rapidly aging country whose young male population is under 5 million. Germany’s Muslim population already approaches 5 million. The median age of Germany’s Muslim population is 34, while the median age for the overall population is 46.
Merkel has rapidly sped up the rate at which Germany’s young male population becomes Muslim.
The document predicts up to 10,000 invaders entering every day. It foresees no end to the arrivals even when it gets cold. These words add up to the end of Germany and the end of Europe.
With numbers like these it’s no wonder that Merkel is frantically trying to shift the burden, berating Eastern European countries for their nationalism and failing to learn from history even though as a former Communist and a German leader, she represents the two political forces that historically did the most to deprive these nations of their national rights and their independence.
Merkel invokes the Berlin War to claim that fences don’t work. But the Berlin Wall kept people from leaving. The fences that Hungary has built are constructed in self-defense, not to keep Hungarians in, but to keep invading Muslims out. It’s Merkel whose EU totalitarianism represents a new Berlin Wall that mandates open borders for Muslim migrants while preventing countries from leaving the EU.
When Merkel states, “The refugees won’t be stopped if we just build fences. That I’m deeply convinced of, and I’ve lived behind a fence for long enough,” she is not only deliberately mangling the moral difference between a fence that keeps invaders out and a fence that keeps people in, but her own complicity in these fences. East Germany needed a fence because people wanted to flee its totalitarian regime. The European Union needs political fences to keep countries from escaping its political regime.
The choice isn’t between open borders and the Berlin Wall. Rather the open borders that Merkel advocates are another form of the Berlin Wall. Communist countries don’t make immigration difficult. They make emigration impossible. Free countries make immigration difficult, but emigration easy.
That’s how democracy is supposed to work. It allows the people of a nation to decide who can enter while allowing anyone to leave. Merkel’s EU brings back the USSR’s ‘Prison of Nations’ where everyone can enter, but no one can leave.
Merkel warns European countries that refusing Muslim immigrants is “not negotiable.” This is the type of language that totalitarian regimes use.
Europeans are told that they will lose their credibility if they don’t take in Muslims. “Who are we to defend Christians around the world if we say we won’t accept a Muslim or a mosque in our country?” she asks. “That won’t do.”
But taking in Muslims has prevented Germans from defending Christians even in their own country, not only in the Middle East.
Christian refugees in Germany report being persecuted, threatened and beaten by Muslims. An Iranian Christian refugee spoke of death threats from Syrian Muslim migrants. An Iraqi Christian family was beaten and told, “We will kill you and drink your blood.”
A Lutheran pastor says that he is asked by refugees, “Will we have to hide ourselves as Christians in the future in this country?”
That question is better addressed to Angela Merkel and her mad Muslim vision for Germany.
Islamizing Germany will not enable it to defend Christians in the Middle East. Instead it will make the government even more vulnerable to terrorist blackmail and political pressure from Muslims. And if Merkel were really concerned about Christians, she wouldn’t be fighting European countries that want to take in Christian refugees instead of Muslim migrants. Not only hasn’t her appeasement of Muslims done anything to help Christians in the Middle East, but it has endangered Christians in Germany.
Despite resistance from her own party, Merkel continues doubling down. She has seized control of refugee policy from her own interior minister, who was skeptical of her action and who may have helped leak the Bild document, and she continues to ignore calls for refugee limits from her own party.
Meanwhile Muslims in Germany are vocal about refusing to accept any limitations of Muslim immigration.
Merkel isn’t really an open borders fanatic. She’s a political hack who made a tragic mistake and is desperately trying to dump it on the rest of Europe. After originally taking the correct line, Merkel folded and rather than admit that she made a mistake whose implications will destroy her country, she is desperately manufacturing one ridiculous excuse after another to defend her actions.
Her calls for sharing the burden amount to dumping the consequences of her unilateral policy on the rest of Europe. It’s exactly the type of behavior she condemned from Greece, only to hypocritically practice a version of it that is far more disastrous, both from the standpoint of security and economics.
Merkel’s plan is to unilaterally demand that the rest of Europe “share” in the welfare, crime and terrorism of the Muslim migrants that she chose to take in. And there’s nothing fair about that.
But the Eurocrats can’t wrap their heads around the idea of border fences. The closest they can come to the idea is to hypocritically plead with Turkey to secure the borders that they refuse to secure.
The Turkish solution still requires Europe to take in another 500,000 Muslims from Turkey in exchange for its tyrannical Islamist ruler agreeing to secure its borders. This means outsourcing European border security to a hostile Muslim country whose ruler dreams of reviving the Ottoman Empire and boasted, “The mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.”
That’s the sort of man that Europe will be turning over its security too. Meanwhile those 500,000 Muslims will also have to be “shared” all across Europe.
Merkel claims that the migrants “present more opportunities than risks.” What opportunities are these exactly? Half the Muslim “youth” in Germany are already unemployed. Barely a third of Muslim immigrants earn a living through professional employment.
What opportunities will adding millions of Muslims to the welfare rolls accomplish except to create more jobs for the government bureaucrats who sign their welfare checks?
Merkel’s allies claim that she deserves the Nobel Prize. She certainly does. Hitler and Stalin were both nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And Merkel has done more damage to Germany and Europe than any leader since these two worthy gentlemen before her had.CINCINNATI – UC police officer Ray Tensing's body camera video clearly shows that he committed "murder" when he shot and killed an unarmed black motorist at a traffic stop, prosecutor Joe Deters said Wednesday.Prosecutor Joe Deters called it an "asinine, senseless shooting," and said the video refutes Tensing's claim that the motorist, 43-year-old Sam DuBose, pulled away from the stop and dragged him with his car.DuBose did "nothing violent" toward Tensing, Deters said."I think he (Tensing) lost his temper because Mr. DuBose would not get out of his car. He wasn't dragged. When you see it, you will not believe how quickly he pulled his gun and shot him in the head," Deters said."He was simply, slowly rolling away. That's it," Deters said."I was senseless. It didn't have to happen, Deters said, in announcing that a grand jury had indicted Tensiung for murder.Deters said he feels sorry for DuBose's family and he showed them the video before its public release. WCPO's Ally Kraemer reported that DuBose's family arrived at the prosecutor's office at noon and and left shortly before Detewrs' 1 p.m. news conference.The community had braced itself for the release of the body cam video, especially after statements by two men who had seen it."It's not good, " Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell declared Monday. On Tuesday, Tensing's attorney. Stew Mathews, said he expected an indictment based on his viewingMEET Karmichael Hunt version 3.0.
A visibly stronger and more robust Hunt had Queensland Reds officials quietly smiling yesterday after the club’s first in-house game of the pre-season at Ballymore.
The musclcular fullback has added 3kg to the 89kg frame he maintained while carving out a five-year career with the AFL’s Gold Coast Suns.
Hunt has put himself through a rigorous weights program and an increased calorie intake to prepare his body for Super Rugby.
“I have been eating more and doing a weights program three times a week,” Hunt said.
“I’ve got a heavier load in the gym and mostly working my upper and lower limbs and doing full body circuits.
“I tried to stay away from the weights in the AFL because my goal was to lose a bit of muscle mass and weight.
“It’s nice having a bit more on the plate and I have become a bit more aware of my diet at home.
“I’m not tucking into any nasty stuff at takeaway windows and I am still eating clean, organic food. I am just trying to eat a bit more of it.’’
Hunt showed all the skill which made him Australia’s premier rugby league fullback with the Broncos during a 90-minute session officiated by Super Rugby referee Rohan Hoffmann yesterday.
It was as if the 28-year-old had never left the rugby field, marshalling the troops from behind the line, acting as a second playmaker in the build-up, using his natural ability to read the game to find gaps and creating chances with his familiar flair.
Hunt said the transition from AFL to rugby had been much smoother than his last code shift.
“Yeah it’s been more about getting reacquainted with the game,” Hunt said.
Karmichael Hunt sends the ball downfield during the Reds hit-out at Ballymore. Source: News Limited
“I’ve played it before and there have been some subtle changes but in the basic frame of rugby hasn’t really changed.
“It’s been a lot smoother this time around and a lot easier mentally, knowing all I have to do is get used to my teammates and the structure that we want to play.
“I’ve enjoyed being back in rugby, the culture in the rooms and training sessions is great and I’m looking forward to playing next year.’’
Hunt also proved he lost none of his toughness while in the AFL by putting his body on the line in a last-ditch attempt to save a try.
While Hunt insisted his choice to don a singlet for the game was not an attempt to hold on to his AFL connection, Hunt’s teammates were given a taste of his new skills when he launched a kick from inside his own 20m across field to find touch 5m from the opposing tryline.
“I should be able to bring some strong kicking to the team,” Hunt said. “I have done plenty of it over the last five years and it could be an asset for our team.
“We have got some good kickers in the team so I guess we will share the workload around.’’
Reds coach Richard Graham said Hunt was already delivering the quality of play which prompted the club to sign him.
“He is all the things we thought he would have been in terms of his level of professionalism and leadership so he has fitted in really well,” Graham said.
Graham said he was not shocked by the skill level of the former Anglican Church Grammar School and French club rugby player.
“He obviously has a background of three years in the game, with two as a schoolboys at Churchie and a year at Biarritz Olympique.
“When you think about it he has played (fullback) for Biarritz at the top level and that’s pretty much a Super Rugby season.’’Image caption Party members have been voting on a raft of reforms
Cuba says it will allow people to buy and sell their homes for the first time since the communist revolution in 1959.
For the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children, or to swap them through a complicated and often corrupt system.
The move was decided during the first congress held by the ruling Communist Party in 14 years, aimed at breathing new life into the communist system.
No details were given on how the new property sales could work.
Cuban President Raul Castro warned that the concentration of property would not be allowed.
During the congress, President Castro also said top political positions should be limited to two five-year terms, and promised "systematic rejuvenation" of the government.
He said the party leadership was in need of renewal and should subject itself to severe self-criticism.
The proposal is unprecedented under Cuban communism.
In an editorial published in Cuban state media, former president and leader of the 1959 revolution Fidel Castro endorsed the change.
He wrote that a new generation was needed to correct the errors of the past to ensure the communist system survived once the current generation of leaders had gone.
Cuba's Communist Party approved the reforms on Monday.
State media reported that party members also voted for a new party leadership, but the results were not immediately disclosed.- Advertisement -
CBS Falsifies Iraq War History
by Robert Parry
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In a world of objective reality, a reporter would simply say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and did this even after UN inspectors, completely unopposed by Saddam, had failed to find any WMD.
On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. Plus, in the fall 2002, Hussein's government allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.
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Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war -- despite the U.N. Security Council's refusal to authorize the invasion, and despite its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.
But none of this reality is part of the Orwellian history that Americans are supposed to believe. The officially sanctioned and Orwellian U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech (and now embraced by Mitt Romney as well), is that Saddam Hussein "chose war" by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue.
In line with Bush's version of history, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq's borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.
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"For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking," Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. "Why did he choose war with the United States?"
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) on Monday said that the “for slim only” signs found in the front seat of some UV Express passenger vans are discriminatory.
According to a Radyo Inquirer report, LTFRB board member Atty. Ariel Inton reminded drivers of public utility vehicles that they cannot discriminate against their passengers based on their age, sex or physical appearance.
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Inton issued the reminder after receiving complaints from commuters assailing the “for slim only” rule.
Aside from discriminating against passengers due to their physical appearance, Inton said that some drivers even bar male passengers from taking the front seat.
He said that the said “rule” being imposed by some drivers is a violation of the Joint Administrative Order No. 2014-001 signed by the LTFRB and the Land Transportation Office.
Under the joint administrative order, a driver’s “refusal to render service to the public or convey passenger to destination” is a traffic violation.
For the first offense, the driver or operator is fined P5,000. For the second offense, the driver or operator is fined P10,000.00 and the passenger van is impounded for 30 days. For the third and subsequent offenses, a fine of P15,000 will be imposed and the certificate of public convenience may be cancelled. AJH with reports from Ricky Brozas, Radyo Inquirer/RAM/rga
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MOST READAre Christian and Muslim convictions compatible with American values? I suppose it depends on which convictions one is talking about, and what American values one has in mind.
I find it inconceivable that Christianity and Islam could ever affirm secularism as a reigning ideology. Here I am referring to the attempt to bracket consideration of God from public life. The more secularism as articulated here becomes entrenched in American society as a reigning value system the less compatible Christian and Muslim convictions will be with America’s value system. Please note that I used the words “public life” in a prior sentence. While many Christians are comfortable with privatizing or compartmentalizing their faith, biblical Christianity sits uncomfortably with compartmentalization of the faith in view of its claim that Jesus is Lord over all domains. I believe the same abhorrence for the bracketing of the faith from public life is found in large segments of Islam. Christianity can make space for what we might call the secular (in contrast to that which is deemed sacred, as in sacred art, etc.) and for secularists and can operate alongside secularists in pursuit of democratic values, but public faith requires that we speak to those shared democratic values from our Christian heritage and biblical vantage point in pursuit of the common good. Wouldn’t the same hold true for Muslims?Gnocchi is defined as a homemade Italian dumpling that’s easily made using just a few ingredients. Most gnocchi recipes are also accompanied by some type of sauce, making this Italian staple truly versatile for making it your own. This medicated recipe for gnocchi showcases all of the flavors of fall, featuring pumpkin gnocchi as the main star, accompanied by hints of fresh nutmeg and even a fresh sage butter sauce! Fill up on this wholesome and heart-warming meal!
Serves 8 (appetizer), 4-6 (dinner)
Here’s What You Need:
Pumpkin Gnoc |
Jannik Tai Mosholt (“Borgen”), Esben Toft Jacobsen (“The Great Bear”) and Christian Potalivo (“The Pig”).
Produced by Miso Film, the FremantleMedia-owned outfit behind “Those Who Kill,” “Acquitted” and “Modus,” “The Rain” unfolds a decade after a brutal virus has wiped out most of the population in Scandinavia. The series follows the perilous journey of two young siblings searching for safety, guided by their father’s notebook about the virus and the hazards of this new world. Joining a group of other young survivors, the pair quickly realize that the greatest danger comes from within.
“I’m interested in finding out what we humans will do if the day should come when civilization as we know it vanishes,” said Tai Mosholt, who will be writing the series and showrunning alongside producer Potalivo. “And I want to see it through the eyes of youth. Those who are too young to understand it all when everything and everyone disappears around them, and who then have to find out who they are and what they will become.”
Tai Mosholt added that, “in broad terms, ‘The Rain’ is a story about hope and finding out what there is to hope for when all hope seems gone. It’s a story about responsibility and whether survival is about the individual or the group.”
Erik Barmack, VP of international original series at Netflix, said Tai Mosholt, Potalivo and Miso had all contributed to the recent rise in Scandinavian television. “We believe that Netflix will be the perfect global platform to showcase their talents,” Barmack said.
Netflix will premiere “The Rain” in 2018, across all the territories where the service is established.
Netflix previously acquired Scandinavian series such as “Rita,” the Danish comedy-drama created by Christian Torpe, and “Lilyhammer,” the American-Norwegian show created by and starring Steven Van Zandt.
Since launching in 2004, Miso Film has produced a flurry of high-end drama series such as “Veum,” “Those Who Kill,” “Dicte,” “Acquitted” and “Modus,” which earned critical acclaim and traveled to many territories.The taste of tea is changing—and generally for the worse if left unmanaged," declares ethnobotanist Selena Ahmed, an assistant professor of sustainable food systems at Montana State University. Ahmed is the project lead of a research group from Tufts University in Massachusetts studying the effect of climate change on tea. And not only is flavor being compromised, but ultimately, due to erratic precipitation and extreme temperatures, "there are [fewer] areas suitable for [growing] high quality tea" around the world, she finishes.
Taiwanese farmer Alfredo Lin, a relatively new tea producer, would agree. He planted his first tea farm four years ago in Nantou County, in central Taiwan, and confirms that his crops have already experienced the effects of climate change.
"The extreme rain last year really overwhelmed my plants," he says. "It never used to be this serious. The rain is threatening the root systems."
Although Lin is new to the tea game, he’s not short of experience. Lin’s family has been growing oolong tea in central Taiwan for decades. His aunt and uncle are oolong tea producers, and his own mother works full-time as a tea picker, rising daily at 6 a.m. during the harvest season to pluck tender tea buds underneath the increasingly harsh sun. Lin calls his mother and her friends, adoringly, "mother pluckers." They are all Taiwanese women over the age of 60, and they wear long protective layers and a thick hat to prevent themselves from heatstroke in the fields.
"Young people don’t want to do this job anymore," Lin’s mother says. "It’s too much hard work. It’s getting too hot."
Lin’s crop of choice is Ruby Red #18—a highly oxidized black tea cultivar bred by the government-sponsored Tea Research and Extension Station, whose sole purpose is to improve tea plantations in Taiwan. Scientists there created Ruby Red #18 by crossing a Taiwan native variety with an Assam cultivar from Burma. The result: a wonderful brew distinguished by its cinnamon and malt sugar undertones.
"The average yield for Ruby Red tea is around 500 kilograms," explains Lin. "I only brought in 125 kilograms and 80 kilograms during my two harvests this year." Lin admits he is also afraid that the intense scorching summer heat this year will damage his plants’ buds.
"The taste of tea is changing—and generally for the worse."
"In Taiwan this spring, it was cold for a long time, and all of sudden it was hot. This decreased yields," explains David Tsay, a tea teacher who specializes in organic farming and travels around China and Taiwan giving lectures at universities. "We’re also currently waiting for the typhoon season, which is delayed this year."
These observations are not uncommon. All over the world, tea farmers are dealing with irregular precipitation and higher temperatures. In the last 15 years, global surface temperatures have been increasing; 2015 was the hottest year on record.
Too Much Rain Is Dulling the Flavor of Tea
Global warming has brought unseasonally high levels of rainfall in parts of the world. Because the atmosphere’s water-holding limit increases by about 4 percent for every one degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, extreme precipitation is more likely when a storm passes through a warmer atmosphere holding more water. These places include major tea producing areas like Japan, China’s Yunnan province, and Assam and Darjeeling in India. Tea plants can only take a certain threshold of rain, and in all of these areas, plants are being pushed past their precipitation limits.
"For tea, when there’s too much rain, there’s a dilution effect of the secondary metabolites," Ahmed explains, referencing the compounds that tea drinkers value—like flavor, antioxidant properties, and caffeine levels.
"Those are basically the aromatic compounds that give tea all of its flavors and really distinguishes one tea from another tea," she adds. "When it’s really wet, the plant doesn’t have the ecological cue to make these compounds, and they also get diluted."
And so while size and the weight of the tea leaves may nearly double because of the rain, the plant's major phytochemicals will decrease to about half.
Farmers Are Hiding Lower-Quality Tea
Generally speaking, all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. But it’s the processing method a farmer follows that differentiates teas—white, black, oolong, pu’erh, red, green, yellow—from one another.
For producers of high grade green pu’erh tea in Yunnan, the quality of leaves has decreased so severely during monsoon seasons that farmers are forced to diversify their processing mechanisms so consumers won’t notice the drop in tea quality. If they don’t, the prices of the tea will sink.
"It never used to be this serious."
So, that means, instead of making green pu’erh, these producers are opting for oolong and black teas during the monsoon season instead. Oolong and black tea require heavy processing methods and undergo more fermentation than green pu’erh. The fermentation process covers up some of the aromatic imperfections of the raw leaf. "With green pu’erh, it’s hard to hide the decrease in quality," Ahmed says. "With oolong or black tea, you can sort of cover up some of the issues in the growing conditions in the ecosystem itself."
Temperature Fluctuations May Mean Less Tea
Beyond rainfall, in places like Zhejiang and Fujian in eastern China and Taiwan, the biggest hurdle tea producers must overcome is temperature variability.
This spring in Zhejiang, where the famous Longjing green tea (Longjing, or Dragon Well, refers to the area in Hangzhou—the capital of Zhejiang—where, arguably, the best green tea in China is produced, also a favorite of the Qianlong Emperor) grows, the weather was warm enough to cause an early bud burst. It was followed up by frost, which ended up damaging some plants. Although this didn’t affect tea quality, it did impact yield. Zhejiang tea farmers weren’t able to harvest as much tea compared to previous years.
Who Else Is at Risk? Geographically speaking, lower elevation tea sites are at higher risk because they experience greater fluctuations in temperature. With rainfall, water will run down a mountain and can potentially flood fields. High mountain tea farms aren’t subject to as many erratic changes.
Southern tea-producing regions like Yunnan and Guangdong are more susceptible than more northern places like Japan. "The temperatures are higher [in southern tea-producing regions] and the annual distribution of rain isn’t even," explains Wenyan Han, a scientist at the Tea Research Institute in Hangzhou, China.
"The early budding also impacted the harvest schedule," Ahmed says. "It was difficult getting laborers to harvest the tea last-minute this year."
How to Save Tea
Ahmed offers several suggestions on how farmers can best protect their tea plants from climate change, but first and foremost, she believes that plants which grow in a diversified ecosystem have the best chance to withstand weather changes and produce high quality leaves. Right now, the majority of tea farms around the world exist as monocultures, which makes them more susceptible to unpredictable weather patterns.
"Traditionally in southwestern China, tea plants were grown in a forest ecosystem," Ahmed explains. "This multistoried structure, or agroforest, helped manage pests and diseases." Agroforests are also more resilient to weather changes and erratic rainfall.
Next, she notes that organic farming yields higher quality plants compared to conventional farming. "We studied quality from organic farms at sites in Fujian and Zhejiang," she says. "Organic teas have higher phytochemicals." Simply put: organic teas taste better. This is most likely because organic tea plants live under greater stress than conventional tea plants since farm managers don't apply the same amount of pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals to protect them. Under stress, organic plants produce more phyochemicals. Additionally, strong pesticides used in conventional farming strip the soil and shortens the lifespan of a tea bush to a couple of years versus a couple of decades.
And finally, for sites that are susceptible to erosion from heavy rainfall, Ahmed advises farmers to plant their crops from seed. "The plants grown from seeds or seedlings have stronger roots," she says. Clonal propagules, or trees planted from cuttings, aren’t able to dig as deep and absorb nutrients from the soil and water.
While the future of tea may seem bleak, on the contrary, some parts of the world may actually be benefitting, and even producing higher quality tea, as a result of climate change.
"A little bit of drought is actually good for tea quality," admits Ahmed. "It creates complex flavored teas, but if it’s too extreme, this is detrimental to the tea plant." She notes that there was a drought in southwest China in 2012 and 2013. In Yunnan, pu’erh producers were able to charge higher prices for their drought-ridden product—which had a more full-bodied and intense taste.
Tea as a Case Study
It’s difficult to pinpoint flavor subtleties in crops like wheat and rice. But tea, with its hundreds of compounds, is sensitive and complex enough to reflect minute changes in temperature and precipitation.
In the last 15 years, global surface temperatures have been increasing; 2015 was the hottest year on record.
Although weather fluctuations are normal in any ecosystem, these variables have been especially unpredictable in the last 15 years. What’s taking place with tea is a sobering microcosm for what’s happening to agricultural products around the world. "Tea is really an indicator species for climate change," Ahmed says. "It has all of these variables and makes for a really good case study."
Master tea connoisseurs, she points out, are able to drink a cup and relay the different environmental conditions in which a leaf was grown. Tsay, the tea teacher in Taiwan, is one of those people. He works with farmers across Taiwan and the greater China region to transition to organic farming. He’s a staunch advocate for the preservation of wild tea trees and agroforests in Yunnan.
"You can immediately notice the difference in taste when people cut corners," he states. "When farms blindly pursue yield, quality is at risk."
That, it seems, is the entire crux of the climate change conversation. While yields may decrease based on factors like temperature fluctuations, for tea enthusiasts, the quality of the tea is the most important component. And quality, according to Ahmed and her team, can best be maintained by diversifying planting systems.
"We need to think about ways of having our agricultural system like a naturally functioning ecosystem," Ahmed adds. "More consumers these days are aware of organic and sustainable food systems. The next step is developing a climate smart system."
Editor: Kat OdellOxford Circus tube station evacuated, police respond to 'incident'
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Update 17:43: Met now say found no trace of suspects or of shots having been fired.
Update 17:19: Police say they are responding to reports of shots fired and a potential terrorist incident.
Oxford Circus tube station in London has been evacuated after reports of an ‘incident’, armed police are on the scene.
There are reports of people running away from the scene.
Just been caught up in loads of people screaming and running away from Oxford Circus station after being evacuated, police telling people to get inside. Sounds like some serious shit is going down. — Alex Irons (@IRONSBREW) November 24, 2017
Police are advising people to avoid the area.
Our officers are on the scene at #OxfordCircus tube station with @BTP Please avoid the Oxford Circus area whilst we deal with the incident. More info asap — Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) November 24, 2017
Met also telling people to get inside a building.Folks, I wasn't able to listen to Bill Belichick's press conference after the game. My girlfriend said that I had to give some form of attention to the guests at our apartment and that I should probably put football away.
She said that I wouldn't miss anything from his press conference, anyways. She said that she already knew what he was going to say.
I agreed to socialize on the condition that she grant me this interview. Here are the results:
PP: So how did Tom Brady do?
GFB: Okay, so Tom Brady is the quarterback and he threw the ball and sometimes he threw them for touchdowns. Next question.
PP: So what did you think about the play of Rob Gronkowski?
GFB:...what play?
PP: Sorry, how did you like his touchdown?
GFB: Well, Gronkowski made a touchdown and that's what he's supposed to do because he's a football player. So...next question?
PP: So what did you do to prepare for Peyton Manning?
GFB: We practiced football. Next question.
PP: How did the weather affect your decisions as a coach?
GFB: We play football in all sorts of weather.
PP: Well, I know you had an issue with the weatherman this week. How did the forecast change your game plan?
GFB: Wait, I want to answer this well. Can I have the hot sauce?
PP: Bill, I'm including all of this.
GFB: Well, I'm Belichick, so I don't make wrong decisions. I only make the right decisions. But I don't need a dome to protect me.
---
I actually think this is a fair representation of the press conference. So. Thanks for the interview "Bill".RCMP say a man being pursued by Mounties forced the closure of a small airport in Edson, Alta., after he drove through a security gate and onto a runway before his pickup truck caught fire.
Police say the man has been arrested and charges were pending, including endangering the safety of an aerodrome and possession of methamphetamine.
RCMP say it all started Monday afternoon when an officer stopped a pickup for a traffic check but it sped off, hitting a police car.
Mounties say when they caught up with the truck at the airport it was burning and a man fled into some nearby woods.
Officers later arrested a suspect in a residential area.
No one was hurt and no aircraft were damaged.
"The actions of one put the safety of the airport in substantial danger," Staff Sergeant Peter King said in a release.
"We are pleased the man was apprehended quickly and through the work of our officers and emergency service partners it brought this incident to a prompt resolution."
The man was being held in custody pending a bail hearing.
Edson is about 200 kilometres west of Edmonton.Why startups should focus on a very small market
Kilometer.io Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 26, 2015
Everybody will tell you that if you are building a company you should make sure that your market is big enough. Otherwise, even if you dominate the whole market, you might not be making enough money to build a big and successful business.
The problem is that it’s almost impossible for a new startup to compete with the big guys and conquer a significant market share of a big market.
Luckily, there’s a workaround.
In this post I will share my thoughts on how to start with a small market, dominant it and expand your success to a huge market.
When you are just starting out, no one knows you, trusts you or believes your promises. If that’s not enough, big markets have big competitors that are well known, have many customers, reputation and reliability.
How are you going to position yourself against the big guys?
Are you going to offer a cheaper price? Simpler user interface? More features?
Usually, this will not be enough to fight the natural scepticism of the users. Not enough to make people take the risk and make an effort to try what you have to offer.
Let’s analyze an hypothetical example:
You’re building a mobile-phone and want to compete with iPhone.
The market for mobile phones is huge, so if you can even acquire a tiny part of this market, you’ll be considered a success story.
You create a cheaper mobile phone with a longer battery life and a bigger screen. But iPhone has millions of apps, it’s branded, trendy, highly publicized and much more.
What are the chances to acquire a share of that huge market? Probably very low.
Let’s consider another scenario:
You are focusing on a small market of professional athletes, and building a mobile-phone that will be tailored for their needs.
Since your market is so small you can build the very best product on earth for this specific market.
You can build a mobile phone with special sensors that are important for athletes. Add an ecosystem of apps allowing to use those sensors in order to share training results with teammates and coaches.
iPhone’s market is huge, Apple can’t focus on professional athletes, it needs to build an “one fits all” phone. This is your advantage, since hypothetically you can build a much better product for a very narrow market.
Doing this successfully will allow you to dominate that narrow market.
But what is the point of dominating a small market?
So now you have a big market share of a tiny market, since the market is so small dominating it might seem useless and you might be losing money.
You need to remember that dominating a small market is only the first stage.
When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, the market for it was very limited- Harvard students. It wouldn’t make any sense for the vast majority of today’s Facebook users
to sign up and create a profile (and it wasn’t event possible because of the invite only policy).
Then Facebook expended to other universities, and the rest is history.
Another great example is Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors company. Tesla started out by building luxury electric sport cars. By focusing on great innovation and technology, Tesla dominated the market, and built it’s brand.
Later Tesla introduced the S-model, an electric Sedan, and the upcoming X-model was the cross-over. Currently over 70K Tesla vehicles were already sold and the company is growing rapidly.
Back to our mobile-phone example:
Most of the professional athletes are using your phone and since it’s perfect for their needs they are absolutely loving it. They are talking about your phone and showing it to their friends and family. Their friends might not be professional athletes, but since they occasionally jog in the park they might seriously consider trying it.
Expanding to the mainstream
Now you’ve built a good product, your brand name and your users love the product and tell their friends about it. Your next step will be to create another version of the product for the general public.
Now you’re no longer just starting out, you’re selling your product, your company gets bigger and you gain interest from investors and press.
Although this is an hypothetical example, I think we can agree that focusing on a small market at the beginning of the way eventually will increase your chances of building a successful company in a big market.
Implementing the “small market first” strategy at Kilometer.io
When I started Kilometer I realized that the Online Analytics market is huge and that we need to focus on a small part of that huge market.
That’s why in general we’re following this strategy:
Focus on a small market (within the Online Analytics market)
Talk to users in this specific market, understanding in depth their problems and needs
Build a product that’s 10 times better than the existing products for the specific users included in your target market
Get feedback and improve until you dominate that small market
Expand to a broader market, repeat the previous steps, until reaching the mainstream
How did we choose our market?
The first step was researching our competitors, who are the users they are serving.
We divided our research into three parts:
Type of companies using our competitors:
SaaS Companies
Ecommerce stores
Content Websites
Size of companies using our competitors:
We found out that the size of the companies using our competitors varies from small unfounded startups to hugeenterprise organizations.
Type of users using our competitors:
Analysts
Data mining professionals
Marketers
Product managers
Founders
Of course, a product that serves all of the above audiences can’t fit them all perfectly. So we tried to find out which users slip from the main focus of the big analytics companies.
It took hundreds of emails, conversation, surveys and meetings in order to focus on one narrow audience:
Founders of small SaaS startups
Here are some of the reasons that made us believe that they are most likely to embrace our product over the existing solutions:
Startup founders have a huge need for analytics that will help them find out what’s going on in their business.
Founders usually don’t have the analytics knowledge, background and experience which is required in order to use the existing tools.
It’s relatively easy to reach out and connect with startup founders (compared to data mining professionals for example).
Startup founders are more likely to be interested in trying out early products and providing valuable feedback.
Building a 10 times better product for our specific audience
After we choose our audience, we asked ourself the following question:
What a typical SaaS founder should go through in order to understand what is going on in his startup?
And, how long will it take?
In order to describe the process I am going to use Mixpanel — a $865,000,000 worth analytics company, which is considered one of the leaders of this market.
From “I am blind!” to “I have awesome dashboards that tell me all I need to know” with Mixpanel the process is as following:
Sign up to Mixpanel
Go over the documentation, learn how to transmit events to Mixpanel
Research and define which KPIs and metrics are important for you to measure in your SaaS company
Define which events are needed in order to calculate the above metrics, focusing on naming and choosing which data to send with each event
Research which formulas to use in order to calculate metrics such as Life Time Value, MRR, User Churn, User Growth and more
Create charts and metrics based on the event-data sent to Mixpanel
Build dashboards that will include charts and metrics that show the big picture (custom coding required)
Roughly speaking the process should take around 3 working days.
Since we’re building a product for a narrow market, we can make the above tasks much easier.
We already know which KPIs and metrics are important for a SaaS businesses and we know how to calculate them.
We know which data we need the user to send us and we can supply ready made code snippets (copy & paste approach) — No thinking required
We can automatically create all the charts, metrics and dashboards a typical SaaS founder needs.
Finally, we just need the user to copy & paste a few lines of code to his project and that code will send to Kilometer all the information required in order to create three pre-defined dashboards:
User Acquisition
User Retention
Finance
The dashboards will be automatically filled with 27 metrics such as Life Time Value, MRR, User Churn, User Growth etc.
The whole integration process should take the user around 290 seconds.
Here is an example of our user acquisition dashboard:
Acquisition Dashboard
We’re using “the power of focusing on small market” in order to create a better product for saas startup founders.
Is Kilometer a better tool for analysts and data scientists? Probably not, they need much deeper analytics capabilities.
But, we’re perfectly fine with that at this stage, as I explained in our strategic plan above.
This post was heavily inspired by the ideas shared in a book called “Zero to One” by PayPal’s founder Peter Thiel. I highly recommend this book to any entrepreneur.
What do you think, does our plan make sense to you? Join the conversation and comment below:A major blast is reported to have ripped through Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. The bomb allegedly targeted the headquarters of Syria’s ruling Ba'ath Party.
According to local media, unidentified gunmen hurled a grenade at the headquarters of Syria’s ruling party, killing a security agent and damaging the building. Guards then opened fire at the assailants, though it was not clear whether anyone was killed in the exchange.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told AFP that “initial details indicate that the Aleppo blast was targeting the local branch of the ruling Ba'ath party and there is no information until now on the number of victims that fell in the explosion.”
However, one guard at the headquarters died, apparently in a round of gunfire following the explosion, reports Reuters citing SOHR. Activists in the city said they heard a very loud noise that appeared to come from an area in center of Aleppo.
"The sound was so loud and after that there were a lot of echoes of gun fire. Now all the roads leading to Saadallah al-Jabiry square are closed down," Reuters cites an activist who asked not to be named.
The blasts come hours after Syrian authorities killed a would-be suicide bomber, foiling a potentially major terror plot. The terrorist was shot before he had a chance to detonate 1,200 kilograms of explosives stashed in his minibus.
Also on Friday night, RT’s Sara Firth, on location in Damascus, has reported another possible explosion. The strength of the blast is not yet clear, and there has been no official confirmation. However, Firth said the RT crew could hear and feel something like a bomb going off from their hotel room. According to Firth, the feeling was akin to one they’d experienced “when the May 10 bombs exploded” near intelligence headquarters in the Syrian capital.
Only two days ago, 55 people were killed and 372 more injured by two powerful blasts in Damascus, the worst attack since the uprising began more than a year ago.
Two car bombs went off in quick succession during the morning rush hour, just as employees were arriving to work. A small initial explosion was followed by a much larger blast, allegedly targeted at paramedics and security forces arriving at the scene.
The explosion left two craters – three and six meters wide – in front of a military compound. The two cars were stuffed with more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives, said Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi.
The blasts were branded a terrorist attack by state television and the authorities, but there has been no claim of responsibility yet.
SOHR – Who can you trust?
Earlier, Russia questioned the reliability of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The activities of the controversial London-based group were denounced by Russia’s Foreign Ministry back on February 2012, with spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich casting doubts on SOHR’s reliability.
"As far as we know, this organization employs only two people (its head and secretary-translator). It is headed by Rami Abdulrahman, who has no training either in journalism or law or even a complete secondary education," Lukashevich said.
The SOHR is one of the most widely-quoted sources of Syrian casualty figures and Lukashevich pointed out that many information agencies, primary Western ones, often refer to SOHR data in their reports on Syria.
Historian Pierre Picolin also says the Observatory is a source Western media choose to rely exclusively on when it comes to getting information about Syria.
“I say that there are two such 'observatories,' and they are both connected with the opposition. In reality these organizations are the opposition’s propaganda agencies, propaganda tools.” he said.
“It is part of the journalist’s job to think critically, verify sources and be extremely cautious. But they decide to just spread the information they receive from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, without asking any questions.”
In fact there are two sites each claiming to be an official observatory and providing different data. Both sites report slightly different figures, none of which can be independently confirmed, leaving media outlets wondering how reliable their sources are.February 26, 2010
James Illingworth explains how the budget crisis got so bad in California--and describes the development of a movement that is challenging the cuts.
ON MARCH 4, thousands of students, workers, and teachers will take action across California to resist the ongoing attack on public education. The scale of the fightback in education has inevitably focused attention on the cuts in that sector, but the crisis extends into every area of the state government.
How did things get so bad in California?
Budget crises are hitting states across the U.S. According to the Economic Policy Institute, state governments entered the 2010 fiscal year with a collective budget shortfall of $156 billion. This was partially overcome with $68 billion in federal stimulus spending and about $1 billion in rainy day funds. That left $87 billion to be accounted for through spending cuts and tax increases.
The crisis is sharpest in California for several reasons. First, its economy was the most reliant on construction and financial services, two of the sectors hardest hit in this recession. California lost half a million jobs in 2009 alone.
Over 2 million Californians are out of work today, and the unemployment rate stands at more than 12 percent. Statewide, construction, manufacturing and business services have each lost well over 150,000 jobs during the last 18 months. And, of course, tax revenues have slumped as a result of the downturn.
Some 4,000 students, faculty and staff demonstrated on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley last September
Second, California's peculiar political character exacerbated the crisis. One key factor is the 1978 Proposition 13 ballot measure, which put a strict limit on property taxes and mandated a two-thirds majority vote of the legislature to raise any state taxes.
For a decade, Republicans in Sacramento refused to raise taxes, forcing the majority Democrats to fund the state government through massive borrowing. This strategy worked fine while the economy kept growing, and cheap credit stayed available. But the financial meltdown of late 2008 caused both a huge drop in state tax revenues and also the drying up of credit.
Now, almost 5 percent of the state budget is dedicated to servicing California's massive debts. That's $4.5 billion this year, and it's projected to rise to more than $9 billion, or 6 percent of the budget, before the end of the 2010s.
From the beginning of the crisis, therefore, the state government consistently sought to make poor and working-class Californians pay the price. Rather than introduce publicly funded jobs programs to replace employment lost in the private sector, the state used the crisis to attack social welfare programs, privatize whole parts of the public sector and attempt to break the back of the teachers' union.
THE SCALE of the attack to come became clear in November 2008, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to the Wall Street meltdown by proposing a furlough program for state workers, elimination of some paid holidays and restrictions on overtime.
By early 2009, Schwarzenegger and California Democrats were proposing to fix the $42 billion budget deficit with ballot measures that would have raised indirect taxation on working people and capped spending on education. Voters went to the polls in May 2009 and overwhelmingly rejected these measures--so Schwarzenegger and the Democrats were forced to take a different tack.
After many delays and much political wrangling, the legislature managed to pass a budget in July 2009 that included $15 billion in cuts--including more than $6.5 billion slashed from K-12 education and community colleges, and $2 billion taken from the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems.
Democrats in the legislature voted unanimously for the cuts. They were able to secure passage of the budget when state Sen. Abel Maldonado--who has since gotten Schwarzenegger's endorsement to serve as lieutenant governor--defected from the closed ranks on the Republican side, and voted in favor.
At $20 billion, the projected budget deficit for 2010-11 is smaller than last year's. But Schwarzenegger clearly intends to continue his strategy of cuts, privatization and war on the unions.
In January of this year, he announced plans for state workers to take a further 5 percent cut in wages, and to pay 5 percent more into their pensions out of their paychecks. The proposed budget also calls for privatization of those pensions, which would strip many workers of any protection for their retirement benefits.
For good measure, the governor wants to curtail seniority protection for teachers. And he wants to do all of this without sitting at the negotiating table with public sector unions.
If education took the biggest hit last time around, it's now the turn of Health and Human Services, which the governor is targeting for 8 percent cuts, totaling almost $3 billion. Included in this is an attack on In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), which cares for more than 430,000 of the poorest elderly and disabled Californians.
Despite the fact that a federal judge issued an injunction to stop the state government from implementing similar cuts during the 2009-10 budget year, Schwarzenegger now proposes to eliminate this service entirely for 87 percent of recipients, which could destroy more than 300,000 union jobs.
The governor's latest budget also proposes to end public assistance for legal immigrants, which would save a paltry $300 million, but leave thousands of elderly and disabled people at the mercy of the recession.
If his plan is approved, the CalWORKS welfare program, which provided $723 for a two-parent family of three in January 2009, will now pay out only $585 to the same family. The budget also proposes a $750 million cut to Medi-Cal--California's version of Medicaid--as well as cuts in day care services.
ALTHOUGH EDUCATION will take a smaller hit in the new budget, this sector has become the main symbol of the California budget crisis. It's also the area that most clearly demonstrates the "shock doctrine" approach of the California ruling class in the current crisis--it's become a testing ground for a policy of austerity and privatization.
Schwarzenegger has had a grudge against public education ever since he took office. In 2004, he agreed to a "Higher Education Compact" with the heads of the CSU and UC systems, under which student fees would rise at an average of 10 percent a year.
With so much cheap credit available during the debt bubble of those years, Schwarzenegger and university administrators figured that students and their families could fund the increase in fees through ever-more student loans, based on the equity from rising house prices. The idea that higher education should be a luxury for the wealthiest Californians reached its logical conclusion when the UC Regents raised tuition by 32 percent in November 2009.
At the same time, state authorities have gone on the offensive against public schools in the K-12 system. Schwarzenegger stacked the State Board of Education with advocates of privatization. The result has been a steady push towards charter schools, which often employ non-union teachers and are run by private business interests.
At first, public-sector unions were slow to react to the attack. In early 2009, the California Teachers Association even made the extraordinary decision to back Schwarzenegger's ballot measures, though they were hugely unpopular with California workers and would have led to an increase in regressive taxation.
Soon after, however, the first sparks of a fightback appeared on university campuses.
On September 24, the first day of classes in much of the University of California system, two campus unions--the Union of Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) and the Coalition of University Employees (CUE)--organized a one-day strike, and found a deep well of support from students and faculty. Professors and lecturers throughout the UC system signed on to an open letter calling for walkouts against the cuts. At UC Berkeley, as many as 5,000 students and workers rallied against the cuts on September 24, and thousands took action elsewhere.
September 24 also saw the beginning of the student occupation movement. At UC Santa Cruz, some two dozen protestors took over the graduate student commons and remained barricaded inside for almost a week. The tactic spread--occupations took place on UC campuses at Davis, Berkeley and Los Angeles, plus San Francisco State and Fresno State, among others.
On October 24, some 800 students, workers and teachers gathered in Berkeley for a conference to coordinate the fight against the cuts, and voted for March 4 to be a day of strikes and actions to defend public education at all levels.
The movement took another big step forward when the UC Regents met in November for their vote to raise tuition by 32 percent. When they were meeting, students and their allies occupied buildings at half a dozen schools across California. Some of the occupations involved hundreds and even thousands of people, and led to confrontations with riot police at UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. Authorities only regained control on these campuses after several days of protests.
THE SCALE of the November protests and the inspiration they gave to many rank-and-file workers in the public sector finally forced union leaderships to take the movement seriously.
One by one, during December and January, the teachers' unions endorsed the March 4 actions. Even if their organizing efforts were often top-down or half-hearted, this development demonstrated the depth of anger among union members and showed how a radicalized and mobilized membership could shift the direction of labor officials.
So far, the movement against cuts in education has |
Vice; however the explanation would be insufficient.
The seemingly subversive behavior of a few outliers is hardly unprecedented. In the recent insurrection in Greece, a large part of the media expressed sympathy with the rioters, albeit in a very formulaic way. In the media lens, young students were justifiably protesting in the streets after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, anarchists were hijacking the event to burn police stations, and immigrants were taking advantage of the situation to loot stores. None of these characterizations are based on fact. Millions of young people and old, Greeks and immigrants, participated in the uprising, in a variety of ways. Many students looted, many immigrants walked along with protests. A frequently expressed sentiment was that participation in the insurrection blurred all of these pre-established identities, in which case the media operation clearly intended to reassert them. With all three subjects, the media caricature refers to a prefabricated figure that the entire population was already familiar with—the socially concerned student, the pyromaniac anarchist, the criminal immigrant—that only ever existed on the glowing screen, because it was the media themselves that created it. That’s the brilliance of the media: they rarely have to verify their claims, because they operate within a virtual universe that they themselves have created.
In the Greek example, it is obvious why the media would sympathize with student rioting: to discourage non-students from participating or identifying with the uprising; and to establish a limit of acceptable tactics, implicitly criminalizing the looting and the attacks on police stations. After all, the intensity of street fighting over three uninterrupted weeks was forcing the government to consider calling in the military. They were willing to tolerate burning barricades and illegal protests if things didn’t go further.
Likewise, when people start to bring guns to protests as in Ferguson, there will be those among the forces of law and order who begin to see the wisdom in tolerating the smashing of banks. It’s noteworthy that the media only begin to stomach property destruction when talk of shooting back begins to resonate throughout society. And though within the confines of American dialogue, it feels like a breath of fresh air that Time Magazine would sympathize with rioters, it is a more or less calculated move that functions to limit the growth of resistance. Even if the editors of a magazine are not scheming consciously and explicitly about how to maintain social control, they are still individuals with a vested interest in the current system. People fighting fiercely for their freedom, unlike those who compulsively walk in circles or stage die-ins, often force a recognition of their humanity and win a limited sympathy from their enemies. They also make the existence of a social conflict undeniable. In such a case, people in power may come to accept tactics that they had previously condemned, to acknowledge errors they had previously denied, but their condemnation of forms of rebellion that are irreversibly destabilizing will only crystalize. People can be permitted to blow off steam, even in illegal ways, but they cannot be permitted to blunt or sabotage the instruments of the State. And when the police confront an armed population, they are suddenly much less effective.
Another way that exceptional dissent might manifest is in the realm of discourse and research. I am by no means the first person to express the idea that the police should be abolished, nor is this idea entirely strange in acceptable discourse among people who are much better dressed than I am. However the elaboration of these discourses must be couched in certain ways to signal their usefulness to the State, and their separation from communities in struggle.
If we assert that it is not permitted to speak of a world without police, this is only true if we understand the police as one function in an interlocking system of domination, and the abolition of the police means the abolition of that entire system. Otherwise, there is a great deal of research and debate that maps out the possibilities of prison abolition or an end to policing as we know it. But what is the actual meaning and effect of this discourse?
I would start by arguing that the vast majority of those who conduct this theoretical labor have good intentions. But we also know what they say about good intentions, and the paving stones on the road to hell are not nearly as substantial as the ones being thrown at cops in Ferguson and elsewhere. With this facile figure of speech, I actually mean to suggest a different criterion for evaluating our actions.
I gladly admit that the information produced by academics or activists who theorize about prison abolition or a world without police is thought-provoking and useful. I have cited a few examples of it in this essay. But just as we must ask why Time Magazine would sympathize with rioters, we should ask why there exist paid positions for people to study prison abolition. Either capitalism isn’t a totality, or the prisons and the police are not an integral part of power, or power benefits somehow by studying its own abolition.
I believe the answer lies between the second and the third possibilities. Even though the abolition of prisons is not a likely future, from the present vantage, democratic capitalism increases its chances for survival by exploring contingency plans for extreme cases, and by giving opponents employment opportunities. The advantage is increased if “prisons” or “police” can be discursively transformed from an integral element of a whole system into a particular appendage that can be discarded or modified. And there are few methods of discourse more suited to carrying out this transformation than the academic—which favors specificity and an analysis of parts over wholes—and the activist—which tends towards single-issue messaging that favors the myopic over the radical.
Someone in the academy or in the world of professional activism can study the police for all the right reasons, personally holding a global analysis of the integral role of police within a greater whole, but the institutional formulae of applying for grants, publishing articles, and claiming concrete improvements all modulate those individuals’ activity to favor a piecemeal worldview and to direct discourse at other power-holders.
It may sound like a platitude but I believe experience in struggle bears it out: you cannot abolish that with which you dialogue. State authority above all thrives on being present in every social conversation. A conversation with employers, legislators, grant-writers, or experts about the abolition of the police necessarily assumes the replacement of one form of policing with another.
The modern prison was born out of the abolition of the scaffold. Community policing was a survival mechanism after the defeats and the unpopularity of the police caused by the struggles of the ’60s. The danger is real.
Even without a far-reaching reform that allows the powerful to regenerate their methods for accumulating power, radical discourses in professional channels present other problems. One I have already hinted at can be thought of as misdirection.
Let’s imagine an organization that focuses on prison abolition. Their employees are sincere, dedicated activists, some of them proven veterans of past struggles. Nearly all of them are college graduates, and some might be academics; otherwise they stay in close contact with the experts who produce facts that make it easier to argue for prison abolition in polite circles. They produce many valuable materials that can be useful for supporting prisoners or changing people’s opinions about the prison system, and they may even have a pilot project on a couple blocks in a specific neighborhood, designed to decrease reliance on the prison industrial complex.
Taken individually, all of these things are great. We need more people who are talking about a world without prisons. But the ideas that this hypothetical organization spreads, how do they direct people’s attentions, particularly in a moment of social rebellion?
When such an organization, with paid staff, non-profit status, cred, but also rules to play by and bills to pay, proclaims that “We need to abolish the police and the prisons,” what is the practical implication? “Therefore this organization should receive more grants and this law should not be passed,” or “therefore these people who took up arms against the police deserve our support”? Clearly, it’s not the latter.
A professional approach to tackling the social problems underscored by Ferguson rarely returns people’s energies and attentions to the streets, where real change is created. True, most of the time, we don’t have something like Ferguson going on, so a patient, gradualist method seems to make sense. However, the conservatism of the professional approach often leads activists to play a pacifying role when a moment of intense struggle arises, as we abundantly witnessed this August and again in November. All across the country, even where they refrained from denouncing rioters, activist organizations called for vigils and speak-outs, when it was clear that the time for mere words had passed. Directly or indirectly, these mobilizations allowed a middle-class constituency to monopolize the social response and prevent rioting, at a time when an unprecedented number of people were ready to fight back.
What’s more, the assumptions are all wrong. Ferguson is only exceptional in its extension, not in its spirit. Not a month goes by when someone does not shoot back at the police in America. Most of the time, however, they are a lone shooter, they often kill themselves or die in the act, and the media always publish unsavory details about their personal lives, true or invented. They also portray the cops as heroes, no matter what kind of people they actually were, and they never entertain the possibility that the shooters were justified, as they always do when it’s cops doing the murdering (actually, this is too charitable a description; many media outlets assert from the beginning that the killing was justified, not even allowing a debate). The recent shooting of the two cops in NYC fits the pattern perfectly, but earlier cases like that of Christopher Monfort in Seattle, Eric Frein in Pennsylvania, or Christopher Dorner in LA also apply. None of this should be surprising. There is a certain schizophrenia in a society that glorifies the police and suppresses or distorts any honest conversation about what people actually experience at the hands of police and what sort of countermeasures are adequate or justified. If large numbers of alienated people feel entirely alone in their brutalization and dehumanization by police, collective resistance becomes impossible. The only people to express an active negation of the police will be individuals who reach a certain limit and then snap. By the very nature of the problem they are not going to be the stable ones, especially if mental health is defined as an infinite capacity to accomodate misery.
In Ferguson, rioters spraypainted the QT with the phrase, “free Kevin Johnson”, referring to a black man from an aggressively gentrifying St. Louis suburb who is on death row since 2008. Johnson shot to death an infamous bully of a cop who refused to help his kid brother as he lay dying from a heart condition. There is a direct connection between what are portrayed as isolated outbursts of senseless violence, and the massive rebellions that force society to at least stop and pay attention. I don’t, however, see the professionals making this connection. Typically they are either silent or help pathologize the lone wolves. The tragedy is, such incidents are only isolated as long as people in power AND people in social movements continue to actively isolate them.
Recognizing the basic legitimacy of these acts isn’t to glorify the shooters as heroes. There is something sad in any death, no matter who the victim is, and we’re in dire straits when the only available means of resistance that people think they have are directly suicidal. The point is, there is a direct connection between the systematic brutality of police and the appearance of people who shoot back. Denying it only maintains the schizophrenic condition that forces us to pathologize a sensible human response to systematic abuse, preserves our psychological loyalty to a system that treats us like fodder, and prevents the development of collective measures.
There have been attempts in the US to develop and spread methods of resistance to police that are collective, that brook no compromise, and that are less dangerous, less suicidal, than the method of the lone gunmen. The best known is probably the “black bloc.” And though it is clearly an imperfect tool, the bloc typically faces blanket denunciations by people who make no attempts to propose alternatives. In NGO-land, the trope that has been circulated is that the black bloc is the domain of young white men. Never mind that there are many testimonials by women, queer, and trans people attempting to counter this lie (and at great personal risk, since it requires speaking about personal involvement in an illegal activity); never mind that American anarchists have learned about the tactic not only in Europe but also in Latin America, where it is widely popular. The denunciations cannot be taken seriously as criticisms because they do not rely on realistic portrayals of the black bloc, they are formulated to silence rather than to engage, and they do not propose any alternatives for seizing space or collectively fighting back against police.
The extent to which this trope has been circulated by the corporate media reveals just how liberatory the thinking behind it truly is.
But the black bloc is just one possibility among many, and while it helps demonstrators protect themselves in rowdy street confrontations, it does not suggest to most people the vision of another world. Talking about a world without police in the here and now, without paving the way for our own co-optation is a big order to fill. Fortunately, the conversation is already ongoing.
We have the examples of societies that thrived without police, which I mentioned towards the beginning of the essay. Those stories belong to other cultures. I don’t think Westerners should use them as models or as ideological capital, but I think we should recognize their existence, to break the stranglehold that Western civilization has over definitions of human nature and human possibility, and we should also recognize that those other forms of being were violently interrupted by processes of colonization that are still ongoing. They are not marginal, idyllic stories of “primitive” societies with no bearing on modern reality, they are histories of peoples who are still struggling for survival. If, in the worlds we dream of, there is no room for them to reassert themselves independent of our designs, then whatever we create will only be a continuation of the thing we are fighting against.
More appropriate as inspiration for our own action are a number of stories of struggle in Western or westernized countries in which people created police-free zones on the ground. After all, a holistic critique of the police means that by the very nature of the problem, we cannot ask government to institute the needed changes. Real steps towards a world without police can be found in the riots in Ferguson and other cities around the country where people surpassed their self-appointed leaders and actually fought back, rather than just manufacturing yet another spectacle of symbolic dissent. The riots in Ferguson were not only important in an instrumental way, forcing all of society to consider the problem; they also suggested the beginnings of a solution as neighbors came together in solidarity, building new relations amongst themselves, and forcefully ejecting police from the neighborhoods they patrol.
Christiania is an autonomous neighborhood of Copenhagen that has been squatted since 1971. The area, with nearly a thousand inhabitants, organizes itself in assemblies, maintains its own economy and infrastructure, cleans up its trash, produces bicycles and other items in collective workshops, and runs a number of communal spaces. They also resolve their own conflicts, and with the exception of some aggressive incursions and raids, Christiania has been a police-free zone for most of its existence. Initially, the Danish government opted for a soft strategy, hoping that Christiania would eventually fall apart on its own. In the same era, the autonomous movement in the Netherlands and Germany was fighting major battles to defend their squatted spaces, sometimes defeating the police in the streets or burning down shopping malls in retribution for evictions. In context, the Danish approach made sense. However, Christiania thrived. Some suspect that the government was behind the crisis that threatened the autonomous neighborhood’s existence in 1984 when a motorcycle gang moved into the police-free zone to begin selling hard drugs (soft drugs have always been widely used in Christinia, while addictive drugs are vehemently discouraged).
Earlier in Christiania’s history, there had been a fierce debate about how to deal with the problem of drugs. Over intense opposition, a part of the neighborhood decided to request police assistance, but they soon found that the cops were arresting the users of non-addictive drugs and ignoring or even protecting the proliferation of hard drugs. After that, Christiania decided to keep the police out, and their autonomy was well established by the time the motorcycle gang moved in. The gangsters thought they had picked an easy target: a neighborhood of hippies who not only disavowed making use of the police, they actively kept the police out. These drug-pushers, however, had fallen for capitalist mythology, which presents us all as isolated individuals, vulnerable to organized delinquents, and therefore in need of the greatest protection racket of them all, the State. Christiania residents banded together, exercising the same principle of solidarity that was at work in all the other aspects of their lives, fought back, and kicked the motorcycle gang out, using a combination of sabotage, public meetings, pressure, and direct confrontation.
It is no coincidence that the same tools and capacities that allow us to fight back and free ourselves from policing are also the ones we need to protect ourselves from the forms of harm that capitalist democracies prosecute under the rubric of “crime”. Crime and police are two sides of the same coin. They perpetuate each other, and they each rely on a vulnerable, atomized society. A healthy society would have no need for police, no more than it would lock people in cages and hide its problems out of sight rather than deal with the conflicts and deficiencies that led to an act of harm being committed in the first place.
The mutual relationship between police and crime was exquisitely revealed during the popular uprising in Oaxaca in 2006. In June of that year, police viciously attacked the massive encampment staged annually by striking teachers. But the teachers fought back tooth and nail, quickly joined by many neighbors. They pushed police out of Oaxaca City, which remained autonomous for five months along with large parts of the countryside. People built barricades, which became an important space for socialization as well as self-defense, and they organized topiles, an indigenous tradition that provided volunteers to fight back against police and paramilitaries as well as to look out for fires, acts of robbery, or assault.
The defenders of Oaxaca soon learned that the police were releasing people from their prisons on the condition that they go into the city to commit crimes. In protecting their neighborhoods against these acts, the topiles did not function like Western police forces. They patrolled unarmed, they were volunteers, and they did not have a prerogative to arrest people or impose their will, the way cops do. Upon coming across a robbery, arson, or assault, their function was not only that of first responders, but also to call on the neighbors so everyone could respond collectively. With such a structure, it would be impossible to enforce a legal code against an activity with popular participation. In other words, the topiles could stop a stranger who was robbing the store of a local, working class person (as were many of the neighborhood stores in Oaxaca), but they couldn’t have stopped the neighbors themselves from looting a store they already had an antagonistic, classist relationship with, as was the case in Ferguson.
People in Oaxaca also had to defend themselves from police and paramilitaries, and they did so for five months. The topiles and many others were unarmed. They had to fight back with rocks, fireworks, and molotov cocktails, many of them getting shot in the process. Their bravery allowed hundreds of thousands of people to live in freedom for five months, in a police-free, government-free zone, experimenting with the self-organization of their lives on social, economic, and cultural levels. All the beautiful aspects of the Oaxaca commune are inseperable from their violent struggle against police, involving barricades, slingshots, molotov cocktails, and thousands of people who faced down armed opponents, over a dozen of them giving their lives in the process. In the end, the Mexican state had to send in the military as the only way to crush this flourishing pocket of autonomy.
If we learn from examples like Christiania, Oaxaca, and Ferguson itself, we can fight for a world without police and everything they represent, beginning here and now by creating blocks, neighborhoods, or even entire cities that are at least temporarily police-free zones. Within these spaces we can finally experiment and practice with solutions to all the other interrelated forms of oppression that plague us.
There is something beautiful about people finding the courage to fight back against a more powerful enemy, and people also flourish in surprising ways when they liberate space and take the power to organize their own lives. Neither of these things can be overemphasized. But neither should we romanticize. In the streets of Ferguson and other liberated spaces, much of the ugliness that infuses our society rears its head. But dealing with what had previously been invisible or normalized is an inevitable part of any healing process, and our society is nothing if not sick. Calamities like uprisings and riots can be important catalysts in processes of social healing, and liberated spaces, by forcefully casting aside the previous regime’s norms and relationships, that only functioned to reproduce and invisibilize all the ongoing forms of harm, can give us the opportunity to create new, healthier patterns, and engage in conversations that previously had been impossible. Empowering ourselves to fight back against those who have traumatized us, like the police, can be an important step in upsetting oppressive relations, healing from trauma, and restoring healthy social relations.
This is, however, a dangerous proposition. Fighting back against the police, especially shooting back at them, as was happening in Ferguson, is not a safe activity. Change is never safe. And if we can successfully overcome the police to create a liberated zone, the State will eventually send in the military. Are the soldiers still loyal enough, after these last wars, to open fire on us? Has enough been done to encourage dissension in the ranks, or is the government firmly in control? There is only one way to find out.
It is understandable that many people would not want to face the extreme risks involved with uprooting the oppressions that grip our society. There is nothing wrong with being afraid, so long as you have the courage to admit it. Some people, however, do a great disservice by muddying the waters with myopic proposals that have no hope of making an actual difference.
In the streets, we need to learn how to seize space, to make sure that those who fight back are never isolated, to make collective responses possible so no one has to react in an individual, suicidal way again, and to build a struggle that has room for young and old, for the peaceful and the bellicose, for those who know how to fight and those who know how to heal. It will be a long process, and in the meantime, there is a great need to speak loud and clear about a world without police, so everyone will know there is another way, beyond the false alternatives of obedience or ineffectual reform.
December 29, 2014Michael Markesbery and Rithvik Venna spent time recently in Salt Lake City to test their new line of outerwear. (Photo: Provided)
A year ago, Miami University seniors Michael Markesbery and Rithvik Venna were preparing to graduate college.
They were also about to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a high-tech jacket, insulated with a material used in the space shuttle.
The zoology majors wouldn't be disappointed.
Backers pledged $319,000 in 30 days through the crowdfunding website and Lukla was born, producing its first line of jackets for skiers, snowboarders and others outdoor sports lovers.
Now, they're at it again.
At noon on Monday, they launched a new Kickstarter campaign with a new jacket, beanies, gloves and snow pants. By midday Thursday, they had raised just under $109,000.
You'll notice a name change: Oros Apparel. That's because they have expanded their business into workwear and are licensing their aerogel technology for other products.
"We could get a loan to produce this stuff or we can do what we do best, which is a Kickstarter," Markesbery, an Indian Hill native, said. "We decided to go back to our original consumers; guys who got us here in the first place."
Kickstarter allows people to offer financial support to individuals and startups, like Oros, that are attempting to launch a service or product into the market.
The company or individual sets a fundraising goal; in Oros' case: $310,000.
If the goal isn't reached, the pledges aren't cashed in and everyone moves on. During Lukla's first campaign the company met its $100,000 goal in less than 48 hours.
Depending on the level of support, backers can get rewards. Oros will give backers one of its new beanies for $35, for example.
Oros was one of the first companies selling jackets using aerogel as an insulator on the market. While Markesbery is proud of the product the company delivered last fall, he said the second jacket is improved.
For one, they are using a different type of aerogel that is far more flexible. Aerogel is the world's lightest solid, allowing the jackets to be thin and warm.
Oros is Greek for "mountain," so the name is fitting, Markesbery said.
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"Whenever you engage in a task, you have to sacrifice blood, sweat, time and money," Markesbery said. "We thought the name was symbolic of the challenge that goes along with the task."
So what else is new about the second-generation jacket? It has a few small things, including a different type of Velcro and smaller hood. But its weight has also been reduced by 33 percent.
Markesbery is particularly excited about the gloves, which are self-heating, by using aerogel and a material called graphene; no battery required.
Markesbery, Venna and their third business partner, Massimiliano "Max" Squire, will continue pressing into the workwear market, a roughly $10 billion a year industry, Markesbery said.
The U.S. Army is already testing an Oros jacket that may one day be ordered in bulk for Navy Seals or Marines, Markesbery said.
"If you're not innovating," Markesbery said, "you're dying."
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1STjx26I would like to provide some information on working with System Settings. This is a big endeavor and not an easy one. System Settings is a good expression of the power of Plasma KDE and also the many influences that have shaped it over the years.
Trying to untangle the work that has gone into System Settings requires time and patience. I have always been interested in working in revamping this UI. We worked with the team in the VDG on this some time ago, and although there were many great and interesting changes, the scope of the work was too great. Therefore, we decided only to move forward with those things that were achievable at the time.
We reorganized our settings.
In recent iterations of the software, we have also decided to change a few more visuals with the application and have added a second column for specific KCMs.
However, I feel we want to go further in the future and achieve even more. It is because of that vision that I have decided to keep working with System Settings to help the modules arrive at a good place in the near future. I have taken consideration of a few ideas and initiatives that our team has, some reported bugs and overall perception. I suggested that I become a lead designer for this project.
But I can’t do it alone. If you have ideas and thoughts (albeit without drastically changing the direction that I am taking) please share them.
This is somewhat rough, but here is something that I can show for now, please note this is a graphic mockup, not a working UI:
Please note that these ideas here are still in progress. They are developing and changing a lot. Further things that I would like to design are:
Work on labels and develop a tone and angle for descriptions. Right now labels don’t have a consistent sound and tend to lead to confusion, at least in English.
Work on removing tabs in favor of a one-page interface where settings can be together without the need for more than 3 clicks before getting to the desired content.
Design new interactions for certain KCMs and follow a predictable structure for information presentation.
I hope this helps understand where System Settings can be.
Our KDE team is working hard these days in many areas. Adding System Settings to the mix might take time. For now, they are focused on getting people at our next sprint at Randa. They will be working on accessibility. I am hoping that we can bring System Settings to those discussions as well.
UPDATE: I should make a statement as it seems that others have been misled. This mockup is only a graphical concept, not a developed application. I am not a developer, I am a visual designer. This mockup is intended to have the KDE team review and come to a consensus to develop System Settings to something like I have proposed. The mockup is missing a few things, title bar, search fields, labels, and buttons. I hope it is evident that those changes will be included.
AdvertisementsOne of my personal favorite aspects of CBD is its natural ability to calm me down. When I’m overly stressed about work or even if I just have a case of coffee jitters I know I can simply medicate with CBD crystalline and in no time I am back to an even keel. This effect is often overlooked when discussing CBD because it is notoriously non-psychoactive, but because of its strong anti-inflammatory properties and its natural ability to heal, I have found that it has a very real ability to clear my head and help me relax.
CBD and transcendental meditation are very similar in this sense in that they both promote calmness and clarity. They both allow us to take a step back from the clutter in our lives and re-evaluate where our focus should lie to increase our own individual productivity. It is a common misconception to think that you need to be busy to be productive. When I think busy, I think of a chicken with its head cutoff—running around trying to handle ten tasks at once, which often can result in those tasks being poorly and inefficiently executed. When I think productive, on the other hand, I think calmness, focus, and clarity. I think patience and attention to detail, and being in “Flow State.” Being busy and being productive are two very different things. This is a realization I have come to through meditation.
Meditation is all about learning how to control the activity level of your brain. For those who have never tried, meditation can seem like a foreign concept, but actually the basic principals of meditation are instinctual in human beings. When we’re stressed out, we take deeper breaths and slow down in order to allow our brains to fully assess the situation. We stop and think. Essentially, we meditate. I have found personally that CBD promotes these same ideals, especially in terms of relaxation. One of the hardest things for new meditators to do is to completely relax their bodies and focus entirely on breathing. It is very common for people to get fidgety and want to shift positions. CBD helps relax the muscles in the body and fosters calmness that allows you to focus your thoughts and breath rather than trying to get comfortable. Meditation is critical because you it doesn’t require you to take classes and all you need is to dedicate some time to it. Simply find a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. The more you practice, the more comfortable you will get and the more you will start to notice the benefits, including improved sleeping patterns, increased ability to concentrate, and higher energy spilling over into your day-to-day life. If you’ve never tried transcendental meditation, take 30 minutes out of your day, enjoy some CBD from providers such as Johnny AppleCBD, and get in tune with your mind, body and soul. I can guarantee you will come out of it refreshed, refocused, and ready to take on the day.WASHINGTON, May 19 – Sen. Bernie Sanders issued the following statement today after House Republicans unveiled legislation to address Puerto Rico’s financial crisis: “The legislation that was announced today to establish an unelected control board in Puerto Rico is a move in exactly the wrong direction. “This undemocratic board would have the power to slash pensions, cut education and health care, and increase taxes on working families in Puerto Rico. That is unacceptable. “Even worse, Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan would be in charge of handpicking a majority of the control board’s members, while the people of Puerto Rico would be in charge of choosing none. That may make sense to the Tea Party and one of the largest trade groups representing Wall Street – groups that endorsed this legislation – but it makes absolutely no sense to me. “This legislation would slash the minimum wage in Puerto Rico and exempt workers in Puerto Rico from President Obama’s overtime protections. In my view, we should be increasing wages in Puerto Rico, not slashing them. “The economic situation in Puerto Rico will not improve by eliminating more public schools, slashing pensions, laying off workers and allowing corporations to pay workers starvation wages by suspending the minimum wage and relaxing labor laws. “Instead, Puerto Rico must be given the time it needs to grow its economy, create jobs, reduce the poverty rate and expand its tax base so that it can pay back its debt in a way that is fair and that is just. “We need austerity for billionaire Wall Street hedge fund managers who have exacerbated the financial crisis in Puerto Rico. We don’t need more austerity for children in Puerto Rico who are going hungry. “I believe that Congress should act immediately to give Puerto Rico the same authority granted to every municipality in this country to restructure its debt under the supervision of a bankruptcy court. But the Republicans in Congress continue to oppose this. “The people of Puerto Rico cannot wait any longer. That is why I renew my call today for the Federal Reserve to use its emergency authority to facilitate an orderly restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt. “We must stop treating Puerto Rico like a colony and start treating the people of Puerto Rico with the respect and dignity that they deserve.”Law & Order: Special Victims Unit just aired Sojust aired an episode about video games that made the same tired arguments I've been hearing about the medium since I was a kid. Stuff like "they'll make you into a violent jerkbag" and "you won't be able to tell real-life from games" and even "you'll start using acronyms in real life conversations." And though I thought "Intimidation Game" (seriously?) was stupid and exploitative, I didn't find the depiction of gamers particularly offensive. Because the cartoonishly evil characters dreamed up as punching bags for Ice-T were just acting out the real threats I've been seeing all over the Internet for the past six months:
Washington Post
"Eureka! The episode writes itself!" -- an asshole.
Rise of the Triad when I was, gosh, way too young for something like that. The happiest moment of the past month for me was discovering that I could download Baldur's Gate on to my cellphone, because it meant I could keep up my nostalgic trip down D&D lane even while pooping. Games are my favorite way to waste time, and I still think that we have, hands down, the Now let's get one thing straight: I play a ton of video games, and I'm not afraid to say it. I've been gaming ever since my cousin first showed mewhen I was, gosh,too young for something like that. The happiest moment of the past month for me was discovering that I could downloadon to my cellphone, because it meant I could keep up my nostalgic trip down D&D lane. Games are my favorite way to waste time, and I still think that we have, hands down, the shittiest community online that isn't an outright hate group
why? My theory is that it's because video games, more so than any other art form, are designed to get you addicted and that this addiction has turned a bunch of dorky but harmless people into raving lunatics. But I'm just a doofy Internet comedy writer, so I talked to ButMy theory is that it's because video games, more so than any other art form, are designed to get you addicted and that this addiction has turned a bunch of dorky but harmless people into raving lunatics. But I'm just a doofy Internet comedy writer, so I talked to Ciaran O'Connor, a psychotherapist from Brighton, U.K. who specializes in gaming addiction (he even wrote a book about it), and he told me...
#5. Gaming Addiction Is an Addiction to Feeling Powerful
James Woodson/Digital Vision/Getty Images
According to O'Connor, a video game addiction is largely an addiction to feeling like you matter. "We all crave this very, very basic thing, which is that we can do something and then notice how it changes the world in some way," he says. "Right now, for example, I want to give you an answer to this interview question, and I want to see you react. Games provide that."
Grand Theft Auto V was park on the 405 and unload RPGs into dozens of faceless commuters because fuck LA traffic. But the difference between the healthy gamer and the addict is that the addict isn't getting this kind of "I matter" fulfillment anywhere else. Think about the thing that every game you've ever played has in common: You're always either the most powerful character, or working towards becoming that character. Games provide the sensation of being really important, of being someone that everyone has to listen to, and they provide it in concentrated, crack-like doses: The very first thing fellow Cracked Writer Robert Evans and I did when we got our high-definition version ofwas park on the 405 and unload RPGs into dozens of faceless commuters because. But the difference between the healthy gamer and the addict is that the addict isn't getting this kind of "I matter" fulfillment anywhere else.
"[Gaming addicts] will tell me, 'I say things, and no one listens. I make jokes, and no one laughs. I make advances, and no one responds.' Then they go into an online environment, and suddenly they can get the biggest reactions.... The consequences are gone, so they go for the biggest reactions. That can be violence and hatred."
Andrea Chu/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Online, being a dick is like meth for your self-esteem.
everything else about gaming. I'll give you an example: One of the best games ever made, in my opinion, is Spec Ops: The Line. It's downright haunting, is guaranteed to keep you up at night after you |
was a chilly November morning in New York City—one of the last days that would see brilliant red, orange, and yellow leaves hanging from the trees. On Wooster Street, in SoHo, a small gathering of travel agents shuffled their way across the cobblestone road bundled under hats and heavy jackets. Once inside their storefront, the agency workers warmed their hands with hot coffee and began the work day by seating themselves at their typewriters. The agents had one goal and one goal only for the day: entice cold New Yorkers with $66 flights to fabulous Palm Springs, California; the land of swimming pools, cocktail parties, and plenty of warm desert sunshine. The funny thing is, this wasn’t 1966—this was November 11th, 2016; opening day of the JetBlue Time Travel Agency.
What’s Old is Blue Again Created as an experiential marketing campaign to celebrate their newly launched direct flight service from New York City to the mid-century modern design mecca that is Palm Springs, the two-day 1960s-inspired Time Travel Agency was just one piece out of many that the company used to tell their RetroJet livery story centered around embracing 1960s nostalgia and more specifically, the Golden Age of Travel. While SoHo shoppers were just feet away from the Apple Store and Starbucks, when they entered the Time Travel Agency, they were taken to an entirely different time and place, thanks to the level of detail put into this one-of-a-kind experience. “At the Time Travel Agency, people could step back in time to experience an era (and way of booking flights) that’s synonymous with 1960s Palm Springs,” explains Amy Ferguson, VP, Creative Director at MullenLowe, who worked closely with the JetBlue design and marketing teams to bring the concept to life. “Everything inside the Time Travel Agency reflected the era: the employee’s mannerisms and dialect, the office supplies, even the $66 fares Agency employees provided to customers. The only thing that didn’t was the travel agents’ uncanny knowledge of Greater Palm Springs attractions of 2016.” But how does a brand that is younger than most millennials—JetBlue first took flight in 2000—even begin to envision who or what they would have been if they had existed in the 1960s? Where does an airline so heavily invested in the future of air travel begin to look back and rewrite history? For the JetBlue design team, it started by taking a long hard look at the DNA that already made them who they were.
The Cool Airline Brand From the state-of-the-art T5 terminal at New York’s JFK airport to years of innovative advertising campaigns (including a recent edible newspaper ad to promote their all-you-eat in-flight snack service), JetBlue is no stranger to veering off into unknown territories. Although the airline is only 16 years old, their unique ability to remain “cool” while balancing user experience and cost has proven to be a disruptive lightning rod through the passenger airline industry. Unsurprisingly, the brand’s bold approach to marketing has also made them especially popular with the millennial generation. Between their glittery millennial-friendly social media presence on Instagram and Snapchat to their commitment to creating a treasure trove of delicious share-worthy content, the brand’s marketing strategy is one that others—airline or not—may want to start looking at more closely. “We’ve only been around 16 years, making JetBlue very young in the airline industry,” says Jamie Perry, JetBlue’s VP of Marketing, from the company’s Long Island City, New York office. The office, which is located just a few miles from the airline’s flagship T5 terminal, is also designed to resemble a futuristic travel hub. “(But) we’ve put JetBlue on the map making every part of the travel experience as simple and pleasant as possible, by providing a higher quality product at a lower cost to customers. ’Fun’ is definitely one of the most tangible values and what our customers remember about us and keep coming back to us for, in addition to the unparalleled customer service. It’s those ‘surprise and delight’ moments that allow us to engage with our customers and help tell our story in a genuine way.” And in today’s always-on, always-sharing world, few methods of telling a story are as effective as a carefully curated experience. While the concept of experiential marketing is nothing new, today’s brands are rewriting the formula to create truly immersive experiences that won’t soon be forgotten.
For JetBlue’s design and marketing teams, the first step towards rewriting history and creating an immersive experience started at the epicenter of mid-century modern graphic design: The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography at the Cooper Union in New York City. There, along with the Center’s head design curator Alexander Tochilovsky, JetBlue designers spent days poring through original advertisements, graphics, images and typography styles from the 1960s. The team particularly looked towards common themes and design elements that made up the objects as a whole rather than simply just the way they looked. As Tochilovsky explains, JetBlue’s Golden Age of Travel branding overhaul was a multi-angled approach that went well beyond simply looking at what 1960s graphic design looked like: how could the brand stay true to the conceptual aspects of the time while maintaining the very authenticity they were after?
Welcome to the Time Travel Agency From the finished RetroJet aircraft down to the playing cards, the final JetBlue RetroJet livery design direction and Time Travel Agency tells a story so believable, it may as well just have been true physics-bending time travel for those that got to experience it. “Everything inside the Time Travel Agency was a nod to the 60s,” says Ferguson. “From printed collateral to desk décor, New Yorkers stepped off the SoHo sidewalk and back in time. While waiting for their meeting with an in-character travel agent, customers enjoyed the sights of Palm Springs through a vintage Viewmaster, flipped through the pages of TIME magazines from the 1960s and even read a custom-printed Wooster Street Journal telling the Time Travel Agency story and featuring horoscopes for the weekend of Nov. 11. For customers sharing their real-time #TimeTravelAgency experience on social media, a custom Snapchat geofilter was live around the storefront featuring a retro lens.”
Further, those on the actual inaugural flight from NYC to Palm Springs in the newly-painted Retrojet plane were given an even deeper 1960s experience.
“The aircraft’s inaugural JFK to Palm Springs flight featured JetBlue crew members in retro-style uniforms designed by Stan Herman and specially designed fascinator-style hats by Patricia Underwood,” adds Perry. “All customers in-flight also received limited-edition amenity kits including playing cards, luggage tag, postcards and a commemorative pin.” But despite the brand’s successful bold step into experiential marketing territory, just how well did the design team capture 1960s graphic design while maintaining authenticity?
A Path to Effective Storytelling Experiential marketing isn’t necessarily new, but the formula for staying effective and capturing audience attention is becoming increasingly more refined. And while smart companies like JetBlue prioritize design above all else, at the heart of every great experience is great storytelling. From their 1960s-inspired radio ad played on Spotify and their $66 airline fares, to the Time Travel Agency experience and—for the lucky few at least—a trip to Palm Springs on the RetroJet, JetBlue opened the pages to their multi-sensory story and let the people jump inside. Ultimately, this was a perfect exercise in holistic brand storytelling—from terminals to flight attendants to booking tickets—that the company strives for every single day in 2016.
“The foundation of (design and storytelling) is present in everything JetBlue touches, and our crew members are empowered to live them,” says Perry. “Harnessing this energy from crew members is essential to authentically communicating and showcasing the brand’s story. It is one thing to have brand values on paper and a stylebook to guide design, but it’s another to have them work together and for you on the brand’s front lines each day.“Poland Spring is a brand of bottled water produced in Poland, Maine, named after the original natural spring in the town of Alfred, Maine it was drawn from. Today it is a subsidiary of Nestlé and sold in the United States.[1] The spring was first exploited commercially in 1845 by Hiram Ricker, owner of a nearby inn.[citation needed] Contemporary demand is so great the brand’s water is derived from multiple sources in the state of Maine including Poland Spring and Garden Spring in Poland, Maine, Clear Spring in Hollis, Evergreen Spring in Fryeburg, Spruce Spring in Pierce Pond Township, White Cedar Spring in Dallas Plantation, and Bradbury Spring in Kingfield.
Poland Spring was the top-selling spring water brand in America in 2006.[1] In 2007, the Poland Spring brand adopted a bottle using 30% less plastic, as did the other Nestlé Waters North America brands.[2]
Origin [ edit ]
A large pile of half-pint Poland Spring bottles
The spring has its origins in the late 18th century. In 1797, The Wentworth Ricker Inn opened at the homestead of Jabez Ricker. In 1844, Jabez's grandson, Hiram Ricker claimed that spring water from the property cured him of chronic dyspepsia. In 1861, the inn was enlarged and renamed The Mansion House. The inn had grown to a resort, and his discussions with guests led them to also praise the drinking water. In this period, it was quite fashionable to "take the waters" for almost all illnesses, causing an uptick in business. The Rickers soon began bottling the water. Expanded again into an extravagant resort that locals dubbed "Ricker's Folly", the inn was renamed the Poland Spring House and opened On July 4, 1876. The inn remained a significant resort into the early 20th century, but the Ricker family lost control of the company during the 1930s. A resort still operates on the site.[3]
Water sales [ edit ]
In 1891 Maine's Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics listed 81 existing mineral springs. Twenty-three were used for commercial bottling, with total sales of $400,000; $200,000 of these sales were by Poland Spring.[citation needed]
Today Poland Spring sells the majority of its water in portable 8, 12, and 20 oz bottles; 500 ml, 700 ml, 1 L, and 1.5 L bottles, and also larger 5 gallon bottles usable in office or in home water dispensers. Smaller 3 L, 1 gallon and 2.5 gallon bottles are also available for sale in most supermarkets, and for home delivery in the Northeastern United States. Other varieties of Poland Spring include sparkling, lemon, lime, and distilled. They are also the producers of the Aquapod line of products.
All Poland Spring products are sold in plastic bottles, for both safety and economic reasons.[4] Today, no portable Poland Spring bottles are made from the number "7" polycarbonate plastic that contains Bisphenol-A (BPA).[4] The large 5-gallon bottles are made of number "1" plastic and are also BPA-free, while the 3-gallon bottles are made of number "7" plastic and may contain trace levels of BPA.[5] Bottles made of PETE, which do not contain BPA (number "1" or "2" or "4" on bottom), started to appear in 2013; in some areas one may have only these bottles. They can be recognized by the different handle design (separate piece of plastic rather than a continuous molded element).
In the summer of 2005, Poland Spring changed the color of its 1-gallon bottle cap from dark green to clear. The reason for the color change was to remove the dye from the cap, which is more suitable for the recycling stream. Poland Spring later changed to a lighter bottle called the Eco-Shape which uses 30 percent less plastic.[2] The new style made its début in November 2007.[6]
Controversies [ edit ]
Several towns in Maine have objected to the business practices of Poland Spring and its parent company Nestlé. In some towns, such as Fryeburg, Maine, Poland Spring actually buys the water (110 million gallons of water from Fryeburg a year) from another company, the Fryeburg Water Co., and ships it to the Poland Spring bottling plant in Poland Spring.[7] However, Fryeburg Water Co. also sells water to the town of Fryeburg.
The town of Fryeburg began to question the amount of water the company was selling to Poland Spring. In 2004, the town's water stopped temporarily because of a pump failure, but Poland Spring's operations were able to continue.[1] The group H 2 O for ME wants to create a tax on water drawn for commercial purposes. However, Poland Spring said the tax would force the company into bankruptcy.[8] State legislator Jim Wilfong proposed a 20 cent per gallon tax be allowed to be voted on in a referendum, but the measure was defeated. He also believed that laws should be rearranged to place limits on the amount of groundwater landowners can pump out of their land.[1]
The town of Sterling, Massachusetts, is attempting to prevent Poland Spring (Nestlé) from pumping spring water from conservation restricted town land. Nestlé Waters North America (NWNA) has responded to an RFP issued by the Town of Clinton to purchase the Town of Clinton's Wekepeke aquifer water rights located in Sterling.[9]
In June 2003, Poland Spring was sued for false advertising in a class action lawsuit charging that their water that supposedly comes from springs, is in fact heavily treated common ground water.[10] The suit also states, hydro-geologists hired by Nestlé found that another current source for Poland Spring water near the original site stands over a former trash and refuse dump, and below an illegal disposal site where human sewage was sprayed as fertilizer for many years.[10] The suit was settled in September 2003, with the company not admitting to the allegations, but agreeing to pay $10 million in charity donations and discounts over the next 5 years.[11] Nestlé continues to sell the same Maine water under the Poland Spring name.
In August 2017, a class-action lawsuit was filed in Connecticut alleging that “Not one drop of Poland Spring Water emanates from a water source that complies with the Food and Drug Administration definition of ‘spring water'. The famous Poland Spring in Poland Spring, Maine, which defendant’s labels claim is a source of Poland Spring Water, ran dry nearly 50 years ago.” A Poland Spring spokeswoman responded that “Poland Spring is 100 percent spring water. The claims made in the lawsuit are without merit and an obvious attempt to manipulate the legal system for personal gain.” Scientist Peter Gleick said that “Most of Nestle’s waters are pumped from the ground, but the bigger issue that the regulatory definition of what really counts as spring water is really weak. No one is really looking over the shoulders of the bottled water companies.”[12]
See also [ edit ]E=mc2. Einstein’s great equation represents a pinnacle of mathematical purity. But as the evidence piles up which general relativity struggles to account for, is the very elegance of Einstein's theories preventing scientists from updating them? Is there always beauty in truth, or are aesthetics a distraction from the fundamental mission of science?
Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London. He is a member of the UCL High Energy Physics group and works on the Atlas experiment at Cern's Large Hadron Collider. His book, Smashing Physics: The Inside Story of the Hunt for the Higgs was published in May 2014.
Here, he speaks to the IAI about quantum physics, the Standard Model, and the relationship between beauty and scientific truth.
You have said in the past that beauty is found in simplicity, but isn’t it actually the complex nature of the world that inspires awe?
Obviously it’s a subjective point of view but, for me, what inspires awe is the fact that such complexity can arise for some very simple underlying principles. It’s the combination of complexity and simplicity. If the universe was all manifestly simple, that wouldn’t be so impressive. But the fact that you can see all this complexity and wonder around us and it arises, perhaps, from some really elegant principles, to me that’s where the beauty lies.
Why is it rational to use the simpler theory to explain phenomena? Could using this approach lead us to something which is beautiful but untrue? Is beauty perhaps a distraction?
Given that science is experimental, it’s unlikely to settle on something that’s actually wrong, because in the end it has to be judged against what we observe. But yes, it’s certainly true that beauty could be a distraction, that people could place too much weight on the aesthetic concerns when really the data is telling us something different. It’s certainly true that we could go the wrong way because of our prejudice to follow what we think is the simpler model or simpler theory. But you have to use whatever guide you can find. In the end, the data keep you honest. If you’re not meeting the data, you’re not really doing science; you’re doing maths or something else entirely.
Can science really be communicated in aesthetic terms? Not all scientists will find beauty in the same principles, though they may find truth.
That’s right – you’ve got to be very careful about being too universal about what beauty is. On some level it’s a cultural construct, and while the way we approach scientific theories is also born out of our culture, the hope is – and it’s certainly true at least a lot of the time – that science is striving towards an objective truth, some objective understanding of the phenomena around us. That understanding would be intelligible to a space alien who we’ve never communicated with before but who was living in the same universe with the same physical laws. By contrast, they may have a completely idea of what beauty is. So science is embedded in the culture that does it, but it is striving to be something a little more objective. That means beauty, you could argue, is an unreliable guide. But very often beauty does work – and you can tell whether it works or not because of the data.
Surely you find certain principles beautiful because they represent evidence for your theories?
I wouldn’t call that beauty – I think that’s more of a kind of fist-pump! You feel pleased with yourself because you’ve understood something, and there are all kinds of emotions in that. Partly it’s an ego trip because you think you’re great, you’ve understood some of the universe. Partly also the increased understanding does allow you to appreciate more beauty that is actually true. To me, something that’s real is more beautiful than something that’s made up – in the context of science at least. So a theory can be really beautiful but it gains a new layer of beauty if you find it’s actually realised in nature.
Simplicity and Ockham’s razor are often used to choose between competing theories, but the method is only as strong as the assumptions that are kept. Is there an alternative to this?
There are alternative analytic approaches. Ockham’s razor says that you should try and be as simple as possible and have as few adjustable parameters in your theory. There are analytics, namely things like neural nets and multi-vari analysis, where you essentially don’t really use much insight. You just throw all the data you have at an algorithm and hope it spits out the right answer. Those things are kind of unsatisfying. In the end you still want to reduce the number of variables, but you may not know how to so the algorithm gives you some clues. That is an analytic approach where you would certainly use something like Ockham’s razor and try and have the simplest analytics form to explain whatever it is you’re seeing. Then there are other methods where you blindly throw all the data into a mixing pot and hope the right answer pops out. In either case, however, if two calculations do equally well, you would take the theory that is the simplest.
The Standard Model of particle physics is often described as being particularly ugly – does this tell us that we are doing something wrong?
It tells us it’s incomplete, yes. Ugly is a little harsh! By the standards of any previous theory, it’s absolutely efficient and beautiful, but there are plenty of bits where you see the blemishes, once you’ve looked at it for a while. So I think it’s incomplete. We know that anyway because it’s not a theory of everything. There are phenomena around us that it doesn’t explain: it doesn’t include gravity, for example, or dark matter.
The aesthetics of the standard model are given significant weight by some people. The Naturalness Problem, for example, which concerns the mass of the Higgs and the masses of the other particles associated with it. It looks awkward for the Standard Model that these masses are as low as they actually are: the theory would naturally tend to make them much higher. You can get around that by fine tuning it, but that looks really awkward. It’s clear that something is going on that we don’t know about.
On the flip side of that, Einstein's general relativity is arguably one of the most beautiful theories we have. Could its elegance be distracting us from the possibility that it too needs to be updated in order for us to find a unified theory in physics?
Its elegance makes it very hard to modify, and it’s generally accepted that general relativity has to be linked up with quantum theory at some point. Most physicists would say that quantum mechanics is closer to the truth than general relativity. It has to be changed; it’s just very difficult.
When a particular theory is found to be elegant, can this lead to complacency?
That might be true if it wasn’t for the fact that we keep seeing unusual things around us. Whilst the theory of general relativity is itself simple, its implications are not. There was a period perhaps where scientists felt it very difficult observe the consequences of the theory in nature. Then when they started thinking about black holes and extreme astrophysics they looked at the theory again, much more carefully. After Einstein proposed the theory and Eddington showed that it was necessary to describe the way light bends round the sun, for instance, there was a period in which it was very hard to think of any more testable consequences of the theory. So people played around with a few solutions and left it alone.
Then scientists like Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking started talking about singularities, cosmology become much more of a precise science, and people became able to interrogate how the universe developed almost right back to the big bang. At that point, general relativity was necessary to understand all that and it became much more active again. So I wouldn’t say this is about complacency; I think it was the difficulty of designing an experiment that could test anything with general relativity. Now with the improvements in observational astronomy, there are testable predictions of general relativity. One of the most active is for gravitational waves, which could be detected any time in the next few years.
Which theory do you find most beautiful, if you had to pick one?
The obvious one to pick is the Higgs mass mechanism. It’s absolutely amazing how it works. But it’s also unsatisfactory in some ways. I must admit, the basics of quantum mechanics are probably the amazing thing. Quantum theory in general is very beautiful: whereby the question of whether something is a wave or a particle is solved by saying that it’s a fluctuation of a quantum field. Watching that play out, and seeing how in some places an electron will behave like a particle, and in other places it will behave like a wave, and how that is all unified in one codified description in quantum field theory: that’s really pretty special. That underlies the standard model anyway and that’s what I would say is the most beautiful thing.
Image credit: Nicolas RaymondFrost Blade Irelia
Blackthorn Morgana
Dacian Knight Pantheon
Rune Wars Renekton
Dark Crystal Varus
Edit #1
" Chalice of Harmony ", "+30 Magic Resist +7.5 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: Increases your Mana Regen by 1% per 1% Mana you are missing. Does not stack with Chalice of Discord.", "3028_Harmony_Ring.dds"
", "+30 Magic Resist +7.5 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: Increases your Mana Regen by 1% per 1% Mana you are missing. Does not stack with Chalice of Discord.", "3028_Harmony_Ring.dds" " Sunfire Cape ", "+450 Health +45 Armor UNIQUE Passive: Deals 40 magic damage per second to nearby enemies.", "3068_Sunfire_Cape.dds"
", "+450 Health +45 Armor UNIQUE Passive: Deals 40 magic damage per second to nearby enemies.", "3068_Sunfire_Cape.dds" "Force of Nature", "+76 Magic Resist +40 Health Regen per 5 seconds +8% Movement Speed UNIQUE Passive: Restores 1.75% of your maxmium Health every 5 seconds.", "124_Gladiators_Pride.dds"
" Randuin's Omen ", "+350 Health +75 Armor +25 Health Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: +5% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: 20% chance on being hit by basic attacks to slow the attacker\'s Movement and Attack Speeds by 35% for 3 seconds. UNIQUE Active: Slows the Movement and Attack Speeds of surrounding enemy units by 35% for 1 second + 0.5 seconds for each 100 combined Armor and Magic Resist your champion has (60 second cooldown).", "3143_Randuins_Omen.dds"
", "+350 Health +75 Armor +25 Health Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: +5% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Passive: 20% chance on being hit by basic attacks to slow the attacker\'s Movement and Attack Speeds by 35% for 3 seconds. UNIQUE Active: Slows the Movement and Attack Speeds of surrounding enemy units by 35% for 1 second + 0.5 seconds for each 100 combined Armor and Magic Resist your champion has (60 second cooldown).", "3143_Randuins_Omen.dds" " Morello's Evil Tome ", "+75 Ability Power +12 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: +20% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Active: Inflicts target enemy champion with Grievous Wound, causing 50% reduced healing and regeneration for 6 seconds (20 second cooldown).", "3165_Noxusnomicon.dds"
", "+75 Ability Power +12 Mana Regen per 5 seconds UNIQUE Passive: +20% Cooldown Reduction UNIQUE Active: Inflicts target enemy champion with Grievous Wound, causing 50% reduced healing and regeneration for 6 seconds (20 second cooldown).", "3165_Noxusnomicon.dds" "Athene's Unholy Grail", "+80 Ability Power +40 Magic Resist +15 Mana Regen per 5 seconds +15% Cooldown Reduction Passive: Restores 12% of your max Mana on Kill or Assist. UNIQUE Passive: Increases your Mana Regen by 1% per 1% Mana you are missing. Does not stack with Chalice of Harmony.", "3174ChaliceOfDiscord.dds"
Edit #2 : Here are tentative patch notes from the PBE courtesy of
Amumu: Curse of the Sad Mummy cooldown decreased from 170/150/130 Seconds to 150/130/110 Seconds Annie: Health increased from 424 (+76 per level) to 460 (+76 per level)
Incinerate mana cost reduced from 80/95/110/125/140 Mana to 70/80/90/100/110 Mana
Mana to Molten Shield
Duration reduced from 15 to 8
Armor and Magic Resist increased from 10/20/30/40/50 to 20/30/40/50/60
Mana Cost reduced from 25 to 20
Cooldown reduced from 30 to 16 Cho'Gath: Movement Speed increased from 315 to 320 Kog'Maw: Void Ooze slow reduced from 28/36/44/52/60 % to 20/28/36/44/52 % Lee Sin: Safeguard/Ironwill reduced from 5/10/15/20/25 % Lifesteal/Spell Vamp to 5/9/13/17/21 % Lifesteal/Spell Vamp Lulu: Glitterlance
Ability Power ratio reduced from +.7 to +.6
Mana Cost increased from 40/45/50/55/60 Mana to 40/50/60/70/80 Mana
Mana to Wildgrowth changed from "Lulu enlarges her ally, knocking enemies away from them." to nearby enemies into the air."." to Lulu enlarges her ally, knockingenemies Master Yi: Alpha Strike
Old: Master Yi leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing 100/150/200/250/300 (+1) magic damage to each enemy with a 20/30/40/50/60 % chance to deal 400 bonus magic damage to minions.
leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing (+1) magic damage to a % chance to
leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing 100/150/200/250/300 (+1) magic damage to every target. If the first target is a minion, it will be dealt 200/250/300/350/400 magic damage, and every additional minion target has a 20/30/40/50/60 % chance to be dealt 200/250/300/350/400. New: Master Yi leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing(+1) magic damage to% chance to
Highlander slow immunity increased from 6/9/12 seconds to 8/10/12 seconds
seconds to Meditate Mana Cost reduced from 70/85/100/115/130 Mana to 70/80/90/100/110 Mana. Miss Fortune: Bullet Time ratio changed from 65/95/125 (+0.2) magic damage per bullet to 65/95/125 (+0.2) physical damage per bullet.
(+0.2) damage per bullet to (+0.2) Double Up bounce damage increased from 115% to 120%. Olaf: Reckless Swing Cooldown increased from 8/7/6/5/4 Seconds 9/8/7/6/5 Seconds. Ryze: Damage increased from 53 (+3 per level) to 55 (+3 per level)
Desperate Power
Passive bonus mana per level of skill ( 75/150/225) removed.
Active: Ryze becomes supercharged, gaining 15/20/25 % Spell Vamp, causes his spells to deal 50% AoE damage, and gain 35/55/75 Movement Speed for 5/6/7 seconds. New Active:causes his spells to deal 50% AoE damage,forseconds.
Overload
Changed from 40/65/90/115/140 (+0. 2) plus 7. 5 % of his max mana in magic damage to 60/85/110/135/160 (+0. 4) plus 6. 5 % of his max mana in magic damage.
(+0. plus % of his max mana in magic damage to
Mana Cost reduced from 70 to 60.
Range reduced from 675 to 650.
Rune Prison
Snare reduced from 1/1. 3/1.5/1. 8/2 seconds to 0. 8/1/1. 3/1.5/1. 8 seconds.
seconds to
Plus max mana % in damage reduced from 5% max mana to 4.5% max mana.
Mana Cost reduced from 80/95/110/125/140 Mana to 80/90/100/110/120 Mana.
Mana to Spell Flux
Damage ratio increased from 50/70/90/110/130 (+0.35) magic damage to 50/70/90/110/130 (+0.35) plus 1 % of his max mana magic damage
(+0.35) magic damage to
Mana Cost reduced from 60/75/90/105/120 Mana to 60/70/80/90/100 Mana Shen: Stand United global ranged reduced from 25000 to 5500. Singed: Health increased from 448 (+82 per level) to 487 (+82 per level) Soraka: Starcall
Magic Resist reduction duration reduced from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
Mana Cost increased from 20/30/40/50/60 Mana to 20/35/50/65/80 Mana. Talon: Armor increased from 18.5 (+3.5 per level) to 20.5 (+3.5 per level)
Rake Mana Cost reduced from 60/65/70/75/80 Mana to 20/35/50/65/80 Mana. Warwick: Hungering Strike
Damage reduced from 75/125/175/225/275 (+1) and 8/11/14/17/20 % of the target's maximum Health as magic damage, to 75/125/175/225/275 (+1) and 6/9/12/15/18 % of the target's maximum Health as magic damage.
(+1) and % of the target's maximum Health as magic damage, to
Mana Cost increased from 70/80/90/100/110 Mana to 80/90/100/110/120 Mana. : Here are tentative patch notes from the PBE courtesy of RoG
Holy Moley! We have a lot of new skins. Included in the most recent PBE update, which included the upcoming champion, are new skins for, and, as well as one ofrelease skins.Please remember the videos below are TEASERS and may not reflect the skins final particles, animations, or appearance.I'll have some more information, videos, and shots as they come available. Big shout out to SkinSpotlights on youtube for getting these up as soon as possible.P.S: I'm ridiculously excited for that Pantheon skin as it reminds me of something from my beloved Game of Thrones.: Looks like Slushe has gather a set of item changes from the PBE patch. The changes include a new item,( I can only assume this is Athene's referral reward ), as well as updates for several items that are already in game. A much needed change is some additional utility to, which will now have an on use similar to Executioner's Calling. Check them out below:de | en | fa | fr | nl Neu / New / Nouveau / Nieuw:
2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015
de | Eine historische Referenz für Forschung und politische Inspiration Der Association Archives Antonie Pannekoek (a.a.a.p.) bezweckt historische Materialien zugänglich zu machen, vornehmlich, doch nicht ausschließlich, von der Holländisch-Deutschen Kommunistischer Linken, einer politischen Strömung die während der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhundert einflussreich war, und die ein bestimmtes Wiederaufleben am Ende der 1960er und am Anfang der 1970er Jahre gekannt hat.
Die Aktivitäten des Vereins werden durch eine kleine Zahl freiwilliger Mitarbeiter getragen, die von der historischen und politischen Bedeutung dieses Materials überzeugt sind.
Sie können beitragen durch Zustellung primäre Quellen und Unterstützung von neuer Auflagen in anderen Sprachen. © Obgleich die Kommunistische Linke im Allgemeinen keine Urheberrechte bzw. „intellektuelle Eigentumsrechte“ für sich eingefordert hat, können einige Veröffentlichungen auf dieser Webseite urheberrechtlich geschützt sein. In diesem Fall steht ihr Gebrauch nur zum Zweck persönlichen Nachschlags frei. Ungeschütztes Material kann für nicht-kommerzielle Zwecke frei und unentgeltlich verbreitet werden. Wir sind Ihnen erkenntlich für Ihren Quellenhinweis und Benachrichtigung. Bei beabsichtigter kommerzieller Nutzung bitten wir um Kontaktaufnahme. en | A historical reference for research and political inspiration The Association Archives Antonie Pannekoek (a.a.a.p.) aims to make historical materials accessible from mainly, but not exclusively, the Dutch-German Communist Left, a political current influential during the first half of the twentieth century, and that has known a certain revival at the end of the 1960’s and beginning of the 1970’s.
The Association’s activities are driven by a small number of volunteers who are convinced of the historical and political significance of this material.
You can contribute by providing primary sources and by supporting new editions in other languages. © Allthough the Communist Left in general abstained from claiming copyrights or rights on “intellectuel property”, some publications on this site might be copyrighted; if they are, their use is free for personal consultation only. Non-copyrighted material, provided for non-commercial use only, can be freely distributed. Including a reference to this source is appreciated, as well as a notification. As for commercial use, please contact us. fa | مرجع تاریخی برای تحقیق و بایگانی و با الهام و انگیزه های سیاسی آرشیو انستیتو آنتونیو پانه کوک قصد دارد منابع تاریخی را به طور خاص ولی نه فقط- متعلق به چپ کمونیسم آلمانی – هلندی در دسترس عموم قرار دهد
.چپ کمونیست آلمان ؛ گرایشی که در طول نیمه ی اول قرن بیستم یک جریان تاثیر گذار سیاسی بود و در پایان سال ۱۹۶۰ و دهه هفتاد احیای دوباره داشته
فعالیت های این انستیتو توسط جمع کوچکی از داوطلبانی که از اهمیت سیاسی – تاریخی این منابع آگاه هستند؛ انجام و اداره می شود.شما می توانید از طریق در اختیار قراردادن و فراهم سازی منابع اولیه برای این جمع وهمچنین ترجمه و ویرایش به زبان های دیگر با ما همکاری کنید ©
.با وجود اینکه چپ کمونیست ازخواست و طلب کردن حق کپی رایت خودداری کرده است ؛ و نیزاز مالکیت معنوی این منابع ؛ اما بعضی از منابع و مطالب و انتشارات آنان در این سایت ممکن است از حق کپی رایت برخوردار باشند ; در این صورت استفاده از این منابع برای مشاوره و تحقیقات شخصی رایگان است
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and the developers promise that it will be integrated into the platform in the coming months.
“We initially created Matchpool to be a dating platform, but quickly realized the technology can be applied to so much more,” said Yonatan Ben Shimon, CEO of Matchpool. “Soon, we’ll offer developers the opportunity to build custom apps within Matchpool to provide extra avenues for community members to initiate, maintain, and be rewarded for creating meaningful connections. This idea can be stretched across any shared interest group to bring people together from anywhere in the world.”
“We built Matchpool based on the needs and interests of the community, and participants have tested the platform to provide feedback and new feature ideas,” said Maximus Richardson, co-founder of Matchpool. “We look forward to continued feedback from the community as we prepare for our eventual Beta launch.”WHEN Raúl Castro took over the presidency of Cuba from his ailing brother, Fidel, last month his acceptance speech to the National Assembly included a teasing hint. “Within weeks”, he promised, some of the restrictions that circumscribe Cubans' daily lives would be lifted. That set off a public guessing game. Would an unpopular dual-currency system be modified and the local Cuban peso, in which wages are paid, be revalued? Long queues formed at exchange houses as Cubans rushed to swap “convertible” pesos for their lowlier counterpart. Others hoped for a lifting of curbs on foreign travel, or at least for permission for Cubans to stay in tourist hotels in their own country.
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But Mr Castro's plans have so far been more modest. According to an official memo, the government is to lift a ban on the purchase of computers, DVD players and microwaves. Next year, air conditioners should be available. Cubans can also look forward to the right to buy an electric toaster by 2010. Days later news broke that private farmers will be allowed to buy their own supplies, rather than these being assigned by the state.
The government is able to widen access to consumer electronics because Venezuelan aid has allowed it to overhaul the electricity grid. Officials also know that the grid will not immediately be overwhelmed: monthly wages average $17. For those who don't receive remittances from relatives abroad, electronic gadgets will remain unaffordable. Even for those who do they will be expensive: they will only be available in state-owned shops that apply a mark-up of around 200%.
Nevertheless, lifting the ban on buying computers came as a surprise. Officials have long regarded the internet with suspicion. The government has set up a Cuban intranet, which is all that is available in schools and universities. Internet accounts are available only to foreigners, or to favoured Cubans for research purposes. Officials blame this on a lack of bandwidth. They have a point: the United States government has blocked plans for a fibre-optic link to an undersea cable in American waters (so Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is now building a similar link to his country).
But the official mood might be changing. “I think the leadership now recognises that when it comes to the internet the genie is out of the bottle, and they have to live with it,” says a foreign diplomat in Havana. Cubans have become remarkably inventive at getting online. Doctors and academics with internet access rent their passwords so that others can use them after office hours. Some entrepreneurs have smuggled in satellite receivers to connect to the internet; they then sell accounts to their neighbours.
The digital age has opened the odd crack in the state's information monopoly. At a meeting in January Ricardo Alarcón, the assembly president, struggled to explain to computer-science students why Cubans should be banned from travelling abroad. A video of the meeting was promptly posted on YouTube.
Another small sign that Raúl Castro is probably prepared to tolerate more debate than his brother did is the survival of Generación Y, a blog written in Havana by Yoani Sánchez, a young Cuban woman who posts her entries from tourist hotels or from one of Havana's few internet cafés. In a post this week she predicted that at the current rate of progress, by 2050 Cubans might be allowed satellite television.Scroll Down for Lots More on Trump!!
#Paedophilia, #Pedophilia, #ChildAbuse, #SexTrafficking
#WhistleBlowerKids, #OpDeathEaters, #BabyEaters,
#PizzaGate, #Hampstead, #OpHydrant, #Lolita Express
CIA AGENT ALEX JONES COVERS UP PIZZAGATE!!!
Sands ORDERS PizzaGate Protests
ASHTON KUTCHER IS A CIA PEDOPHILE FRONT
UNDER LYNN FORESTER DE ROTHSCHILD AND JOHN MCCAIN
ESPN Now Calling for More Information
<center
US State Department Tied to Pedophile Ring
WATCH KIDS TALK Killing & Eating Babies
Operation Hydrant Breaking News
► More on Mark Thompson
US National Security Advisor’s son TESTIFIES PizzaGate is Real
ARRESTS 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5
Virginia Sheriff Deputy
OBAMA, CLINTON, PODESTA, SOROS, EPSTEIN, ALEFANTIS CONNECTED TO CANNIBALISM *
Pam Anderson Kills Palestinians * and is a Cannibal
(Click Photos to Enlarge)
SEE MANY!! More Pics of the Cannibal Festival
DEBORAH HARRY IN MORE PEDOCANNIBAL FILM FOOTAGE
(See YouTube Descripton for Harry’s Fetish of Eating Children)
► Madonna Gives Oral Sex for Clinton Votes
(Click Photos to Enlarge)
TELEGRAPH | US Corp Pedophile Coverup | 12JUN2013
PAMELA ANDERSON
Only in Hollywood could a serial infant killer be a famous animal rights activist.
Swore Under Oath in Court she’s a SERIAL BABY KILLER * Pam’s 3-time Husbandshe’s a
Pam Anderson Gets with
Bill & Hillary Clinton in More Ways than One *
HOLY SHIT!! US Corpse Human Sacrifices
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RED ALERT ►SCOTLAND YARD IN CIVIL WARAGAWAM — A college student from Agawam has been appointed to the board of directors of the Western Mass Republicans PAC and will help lead the organization's new Western Mass Young Republicans division.
Kassy Dillon, a junior at Mount Holyoke College with a double major in Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations, is a conservative activist and political commentator for several websites including Campus Reform, Breitbart, Heat Street, Red Alert Politics and Lone Conservative. Her articles have been featured on Fox News and the Drudge Report.
Dillon is the founder of Lone Conservative, a website run by "a bunch of college students who are tired of the liberal idiocy" that plagues college campuses across America, she says on the site.
"It is time for young Republicans to pay attention to the local elections and start getting involved with helping local candidates," she said. "Working together, we can ensure that Western Massachusetts has a strong coalition of Republicans to help elect candidates that represent our values."
Dillon will be joined on the board of directors by William Nardi of Springfield, a student journalist at Roger Williams University and formerly an intern for Gov. Charlie Baker. Nardi also was recently tapped to help lead WMR's Young Republicans division.
The Young Republicans division was created to help expand GOP efforts in the region by engaging millennial voters, according to Robert Grove, chairman of Western Mass Republicans, or WMR. "Younger voters in Western Massachusetts are a key demographic for WMR and the GOP," he said. "Many have a passion for involvement but until now they had no organization to support them."
The Republican Party is setting its sights on millennials, the largest population group in the U.S. and the generation following Generation X. Indeed, the latest Millennial Impact Report indicates the group is more conservative-leaning than liberal and has little or no trust that government will do the right thing.
The Pew Research Center reports that millennials (ages 18-34) have surpassed baby boomers (ages 51-69) as the nation's largest living generation. Millennials now number around 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million baby boomers, according to population estimates released in April by the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, Gen Xers (ages 35-50) are projected to pass the boomers in population by 2028.
"We see a growing number of younger voters, especially millennials, concerned about the direction and policies of big government," Grove said. "They are moving away from progressive political philosophies and adopting a more measured and thoughtful political approach.
Dillon's conservative bona fides are unassailable.
In July, Dillon was temporarily banned from Twitter for retweeting a remark by actress Leslie Jones, the "Saturday Nigh Live" cast member and "Ghostbusters" star who came under fire from online trolls.
After enduring a stream of pornography, racist speech, and hateful memes, Jones fired back with her own profanity-laced retort. But when Dillon redirected Jones' tweet to Jones herself, Dillon said she was suspended from the social media site.
"The only reason why I tweeted copies of what Leslie said is to show bias," Dillon told Heat Street, an online news site popular with conservatives and libertarians. "If this famous actress actress does it, it's okay," Dillon said. "But if I do the same thing as a conservative writer, Twitter punishes me for it."
Dillon said she repeated Jones' tweet, word for word, in an effort to expose bias on Twitter, which didn't ban hate speech directed toward Dillon.A judge has ruled that major retailers do not have to modify their commercial trademark English names into French, as the province's language watchdog had hoped.
A Quebec Superior Court justice ruled Wednesday that businesses that have storefront signs with their trademark name in a language other than French do not contravene the French Language Charter.
Several multinationals took the province to court after they were told by the language watchdog to change their names or risk running afoul of the rules governing the language of business in the province.
The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) wanted the companies to change their signs to either give themselves a generic French name or add a slogan or explanation that reflected what they sold.
But the judge hearing the case ruled in favour of the major retailers — a list that included Best Buy, Costco, Gap, Old Navy, Guess, Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us and Curves.
"Public signage by the plaintiffs of their trademarks uniquely in a language other than French, when there is no French version of the trademark, does not violate the Charter of the French Language or the laws respecting the language of commerce and business," Justice Michel Yergeau wrote.
New interpretation of old rules
The companies operate a combined 215 outlets in the province. They had argued they complied with the language laws as they stand. They suggested the watchdog was offering a different interpretation of the laws, which had not been formally changed in years.
In 2012, the retailers sought the court's opinion as to whether the government had the right to make such a demand.
While the language law states the name of a business must be in French, it generally hasn't applied to trademark names.
The judge said it's not up to the courts to modify language rules that have remained unchanged for two decades.
Yergeau wrote that while trademarks fall under federal jurisdiction, it's up to the Quebec legislature to "take the lead" if it considers the French language is suffering because of English trademarks.
"The choice is a political function and not one of the judiciary," Yergeau wrote.
French descriptors on English names not required
The watchdog had suggested that a store like Wal-Mart, a household name on the retail scene in Quebec with no French equivalent, could change its signage to "Le Magasin Wal-Mart."
Some companies have changed their business names here.
For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken is known in Quebec as Poulet Frit Kentucky, so KFC is commonly known here as PFK. Starbucks is known as Cafe Starbucks Coffee. And after a series of firebombings in the early 2000s, Second Cup coffee shops added the words "Les cafés" to their signs.
Yergeau wrote that nothing prevents firms from adopting a French name of their own volition.
"Many (companies) do already on a voluntary basis, while at the same time contributing to the preservation of the French language in Quebec," the judge wrote.
The issue is part of a broader battle as the provincial government constantly seeks to ensure the preservation and development of French in the province — the only place in North America where the majority speak it.
The watchdog embarked on an awareness campaign in late 2011, calling the situation involving the big stores worrisome.
They suggested coming up with a sort of descriptive slogan or line in French or using a French/English sign, with the French component being more predominant.
As the tension mounted, a French language rights group called on a boycott of the retailers in question.
Legal action was triggered after the watchdog sent letters obliging retailers to change their signs, followed by legal letters that threatened to revoke government "francization certificates" and dole out hefty fines.
Those certificates, renewed every three years, mean companies are in compliance with language rules and can benefit from certain government grants. All of the plaintiffs had received their certificates previously, with no concerns raised about their storefront signage.
In his ruling, Yergeau also said the watchdog may not suspend, revoke or refuse to renew certificates or attempt to impose any other sanction stemming from the trademarks.
Language watchdog Jean-Pierre Le Blanc said it'll be up to the attorney general's office to decide whether to challenge the ruling.
The government has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the decision.
Read the full court ruling here (in French):Ukrainian serviceman watches in case of the enemy movement at the positions near the frontline city of Toretsk on May 14.
MAYORSK, UKRAINE — It’s May at the war front, and things aren’t going well for Russian-backed soldiers at this spot some 600 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
“We usually let our enemies recover the bodies of their dead from the battlefield,” says a Ukrainian paratrooper known as “German.”
He says that shootouts happen almost every night, “so we often hear separatists talking about their high death toll after assaults.”
In his 20s, the paratrooper keeps his finger on the trigger of a Kalashnikov machine gun and stares at the horizon through the gun’s sights. His fellow soldiers also keep watch, peeking out from behind defenses made from concrete blocks and wooden ammunition boxes, with automatic rifles in their hands.
Their task is to watch for any hostile activity. They don’t have far to look. The enemy’s entrenchments lie several hundred meters away in flat wilderness across a minefield.
On the Ukrainian-controlled side, the concrete floor is covered with empty cartridges from the previous night’s shootout. In four hours, their watch will be over and the soldiers will return to their dugout for sleep.
After three years of bloodshed and 10,000 deaths, Russia’s war keeps raging on in Ukraine’s east.
The Donbas, the country’s one-time industrial heartland, is bisected by 400 kilometers of front lines.
The elite 25th Dnipropetrovsk Airborne Brigade, one of the most capable Ukrainian army units, has fought from the first days of the war instigated by Russia in the spring of 2014. It helped retake Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in the summer of 2014, but was forced to retreat in the bloody battles for Savur Mohyla, the destroyed Donetsk airport and the city of Debaltseve.
In the summer of 2014, the paratroopers defended Luhansk airport after it was surrounded by Russian-backed forces, and 40 of them were killed when an Il‑76 transport aircraft was downed by a missile fired by Russian-backed forces on June 14, 2014.
In defeats and victories, the 25th Airborne Brigade has lost 130 fighters, killed in action, and over 500 men have been wounded.
‘Give ’em hell’
The brigade’s 8th company is now defending the area of Mayorsk near the Russian-occupied city of Horlivka.
The company’s positions lie among neglected fields and sparse forestland close to the Siversky Donets-Donbas water pipeline. The paratroopers are defending the pipeline and a power station near Mayorsk’s railway station to prevent the enemy from taking control of water supplies to heavily populated areas of Donetsk Oblast.
Area road bridges were blown up in 2014 and still lie in ruins. The local railroad leading to occupied Horlivka was cratered by shellfire.
Checkpoints in Mayorsk and nearby Zaitseve allow civilians to cross the lines between the government-controlled and Russian-occupied parts.
The morning of May 14 saw the paratroopers enter battle again.
Sporadic exchanges of fire started soon after dawn, and continuous bursts of gunfire could be heard almost everywhere. Ukrainian troops are permitted to return fire even if they don’t have visual contact with the enemy.
At 11 a. m., two mortar shells whistle in from the left flank. A unit has come under enemy fire from 82-millimeter mortars.
“All right boys, give them some hell,” the company’s commander, Captain Andriy Shkorubskiy, code name “Shaman,” says into his walkie-talkie. “It’s time to shut them up at last.”
A Ukrainian grenade launcher opens up, and the exchange of fire gradually fades away. The fighting is over — for now.
Outgunned
“The militants have no shortage of weapons and ammo,” the company commander says. “Anti-tank guided missile systems, armored vehicles, machine guns, bazookas, large caliber mortars — anything you like. Recently, they apparently got the AGS‑30 automatic grenade guns, so they can easily hit us from distances of up to 1,800 meters. We don’t have such weaponry yet.”
Like most of the soldiers under his command, Captain Shkorubskiy has fought in all of the main battles of Russia’s war in the Donbas, serving in the war zone from the start. In three years of war, his unit has endured many tragedies, including treason. Some of the captain’s fellow paratroopers went over to the enemy in the chaotic start of the war in 2014.
“There was a time when we used to overhear the militant’s radio traffic, hearing someone’s commands in pure Ukrainian. Try to imagine how freaked out we were then,” he says.
Deadly games
The militant forces standing against the Shaman’s company are now led by a warlord calling himself “Rambo” in radio communications. He senselessly throws his troops against Ukrainian machine guns and minefields, the soldiers say.
“We stand here in defense,” says Nazar Petruk, a scout platoon commander. “So we’re always ready for uninvited guests from the other side — the militant commandos are trying to knock us out from here. The local topography here makes it difficult for us to detect and destroy them easily all the time. There are lots of places to hide from fire.”
Almost every night, or even during days when there is mist, the paratroopers come up against infiltration groups trying to get across the minefield to take over Ukrainian positions, Petruk says.
“Sometimes we detect their movement via thermal scopes — and then me and my scouts secretly go out to ambush them, avoiding our own traps in the night.”
Very often the militant infiltrators fail — and are blown up by Ukrainian mines and trip wires in no man’s land. In this case the paratrooper scouts have even more dangerous mission — to protect their mine layers as they reset traps.
“The mine layer actually walks through the minefield with just a thin stick in his hand, trying to find any traps left by the militants. It’s a deadly cat-and-mouse game, and also immensely psychologically stressful for everyone,” Petruk says.
‘Mostly going well’
As the situation stabilizes and the guns go silent, the soldiers relax a bit.
“Things are mostly going well here at the frontline,” soldier Oleksandr Kuznetsov says. “We have enough weapons, food, equipment. However, there are problems with leave — a lot of us haven’t been home for many months.”
Almost all of the soldiers are around 20 years old and proud to belong to an elite Ukrainian paratroop brigade. “Our army has taken a terrific step forward during these three years of war,” Shkorubskiy says. “For instance, all the soldiers in my company have collimating sights on their rifles. Back in 2014 we couldn’t even dream about that.”
Since the spring of 2015, the situation with weapons, medicine, and food supplies for the army has improved greatly, Shkorubskiy says, and it sounds odd when some army units complain about shortages.
Trench life
When silence falls, it’s a good time for commanders to check on the men under their command. Shkorubskiy goes along his company positions, peering into bunkers and trenches. He sees a soldier without a helmet.
“Hey, get your pot on your head!” he shouts angrily. “Where do you think you are, on the beach?”
The soldier forces a smile and puts on his helmet.
The company’s network of trenches, dugouts and firing positions lead for a hundred meters along the frontline. As the stalemated war drags into its fourth year, the paratroopers, trained to enter battle from the sky, have had to get used to digging into the ground.
When off duty, soldiers sleep and rest on wooden bunk beds they have constructed for themselves inside dugouts, which are lit dimly with lanterns. The air inside one dugout is warm and moist — someone is drying his washing on a cast-iron stove.
Sometimes they sleep right in the heavy machine gun nest so when an attack starts, soldiers can be back in combat within seconds.
Soldiers have started to make their underground shelters more homey. On the wooden walls of their dugouts, where they hang their grenade launchers and Kalashnikov rifles, they also put photos of their loved ones and children’s drawings. Those lucky enough to have a better-equipped, larger dugout with an electricity supply have TV sets (although these only receive Russian channels) and sometimes even an automatic washing machine.
But they eat well.
“Our cook is actually a former restaurant chef,” the captain explains. “So we’re fed fabulously. And mind you, being an army cook is even harder than being a soldier.” The cook has to prepare three meals for the whole company and then goes to bed at midnight, waking up at 4 a.m. to make breakfast.
Apart from battling the Russian-backed forces, the paratroopers in Mayorsk are fighting the trench soldier’s perennial foes — rain and mud.
Soldiers often have to sweep muddy water off the wooden floors of their emplacements — at times conditions are reminiscent of those in the World War I trenches.
The soldiers meet the adverse elements with some military philosophy.
“A paratrooper doesn’t get wet in the rain,” one soldier says while walking through a pouring spring shower at the frontline on May 14. “It just braces him up.”What advice would you give to your younger biking self?
School’s in session again, and with it a lot of additional cyclists on area roads. We recently reached out on social media to ask all of you for biking tips that, if you could turn back the clock, you would give your college-age selves. We received a heap of thoughtful responses, the best of which we’ve compiled into the list below. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to share their advice!
1. Communicate with drivers and pedestrians
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition | Flickr
“We are programmed by evolution to react to things that can harm us. Car drivers don’t see us because we are not a danger to them. Always make eye contact, wear a helmet, use lights and hand signals, and drive defensively.” – Scott P.
“Look back over your shoulder frequently. About half the time it makes drivers tap their brakes and wait to pass you till it’s safe.” – Ellie N.
“Get a nice-sounding bell. They are magical for alerting pedestrians and other bikes to your presence.” – Tricia C.
2. Take the lane
Richard Masoner | Flickr
“It is legal in PA for a driver to cross the yellow line to pass a cyclist if the driver can see it’s otherwise safe to. So take the lane! You do *not* need to ‘get out of the way'” – Stuart S.
3. Be predictable
Christian Stefanescu | Flickr
“Operate a vehicle, not a toy. Be visible. Be predictable. Running stop signs, stop lights doesn’t really save all that much time or effort. Obey them.” – Sara W.
4. Walk your bike on the sidewalk
Jess J | Flickr
“If you have to use a sidewalk, do so at a snails pace and preferably walking the bike… pedestrians always have right of way. If you do ride on the sidewalk, you aren’t visible to cars, don’t ride out in front of a turning car just because the light is green…” – Drew D.
5. Lock your bike up right
“Learn how to lock your bike properly or else you’ll have a sad, lonely bike wheel left behind.” – Tricia C.
6. Have fun
“So much of this city can be discovered and enjoyed by bicycle. Your horizons will go so much further than the campus you call home. Go find it all. Be safe, be cautious, but be adventurous too.” – Emily W-K
“Don’t think the weather has to be perfect, the bike anything more than a beater, or that you have to be fit before you get started. Biking to get around is a joy that’s accessible to all, even with the hills. In fact, many find they have a strangely addictive quality.” – Ben Y.
GET MORE TIPS AND INFORMATION: Check our our new Oakland-specific page for more information on riding in one of Pittsburgh’s most bustling neighborhoods.
Sign up for Bike Pittsburgh’s newsletter, The Messenger, to get the latest news on events, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and fun, delivered straight to your inbox. Twice monthly emails, no spam.Israel has been committing an incremental “genocide” against Palestinians and the United States will be held accountable for “aiding and abetting” the Zionist regime in this crime, an international lawyer and political commentator says.
Barry Grossman, who is based on the Indonesian island of Bali, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on a report which says that Israel is seeking a 60 percent increase in annual military aid from the US.
Under the existing agreement that was signed in 2007 and expires in 2017, Israel recessives about $3 billion of military aid every year. Israeli officials are reportedly demanding an average of $5 billion a year over the 2018-2028 period.
“Every dollar provided by US taxpayer to fund the occupation military, is a dollar that is freed up from Israel’s own budget to be used to bribe American politicians,” Grossman said.
“While other allies and client states have their US military aid doled out in quarterly allotments, Israel receives all of its allocation in one lump sum early in the year,” he added.
“Israel also enjoys ‘fast-track’ status for weapons sales, meaning that it is able to bypass the Pentagon and make deals directly with weapons manufacturers.
“All of this is of course justified by disingenuous claims that the US is merely aiding Israel to defend itself against terrorist threats but in making this case, America’s corrupt political and security establishment invokes highly politicized notions of self-defense and national security which do violence to any reasonable definition of those terms.
“That same corrupt establishment also ignores that the occupiers are engaged in a massive continuing crime and can hardly be considered engaged in anything that can be called self-defense given that Israel has not openly engaged a foreign military threat since it lost the South Lebanon conflict which was the result of Israel’s military assault on Lebanon, after it had already been defeated in its war on Lebanon which followed Israel’s large scale invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the 80’s.
“Moreover, the second intifada waged by Palestinians ended 10 years ago and, since then, and I say this categorically there has been a more than 90 percent decline in the incidence of lethal so-called ‘Palestinian terrorism’ claimed by Israel.
“In recognition of this unequivocal demonstration of Palestinian willingness to ‘give peace a chance,’ the occupiers have continued to seize more and more Palestinian territory, kill and detain ever increasing numbers of Palestinian men, women, and children, and belligerently attacked Gaza in major operations like Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge, along with countless lesser operations – all funded by US taxpayers as a result of decisions made by corrupt politicians who have in one form or another been bribed, blackmailed, or threatened by Zionist lobbyists funded, as often as not, with money saved as a result of US military aid to Israel.”
Israeli troops with their tanks in a staging area near the Gaza Strip, November 18, 2012. (AP photo)
Palestinians gather around a destroyed house after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, November 19, 2012. (Reuters photo)
An emergency rescue worker carries a Palestinian child's body found in the Daloo family house rubble following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, November 18, 2012. (Reuters photo)
Grossman said that “the US political establishment ignores America’s own long standing professed policy which, like most of the wider international community of nations, considers so-called Israeli settlements in the [occupied] West Bank and Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem [al-Quds] to be unlawful, to say nothing the occupying force’s orchestrated and unrelenting violations of the internationally recognized laws of conflict and occupation.”
“Of course with roughly 8 percent of the US economy comprised of weapons related industries and military and law enforcement spending, the US economy has become a war economy, so the willingness of its political establishment to champion ever increasing amounts of military aid to Israel at the expense of US tax payers, for that reason alone, should not be surprising to anyone,” he stated.
“Indeed, bearing in mind the multiplier effect associated with government fiscal spending, every dollar of aid not given to Israel has the effect of contracting the US economy by an amount several times greater than the dollar saved. In other words, the US economy has become very much dependant on America’s obscene levels of military spending which, in aggregate, are as much as the rest of the world combined,” the analyst stated.
“The US is addicted to war in the same way heroin addicts are unhappily addicted to opiates, typically as a result of some spiritual ailment which they suffer. If the US was a person, those who care would organize an intervention with the aim of putting it through a detoxification and subsequent counseling program,” he noted.
“But since we are stuck with the status quo, Americans need to understand that in the same way drug addicts are eventually held to account for the crimes they are compelled by their addiction to commit. The United States will certainly be held to account for its crimes in aiding and abetting Israel’s slow genocide on Palestinians,” Grossman concluded.Posted by Aidy Burrows on Apr 23, 2015
Covered in this tutorial by Guilherme Henrique:
References
When to use triangles
Getting ready for sculpting
Thoughts on retopology
What makes a good UV unwrap
Getting good normals from a bake
Next gen texturing
Resources (LOTS!)
Do you wanna make your very own Gears of War?
Well skip this page then and try asking Google as today we’ll be learning the workflow of making a next gen asset!
For a long time I had problems trying to do stuff for games e.g.
1 – The bakes would never go as I expected
2 – I didn’t understand how I should have been setting the normals of my models
3 – How to make a proper UV layout or how I should’ve modeled my low polys.
etc, etc.
When we are used to working on rendered stuff, making art for realtime processing seems like a whole new undiscovered world, and hopefully, for those who still are kinda figuring out how to make all the things work, today I’ll be trying to clear all the mystery!
A few years ago I started to work in a game studio focused on advertising, and with that, my curiosity to finally understand how everything works started to grow, and after that, me and a co-worker friend decided to raise the level and start our own business, then I found myself in a situation that learning how to properly create game content was going to be vital to the success of our work, and with what I’ve learned, now here I am spreading it to you 😉
Hope you find it useful!
The model I’ll be using to explain the main concepts of the workflow is a tombstone I recently did for a game I’m working on, here we’ll be going from modeling to loading the asset in BGE
So take the kids out of the room and lets start!
STEP 1 – REFERENCES
Yeah! I think that this should be worth a mention: You’ll only make a good model if you have good references, so the first thing I did was to dive into Google search for heart-warming graveyard pictures.
A good tip here is to use Pinterest to search your references, sometimes it can be even better than the Google search engine (if you can imagine that)
I won’t go deep on detail into this since I really can’t stand looking at more tombstone pictures.
OK, NEXT.
STEP 2 – MODELING
You can start this step in many forms, there are people who like to use apps like Zbrush and build the entire model from scratch inside it, others prefer to make a base mesh to sculpt it later, and people like me, who don’t give a damn about anything.
In this particular asset, I did a bit of an unusual workflow that ended working really well, so I think I can call it a “technique”.
As the visual style is still in development I have a certain freedom to experiment. At first my idea was to try to make a clean looking low poly asset, so my modeling was entirely focused on shapes and readability, silhouette plays a big role when working with assets, so try to focus your attention to it whenever is possible!
Guidelines & Tips for low poly modeling:
As long as your model is not going to be animated or deformed you don’t have to worry about having tri’s (get used to hearing “tri’s” (short for triangles of course) a lot! – aint no time for 3 syllables when there’s baking to be done!). Wise use of tri’s (see there it is again!) can save you a lot on the overall polycount.
FAQ:
Q: Why are we able to use tri’s on game models?
A: First of all, when the Game Engine loads your model it automatically converts all your polygons into tri’s, since tri’s are the only geometry that a video card understands, so there’s no need to worry about using tri’s.
Q: Then why do people tell me to not use it?
A: It’s not because we can use it that we should do it (just like drugs kids!), sometimes having tri’s can be very beneficial, but tri’s also can lead to shading errors, ruining all your hard work, also organic models do not deform well with triangles, since it breaks the polygonal flow of the topology, that’s why you can’t use tri’s on animatable organic things, and it’s also better to avoid when you’ll be planning to use subsurf (since this will give you strange crap in your mesh).
– First block out your details, then you worry about polycount/topology.
What does this mean?
Let’s take as example this damage on the tomb, to do that, I’ve first blocked the hole using the knife tool (K), then later I use the knife tool again to remove N-Gons. (N-Gons are faces that have more than 4 sides and can cause an error when exporting to certain engines or using certain export formats.)
How to make sure you don’t have any N-Gons left?
Easy:
Select the face selection mode Go to: Select > Select Faces by Sides On the Tool shelf (T), select “Greater than 4”
– Use snap to vertices with merge on to optimize your mesh reducing unnecessary edge loops
These tips are aimed towards models that won’t be sculpted, or when you go to retopo your mesh
BUT, “Hey Mr. Guilherme, what if I did my model that way? It’s really awesome, but I really want to sculpt it and don’t want to redo it from scratch.”
Well, so let’s suppose you found yourself in that situation above, (curiously the same as mine in this model), what hack can you do to work around this?
In Blender we have an awesome modifier called “Remesh”, with it, you can take your messy modeling full of tris & weirdness and convert it to a awesome sculpting friendly mesh!
For meshes that will be sculpted, you just follow the well known & established subdivision modeling pipeline.
Before sending your models to be sculpted, make sure your base mesh has even face topology:
(In softwares like Zbrush, 3D-Coat or Blender, even topology is a thing that’s not necessarily required anymore) -future, folks-
With Blender we have Dynamic Topology, with it we can just sculpt our soul out without a care to mesh resolution, as it will be dynamically adjusting to your needs 😉
STEP 3 – SCULPTING
This is where things get interesting, you take your boring model and transform it into an awesome organic devil!
My tool of choice is mudbox, I’ve always used it, so it’s a natural choice for me, but the foundations are the same.
In Blender we have Sculpt mode, where we can do this very well too |
in one form or another, but this process is perfectly natural. Indeed, it is essential. Without the fertilizing effects of urine nitrogen, many plant species could not survive.”
Now I’m not ignoring the fact that we humans also excrete trace amounts of other things—such as pharmaceutical breakdown products—that a whale or fish likely wouldn’t. There have been reports of fish feminized by birth control hormones in areas downstream of wastewater treatment plants. And there have been studies of behavioral changes in fish exposed to antianxiety medications. For these reasons, as I mentioned above, I don’t advocate peeing in small bodies of water that don’t circulate. Although he says it isn’t his area of expertise, Jones concurs: “I suppose problems may arise where unnaturally large volumes of excretion products are concentrated into very small areas, such as rivers or streams where they may potentially damage fragile ecosystems.” But again, this might require a large group of people to pee in that small pond.
Exhibit D:
Isn’t urine unsanitary? Well, when urine comes out of a healthy human, it’s sterile. Unless someone has a bladder infection, Jones says, pee is clean (so you folks with bladder infections, I don’t want to see you in the ocean waters of southern Jersey). “Once outside of the body,” he adds, “urine is very quickly colonized by bacteria that thrive on its rich cocktail of excretion products.” That’s why urine can generate unpleasant odors after some time. In the ocean, though, it would only help grow bacteria already present, not add new bacteria to the ocean.
I could go on with further exhibits, but I’m going to rest this case. Dearest husband, don’t just take my word for it, listen to an expert: “No question, pee in the ocean,” Jones says. “Urine is harmless stuff in the first place and is diluted to the point of insignificance within minutes. There are far more harmful things in the ocean to worry about!”
Yeah, like a Sharknado. THAT’s something I worry about.
****NOTE: Web comic XKCD certainly does a better job than me of debunking myths and answering science queries with humorous calculations. Please take a look here for answers to burning questions such as “How much Force power can Yoda output?”A senior US State Department official has allegedly been caught giving an unexpected message to the EU while discussing Ukrainian opposition leaders’ roles in the country’s future government. The phone call was taped and posted on YouTube.
"F**k the EU," Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland allegedly said in a recent phone call with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, as the two were discussing a deal to end the crisis in Ukraine.
The four-minute video - titled ‘Maidan puppets,’ referring to Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital - was uploaded by an anonymous user. The origin of the recording is not clear. The video was first reported in the Kyiv Post.
The US State Department did not deny the authenticity of the video and stressed that Nuland had apologized for the "reported comments."
The conversation is mainly focused on Ukraine’s government and President Viktor Yanukovich's offer last month to make opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk the new prime minister and Vitaly Klitschko deputy prime minister.
“I don’t think that Klitschko should go into the government. I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t think it is a good idea,” a female voice - allegedly Nuland - said.
“In terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework,” a male voice - believed to be Pyatt - replied. “In terms of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together,” he said.
As Nuland sees it, Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk should be in charge of the new government and Klitschko would not get along with him. “It’s just not going to work,” she said.
Nuland added that she has also been told that UN chief Ban Ki-moon is about to appoint the former Dutch ambassador to Kiev, Robert Serry, as his representative to Ukraine.
"That would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN glue it and you know, f**k the EU," she said in apparent reference to their differences over policies.
"We've got to do something to make it stick together, because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it," Pyatt replied.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment on the tape’s contents, but did not deny its authenticity.
"I did not say it was not authentic," she said, adding that Nuland had apologized to her EU counterparts for the reported comments.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney alleged that the fact that it had been "tweeted out by the Russian government, it says something about Russia's role.”
In the conversation, it sounds like the two officials are playing a game of chess; strategizing on how to put together the government of another country, RT’s Marina Portnaya said while commenting on the report.
Foreign policy expert Nebojsa Malic told RT that even though Nuland apologized for the reported comments, she did not admit her fault in trying to overthrow the government in Ukraine.
“What she hasn’t apologized for is the plans to midwife a new government in Ukraine. In other words, she is apologizing for cussing up the EU, but she is not apologizing for trying to overthrow the government in Kiev, calling it popular democracy,” Malic said. “I don’t think anybody in the US establishment is sorry for what they are trying to do. I think they are very proud of it and they are going to pursue it.”
The leaked chat fuels earlier allegations that Washington is heavily meddling in the Ukrainian political crisis by manipulating the pro-EU opposition and helping it in its efforts to oust President Viktor Yanukovich.
Back in December, Victoria Nuland was spotted in the cradle of the anti-government protests - Kiev’s landmark Independence Square - distributing cookies to demonstrators. Later in the month, Senator John McCain arrived in Kiev to show his support for the opposition. Addressing protesters on Independence Square, he stated that Ukraine's future was with Europe, adding that the country would “make Europe better.”Advertisement Megachurch announces removal of founding pastor Perry Noble leaves NewSpring Church Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Leaders of the NewSpring megachurch have removed founding pastor, Perry Noble.Pastor Shane Duffey made the announcement from the main campus in Anderson during services Sunday morning.The decision was based on Noble's personal behavior, which included alcohol and marital issues, Duffey said.The message was broadcasted throughout all 17 campuses that belong to the church, and was available to its more than 30,000 parishioners across South Carolina.Duffey read a statement from church officials that said, "Perry has made some unfortunate decisions," and that he "is no longer qualified" to continue as pastor.Noble wrote in a letter, "In the past year or so, I have allowed myself to slide into, in my opinion, the overuse of alcohol. This was a spiritual and moral mistake on my part, as I began to depend on alcohol for my refuge instead of Jesus and others. I have no excuse, this was wrong and sinful, and I'm truly sorry."Noble's letter went on to state, "Let me clear, neither Lucretia nor I have committed any sort of sexual sin. I have not stolen money, I've not been looking at porn, and there is absolutely no domestic abuse."In 2005, Noble wrote publicly on his blog about how he overcame an addiction to pornography that he said started as a teenager.Noble's departure from the church was effective July 1.Noble founded NewSpring 20 years ago after holding services in a living room, according to the NewSpring website.Church officials said the new building is still set to open as planned in early August in Powdersville.Duffey said Executive Pastor, Clayton King, will serve as interim pastor while the church begins the search for a permanent replacement.Duffey said Noble is now being treated by a psychiatrist.Brandy Singleton has gone to NewSpring since 2006 and said Noble needs support from members now more than ever."You don't really think about how you put people on a pedestal and how they are just regular men and women like we are," Singleton told WYFF News 4's Mandy Gaither. "(Leaders) sin and falter like everybody else."Singleton said she believes the church will be able to move on through this."Because of the design of our church, I feel like we have the opportunity to have a lot of additional guest speakers come in (like) Clayton King, Mr. White. We have a lot of different folks coming in, and so I feel like we're used to seeing not just the same person every single week, so I feel like as long as we keep with the positive momentum that the church will be okay," she said.NewSpring Church officials weren't available for an interview on Monday, but Suzanne Swift, NewSpring Church's chief public relations and marketing officer, did answer questions from WYFF News 4 via email:1 - How is the church family doing after all this?We have been overwhelmed by the positive support of our church. Everyone processes things in different ways, but the feedback we've received is so encouraging. 2 - What’s the future hold for NewSpring Church?NewSpring Church is made up of really great people who are committed to making a positive difference in our state. We believe our future is bright. 3 - What message do you want all members/prospective members to know?NewSpring Church was founded on a vision from God and has grown because of the work of God's people in our church. We are a strong church built on a strong foundation in Jesus. We will continue to work together to reach our state with the Gospel, remain in community with one another, and continue to make a difference in the lives of people around us.Four men are recovering after being shot near Endzone Nightclub near the Superdome around 2:30 Monday morning.The club is located on corner of Poydras and Bolivar streets – not far from the corner of Poydras Street and S. Claiborne Avenue. There are four victims confirmed: a 16-year-old who was shot in the behind, a man who shot in the cheek, a man who was shot in the stomach and a man who was shot in the legs.MOBILE APP USERS: Watch Report HereInvestigators say one victim is being treated at Tulane Hospital and two others are being treated at LSU Interim University Hospital. It’s unclear at this time where the fourth victim is being treated.Expect updates on victims’ conditions and the investigation in later newscasts. The New Orleans Police Department wants anyone with information on this shooting to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.13484466
Four men are recovering after being shot near Endzone Nightclub near the Superdome around 2:30 Monday morning.
The club is located on corner of Poydras and Bolivar streets – not far from the corner of Poydras Street and S. Claiborne Avenue. There are four victims confirmed: a 16-year-old who was shot in the behind, a man who shot in the cheek, a man who was shot in the stomach and a man who was shot in the legs.
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MOBILE APP USERS: Watch Report Here
Investigators say one victim is being treated at Tulane Hospital and two others are being treated at LSU Interim University Hospital. It’s unclear at this time where the fourth victim is being treated.
Expect updates on victims’ conditions and the investigation in later newscasts. The New Orleans Police Department wants anyone with information on this shooting to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.
AlertMeThree players will not return to the Philadelphia Union in 2013, as the team parted ways with Gabriel Gomez, Porfirio Lopez and Krystian Witkowski. All three will be available in this afternoon's Major League Soccer Waiver Draft, which will happen at 3:30 EDT.
Of the three who will not come back, Gomez was the most notable release. The Panamanian international was brought in to revamp the Union's midfield, which did a true attacking force or solid player alongside Brian Carroll in 2011.
Gomez started off with a bang for the Union, jumping out early as the team's leading scorer and main threat on set pieces. Then May rolled around and Gomez's troubles began, as he scored against FC Dallas, but was injured at the same time when Kevin Hartman collided with his thigh.
From then on out, Gomez had difficulties maintaining his role in the team's starting lineup, and also getting into game day rosters at all. A high salary and waning production over the second half of the season most likely led to his exposure to the Waiver Draft.
Unlike Gomez, Lopez had little success to speak of after coming to the Union as an international player acquisition during the offseason. Expected to fix the Union's problems defensively at left back, which have plagued the team since the trade of former starter Jordan Harvey,
Lopez failed miserably and drew comparisons to the disaster that was the quick David Myrie experiment in 2010.
Witkowski was never given much of a chance to perform on the field, mostly due to his concussion symptom problems. However, he showed enough promise to warrant getting looks from the coaching staff prior to suffering the original concussion that caused the symptoms.Casino billionaire and Republican party kingmaker Sheldon Adelson and his wife have pledged $16.4 million to help fund the Israeli SpaceIL mission to the moon.
According to the Jewish Daily Forward, the $16.4 million makes up a substantial portion of the project’s estimated $37 million dollar budget.
“Sheldon and I are thrilled to be supporting the SpaceIL association in its effort to land the first Israel spacecraft on the moon,” Miriam Adelson told the Israeli news site on science, hayadan.org.il. “As a physician and an Israel-born scientist, I am particularly proud of the positive effect this will have on a generation of young Israelis and non-Israelis,” she said.
SpaceIL is part of the Google Lunar X competition which was launched in 2007. It is reportedly the only team funding its project through philanthropic donations rather than corporate sponsorship.
According to the SpaceIL website, their mission is to: “…. make a soft landing of an unmanned spacecraft on the surface of the moon, move 500 meters and transmit video, images, and data back to Earth by the end of 2015.”
SpaceIL co-founder, Yariv Bash, said that once the craft makes it to the lunar surface, their plan is to carry out a number of experiments including attempting to grow plants outside the earth.
[Space Lander On The Planet on Shutterstock]“There is a possibility that we could actually replace mining on earth with space mining one day,” says Meagan Crawford, of Deep Space Industries.
Deep Space Industries (DSI) is a Huston based company that specialises in building and operating cutting edge spacecraft. The company develops technology solutions for government, scientific and commercial customers.
DSI has 14 founding fathers, some of the top scientists and space craft engineers in the world. They are chaired by Mr John Lewis, one of the most well-known space industry advocates in the world, author of Asteroid Mining 101, the man who ‘literally wrote the book’ on asteroid mining.
In 2014 these 14 founders were in attendance at a conference on space programs and asteroid mining and discovered they all shared a vision of how best to turn these ideas into reality.
“We are a mining and technology company but our primary purpose is to get the right supplies to the right place at the right time. We will supply space businesses with what they need to be successful,” explains Meagan.
Read the full interview on how DSI has been planning, building relationships, in order to make its mark on the world, before making a bigger one off it in the August issue of Mining Global Magazine!
Be sure to follow @MiningGlobal for news and latest updates!It's only the beginning. The Associated Press
"This will all be over soon."
No, I'm not reading many of your minds or your prayers. I'm quoting characters in the new PBS drama "Mercy Street," commenting on the Civil War. The show takes place in 1862, when the war had really just begun – it wouldn't end until 1865.
I might just as well have quoted characters in a Revolutionary War drama – another time in American history when real people, in the real moment, thought the conflict would wrap up quickly.
Gov. Jeb Bush’s early presidential fundraising extravaganza, described by some as a "shock and awe” strategy (a cringe-worthy reference to the bombing of Baghdad in 2003), was similar – a bit like saying “let’s make this quick.”
And we know how all of those scenarios turned out. The wars went on for years, and many of those who believed the conflicts would end quickly in their favor... were wrong.
Bush's campaign struggled for a period of months, but you can bet it felt like longer to the people who wrote five- or six-figure checks. And they lost.
Revolution, my friends, is messy. And it is not quick. It does not hew to two-year political cycles. It does not have crystal clear sides of right and wrong, at least not in the heat of the moment. It has casualties that we cannot imagine at the outset.
We. Are in the midst. Of a bloodless (hopefully). Revolution.
And to be clear, I am not just talking about Donald Trump. Yes, his supporters are rebels, but so are Sen. Ted Cruz's supporters. So are Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters.
This uprising of the terribly frustrated, deeply pissed-off middle class will not end soon. It will not end in November. Because guess what? No matter who comes out on top, a whole lot of people are going to be very, very disappointed at best. More than likely, we will have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people who will have seen their hopes for meaningful change crushed and are angry and/or terrified on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016.
And unless the winner in November is a transformative leader who can heal the wounds of both sides...
Unless real, dramatic change in government can quickly release the working and middle class from the profound economic insecurity that feels like an anchor around their necks…
Unless the American Dream gets back within reach, fast…
The revolution will go on.
(Spoiler alert: None of the candidates seem very likely to become great healers.)
Eventually, those who thought they could quickly put down the rebels – Peggy Noonan calls them the unprotected – will come to appreciate why the rebels – Noonan's "unprotected" – are seriously in this for the long haul.
And eventually the politicians will have to become leaders. They will have to put their own interests, their own egos and ambitions, to the side. Elections won't be only about who wins and who loses, and which side is better positioned to win the White House or the majority next time. This will be a good thing, and on this we will all agree.
The people will be answered. They will be put first. And history will eventually thank them for changing the course of America from one of a barely recognized but all-too-real withering of the American dream, to a painful, awful, years-long, bloodless (hopefully) revolution.NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Perfect for fans of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones, this one-of-a-kind adult coloring book features forty-five exclusive illustrations!
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Keep ReadingTim Hortons has “confirmed” it was Doug Ford — not the mayor — who visited a franchise location in the Junction on Tuesday morning, a spokesperson told the Star. Michelle Robichaud, manager of public relations for the coffee chain, said employees at the west-end Tim Hortons reviewed video from security cameras and concluded it was Councillor Ford who attended the restaurant while Mayor Rob Ford is purportedly in rehab.
In this March, 26, 2014, file photo, Mayor Rob Ford, left, listens to his brother and campaign manager Doug Ford, during a commercial break as Rob Ford takes part in a live television mayoral debate in Toronto. Last week, Ford announced he was taking a leave of absence to seek help for substance abuse. ( Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO )
Tim Hortons is refusing to release images from its cameras to prove Rob Ford wasn’t there. “It is, for sure, Doug,” said Robichaud. “That’s all I want to say right now — that it was reviewed internally and we can confirm it’s Doug.” Rob Ford announced he was going to rehab last week to deal with an “alcohol problem,” and has reportedly made calls to a Toronto Sun columnist from a treatment facility.
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Sixteen-year-old Cayla Clarkson, however, claims she saw the mayor outside the Tim Hortons near Dundas St. W. and Clendenan Ave. Tuesday around 9 a.m. A Tim Hortons employee who would not share her name also told the Star the mayor came into the restaurant that morning and ordered coffee and a sandwich. On Wednesday, Doug Ford told reporters “that was me,” explaining he stopped at the Tim Hortons on his way to work at City Hall. He also said he took photos and handed out t-shirts near the restaurant. Clarkson could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday. In an earlier interview, though, she stuck to her story, claiming she is “97 per cent sure” it was Rob Ford who went into the restaurant and then came back out and got into his vehicle. “I was standing behind his car, and I had my phone out because I was going to take a picture of him, but then he looked at me and then I kind of put my phone away, because he didn’t really seem to be the happiest person,” she said.
In the days since the mayor took a leave of absence and said he is going to rehab, there have been several claimed Ford sightings in disparate locations, including Hamilton, Richmond Hill and the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Doug Ford said his brother is “nowhere near the GTA.” His exact location has not been disclosed.
Read more about:Osh-Tisch (Crow: "Finds Them and Kills Them")[1][2] was a Crow badé. A badé (also spelled baté) is a male-bodied person in a Crow community who lives in the social role of woman in that culture (the modern, pan-Indian term for this third gender role is Two-Spirit).
Osh-Tisch fought in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud, as recounted by Pretty Shield.[3] During the battle, Osh-Tisch and a woman named The Other Magpie saved Bull Snake, and Osh-Tisch later shot a Lakota warrior, for which Osh-Tisch received her name.[3][4]
In the late 1890s, an American agent named Briskow, tasked with forcing the Plains Indians to assimilate into the dominant culture, jailed Osh-Tisch and the other badés, and forced them to get masculine haircuts, wear masculine clothing, and perform manual labor such as planting trees. The Crow, who considered their badés valuable members of their community, particularly known for their needlework and cooking,[5] were outraged, saying this abuse went against their nature.[6] Chief Pretty Eagle used what power he had to compel the agent to resign and leave tribal lands.[2] Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow, delivering this oral history in 1982 said, "It was a tragedy, trying to change them."[7]
Osh-Tisch was one of the last known badés of the Crow Nation, and the institution of the badé is said to have gone into decline during Osh-Tisch's life.[8]
Sources [ edit ]
^ Also spelled Ohchiish; from óhchikaapi "find". a b Will Roscoe (2000). Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 25, 35. ISBN 0-312-22479-6. a b Joseph Agonito (2016). Brave Hearts: Indian Women of the Plains. pp. 9–10. ISBN 1493019066. Pretty Shield [...revealed] the role Finds Them and Kills Them (Pretty Shield and Linderman referred to Osh Tisch by the English rendering of her name) and The Other Magpie played in the fight against the Lakotas that took place on Rosebud Creek [...Pretty Shield] described how Finds Them and Kills Them "[...] wore woman's clothes; and she had the heart of a woman.["...] Pretty Shield respected the womanly side of Finds Them and Kills Them by always referring to "her" with feminine pronouns. [...] During the fight at the Rosebud, these two women fought bravely, expecting death at the hands of the enemy. For this reason, Finds Them and Kills Them changed into men's clothing before the fighting began. [...] Bull Snake fell from his horse, badly wounded. Finds Them and Kills Them rode to his defense, firing her gun at the advancing Lakotas. [...] Bull Snake was saved. ^ David W. Machacek; Melissa M. Wilcox (2003). Sexuality and the World's Religions. p. 53. ISBN 1576073599. Osh-Tisch (which means “Finds Them and Kills Them”), a Crow boté discussed by Roscoe (1998), Walter Williams (1992), and Lang (1998), considered herself to be the last boté. Osh-Tisch received her name during the Battle of the Rosebud. ^ Transgender Warriors by by Leslie Feinberg Beacon Press, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 26. ^ The Crow Indians (1983, ISBN 0803279094) (1983, ^ Transgender Warriors by by Leslie Feinberg Beacon Press, Massachusetts, 1996, pp. 22–23. ^ Sabine Lang (1998). Men as women, women as men: changing gender in Native American cultures. University of Texas Press. p. 117. ISBN 0-292-74701-2.Despite your brain being protected by nothing more than a slim bony shell that tends to fracture if you knock it a little too hard, plenty of cyclists still opt to ride without a helmet. It’s somewhat understandable, given their bulk. But the Closca Fuga Black collapsible helmet offers a potential alternative that might sway those who would wear protection if only it would fit in their bags.
The helmet is made of three circular shell components, which fold down and nest inside each other to make a package that fits inside a bag. According to manufacturer Closca, the helmet has passed certification in Europe, Canada and the States, thanks to a combination of polystyrene and polycarbonate in the shell.
The helmet even features hidden air vents, so you won’t overheat in the hot summer sun. It’s not necessarily the prettiest thing to look at, but what it lacks in looks it makes up for in convenience and protection. It’ll set you back €72.00 ($77USD), with shipping in Spring.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]Feminism flourishes in the West because the patriarchy is dead, but don't count on it staying that way.
Pakistani women rally for International Women’s day in Lahore in 2013. (Photo11: Arif Ali, AFP/Getty Images)
So last week, gay conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos declared October 18 ”World Patriarchy Day.”
Yiannopoulos wrote: “Feminists like to claim that there is a sinister cultural phenomenon known as the ‘patriarchy,’ through which all men, especially if they are white, contribute to a set of values and social norms that marginalise and exclude women. What a load of old (bull). I honestly can’t believe people fall for this rubbish. So, in an attempt to redress the imbalance between fact and fantasy, World Patriarchy Day is the day on which you should feel free to express your masculinity in the most odiously toxic manner imaginable.”
This went onto Twitter with the hashtag #WorldPatriarchyDay in a bit of trolling that soon had feminists complaining precisely as intended. In other words, a typical day on the Internet.
But it led Rachel Edwards to write a thoughtful piece noting that there isn’t actually a patriarchy, at least not in the West, where one hears the most complaints. “Feminism can only exist in the kinds of countries that are doing so well that they don’t have to consider eating rats for much needed sustenance. It can only exist in a place with enough human rights to care that you as a woman are a little upset. Feminism can only exist in countries where women can be smart enough to understand the concept of oppression, yet stupid and coddled enough to believe that such words describe the country that they live in. In fact, a country has to care about women, period, for feminism to even be a thing.”
That’s true, and by any reasonable standard the West is looking as much matriarchal as patriarchal, with women overrepresented among college graduates and living longer than men.
But take heart, would-be patriarchs. Because that’s all going to change. The Western values that, as Edwards notes, make feminism and complaints about the patriarchy possible are pretty much unique, and they’re not likely to last long in their current form if trends continue.
In academia, we have a saying: Personnel is policy. If your history department hires a bunch of Marxists, you’ll have a Marxist history department. If the law school hires a bunch of law-and-economics types, you’ll have a law-and-economics based law school. And because most people tend to stay for a long time, and because people tend to hire people like themselves, those changes will be long-lasting.
Which brings me to the unprecedented mass-migration being experienced at present by Europe and, to a lesser degree, by the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people — soon, it seems likely to be millions — are coming from countries where the patriarchy really is a thing. These are places where honor killings, female genital mutilation and the legal and social subordination of wives and daughters to husbands and fathers are considered the norm. (The Dutch are already getting upset about the Syrian refugees who are bringing child brides with them.)
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Some of these people, of course, will eagerly adopt the culture of their new lands, and try their hardest to assimilate. But many more will not. They will, as people tend to do, cling to their native culture and customs regardless, either ignorant of (or more likely) feeling superior to the traditions of their adoptive countries. (This is normal for all sorts of people: When Americans do that, they’re called “ugly Americans.”) And to the extent that their behavior is visible, some percentage of the native population will adopt it, at least to some degree, especially if it seems that it is successful.
The end result will be that patriarchy will be back in the West. Because personnel is policy, and immigration is all about who will be staffing your nation in the future. Keep that in mind as these things are debated.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1LSOBLbSCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PA – At 4:19 AM on Sunday, February 14, Shenandoah Marshal 747 spotted smoke coming from a building in the unit block of North Main Street in the borough. M747 radioed into Schuylkill County 9-1-1 who also began to receive reports of the fire. The first alarm was dispatched.
Squrt 745 was out the door in seconds and took the address, a second alarm was requested. Engine 747 took the rear of the address where heavy fire was showing. Multiple lines were stretched off 747. Ladder 745 positioned right behind the Squrt and sent a crew to the roof to start to open up. Mahanoy City Rescue 993 assembled a Rapid Intervention Team and staged in front of the Squrt.
The second alarm dispatched Frackville Fire, Englewood Fire, Mahanoy City Citizens Fire, Shenandoah Heights Fire and Ringtown Valley Fire.
Engine 751 arrived on scene and tagged a hydrant at Main and Center and took the D side. Frackville Ladder 43-20 was directed into the same parking lot as 751. The stick went to the roof and a crew ascended. Englewood Engine 369 was directed around the scene and establish a water supply from Lloyd and Main Streets. Engine 369 then supplied Squrt 745 and stretched an attack line into the building. An additional RIT from Pottsville was requested into the scene.
Engine 742 and Tanker 759 went to the rear from Lloyd street and crews worked to stretch additional hand lines to the rear.
Heavy smoke continued to poor from the third floor of the original fire building leading to a third alarm be struck. The third alarm brought in Girardville, Saint Clair, Nuremberg-Weston and Ashland fire companies.
Nuremberg Ladder 581 arrived on the scene and sent its personnel to 43-20 were members from both truck companies worked on the roof of the end building to open the walls of the original fire building. Ashland Ladder 38-25 sent their crew to the roof to relieve the 745 companies.
Crews were unable to make any interior progress and smoke conditions continued to deteriorate leading to the Squrt putting the master stream in service through the third story window. At this point, concern was raised that the front of the building may collapse so the Squrt was shut down and pulled down to the end of the row.
After moving, the Squrt was put back in service as an elevated master stream. The roof crew on top of the end building completed everything it could and retreated to the ground. 43-20 set up for master stream operations.
Both master streams began to prove effective in the front of the building. Firefighters continued to use multiple hand lines in the rear to keep the fire under control. Additional crews stayed in the exposure buildings to prevent any further extension.
While the master streams were in use, firefighters were able to rehab in a heated tent provided by Ryan Township EMS. Propane heaters and chairs were provided to the firefighters as well as coffee, water and snacks. The Red Cross was also on scene providing aid to the firefighters.
Throughout this fire the temperature hovered between 0 and -5 degrees leading to a slick situation. Firefighters were seen walking on the scene in stiff, frozen gear. Their ladders and hand lines also froze over and had to be moved in their extended positions.
The Schuylkill County EMA Incident Support Vehicle was also on scene to provide an Inicident Management Team to support Incident Command. Schuylkill County COMM1 was also on scene to aid with the communications on scene. The IMT assisted with getting fuel trucks to the scene to supply apparatus as well as portable heaters to de-ice equipment.
By 10 AM the bulk of fire had been knocked down and third alarm companies were released. At 11 AM all crews were ordered to break down their equipment and regroup. Second alarm companies began to be released at this time.File: Bath, England — The plaque on the front of No. 4 Sydney Place memorizling Jane Austen’s years of residence in the house. (Photo by Zofia Smardz/The Washington Post)
It’s in Justice Scalia’s opinion this morning in Whitfield v. United States, and the opinion uses “Pride and Prejudice” much as linguists sometimes do: to offer an example of common English usage (not that recent, to be sure, but likely influential even today — or, more relevant, 1934 — given the book’s place in the literary canon):
In 1934 [when the relevant statute was enacted -EV], just as today, to “accompany” someone meant to “go with” him. See Oxford English Dictionary 60 (1st ed. 1933) (defining “accompany” as: “To go in company with, to go along with”). The word does not, as Whitfield contends, connote movement over a substantial distance. It was, and still is, perfectly natural to speak of accompanying someone over a relatively short distance, for example: from one area within a bank “to the vault”; “to the altar” at a wedding; “up the stairway”; or into, out of, or across a room. English literature is replete with examples. See, e.g., C. Dickens, David Copperfield 529 (Modern Library ed. 2000) (Uriah “accompanied me into Mr. Wickfield’s room”); J. Austen, Pride and Prejudice 182 (Greenwich ed. 1982) (Elizabeth “accompanied her out of the room”).
So congratulations, Prof. Austen! Definitely something to tell the dean when talk turns to your next promotion.Multiple personality disorder, like amnesia, is one of those aberrant mental states that has been a curse to those who suffer, but a gift to screenwriters over the years. From Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” to Brian De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill,” filmmakers have long exploited how little we truly understand about the condition — though none has pushed it quite as far as M. Night Shyamalan does in “Split,” treating dissociative identity disorder not as the twist, but as the premise on which this wickedly compelling abduction thriller is founded: James McAvoy plays a lunatic kidnapper |
which the victim is reportedly ‘habituated to sexual intercourse.’
Despite a recent Supreme Court ruling [18 July 2013], the test is still far from expunged.
The new ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) guidelines state:
The two-finger test of admissibility should not be performed in cases of sexual assault as information about past sexual conduct has been considered irrelevant to the case in several judgments (Sec. 146 of the Indian Evidence Act & deletion of Sub-section (4) of Sec. 155.) Even the test has no scientific validity and is subjective. On the basis of test results doctors should not identify (1) that victim is habituated to sexual intercourse or not.
This has yet to be implemented by forensic experts. For it to percolate into medical textbooks might take a century or more.
The misogyny implicit to the Two Finger Test has a long memory, and like much of our mechanistic protocol, that memory too is British.
The secretive Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s were implemented in Indian cantonments long before the British Parliament actually read them for what they were. While the actual wording of these laws and their repeal has been studied and analysed by Indian historians, the shift in medical ethic they brought about has passed without comment. As a result of these laws, Indian women were regimentalised as prostitutes for British soldiers.
In principle, this was meant to control venereal disease in the army. The British farmed Indian women into chaklas (brothels) where they had to present themselves for periodic examinations. The Two Finger Test had its beginnings here. Any woman who seemed suitable could be (and was) spirited away to a chakla by agents, and subjected to this degrading test. Her ‘moral laxity’ confirmed, she was then set to serve the British Army.
Hospitals conducted periodic pelvic examinations on such ‘licensed prostitutes.’
The records of ‘Lock Hospitals,’ written in stiff upper-lipped Imperialese, make heart-rending reading today.
Many doctors, Indian and British, protested angrily against these ugly laws, but the medical curriculum absorbed them eagerly into its system. Without question, these laws changed the way medical students were informed about a woman’s body. The attitude mimicked the Contagious Diseases Act.
Women in medicine, unquestionably, are targets of misogyny themselves, especially those in fields that used to be regarded as male preserves. That is a bitter battle, certainly, but I’m not writing about it here. What I talk about when I talk about rape is the vulnerability of a woman’s body to abuse by the system. Medicine is a protective science. Unless its students are taught to oppose the misogyny in textbooks and routine procedures, they will continue, perhaps in all innocence, to perpetuate rape. Because in medicine, the attitude is the act.
Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan are surgeons. They write together as Kalpish Ratna. Their novel The Quarantine Papers is now available in paperback.
Note: A correction was made to this article after it was publishedStory highlights A man pleads guilty to terror and immigration offenses and receives six-year prison sentence
An invoice for ammunition worth $28.5 million was found on his phone, UK prosecutors say
Documents also showed the hiring of a cargo plane to be used in Libya, they say
London (CNN) A man received a six-year prison sentence Tuesday after admitting guilt to terror and immigration offenses, British prosecutors said. Police discovered images on his mobile phone showing an invoice for ammunition worth $28.5 million and the hiring of a cargo plane to be used in Libya.
Abdurraouf Eshati, 29, of Wrexham, Wales, was sentenced Tuesday at London's Old Bailey Court, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
"The information that was contained within those documents found on Eshati's phone were considered likely to have supported and been useful to an individual preparing to commit an act of terrorism," a Crown Prosecution Service representative said.
"Such was the scale of his activity, the court was told his arrest and the finding of these documents has led to Italian authorities discovering large-scale illegal arms supplies being imported from eastern Europe to conflict zones in Libya and other places."
The representative said, "The very fact that Eshati pleaded guilty to these offenses on the first day of his trial is a testament to the strength of the case and evidence brought against him."
Read MoreIt's not spelled out in her office's mandate, but federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson knows that a big part of her job is to serve as Parliament's ethical laundromat. The government drops its dirty clothes off at her door, and when the opposition complains about how filthy the Cabinet looks, everyone gets to yell at the cleaning staff.
But despite rising concerns about the advice she's been giving the government, the problem isn't with Ms. Dawson herself, it is built into the structure of the position she holds. And the more it becomes clear that she's going to be blamed by all sides for the deepening mess over Bill Morneau's financial arrangements, the more it looks like her office should never have been created in the first place.
It's worth tracing the convolutions of how we got here. In its 1993 Red Book election platform, the Liberal Party promised to restore integrity to government by appointing an independent ethics counsellor who would report directly to Parliament. But once in power, Jean Chrétien appointed Howard Wilson as a counsellor who reported not to Parliament but to the prime minister himself, on the grounds that he (Chrétien) alone was responsible for the ethical conduct of his government.
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Except by the late 1990s, federal politics was a toxic blend of Liberal arrogance and feckless opposition. With Parliament looking "Gritlocked," the idea took hold that it was beset by a clutch of institutional and electoral problems known as the "democratic deficit." In reality, the democratic deficit was little more than opposition code for Liberal hegemony, so fixing the democratic deficit meant limiting or hindering the power of the federal government. What the opposition could not do through normal political means it would do through the back door of institutional constraints and quasi-judicial oversight bodies.
Enter the idea of the Ethics Commissioner, who would be something like the Auditor-General, an independent officer of Parliament who could serve as a sort of forensic ethical accountant. They would investigate the government for all manner of moral transgressions, naming and shaming violators and enforcing sanctions.
What happened instead was the role was almost immediately turned into a parliamentary scold, serving first one partisan interest, then another. Recall what happened to Ms. Dawson's predecessor, Bernard Shapiro: After Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006, he declared that he would not co-operate with Mr. Shapiro's investigation of David Emerson's day-after-the-election defection from the Liberals to the Conservatives. This led to howls from the media and commentariat for Mr. Shapiro's resignation, on the grounds that he had become hopelessly politicized.
In 2009, Ms. Dawson herself was served a blizzard of complaints about Conservative MPs using taxpayers' money for partisan purposes by putting their own names and – on at least two occasions – party logo on giant novelty stimulus cheques. "It is an ethical matter," thundered then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.
Exactly. But as Ms. Dawson had to remind Parliament at the time, while her title contains the word "ethics," the government's ethics are actually outside of her mandate.
Jeffrey Simpson argued long ago in his book Spoils of Power whether certain forms of patronage or partisanship are ethical or not can't be decided by explicit rules or codes, but will instead have "much to do with the eye of the beholder, conditioned by the political culture of the country or the province," or even by the relative popularity of the government at a given moment.
That is why our traditional mechanism for holding governments accountable for their ethical behaviour is not independent oversight by officers of Parliament, but the adversarial cut and thrust of parliamentary debate. Through responsible opposition, we ensure responsible government. The Ethics Commissioner was designed from the beginning to serve a political function. The commissioner's role was to serve as a sort of proxy opposition, a way of checking a Liberal government that had no effective political counterweight.
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But Gritlock was instead cured by the rather obvious device of a united Conservative Party, and no one talks about the democratic deficit any more. Parliamentary government is unfolding as it should. The Ethics Commissioner is both an unnecessary intervention into the political process and a reminder of one of the most unpleasant periods of recent Canadian democracy. Jean Chrétien's first instincts were correct, and the position should be re-established as an ethics counsellor as soon as possible.
Andrew Potter is an associate professor at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.Did you know that social media behemoth Facebook, plans to phase out the smartphone in 10 years’ time? According to the CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, there are plans to make Facebook and other apps available through augmented reality (AR), he announced this at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference.
You might be wondering when was the smartphone created that It faces extinction so soon, well that’s how fast the IT world evolves.
To understand the massive pace at which the IT industry is growing, we need to understand how we got here, the era of social media, smartphones, additive printing, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and so on. Let’s take a quick look at the evolution of the industry over time.
GROWTH OF THE IT INDUSTRY OVER TIME
When you see the pace at which this industry has grown over time, you’ll be surprised as I was. The millennials have enjoyed most of the benefits of the IT industry. A few years back the concept of social media was unheard of; there was no Google for your physics project.
The Information technology has outpaced every other industry in the world. This industry (IT) has helped in various ways than any other industry. It has helped better and improve productivity, hence making it a key driver in world economic growth. The limitless and insatiable demand of consumers and economies of scale from both enterprises and consumers illustrate this fast growing sector
All these technological advances had profound political, economic, and even philosophical effects on the civilization and the entire human race. Economically we became globally interdependent, industries rely on raw materials found outside of their countries, while less developed countries rely on goods produced by their industrialized counterparts. The global interdependence led to the adoption of the worldwide gold standard to smooth over complications of international trade. Although, the gold standard has been abandoned, most national economies still work together as one integrated global economy.
AUTOMATION IN THE INDUSTRY
This is no surprise to anyone – automation is the new and hottest trend in the world right now. According to studies, automation which includes both mechanized robots (drone shaped or humanoid) and artificially intelligent software programs, is predicted to take over 6% of the jobs in the U.S. in the next five years. And it’s not just low-wage personnel that need to be concerned, highly skilled, knowledge-based personnel in some sectors, including accounting and legal, could see their jobs decimated in the next decade. Deloitte estimates that 39% of jobs in the legal sector could be automated in the next ten years. A different research has concluded that accountants have a 95% chance of losing their jobs to automation in the future.
The IT industry is the only industry that will outpace other industries due to automation. Automation in the IT industry refers to using computers to execute or perform repetitive or less intricate tasks. Automation reduces errors; people can then be used to perform more intricate tasks, while automation takes care of the less complex tasks. This means that fewer people are needed while the quality of work done by humans improves considerably.
Automation in IT can also be seen as a control system that makes a process run on its own accord without human interference. As a result, it increases ROI and productivity also decreasing cost. Various organizations provide automation services for their clients which include cloud automation, automation testing services, industrial automation, etc.
This has made the IT industry highly productive leaving humans to face more complicated problems. One of the most used messaging apps in the world Whatsapp has a staff strength of 16 people, yet it has more than a billion users on its platform and still runs efficiently.
All these are achieved because most of its services are automated which is a very common feature in the IT industry. More can be achieved with fewer people at lesser costs. More time can be focused on research and development which has made the IT industry outpace any other industry. With the results of automation is achieving, I bet you’re wondering if your job is safe, let’s find out.
DEMAND FOR IT AND SOFTWARE SKILLS
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but automated systems definitely need IT experts and software engineers to design, code and run them. Each of these systems built to perform repetitive and less intricate tasks was built by experts from the IT sector.
Only people with software and IT backgrounds can build automated systems. The knowledge of programming language is one of the key requirements for automation.
As integral and important as IT is to our lives, there haven’t been enough engineers to meet the demand of the industry. Universities worldwide haven’t been able to churn out enough engineers that can adequately meet the demand placed by the IT industry.
According to world economic forum – only 10 countries in the world are able to produce more than 100,000 engineering graduates, which isn’t enough to meet the worlds IT demands, giving the pace at which the IT industry is moving.
RISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
In some Sci-Fi movies, we see them projecting a world where artificial intelligence plays an integral part of human lives, some show AI taking over the world and all. They may be works of fiction, but they aren’t too far from the truth. Artificial intelligence is truly on the rise in every walk of life.
The advancement in the field of AI, big data and data science – coupled with the inability of universities worldwide to produce enough graduates in the IT sector, it has led to a shift from human capital to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been experiencing a major renaissance in recent times. In 2014, there was an injection of nearly half a billion dollars into the AI industry. What could be the cause? Availability, infrastructure speed and sheer scale have led to bolder algorithms to tackle more ambitious problems. Not only do we have faster hardware now, it’s supported by a specialized array of processors (e.g. GPUs), it is also available as cloud services. At the fraction of a cost, what used to be run in specialized labs with super computers is deployed to the cloud easily. This has led to access to the necessary hardware platforms to run AI, enabling a number of startups to spring up,
The financial stimulus from the recent investment in AI has led to an unprecedented expansion of the industry. More companies are creating smarter solutions to their clientele and a set of new AI related companies are aiming at providing these solutions springing up. Most industries don’t want to be behind the trend as they’re looking to use AI in one form or the other, the pace at which AI is going, there’s ample room yet to be explored. AI has various potentials, but as self-learning and intelligent as AI seems, its algorithms still have to be compiled by humans. Algorithms are mathematical instructions; they are step by step procedure for calculations. All these can only be built by IT and software engineers, that where you, the generic programmer come in.
TAKE YOU IT OR SOFTWARE ENGINEER CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Recently, LinkedIn analyzed lots of data points and all of the hiring and recruiting activity that occurred in 2016 to identify the most sought after skillset; IT skills were the most sought after by employers. According to LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher in a press release. “While some skills expire every couple of years, our data strongly suggests that tech skills will still be needed for years to come, in every industry. Now is a great time for professionals to acquire the skills they need to be more marketable.”
Learning an in-demand language like JavaScript, Python, GoLang, etc. is a greate way to start your IT career. For a lot of non-engineers, becoming an IT or software engineer may seem like a Herculean task. However, thanks to a large pool of resources that have been put online, either paid or free, learning to code has never been easier.
With all the reasons and facts stated above, the need for IT experts and programmers cannot be stressed further.
Yet once you are in the IT industry – how do continue to grow and take your career to the next level? Even though there is an overall demand and supply disparity in the IT sector – the pool of IT programmers and engineers is still quite large. With a lot of people offering the similar or overlapping skillset. Be honest are you one of those people who make the mistake of not specializing, marketing, investing in yourself and socializing with others in the field.
Here are a few tips on becoming indispensable in the IT sector;
1. SPECIALIZE: It is no secret that generic programming jobs pay quite well. Entry level software developers can expect to earn an average of 65,000 USD annually. But the problem here is, there’s a relatively large pool when it comes to pay and promotion, to combat this, you have to specialize.
The importance of specialization is not limited to the IT industry alone; other industries are equally affected. Many doctors and lawyers choose to specialize in their respective fields so that they can give higher value to their clients and in return make better money. The annual Medscape from WebMD physician compensation survey of more than 19,600 doctors in 26 specialties found the average compensation for a specialist in 2014 to be $284,000, while primary care physicians made an average of $195,000. According to The Balance, there are three types of lawyers that earn the most money and they are attorneys working for contingency fees, equity partners at profitable firms and high ranking in house counsel at major companies all earning above 200,000 USD per year. There’s a stark difference between lawyers and doctors who specialize and those who aren’t. All these show the importance and the need to specialize in the IT industry.
When your skillset is focused on a single, core area that is done quite well, it means you become the best in that area. Specialists are not distracted by other areas, the quality of work soars considerably, hence, standing out from competitors. Specialization increases client’s base considerably making those that offer the same skillset as you in the field scarce, hence increasing demand for your services. Specialization has many advantages to a lot of people and increases the prospects of employment greatly. Several IT organizations need workers that are well knowledgeable and vast in particular languages. This increases your potential value as a programmer. Specialization gives job security which is something most workers don’t enjoy, when you have a skillset that’s rare, and in demand, you become more valuable than your peers and cannot be disposed of easily.
Since job specialization makes you skilled, your productivity becomes high with little supervision and time wastage; there’s no time wasted by changing from one job to another. Hence flow is continuous leading to higher productivity. Because of the value you offer, the pool of specialists with similar skills as yours becomes smaller, you receive higher pay because you’re in high demand and you’re also offered better incentives and remunerations.
2. MARKET YOURSELF: Just like companies need to market their product and services – it is very important IT engineers to reach out to their respective communities and market themselves to the right people using the right medium. Having the right skills, experience and certificates aren’t enough to get you a job you dersve and the promotion you deserve, you must know how to effectively market yourself to get noticed. Good marketing is about establishing the needs of your intended audience and aligning your brand as a programmer to meet with their demands. With more people registering with social media accounts, employers now have the opportunity to find out about their potential candidates before you’re interviewed. This is an opportunity to effectively market yourself and give a good first impression. Here are a few platforms that can be used.
LinkedIn is a great tool to build a professional profile, network and presence through a social media site. By creating a profile, focus on your key skills, past experience and effectively use it as an online CV. Make sure you write in first person, in an engaging and less formal style than on your CV. Employers are now using LinkedIn for searching suitable candidates and headhunting, so it’s a great way to get seen. One great feature of LinkedIn is the ability to recommend your skills to people in your network, which can add value to your applications.
Twitter is another great tool that can help in marketing your skills, it’s also becoming a common tool for job searches. Start by following leaders and key people in the industry, this lets you get information on current job opportunities and developments. Write a professional twitter bio to capture your skills, personality and experience. It makes you take a preemptive approach in your job hunt by using search tools to keep you updated on available roles, also giving you industry knowledge through hash tags and tweets.
A great way to promote yourself apart from writing a professional resume is to create a blog. You can link your online profiles to the blog, this can help create a buzz around you. You don’t need something too sophisticated, a simple and free blog should do. Ensure you post about relevant happenings in the IT industry so you can develop a loyal following. This can also be linked with Twitter and LinkedIn allowing potential recruiters so see your blog posts. The reason for this is to show that you have in depth knowledge and experience in your field. By creating a brand via the same terminologies and information, you will be a step ahead of those with just a CV, hence, you’re more likely to be found by recruiters and employers.
3. INVEST IN YOURSELF: There’s a popular saying that goes “If you want to invest in something with minimum risk and a guaranteed big return, invest in yourself.” To achieve this, a significant amount of money, time and effort is required. The biggest tech giants in the world, Google, Microsoft, and Apple invest five times more the amount spent by the largest US defense companies on research and development in 2013. In all, the three big tech companies spent $18.8 billion more than the defense companies on these R&D projects in 2013, according to data compiled by a noted defense analyst Byron Callan (an analyst with Capital Alpha partners). This shows the importance tech giants attach to research and development. In the same vein, to be relevant in the industry, one has to develop accordingly.
With the pace at which the IT sector is moving, if you aren’t regularly updated with the newest trends, tools, frameworks, and applications in a few months you’d realize you’re out of touch with the happenings in the sector. To improve your IT skills you have to learn how to use the latest and greatest tools for the trade, know the relevant programming languages in your niche, meet people of like minds online, take tutorials and dedicate a few hours a week absorbing and practicing all that has been learned. You can contribute to open source software and work on various free projects to expand your portfolio.
4. SOCIALIZE: Being in the IT sector, you’re already part of a special and driven community. The next step is to socialize with other techies in the community by joining online groups, meetups, etc. You should join or create one to grow and strengthen your network. If you’re living in a small or large city, you should be able to find a local chapter, but if not – you can always take the initiative to start one.
Meetups focus on bringing people together in person and help them find like-minded people they’ve never met. In such groups, it’s important to be visible and to be an authority figure rather than to be relegated to the background. The success of whatever group you start will depend on your willingness and ability to provide whatever leadership it requires. Starting a new meet up is a quite simple, just put together a group online, set a time and place and see who shows up. If the first meeting doesn’t go as you want, just try again at the next one.
The rate with which automation will be adopted into the offices will differ, and the effects on employment, on national economies, and on businesses and workers globally will play out in myriad ways. At its core, however, the IT industry represents a considerable opportunity for the global economy at a time of weak productivity and a declining share of the working-age population. For corporate leaders, the IT industry will reshape the business landscape and create considerable future value. How to capture the opportunities and prepare for the possible consequences will be a key political, economic, corporate, and social question going forward. This is not something that can be watched from the sidelines; you have to be part of it. The age of information is here, disruption is upon us, automation is here, and the technological breakthroughs will continue. It is never too early to prepare.
Ultimately, if you are an information technology expert, professional or starter; and you want to improve your IT career, gain more experience and knowledge in Information technology, get a huge promotion at work, or most importantly those that are stuck in their jobs and needs to learn more skills in other to create more value; you should visit www.tetratutorials.com/courses
There is a wide variety of courses and skills in information technology and related fields that you can learn to be a better professional and expertise in what you already know or what you are vying to learn. Learning these in-demand skills will make you a better expert in your field than you already are and for those that are just starting out as IT professionals, this could be the opportunity for you to have a bragging right at work, home, amongst friends and foe about your newly acquired skills.
See you at www.tetratutorials.com/coursesTexas Instruments delivers industry’s first quad-radio single chip
TI raises the bar with WiLink™ 7.0 solution, integrating WLAN, GPS, Bluetooth® and FM transmit/receive technologies on a true single-chip
Demonstrating its leadership in the wireless connectivity market, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today unveiled its WiLink™ 7.0 single-chip solution, the industry’s first offering to integrate WLAN 802.11n, GPS, FM transmit/receive and Bluetooth® technologies. Integrating these capabilities on a true single chip, the 65-nanometer WiLink 7.0 solution reduces costs by 30 percent, reduces size by 50 percent and delivers superior coexistence performance as compared to today’s existing solutions. Built on seven generations of proven technologies and legacy software, this single-chip solution further extends TI’s heritage of bringing technologies previously seen in high-end devices to the broad mobile market. The WiLink 7.0 solution will be showcased during Mobile World Congress 2010 in the TI booth (8A84, Hall 8). For more information, visit www.ti.com/wilink7pr.
“TI's announcement that its Bluetooth/FM/GPS/WLAN combination IC is sampling to major OEMs marks the first of its kind, demonstrating the strong future for combination ICs that enable device manufacturers to offer multiple radios without sacrificing performance, space requirements or profit margins,” said Lisa Arrowsmith, analyst, IMS Research. “IMS Research forecasts that by 2013, more than 4.5 billion combination ICs featuring a variety of radios will have been shipped.”
A one-chip wonder: WiLink 7.0 solution’s unique features and benefits
Key feature Benefits Unique coexistence capabilities Hardware mechanisms cancel out board- and chip-level RF interference at the source to simplify design process
Enhanced WiFi/Bluetooth/Bluetooth Low Energy inter-core communication prioritizes packet scheduling, supports more connections in parallel High-performance GPS core Best-in-class 3GPP test performance
Multi-path resolution engine coupled with advanced algorithms reduces interference impact for more accurate positioning in urban canyons
On-chip position engine simplifies integration with device host processor
Supports reduced power consumption during tracking
Host-independent location buffering and geo-fencing features further reduce host loading and power consumption Powerful Bluetooth core Best-in-class RF performance
Dedicated audio processor system-on-chip
Supports latest Bluetooth low-energy and Bluetooth 3.0 specifications
Extensible to support additional protocols Robust Wi-Fi core Supports the soon-to be ratified WiFi Direct™ and Soft AP mode capabilities, extensible to support additional protocols
Supports 802.11 a/b/g/n capabilities FM core Increased output power for FM transmit combined with highly sensitive FM receive delivers cleaner FM experience
Supports internal antenna
“As the first company to put the power of GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth and FM technologies on a single chip, we are excited to have solved some of the market’s most complex coexistence challenges,” said Haviv Ilan, vice president and general manager, wireless connectivity solutions, TI. “This type of innovation builds on our strong heritage in the wireless market and commitment to spearhead next-generation advancements. With its ability to support simultaneous use of all four radios, the WiLink 7.0 solution will truly revolutionize the way people interact with their devices and connect to the larger world.”
Availability
The WiLink 7.0 solution is sampling to major OEMs today. Devices using the WiLink 7.0 solution are expected to enter the market by the end of 2010.
To learn more about TI’s WiLink 7.0 solution, visit:
Video: www.ti.com/wilink7videos
Images: www.ti.com/wilink7images
Block diagram: www.ti.com/wilink7blkdiagram
Follow TI on Twitter: www.twitter.com/txinstruments
TI Mobile Momentum blog: http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/mobile_momentum/default.aspx
About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) helps customers solve problems and develop new electronics that make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. A global semiconductor company, TI innovates through manufacturing, design and sales operations in more than 30 countries. For more information, go to www.ti.com.
Trademarks
WiLink™ is a trademark of Texas Instruments Inc. All other registered trademarks and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
TXN-PQ: Do pregnant women count as two people for carpool lanes?
A: No.
“We have been told that being pregnant definitely doesn’t qualify you for the carpool lane,” Trooper Julie Startup said.
Not that the case hasn’t been made. A State Patrol spokeswoman for King County, Startup said the case was raised several years ago by a woman a trooper had cited. The judge sided with the State Patrol, and Startup said troopers aren’t aware of any Washington cases that have gone otherwise.
But kids – even a day old – do count for the carpool lane tally. Startup knows that sounds ridiculous to some people, but it’s the way the law’s written.
RCW 46.61.165, the state law that refers to high-occupancy vehicle lanes, doesn’t say anything about passenger age:
The state Department of Transportation and the local authorities are authorized to reserve all or any portion of any highway under their respective jurisdictions, including any designated lane or ramp, for the exclusive or preferential use of public transportation vehicles or private motor vehicles carrying no fewer than a specified number of passengers when such limitation will increase the efficient utilization of the highway or will aid in the conservation of energy resources. Regulations authorizing such exclusive or preferential use of a highway facility may be declared to be effective at all times or at specified times of day or on specified days. Violation of a restriction of highway usage prescribed by the appropriate authority under this section is a traffic infraction.
Thanks to the people who submitted questions. Scroll through a list of previous answers below.It looks like Paige VanZant is set to become WWE’s next big superstar. Jim Ross who is the former head of WWE talent relations, and a Hall of Famer believes “12 Gauge” will be the next big WWE star, seeing her as a cross between
Ronda Rousey and WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus. Ross has recruited and signed many of WWE’s top stars including Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Brock Lesnar and John Cena. He spoke to ESPN on Saturday following VanZant’s loss, revealing his plans for the 22 year old and why she has such a bright future within the organisation.
“Paige has the uncoachable ‘it’ factor, it’s the same as I saw in Dwayne Johnson, John Cena and Brock Lesnar. She even has marketable initials: PVZ. Based on what I’ve seen, I’d consider Paige a blue-chipper when she’s ready.
“If her skill set would match up with her hype and rep, I’d book her making some sort of water cooler talk impact in a perfect TV storm. Wearing gloves wouldn’t limit her sex appeal, and it fits who the public knows her to be. I’d intro her with huge fanfare, cover her contract signing, training and document her entire journey. Build a long arching anticipation for her debut, which would be at an important destination. There are lots of right ways to introduce a potential star within the sports-entertainment genre,” he tells ESPN.
WWE stars aren’t just wrestlers anymore, they are worldwide superstars. “The Rock” and John Cena are two of the hottest names in Hollywood right now.
A partnership between the UFC and WWE would benefit both promotions. Lesnar’s blockbuster pay-per-view numbers and the fact that Punk attracted about 450,000 pay-per-view buys for his first professional MMA fight shows what cross-promotion can do for the companies. “I’d assume she could do both, but I’m not sure how successful she’d be at either while splitting her focus,” Ross said. “The skills required to be a successful, pro grappler are varied and need months of diligent training under the watchful eye of top coaches. WWE has that covered. I’d suggest that she fulfill her UFC commitments and try and live her MMA dreams before committing to WWE, unless it was for a one-off, high-profile cameo at a major event like WrestleMania.”
VanZant says she’s more than capable of doing more than one thing at a time and said she wasn’t exactly sure when she would fight again, saying it could be a couple months or six months or even longer. In the meantime, she will pursue all those opportunities she has in front of her. “I took a break to do ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ and I came back and I knocked somebody out,” VanZant said. “I’m very good at balancing my outside factors. I know how to balance my schedule. I have the best team in the world. I’m very smart. I could have done anything I wanted to, and I chose to fight, and I’m going to continue to balance my schedule … I have a lot of passions in the world, and I’m not going to limit myself to one thing.”
It’s no secret the WWE has been after VanZant ever since her appearance on Dancing with the Stars. She revealed earlier in the week that she has every intention of joining the WWE once her UFC run is up. It appears we’ll be seeing her debut for the company sooner rather than later.Before we started working on the web portal at work, we discussed which languages to use. We had a team of four developers and planned to hire more. We considered the hiring pool, package availability, language standardization, testing, and scalability.
PHP
A coworker suggested PHP and Laravel. We would have access to a nice pool of web developers so there would be no shortage of talent. Laravel is also well documented. I spent my first couple weeks at the company learning Laravel for a different project and I wasn’t building as fast as I had hoped, even with my six years of experience in PHP. Autocomplete was difficult to set up so I spent a lot of time in the documentation looking up commands. There was also a lot of magic in the background that made it difficult to troubleshoot.
Node
Also on the table was Node. A lot of interactive applications use Node and we could create dynamic applications that looked great and performed well, but no one on the team had built anything other than a “hello world” application. JavaScript was also not any of our top languages. Even though we didn’t choose Node, npm (Node Package Manager) turned out to be an asset for tasks like compiling SASS and minifying JavaScript.
Go
Finally, we discussed Go. The two big issues were the small hiring pool and the availability of packages.
To address the first one, Go is not a difficult language to learn and you can be productive quickly. You can read the entire spec very quickly and you can walk through the tutorials in a few hours. The low number of keywords means it’s easier to start working with the language and you’re more likely to pick the “best” way to complete a task. Since the source of the language is mostly written in Go, you can use that code as a resource.
The second issue is not an issue, it’s a mindset. We all want rapid application development (RAD), but how beneficial is a “RAD only” language in the long run? Go believes in small packages, not frameworks. A small number of dependencies means a smaller number of bugs and more stability (generally). RAD is great for prototyping, but it’s the 20% of the features that takes up 80% of your time. Many languages and frameworks give you the 80% of the features you need for free and the other 20% you spend your time figuring out or writing yourself. Go has a few big web frameworks, but there is no reason to use them because you can find smaller packages to fit your needs. We also wanted our applications to be modular so if we used a web framework for one application, it would be difficult to use the same packages in another daemon in another application.
We found most of what we needed in the Go standard library. It includes packages which allow you to build on top of a web listener, parse form variables, compile templates - all required when building a web site. As long as we had access to the AWS SDK and a good LDAP package, we had the minimum requirements for the web portal.
The team decided to use Go because we could use it for the web portal and other applications, it was quick and scalable, and not likely to change or go obsolete in the next 2-3 years because of the version 1 promise.
Our Experiences
Standardizing on a Language
Our team was mostly DevOps Engineers - self included. The web portal was not our only application. We had to interact with other systems, logs, etc. Many of the applications were daemons that ran every 5 or 10 minutes to sync users and groups from Active Directory to another application or load log files into another application for analysis. This is where standardizing was extremely valuable. We wrote all of daemons in Go. Why? Anyone on the team could build and work on them. No to mention that Go runs on Windows, |
first see an exoplanet around a nearby star rather than one that is farther away.
There have been many planets that have been indirectly inferred to be orbiting other stars. In August of 2016 New Scientist (pg 8) mentions the ultracool star TRAPPIST has three potentially habitable planets orbiting the same star. See upper graphic.
The three planets are surprisingly close to TRAPPIST-1 ranging from 2-3 Gigameters or so. Mercury orbits at 58 Gigameters from the Sun. If they orbited our Sun, these planets would be well inside the orbit of Mercury.
The above table helps put the information into context using metric prefixes. The planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 are all very close to their star. Because it is ultracool (in the temperature sense) the orbiting planets are potentially cool enough for life as we know it to exist. The first imaged exoplanets 2M1207b and 1RSX1609b orbit at a distance about equal to Pluto in the first case, and about 7.5 times that distance in the second. When mapped onto our solar system, none of these new planets orbit within the same range as our planets.
The only exoplanet in the table with an estimated diameter, 2M1207b, (210 Mm) has a diameter larger than Jupiter (140 Mm). It would make sense that a planet would have to be about this size to allow for measurement of its extent. Distances to these stars are expressed with Petameters, which means they are very close to us. The extent of our Galaxy is about 1000 Exameters or 1 000 000 Petameters, so TRAPPIST-1 (370 Pm), 2M1207 (1608 Pm) and 1RXS 1609 (4440 Pm) are close to us when compared with our galaxy’s dimensions.
Astronomers appear to be generators of unit proliferation. When you look up the diameter of 1RXS 1609 in Wikipedia, its radius is listed as 1.35 solar radii. The brown dwarf 2M1207 is about 0.25 solar radii, but its orbiting planet 2M1207b is given as 1.5 Jupiter radii. Astronomers have chosen to express measurements using metaphorical units in terms of arbitrarily chosen objects in our solar system. Why not use the metric system directly?—and then offer an example for context? Mass is expressed in terms of Jupiter’s mass, but the temperature of the planet is given in kelvin. Why is the temperature not in terms of Jupiter’s temperature?—just to stay consistent. Do astronomers have equipment that measures and outputs values in Jupiter masses and radii?—I kind of doubt it—I hope.
Lest you think I believe there has been no metric progress, it appears that at least Wikipedia is slowly changing its ways, albeit inconsistently. If you look at the orbital distance of Pluto it is first listed in AU (astronomical units) and in parenthesis next to it are the same values in Gigameters. Metric is still in parenthesis as “the alternative” but at least it is there, and not expressed in millions of Kilometers. I’m rather sure that at one time I never saw Gm values on astronomy pages in Wikipedia, and so this is a positive change. The Equatorial and Polar radius of Pluto and Jupiter are first given in Km and below each value is an equivalent Earth value, 11.209 Earths and 10.517 Earths in the case of Jupiter, and 0.18 Earths for Pluto. The volume and mass also have metric first and a suggested context second. I see this as a very acceptable way to designate these values. The mean density of Jupiter is in grams per cubic centimeter rather than 1.326 g/mL or 1326 g/L, so while it may have metric units in the expression it’s still more cgs than SI. Saturn is 0.687 g/ml or 687 g/L and because it is below one g/mL in the first case and below 1000 g/L in the second, an average chunk of Saturn would, in principal, float in water. Overall it seems that I’m seeing more use of the larger metric prefixes in Wikipedia and I definitely see that as a millimeter of progress in a country that has Yottameters to go.
If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page
Related essays:
Long Distance Voyager
The Expanding Universe
***
The Metric Maven has published a new book titled The Dimensions of The Cosmos. It examines the basic quantities of the world from yocto to Yotta with a mixture of scientific anecdotes and may be purchased here.Biden dodges angry mob in Ukraine
Vice President Joe Biden backed out from appearing with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine at a memorial ceremony in Kiev on Friday, when the Secret Service determined it “wasn’t a good idea” after a crowd became “unruly,” a pool report said.
“When Biden’s motorcade arrived on outskirts of what had become very large and somewhat unruly gathering, many chanting ‘shame’ at Poroshenko. … [U.S.] [S]ecret [S]ervice decided wasn’t a good idea for Biden to wade in,” according to the pool report.
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At that point, the report said, Biden’s “[m]otorcade turned around.”
Biden, who has been in Ukraine with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, was in Kiev on Friday morning to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony for people killed in demonstrations earlier this year. However, a crowd that was first around 100 people, mostly elderly men and women, quickly grew at Poroshenko’s arrival. The pool report said there was “little apparent interference” by Ukrainian security for Poroshenko.
Biden later got out of his car and shook Poroshenko’s hand after the Ukrainian president emerged on foot. Biden’s motorcade then drove to another location a short distance away for a bilateral meeting with Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Biden eventually made an unscheduled stop to a separate memorial later in the day, according to a pool report. Laying flowers at the memorial, the vice president asked to be accompanied by Myroslava Gongadze, a Voice of America correspondent and Ukrainian, who is part of the traveling pool. Gongadze’s husband, an investigative journalist, was killed by government police at the location over a decade ago. The pair stood together at the memorial for about five minutes before Biden invited her to join him in the limo as they departed for the next stop.
Biden is in Ukraine as part of a five-day trip that began in Morocco and will end in Turkey. While in Ukraine, Biden is to talk to Ukrainian leaders about their election as they begin to set up a new government.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
BARTLETT, Tenn. — Some parents are outraged after they said a school's theme day pushed the envelope a little too far in their eyes.
Homecoming week was supposed to be full of fun, but not everyone is laughing after pictures of some pretty inappropriate villains hit social media.
Wednesday started as Villain Day at Bartlett High, and for some things quickly turned as dark as the day’s theme.
"The Hitler person was standing in the building of Bartlett High and saluting," parent Sherita Miller said.
The school says the theme was supposed to give students the chance to dress up as their favorite comic book bad guy, but it went further than that.
"The kid dressed in the Hitler, to me that is just totally out of line for this day and age and for everything that is happening," parent Dan Talley said.
"It offends a large group of people."
WREG began receiving calls about the controversial photos making their rounds on social media.
"I saw the slave master person in uniform and we can see the school in the background, we see children with Bartlett High shirts on," Miller said.
School officials said one student who was wearing a police officer costume was in fact asked to change because that costume caused a disruption to the learning environment.
The school released this statement about the costume controversy. Bartlett City Schools said hallways and classrooms were heavily monitored throughout the day, but they never saw or received complaints about the other controversial costumes in question.
"They say they didn’t see it, whether they saw it or not, we saw it, and that's a problem," Miller said. "Those pictures were taken at the school not off of school grounds."
During homecoming week, each day has a theme. Those are picked by the student government and supervised by administration.
School officials encourage parents to reach out to them if they have any concerns about the costumes that were worn Wednesday.Getty Images
The NFL is making it harder for college players who have been involved in violent incidents off the field to make it professionally.
Former Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon, who was caught on tape punching a woman, and former Baylor receiver Ishmael Zamora, who was caught on tape beating a dog with a belt, were not invited to the Scouting Combine, according to Tom Pelissero of USA Today.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, no player who has been convicted of violence or use of a weapon, domestic violence or sexual offenses will be allowed at the Combine. It is unclear if any players other than Mixon or Zamora will be kept away.
Based on talent alone, Mixon could be a first-round draft pick. But the ugly incident in which he punched a woman who confronted him in a restaurant raises questions about whether he’ll be drafted at all. The NFL clearly hopes he won’t be.
Zamora caught 63 passes for 809 yards and eight touchdowns last season despite missing the first three games because Baylor suspended him for the animal abuse. He’s not the same kind of talent that Mixon is, but he too has the physical tools to play in the NFL.
Both players will have to hope they get pre-draft invitations to work out for teams individually, and both will have to hope they can impress at their Pro Days. Because they won’t get a chance to show what they can do at the Combine.Amazon's grocery service will offer 22,000 lines as it challenges Ocado for the position of pre-eminent online grocer
Amazon today launched a grocery division offering free delivery on thousands of household goods.
The online retailer, which launched in the UK in 1998 as a bookseller, will offer 22,000 top grocery lines including Pampers, Ariel, Uncle Ben's, Dolmio, Kraft, Schwartz, Kenco, Carte Noir, Walkers and Oreo, and leading pet food products Bakers and Purina One.
As well as selling individual items the Amazon.co.uk Grocery store allows customers to save money by bulk-buying items such as nappies, washing powders, pasta, rice, herbs, cooking oils and spices.
Goods on sale will also include a large selection of international and specialist items including organic, kosher, gluten free, sugar free and vegan ranges. Products offered include Montana hot chocolate, Illy coffee, Clif Bar natural energy bars, and Loacker chocolate and wafers.
Shoppers will be able to use Amazon.co.uk's delivery options including unlimited free one-day delivery for an annual membership fee of £49 with Amazon Prime, and free super saver delivery where each product automatically qualifies for free delivery within the UK.
Customers will be able to shop via their computers or their smart phones. Alternatively, iPhone and iPod touch users can download the Amazon app.
Grocery orders will be processed in all of Amazon UK's "fulfilment centres" in Milton Keynes, Swansea, Glenrothes, Gourock, Peterborough and Doncaster.
The move is likely to be regarded as a blow to Ocado, which is aiming to persuade investors to buy its shares for between 200p and 275p, valuing the firm at £1.18bn despite failing to make a profit in its 10-year history.
James Leeson, director of grocery at Amazon.co.uk Ltd, said: "Amazon.co.uk's aim is to be the place where customers can find and discover any product they want to buy online, and with the introduction of this new store there are thousands of household, niche, ethnic and international grocery items, all available at the click of a button.
"With unlimited virtual shelf space customers can choose from a wide variety of products, all of which benefit from free delivery. We will work tirelessly to increase the selection of grocery items available to be delivered directly to customers' doors."
However, the Amazon service does not a "shopping list" facility which allows customers to order the same basic goods every week without typing them in individually, and as yet it is not "scraped" by Mysupermarket.co.uk to compare its prices for a set shopping basket of goods with those of online supermarkets Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury and Ocado.
Amazon, which has 160 million customers worldwide and operates in the US, Canada, Japan, China, France and Germany as well as the UK, has sold groceries in the US since 2006. The move to sell groceries in the UK store follows its entrance in the musical instrument market last week.Haridwar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday voiced concern over the growing problem of substance abuse among the younger generation and said society will be “ruined" in the next 25 years if the menace was not checked.
Modi was addressing people associated with the Umiya Sansthan, a socio-religious organisation, in Haridwar through video conference on the inauguration of Ma Umiya Dham Ashram. Praising the Sansthan for according priority to social causes, he spoke of the crucial role it could play in fighting drug abuse among the younger generation and creating awareness about cleanliness and environment conservation.
Remembering how the institution had lent him a helping hand in stopping female foeticide and providing succour to quake-hit people when he had just taken over as Gujarat chief minister, Modi asked the Sansthan to save the younger generation from falling victim to substance abuse besides inspiring devotees to keep the environment clean.
“I am sharing this concern with you as someone who has grown among your midst and not as the prime minister. Considering your contribution to social causes in the past I shall appeal to you to stop the younger generation from going astray," the prime minister said.
Modi suggested that devotees coming to the ashram should be asked whether or not they had made toilets at home and offered a sapling each to plant and nurture with the same devotion which they show while worshipping Ma Umiya.
“It will help get rid of open defecation and keeping the environment clean and green," he said. He said the “dharamshala" opened by the Umiya Sansthan will tremendously boost tourism in the whole of north India especially Uttarakhand where major pilgrimages like Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri are located.
Modi said circuit tourism may be a modern coinage but the concept has been part of India’s traditions for ages as people in this country have long been undertaking long journeys to visit major centres of faith. The prime minister congratulated the Sansthan for setting up such a large dharamshala in Haridwar for devotees, saying people visiting the Himalayan shrines of Uttarakhand will benefit immensely from the facility which will boost religious tourism in the state.
He also recalled the enthusiasm with which he used to take part in Ma Umiya Devi festival celebrations as a young volunteer in Gujarat.In an election year that was supposed to be all about getting the country out of its economic doldrums, social values – mainly having to do with sex – have intruded big time. Largely, but not exclusively, it’s the realm of Rick Santorum.
In some cases (birth control vs. religious beliefs), they’ve taken firm root in the presidential election. In others (abortion and same-sex marriage), they lurk about the periphery – likely to inject themselves more deeply as the nominating process sorts itself out.
President Obama’s policy move requiring schools, hospitals, and other religious institutions to provide birth control to employees – even though it was adjusted to make insurance companies and not the institutions themselves responsible – continues to gain political traction left and right.
To conservatives, it’s all about government intrusion into religious beliefs and practices. To liberals, it’s about personal choice and women’s rights in the most private of issues.
Rick Santorum: Top 7 culture war moments
A congressional hearing this past week illustrated the heated divide. On an issue of particular importance to women, the hearing on Obama’s birth control policy, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California, began with a panel of religious leaders – all of them men.
"I look at this panel, and I don't see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning,” complained Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) of New York, one of several women lawmakers who walked out in protest.
“Where are the women?” she asked.
Meanwhile, same sex marriage was making news in three states. With a vote in the state legislature, Washington State was on track to become the seventh state where couples of the same gender could legally marry. New Jersey lawmakers approved gay marriage as well, although Gov. Chris Christie – frequently mentioned as a Republican vice presidential candidate – quickly vetoed it in favor of a voter referendum on the issue.
State legislators in Maryland Friday afternoon approved a new law allowing gay marriage, which Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley supports. Like New Jersey, opponents of same-sex marriage in Maryland vow to take it to a referendum, where – if the voting history in many other states is a guide – chances are it’ll be defeated
Abortion has been a hot-button political issue ever since the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. But it’s taken another twist lately as opponents of legalized abortion seek to change the law or at least restrict the practice.
Another Republican governor who could be the GOP’s vice presidential nominee – Bob McDonnell in Virginia – says he’ll sign just-passed legislation that would force all women seeking an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound procedure. Not only is that physically invasive and medically unnecessary, critics say, but it requires that women who decline to view the ultrasound image or listen to the fetal heartbeat have that fact recorded in their medical record.
(“I guess they were all out of scarlet letters in Richmond,” observed Slate legal affairs writer Dahlia Lithwick.)
In the presidential race, GOP hopeful Rick Santorum has been the most outspoken on such issues.
Santorum says he would bring back the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuals in the military, favors a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and has said that as president he would talk about “the dangers of contraception in this country.”
Santorum also wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. (He has said a woman who becomes pregnant through rape should "make the best out of a bad situation")
How do most Americans feel about all of this?
By about two-to-one, according to public opinion surveys, Americans do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned.
As of last year, polls began showing that a majority of Americans approve of gay marriage.
Generally speaking, birth control is mostly a settled issue too, and that includes for most Catholics. (Only two percent of Catholic women rely wholly on the “rhythm method” allowed under church doctrine.)
Regarding “religiously-affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university,” respondents to a CBS News/New York Times poll last week were asked: “Do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that their health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees?" Sixty-one percent said “yes,” 31 percent said “no.”
In their party’s primary elections and caucuses, Republicans know they face voters who are a lot more socially conservative than the general electorate. Hence the deference to “family values” positions.
But for Santorum – to his credit, say supporters – his positions on abortion, gay rights, and birth control are rock-solid and heartfelt. Still, having moved into frontrunner status, even he realizes that there are limits to what he can espouse.
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Seeking to clarify the difference between personal belief and political reality the other day he said, "My position is birth control can and should be available.”
Rick Santorum: Top 7 culture war momentsThat said, creating this run took way longer than I anticipated or care to admit. The routing alone took months before even starting the first frame of the run, and small improvements came up constantly requiring to re-do parts of it. This is submission is the fifth complete start-to-finish attempt I created, the previous four I re-did because of obvious routing improvements I noticed along the way.
The categories for Generation I of Pokémon games have shifted towards being all about the glitches, and efforts to limit which glitches are allowed to show more actual gameplay have been largely ineffective (see the current any% publication). Since I feel partly responsible for this shortcoming, I'll try with this submission to fix it.
Goal choice
The goal of this run is to collect all 150 obtainable Pokemon in both versions and obtain the diploma. No glitches are allowed.
Why glitchless?
The main purpose of this submission is to show more of the actual gameplay and variety, which remain unexplored in other categories just because using glitches is faster. The whole dual GB setup wouldn't make any sense when allowing glitches, you'd be faster just not trading at all, and end up with a solo Catch 'Em All run. And history has shown that trying to limit the amount of glitches does not work, the games are too broken and you'll always find ways around it.
Why Coop Diploma?
First of all, I think it's just a fun category, and something most people have not seen as a category. The concept has been explored before, but there was no polished route developed yet, largely because the possibilities for how to go about things are so vast. I considered doing any% glitchless at first, but the route for this is mostly fixed and everyone has probably seen it. A TAS wouldn't add much to it. In Coop Diploma, you get to do things you wouldn't do in other categories, like fishing, trading, gambling, etc. It shows off most of the things the game has to offer at some point during the run. In Coop Diploma, you get to do things you wouldn't do in other categories, like fishing, trading, gambling, etc. It shows off most of the things the game has to offer at some point during the run. Also, I always wanted to explore the dual GB capabilities of BizHawk. There aren't too many dual GB TASes around, and Pokémon Red/Blue is a game that can actually benefit from these capabilities. Having to sync the games up in the middle of the run poses an extra routing challenge. Also, I always wanted to explore the dual GB capabilities of BizHawk. There aren't too many dual GB TASes around, and Pokémon Red/Blue is a game that can actually benefit from these capabilities. Having to sync the games up in the middle of the run poses an extra routing challenge.
Emulator Choice/RantMore options: Share, Mark as favorite
It has now been a few days since a research team alerted the rest of us that Seattle’s $13 minimum wage is hurting low-wage workers more than it is helping them. The tsunami of instant reaction seems to have passed, so let’s take a broader view. What can we learn?
First, some background. Declaring that they were answering “President Obama’s call and the moral call to address the plight of low-wage workers,” the Seattle city council voted in June 2014 to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour over a period of a few years. Seattle’s minimum wage hit $13 last year (on its way to $15), and the consequences aren’t pretty.
A team of researchers at the University of Washington, led by economist Jacob Vigdor, found that the number of low-wage jobs in Seattle declined considerably as a consequence of the $13 per hour mandate. They also found that the number of hours worked by low-wage labor declined by 9 percent, while wages increased by only 3 percent. Since hours went down more than wages went up, the net result is that the amount of money earned by low-wage workers actually fell.
Read MoreLeoneda Inge reports on the Medicaid expansion discussion in North Carolina.
The head of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is speaking out in support of expanding Medicaid in the state.
Brad Wilson is President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
“As business leaders of North Carolina, you need to help us craft a solution to expand Medicaid," said Wilson.
Wilson tossed out that charge during this week’s Economic Forecast Forum in Research Triangle Park, sponsored by the North Carolina Bankers Association and the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.
Reports show 500,000 mostly low-income people in the state would have health care if Medicaid was expanded.
Reports show 500,000 mostly low-income people in the state would have health care if Medicaid was expanded. These are people who are not eligible for coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act.
Wilson told business, government and community leaders it’s time for a North Carolina solution to the Medicaid problem.
“Now people of good will can disagree over this and a lot of other subjects relevant to health care," said Wilson. "But I believe that Medicaid and expanding Medicaid is the right thing to do for North Carolinians.”
Looking at fiscal advantages
Wilson cited a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report in his speech that said there are "fiscal advantages" for states like North Carolina to expand Medicaid. He said North Carolina lost out on $1.1 billion in Medicaid funds because of the decision not to expand the program.
"That spells pain for many of our hospitals and many of our doctors," said Wilson.
Medicaid has been a touchy topic in the General Assembly. Governor Pat McCrory has moved closer to supporting Medicaid expansion, despite little movement in the legislature.
Wilson said he was encouraged to hear McCrory will use his trip to Washington, DC this week to contemplate Medicaid expansion.We all know that the goal on the green is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest putts. We also know that one-putts are good and three-putts are bad — but which is more important? That is, should you try to drain that first putt, or is it smarter to lag putts nice and close so you can avoid dreaded three-jacks? The answer could save you strokes.
Let’s first take a look at the Tour pros. From eight feet, the world’s best players one-putt half the time and average 1.5 strokes to hole out. A one-putt gains a Tour pro only a half stroke against the field, while a three-putt loses him 1.5 strokes. Ouch! The three-putt loses three times what the one-putt gains. That means avoiding three-putts should be your first order of business, right? Wrong. What’s missing in this example is the frequency of three-putts: The less it happens, the less it matters.
For the pros, getting the ball in the hole in one putt is far more important than avoiding a three-putt.
We can learn a lot from the best putters, so I gave Brad Faxon a call. From 1992 to 2002, Faxon was the No. 1 putter on the PGA Tour (see table). “I never cared about three-putting,” he told me. “I didn’t like to three-putt, but I didn’t stand over a 15-footer for birdie worrying about three-putting.”
That’s a great mindset from one of the greatest putters ever, and the stats bear Faxon out. I compared the best putters on Tour today — that is, the leaders in Strokes Gained Putting — with the Tour’s average putters. The bottom line? The very best putters have 0.6 more one-putt greens (7.5 versus 6.9 per round) and just 0.15 fewer three-putt greens (0.40 versus 0.55 per round). The elite putters gain about four times as much from more one-putts than they do from fewer three-putts. (Granted, pros rarely three-putt.)
Here’s another way to see it: The best Tour putters sink 55 percent of their eight-footers, compared with 50 percent for an average Tour putter. Five percent is a lot. The difference in three-putt rates from eight feet is just 0.2 percent (0.4 percent for the top putters, versus a Tour average 0.6 percent).
The best putters have something in common: They’re aggressive. They one-putt more often, they leave fewer putts short, and they leave slightly longer comebackers. “In my great putting rounds,” Faxon said, “I noticed that when I missed, I always had to mark the ball, because it would go far enough past the hole that it wasn’t a tap-in. I made most of those three-foot comebackers, but it always made for a little more angst than just tapping in.”
I do have some three-putt caveats. From 30 feet and beyond, the best on Tour gain more from fewer three-putts than from more one-putts. But how about better (80-shooters) and average (90-shooters) everyday players? The 80-shooters gain more from frequent one-putting than from fewer three-putts from 13 feet and in. (From 14 feet and beyond, it reverses.) Overall, for weekend golfers, about half of the gain comes from more one-putts and about half from fewer three-putts.
Takeaway 1: Get short putts to the hole. The better-putting 80-shooters leave 12 percent of their 10-footers short, compared with 17 percent for 90-shooters. [For pros, it’s only 7 percent.]
Takeaway 2: Short putts [say, three to eight feet] matter most. Better short putting leads to more one-putts and fewer three-putts.
Takeaway 3: Distance control matters. As Pat Goss, Luke Donald’s short-game coach, has said, “I don’t think there’s a more important skill in golf than controlling distance in putting.”
Takeaway 4: Compare your putting with the benchmark: 80-shooters average about one three-putt per round, 90-shooters average about two, and 100-shooters about three. If you average more three-putts than your benchmark, consider a putting lesson.Search
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only be known by a guilty person, the other five answers being equally plausible to an innocent person. Subjects who received active tDCS (anodal over the left parietal cortex coupled with cathodal over the right aPFC) were better at deceiving than when they received sham tDCS. More specifically, they were faster at lying and they reported lesser guilt. The opposite electrode montage (i.e., anodal over the left aPFC coupled with cathodal over the right parietal cortex) did not modulate deceptive behaviors (Karim et al., 2010). The effects of tDCS on other deceptive abilities were also investigated (Fecteau et al., 2013). Three kinds of stimulation parameters were compared: the anode over the right DLPFC coupled with the cathode over the left DLPFC, the opposite electrode arrangement (anodal over the left DLPFC coupled with cathodal over the right DLPFC) and sham tDCS. Main findings include that compared to subjects who received sham stimulation, those who received active tDCS (anodal over the right or left DLPFC coupled with cathodal over the contralateral region) were faster at recalling memorized untruthful answers. No change in RT was found in these subjects for providing truthful responses. In sum, although data are still limited, they suggest that NIBS may improve some deceptive abilities.
Discussion
We reviewed here studies indicating that NIBS can improve normal performance in healthy subjects (see Figure 2). Specifically, these improvements were observed for motor abilities (e.g., greater muscular endurance), attentional processes (e.g., faster threat detection), impulsive behavior (e.g., choosing more often larger, delayed rewards than smaller, immediate rewards), risk-taking (e.g., displaying more careful behaviors, diminished or increased risk-taking), memory (e.g., increased working memory load), planning (e.g., enhanced fluid reasoning), and deceptive capacities (e.g., decreased RT in providing deceitful answers).
FIGURE 2
Figure 2. Main brain areas targeted in NIBS studies inducing motor and cognitive (attention, risk-taking, planning and deceptive abilities) enhancements in healthy volunteers. L: Left; R: Right; DLPFC: Dorso Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (attention, risk-taking/impulsivity, planning and deceptive abilities); IFC: Inferior Frontal Cortex (attention and deceptive abilities); PPC: Posterior Parietal Cortex (attention); M1: Primary Motor Cortex (motor); TPJ: temporoparietal junction (working memory).
Interestingly, some of these motor and cognitive processes that can be enhanced using NIBS are already targeted in specific training programs for security purposes. Indeed, some approaches already exist to develop soldiers' motor abilities to emphasize combat readiness. Amongst them, the Army Physical Fitness Test is a common program to train physical performance in military. This program trains multimodal aspects of motor performance such as endurance, mobility, strength, and flexibility (Heinrich et al., 2012).
There are also several training programs to enhance cognitive functions for security purposes. Training attention to detect threatening stimuli constitutes one of the highest priorities for security services (see report from the Committee on Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications and Council, 2009). Airport security screening staff are trained with computer-based training programs to improve their attentional skills in order to enhance their abilities to detect threatening objects in X-ray images (Schwaninger, 2004). As previously discussed, the DAWARS Ambush! program was developed to train soldiers to accurately detect threatening objects in realistic environment. Similarly, soldiers are trained to enhance their attentional skills in shooting using the pop-up target friend or foe programs (Kelley et al., 2011). In this training program, soldiers have to shoot or refrain from shooting targets representing either friends or foes. Accuracy and RT are trained during specific shooting training. Another training consists of developing automatic behavior to reduce aversive effect of stress on performance for which cognitive control is needed (Leach, 2004). In this way, soldiers are trained to create and follow cognitive automations so-called drills (e.g., if you are under fire, you find cover; Delahaij et al., 2006). There is also The Reid training program (Jayne and Buckley, 1999), which provides interrogation and interviewing techniques seminars. The goal of this training program is to develop adaptative attentional skills, planning abilities, memory abilities, and appropriate risk-taking. In sum, several of these motor and cognitive skills, as mentioned earlier, can be enhanced with NIBS in healthy subjects. Thus, one might speculate that NIBS may be a promising neuroenhancement tool for security purposes. However, transferability and meaningfulness of these NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitations into real life situations are not clear yet.
Are NIBS-Induced Paradoxical Facilitations Transferable into Real-Life Situations?
Before proposing NIBS as a neuroenhancement tool for security purposes, we have to discuss whether these enhancements may be transferable into real-life situations. Indeed, most of the NIBS-induced facilitation data reviewed here have been collected in laboratory settings. This particular environment using rigorous scientific methods is needed to identify as much as possible the exact changes that are induced by NIBS, not only the improvements, but also potential impairments with controls conditions for instance. This represents an important step toward the development of a new neuroenhancement technique. However, if we want to use NIBS to improve functions relevant in real-life situations, we need to explore whether they can be transferred into real-life.
One avenue to further transferability is to promote the ecological validity of the experimental tasks. Several factors can be promoted to boost the ecological validity of experimental testing. A first factor is how the function is measured. Most functions are measured with computer programs. For instance, target detection can be assessed in laboratory settings using the Flanker task (Lavie and Cox, 1997). More recently, target detection has been tested in a more ecological task: the DAWARS Ambush! As mentioned earlier, this computer-based program simulates foreign countries environments to train threat detection in war situations (e.g., detect land mines or the safe hidden path used by the enemy to avoid these mines into realistic environment). The effects of NIBS on target detection using the Flanker and the DAWARS Ambush! paradigms have also been tested. Target detection was improved with active as compared to sham stimulation in healthy subjects at the Flanker task (Weiss and Lavidor, 2012) and the DARWARS Ambush! (Clark et al., 2012; Falcone et al., 2012). Another example is impulsivity. A common way to test impulsivity level in laboratory settings is with a computer-based task, the SST (O'Brien and Gormley, 2013). Efforts have been made to test impulsivity in more ecological paradigms, such as using a driving simulator (Pearson et al., 2013). The effects of NIBS have been tested on impulsivity on these tasks. Active stimulation as compared to sham stimulation can lead to lower impulsivity level at the SST (Hsu et al., 2011) and at the driving simulator (Beeli et al., 2008). Another example is working memory. A widely used task to characterize working memory and learning is the Sternberg Task. In order to assess spatial working memory in a more ecological context, performance of subjects can be assessed using map-learning procedure based on existing maps (Bosco et al., 2004). In such Street Map Task, objects are placed on a map and participants have to remember the positions of the objects. The effects of NIBS have been tested on both the Sternberg Task and a Street Map Task. Results revealed that NIBS improved working memory at the Sternberg Task (Gladwin et al., 2012) and at the Street Map Task (Floel et al., 2012). These examples are good models to follow to promote the ecological value of laboratory setting without compromising scientific methodological rigor.
In order to promote the effects of NIBS in this population, we need to test the effects of NIBS on ecological tasks and mimic as much as possible external factors that might have an impact, such as performing under stressful situations. Technological advances such as the development of immersive 3D scenarios will certainly optimize smooth translation from laboratory programs into real-life situations. A last point to discuss concerns the generalization of these NIBS-induced improvement at specific task to the whole functioning (global intelligence) as it can be the case with cognitive training (Jaeggi et al., 2010). Now, let's say that in the best-case scenario, NIBS can be transferred into real-life situations. The next question is: Are these NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitations meaningful for real-life situations?
Are NIBS-Induced Paradoxical Facilitations Meaningful for Real-Life Situations?
Throughout this paper we presented studies showing paradoxical facilitation induced by NIBS on various motor and cognitive functions. If these NIBS-induced motor and cognitive enhancements are transferable in real-life situations, another question that remains is whether they are meaningful for security purposes. Meaningfulness is defined here as the magnitude and the duration of the effects, in other words Are they big enough to have a real impact?
Magnitude of these NIBS-induced facilitations is widely variable. Although statistically significant, whether the magnitude of these enhancements is meaningful for daily-life situations is not clear yet. For instance, Pascual-Leone et al. (2012) estimated a mean reduction of 32 milliseconds from studies using NIBS to improve motor RT. In the specific context of speed shooting performances, ~13 milliseconds would be the difference between elite and rookie police officers (Vickers and Lewinski, 2012). Therefore, an improvement of 32 ms may make a vital difference in the context of a one-on-one gunfight or during aircraft combat (dogfight). This suggested that the magnitude of NIBS-induced enhancements might have a real interest for soldiers and police officers. On the other hand, the magnitude of the enhancement typically observed using NIBS are rather the same as those observed using pharmacological enhancers such as caffeine (Husain and Mehta, 2011). Duration of these NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitations is widely variable across studies, from several minutes to several months (Dockery et al., 2009; Reis et al., 2009). Duration of these effects obviously plays an important role in determining whether these enhancements are meaningful for real-life situations or determining the best timing to stimulate or re-stimulate. Even when tested in laboratory settings in which testing is rigorously controlled, the real duration of these enhancements remains uncertain.
Several factors can influence the magnitude and duration of these paradoxical facilitations, thus ultimately transferability of laboratory findings into real-life situations. These factors can be related to (1) the NIBS device, (2) the brain state, and (3) the behaviors.
(1) Factors related to the NIBS device that can influence facilitation include the stimulation parameters. These parameters such as frequency, intensity, number of pulses, and number of sessions can influence the magnitude and duration of paradoxical facilitations. For instance, Iyer et al. (2005) found greater effects with 2 mA than 1 mA on verbal fluency in healthy subjects.
(2) Brain state can also influence the effects of NIBS on paradoxical facilitation. State dependency can be defined as the baseline state of brain dealing with many factors such as fatigue, sleep, experience, and personality traits (e.g., Silvanto and Pascual-Leone, 2008; Silvanto et al., 2008). The effects of NIBS can be state dependent. One example comes from tDCS. Slow oscillatory-tDCS (i.e., 0.75 Hz) applied bilaterally over the DLPFC during slow wave sleep increased retention of declarative memory capacities (word pairs previously learned), as compared to sham stimulation. This improvement of memory capacities was associated with an increased sleep depth and slow oscillatory activity (<3 Hz), whereas the power in the faster frequency EEG bands (theta, alpha, and beta) was reduced. In contrast, with the same protocol of slow oscillatory-tDCS, but applied during the wake retention interval, there were no effects on declarative memory (Marshall et al., 2004). Thus, administrating NIBS during a specific sleep phase facilitated sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memories. This kind of result highlights the importance of state-dependency in NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitation. In other words, in order to optimize NIBS efficacy, we have to determine the best state the subject needs to be before, during and after stimulation. For instance, Kwon et al. (2013) reported that NIBS improved inhibition when it was applied while subjects performed the SST, but it had no effect when it was applied before the SST.
(3) Behavioral level at baseline can also influence the effects of NIBS on paradoxical facilitation. Even when performance of a group of subjects is considered normal, within the normal range, some subjects displayed better performance than others (e.g., normal distribution). This baseline level of performance may influence the effects of NIBS. For example, NIBS improved visual working memory skills in low performing subjects, but not in higher performing ones (Tseng et al., 2012).
Age and gender can influence behavioral performance as well as the effects of NIBS. Indeed, baseline performance can vary according to subject's age and gender. Throughout life, our skills naturally change. For example older individuals present slower RT to motion onset than younger ones (Porciatti et al., 1999). Attentional capacities also change with aging (McDowd and Craik, 1988). The same observation has been reported on planning abilities with older adults displaying worse performance at the Tower of London task than younger adults (Phillips et al., 2006). Normal aging also affects working memory. For example, it has been reported that older participants displayed both reduced accuracy and slower RT at working memory tasks compared to younger participants (Gazzaley et al., 2005). In sum, it is well-accepted that motor and cognitive performance change through aging (see review from Glisky, 2007). The influence of age on NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitation has not been however extensively investigated yet (for a review see Freitas et al., 2013). One study reported that rTMS induced greater facilitation of inhibition at the Go/NoGo task in younger than older adults (age range 28–37 years; Huang et al., 2004), whereas another study reported that NIBS led to greater improvement of motor skills in older than younger participants (age range 56–87 years; Hummel et al., 2010). On one hand, it is possible that NIBS induces larger facilitation in younger than older adults. Indeed, age was reported to correlate negatively with the duration of NIBS-induced neurophysiological effects: longer-lasting effects were found in younger than older healthy subjects. It is speculated that this change in cortical plasticity through aging is linked to normal motor and cognitive decline (Freitas et al., 2013). On the other hand, it is possible that normal performance in older individuals might be easier to improve with NIBS than in younger ones. We could call this motor or cognitive rejuvenation that is making older individuals performing as when they were younger.
Gender may also be a considerable factor when using NIBS to induce facilitation in healthy subjects. At the behavioral level, baseline performance can differ according to gender. For example, men are more accurate at a throwing task than women (Moreno-Briseno et al., 2010). Cognitive performance has also been reported different according to gender in numerous functions (for a review, see Zaidi, 2010), such as attentional inhibition (Halari et al., 2005), visual-spatial attention (Rubia et al., 2010), and spatial working memory (Duff and Hampson, 2001). The influence of gender on NIBS-induced effects has not been rigorously studied and remains to be further characterized (Ridding and Ziemann, 2010). Most NIBS studies are not specifically designed to test for gender differences. In sum, further studies are needed to characterize the real influence of several factors, including those related to the device, brain state, behavioral level at baseline, age, and gender on NIBS-induced paradoxical facilitation. Better knowledge of these factors will certainly help to smooth transferability and increase meaningfulness of laboratory setting protocols into real-life contexts.
Another way to improve transferability and meaningfulness of the NIBS induced effects might be to use NIBS as an add-on to existing training programs. NIBS may promote capacities that are critical for security purposes. Some studies reported that the combination of motor training and NIBS lead to greater motor improvements than to a single method approach (e.g., physical exercise alone; Bolognini et al., 2009; Williams et al., 2010). This has also been reported in cognition. Combining cognitive training with NIBS resulted in greater effects than single method approach (e.g., stimulation alone). For instance, the combination of a n-back training and active tDCS resulted in greater performance at the digit span task than tDCS used as a single method approach and the combination of the n-back training and sham tDCS (Andrews et al., 2011). Thus, existing programs developed for security personnel might benefit from combining them with NIBS.
Ethical Concerns of Using NIBS-Induced Paradoxical Facilitation in Healthy Subjects
Although this is out of the scope of this review paper, it is important to mention that this field—inducing paradoxical facilitations with NIBS in healthy subjects—calls for fair and well-balanced discussions on ethics. This discussion should be to some extent in accordance with lines of conduct from the use of other neuroenhancers, such as smart pills (for review Illes and Bird, 2006; Forlini et al., 2013). At this point, whether or not it is ethical to use NIBS as a neuroenhancement tool for security purposes remains an open debate. If it is, another question remains: Is it safe?
Safety Concerns of Using NIBS-Induced Paradoxical Facilitation in Healthy Subjects
There are known risks and hypothetical risks associated with the use of NIBS. These risks are reviewed by different groups on the use of NIBS (Wassermann, 1998; Iyer et al., 2005; Rossi et al., 2009). The classic protocol that is considered safe to reduce depressive symptoms in patients with major depression refractory to medications consists of delivering daily session (a session a day, from Monday through Friday) of high frequency rTMS during 3–6 weeks (O'Reardon et al., 2007). Repeated sessions are delivered in order to induce longer lasting clinical benefits. Common side-effects related to this protocol include headaches or cutaneous discomfort.
In healthy subjects, the use of tDCS has been reported to be safe with a single session in 103 subjects (Iyer et al., 2005). However, there are no safety guidelines for the administration of repeated NIBS sessions over a long period of time in healthy individuals. We cannot solely and directly derive them from safety guidelines established for clinical populations. One reason is that the effects of a given NIBS protocol known to be safe (and even salutary) in a clinical population may not be safe in healthy volunteers. For instance, delivering high frequency rTMS over the left DLPFC can alleviate depressive symptoms in patients with depression (i.e., clinical benefit), but can hinder mood in healthy subjects (i.e., would be considered as a side-effect). Hence, we must consider the possibility that a same NIBS protocol might lead to opposite behavioral effects depending on the studied populations.
Regarding the NIBS-induced enhancement studies, another important related aspect that must be taken into consideration is the possibility of incidentally eliciting other effects. For instance, in line with the zero-sum theory principle, rTMS resulted in improved detection of targets in the ipsi- or contra-lateral visual-field and in impaired detection in the opposite visual field (Thut et al., 2005; Buetefisch et al., 2011). NIBS-induced facilitation of motor function can also shift the speed/accuracy trade-off function (Reis et al., 2009; Nelson et al., 2013). This dual effect is not new, nor restricted to the use of NIBS. This speed/accuracy trade-off is commonly observed in cognitive programs (Van Veen et al., 2008). Novice inspectors of aircrafts are trained to detect defects with immersive virtual scenarios. This training leads to increased attentional accuracy, but also to increased RT to detect threatening defects (Sadasivan et al., 2005). We might not be able to prevent or minimize some of these trade-offs yet, but the benefit/risk ratio should be carefully addressed. With regards to hypothetic risks, it is also important to keep in mind some results from the animal literature. It is well-known that animal can develop an addiction to auto-electrical stimulation. This represent an hypothetical risk for humans to develop an addiction to neuroenhancers (Heinz et al., 2012).
Conclusion
In this article we reviewed experimental data supporting that NIBS can enhance motor (precision, speed, strength, acceleration endurance, and execution of daily motor task) and cognitive functions (attention, impulsivity, risk-taking, working memory, planning, and deceptive capacities) in healthy individuals. Some of these functions are already trained with existing programs for security services. It is thus tempting to speculate that NIBS may serve as a neuroenhancer tool for security purposes. However, numerous questions remain to be answered to do so. We believe that two important questions are (1) Are these paradoxical facilitations induced in laboratory settings transferable into real-life situations? and (2) If they are transferable, are they meaningful for real-life events? Furthermore, ethical and safety concerns should be carefully addressed.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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According to court documents obtained by WFSB, Newlun is accused of then removing the girl's pants and touching her while pleasuring himself.
After no longer than 10 minutes, authorities say the parents returned unexpectedly after forgetting something at the house. That's when the mother told cops she found Newlun taking a picture of the girl and then touching her |
care systems'
The number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% in the past 30 years, according to a report by researchers from Bournemouth University.
Between 1974 and 2006, the number of children aged 14 and under who are killed annually fell from 136 to 84, says the study, which was shown to the BBC ahead of publication later this year.
As a proportion of the child population, the death rate nearly halved from 32 to 17 per million children.
Prof Colin Pritchard, from the university's school of health and social care, told the BBC: "Thirty years ago England and Wales were the third or fourth highest child killers in the western world, but we're now fourth lowest.
"There's been a gradual decline in these terrible events."
The study examined nine other developed countries, with most showing similar reductions.
Spain had the lowest violent death rate, at four deaths per million children, with Italy on five.
The US figure was highest at 47 deaths per million, with Germany second highest at 21.
Pritchard said improvements in social care systems, along with a greater focus on child poverty, had helped lower the death rate.
"When these things go wrong, it is very often because the usual good working together has actually broken down," he said.Back in 2013, James Howells made headlines when the story of his missing hard drive came to light. Howells was an early Bitcoiner who mined 7,500 Bitcoins back in 2009 with his laptop – when the cryptocurrency was still easily mineable, and barely worth anything.
According to The Guardian, he mined them on a Dell laptop for over a week and stopped mining because his girlfriend complained the laptop was too noisy and hot. In 2010, he accidentally spilled lemonade on his Dell laptop, so he dismantled it for parts. The hard drive in which the Bitcoins were in were kept in went to a drawer, in which it stayed for three years, until one day he had a clearout.
When clearing out his old IT equipment, he didn’t remember the hard drive had money in it, so he just threw it away. At the time, he said “you know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself ‘that’s a bad idea’? I really did have that.” When he realized what he had done, he searched for a backup, an accidental copy, something that could give him access to the money, but didn’t find anything.
The 7,500 BTC, at the time he threw them out worth over $600,000, and at the time his story made headlines worth over $5 million, were lost in a landfill in Newport. Howells did what he could to get his money back:
I had a word with one of the guys down there, explained the situation. And he actually took me out in his truck to where the landfill site is, the current ditch they’re working on. It’s about the size of a football field, and he said something from three or four months ago would be about three or four feet down.
He was told that a scenario where even the police had to go digging would require a team of 15 including diggers with mandatory personal protection equipment. He couldn’t fund such an operation, so he resigned, and set up a wallet for donations:
Fast forward, and we’re nearing the end of 2017. Bitcoin is now worth over $9,700 and is making its way to $10,000. That hard drive, with 7,500 BTC in it, is now worth $72 million and, as far as we know, may still be out there, waiting to be found.
At the time, a Newport council spokesperson emphasized that treasure hunters wouldn’t be allowed in the landfill and that if it was easily retrieved, it’d be returned. Howells stated:
“I’m at the point where it’s either laugh about it or cry about it. Why aren’t I out there with a shovel now? I think I’m just resigned to never being able to find it.”
A cryptocurrency enthusiast
At the time, Howells still made it clear he believed Bitcoin was the future of money. Per his own words, it was going to go higher, as it was the next step of the internet. He even added: “When I first came across it, I knew straight away. We had everything else at the time; Google, Facebook, they were already the market leaders in their areas. The only thing that was missing was an internet money.”
The Twitter account associated with James Howells now shows support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency that still maintains some of Bitcoin’s early properties, in a time in which Bitcoin itself deals with a transaction backlog and high fees.
In 2013, Howells revealed he was thinking about registering a website, www.returnmyBitcoin.com, hoping someone would find the hard drive. If it hasn’t been found and isn’t broken or damaged, there’s life-changing money in it.
Featured image from Shutterstock.Citation: Krysan DJ, Sutterwala FS, Wellington M (2014) Catching Fire: Candida albicans, Macrophages, and Pyroptosis. PLoS Pathog 10(6): e1004139. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1004139 Editor: William E. Goldman, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States of America Published: June 26, 2014 This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Funding: This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, R01 AI098450 (DJK) and R01 AI087630 (FSS), and from the Strong Children's Research Center at The University of Rochester (MW). The Inflammation Program (FSS) is supported by resources and use of facilities at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Iowa City, IA. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction Candida albicans is a commensal organism of the human gastrointestinal and genitourinary systems as well as the most common human fungal pathogen [1]. The organism causes mucosal infections such as oropharyngeal or vulvo-vaginal candidiasis, but it can also cause life-threatening invasive disease. Healthy individuals readily maintain the organism in its commensal state but individuals with defects in the anti–C. albicans immune response are at high risk for developing disease. Phagocytes, particularly macrophages and neutrophils, are critical to the host's ability to prevent invasive candidiasis [2]. C. albicans poses a particular challenge to host defenses because it is polymorphic; round yeast forms and filamentous pseudohyphae and hyphae forms are all present during infection [3], [4]. Yeast and filamentous C. albicans have a number of important physiological, structural, and biochemical differences. Accordingly, the immune response to these forms differs substantially [4], [5]. The type of recognition receptors used to detect C. albicans, as well as the phagocyte type, anatomic site of infection, and course of infection, all serve to modulate the host response to the organism [2], [6]. Macrophages are particularly important because they can both limit C. albicans burden early in infection and recruit and activate other immune effector cells [4], [6]. Our understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of the interaction between macrophages and C. albicans is improving, but much remains to be learned.
What Does the Macrophage–C. albicans Interaction “Look” Like? Much of our understanding of the interaction between C. albicans and macrophages arose from observations using wide-field, confocal, and fluorescence microscopy. Macrophages readily ingest the round yeast form of C. albicans as well as relatively short C. albicans filaments [7]. After ingestion, some C. albicans are killed; however, most survive and form hyphae in response to the phagosome environment (morphogenesis) [8]. Time-lapse microscopy suggests that some macrophages are able to withstand the stress of elongating C. albicans filaments without apparent loss of integrity, whereas other macrophages that have ingested C. albicans undergo lysis [9]. As lysis is temporally linked to filament elongation, the filaments appear to puncture through macrophage membrane [2], [9], [10]. Thus, while macrophages are able to damage or kill C. albicans, the fungus also has a significant cytotoxic effect on macrophages. In addition to their role in ingestion and possible clearance of C. albicans, macrophages make a critical contribution to the innate and adaptive anti–C. albicans immune response. Macrophages produce a variety of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines in response to C. albicans; the type of response is governed both by morphology and other organisms factors as well as by the host pathogen recognition receptors (PRR) that are engaged (see PLOS Pathogens Pearls [11] and [3] or, for a more in-depth review, [4]). In particular, hyphae formation is a strong trigger for production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1β (IL-1β) [5], [12].
How Do C. albicans Filaments Kill Macrophages? Because of the visual/temporal association of intracellular filament growth with macrophage lysis, a logically appealing hypothesis is that C. albicans filaments simply grow so long that the macrophage membrane is stretched to the point of failure, resulting in lysis [2], [5]. Two additional findings support this hypothesis: First, killed or inactivated C. albicans yeast, which obviously do not form filaments within macrophages, trigger minimal levels of macrophage lysis [13]. Second, C. albicans mutant strains that do not form filaments also do not trigger macrophage lysis [10]. Despite the appealing simplicity of the physical rupture hypothesis, conflicting data has emerged. Several laboratories have identified C. albicans mutant strains that form normal hyphae within macrophages yet induce significantly lower levels of lysis [10], [14], [15]. Furthermore, recent time lapse microscopy experiments have observed “non-lytic expulsion/exocytosis,” in which C. albicans hyphae appear to be expelled from within macrophages without loss of macrophage viability [16]. Thus, hyphal formation alone is not sufficient to trigger macrophage lysis.
Are Macrophage Programmed Cell Death Pathways Activated by C. albicans? An alternative to the long-held idea that C. albicans physically destroys macrophages is that macrophage lysis in response to C. albicans is actually a macrophage-driven response. In the last decade, there has been an explosion of new data describing programmed cell death pathways in response to infection [17]. The designation “programmed” refers to cell death that is specifically induced by host-cell signaling pathways; thus, programmed cell death is host-driven. The archetypal programmed cell death pathway apoptosis may occur in macrophages responding to Candida [18]; however, apoptosis is non-lytic and cannot account for C. albicans–induced lysis. In contrast, several newly described programmed cell death pathways result in lytic cell death, including: pyroptosis, pyronecrosis, and necroptosis [17]. The most well studied of these is pyroptosis, which results in cell swelling, lysis, and release of inflammatory cytokines (see the PLOS Pathogens Pearl [19], or [20] for more detail). This pathway was originally identified in macrophages infected with intracellular bacteria such as Salmonella, Legionella, and possibly Mycobacteria. By undergoing pyroptosis, infected macrophages deprive intracellular bacteria of their immune-protected niche as well as intracellular nutrients. A critical hallmark of pyroptosis is its dependence on the cysteine protease caspase-1 [17]. Caspase-1 is activated via formation of the inflammasome, a multiprotein complex that forms in response to a variety of inflammatory signals. Inflammasome formation is initiated through activation of either a nod-like receptor protein (NLRP1, NLRP3, or NLRC4) or the absent in melanoma protein AIM2 [21]. Subsequently, the adaptor molecule ASC (apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a CARD) is recruited to the complex; this is followed by binding and activation of caspase-1. In addition to its role in triggering cell lysis, activation of caspase-1 results in cleavage of the pro-forms of the cytokines IL-1β and IL-18 into their mature forms [20]. Thus, pyroptosis is a lytic, inflammatory form of cell death. When considering the role of caspase-1 in pyroptosis, it should be noted that the caspase-1 deficient mice used in the majority of research studies are not only deficient for caspase-1 but also have a dysfunctional caspase-11 [22]. C. albicans triggers the activation of NLRP3, NLRC4, and noncanonical inflammasomes [23]–[27], suggesting that C. albicans might trigger macrophage lysis via pyroptosis. Studies from our laboratory and from Uwamahoro et al., recently demonstrated that the majority of C. albicans–induced macrophage lysis requires caspase-1 [13], [15]. We also found that NLRP3 and ASC, but not NLRC4, were required for this process [13]. Thus, host cell components are required for C. albicans–induced lysis; this would not be expected if lysis were due to physical disruption of the macrophage by C. albicans filaments. Furthermore, C. albicans-induced macrophage lysis can be substantially suppressed by the addition of glycine to the culture medium [13]. Glycine, which has no effect on C. albicans growth or filamentation, suppresses pyroptotic lysis, presumably via blocking membrane pores [28]. Taken together, these data clearly demonstrate that pyroptosis occurs in response to C. albicans via the NLRP3 inflammasome (Figure 1). Thus, most of the “cytotoxicity” seen in macrophages exposed to C. albicans is controlled not by C. albicans but rather by host cell pathways [13]. The role of other lytic programmed cell death pathways, such as pyronecrosis or necroptosis, has not been studied, and it remains possible that these pathways are also triggered by C. albicans. Nevertheless, pyroptosis appears to play a major role in the lytic response of macrophages to ingested C. albicans cells. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. C. albicans–mediated NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Upon encountering C. albicans, pattern recognition receptors (PRR) on the macrophage, such as TLR2 and Dectin 1 and 2, activate NF-κB, leading to the transcription and translation of NLRP3 and pro-IL-1β. Phagocytosis of C. albicans yeast forms triggers hyphal formation which may result in lysosomal rupture. NLRP3 inflammasome activation is then triggered through an as-yet-undefined mechanism. Although morphogenesis appears to be necessary for inflammasome activation, it is not sufficient. Activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome results in activation of the cysteine protease caspase-1, which mediates the processing and secretion of pro-IL-1β and pro-IL-18. Caspase-1 activation also induces pyroptotic cell death of the macrophage, resulting in cell swelling, DNA fragmentation, and the lytic release of intracellular inflammatory contents. Osmotic lysis of the macrophage during pyroptosis can be inhibited by the addition of extracellular glycine. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1004139.g001 Our results with mutant C. albicans strains demonstrated that pyroptotic lysis in response to C. albicans does not require hyphal formation [14]. However, we have also observed that the non-albicans Candida species and Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains that are capable of forming filaments are stronger inducers of pyroptosis than those that do not form filaments [13]. Thus, morphogenesis appears to be necessary but not sufficient for triggering pyroptosis. We expect to be able to use this set of Candida and Saccharomyces strains and mutants as a powerful tool for future investigations into the mechanisms through which C. albicans triggers pyroptosis.
How Does Inflammasome Activation Trigger Inflammation in Response to C. albicans? Another important consequence of pyroptosis is the release of IL-1β/IL-18 [20]. The finding that pyroptosis occurs in response to C. albicans is quite consistent with the ability of C. albicans to trigger IL-1β production in macrophages. Production of mature IL-1β via the NLRP3 inflammasome is tightly regulated in a two-step process: The first, or priming signal, triggers activation of NFκB and transcription of pro-IL-1β [12]. The second signal results in inflammasome assembly, caspase-1 activation, and cleavage of pro-IL-1β into mature IL-1β. As with most biological systems, the two signal “pathways” are not completely separated; priming signals also increase the level of NLRP3 [29]. Macrophages have a variety of PRR that recognize C. albicans and may provide the first or priming signal for inflammasome activation. These include complement receptors; the C-type lectins dectin-1, dectin-2 and mannose receptor; and Toll-like receptors, particularly TLR2 [3], [4], [11]. The mechanism(s) by which C. albicans provides the second signal for inflammasome activation is less clear. The NLRP3 inflammasome is activated in response to a wide range of stimuli including cellular stress, tissue damage, and many types of infection [29]. It appears that NLRP3 responds to these myriad conditions through their convergence on mitochondrial damage; potassium efflux, calcium influx and increased mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production are common triggers of activation. In addition, lysosomal rupture is required for NLRP3 inflammasome activation in response to particulate agonists. Any combination of these signals may occur in C. albicans exposed macrophages; furthermore, the mechanisms of C. albicans mediated NLRP3 activation may vary in different environmental conditions and phagocyte types. As with C. albicans–induced macrophage lysis, activation of NLRP3 was thought to occur in direct response to hyphal formation [5]. However, as with our studies on pyroptosis, our data suggests that, at least for macrophages, morphogenesis is necessary but not sufficient to trigger NLRP3 activation [14]. In addition to the NLRP3 inflammasome, C. albicans activates the NLRC4 inflammasome as well as a noncanonical caspase-8 containing inflammasome [26], [27]. Some of the variation in inflammasome responses to C. albicans may be related to the type of host cell that encounters the organism, the PRR used, and/or the type of infection. This is exemplified by the finding that NLRC4 expressed in mucosal stromal cells is important in defense against oropharyngeal candidiasis [26]. In addition, activation of the 1,3-β-glucan lectin dectin-1 on dendritic cells leads to production of IL-1β via a noncanonical inflammasome that utilizes caspase-8 rather than caspase-1 [27]. The role of caspase-8 in production of IL-1β raises particularly interesting questions about caspase activation and programmed cell death pathways as caspase-8 also has a prominent role in initiating apoptosis. Clearly, there is still much to learn about the role of cell death pathways, inflammasome activation, and cytokine production in C. albicans infections. IL-1β production in response to C. albicans is important for recruiting additional phagocytes to the site of infection and stimulating protective immune responses via the T h 17 and/or T h 1 pathway [30]. Less is known about the role of IL-18 in the host response to C. albicans, but it has been associated with recruitment of monocytes to the site of infection, the development of protective T h 1 responses, and modest increases in the ability of neutrophils to damage C. albicans pseudohyphae [30], [31]. Pyroptosis also triggers inflammation through IL-1β/IL-18 independent pathways, including production of IL-1α, HMGB1, and eicosanoids [19]; these danger signals may be important in anti–C. albicans defenses. Inflammasome activation in response to C. albicans has been implicated in elaboration of IL-6, CXCL1 (a murine chemokine similar to human IL-8), and antimicrobial peptides [26]. Furthermore, cell lysis results in global release of intracellular molecules such as ATP, DNA, RNA, which are inflammatory when found in the extracellular environment [19]. Very little is known about the role that these molecules and processes play in the inflammatory response to C. albicans, but they may represent additional mechanisms through which pyroptosis contributes to the anti–C. albicans host defense.
Summary: A New Paradigm for Host–C. albicans Interactions Although C. albicans hyphae formation clearly plays a role in macrophage lysis, the death of macrophages that have ingested C. albicans is not simply the result of the hyphae physically rupturing the macrophage [13]. Rather, the current data supports a new model in which C. albicans–induced macrophage lysis occurs via pyroptosis, a host-cell programmed death pathway. These findings represent the first demonstration that pyroptosis occurs in response to a fungal pathogen. One important question raised by these findings is whether pyroptosis is beneficial to the host, C. albicans, or both. The components of the NLRP3 inflammasome as well as IL-1β, IL-18, and the IL-1α/IL-1β receptor IL-1RI, are important for host survival from systemic candidiasis and prevention of dissemination of oropharyngeal candidiasis [12], [32]. Thus, the NLRP3 inflammasome is clearly important to the host for its role in triggering inflammation; it may also benefit the host by triggering pyroptosis. Alternatively, the host program of pyroptosis could have been “conscripted” during the evolution of C. albicans to provide a mechanism of escape from the macrophage. In that case, triggering pyroptotic macrophage lysis could be a “cost” to the host that is outweighed by the other benefits of inflammasome activation. Future studies may identify additional mechanisms of host cell death that are triggered in response to C. albicans. Indeed, it seems likely that the cytotoxic effect of C. albicans on phagocytes is a function of multiple mechanisms of cell death with factors such as phagocyte type, local environment, organism burden, and host cell activation influencing which pathway(s) is most strongly activated. Although much remains to be learned about C. albicans–triggered phagocyte lysis, the finding that macrophages are catching fire in response to C. albicans represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of C. albicans–phagocyte interactions. As therapies that modulate specific components of the immune response continue to be developed, a fuller understanding of programmed cell pathways in response to C. albicans may allow us to develop more effective treatment for this life-threatening pathogen.As soon as next Monday, the U.S. Senate may vote on whether to nix all federal funding for Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), the organization responsible for operating hundreds of reproductive health-care clinics around the country. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) have been leading a group of GOP senators in crafting and promoting legislation to "defund Planned Parenthood," which has long been a target of conservative ire because some of its clinics perform abortions.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also been backing the measure, telling The Washington Post that lawmakers are "energized and excited" about the prospect for a vote. "If we get 54 Republicans and three or four Democrats, well, that's 58 votes," said Paul. "We can build on that." Sixty votes are needed for the measure to pass.
Libertarians on all sides of the abortion debate tend to find fault with the hefty government funding Planned Parenthood receives—to the tune of more than $500 million annually, between state and federal sources. The money is mostly barred from being used for abortions, but that's not necessarily a comfort from a fiscal perspective.
Yet GOP efforts to cut back on PPFA funding will likely provide little comfort to libertarians, either. Some Republicans have been proposing that the funding not be cut but simply transferred to nonprofit "crisis pregnancy centers," which provide things like pregnancy tests, counseling, and baby clothes to pregnant women but do not offer abortions (or any sort of medical care).
Further complicating things is the fact that much of Planned Parenthood's funding comes in the form of Medicaid reimbursement. To stop Planned Parenthood from getting that money, Congress would have to bar Medicaid patients from visiting there for generally covered services such as contraception, sterilization, and HPV vaccines. Ostensibly, Medicaid patients would go elsewhere for these services, saving nothing overall while imposing an arbitrary restraint on patient choice.
Planned Parenthood was recently the subject of a sting operation designed to portray the organization's fetal-tissue collection programs as illegally profiting from the sale of human body parts. A third video from the operations was released this week, and features a woman who says she worked for a company that harvested organs from aborted fetuses provided by Planned Parenthood. Since then, Planned Parenthood says its website has been downed twice by hackers using distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order preventing the group behind the videos, the Center for Medical Progress, from releasing footage featuring executives from California company StemExpress, which provides researchers with fetal tissue; and Planned Parenthood is asking the National Institutes of Health to convene a panel to study issue surrounding fetal tissue research.
Planned Parenthood clinics don't seem to be doing anything illegal, at least not broadly. Women who have abortions may lawfully donate the fetal tissue for scientific research, and clinics are allowed to receive reimbursement for the cost of things such as storage and transportation. In 1988, the Reagan administration banned the donation of fetal tissue from elective abortions, but the moratorium was lifted by Congress in 1993 as part of the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act. Several Republicans who have recently condemned Planned Parenthood for its fetal tissue program—including Sen. McConnell—voted for the 1993 bill.
Regardless, the videos have sparked heated discussion on fetal tissue research and abortion more broadly. And Republicans quickly seized on the opportunity to push for blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving federal aid.
Hillary Clinton—who has been getting blasted by Paul for getting donations from Planned Parenthood—called the videos "disturbing," but pointed out that Planned Parenthood "has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services." Showing a bit more vim and vigor, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday tweeted: "To Republicans who are trying to defund Planned Parenthood: Good luck with that."
Never one to miss a "war on women" rallying cry, Reid added that "Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are just another GOP attack on women's health."
But Reid may be semi-right in this case. Congressional Republicans aren't really opposing Planned Parenthood funding on limited-government leanings. And while they pretend this is a blow against abortion, the money Planned Parenthood gets from the government is to subsidize non-abortion services only—things like cervical cancer screenings, STD testing, and writing birth-control prescriptions for low-income women. Some Republicans, meanwhile, want to give that money to groups that give little more than faith-based pregnancy advice.
What's more likely is a bill that simply tells Medicaid patients to stay away from Planned Parenthood clinics, and redistributes all grant money going to Planned Parenthood to other women-focused health groups. "Funds no longer available to Planned Parenthood will continue to be offered to other eligible entities to provide such women’s health care services,” Senate Republicans said in a statement.
But wait a second... if everyone is supposed to have health insurance these days, doesn't that mean everyone already has access to subsidized gynecological exams, sexual health screenings, and birth control? Indeed. Obviously not everyone has health insurance in actuality, but the client pool for free clinics that provide these services still must have shrunk in the wake of the Affordable Care Act. Allowing birth control pills to be sold over-the-counter could help shrink it further. I'm not saying the need for low-cost women's health services is now or would be nonexistent, but these organizations can (and do) also receive funding from local governments, private foundations, and religious groups.
Perhaps more diverse funding would spawn more diverse options, instead of contributing to this sort of reproductive-health monolith situation we have now. Part of the reason Planned Parenthood in particular attracts so much pro-life attention is that it's become the symbol of all abortion providers in America. Ironically, the pro-life movement helped bring about this situation. With the ever-increasing (and unnecessary) regulations abortion clinics are subject to, and the constant threat they face of being shut down by state governments, only those big and powerful enough to afford compliance and/or lawsuits have been able to survive. Taken together with its institutionalized support, its no wonder Planned Parenthood has become the what it is today.
For the record, I think Planned Parenthood clinics do a lot of good. But as a lobbying group, which it is as well, the organization has been as gross as any other, launching attacks on policies that might be good for low-income women but bad for its own bottom line. Most recently, the organization has been opposing proposals to make birth control pills available over-the-counter (OTC), asserting that this would decrease women's "access" to birth control.
It's the same strange logic seen from Democrats, who say prescription-free pills would be more expensive for women since we all get "free" birth control now under Obamacare. Of course, there's nothing saying OTC pills must come at the expense of the contraception mandate, nor that they would obviate the market for prescription pills. But what's interesting is that the liberal logic here rests on a world where all women have free access to birth control through their insurance plans—plans which would then, by definition, also cover other preventative care of the kind provided by Planned Parenthood. So which is it? Are "well-woman" services outside of the traditional doctor/insurance scheme totally unnecessary now that we have Obamacare, or an absolutely vital component to women's health?
I guess this is the point in the post where I've reached "a pox on both their houses" territory. And we can expect the political circus around this to get much worse before anything productive happens. If Senate Republicans can't get enough votes to pass the Planned Parenthood defunding bill, their counterparts in the House are threatening not to support any government spending bill that provides money to PPFA.
"Please know that we cannot and will not support any funding resolution—an appropriations bill, an omnibus package, a continuing resolution or otherwise—that contains any funding for Planned Parenthood, including mandatory funding streams," House Republicans wrote in a letter Wednesday.
We're due for the much-hyped "government shutdown" in two months if Congress doesn't pass any new appropriations bills, so Republicans and Democrats are going to have to come together on this one eventually. But I suspect we're in for a lot of hyperbolic headlines, heated abortion debates, and war-on-women rhetoric in the meantime, and—whether Planned Parenthood is eventually cut off or not—a solution that somehow perfectly maintains the status quo.Tennessee Williams, F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Cheever, Carver, Berryman… Six giants of American literature – and all addicted to alcohol. In an edited extract from her new book, The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing looks at the link between writers and the bottle
In the small hours of 25 February 1983, the playwright Tennessee Williams died in his suite at the Elysée, a small, pleasant hotel on the outskirts of the Theatre District in New York City. He was 71: unhappy, a little underweight, addicted to drugs and alcohol and paranoid sometimes to the point of delirium. According to the coroner's report, he'd choked on the bell-shaped plastic cap of a bottle of eyedrops, which he was in the habit of placing on or under his tongue while he administered to his vision.
The next day, the New York Times ran an obituary claiming him as "the most important American playwright after Eugene O'Neill", though it had been two decades since his last successful play. It listed his three Pulitzer prizes, for A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Night of the Iguana, adding: "He wrote with deep sympathy and expansive humour about outcasts in our society. Though his images were often violent, he was a poet of the human heart."
He was also a kind, generous, hard-working man, who rose at dawn almost every morning of his life, sitting down at his typewriter with a cup of black coffee to produce what would amount to well over 100 short stories and plays. At the same time, he was a lonely, depressed alcoholic who managed by degrees to isolate himself from almost everyone he loved. A sample entry from his diary in 1957 reads: "Two Scotches at bar. 3 drinks in morning. A daiquiri at Dirty Dick's, 3 glasses of red wine at lunch and 3 of wine at dinner. Also two seconals so far, and a green tranquillizer whose name I do not know and a yellow one I think is called reserpine or something like that" – an itemisation made more troubling by the fact that he was in rehab at the time.
Things got worse in 1963, when Williams's long-term partner Frank Merlo, nicknamed the Little Horse, died of lung cancer. After that, he was far gone and out, barely perpendicular against the current, buoyed on a diet of coffee, liquor, barbiturates and speed. Hardly any wonder he found speech difficult, or kept toppling over in bars, theatres and hotels. Each year he put on a new play, and each year it failed, rarely lasting a month before it closed.
Two years before he died, Williams was interviewed in the Paris Review. He talked about his work and the people he had known, and he touched too, a little disingenuously, on the role of alcohol in his life, saying: "O'Neill had a terrible problem with alcohol. Most writers do. American writers nearly all have problems with alcohol because there's a great deal of tension involved in writing, you know that. And it's all right up to a certain age, and then you begin to need a little nervous support that you get from drinking."
Tennessee Williams sitting in a bar in Turkey, c1948. He was plagued by depression and self-loathing, and yet produced some of the great American plays. Williams fought his alcohol addiction all his life. He choked to death in his hotel suite in 1983. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
While not all of this statement is wholly to be believed, it's true that Williams was by no means the only alcoholic writer in America, or anywhere else for that matter. Ernest Hemingway. F Scott Fitzgerald. William Faulkner. John Cheever. Patricia Highsmith. Truman Capote. Dylan Thomas. Jack London. Marguerite Duras. Elizabeth Bishop. Jean Rhys. Hart Crane. These are among the greatest writers of our age, and yet, like Williams, their addiction to alcohol damaged their creativity, ravaged their relationships and drove many of them to death.
Why do writers drink? Discussing Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire once commented that alcohol had become a weapon "to kill something inside himself, a worm that would not die". In his introduction to Recovery, the posthumously published novel of the poet John Berryman, Saul Bellow observed: "Inspiration contained a death threat. He would, as he wrote the things he had waited and prayed for, fall apart. Drink was a stabiliser. It somewhat reduced the fatal intensity." In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Williams explains the desire even more succinctly. Towards the end of the play, Brick, the former football hero, tells his father that he needs to keep drinking until he hears "the click…This click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful. I got to drink till I get it." Horrified, Big Daddy grabs his son's shoulders, exclaiming: "Why boy, you're alcoholic."
I was 17 when I first read that sentence, and already well acquainted with alcoholism. My mother's partner for a decade, Diana, had been a drinker, and our time together had recently ended in disaster, when the police came to our home and arrested her after a violent altercation. It wasn't just the fights that had frightened me, but rather the terrifying sense that someone was no longer inhabiting consensual reality. I was traumatised, I suppose, and it's hard to express the relief I experienced when I opened up my pale green copy of Cat and found within its pages a brave, brazen account of the role alcohol can play within a family; a |
manipulating you. Babies can’t manipulate. Babies older than six months can manipulate.
Sleep when the baby sleeps. Clean when the baby cleans. Don’t worry. Stress causes your baby stress and a stressed baby won’t sleep.
Might as well make some use of reading all those books. Here is my still-developing Guide to Baby Sleep Guides.
Concerned about your infant’s development? Check out my “I Think My Baby Has Autism: A Guide For Concerned Parents” series.When the British people voted to leave the dysfunctional European Union on June 23, 2016, I saw it as a massive opportunity for progressive forces to shed the neo-liberal chains that they have become enslaved by and narrate a new, inclusive manifesto for the future. The Brexit referendum was really a fork in the road for progressives – they could go one way and stay irrelevant and cede legitimacy to the rabid Right, or, go the other route, and reinvent themselves as the force of the future. The signs are they have opted to remain irrelevant. In doing so they have essentially conflated financial responsibility and competence with neo-liberal principles relating to the conduct of fiscal surpluses and the role of government in mediating the conflict between workers and capital. In the former sense, they have bought into the myths such as the need to run fiscal surpluses etc. In doing so, in relation to the latter, they have supported policy environments that are heavily biased in favour of capital and undermine the prospects for workers. And when the workers revolt, and, for example, use the Brexit referendum as a voice amidst their powerlessness, the progressives have turned on them accusing them of being ignorant and racist. The reality is that the lack of leadership within the political Left and their deep sense of inferiority (in the face the so-called mainstream economics experts who they mimic to sound smart) has left the door open for the Right to harness the working class anxiety and steer it in a very retrogressive direction.
The UK Guardian seems to be conducting a daily war against the Brexit outcome with its onslaught of articles each day about the doom that Britain faces if they do not reverse the decision.
In today’s edition, there are several anti-Brexit articles and in recent days we have seen predictions of that “Hard Brexit threatens global financial system”, “global economic growth at risk”, “brace for further Brexit price rises”, “UK at risk fo Brexit ‘catastrophe'” and so it goes.
The latest article (January 10, 2016) – The Brexit resistance: ‘It’s getting bigger all the time’ – is a pathetic, bleating story about Europeans who are worried they will be kicked out of Britain.
One German citizen, who has been in the UK for 10 years, didn’t take out English residency status, is now worried they will have to leave. She apparently loves England but “if the government starts throwing out EU citizens, I don’t want to live in this country any more”.
Which is a curious sort of reasoning. If the UK does act like that then what was there to love in the first place? But that is not the point anyway.
The article also questions the legitimacy of the actual referendum vote:
… a minority of the overall electorate voted to leave and that there is hardly the thumping mandate for leaving Europe some politicians talk about – and that, besides all that, Brexit will be such an economic and social disaster that it has to be avoided.
The strategy is, it seems, to throw in the disaster predictions as often as one can, even if they are not related to the point being made, which in this case was the turnout at the referendum.
When the referendum was put (June 23, 2016):
1. 17,410,742 voted to leave (51.9 per cent of the total votes cast).
2. 16,141,241 voted to leave (48.1 per cent of the total votes cast).
3. So there were 33,551,989 votes case out of 46,501,241 eligible voters – a turnout of 72.2 per cent.
4. There were 26,033 rejected ballots.
So what the UK Guardian journalist is now claiming, which is a popular refrain among those who voted to Remain, is that the Leave vote was only 37.4 per cent of the eligible electorate.
We could equally say that the Remain vote, using the same logic, was only 34.7 per cent of the eligible electorate – “hardly the thumping mandate” to stay in the EU.
We will never know how the ‘vote’ (leaning) of the 12,949,258 eligible voters who chose not to vote.
The Referendum was not binding on the British Parliament, which will have to legislate accordingly to give it operational meaning.
The notion of consent has long occupied the minds of political philosophers. The likes of John Locke, for example, argued that a citizenry is obligated to accept the dictates of the politicians only if they have given ‘free’ and ‘voluntary’ consent to the formation of that government.
In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke advanced his notion of tacit consent. He wanted to deal with the problem that not everyone actually (formally) gives their free and voluntary consent.
How does one determine whether what tacit consent is?
In the way Locke conceived it, tacit (or silent) consent means that if one accepts the benefits of government then they also accept the decisions (burdens) that government imposes on them (Second 119):
The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds — i.e., how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man that hath any possession or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth hereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it, whether this his possession be of land to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and, in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that government.
[Reference: John Locke, J. (1823) Two Treatises of Government, London: Thomas Tegg. LINK]
The hallmark of ‘democratic’ systems, where voting is not compulsory (and even when it is sometimes), people decide for whatever reason not to formally cast a vote.
Those that do cast a vote, more or less agree to accept the outcome of that vote and obey the legislation that the winning party brings in.
What about those who did not vote – the silent ones? They haven’t formally consented to anything. So do they have obligations to accept the outcome?
An application of Locke would suggest that it is the right to vote (rather than the act of voting) that creates the obligation.
Accordingly, through their silence the non-voters are giving the government tacit consent to act on their behalf.
I understand all the controversies in political philosophy about the nation of consent – when you give it etc. But the British voters who didn’t vote but could have were not forced to do that. They chose not too for whatever reason in full knowledge that the Referendum gave them a chance to formally consent to one position or another.
Locke understood that no person is obligated to accept tyranny – but the Brexit referendum was hardly that.
Of course, all of this might be moot, given that free choice implies knowledge and one can hardly impute that many of the voters knew what they were letting themselves in for – either way.
But the point is that non-voting is an action and the Remain lobby can hardly claim that the 37 per cent who didn’t vote were all in their camp.
As an interesting aside, Article 12(2) of the Rules of Procedure of the Council of the European Union (the governing body) says:
On the initiative of the Presidency, the Council may act by means of a simplified written procedure called “silence procedure” …
Which means that a “no response from a member of the Council by the time a set deadline expires implies acceptance of the adoption of the act in question”
Silence gives legitimacy. That is what John Locke’s notion of tacit consent was all about.
My view is that the Brexit vote was easily won by the Leave camp (1,269,501 votes) and the non-voters chose whatever outcome was generated in their ‘absence’.
Whether either side knew the ins-and-outs, lied, misrepresented might be an indictment on the state of British democracy but given the rules doesn’t alter the outcome.
The thing that really stands out has been the elitism of those who still want to deny the outcome.
For example, late last year (December 1, 2016), American commentator Barry Ritholz wrote “Popularism” as Farce where he intoned that:
Popularism is slowly being revealed as a farce, a grift of the uneducated, low information voter, coopted to vote in many ways against their own interests. This includes women, minorities, medicaid consumers, Obamacare subscribers.
A ‘grift’ is an American terms for swindle.
He was railing against the election of Donald Trump. As if the election of his competitor would have been a victory for the dominant elites in the financial markets etc who also swindle the common citizen.
But there is this sense that votes against the current establishment are ill-informed and cast by ignorant (poorly educated etc) voters who don’t have the same quality of judgement as the educated, middle-class who accept the advice of experts (including a raft of neo-liberal economists) that Brexit or Trump or whatever will be disastrous for the nation.
The term ‘popularism’ is now a perjorative term used by the elites to put down ordinary folk who have the temerity to vote according to what they feel and see in their own lives rather than the ‘equilibrium’ and ‘optimisation’ that the economists tell them about or the ‘growth’ and ‘jobs’ that the neo-liberal politicians tell them about.
The UK Guardian article (January 10, 2017) – One blunt heckler has revealed just how much the UK economy is failing us – by Aditya Chakrabortty (who typically makes sense), is worth reflecting on.
While the so-called ‘progressives’ point the finger at the hoy polloi as they sip another latte and suggest that popularism is a ‘right-wing’ movement built on racism and fascism, the reality is quite different, in my view.
That reality is that millions of workers are feeling let down by the system that the neo-liberals contrived to wrest any residual power that those workers enjoyed that allowed them to achieve better shares of the national growth process.
Not content with most, the top-end-of-town wanted more.
Aditya Chakrabortty’s article recycles a graphic that shows the regional growth performance in the UK since 2007. It is a salutory graphic account of why those outside of London are in the mood to take back control of their lives.
He summarises:
On statistical aggregates the UK is enjoying a recovery. But in reality this has been a recovery for owner-occupiers in London and the south-east. It has locked out those without big assets, such as the young, and those renting in the capital. It has penalised the poor. And it has impoverished those who have been forced on to zero hours or bogus self-employment.
But for the so-called ‘progressives’, the protest movement that is forming is just a snivelling mass of uneducated racists who should be silent.
I noted the other day that I have been reading about the demise of the Scottish clan system and the highland clearances, which followed the slaughter of Scots at Culloden in April 1746 and continued with the introduction of the Cheviot sheep onto the large estates (that had been amalgamated by clearing out families who had occupied the lands for centuries).
Clearing out is a really unfortunate euphemism. The traditional occupiers of the land (small farmers, crofters etc) were beaten, murdered, raped, exiled, tortured and more by the British upper class who wanted to accumulate more wealth from the land they expropriated.
The point was that the elites got away with it because the poor Scots did not have coherent leadership. They had anger, courage and resisted but their lack of strategic leadership led to their terrible demise.
The same could be said now, as the ‘popularism’ is not well thought out and the progressive side of politics has failed to step in and provide leadership to people who are the natural cohort for change but who they dismiss as mindless racists or somesuch.
Just today (January 11, 2017) there was an article in the EUObserver – The 89ers and the battle against populism – which traces the ‘populist’ backlash back to “Poorly planned globalisation, occurring from the 1980s onwards” that “has impoverished small communities whose economies long-relied on one or two old-world industries. The damage was caused not by globalisation itself, as radical leftists contend, but by the form which it took, and also its speed.”
In our new book (to be published by Pluto Press later in 2017), we argue that commentators like to conflate globalisation and neo-liberalism as if they are the same process.
But the worst damage has been done by neo-liberalism not the rising global character of supply chains and increased commerical linkages between nations.
These ‘populists’ are apparently “nationalist” and “anti-EU” and the:
… left-right divide is sliding into insignificance, with the real conflict now between those who believe in an open, free and global society; and those who do not.
So if you protest against the ravages of neo-liberalism that has led to flat real wages growth in many nations, a massive redistribution of national income away from wages towards profits, mass unemployment, rising underemployment, degraded public services etc – you just don’t “believe in an open, free and global society”.
You are just an ignorant nationalist, racist dolt.
And, you need to be saved by the so-called “89ers” – the cohort of “European citizens born around the year 1989 and growing up in a Europe that is relatively peaceful and prosperous when compared with other periods”.
This was the year that the 1987 Single Market changes forced several nations, including France and Italy to abandon capital control, which had been the only policy tool they had to help maintain domestic stability in the context of the unworkable exchange rate mechanism they were tied to.
At that point they lost their macroeoconomic freedom and biased policy towards recession.
It was the year that Jacques Delors, who had long before abandoned any pretence to holding progressive ideas, took the neo-liberal Delors Report to the Commission. It was the blueprint for the disastrous Eurozone, which was accepted a few years later at the ill-fated Maastricht conference.
The writer’s is not joking (unfortunately). The ’89ers’ are now 28 years of age. Some of them might never have worked – given the crisis began nearly 9 years ago and youth unemployment rates in some European nations topped 60 per cent and remain around 45 per cent in Spain and Greece.
The parents of the 89ers went along with the monetary union plan foisted on them by the elites who designed a system that favoured the big financial interests and the top-end-of-town but would never deliver lasting prosperity for the bottom layer of society and would eventually eat into the well-being of the middle class.
The 89ers have every reason to feel dudded by the whole show rather than being vigorous supporters of the European Union and the monetary union in particular.
At least the EUObserver author recognises that:
… the EU is no longer able to provide the prosperity and security that was once its hallmark.
And the logic according to this journalist is that because the “elders are disinclined to embrace the European spirit, the responsibility falls to the 89ers to deliver the ideas and actions that will regenerate it.”
Well, the first point that the 89ers should grasp is that there is a difference between the EU, Europe and the Eurozone. These are often conveniently lumped together to divert attention away from real debate.
If Spain or Italy leaves the Eurozone it does not cease to be European. Membership of that and the European Union is not the qualification necessary to be European.
And note the ageism in the article – “the elders” don’t like what the elites are doing to them but their children will.
If we really want to get rid of influential right-wing, xenophobic, racist political voices then leadership is required.
The reason these voices have ears listening to them is because neo-liberalism has ravaged peoples’ lives and guaranteed their children a bleak future.
That is fact – the data tells us that. The graph that Aditya Chakrabortty recycled isn’t a chimera. It is real and the manifestations of the lines in the graph impact severely on real people.
The fact that they are mobilising politically now and being diverted into other broader struggles (anti-immigration etc) reflects the total failure of the political left to lead.
The political left has been too willing to be cute and embrace neo-liberal macroeconomic narratives that they think makes them look financially competent that they have failed to see that those very same narratives are why there is a problem in the first place.
Thinking one is financially competent because they seek fiscal surpluses etc is just a sign that the Left has an inferiority complex.
There is no valid case that can be made for pursuing, for example, as a rule, a balanced fiscal outcome across an economic cycle.
Thinking that makes one sound cool and competent is a delusion.
The only way that the popularism will be channelled into progressive ends is if the Left shakes off that inferiority and starts to articulate a non-neo-liberal macroeconomics as provided by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Then people will understand that it is not that one opposes “an open, free and global society” but, rather, that national borders, which define optimal currency areas and empower the currency-issuing government to advance the well-being of all, are sensible constructs.
An open society is one where everyone has an opportunity irrespective of where you have come from. But, it doesn’t mean that everyone has the right to go to which ‘nation’ they choose.
Governments have to be entrusted with a population policy that allows the natural environment to sustainably support the social and economic settlement.
For example, Australia has a very sensitive ecology – it is an arid nation and frequently succumbs to drought. It is a large land mass that is incapable of supporting a commensurately large population.
That has to be understood.
That doesn’t mean that our government should ignore our international responsibilities to reduce poverty and hardship. But migration is only one way to pursue that objective and probably in many nations not the best way.
To say those things does not mean I oppose “an open, free and global society”. But I recognise the limits of national currency sovereignty.
They went well beyond those limits when they created the Eurozone and didn’t even try (for ideological reasons) to make the creation work properly (for example, by creating a federal fiscal capacity that is the hallmark of all successfully functioning federations).
Conclusion
The Progressive side of politics has to jettison its simplistic idea that popularism is anti-democratic and essentially racist.
In fact, the opposite is the case. It is the underlying machinery of democracies starting to work again after being muted by the self-serving manipulation of the elites.
The lack of leadership on the Left side of the debate is allowing the Right to pervert the angst that a failed, neo-liberal economic system has created among the workers.
It is not a sign that the workers are dolts, rather than the Left is gutless and riddled with inferiority complexes.
The series so far
This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book on globalisation and the capacities of the nation-state. More instalments will come as the research process unfolds.
The series so far:
1. Friday lay day – The Stability Pact didn’t mean much anyway, did it?
2. European Left face a Dystopia of their own making
3. The Eurozone Groupthink and Denial continues …
4. Mitterrand’s turn to austerity was an ideological choice not an inevitability
5. The origins of the ‘leftist’ failure to oppose austerity
6. The European Project is dead
7. The Italian left should hang their heads in shame
8. On the trail of inflation and the fears of the same ….
9. Globalisation and currency arrangements
10. The co-option of government by transnational organisations
11. The Modigliani controversy – the break with Keynesian thinking
12. The capacity of the state and the open economy – Part 1
13. Is exchange rate depreciation inflationary?
14. Balance of payments constraints
15. Ultimately, real resource availability constrains prosperity
16. The impossibility theorem that beguiles the Left.
17. The British Monetarist infestation.
18. The Monetarism Trap snares the second Wilson Labour Government.
19. The Heath government was not Monetarist – that was left to the Labour Party.
20. Britain and the 1970s oil shocks – the failure of Monetarism.
21. The right-wing counter attack – 1971.
22. British trade unions in the early 1970s.
23. Distributional conflict and inflation – Britain in the early 1970s.
24. Rising urban inequality and segregation and the role of the state.
25. The British Labour Party path to Monetarism.
26. Britain approaches the 1976 currency crisis.
27. The 1976 currency crisis.
28. The Left confuses globalisation with neo-liberalism and gets lost.
29. The metamorphosis of the IMF as a neo-liberal attack dog.
30. The Wall Street-US Treasury Complex.
31. The Bacon-Eltis intervention – Britain 1976.
32. British Left reject fiscal strategy – speculation mounts, March 1976.
33. The US government view of the 1976 sterling crisis.
34. Iceland proves the nation state is alive and well.
35. The British Cabinet divides over the IMF negotiations in 1976.
36. The conspiracy to bring British Labour to heel 1976.
37. The 1976 British austerity shift – a triumph of perception over reality.
38. The British Left is usurped and IMF austerity begins 1976.
39. Why capital controls should be part of a progressive policy.
40. Brexit signals that a new policy paradigm is required including re-nationalisation.
41. Towards a progressive concept of efficiency – Part 1.
42. Towards a progressive concept of efficiency – Part 2.
43. The case for re-nationalisation – Part 2.
44. Brainbelts – only a part of a progressive future.
45. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 1.
46. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 2.
47. Reducing income inequality.
48. The struggle to establish a coherent progressive position continues.
49. Work is important for human well-being.
50. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 1.
51. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 2.
52. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 3.
53. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 4 – robot edition.
54. Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5.
55. An optimistic view of worker power.
56. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 3.
57. Reforming the international institutional framework – Part 4.
58. Ending food price speculation – Part 1.
59. Ending food price speculation – Part 2.
60. Rising inequality and underconsumption.
61. The case against free trade – Part 1.
62. The case against free trade – Part 2.
63. The case against free trade – Part 3.
64. The case against free trade – Part 4.
65. Moving on from the post-modernist derailment of the Left.
66. The Left lacks courage and has become riddled with inferiority complexes.
The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due in 2017. The book will be published by Pluto Books in London.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2017 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.This is a story about how Bob became Calm:
Bob always tried to become the things he saw as strong or balanced. He went to business school because business, until Armageddon or the Second Coming, would always be around. He attended community developmental programs because he wanted to keep his mind sharp and learn things he previously didn’t know. He always tried to be punctual and arrive with something new, because in his eyes his being any place meant he was providing something.
And Bob did all of this to compensate for a lack of chaos he saw in himself.
On an overcast Sunday in a chilly November, Bob decided to head to the local coffee shop and grab a warm beverage and watch the other people pass by. He grabbed his messenger bag and started to walk out of his apartment as he ran into some of his floor tenants on the elevator. One of them was a girl he had recently tried to go on a date with, but was dismissed for her stating she was too busy. He nodded to her and she did the same as he passed by on his way out of the apartment complex and into the brisk breeze outside.
Bob walked a few blocks to his favorite local coffee shop and arrived to see a couple shovel in through the front door. He smiled and walked in behind them, the man holding the door for Bob.
“Thanks,” Bob said with a smile.
“Of course.”
Bob stood behind the couple as they whispered to each other what they wanted to have. Bob trailed off his view to the outside window as it began to snow gently in the soft wind. His eyes were fixed on the window as Christmas lights around the glass began to pulse and fade.
“Can I help you,” asked a somber cashier. Her facial expression was that of an unamused, elderly librarian to snickering jokes of nearby teenagers.
“Oh,” Bob spurted, “yes please. Could I have a large black coffee?”
“Yeah. Sure. $2.20, please.”
Bob fumbled out his wallet and handed the cashier a five dollar bill and told her to keep the change. She dismissed the smile he had and threw the change in a jar labeled, “TIPS are what REAL people work for.” Bob couldn’t help but smile at the thought of other workers that make tips that were surely in this establishment making his freshly-ish brewed coffee. He stood for a moment and looked at the decor he knew too well trimmed against the ceiling and walls until another despondent, skinny cashier yelled some garbled nonsense about his beverage. He raised a hand and grabbed his cup as the girl gave a forced smile and walked back to the kitchen.
Bob sighed and walked to an empty seat in the open area of the coffee shop. Few people were here, but those that were there were either couples or groups that were discussing popular topics or soft dialogues. Bob took a seat next to a table beside another window peering out to the now slow motion downpour of snow. He peeled off his bag and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. He sipped his drink and jerked at how hot it was, then smirked because he realized that he should have expected it to be hot.
Bob lifted up his head to peer around the room again and saw the couple he’d entered with secretly kissing behind a menu at their table, a group of college students discussing some particular political point of view, and the cashiers and baristas speaking to one another and scoffing at slight whispers behind hands to ears. He tapped his pen against the paper and sipped his beverage again. Slowly, he turned his head outside to look past the road and pedestrians to the park that seemed like it had a thin sheet of snow on top of it. An idea struck him and he began to write some words on the paper, slowly making sentences, then paragraphs, then pages.
Bob had sat there for a few hours until the daylight turned to night lights cast from streetlights into the coffee shop’s dim windows. He lifted his head to see the progress he’d made and decided that was enough for one night. He gathered his things together in his bag, slung it against his side, and got up to get another coffee. A different cashier stood at the counter and smiled at Bob as he approached.
“Hello sir. What can I getcha?”
“Could I please get another black coffee to go?”
“For sure. That will be $2.20.”
Bob again took out a five dollar bill and told her to keep the change. The girl beamed and then smiled at Bob.
“Thank you very much, sir. I’ll have it out for you in a moment.”
Bob nodded and the adjusted his bag as the cashier came out from the back with is beverage. She gave it to him with a wink.
“Have a good night, sir.”
“One can hope.”
Bob thanked the girl and then walked out of the coffee shop to brave the cold that struck his exposed hands and face. He sipped his beverage as he walked the few blocks home, slowly careful of other pedestrians and cars passing him by. He arrived home and entered the front door of his complex to hear a giggle emerge from the closing elevator door. He shrugged, walked to the elevator, and pressed the button for the elevator to come back down.
The door opened and Bob entered before pressing his floor button and leaning against the cold steel chassis of the elevator. The ride was smooth and as the doors opened to his floor, he saw the female that denied him making out with a man in the hallway outside her apartment door. Bob looked down and walked forward, trying not to draw attention to himself as he passed them to arrive at his door. She looked up to see Bob as he passed and pulled away for the man. She’d dug in her purse clumsily and after cursing under her breath in quick, tipsy slurs found her keys and shoved them in the tumbler. Bob looked back at her as she connected eyes with him just before pulling the man inside her apartment and closing the door behind her.
Bob again sighed, unlocked his apartment, entered his living room, and shut the door behind him as he walked to his bedroom to try and dream about something else.
And that is the story about how Bob became Calm.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
WHEN Nicolas Sarkozy first burst into the French political consciousness he was unlike any other recent leader the country had known. He dared to tell the French what they did not care to hear: that they should work more, take more risks, promote more ethnic minorities, be nicer to America. He was not afraid to roll up his sleeves, confront his opponents and court unpopularity. He balanced firmness on immigration from abroad with fairness towards ethnic minorities at home. Never a fully fledged liberal, he nonetheless had enough liberal reflexes to understand that the French could preserve the best of their way of life only through reform.
What a shrunken version of that politician now occupies the presidency. Little more than three years into his five-year term, Mr Sarkozy seems to be a shadow of the reformer he once was on economic affairs and a caricature of the tough-cop leader on social matters. He bashes capitalism with one hand and now Roma (gypsies) with the other. His popularity has collapsed, the opposition Socialists are breathing down his neck and a series of mini-scandals has damaged his standing. Even his own camp has begun to doubt that he still has what it takes to carry them to victory again in 2012.
This is what lies behind the battle over pension reform, which drew 1.1m-2.7m protesters (depending on whom you believe) onto the streets on September 7th as part of a one-day national strike. At stake is more than the sustainability of France's generous pension benefits. It is Mr Sarkozy's credibility as a leader who is still willing to take risks, and France's ability to restore its public finances and economy to health.
Impoverished ambitions
By the standards of other European countries, the French pension reform is timid. Mr Sarkozy plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to just 62, in a country where men spend six more years in retirement than the OECD average and where the state pension-fund faces a shortfall of €42 billion ($53 billion) by 2018. A bolder president would have raised the retirement age higher still. Yet, flush with the success of this week's manif, union leaders are pushing for concessions even to the current modest plan. The palaeolithic Socialists joined in the demonstrations, calling for the legislation to be thrown out and claiming that they would revert to retirement at 60 if they won the presidency in 2012. From his offices in Washington, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a potential Socialist presidential candidate and presently boss of the IMF, must have blushed as red as the banners on the boulevards of Paris.
Fear of the French street, where all great battles are won or lost, is understandable. Recent history is littered with examples of street protests that have defeated government plans: pension reform in 1995 under Alain Juppé, one of President Jacques Chirac's prime ministers; a new job contract for the young in 2006 under Dominique de Villepin, another former prime minister. The French are proud of their cradle-to-grave welfare benefits, and do not give them up without a good old theatrical fight. Their recalcitrance led Mr Chirac to conclude that they were too fragile to cope with unpopular change.
That is too pessimistic now. One encouraging trend has been a growing French acceptance of the need to adapt. The euro-zone crisis has focused minds, and even the French—or, at least, those not marching this week—know that they cannot expect Europe's new austerity to apply to everybody except them. They approve of protest: in one poll this week 70% backed the strikes. That does not, however, mean that they think the government should cave in. The same poll showed 53% thought Mr Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62 was “acceptable”. This is a turnaround from 15 years ago, when a majority wanted the government to back down.
For years the French elected politicians who were happy to sustain the illusion that generous benefits and snug protections were indefinitely affordable by building up the debts they leave to future generations. The fact that they voted for Mr Sarkozy demonstrated that they were hungry for change. But now he seems unwilling to bring change about.
The good news is that Mr Sarkozy says he will not budge on retirement at 62. Yet, no sooner had the demonstrators folded up their banners this week than he announced exceptions to the new rule, for farmers and other hard labourers. This fits a pattern (see article). Even when the president's popularity was sky-high, he tended to give too much ground in order to secure a headline-grabbing deal. More worrying, his advisers say that, once the pension plan is passed, there are no further big reforms in the diary.
The idea that France is fixed and that there is nothing useful to do for the next 18 months is preposterous. While the German economy is surging ahead, Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, recently cut the forecast for French GDP growth in 2011 from 2.5% to 2%. This will make it harder for the government to curb its deficit as promised, from 8% this year to 6% next; no French government has balanced its budget for over 30 years. The young are shut out of work because excessive rules and costs discourage employers from creating jobs. The heavily immigrant banlieues that encircle French towns are steeped in unemployment, gang violence and rage. The strengths that protected France's economy from the worst of the recession are turning into weaknesses in the recovery.
Point him in the right direction, someone
At his best, Mr Sarkozy is a thrilling politician; at his worst, a shameless opportunist who bends with the wind. His inconsistencies make it hard to know what he really wants, if he even knows himself. Before the next election there is still time for him to demonstrate the qualities that once made him so beguiling, and to reassert both his reformist streak and his previously open approach towards ethnic minorities and integration. Holding firm on pension reform would be a start.
The current, timid, reactionary Sarkozy may judge that he stands to gain little from further reform. His grander former self would decide that he has little to lose from trying either.Stop failing so fast
Sami Honkonen Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 10, 2013
Failure is becoming a value in itself. You need to have a certain amount of failed startups under your belt to be considered worthy. Unfortunately failing does not guarantee learning.
Being able to deal with mistakes in a productive manner is an essential skill. Our brain’s default threat response, fight or flight, is not especially helpful in a business context. If we learn to hinder the threat response we can see the opportunities within our mistakes.
When we learn to deal with mistakes productively they become a tool. To test an idea (or an assumption within an idea), we design an experiment, we act confident that the assumption is true and give it a shot as if we already knew it will work. If it does work, perfect. If it doesn’t, we learn from it. Rinse and repeat systematically.
Some of the assumptions we have might make or break the whole idea. Some of them, even if they turn out not to be true, we can go around. We should pick the riskiest to be tested first. This is called failing fast. We test our riskiest assumptions first so we can learn from them as fast as possible.
And this is where we seem to step astray. Failing fast doesn’t actually mean you should aim to fail fast. Failing fast is easy. It’s failing fast and well within the context of trying to succeed that matters. If you’re not even trying to succeed your experiments are meaningless.
Failing fast is not a goal, it’s a means to a goal. Failing fast simply means testing your riskiest assumptions first while aiming to succeed.The Algonquin Opens 1902The Algonquin opened on November 22, 1902. Single rooms cost $2 dollars a night while larger three bedroom accommodations cost $10. The hotel was originally planned to be residential but found short term guests to be more profitable.
The Annex 1904The two story horse stable next to the |
really pushy recruiters. Once, a recruiter called at 9:30p.m., was told not to call again because I wasn’t interested. The same guy called at 8:20a.m. the next morning about the same position. Again, he was rebuffed, and he called back again at 4p.m. that day. Who else would do that?
More recently, my wife told a recruiter that the number he was calling was hers but even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t interested anyhow. This recruiter proceeds to try to strongarm my wife into putting me on the phone, give him my new number, give him a time he could call back, and any manner of things to try to get in contact with me. He was already told I’m simply not interested in anything he has right now, yet he felt it was imperative that he talk to me. I’ve never even had a debt collector be that adamant.
My inbox is pretty consistently invaded by just utter crap from recruiters. It’s pretty easy to identify junk (“MYSQL/PHP/SCALA/JAVA/C__ - $36k SALARY - NYC —” is the most recent subject line I’ve received), but sometimes I get e-mail like “Hey I’d like to chat with you about work.” OK, great. I’m totally fine with “networking” with recruiters who actually care, but inevitably, this turns out to be a “Oh, he actually reads his e-mail” situation where they start firebombing me with “leads” every day. I try to be charitable to most of those introductory e-mails because I always hope it’s a recruiter really trying to do it right, but every time I’ve “fallen for it” it’s turned out badly.
Typically I’ll send my response, mark as spam/block the sender, and move on. But on a few occasions, I’ve had someone else in the same agency start spamming me. So, I block one person, they simply toss my address to another e-mail within their company, and start sending from that.
In one case, I’d tried to be nice to a recruiter, told her I wasn’t interested, but she continued to send “leads” my way (of the “you’d have to relocate to the middle of Tennessee or South Carolina and be paid $22k for a position requiring 5 years of Java experience” variety). Finally, I bluntly but civilly told her to never contact me again (this was pre-The Response™) and blocked her. She proceeds to e-mail me from her personal Yahoo! account yelling at me for blocking her other address, telling me I’m helping to put her out of business, and all this other crap that I can’t be hassled to remember right now. You can point to those and say “oh, those are the bad ones!” but frankly that’s how most of my interactions with recruiters go, especially when it comes to phone pushiness. The point is that this boorish behavior isn’t really abnormal. The worst part is that 3 for 3 yesterday in the recruiter responses, they all blamed me. “Well if you wouldn’t post your resume on your website, we wouldn’t e-mail you.” “If you didn’t mark yourself as ‘for hire’ on LinkedIn or WorkingWithRails, we couldn’t call you.” Are you kidding me? PROTIP: I am for hire. I run a consulting business. I’ve actually gotten 2 contracts from people pinging me from those mechanisms. I’m not going to act as if I’m full up on work just so you won’t spam me. That’s just ridiculous, self-absorbed martyrdom. Even further, just because I post some information publicly that doesn’t give you the right to spam with tenuously related information. I mean, what if I spammed you with some recruiter related product? Or what if I started a recruiter recruiting firm and just totally bombed you with e-mails about positions in it? I guarantee you’d cry foul then. It’s not very effective Recruiting as it’s currently practiced can’t possibly work very well. Maybe it does. Maybe they have enough resumes built up that they’ll get a few hits that are actually viable. I doubt that happens most of the time given the amount of repeat job spam I get, but it’s always possible. But even so, they’re not doing their job as it’s supposed to be done at all. Part of the job of a recruiter is (theoretically) screening candidates on some surface level. I did an experiment a couple of years ago by responding to 3 job spams I totally wasn’t qualified for: one was a position using R or SAS or something like that at a financial firm, one was a C++ position at a games company, and one was a low-level network engineer position at some MegaCorp™. Every time the recruiter merrily passed on my information to the client, selling me up as a great candidate, and so on. My resume said nothing about any of this stuff. No experience, no education. Nothing. So, not only are these people not good at screening candidates to spam, they’re also terrible at even telling whether a candidate is legitimate. I felt bad telling the firms they’d been duped into accepting a lead on a crappy candidate. Two of the companies never responded at all, but the MegaCorp™ HR person told me they never expected high calibre candidates from recruiters anyhow. It’s a useless industry The way it’s currently done, recruiting is totally useless. What do recruiters offer beyond what a job board posting would offer? I’d even venture to guess that a job board posting would have a better return since the people looking at it and applying are actually looking for another gig. Spam recruiters are simply leeches, middle(wo)men who take a big slice for being a reverse job board. What recruiting is supposed to be Recruiting isn’t always like this, though. In Real Recruiting™, recruiters actually spend time evaluating candidates (not just e-mailing anyone who matches some keywords), searching out people who fit the position they’ve been tasked with filling using information gathered from their own experience and their network (not just doing a Google search for a resume and passing it on), getting to know the candidates (not just merrily passing them along after the first response), and then making an informed and pointed recommendation to their client. That’s how it works in corporate America. Do you think when a big corporation decides they want to hire a new CEO that their recruiter mailbombs everyone who has CEO experience? No, they have an informed process to make educated recommendations to the board. For example, when Apple recruited John Sculley to be their new CEO, they spent a lot of time evaluating his effects on the company, what he would bring to the table, how it could shape Apple, help tame Steve Jobs, and so on. Now, granted most developer positions don’t carry that much gravity in a company, but a little consideration of the position and background of the candidate would be nice. But…but…but! When I’ve shared some of these thougts with recruiters, I often get back, “But that’s not sustainable! I don’t get paid enough for that!” Then let me be clear: Maybe you don’t have a real business. It’d be great if I could sit on the side of the road and sell small carvings I make from the rinds of watermelons, but hey that’s not sustainable either. The hard truth is that you don’t make enough to do that because you don’t offer any value beyond a job board, and job boards are cheap. I posted a job on one job board, got 20 credible leads (and about 10-15 not-so-credible ones). Would a recruiter have turned that around for less than $300? I doubt it. In this Era of the Internet, a lot of “connector” businesses are finding themselves replaced by websites these days. Phone companies are finding stiff competition requiring staff reductions for things like directory assistance, driving directions, and so on. The Internet has democratized information access and inter-personal connections to the point that middle(wo)men like recruiters are a fading industry. Want to save yourself some cash? Want a programmer that does Java? Post the job on a board and do some searching on a community site. You’ll find people who are doing interesting things and probably looking for work. Doin’ it right So, I hate blog posts that just complain the whole time and offer no concrete solutions. How can recruiters start actually offering value? Learn the industry Anyone can do what I just described above (Google and e-mail someone). The CTO, the team manager, the little HR lady who always offers you a peppermint when you visit her office, they all know how to do that. The value a recruiter can offer in knowing the tech, actually being able to evaluate candidates, talk intelligently with the client and candidates, and so on is nearly immeasurable. I really think a firm of tech-educated recruiters who have real chops (or at least some knowledge), who can connect with both sides, and can actually make educated recommendations would be a real winner. Don’t have the time or inclination? OK, understood, but then hire someone. I tell you what: Arcturo will pre-screen all your candidates for $500 (i.e., toss out actual crap) and technical screen them for $100 a pop. I’m sure a number of other firms would do the same. Even better, talk to the client’s current team or leadership about people and things they’re looking for outside the job description. I talked to a recruiter at Square who was totally doing it right. She had dug up a few people to talk to, and then she went to the team there (who would know who has good technical chops) and said, “What do you guys think?” They helped her narrow her list down, and she contacted each of these people personally. That is doing it right. Contact me like a human Don’t form e-mail bomb me. It’s just offensive that you can’t be hassled to at least compose at least a semi-personal e-mail. That carelessness was the genesis of my form response: they’re taking less than a second to compose a message to me, so I’ll afford them the same courtesy while also registering my displeasure. I’ve only gotten a single response to my form e-mail, and that was simply “OK.” Usually they don’t respond, which, to be fair, is the intended effect. But had they reached out to me like a person, made me feel like they had done any degree of research at all, had actually evaluated whether I would even fit the position at all, I would respond differently. If a recruiter has any familiarity with me at all (even “I saw your Github account” is passable in some cases), I’d be a lot more civil. The CTO at Mixbook did a great job with this. He’d looked over my blog, seen my Github, and contacted me because he thought I’d be a good fit (I’m guessing he didn’t have much success because they’ve now hired a recruiter who is spamming people like DHH). But even so, I thought that was a great approach, and were I looking for a job and to relocate, I’d have definitely responded to him. Use common sense If my resume says nothing about SAS or SAP, then why are you e-mailing me leads dealing with those technologies? If my experience listing tells you that I haven’t touched C# in any real capacity in years, then why are you e-mailing me about a “C# Expert” position (well, I’ll you why, because they’re not reading the resume, but still). Evaluate the information you have available to you before you even reach out. It’ll pay off for you. I also can’t tell you how irritating it is to get an e-mail with something like “We need a developer for a Rails project. It pays $27,000 a year with no benefits and requires at least 4 years experience with Rails and 6 in web development. Oh and you’ll need to be in (Atlanta|NYC|San Francisco|Seattle)” (not an exaggeration). Who would take that position? Sometimes recruiters need to learn to say “NO” to crappy companies trying to hire like that. Candidates would respect you a lot more if you wouldn’t toss this utter crap our way. I know right now the economy is still pretty unstable and some people would be happy to have that job, but if the requirements and the compensation don’t match up at all, then that’s a huge red flag for candidates. OK So, that’s my speel on recruiters. I’m sure I’ll be “blacklisted from [another recruiter’s] extensive network” as I was yesterday. I’m totally sure I’ll “regret saying such things in public.” OK, not really. I feel like I’m being fairly reasoned here given the amount of stupidity and abuse I’ve put up with over the years. By the way: I’m on vacation right now (thanks Tumblr post-queue!). If you e-mail, comment, tweet, etc. and I don’t respond, I’m not ignoring you. Well, I sort of am, but only because I’m probably on the beach or floating in the middle of the Caribbean. Sorry, the Internet reception’s not real good out here. permalink
Let me work on-site for you! (For a few days…) I’ve been tossing this idea around for a while, but now I’m at a point where I can actually do it thanks to things in life and business stabilizing a bit. I like to travel, I like work, and I’ve been wanting to hang out with more people in person (sitting in my office alone is great most of the time but other times it bites!), so I figure why not combine the three? The deal I come to your office and work for you for any number of days (up to 5) at a flat rate. I’ll hack on code, train your developers, pair program, fold your laundry, up vote all your Hacker News posts, make coffee, conduct dramatic readings from the Gang of Four book, whatever you want me to do. The options are (nearly) limitless. If you want just 1 day, that’s OK. I plan on giving everyone a good chunk of time before hand to familiarize myself with the code, their business, what they’ll be needing, and so on. I’m not going to walk in on the first day with no clue about your business, spend 6 hours learning stuff, 1 hour contributing, and another hour telling jokes about airline peanuts. The fee right now will be $2,000 per day, which is basically what I charge for 2 days of time right now at $125/hour. To be clear: I give you a (basically) a day’s worth of time off-site reading documentation, talking to your team, looking at your code, getting familiar with your needs and a day on-site actually doing the work. So, basically you’ll be paying what I charge for remote work, except, you know, on-site. This rate might go up in the next round, I don’t know, but since this is sort of an experiment, I figured I’d just stick with what works right now. When and how? Well, I don’t know when exactly. My plan is to go to San Francisco for a week sometime soon and work at least 4 of the days of the week. I’m also considering a run in New York City. If you want 4-5 days, we can work something out where I make a special trip just for you (possibly even to places not in NYC or SF, but we’ll have to talk about that :)), but if you want fewer, we’ll have to try to coordinate dates with others who want fewer also. So, if you’re a company in San Francisco or New York City and could use a little extra Ruby, Rails, iPhone, or whatever muscle, then get in touch. permalink
Bad (or, my unfortunately unfavorable review of Bob Martin’s Ruby Midwest keynote) Uncle Bob Martin has had a lot of influence on the software development industry over his career. His books are heralded as “landmark” and “essential tome[s].” He is credited as “legendary” (ugh) in his author biography on Amazon. I don’t doubt that he’s an incredibly smart guy from what I’ve read from him. Some of his articles are fantastic reads. But I think perhaps either I haven’t read enough to get a real impression of him, or the conference talk I recently had a chance to watch is significantly more dishonest than his writing for some reason. I was wandering down a rabbit hole of Twitter/Hacker News discussion, and I kept seeing people linking to his keynote video from Ruby Midwest 2011 as a “very important talk to watch.” I’d sat through at least one (possibly more) of his conference talks before without paying much attention (I unfortunately often find it hard to focus on conference talks), really liked what I heard at his RailsConf 2009 keynote (missed his 2010 one), and since this particular talk was relevant to what I was reading at the time, I figured I’d give it a more attentive watch. I realize I’m probably going to tick off a lot of people here, but what I heard was seriously troubling. (There’s that and he took time to correct everyone else’s talks at the start of his talk, so I figured turnabout is fair play. :)) I’d heard his talks described as “sermons” before, but I never realized how hand wavey they could be at times (at least this particular one). I had to watch it 3 times to get at his main point, which still (to my ears) doesn’t really have any evidence behind it or meat to it outside of “Uncle Bob says.” Even worse, as I was listening, I kept getting angrier by the minute at the gross mischaracterizations or downright mistruths he was spouting. The following list is just a collection of things I caught on my first couple of listens. Maybe there are more in there, but these were glaring enough to catch my attention. Assertion: Architecture is about intent, and intent should be evident when looking at a software project, so the Rails directory layout sucks. (around 11:00) He led everyone to this point by showing them blueprints of buildings, indicating that a building’s purpose should be and is evident by how it is architected. From this, he then makes the logical leap that this should absolutely be true of software, and that when you look at the top level directory of a project, the architecture should be evident, not the framework. His criticism is that when you look at a Rails application’s directories and files, you can readily see it’s a Rails application but not what the application actually does. Disregarding the fact that having standardized file placement driven by the framework is one of the biggest wins for development teams when using a framework, that’s one of the most bizarre criticisms I have ever heard in a conference talk. I have never in my career worked on a project where I could simply glance at the file layout and discern exactly what the application does. Heck, even in things like XCode or Visual Studio, where one can have a logical layout of the files with smart groupings, I haven’t been able to do that. The better question is: why would you need to? You’re a developer. You’re going to be building the project out, so you’ll figure out what the app does soon enough. What is more convenient for you: a gangly file layout/“architecture” that is non-standardized, annoying to navigate, and requires documentation for others to navigate or something standard that makes your locating files and important logic in those files that much easier? And even so, as his argument indicates even, file layout doesn’t speak to the functionality of the application. You could just as easily follow his suggestions but put different, unrelated code in the files, and you’d be in a worse position. It’s a foolish, silly criticism that probably sounded better on paper than when it came out in the talk. The worst part was that at around 28:00 he advocates an alternative directory structure based on the architecture he’s describing in the talk, which has names that are just as or even more opaque: interactors, entities, and so on. He also suggests you’d have interactor files named after use cases (e.g., create_order.rb, fill_order.rb, etc.); I would personally kill myself if I had to navigate a huge project in this structure. I get the idea here, but is the ability to quickly sort of discern what an application does worth making your developer’s life a miserable existence during the other 99.9% of the project? Who would want to figure out in which of the 500 use case files that this particular piece lived in? Nobody, that’s who. This point was one part of the talk where he totally lost me in terms of what he was actually trying to say other than “I needed 5 more minutes of material and this seems like a good place to start the rest of my arguments from.” Assertion: Views should know nothing about the business objects. (Around 32:15) Perhaps that’s his opinion on things, but if we’re going to appeal to MVC’s origins and go by standard, accepted definitions, that assertion is just patently false according to much of the authoritative MVC documentation. For example, in the paper where the terminology is finalized for MVC dated December 10, 1979, Reenskaug writes in reference to views and how they get or update data in models: A view is attached to its model (or model part) and gets the data necessary for the presentation from the model by asking questions. It may also update the model by sending appropriate messages. All these questions and messages have to be in the terminology of the model, the view will therefore have to know the semantics of the attributes of the model it represents. (It may, for example, ask for the model’s identifier and expect an instance of Text, it may not assume that the model is of class Text.) In the original vision of MVC, the model, view, and controller were separated but communicative. A view can ask request data (or update a model (Heaven forbid!), an action which he derides at about 31:45) as needed for its functionality (so long as it doesn’t violate its role in the triad). Acting as if a view should be and always has been a “stupid piece of tiny code” that is simply feed flat data that it renders is false. Assertion: You should have “hundreds” of views, not just one view. (Around 30:30) Again, he harkens back to MVC’s roots and asserts that the Rails way of having one view (the page) is wrong, and according to the original plan, you should have hundreds of views, so MVC is a flawed model for doing things on the web. And again, he is incorrect. Quoting from How to Use Model-View-Controller, a paper describing the original implementation of MVC in Smalltalk: Views are designed to be nested. Most windows in fact involve at least two views, one nested inside the other. The outermost view, known as the topView is an instance of StandardSystemView or one of its subClasses. In the original Smalltalk environments, having an overarching, top-level view for the M-V-C slice you were working with was common (and likely required in most situations). If we envision the page to be the same “object” as a window in the original implementation (which I believe is how it should be viewed), then the pattern fits quite well, especially since partials (and cells if we want to follow his assertion that all views should have an M-C piece to them) provide the same subview functionality. This fact is especially true if we get over the whole notion that the MVC pattern is a totally defined, prescribed Pattern™ that you must adhere to religiously and unwaveringly and instead take it for what it is, which is a loosely defined pattern that describes a way to reduce and manage complexity in systems (post coming about that attitude tomorrow…). Assertion: Point of writing tests first is to avoid coverage gaps (or just about anything else he said about TDD in the talk). A lot of his tangent into TDD starting at around 58:00 was silly. First, he asserts that writing tests after the fact is “a waste of time.” Granted, you’re more likely to miss some coverage if you do only that, but who doesn’t write quite a few tests after the implementation? Lay down a solid, basic set of tests covering what you’re writing, then go back and cover the edge cases when you have a clearer picture of the logic and its interactions with other pieces of the system. It’s stupid to act as if writing any tests after the implementation is useless. Secondly, he asserts that the reason everyone TDD’s is to avoid coverage gaps. Now, I don’t know what sort of Magic Double Dream Hands TDD™ he’s doing, but the only “coverage” gains you’re making by TDD'ing are the kind that don’t matter (i.e., numbers not quality). That’s great that you have 100% coverage, but are your tests actually robust? And, even further, if you’re requiring 100% coverage, are you over-testing things? (If I see a unit test for the existence of an attr_accessor or a constant value one more time, I will scream) These questions don’t seem to faze him however. TDD'ing leads to perfect coverage, which, of course, means impeccable quality tests! </sarcasm> Assertion: MVC is meant to be used in the small, so Rails does it wrong. (Around 31:30) This was probably the most frustrating point in the whole talk. He twists and contorts MVC’s role in a Rails application and then muddles the terms of architecture pattern and design pattern to forge a point that Rails usage of MVC is inherently flawed according to how the inventor intended the pattern to be used. Yes, as he asserts, MVC is meant to be used “in the small” in the sense that it takes one slice of your application, separates its concerns, and then lets you independently manage the complexity of those concerns. He is correct in that it is not necessarily an architecture pattern. But his diagram of how a Rails app looks versus this architecture he’s discussing in the talk is just simply disingenuous. https://img.skitch.com/20111231-n9qswtxgswfmmb1qq1qgj6c75y.jpg Not only does he conveniently rearrange the pieces so that it seems disjointed, he also completely pulls it out of the proper place in the architecture diagram to make it seem sloppier than it really is. Even further, Rails uses MVC in the exact way that the original creator of the pattern intended it to be used. It doesn’t use MVC to handle the entire cycle of interaction in the applicatio (f.e., it doesn’t treat the web as part of the MVC mechanism). When a request comes in (i.e., user input), the input is passed to the controller, which decides what should be done with it, how models should be updated, and which views should be rendered for that particular input from a view. This is nearly exactly how it’s done in Smalltalk, exactly how it’s been done in nearly every other implementation of MVC, and this is exactly the “small” that it’s meant to be used in. It’s not being used to build the framework (i.e., your app isn’t treated as some weird model plugged into one giant MVC mechanism or something), it’s not used as the framework/application “architecture” (that’s actually something akin to a Model2 architecture pattern), and it’s not being shoved somewhere it doesn’t belong. It’s exactly where it’s supposed to be. In reality, Rails is fairly close to the architecture he discusses. It’s not as decoupled and interface driven as he’d like it to be, but that’s the real rub with this entire talk: he’s complaining about Rails “flaws” that aren’t part of its DNA. It’s like complaining about how a sweater isn’t a very good conversationalist. He ends the talk by harping on the fact that good architecture lets you defer decisions for as long as possible. But here’s a PROTIP: if you’re using Rails, you’ve already let someone else make a lot of decisions for you. That’s kind of the point since Rails is largely a curated set of Rack extensions that help you build web applications. They’ve decided your app layout. They’ve decided you’re going to be using MVC. They’ve decided you’re going to be piping things through a router of some sort and dispatching those requests to objects. All of these decisions and many, many more are already made. So, why waste the effort to whine and complain and hand wave that it’s bad, when you’re doing it to yourself? Pick a different framework or build your own, problem solved. Seriously, wtf? Those are just the major points I had issue with. There were several other minor things that grated me: At 17:00, he makes the remark that only classes derived from ActiveRecord::Base go in app/models, not the business objects he’s describing. I know he was making a sarcastic remark since that’s a general practice he disagrees with, but it (a) fell flat because a bunch of people yelled ‘models’ when he asked the baiting question and (b) is a fairly well known fact these days you can put anything in there that’s a business object.
go in, not the business objects he’s describing. I know he was making a sarcastic remark since that’s a general practice he disagrees with, but it (a) fell flat because a bunch of people yelled ‘models’ when he asked the baiting question and (b) is a fairly well known fact these days you can put anything in there that’s a business object. Around 25:00, he takes issues with “web stuff” like session id’s and so on getting into your business logic. The problem with that is that sometimes you need that stuff. There are many times where I need to know how to handle some logic because of a header or some other payload information from the web.
Around 33:00 he makes a snide argument that “You gotta know a ton of languages to write a web app.” Seriously? You really only have to know one programming language. If you want your pages to look decent, you need to know one markup language (and optionally know a second programming language if you want some fanciness). What about desktop apps? You need to know a form designer or a mark up like XAML/WPF or how to manage frames and such in code (which isn’t any easier than just learning a stupid mark up language). The criticism is weird because the best part of the web is that we have standard, interpretable languages/mark up usable by clients that don’t require client knowledge of any specific programming language. I can write a web app in Java or Rails and the client, which could be a mobile phone, desktop computer, mainframe in the tundra of Russia, or whatever, doesn’t give a crap which one it is. That’s awesome not annoying.
Around 40:00, someone mentions they have “too many tests.” He goes on to dismiss that attitude (2 or 3 times actually) as a symptom of slow tests, and continues to point out that you should never get rid of tests, just write faster ones. I hope he’s kidding. I can tell stories of many apps I’ve inherited apps that were way overtested. I’m talking 5,000 Cucumber scenarios for an internal, non-mission critical application over-tested. I mean 22,000 unit tests for 30 models over-tested. I mean if I tweak the content of a constant array, the right tests fail, but I also have to clean 5 other tests where they simply tested the content of the array. That’s over-testing. I could rant about this for a while, so I’ll stop. :) So, seriously, what happened? I think I’m just so disappointed because I’ve seen better stuff from him, but how have people been pointing to this talk as a really important talk that everyone should watch? I get he wants us to DECOUPLE ALL THE THINGS, but do we look past all this crap to get to a point he could have made much more directly and honestly (and in only about 10 minutes)? Or am I missing some grand overarching sarcasm that has placed me in the unenviable position of being part of the conference session equivalent of Punk’d? permalink
Introducing gem_git: tiny tools for working with gems’ code via Git We’ve all been there. You’re plowing through your app, in your groove, then you notice an issue with a gem you’re using. In some cases you can work around it (or if you’re desperate/crazy, just monkey patch over it and move on), but more often than not, you want to fork and fix it and/or send a pull request back to the original author. Likewise, I’ve been hankering to hack on some open source stuff lately, and while browsing Github for stuff to hack on is cool, more usually I’m doing something and think, “Hey, it would be cool if this gem did (x)!” Tracking down a gem’s source usually isn’t terribly difficult, but it’s kind of annoying to go find the URL for the repository, pop that into my Terminal, clone it, and so on. The friction is even more irritating if after hacking a bit I decide to fork it and keep my changes separate. So I decided I’d make things a bit easier. I hacked out gem_git. Right now it’s just a couple of gem commands to help with hacking on gems. The first one is gem clone, which hits the RubyGems API to find the gem’s source and clones it. So, if you want to clone paperclip : $ gem clone paperclip Cloning paperclip from https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip... Cloning into paperclip... remote: Counting objects: 5231, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2292/2292), done. remote: Total 5231 (delta 3582), reused 4377 (delta 2822) Receiving objects: 100% (5231/5231), 798.34 KiB | 1.25 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (3582/3582), done. The next one builds on that and lets you actually create a Github fork. So if I wanted to create a fork of pakyow, I’d do this: $ gem fork pakyow Forking pakyow from https://github.com/metabahn/pakyow... Repository forked, now cloning... Cloning into pakyow... remote: Counting objects: 1109, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (461/461), done. remote: Total 1109 (delta 730), reused 977 (delta 598) Receiving objects: 100% (1109/1109), 139.93 KiB | 230 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (730/730), done. Now I have a shiny fork of pakyow for my own hacking. Right now there are no tests and pretty poor error handling, but I’ll be hacking on it over the next few days to improve that sort of stuff. Please file any bugs you find on Github Issues and I’ll get around to them. Also, be sure to clone/fork the gem and send me patches. That would be awesome. :) permalink
Attention API Provider: How to make people using your API love you At Arcturo, we’ve been working with a lot of remote API’s and big data lately. The more API’s from all over the web I work with, the more I realize how much some companies really get how to build an API that developers love and use all the time, but at the same time, I’m beginning to realize how little thought some teams really put into their API and how it will be used. I rant about this often to Ryan, so I thought I’d go ahead write up a little list of things that API consumers would really appreciate if you’re providing an API. Keep it consistent. The number one most annoying thing I’ve encountered is inconsistent treatment of API calls. For example, let’s say I’m working with an API to a library. If I pull a book from the main collection and then a book from the reserve collection, both should contain the same citation information. If both of them, from my end, look like a book but contain different information (or annoyingly differently formatted information), that’s a big usability problem. Much like we obsess over the user experience on the client side, investing time in your API’s user experience will yield big results in terms of adoption and engagement from developers. Think about what they will be doing and make the path from where they are to where they want to be as frictionless as possible. Giving me inconsistent data is a huge blocker to actually getting things done because not only am I wrestling with the data itself, I’m also trying to figure out what your assumptions about the data are and how they may affect something else I’m doing. Make it general. I can’t count how many times I’ve talked to teams who are building an API for internal use and are “just going to give people access to that.” While that turns out well sometimes, in general your internal product, case-specific logic will end up being more annoying to someone attempting to adopt it. I was working with an API once that kept returning boolean data in different ways among the different calls, and when I inquired as to why that was, I was told that their iPhone app interpreted the data one way, their internal web services another way, and the Ajax calls they were making a different way. Of course, I was building something that cross-cut all the calls used by these services, so it made my life incredibly difficult (I literally eventually built a BooleanParser class or some such silliness to handle all the different states). If you’re building an API for something internal, then keep it internal; just because you can offer an API based on some internal thing doesn’t mean you should! Keep your information up to date. Please. Please. I’m begging you. The first thing you should do after changing anything in your API is to ask “Has then been documented and/or covered in our client libraries?” Having your API documentation being out of sync with your actual running API is a death sentence. This situation is becoming more and more of a problem as more sites are adding API’s as a second thought rather than a core functionality. Go ahead and compare your average web application’s API documentation to someone like Twitter who have made their API a core competency (though I could offer them as a counter-example to that about 2 years ago…). Even more important is to make sure that the code developers are running and working with jives with what you’ve got running on your servers. If the documentation is wrong, that’s |
500-year old boyfriend”. Michael Douglas is 71 Gamble – does that make Rick 495?
I’m missing Lydia – I’m not one to throw away a friendship easily and I am not very impressed that the girls are so quick to wholly believe Susie. Yes, Lydia is ignoring me at the moment, but I am not going to jump on the hate-on-Lydia-bandwagon like the others. I want the opportunity to sit down and talk to her about how I feel even though she mocked me at Susie’s and can’t accept that she has done the wrong thing. I hope Lydia can see that she has soured the friendship between Gamble and I.
The girls started to question my faith in Lydia but I am all about second chances and making my own decisions. I’m not going to hate on her just because they have turned their backs on her. I’m clearly unimpressed with all the unreserved bitching and backstabbing. Everything that is being said about Lydia are all assumptions with no proof.
Susie’s accusation of Lydia using Gamble to get to Gina has no validity as Gamble and Lydia state they never talk about Gina. Where is Susie getting this impression from? Susie and Lydia are ferocious towards each other – taking nasty stabs at each other. Lydia’s comment on Susie’s ex-husband leaving her was below the belt as we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. It’s hilarious how Susie claims to be good childhood friends and Lydia says they were never friends. Someone is lying – it’s baseless, brainless banter.
Lydia feels that only Gina and Gamble are her friends. Lydia’s quick to cut me out and assume that I have not got her back. In fact, she doesn’t realise how loyal a friend I am even though she has hurt me. I thought our friendship meant more to Lydia than one falling-out.
Talk about bitching! Jackie just threw out accusations that Lydia was talking about everybody behind their backs but wouldn’t say what Lydia said. I don’t know what Jackie’s problem with Lydia is but you can’t blurt out accusations without backing them up. I think she was gossiping for the sake of gossiping. I’m not buying into it. Gossip club is in full swing – it was like gossiping on steroids.
Jackie’s wheel of facial expressions is like she is playing facial ping-pong with the angels. Either that, or she is constipated.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Lots of love.
Pettifleur xxxIn 2002, 59 people died after a coach of the Sabarmati Express was set on fire in Godhra
Highlights 59 people died after train was set on fire in 2002 at Godhra station High Court today refused to change verdict on 63 acquittals Of 31 convicted, 11 see their sentence reduced to life in prison
The Gujarat High Court has decided a set of appeals challenging convictions and acquittals in the case of the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra in 2002, which triggered massive communal riots across the state of Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people were killed.A total of 94 people, all Muslims, had stood trial on charges of murder and conspiracy. In 2011, a court acquitted 63 of them. The High Court today has refused to change that verdict. Those acquitted include Maulvi Umarji, accused of being the mastermind behind the fire.31 people were convicted of murder, attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy. The death sentence for 11 of them has today been changed to life imprisonment. The others remain sentenced to life in jail.In February 2002, 59 people, most of them 'kar sevaks', Hindu devotees returning from Ayodhya, died after a coach of the Sabarmati Express was set on fire at the Godhra station, around 130 km from Ahmedabad.The Muslims who were tried have always denied setting the train ablaze on February 27, 2002. The train was returning with passengers from the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya that had been demolished by lakhs of right-wing workers and volunteers in 1992. The special court, in 2011, in Gujarat ruled that the accused had conspired to torch the train.Story highlights Erdogan: US will soon have to make a choice between Turkey and Gulen
Demand comes after Turkish and Russian leaders meet in Moscow
(CNN) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to give the United States an ultimatum, demanding the extradition of a cleric he believes is behind the failed July 15 coup attempt.
Erdogan said the US would eventually have to choose between its relationship with Turkey and Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has been in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday.
"Sooner or later the US will make a choice. Either Turkey or FETO," Erdogan said, in reference to the movement headed by Gulen.
Turkey has requested Gulen's extradition, with a delegation of parliamentarians handing over dozens of boxes of documents to US officials to support its case.
President Obama has said that the cleric would only be extradited as a result of "a legal process," and if the extradition request is found to be justified according to the relevant laws and treaties.The former army chief is realigning Egypt’s foreign policy back in favor of its traditional Sunni allies.
President Abdul Fatah Sisi promised Egypt’s full support for Iraq’s embattled government on Tuesday, his office said, days after warning that the Middle East was being “destroyed” by radical Islamists.
While the extent of Egypt’s support for Iraq, which is struggling to put down an uprising by Sunni militants, is unclear, Sisi’s promise marks a complete reversal from the policy of his predecessor, the Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, whom he deposed as army leader last year.
As Egypt’s first elected president following the resignation of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, Morsi moved the Arab world’s largest country away from its undeclared alliance with Israel and the United States in favor of stronger relations with Qatar and the radical Islamist group Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood that has controlled the Palestinian enclave bordering Egypt since an election in 2006 that led to a split with the secular Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Morsi had reportedly proposed backing the largely Sunni uprising against the minority Alawite regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria but was overruled by his generals.
Since the civil war began in Syria more than three years ago, radical Islamists groups such as the al-Nusra Front — which is affiliated with the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda — and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have been among the most effective opposition forces, sidelining secular opponents of the Assad regime who are supported by the West.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also became active in neighboring Iraq, shocking its central government last month when it conquered the country’s second city, Mosul. Having rebranded itself as simply the “Islamic State,” it now control swathes of territory in an arc from Aleppo in Syria to near the western edge of Baghdad.
As Iraqi soldiers failed to fight back the insurgents, less radical Sunni militias and tribes either joined the insurgency or refused to stand in its way, seeing the uprising as an opportunity to remove Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki from power — a Shia Muslim who has consistently marginalized Iraq’s other sects since Western troops pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
On Sunday, Sisi warned that the Islamic State posed a threat to more countries in the region, claiming it had “a plan to take over Egypt.” He added, “I had warned the United States and Europe from providing any aid to them and told them they will come out of Syria to target Iraq then Jordan then Saudi Arabia.”
Sisi himself was able to come to power in no small part due to the perceived sectarian tendencies of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood which failed to respond to the concerns of secular Egyptians and Copts after winning free parliamentary and presidential elections.
The former army chief’s realignment of Egyptian foreign policy signals a return to normalcy for majority Sunni states in the region, most notably Saudi Arabia, that have complained of a lack of support from their American allies. The Saudis in particular regarded warily America’s outreaches to the Muslim Brotherhood after the fall of their ally Mubarak and see the radicalization of the opposition movements in Iraq and Syria as vindication of their policy.
Saudi Arabia has given money and weapons to Salafist jihadists in Syria who rival the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood while fighting the forces of Assad — who is an ally of the kingdom’s nemesis, Iran.Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has developed a consistency over the years of its lifetime in that the later episodes in the season almost always beat out the beginning in terms of quality.
And after a slow start in the Ghost Rider arc of the series, things have picked up with the Life Model Decoy storyline. Unfortunately, as it heads into its third and final ‘pod’ of episodes, it will be taking a long break before picking back up.
After this week’s episode—called “Self Control”—airs on February 21, the show will be off the air for six weeks, returning on April 4th with the as-of-yet untitled episode 04x16. The last pod of episodes would carry the show to a May 16th season finale, if they air without a break.
So expect the LMD storyline to wrap up on the upcoming episode, even if it doesn’t get a neat-and-tidy resolution. It should set up the next slate of episodes, which Chloe Bennet recently stated will make fans “sh*t themselves.” The latest episodes promises to be heavy on the FitzSimmons action, as the rest of the team has been replaced by LMDs. How will the scientific couple solve the latest conundrum? We’ll have to wait and see on Tuesday when Agents of SHIELD airs.
SHIELD IS OVERRUN BY LMDs; THERE IS NO ONE TO TRUST - Suspicion turns to paranoia when the team doesn’t know who can be trusted as more LMDs infiltrate SHIELD. The regular cast features Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons, Henry Simmons as Agent Alphonso “Mack” MacKenzie, and John Hannah as Holden Radcliffe. The guest cast includes Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez, Jason O’Mara as Director Jeffrey Mace, Mallory Jansen as Aida 2.0, Briana Venskus as Agent Piper, Maximilian Osinki as Agent Davis, Zach McGowan as The Superior, Ricardo Walker as Agent Prince, and Cantrell Harris as Agent Fisher.TYPO Talks Berlin — A Short Summary DESIGN | TYPEFACES
TYPO Talks happened a couple of weeks ago in Berlin, and as usual there was no shortage of epic talks about design, creative thinking, and of course, the typographical life. Over the course of three days there were plenty of talks and workshops to attend, some of which happened simultaneously and therefore making it impossible to attend them all (I'm still struggling with FoMO on this one).
However, the folks at TYPO are slowly writing about a few of the talks on their blog, which I'll quote in this section and link up the references.
Viktoriya Grabowska: New life for a forgotten typeface and tactile alphabet for the blind. On one of my favourite talks, Viktoriya talked about her attempt to bring back an alternative tactile typeface to life for blind people. Based on standardised letter forms, her typeface enables sighted people to read it, while doing the research at the same time of its effectiveness. "Since there is an internationally established writing system for blind people, it begs the question what the need of this typeface is. Viktoriya pointed out that this typeface is not only readable by blind people but also by sighted people which would create a shared platform for both parties to communicate.
Although this typeface uses the advantages of being readable for sighted people, it is not meant to be a substitution for Braille. It’s merely used as an educational tool to teach the standardised letter forms to the blind. The main reader audience consists of blind and sightless children. As of right now it is tested in different institutions for blind children in Poland. It can also be useful for adults, as letterforms are forgotten over time without using them." This image shows an attempt at solving the problem with diacritics in Braille:
Read the full article here. Now moving on to another favourite and super interesting talk, we had Sofia talking about the pains of diacritics, and how most commercial typefaces actually get them wrong:
Sofia Oslilo: The way out from the diacritical misery Polish designer Zofia Oslislo began her presentation with a portrait of the father of diacritic characters – Czech reformist Jan Hus. Hus dealt with reform of written Slavonic language for several years of his professional life. The date of his death, 1415, hints at the solutions being quite outdated.
She presented the Insects Project, an incredibly detailed study and analysis of diacritics history, rules and evolution. And the best of all, this is condensed in a free e-book that you can and should download and study for your own nerdy, typographic delight!
Government of Dubai and Monotype: The Dubai Font Project This talk was fascinating, and I believe it will be online very soon, but Nadine Chahini talked us through the process of developing a type design system for the city of Dubai. City branding is one of my subject topics, so I'm partially biased towards these insights, but these thoughts were quite interesting: Creating a type design for the city of Dubai means one thing only — giving a voice to a culture through its own typography. It seems to be the ultimate way of expressing culture, this is about creating an identity as its finest.
The bottom line is, whether or not you are a fan of guidelines within your branding campaign, branding evolved big time.
To echo the theme from the morning talk, brands should be seen like a system. They need to work from the bottom up. They need to work from the bottom source. They need to work from people and customer perspective not the other way around.
Keep reading →Andrew Voss takes a look at Jarrod Croker's points scoring prowess, scrum wins against the feed, the Sharks' lethal back three and Retro Round on Fox Sports.
How many points will Jarrod Croker score in his career?
With an injury-free run, this Goulburn junior is on track to become the NRL's greatest ever points scorer.
This week we should all stand up and cheer his first goal against Souths as Jarrod will pass 200 points for the season, having scored 50 points more than the next highest in the competition (Croker 198, James Maloney 148).
After last week's hat-trick and 18-point haul against the Warriors he took his career numbers to 94 tries in a tally of 1,326 points from 182 matches.
This means he has a points per game average of 7.3. He is still only 25 years old.
The greatest points scorer of all time, Hazem El Masri, accumulated 2,418 points in 317 career games at an average of 7.6 per match. Hazem notched an incredible 159 tries along the way. If Croker was to play 300 games in his career, he too will top the 150-try milestone on his current strike rate.
What a great success story!
Scrum wins against the feed... you're joking, right?
I can't let the events of Sunday at Cronulla pass without comment, because we can't have a scrum won against the feed in the manner the Sharks did pop up on a bigger occasion down the track.
If you missed it: Wade Graham while packing stretched his leg across and heeled the ball back from a Knights feed. Play was allowed to continue, and Cronulla scored in the corner. Can you just imagine if this was the last five minutes of the grand final?
Let's go through this comedy of errors and infringements that, it has to be said, we have created with our total neglect and apathy towards the scrum.
First up, Newcastle's hooker Danny Levi fed the scrum. He did what all halves do these days and put it in at right angles straight to the second row.
Sharks second-rower Graham packed in at prop, as also happens these days, and produced the shock tactic of heeling the ball back which was picked up by fullback Ben Barba who was at lock in the scrum.
Here is the list of offences from the Sharks that we just turned a blind eye to. Props cannot strike for the ball until the hooker does. Heeling the ball from the second row is feet across the scrum. The Sharks back row in the scrum breaks apart before the ball is even out.
Take your pick on the penalty offence or at the very least repack it.
How lethal are the Sharks back three?
In terms of tries, the answer is extremely!
I am in a comparison mood this week, so let me break down what Ben Barba, Valentine Holmes and the underrated Sosaia Feki have achieved so far this year.
The trio have combined for 41 tries in 2016. That's equal with the entire Dragons side and three more than the entire Knights side.
And here are the lofty benchmarks they are set to pass.
The dazzling Canberra back three of 1994 that read Brett Mullins, Ken Nagas and Noa Nadruku posted 45 tries.
The all-star Broncos three of 2000, Darren Lockyer, Wendell Sailor and Lote Tuqiri managed 47 tries.
From the Storm back three in 2007 of Billy Slater, Israel Folau and Steve Turner there were 48 tries.
Barba, Holmes and Feki are poised to smash those figures with weeks to spare.
Who wins in Townsville this weekend?
What a match. Put me down next to the Melbourne Storm, and I probably would be tipping them even if Johnathan Thurston was playing.
This Storm defensive record in 2016 hasn't happened by accident. Not that the Cowboys defence is all that bad either, but Craig Bellamy's men are closing in on a season record in the NRL era.
Their game average through 20 rounds is now down to a phenomenal 11.56 points conceded. The two teams fought out a thriller in Round 10 at Suncorp Stadium with the Storm getting home 15-14.
It is likely to be just as close this Saturday night, but I fancy the same team will win.
Why will finishing fourth be better than finishing third?
This is the way things are panning out for a likely first week of the finals draw, and it is not meant as disrespectful to Cronulla.
But if things stay as they are with the Sharks first, Storm second and Cowboys third, it will mean 1st v 4th will be at a neutral venue in Sydney, while 2nd v 3rd will be in Melbourne, where the home side has lost only once this year.
If the Cowboys were to somehow snatch second spot, then a home final in Townsville would hardly be attractive to the third-placed team, with North Queensland nine from nine at home so far this season.
Take your pick if you are the away team. Where would you rather play: Sydney, Melbourne, or Townsville?
Would you like to go retro?
If the answer is yes, make sure you tune into Fox Sports rugby league coverage as we'll be strolling through memory lane on all five days of football in Round 21.
And Retro Round can mean whatever you want it to depending on when you first started following this great game.
We'll relive plenty of classic moments, characters and characteristics of the sport that has changed so much decade by decade.
From Blocker Roach patting Eddie Ward on the head, to a Charlie Frith big hit, to the magic sponge and players using sand rather than kicking tees for shots at goal. Let's celebrate rugby league!
Giddy Up!
Twitter: @AndrewVossyShare. Plus, how time travel is introduced to the series. Plus, how time travel is introduced to the series.
Warning: Spoilers for The Flash through the midseason finale follow, along with speculation and theorizing on what's to come.
The Flash midseason finale "The Man in the Yellow Suit" concluded with a significant reveal: Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) in possession of the Reverse-Flash costume - which obviously seemed to indicate he was in fact Reverse-Flash. Of course many of us felt that there must be more to the story. Sure it had been clear that Wells was up to something, what with the walking around, looking into the future, manipulating the present, and apparent ruthless disregard for human life of it all. Yet, as the biggest bad that Barry would face -- and given Eddie Thawne's (Rick Cosnett) role in the comics as Professor Zoom/Reverse-Flash -- it seemed impossible that the series would offer up as simple an answer as Wells' reveal as the villain.
Exit Theatre Mode
The Simple Explanation...
“ There is obviously a big surprise regarding Tom's character, but there are even more surprises to come.
After all that, at today's TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour, Cavanagh said definitively that he was "the man in the yellow suit."
"Yes, I am Reverse-Flash," the actor confirmed. Case closed, right? Not quite yet.
It looks like there may be a possibility of more than one Reverse-Flash - and/or the show could be introducing Professor Zoom as a separate character. When asked for clarification on Eddie's role in the show, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg said, "Rick Cosnett very amazingly plays Eddie Thawne. And his name is not an accident. That is going to pay off big time in the back half of the year."
IGN was able to catch up with Kreisberg following the panel to ask for clarification.
"Eddie has a strong connection to the Reverse-Flash," the producer said. "I don't want to spoil anything, but you're going to start to get the gist of it pretty early on. In episode 15, you get a pretty big clue."
He added, "Episode nine really changed everything. Some of the things, like Barry telling Iris he loved her -- obviously that's going to change their lives -- but there are things that happen in nine where even the characters don't realize how much is about to change. There is obviously a big surprise regarding Tom's character, but there are even more surprises to come."
Is Wells An Absolute Villain?
“ Everything he does, there are two agendas.
Cavanagh has talked about his character as having layers and dual motivations. His task as an actor, he explained, is often to build in multiple meanings to what's being said. For example, when he says that he'll see Oliver Queen very soon - it's loaded with implications.
Yet, he seems almost obsessively focused on helping Barry to reach his full potential.
"He obviously wants something from Barry," Kreisberg told IGN when asked if Wells is motivated by a desire to see Barry become The Flash at any cost. "What that is is part of the big surprise in the back half of the year. But it's what makes writing him the most fun. He's always put in a position of, 'Is what I'm about to do or are my actions going to further my own agenda, or is it for the greater good and helping the city?' So I think that's why Tom has so much fun playing the character and why we have so much fun writing the character. Like he said, everything he does, there are two agendas, and making sure that everyone else's agenda doesn't override his own. That's his chief job."
What Happened The Night Barry's Mom Died?
“ You'll definitely get the answers.
It's become clear that there we two Speedsters present the night that Barry's mother was murdered - one yellow, and one red. The mystery of who each of these men are is going to come to the forefront as the season progresses.
"Joe and Cisco are actually going to launch an investigation into what really happened that night," Kreisberg told IGN. "It's funny, every couple of episodes you get a giant piece of the puzzle. So hopefully people won't feel like we're dragging it out for too long. We watched a cut the other day, and Greg and I were both like, 'Oh my God, I forgot that happens in episode 13!' So yeah, we are definitely going to find out what happened that night. What's fun is, we're going to keep seeing that event from lots of people's points of view.
"There were other people there that night," the producer continued. "There was Barry's mother, Barry's father, the two Speedsters. So getting to see that night from different perspectives, it's funny, because the actors keep coming back, and they have to keep playing the scene over and over again but in slightly different ways. We see things that we didn't see the first time, or we see things leading up to it or the aftermath. So that event is obviously the seminal event in the history of the series. But you'll definitely get the answers."
Adding fuel to the "multiple Reverse-Flash" fire, Kreisberg told EW that, “We’re going to see what happened that night from the Reverse-Flash’s point of view."
Yet when asked if that meant Wells, he clarified, "I didn’t say it was from Wells’ point of view, I said it was from the Reverse-Flash’s point of view.”
The Weather Wizard Will Introduce Time Travel
One key ingredient to this story is the existence of time travel. When a reporter asked how it will appear in this world, Kreisberg said, "Definitely by accident. There's an unexpected, accidental time travel coming up, that is played for both hilarity and darkness. It happens in an episode we're really excited about. It's the first Weather Wizard episode with Liam McIntyre."
We will keep you updated as details emerge.
The Flash returns Tuesday, Jan. 20 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.Check out our Halsey Street story map for more articles and previews in this series, and stay tuned to Facebook, Twitter, and our homepage for updates on new stories.
It’s mid-November in Newark, and Kai Campbell is getting ready to realize a dream: the opening of his and his wife Tamara’s new burger joint on his beloved Halsey Street.
That makes Campbell, a third generation Newarker, just the latest small business owner to launch a venture on Halsey Street, a corridor that, thanks in part to its prime location sandwiched just east of University Heights and west of Broad Street, has become a hub of downtown redevelopment.
“It was always my intent to save where I’m from,” said Campbell in an interview conducted in late October, as he oversaw construction at Burger Walla, the Campbells’ unique burger spot. Burger Walla opened its doors to the public with a soft launch on December 2.
Campbell, 33, is a University of Virginia graduate who has spent much of his post-collegiate life trying to bring big businesses to his hometown. He’s held several economic development jobs with the city, and was also was the former Senior Associate of Real Estate for Brick City Development Corporation. “I’ve met with every major retailer you can think of,” he said of his quest to bring business to the city.
Now he’s bringing business in a different way — by launching one himself. Along with his wife, Campbell also runs NewarkPulse.com, a local website that mainly focuses on positive news stories in and around Newark. They’re a true family about Newark: in addition to publishing about the city and launching a business here, Campbell, his wife, and their toddler and newborn live in town, as well.
One factor that can make it tough to attract businesses to Halsey Street and downtown Newark, Campbell said, is that they see Rutgers and NJIT as commuter schools, and consequently assume the coveted student population does not venture past Washington Street. But Campbell thinks Halsey Street is a good investment, and that he can get students to consistently cross that invisible border. “This is the epicenter of where development can take off,” Campbell said.
Social media users review Burger Walla
Thus Burger Walla, an Indian-influenced burger joint that serves everything from beef burgers and flat grilled hot dogs to shrimp and chicken burgers infused with Indian spices. The restaurant also offers an Indian drink called a “lassi,” akin to a traditional milkshake. “Instead of using ice cream, we’re going to use yogurt,” said Campbell.
Why Indian-inspired fare?
For one, Campbell loves Indian food, and he believes others who haven’t yet tried it will love it too if they give it a chance. “People don’t know that they like Indian food,” he mused. “I think by me putting a twist on burgers, which everybody can recognize, I think they’ll be more receptive to Indian food,” he added.
Campbell said the restaurant’s Indian elements are authentic. “I’ve flown halfway around the world to go to a single Indian restaurant before,” he said. In addition, his wife Tamara Campbell is of Indian descent.
The menu is also infused with a couple tastes of New Jersey and the couple’s beloved Brick City: Best hot dogs, Boylan sodas (Best Provision recently celebrated its 75th anniversary in Newark; Boylan Bottling Company was born in New Jersey over a century ago.)
In addition to offering unique food, the Campbells are also looking to infuse their restaurant with a distinct culture fit for a popular neighborhood hangout spot. Campbell said he hopes Burger Walla’s ambiance will keep college students and other community members coming back. “Every Monday night we’re going to be showing independent films,” he said. Along with the movie nights, they also plan to offer viewings of sports events, outdoor dining — weather permitting — and live music.
Find Burger Walla on Facebook and Twitter for updates on events, and check their website for the restaurant’s menu and blog.
Leave a comment
commentsAs secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely had the maid at her Washington D.C. residence access and print information and documents sensitive to the U.S. government, including at least one classified document, according to a report from the New York Post.
According to the Post, Clinton would receive sensitive information from her top aides at the State Department and in turn ask them to forward the messages, and any attached documents, to her maid, Marina Santos, where they would then be printed out.
However, Santos, according to the Post, does not have a security clearance.
More from the Post:
Among other things, Clinton requested Santos print out drafts of her speeches, confidential memos and “call sheets” — background information and talking points prepared for the secretary of state in advance of a phone call with a foreign head of state. “Pls ask Marina to print for me in am,” Clinton e-mailed top aide Huma Abedin regarding a redacted 2011 message marked sensitive but unclassified. In a classified 2012 e-mail dealing with the new president of Malawi, another Clinton aide, Monica Hanley, advised Clinton, “We can ask Marina to print this.” “Revisions to the Iran points” was the subject line of a classified April 2012 e-mail to Clinton from Hanley. In it, the text reads, “Marina is trying to print for you.” Both classified e-mails were marked “confidential,” the tier below “secret” or “top secret.”
According to the report, Huma Abedin, Clinton's right-hand-woman, also told the FBI that Santos had access to the SCIF — which is a highly secured room where diplomatic can set up — in Clinton's D.C. residence.
From within the highly secured room, Santos would retrieve classified documents for Clinton that came through the secured fax line.
More from the Post:
Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.
However, despite the FBI knowing about Santos' access to Clinton's classified information, the Post reports that the FBI never asked Santos in their investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server to turn over the computer she used to print out the documents or the documents themselves.
In fact, the FBI never even interviewed Santos as a key witness in their investigation, according to the Post.
Still, Santos could be the person that brings Clinton down because, according to the Post, Santos may know where the missing computer and flash drive that contain a backup of Clinton's email server is located."By singling out LGBT people for disfavored treatment and explicitly writing discrimination against transgender people into state law, H.B. 2 violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the U.S. Constitution," the lawsuit argues.
AP / Ted Richardson North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory
Three individuals and two LGBT advocacy groups early Monday morning filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the recently passed North Carolina law that nullified local LGBT rights ordinances and restricted transgender people's access to restrooms. "By singling out LGBT people for disfavored treatment and explicitly writing discrimination against transgender people into state law, H.B. 2 violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the U.S. Constitution," the lawsuit argues.
The complaint argues the law violates people's equal protection, privacy, and liberty rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and their civil rights under Title IX of the Education Act of 1972. The lawsuit is asking for a declaratory judgment that the law violates the Constitution and Title IX and an injunction against enforcement of the law. The case was filed overnight in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina on behalf of Joaquín Carcaño, a transgender man who works at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Payton Grey McGarry, a transgender man who is a student at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro; and Angela Gilmore, a lesbian who is the associate dean for academic affairs at North Carolina Central University. Also named as plaintiffs are the ACLU of North Carolina and Equality North Carolina. The defendants include Gov. Pat McCrory, Attorney General Roy Cooper, and the University of North Carolina and several of its senior officials. The lawsuit was assigned to Judge Thomas D. Schroeder, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal, and Equality North Carolina are all backing the litigation. On March 23, Republican state legislators convened a one-day legislative session to pass House Bill 2 with the explicit goal of overriding an ordinance in Charlotte. The city ordinance would have protected LGBT people from discrimination in housing and public accommodations.
McCrory, Republican legislative leaders, and Christian conservatives had claimed the public accommodations portion of the Charlotte ordinance posed a safety threat by allowing transgender women — whom they called “men” — to prey on women and girls, especially in bathrooms.
To negate the city's ordinance, the new North Carolina law decrees that local jurisdictions may not extend protections to classes of people not already covered by the state. The state law approved Wednesday provides "equal access to public accommodations" based on various characteristics — including race, religion, color, and biological sex. However, the law omits coverage based on sexual orientation or gender identity and specifies that designating bathrooms based on "biological sex" is not discrimination.
The lawsuit argues that the new law denies LGBT people equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment because the new law was designed to single LGBT people out for discrimination and less protection. "H.B. 2 was motivated by an intent to treat LGBT people differently, and worse, than other people, including by stripping them of the protections afforded by the City of Charlotte’s Ordinance and precluding any local government from taking action to protect LGBT people against discrimination," the lawsuit alleges. By doing so, it continues, "H.B. 2 imposes a different and more burdensome political process on LGBT people than on non-LGBT people who have state protection against identity-based discrimination." The new state law also mandates that single-sex restrooms and locker rooms in public schools and government buildings only be used only by those who have a corresponding sex listed on their birth certificate. In detailing the consequences of these provisions, the lawsuit states, "The only restrooms on the floor where Mr. Carcaño works at UNC-Chapel Hill are designated either for men or for women. There are no restrooms in the building where Mr. Carcaño works that are not designated either for men or women. All the restrooms in the building are multiple occupancy." The lawsuit continued: "If Mr. Carcaño could not use the men’s restroom at UNC-Chapel Hill, he would have to leave campus and find a local business in order to use the men’s restroom; or he would have to locate a restroom not designated for either men or women elsewhere on campus." The lawsuit argues that the new law violates the rights of transgender people under the Constitution and existing civil rights laws because it denies those students access to school facilities that reflect their gender identity. "H.B. 2’s discrimination against transgender people based on sex is not substantially related to any important government interest," the lawsuit argues in discussing the constitutional claim. "Indeed, it is not even rationally related to any legitimate government interest." It also asserts that the law violates Title IX as to Carcaño and McGarry. For example, the lawsuit alleges that the law denies McGarry "the benefits of, and subjects him to discrimination in educational programs and activities at Defendant’s constituent campus, UNC-Greensboro, 'on the basis of sex'" — a violation of Title IX. Under President Obama, federal agencies have interpreted Title IX — which bans discrimination in publicly funded schools on the basis of sex — to ban transgender discrimination as a form of sex discrimination. While some individual school districts have fought back against the federal interpretation of the law, North Carolina is the first state to enact a law banning transgender students from school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
The lawsuit also alleges two additional constitutional violations regarding the "biological sex" bathroom restrictions of the law: first, a violation of the plaintiffs' right to privacy; and, second, a violation of the plaintiffs' right to "liberty and autonomy in the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment."BEIRUT, LEBANON (4:35 A.M.) – The Foreign Secretary for the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, told the British House of Commons on Tuesday that he |
gear controversy, warriors wear helmets that, yes indeed, have horns on them.
And do you know what? It matters not one jot.
‘The Girl Who Died’ is an episode that looks beyond fixed historical truths to find the truths in the fictions we tell ourselves. It’s a witty episode that cares more about the representation of Vikings in popular culture – from Flash Gordon to Noggin the Nog – than it does about historicity.
It cares about Doctor Who too, taking time to celebrate the programme’s own myths: whether it’s the one about the lonely wanderer in space and time, or the one about the face he found himself wearing, and where he saw it before…
In this, it feels like the next logical continuation of the Capaldi era: a period that has seen the programme increasingly willing to revivify its own past – wearing its Troughton trousers with pride; doffing its cap to the funny-discomfiting eccentricities of the early Tom Baker years.
That’s not to say that ‘The Girl Who Died’ doesn’t take us to fresh places: Vikings, remarkably, haven’t formed the basis of a Doctor Who story since 1965’s ‘The Time Meddler’. Still, there’s something especially familiar about the characterisation of the Doctor here.
Like Pertwee’s Doctor, famously, in ‘The Daemons’, he is keen to refute the existence of the supernatural – and even paraphrases Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
There are dialogue nods, too, to both ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ and ‘The War Games’ – the kinds of thing that were once called ‘kisses to the past’ and now feel like a joining up of dots to find a consistency in this character who is, in so many ways, so changeable.
Why Moffat and Mathieson are able to do this is, in part, because Capaldi is a Who fan, but, rather more, because he is an actor of natural gravitas who lends himself to the kind of grown-up dialogue that is the polar opposite of more ‘humany wumany’ offerings.
The ongoing storyline of Clara’s increasing callousness in the face of death and danger gets another airing and is treated with a tender delicacy from Capaldi’s Doctor that suggests he cares because she chooses not to. He’s a dab hand with the farce too, commandeering a makeshift squad of Viking warriors in a manner that’s more Captain Mainwaring than Erik the Red.
Mathieson and Moffat know where to get their laughs – this cannot be a surprise. But what’s more impressive is the way dialogue is used to build worlds, singing with a lyricism that comes directly out of the situation: a Viking community for whom sagas and story-telling are the things that give their culture meaning.
It’s always pleasing to watch a Doctor Who story that salutes the power of words to shape experience because it feels, instinctively, so right: so right for this character who favours puns over guns, and so right for this programme too, which is, at its best, a celebration of creativity.
‘The Girl Who Died’ wears its heart on its sleeve, and declares that its sympathies are with the outsider, the introvert and the dreamer.
And at the heart of all this is Maisie Williams’s character: the self-same character who has been slow-burning the internet ever since she was first heard to utter, ‘What took you so long, old man?’
It’s a lovely performance – you’d expect no less from Maisie – and one which is worthy of the unique place which this character has in this story and, it seems, this season. If the opening scene of ‘The Girl Who Died’ leads you to expect a sassy genre mash-up, we end in quite a different place, with a CGI directorial flourish that is as impressive as it is quietly intriguing.
Oh, and just for the avoidance of doubt, we end with three words too: ‘To Be Continued…’
Airs at 8.20pm on Saturday 17 October 2015 on BBC One.
> Buy Season 9 on DVD on Amazon.
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Are you looking forward to the episode? Let us know below…
> Here’s everything we know about Season 9 so far.The Central Intelligence Agency, PayPal, and hundreds of other organizations are under an unexplained assault that's bombarding their websites with millions of compute-intensive requests.
The "massive" flood of requests is made over the websites' SSL, or secure-sockets layer, port, causing them to consume more resources than normal connections, according to researchers at Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer security collective. The torrent started about a week ago and appears to be caused by recent changes made to a botnet known as Pushdo.
"What do I mean by massive? I mean you are likely seeing an unexpected increase in traffic by several million hits spread out across several hundred thousand IP addresses," Shadowserver' Steven Adair wrote. "This might be a big deal if you're used to only getting a few hundred or thousands of hits a day or you don't have unlimited bandwidth."
Shadowserver has identified 315 websites that are the recipients of the SSL assault. In addition to cia.gov and paypal.com, other sites include yahoo.com, americanexpress.com, and sans.org.
It's not clear why Pushdo has unleashed the torrent. Infected PCs appear to initiate the SSL connections, along with a bit of junk, disconnect and then repeat the cycle. They don't request any resources from the website or do anything else.
"We find it hard to believe this much activity would be used to make the bots blend in with normal traffic, but at the same time it doesn't quite look like a DDoS either," Adair wrote.
Security mavens aren't sure what targeted sites can do to thwart the attacks. Changing IP addresses may provide a temporary reprieve. Adair asks those with better mitigation techniques to contact him. The Shadowserver advisory is here. ®By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
Washington (CNN) - Addressing his large, mostly black congregation on Sunday morning, the Rev. Wallace Charles Smith did not mince words about where he stood on President Barack Obama's newly announced support for same-sex marriage: The church is against it, he said, prompting shouts of "Amen!" from the pews.
And yet Smith hardly issued a full condemnation of the president.
"We may disagree with our president on this one issue," Smith said from the pulpit of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington. "But we will keep him lifted up in prayer.... Pray for President Barack Obama."
And Smith said there were much bigger challenges facing the black community - "larger challenges that we have to struggle with" - bringing his full congregation to its feet, with many more amens.
Days after Obama announced his personal support for same-sex marriage, pastors across the country offered their Sunday-morning opinions on the development, with the words of black pastors - a key base of support for Obama in 2008, that is also largely opposed to gay marriage - carrying special weight in a presidential election year.But black pastors were hardly monolithic in addressing Obama's remarks.
In Baltimore, Emmett Burns, a politically well-connected black minister who said he supported Obama in 2008, held an event at Rising Sun Baptist Church to publicly withdraw support from the president over Obama's same-sex marriage support.
CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories
"I love the president, but I cannot support what he has done," Burns said at the church.
In an interview with CNN, Burns predicted that Obama's support for legalized same-sex marriage would lead to his defeat in November.
The Rev. Calvin Butts, an influential black pastor in New York City, did not endorse Obama's views but denounced those who are ready to "watch others be discriminated against, marginalized, and literally hated in the name of God."
"Our God is love," he said.
And like Smith in Washington, plenty of black ministers talked about distinguishing between opposition to same-sex marriage and views about Obama.
"I don't see how you cannot talk about it," the Rev. Tim McDonald, based in Atlanta, said earlier this week. "I have to. You can say I'm opposed to it (same-sex marriage), but that doesn't mean I'm against the president."
Though African-Americans provided Obama with record support in 2008, they are also significantly more likely to oppose same-sex marriage than are whites. That may be because black Americans are more likely to frequently attend church than white Americans.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in April found that 49% of African-Americans oppose legalized same-sex marriage, compared with 39% who support it. Among whites, by contrast, Pew found that 47% supported gay marriage, while 43% opposed it.
African-American pastors have been prominent in the movement to ban same-sex marriage. In North Carolina, black leaders helped lead the successful campaign for a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage and domestic partnerships.
In California, 70% of African-Americans supported Prop 8, the 2008 state gay marriage ban, even though 94% of black voters in California backed Obama.
McDonald, who founded a group called the African-American Ministers Leadership Council, says he opposes same-sex marriage, but that he is more concerned about issues such as health care, education and jobs.
But he says more black pastors are talking about same-sex marriage than ever before. "Three years ago, there was not even a conversation about this issue," McDoland says. "There wasn't even an entertainment of a conversation about this."
In Atlanta, at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church - where Martin Luther King Jr. got his start - the Rev. Ralph Warnock addressed the president's remarks near the end of his sermon.
"The president is entitled to his opinion," Warnock said. "He is the president of the United States, not the pastor of the United States."
Warnock said that there is a place for gays in the church, and that "we don't have to solve this today."
Black churchgoers on Sunday appeared split on same-sex marriage, though many of those opposed to it said they still supported Obama.
"It's a human rights issue, not a gay issue. All people that pay taxes should get... the same privileges and rights," said Terence Johnson, a congregant at Salem Bible Church in Atlanta.
At Shiloh Baptist in Washington, Shauna King said she does not support same-sex marriage, but that she respects the president's decision on it.
"I think he was very honest in what he was saying and personally he decided to do that," said the 38-year-old mother of two. "As individuals, we all have to make that decision for ourselves."
"I believe it speaks to what America is," she said. "That we all have different views and are respected for our views individually."
Black opposition to same-sex marriage has dropped dramatically in recent years. In 2008, Pew found that 63% of African-Americans opposed gay marriage, 14 percentage points higher than the proportion who expressed opposition this year.
On Friday, a handful of black leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and former NAACP leader Julian Bond, released a letter supporting Obama's position on same-sex marriage but expressing respect for those who disagree.
"The president made clear that his support is for civil marriage for same-sex couples, and he is fully committed to protecting the ability of religious institutions to make their own decisions about their own sacraments," the letter said.
"There will be those who seek to use this issue to divide our community," it continued. "As a people, we cannot afford such division."
But the letter itself was an implicit acknowledgement of discord within the African-American church community on gay marriage.
Black pastors who preach in favor of same-sex marriage know they may pay a price if they take Obama's position, says Bishop Carlton Pearson.
The Chicago-based black minister says he lost his church building and about 6,000 members when he began preaching that gays and lesbians were accepted by God.
"That's the risk that people take," he told CNN. "A lot of preachers actually don't have a theological issue. It's a business decision. They can't afford to lose their parishioners and their parsonages and salaries."
Pearson navigates the tension between the Bible's calls for holiness and justice this way: "I take the Bible seriously, just not literally," he says. "It's more important what Jesus said about God than what the church says about Jesus."
In Obama's interview with ABC this week, in which he announced his personal support for same-sex marriage, the president talked about squaring his decision with his personal religious faith.
"We are both practicing Christians, and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others," Obama said, referring to his wife, Michelle.
"But, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule," he said. "Treat others the way you would want to be treated."
- CNN’s John Blake, Chris Boyette, Meridith Edwards, Dan Merica and Stephanie Siek contributed to this report.It's the time of year to roll up your sleeve and feel the pinch, in hopes of warding off a nasty case of the flu.
Ottawa Public Health (OPH) will hold its first community flu clinic of the season in Kanata on Saturday, followed by numerous other opportunities to get the vaccine throughout the region in the weeks to come.
"The best protection we have against the flu is the influenza vaccine," said Dr. Geneviève Cadieux, OPH's associate medical officer of health.
"It's important to get it early because it takes around two weeks to get immunity to the influenza virus," Cadieux said.
Targeting specific strains
Supplies of this year's flu vaccine are stored at Ottawa Public Health. (CBC News) As in past years, scientists have attempted to come up with just the right combination of ingredients to combat the flu virus, often with varying degrees of success.
This year's vaccine is designed to protect against influenza A(H3N2), influenza A(H1N1) and influenza B, according to Ottawa Public Health. The vaccine for children, who are more susceptible to the flu, has an additional influenza B strain.
Ottawa Public health confirms seven cases of flu have been reported already this season, compared to three this time last year.
Cadieux said it's too early to determine whether Ottawa will experience a tough flu season, but the "best guess" can be based on flu outbreaks in other parts of the world.
"What we've heard from Australia, they had a year with a lot of hospitalizations and fatalities, and they also had a lot of flu cases."
Flu symptoms, complications
The flu typically starts with high fever, headaches and muscle pain, progressing to a sore throat and cough, usually lasting around seven to 10 days. In severe cases the virus can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, and can result in hospitalization or even death. The elderly and those already suffering from chronic health problems have a higher risk of suffering serious consequences from the flu.
Dr. Geneviève Cadieux of Ottawa Public Health says there's 'no crystal ball' to predict the severity of this year's flu season. (Sandra Abma/CBC) "It's important for you to get the flu shot so you can protect those people who are more at risk for complications," said Cadieux.
Public clinics
Saturday's clinic will be held at All Saints Catholic High School at 5115 Kanata Ave., from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Local pharmacies and family doctors are also giving out the flu shot.
Other OPH clinic hours and locations include:Firefighting vehicles all seem to follow the same formula: big, red trucks that all looks the same. Jalopnik readers found ten blaze-extinguishing rigs that don't quite fit the mold.
Welcome back to Answers of the Day — our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
Now, before we go on, we want to give a little shout-out to something adorable that's not going to make the cut. This wonder is reportedly the world's smallest fire truck, operating in Nobleton, Ontario.
We struggle to believe it does anything other than look adorable and go on parades, but it's pretty fantastic.
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The rest of the vehicles on this list are authoritatively used for fighting fires and responding to emergencies, and they spend more time looking absurdly awesome than absurdly adorable.
Did we forget any crazy firetrucks on this list? Let us know in Kinja below.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
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10.) The Littlest Working Firetruck
This is a six-wheeled Polaris ATV designed for getting into remote, mountainous places, we assume. According to its for-sale listing it has a "75 Gallon Water Tank [and a] 5 Gallon Foam Cell with Foam Nozzle." What do you think, is the $37,500 price worth it for the littlest working firetruck you've ever seen?
Suggested By: Smithoeaneous, Photo Credit: Fire Truck Mall
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9.) Atlanta Fire Rescue Colet K-15 Jaguar Crash Truck
The Atlanta airport started using this thing in the mid-1990s. It's a Colet K-15 Jaguar crash truck, designed for high-speed response to fires. The top speed is no less than 83 miles an hour. Check out the awesome fighter jet-style cockpit, too.
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We want one.
Suggested By: SoberMan, Photo Credit: Colet SVD
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8.) Rolls-Royce Firetruck
You know your town is rich when you have a Rolls-Royce for a fire engine. This Phantom II was drafted into service in 1930.
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Suggested By: eNZo288, Photo Credit: Historical Fire Engines
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7.) Chinese Jet Truck
Take one Youngman truck and shove a jet engine on top and you have this thing. It shoots water right out of that jet nozzle, which is pretty intense. Car News China reports that it can shoot "four tonnes of water every four minutes over 120 meters," and suspects the engine comes out of the Chinese version of the Soviet MiG-19 fighter.
Suggested By: _Mécanicien, Photo Credit: Car News China
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6.) Vintage Ahrens Fox Truck
Yet another good reason why firetrucks have the drivers right at the front of the vehicle nowadays is that they used to have to deal with things like this. Ohio-based firetruck manufacturer Ahrens-Fox just stuck all their machinery on the front of the vehicle, making the driver sit about twelve counties aft of the front wheels. The system didn't work out very well.
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Suggested By: $kaycog, Photo Credit: Timothy Wildey
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5.) Soviet AA-60 Tank Truck
This is basically a MAZ-543 artillery tank, but with a gigantic hose on the top instead of a Scud missile. Powering this beast is a 38.8-liter V12 engine with no more than 525 horsepower and 610 ft-lbs of torque.
Suggested By: Vargius, Photo Credit: Master Sgt. Daniel Nathaniel
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4.) Metro-North Mini-Emergency Vehicles
There aren't many fires in Grand Central station today, but a few decades ago, the annual volume of emergencies was in the triple digits. Twenty years ago, Grand Central got its own fire brigade, and the MTA detailed their adorably small fleet.
The Brigade is equipped with a unique fleet of electric carts customized for firefighting and medical emergencies. There's a fire truck, which is a 200-gallon pumper with 300 feet of hose, a rescue truck, with air packs, forcible entry tools and turnout gear, and an ambulance with a stretcher, three oxygen tanks, defibrillators, a ‘long board' to immobilize spine, medical gear, a stair chair, and first-aid supplies. "They all have sirens, lights, the whole thing. They're kind of cool," [fire chief Sal Oliva] said.
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Suggested By: Highball!, Photo Credit: MTA
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3.) Antarctic Firetruck
While the biggest station on Antarctica, McMurdo Station, has a much more modern, ordinary-looking fire department today, back in 1974, it had one of these monster-truck style vehicles.
Suggested By: evoCS, Photo Credit: Bradford S. Miller/National Science Foundation/US Antarctic Program
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2.) Big Wind
How did you put out 2,000 degree Fahrenheit oil fires back when Saddam was lighting Kuwaiti wells in 1991? You strapped two MiG-21 jet fighter engines onto a WWII-era Soviet T-34 tank and blew the living crap out of the fire.
Technically, you fired six water hoses at the fire and then ran the jet engines through the stream, creating a blast of high-powered steam, which severed the stream of oil from where it ignites above ground. Read more about Big Wind at Car and Driver.
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Suggested By: Greg Hansen and towman, Photo Credit: YouTube
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1.) Russian Rocket Tank Trucks
Even more badass than a Soviet tank with a water hose on it, or a Soviet tank with two jet engines on it are Soviet tanks with rockets on them designed to just blow whatever fire it is to kingdom come. Our favorite is "Impuls-2M," which takes a T-62 main battle tank and puts a 50-round rocket launcher on the top, shooting flame-retarding projectiles.
Suggested By: 2Fast2Finke and OT.level7, Photo Credit: English RussiaAbout
Hi everyone, my name is Danny and for starters, thank you so much for visiting my campaign and contemplating a pledge!
From a young age I found myself lost in pixelated worlds, emotionally connected to 8-bit characters, a love that only grew stronger with the evolution of graphics and to an extant the end of an era and art form. The extinction of these graphics and art form for a decade or so, recently ended with a huge boon in retro gaming from collectors, to digital re-releases of classic video games. This invigorated my less youthful, yet more capable self to scratch that 8-bit pixelated itch that is creating bead sprites.
After studying various mediums of art through school, college and minorly through university, I finally found a method that makes me happy and transports me back to my childhood with every creation, and now this campaign will enable me to share this passion with the world. Even after doing it for so long, I still look forwarding to getting home and relaxing in front of the television, bringing my favourite characters (and hopefully yours!)/scenes and games to life. Don't get me started on my weekends being spent locked away in bead heaven, concuncting ingenious ways to bring modern video games back to the pixelated past, creating a range of coasters, fridge magnets, wall decorations, storage devices and many, many more creations for friends, family and clients alike!
Backing this project will guarantee you a one of a kind pixelated bead sprite, regardless of whether you decide to receive a custom or random creation, you will NOT be disappointed.The equipment I will use for this creations has been limited to a variety of plastic fuse beads (Perler, Hama, Nabbi and Artkal) or PixelHobby (more expensive, due to having to not being able to re-use the pegboards) projects, as these are the 2 most popular mediums of beading pixelated images big and small alike, in which I am also heavily experienced in. The only limitation to the artwork which you receive, is your imagination.
In terms of the pricing as stated before, the PixelHobby has a completely different look and price (higher unfortunately) as you must completely fill every pegboard, which are not reuseable, another reason for the extra expense, the final visual is done to personal preference, this style does look more polished, but many argue that pixel art is not about being perfect and polished, I will only offer PixelHobby projects for those in excess of 30,000 beads. With regards to the fuse beads, the boards are re-useable, however extra time is, in most cases, required, as you must place the beads, use tape to remove the beads, and then iron them in order for them to melt and fuse together. 1 pegboard, can hold a maximum of 841 beads. A one pegboard sprite takes approximately 1 hour to bead, and then another 30 minutes to remove and iron, however this is when I have game art etc to go by. Sometimes I will need need to create my own digital art in order to then create the pixel bead art.
Over the years of searching for the perfect method (personal preference of course) of creating pixel art, I have drawn, painted, melted, and digitally created close to anything and everything imaginable, with a specialization in the older generation of the gaming world (SNES era and before), but as previously said, what you receive is only limited by what you can imagine. In terms of quality, the biggest critic of my work, is myself, and you will not receive an creation that I would not proudly hang on my very own wall. Every piece of artwork created will be done so with my greatest attention, dedication and commitment, and nothing less! It may take numerous attempts to create exactly what you wish for, but this will only inspire to work harder.
Below are some examples pixelated bead work, and what you can expect to receive when pledging to this campaign. Please note that some of these are just examples to stir those creative juices that are your imaginations, with that said, they are available if you so desire, so please see the FAQ below.
Thank you ever so much for taking the time to read this, whether you decide to pledge to my campaign or not, your presence alone is appreciated, and if you pledge, I look forward to creating your pixelated bead artwork!
An example of Uzumaki Naruto - Kyuubi, after being ironed.
An example of Final Fantasy 6 characters and antagonists, after being ironed (these are 1 pegboard bead sprites)
An example of Chrono Trigger Epoch Ship battle scene. My favourite game, and one of the iconic scenes!
Spiritual Stones from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
An example of fridge magnet bead sprites.
Jean Grey/Phoenix. An example of a larger project, containing approximately 31,000 fuse beads
An example of what can be done with PixelHobby! Realistic Mario, made up of 50,000 pixel beads.
Venom! Once again, an example of what can be done with 50,000 PixelHobby beads. Imagine what that 140,000 project could look like in your house!
** If you have a project in mind, PLEASE contact me via message, and I shall discuss the project with you, and find a solution, and tell you which pledge to go to**
**If you have any questions regarding images please, once again, contact me. For example if you wish to see all of the Legend of Zelda stain glass window designs before pledging, look below**
Zelda: Wind Waker stain glass window. (Digital images, not pixelated and beaded yet! unable to find original artist to give credit, but I will continue to search!)Home Rule Municipality in Colorado, United States
Cortez is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States.[5] The city population was 8,482 at the 2010 United States Census.
History [ edit ]
Entrance of Montezuma County Courthouse in Cortez.
In 1886, the town was built to provide housing for the men working on the tunnels and irrigation ditches required to divert water out of the Dolores River and into Montezuma Valley.[6] The town was named for Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.[7]
It is a popular stop for tourists, who stay there because of its central location among surrounding attractions, such as Mesa Verde National Park, Monument Valley, and the Four Corners.
Prehistoric sites [ edit ]
There are many prehistoric sites in the Cortez area, listed on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties or both the state register and the National Register of Historic Places: They include large parks or centers, such as Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Hovenweep National Monument, and Mesa Verde National Park. There are also smaller or individuals sites, such as Cowboy Wash, Hawkins Pueblo and cliff dwellings, Lowry Ruin, Mitchell Springs Archeological Site, also known as the Mitchell Springs Ruin Group, Mud Springs Pueblo, and Yucca House National Monument. Within the McElmo Drainage Unit (AD 1075-1300) is Cannonball Ruins, Maxwell Community, Roy's Ruin, Sand Canyon Archaeological District, and Wallace Ruin.[8][9]
Historic trails or byways [ edit ]
There following are trails or byways through the Cortez area:
1959 U-2 emergency landing [ edit ]
A Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft made an emergency nighttime forced landing August 3, 1959, at the Cortez Municipal Airport.[10] Major H. Mike Hua (now retired as General)[11] was on a training flight originating at Laughlin AFB, Texas; the U-2 aircraft engine flamed out at 70,000 feet MSL. Maj. Hua established best glide and was able to navigate through a valley to a lighted airport that wasn't on his map nor did he know of its existence beforehand. The airport was the only one in the area with a lighted runway which was illuminated overnight.[10]
Geography [ edit ]
Cortez is located at (37.349270, -108.579225).[12]
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 5.5 square miles (14 km2), of which 5.5 square miles (14 km2) is land and 0.04 square miles (0.10 km2) (0.36%) is water. Cortez is located in the area of the southwest known as the "High Desert", as are most of northwestern, western, southwestern, and southern Colorado.
Economy [ edit ]
View looking SE of Main Street in Cortez, with the cliff faces of the Mesa Verde visible in the distance.
Cortez is a local commercial center, competing with Durango in the east, and Farmington, New Mexico in the south, and draws trade from southeastern Utah, the extreme northeastern corner of Arizona, the Shiprock area of Northwestern New Mexico, and San Miquel, Dolores, Montezuma, and parts of LaPlata County in Colorado. Its economy is based very heavily on tourism, both to nearby Mesa Verde National Park as well as to San Juan National Forest, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the area (including Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, as well as the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Navajo Indian Reservations).
Mesa Verde National Park, featuring Ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings, is situated southeast of Cortez.
Climate [ edit ]
Cortez has a cold and continental semi-arid climate with hot summer days and cold winter nights, the latter a result of its elevation.
Climate data for Cortez, Colorado Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °F (°C) 63
(17) 78
(26) 80
(27) 88
(31) 95
(35) 100
(38) 102
(39) 99
(37) 96
(36) 86
(30) 72
(22) 65
(18) 102
(39) Average high °F (°C) 41
(5) 46
(8) 53
(12) 62
(17) 72
(22) 83
(28) 89
(32) 86
(30) 79
(26) 67
(19) 52
(11) 42
(6) 64
(18) Average low °F (°C) 12
(−11) 18
(−8) 25
(−4) 29
(−2) 37
(3) 46
(8) 53
(12) 51
(11) 44
(7) 33
(1) 22
(−6) 14
(−10) 32
(0) Record low °F (°C) −27
(−33) −31
(−35) −15
(−26) 6
(−14) 17
(−8) 27
(−3) 37
(3) 36
(2) 23
(−5) 12
(−11) −14
(−26) −22
(−30) −31
(−35) Average precipitation inches (mm) 1.01
(26) 0.95
(24) 1.37
(35) 0.90
(23) 1.01
(26) 0.43
(11) 1.23
(31) 1.37
(35) 1.31
(33) 1.55
(39) 1.18
(30) 0.90
(23) 13.21
(336) Average snowfall inches (cm) 17.8
(45) 13.5
(34) 13.2
(34) 3.8
(9.7) 0.5
(1.3) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 1.2
(3.0) 5.9
(15) 17.6
(45) 73.5
(187) Source #1: [13] Source #2: [14]
Demographics [ edit ]
Historical population Census Pop. %± 1890 332 — 1900 125 −62.3% 1910 565 352.0% 1920 541 −4.2% 1930 921 70.2% 1940 1,778 93.1% 1950 2,680 50.7% 1960 6,764 152.4% 1970 6,032 −10.8% 1980 7,095 17.6% 1990 7,284 2.7% 2000 7,977 9.5% 2010 8,482 6.3% Est. 2016 9,007 [4] 6.2% U.S. Decennial Census[15]
As of the census[16] of 2010, there were 8,482 people, 3,590 households, and 2,234 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,449.9 people per square mile (560.0/km²). There were 3,885 housing units at an average density of 637.6 per square mile (246.3/km²). The gender makeup of the city was 48.1% male (4,083) and 51.9% female (4,399). The racial makeup of the city was 79.2% White, 0.4% African American, 11.8% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 6.04% from other races, and 2.44% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 13.30% of the population.
There were 3,590 households out of which 30.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.0% were married couples living together, 14.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.8% were non-families. 30.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 12.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.92.
In the city, the population was spread out with 26.7% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 26.6% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $28,776, and the median income for a family was $35,533. Males had a median income of $30,755 versus $20,280 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,040. About 14.8% of families and 18.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27.3% of those under age 18 and 17.3% of those age 65 or over.
Education [ edit ]
Cortez Public Schools are part of the Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1. The district has one preschool, five elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. The educational system is currently suffering a loss of 1.6% according to the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program.
Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 Pre-School, Kemper Elementary School, Lewis-Arriola Elementary School, Manaugh Elementary School, Mesa Elementary Schools, Pleasant View Elementary School, Cortez Middle School and Montezuma-Cortez High School are located in Cortez. The high school mascot is the Panthers.
Alex Carter is the Superintendent of Schools.[17]
Transportation [ edit ]
Cortez Municipal Airport serves Cortez.
Notable people [ edit ]
Eli Tomac, motocross champion.
Scott Tipton, U.S. House of Representatives - Colorado's 3rd District
William B. Ebbert, popular rancher |
LLN Links to: US Free trade Fraud promoting famine in Haiti
* * * ** * * * * * * * * * *
US Poverty Pimps masturbating on Black pain, the Christian NGO's Veil of Blood and the mainstream media’s role in this ongoing travesty and untold crime against Haiti and humanity: Èzili Dantò responds to the two common storylines about Haiti - Kerr's 'Bringing the Love to Haiti' and Reteurs' 'Graveyard quiet of huge Haiti slum signals progress' by Èzili Dantò| Haitian Perspectives | May 11, 2008The Philistines – one of the so-called Sea Peoples, and mentioned in the Bible and other ancient sources – were a seafaring Indo-European people who appeared in the southern coastal area of modern-day Israel around 1,250 BC, most probably from the Aegean region. They brought to the region not just themselves but also their plants, says a team of archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The team, led by Prof Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University, compiled and analyzed a database of plant remains extracted from Bronze and Iron Ages sites in the southern Levant, both Philistine and non-Philistine.
By analyzing this database, they concluded that the plant species the Philistines brought are all cultivars that had not been seen in the region previously.
This includes edible parts of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), the sycamore tree (Ficus sycomorus); and cumin (Cuminum cyminum).
“In the Eastern Mediterranean, the earliest cumin has been identified from Atlit-Yam (northern Israel, 6, 900 – 6, 300 BC), subsequently it was found in New Kingdom Egypt (Deir el-Medina, 18th dynasty, 1,543 – 1,292 BC) and in Mesopotamia (Tell ed-Der, 2,100 – 1,900 BCE), and re-appears in Israel only at Iron Age Philistine sites,” Prof Weiss and co-authors wrote in a paper published online in the journal Scientific Reports.
“Sycamore is an eastern African species, domesticated in Egypt and closely associated with Egypt agriculture since Predynastic times (6,000 – 3,100 BC). All parts of this tree were found in Egypt in numerous tombs in the Valley of the Kings through the Early, Middle and Late Kingdoms (3,000 – 1,000 BC) and later probably in Tell es-Sa’idiyeh, Jordan (2,900 BC). Outside Egypt, the sycamore findings include so far only timber. The earliest sycamore timber was found in Jericho (Neolithic). The next occurrence is in Beth Shean (Late Bronze Age), and from the Iron Age onwards, sycamore timber is a common find in Israel. However, the remains of its fruit (rather than wood) first appear, outside Egypt, in Philistine contexts at the site of Ashkelon, and probably represent the exploitation of locally grown trees.”
“The finding of opium poppy at Philistine Ashkelon is the second earliest evidence of opium seeds (and possible cultivation) of this plant in the Eastern Mediterranean. The earlier example came from Late Bronze Age Greece (Mycenaean Tiryns, 1,200 BC), from where some of the Philistines may have originated.”
“In previous periods, particularly the Late Bronze Age, there is evidence of trade in opium into the Eastern Mediterranean, but no signs of local cultivation. In addition the inscriptions on Sumerian clay tablets dating to the Early Bronze Age that have been previously interpreted as referring to the opium poppy, are now interpreted as referring to Punica, the pomegranate. The presence of the seeds and not of opium latex itself in a Philistine site suggests the possibility of local cultivation of the plant in Israel.”
“Thus, our result imply that cumin, sycamore fruit and the opium poppy seeds were first introduced into Israel by the Philistines, from remarkably diverse regions to the north-west and south-west of Israel,” the scientists wrote.
“Among species that are absent in Bronze Age contexts in Israel and which first appeared during the Iron Age in Philistine sites, there are two useful plants species, which occur in the wild in Israel: Coriandrum sativum (coriander, from early Iron Age Ashkelon and Ekron) and Laurus nobilis (bay tree, from late Iron Age Ashkelon).”
“Coriander is well-represented in Bronze Age contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean in sites to the north and north-west of Israel, as well as in Egypt (Tutankhamun’s tomb). Though it is found in a Neolithic site in Israel (Nahal Hemar cave, 6,000 BC), it disappears from the region and is not found during the Bronze Age, only to reappear in the Iron Age in Philistine sites.”
“Bay tree timber is known in Bronze Age Israel from two sites in the arid south – Arad and Jericho – and was apparently transported to these sites, as its natural habitat is the Mediterranean woodland. Bay tree fruit is first found in Philistine Ashkelon suggesting a possible change in plant use, from timber to fruits – and possibly also, of its leaves. These temporal changes can be attributed to changes in dietary preferences among the Philistine peoples who settled in the littoral of the southern Levant. Today, both these plants species grow in Israel in natural habitats and under cultivation.”
The fact that the exotic plants introduced by the Philistines originate from different regions accords well with the diverse geographic origin of these people.
The results of this research indicate that the 600 year presence of the Philistine culture in Israel had a major and long-term impact on local floral biodiversity.
The Philistines also left their mark on the local fauna.
In a previous study, DNA extracted from ancient pig bones from Philistine and non-Philistine sites in Israel demonstrated that European pigs were introduced by the Philistines into Israel and slowly swamped the local pig populations through inter-breeding.
As a consequence, modern wild boar in Israel today bears a European haplotype rather than a local, Near Eastern one.
_____
Suembikya Frumin et al. 2015. Studying Ancient Anthropogenic Impacts on Current Floral Biodiversity in the Southern Levant as reflected by the Philistine Migration. Scientific Reports 5, article number: 13308; doi: 10.1038/srep13308Memorandum on the New 10-Year
$38 billion U.S. Aid Package to Israel Starting in 2019, the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion over the next 10 years – $3.8 billion per year, which is $10.41 million per day. This is in line with previous years. In 2017, the U.S. gave Israel $3.7 billion – about $10.14 million per day. In other words, the new aid package amounts to an increase of around $27 million per year. Israel has long received more U.S. money than any other country. Some earlier disbursements were even larger when considered in today’s dollars. This aid to Israel amounts to more than half of all direct military aid the United States provides worldwide. The new agreement will slowly phase out a unique Israeli privilege: Israel’s exception to the requirement that all U.S. military aid be used on American goods and services (40% of military aid to Israel is currently exempted). This special exemption is supposed to end by the seventh year. It is expected that Israel and Israeli companies will work to get around this potential loss of revenue in a number of ways: forming “partnerships” with American companies;
increasing the practice of requiring that some of the systems Israel purchases from American companies include Israeli-made components;
increasing the amount of materiel and other goods in general that the U.S. purchases from Israel, already far from negligible. Under the agreement Israel promises not to not ask for additional money; however, this promise includes loopholes: Israel may ask for more money if there is a “war.” (Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza – during which its forces killed over 2,200 Gazans, over a third of them women and children, and Palestinian resistance fighters killed 67 Israelis – was frequently called a “war.”) The great many Congressional representatives who are personally pro-Israel or who wish to curry favor with pro-Israel donors and media may independently vote additional money to Israel. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already indicated that he intends to do just this. Aid to Israel is technically illegal, violating U.S. regulations prohibiting U.S. aid to non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There is currently a lawsuit pending in Washington DC challenging the disbursement of this aid. The American public is not in favor of this aid to Israel. A recent survey showed that almost two-thirds of American voters feel that the U.S. gives Israel too much moneys. Numerous surveys over the years found that approximately two-thirds to three-quarters don’t wish the U.S. to take sides on Israel-Palestine. The agreement is in the form of a “memorandum of understanding.” It is not a treaty and is not legally binding. American voters have the right to demand that the MoU be abandoned and that the aid end. # White House Fact Sheet State Department Briefing Share |Howard Dean is stepping down as Democratic National chairman. He has been criticized as a poor fundraiser and was not entrusted with many major tasks by the Obama campaign this fall. But Dean's 50 state campaign plan—building a Democratic Party in every state—turned out to have been a real winner for the party. It helped to expand the field for the Obama campaign and helped make many Democrats competitive—and successful—in states that George W. Bush carried by considerable margins in 2000 and 2004. Dean also kept in close touch with the mostly left-wing "netroots" that supplied so much of the energy for Democrats in 2006 and this year. Dean apparently feels that the DNC position will be less important with a Democratic president in office, and that is surely the case. But I think Democrats owe a big round of thanks to Howard Dean for a job well done.Most American Renaissance commenters support Derbyshire. While he might not be a white supremacist, he is a "race realist" (a term we learned researching this post, along with "ethnomasochism" and "Holder's people," a term, it seems, for black people and a reference to Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black.) "There is no way Derbyshire published these absolute but forbidden truths about black crime rates and the mandate for whites to take precautions without knowing what the repercussion would be," writes one commenter. Another smells conspiracy: "Maybe these "conservative magazines" are set up by the enemy in the first place? They really are not conservatives to begin with."
Even so, Derbyshire does not make the perfect victim of liberal anti-white demagoguery. For one thing, his wife is Chinese. For another, some of his recommendations are problematic. No, not Derbyshire's advice to his kids that that they should avoid large groups of blacks, or that they should expect black people to be genetically inferior. No, the problem is that he suggested his kids make friends with smart black people to inoculate themselves against charges of racism.
On this point, commenter Whiteyyyyy complains, "That is where he lost some credibility with me, I know he has to cover his back but the have some token blacks to improve your status bit. THATS 90 percent of the problem right there, thats the clever thinking that keeps the whole race spoils war going." Others share this concern. "He talks about having friends with the 'good' blacks (no such thing) for 'Public Relations benefits.' Oh to hell with that. Did he also tell them to have sex with asians for good PR?" commenter Hunter Morrow complains. "Hey kids! Play with matches and have kickball games in the middle of the road! Oh, and hang out with 'good' blacks for positive press!... He is the definition of gatekeeper/controlled opposition/manufactured dissent." Commenter Anon12 agrees, "Sounds more like pandering and "helping" his career, to me. To h...with that nonsense! That is counter-productive, to say the least."
As for Derbsyhire's Chinese wife, commenters have mixed feelings about whether this disqualifies him as an ally. Wayne Lo, an apparent troll, called Derbyshire a hypocrite for his marriage to a non-white person. "Utter nonsense," Blaak Obongo responds. "There are some (certainly not all) White nationalists who believe that interbreeding with Orientals is acceptable, at least on a limited basis." And Celestial Time adds, "Asian communities and people are not hostile to White communities at anywhere near the level that blacks are." FInnland gets into the details: "Some white advocates are OK with asian women because they are intelligent, reasonably attractive and carry a work ethic. If we had to do with alien races, importing asian WOMEN would be the smallest evil as women do not have the aggressive drive to dominate that men have, but they have a reasonably similar skill set." Still, Fakeemail allows, "I will say that you have a point regarding Derbyshire's hypocrisy in regards to his interracial marriage. But an individual's personal life and the macro truth are not always the same thing."HOUSTON -- J.J. Watt is the best defensive player in the NFL, but his salary doesn't reflect that anymore.
Since Watt signed a deal worth $100 million with $51.8 million guaranteed at $16.667 million per year before the 2015 season, the market for players at comparable positions grew as markets do. He's been knocked off the top of the list of defensive linemen. Olivier Vernon, whom the New York Giants signed in free agency this year, has an average annual salary of $17 million. His is a shorter contract at five years, but includes a little bit more guaranteed money. Kansas City Chiefs outside linebacker Justin Houston makes $16.833 per year and also has a guarantee of $52.5 million. The Buffalo Bills' Marcell Dareus got close with a deal worth $15.850 per year and $60 million guaranteed.
At last one player thinks that's insane.
"There are guys getting paid more than J.J. Watt and that does not make any sense,” Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett said during an interview with Houston's Sports Radio 610. “There should not be a defensive lineman making more money than him; the statistics he’s put up. When I see guys they don’t even have three or four sacks getting $100 million and I’m like ‘what is going on?'"
Dareus had two sacks in 2015, but he had 10 in 2014. Houston had 7.5 in 2015 after 22 in 2014. Vernon had 6.5 in 2014 and 7.5 in 2015. By comparison, Watt had 17.5 in 2015 and 20.5 in 2014.
What's going on is that the market changes over time. During the NFL owners meetings, I asked Houston Texans owner Bob McNair if he feels that the Texans got Watt at a discount. McNair said no. He noted that Watt was the highest-paid defensive player when he signed that contract and cited Watt's own declaration that he would outperform his contract. Watt has certainly done that, last year becoming the league's defensive player of the year for a third time and second year in a row.
McNair probably doesn't want to imagine the number Watt would command had he hit free agency this year.HOUSTON -- There used to be life here.
The Eighth Wonder of the World. Houston's treasure. The Astrodome.
Abandoned in the shadows of NRG Stadium, the Astrodome today still thrives in the memory banks of NFL fans as the unforgettable home of the Oilers. For nearly three decades, from 1968 to 1996, the team made this rollicking venue its landing pad, until fleeing east for Tennessee and eventually changing its name to the Titans.
Before that ugly departure, the Oilers engaged in a vibrant and rare love affair with their fans that caught holy fire with the "Luv ya Blue" squad of the late 1970s before peaking again roughly one decade later under coach Jerry Glanville.
From Luv Ya Blue to The House of Pain
"The fans were very, very special," Glanville told me this week. "In all the games I coached there, I never walked to my car with my wife and my son where the crowd was not waiting at the car to congratulate you. And even if we lost, which we very seldom did, they would support you. It was very, very unusual. It was not like pro football is today."
As Chris Wesseling noted in his wonderful feature on the Luv ya Blue era, those late-'70s Oilers teams suffered back-to-back AFC title game losses to the Steelers, only to return home to "throngs of fans estimated at anywhere from 50,000 to 300,000."
That bond was tested in the early 1980s, as Houston operated as one of the worst teams in the AFC before Glanville took over the full-time coaching reins in 1986. By the following season, the Oilers were back in the postseason to begin a seven-year playoff streak that thrust the Astrodome right back into the NFL spotlight.
"Probably the thing that happened most when we were there, it got named the 'House of Pain.' And we had these huge paintings of players that, when they would go out for the coin toss, somehow they would open them up and they would unroll and here would be a picture of John Grimsley, Jeff Donaldson, Robert Lyles, Keith Bostic," said Glanville, reciting each of their names as if they were ancient gods. "And Robert Lyles named it. He went out for the coin toss one time and they went to shake hands and he said, 'Welcome to the House of Pain.' And that never left all the while we were there."
Operating in the rough-and-tumble AFC Central, the Oilers under Glanville morphed into a bully powered by a violent defense, a high-octane offense and a seek-and-destroy special-teams unit that regularly flipped the switch on the Astrodome crowd.
"Back in the day, when we were there, I was the special teams coach and the tight ends coach," Falcons defensive coordinator Richard Smith said Monday of his first NFL coaching job. "The thing that was so fun for me is that [the Oilers] introduced the special teams. If you go back, most days, they'd think you're crazy. But we were pretty good... We were a wrecking crew."
It was Glanville who also gave Kevin Gilbride his first offensive coordinator job in the NFL. The innovative play-caller and run-and-shoot disciple served as a godsend for quarterback Warren Moon and his versatile crew of pass-catchers. The Moon-Gilbride marriage turned the offense into a points-and-yardage juggernaut that unleashed Oilers fever across Southeast Texas.
"In the Astrodome, people at times thought I was Kevin Gilbride," Smith said. "When the offense was scoring a lot of points... I would wave to the crowd when they were yelling at me and say, 'I'm not Gilbride!'
'They went there to see you kick butt'
"Probably the most shocking thing in our pregame warmup, there was nobody in the Astrodome," Glanville said. "One team would be at one end and we'd be on the other end and you could count the people that were in there, because they were in church. And I had [Bengals coach] Sam Wyche once say to me before a game, 'Is absolutely nobody coming to this game? Are you kidding me?' And then we would go in after the pregame warmup and come back in 20 minutes and they'd be hanging off the railings. There wouldn't be a seat anywhere, and they'd be screaming."
Preparing to watch his own son Jake play left tackle for the Falcons in Sunday's Super Bowl, Hall of Fame offensive lineman Bruce Matthews -- who spent his 19-season NFL career with the Oilers/Titans franchise -- still remembers the unhinged nature of the Astrodome.
"In the mid-to-late '80s, that's when I think it took off -- the whole advantage of having a loud crowd. And the Dome was as loud, if not louder, than any other stadium," Matthews said. "We were one of only a couple of domes. We weren't humungous like New Orleans or as cavernous as the Kingdome up in Seattle. There were 62,000 people -- and they felt it."
Glanville's Oilers went 22-9 in the Astrodome before Jack Pardee's teams lit up the building with a 25-7 in-house mark between 1990 and 1993.
"Pretty hard to beat us there," Glanville said. "I can remember we were so good there, that one day we lost and I got a letter from a father in Texas, saying, 'How dare you? How dare you? I brought my two sons there. How dare you lose. My two sons sat there and we cried all the way home.' People didn't go there to see a game, they went there to see you kick butt."
A building flush with beautiful quirks
When an opponent visited the Astrodome, the obstacles went far beyond the issue of unusually frisky crowd noise.
"Our turf wasn't laid on blacktop. It was laid on 5-by-8 sheets of plywood because they had to pull it up for the rodeo," Glanville said. "And then my favorite thing was, you were supposed to cover up the baseball infield as soon as baseball was done. But I would leave it as long as I could, because if I could get the enemy's quarterback, I would blitz him on second base, because they were still on dirt. So I knew how to call the defenses by whether we were on dirt or artificial turf."
If the quarterback somehow got a pass off, the troubles were only beginning.
"As you were running down the field, someone might not even touch you, and it was liable the turf monster would tackle you. Because the wood -- I saw the wood below the turf -- the plywood sheets were all warped.... If you laid them on the floor, this would be sticking up in this corner, in the middle -- this was not a smooth turf... It should have been illegal, really."
The Astrodome presented another distinct advantage for an Oilers club doing business in the rugged AFC Central.
"There was something about the Dome, especially later in the year, when our three division opponents were Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Cleveland," Matthews said. "So they're coming down from cold-weather environments. And Houston in December, it can be 85 degrees, so there was almost like a sauna effect later in the year. Earlier in the year, it's hot as balls, so the air condition is running -- the Dome was pleasant. But those late-December games, it was like a sweatbox, and that was unusual, I think, for those northern teams coming down. Guys had to get IVs and stuff like that because they were so dehydrated."
Oilers fans turned the Astrodome on its side each Sunday, but they were more than just simple madmen. They understood the game as well as any fan base of the day.
"This crowd, when we were on offense and Warren Moon was at quarterback -- you could hear a pin drop," Glanville said. "Warren at home was nothing like he was on the road. He would see the blitz, he could call any audible, he could run the whole show. And he would say, 'Blue 32!' and everybody in the Astrodome would say, 'We're running Blue 32!' And then when our defense went in, you couldn't hear anything. The crowd helped us as to when to be quiet. The crowd was so educated that you would think you were playing in the living room when we were offense."
Speaking with NFL.com's Brooke Cersosimo on Wednesday, Moon backed up Glanville's account:
"Our fans were so knowledgeable, first of all. Football is king in this state, not just in Houston. So the people know football, they love football, they were brought up with it, are passionate about it and bring that passion into the stadium," Moon said. "More of a rowdy, raucous-type crowd that's very educated when to make noise and when not to."
Nothing like the Oilers
"I think we were the only team that sang a song like a college team," Glanville said. "The whole stadium would sing 'Luv Ya Blue.' "
Look out football, here we come,
Houston Oilers, number one.
Houston has the Oilers, the greatest football team.
We take the ball from goal to goal like no one's ever seen.
We're in the air, we're on the ground... always in control
And when you say the Oilers, you're talking Super Bowl.
"I did a radio thing a few weeks ago, and they played the old theme song -- 'Look out football, here we come! Houston Oilers!' -- and that really brought back memories," Matthews said. "That was kind of a hokey '50s, '60s kind of song, but it transcended the decades. And there were kids and families who were kind of grown up and that was part of their fall weekend to go to the Oilers games. I guess as I'm getting old, I'm getting a little more sentimental and thinking about that family aspect."
It was the kind of atmosphere that got on the radar of future NFL stars long before they suited up in the Astrodome.
"That's one of the ones I wanted to play in," Moon said, "because I remember back in the days when Billy 'White Shoes' (Johnson) was playing there with the 'Funky Chicken' dance moves when he scored a touchdown or when Earl Campbell played on 'Monday Night Football' with the white pompoms and the Houston Oilers' song. You just knew the crowd was very passionate down here, and because of the venue, this is a place I wanted to play. I ended up playing 10 years in that place."
The end of the road
Oilers owner Bud Adams moved the team to Tennessee in 1997, but only after falling short in efforts to get the city of Houston to furnish the team with a new multipurpose stadium.
For decades, the Astrodome had been the definition of "multipurpose," serving as a home to the Oilers, the MLB's Houston Astros and even the NBA's Houston Rockets for a stint. The Houston Cougars played their college football there, and the Astrodome also housed soccer, bowl games, USFL action and a stream of livestock and rodeo shows.
Asked for heavy rent to play in the Astrodome, which was owned by the Astros, Adams was piqued by the favorable deal the Los Angeles Rams received to move to St. Louis in 1995.
With Nashville emerging as a viable new home -- "This was really the last frontier on our expansion list," Adams once said -- the Oilers held the upper hand in a bitter and elongated battle with the city of Houston over a new stadium.
"You've got warring parties on all sides," Oilers executive vice president Mike McClure said at the time. "Powerful egos are at play. To sum it up, it's a big mess."
A mess that made it clear to Oilers fans -- for two full seasons -- that their beloved NFL team was on the move.
"The last two years were horrible," Matthews said. "We announced we were moving (in 1995). It was the greatest blueprint of how not to relocate an NFL franchise. With two years -- '95 to '96, the last two years of the Houston Oilers -- as a lame-duck franchise. And we were there with [15,000 to 20,000] people. There wasn't anything close to a home-field advantage.... The 'House of Pain,' the home-field advantage we experienced, was completely gone. It was pretty darn depressing to me."
The next frontier
Closed since 2009, the Astrodome today sits hushed and adjacent to NRG Stadium, home to the Texans (who started play as an expansion franchise in 2002) and Super Bowl LI.
"When I see it next to NRG, it's kind of sad," Matthews said. "Just like the history of the Oilers. The history of the Oilers is up in Tennessee somewhere in some warehouse, and nobody cares about it. That era is gone, and it's best served in our memories."
Hall of Fame running back Earl Campbell has been a public proponent of keeping the Astrodome intact from the very beginning -- and the former Oilers icon will get his wish.
The Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously in September to approve a $105 million Astrodome Revitalization Plan. Saving the structure from demolition, the proposal will raise the ground floor -- where the field used to be -- up two levels to create 1,400 parking spaces in a subterranean garage.
The late-'70s Oilers didn't win a Lombardi Trophy, but they did create a hysteria never seen before -- or since. Chris Wesseling chronicles the story of Bum Phillips, Earl Campbell and Houston gone wild.
The Astrodome's "column-free and weatherproof open space" above the eventual parking structure will be used as a multipurpose venue for a wide variety of events -- rodeos, auto shows, conferences -- when it finally launches four-plus years from now.
"We've got a minority of people, who are very vocal, who just say, 'Tear it down. It's an eyesore.' Well, it's not an eyesore," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told me. "That's kind of in the eye of the beholder. I do not have an emotional attachment to the dome. When I got involved in it, I didn't know where I would come down on the issue. But it turns out that it's fully paid for and it would cost [$30 million to $35 million] to tear down -- after which you have nothing. That's when I said, 'Well, wait a minute. Why don't we find a way to keep this?' "
The Oilers are gone -- not about to return -- but their home remains.
There will be life in the Astrodome once again.Although there are a ton of store-bought healthy snacks out there, nothing beats a quick and fresh D.I.Y. snack from your own kitchen. Since most of us don’t have time to stress over what’s healthy and what won’t wind up tasting like a child’s science experiment, having a handful of go-to snacks can be life-changing. Your confidence in your grocery shopping can increase, your nutrition intake can get a boost, and you can waistline shrink when you avoid overeating by munching on low-calories snacks in between meals. Pair your latest drink from Zero Belly Smoothies with these healthy snack ideas that are approachable, affordable, and tasty!
1 Monkey Toast
What You’ll Need: Peanut butter, banana, honey, bread, chia seeds
Pave a slice of toasted wheat bread with peanut butter and banana slices. Top with a drizzle of honey.
2 Avocado Cracker
What You’ll Need: Multigrain crackers, avocado, tomato, salt, pepper
Layer a multigrain cracker with an avocado. Option: add ¼-inch thick slice of plum or romano tomato. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3 Hummus & Veggies Mason Jars
What You’ll Need: Peppers, celery, carrots, hummus
Using a tiny jar for hummus is great for perfecting portion control—and creating healthy snacks! Simply divide up your portioned servings of hummus and dip fiber-rich vegetables into the protein-packed puree. Together, this combo makes an awesome flat-belly-friendly bite.
4 Yogurt Parfait
What You’ll Need: Fresh or slightly-frozen berries, plain Greek Yogurt, carob chips
Mix fresh or slightly-frozen berries with plain Greek yogurt. Sprinkle with carob chips for a guilt-free indulgence.
5 Caprese Skewers
What You’ll Need: fresh mozzarella, pitted green olives, sundried tomatoes
Bored of cheese and crackers? For a yummier healthy snack, cut fresh mozzarella into ½-inch cubes. Skewer on toothpicks with pitted green olives and sundried tomatoes.
6 Spiced Nuts
What You’ll Need: pecans, almonds, cashews, chili powder, black pepper, cayenne
Toss a combination of nuts—pecans, almonds, peanuts, cashews—with chili powder, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Roast in a 400° F oven for 10 minutes, until warm and toasty. Talk about a soul-warming snack!
7 Veggie-Tuna Bites
What You’ll Need: Canned tuna, shredded carrots, pickles, cucumber, olives, Dijon mustard, mayo, salt, pepper, whole-white based cracker
Combine a can of tuna with shredded carrots, pickles, cucumber, olives, Dijon mustard, a touch of mayo, and season with salt and pepper. Use Triscuits, Wheat Thins, or Stacy’s Pita Chips for scooping.
8 Goat Cheese Stuffed Peppers
What You’ll Need: Cherry peppers, goat cheese
Stuff cherry peppers or bottled Peppadew peppers with soft goat cheese or mini balls of fresh mozzarella.
9 D.I.Y. Trail Mix
What You’ll Need: almonds, walnuts, cashew, sunflower seeds, dried fruit
Make your own souped-up trail mix: Combine 1 cup almonds, walnuts, or cashew (or a mix of all three) with ½ cup sunflower seeds and 1 ½ cups dried fruit: raisins, apricots, apples, prunes, and/or banana chips.
10 Ants on a Log
What You’ll Need: celery, peanut butter, raisins
Slather celery with smooth or chunky peanut butter. Dot with raisins. But find out where your favorite PB falls on our exclusive list of The 36 Top Peanut Butters—Ranked!
11 Artichoke Mix
What You’ll Need: artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, olives, chunks of cheese (Parmesan, Manchego, or Gruyere)
Using a few marinated artichoke hearts (usually sold in a jar), mix in a small bowl with roasted red peppers, olives, and chunks of cheese (Parmesan, Manchego or Gruyere).
12 Greek Cucumber Salad
What You’ll Need: Cucumber, tomatoes, black olives, red onion, feta, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper.
We don’t love this because just because it’s so hydrating. No, this light and refreshing snack can be made so quickly. Chop up some cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives, onion, and feta. Sprinkle some olive oil and lemon juice to lightly coat the veggies. Add salt and pepper to taste for a quick and healthy snack.
13 Apples and Peanut Butter
What You’ll Need: 2 tablespoons peanut butter, apple slices
This salty and sweet combination does more than remind you of your childhood. This protein and fiber combo will help you remain satiated until your next meal. Feel free to add some cinnamon to fancy things up.
14 Olive Tapenade
What You’ll Need: Pimiento stuffed green olives, black olives, garlic salt, olive oil, lemon juice
If you have one, add olives into a food processor until they are in tiny pieces — otherwise, chop away. Add olive oil, garlic salt, and lemon juice together until blended, then pour over olive mash. Serve over grain-based crackers and enjoy.
15 Berry Yogurt Toast
What You’ll Need: Ezekial toast, Greek yogurt, berries, chia seed
Slabbing a piece of fiber rich Ezekiel toast, with protein-packed Greek yogurt makes this snack of the day so much better. We like to add high-fiber berries, to take the toasts nutrition to the next level. Did you know? 1 cup of raspberries contains a whopping 8 grams of fiber. That combined with antioxidant rich blueberries, and blood-sugar stabilizing chia seeds this epic combo is sure to keep those afternoon tummy rumbles at ease.
16 Grilled Veggies with Tzatziki
What You’ll Need: Peppers, eggplant, mushroom, asparagus, zucchini, diced cucumbers, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, parsley, salt, pepper.
Place your favorite veggies on the grill until charred, they make the perfect dippers for this Greek sauce. Squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the diced cucumbers, chop as small as possible. Add to a combination of Greek yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley and salt and pepper to make a delicious sauce. Using Greek yogurt provides you with a boost or probiotics, protein and a great source of vitamin D.
17 Corn & Bean Salsa with Chips
What You’ll Need: Cooked corn, black beans, tomato, bell pepper, onion, apple cider vinegar, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Tortilla chips are optional.
A perfect blend of corn, black beans, chopped tomatoes, chopped bell peppers, red onion, and dressed with a splash of Apple Cider Vinegar & lime juice. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve either with chips or as a side dish! Fiber-rich, protein-packed, and made with fresh ingredients — what else could we ask for,
18 Sesame-Seasoned Edamame
What You’ll Need: edamame, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, kosher salt
Boil a few cups of frozen edamame until tender. Drain and toss with a light coating of sesame oil, red pepper flakes, and kosher salt.
19 Chili & Lime Spiced Mango Spears
Courtesy of Flickr/Lucy Lang
What You’ll Need: mango, lime juice, chili powder
Peel a mango and cut it into spears. Top with fresh lime juice and chili powder.
20 Veggies and Pesto
What You’ll Need: Pesto sauce, eggplant, tomato, peppers
With these skewers, the more vegetables the merrier! Simply grill a colorful array of vegetables topped with a light seasoning of pesto sauce. Grill until charred and then, devour!
21 Wrapped Melon
What You’ll Need: melon (or |
studied using Zenon Antibody Labeling Kits (Invitrogen) with integrin β 3 (LM609) and KRAS (Abgent) antibodies (Supplementary Table 1).
Immunohistochemical analysis.
Immunostaining was carried out according to the manufacturer’s recommendations (Vector Labs) on 5 μM sections of paraffin-embedded tumours from tumour biopsies from lung cancer patients. Tumour sections were processed as previously described59 using integrin β 3 (Abcam), diluted 1:200 (Supplementary Table 1). Sections were stained with integrin β 3 and scored using an H-score according to the staining intensity on a scale of 0–3 within the whole tissue section.
Genetic knockdown and expression of mutant constructs.
Cells were transfected with vector control, wild-type, G23V RalB–Flag, or integrin β 3 using a lentiviral system. For knockdown experiments, cells were transfected with RALA, RALB, AKT1, ERK1/2 short interfering RNA (siRNA; Qiagen) using lipofectamine reagent (Invitrogen) following the manufacturer’s protocol or transfected with shRNA (Open Biosystems) using a lentiviral system. Gene silencing was confirmed by immunoblot analysis. The siRNA and shRNA used in this study have been described in Supplementary Table 2.
Immunoprecipitation and immunoblots.
Lysates from cell lines and xenograft tumours were generated using radioimmunoprecipitation assay and Triton buffers. Immunoprecipitation experiments were carried out as previously described1 with anti-KRAS antibody. For immunoblot analysis, 25 μg of protein was boiled in Laemmli buffer and resolved on an 8–15% gel. The antibodies used here are described in Supplementary Table 1.
Affinity pulldown assays for Ral.
Ral activation assays were carried out in accordance with the manufacturer’s (Upstate) instruction. Briefly, cells were cultured in suspension for 3 h. 10 μg of Ral Assay Reagent (Ral BP1, agarose) was added to 1 mg of total cell protein in MLB buffer (Millipore). After 30 min of rocking at 4 °C, the activated (guanosine triphosphate) forms of Ral bound to the agarose beads were collected by centrifugation, washed, boiled in Laemmli buffer and loaded on a 15% SDS–polyacrylamide electrophoresis gel.
Statistical analyses.
All statistical analyses were carried out using Prism software (GraphPad). Chi-squared tests, one-way ANOVA tests or t-tests were used to calculate statistical significance. A P-value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. A statistical method was used to predetermine sample size for the FG model. No statistical method was used to determine sample size for the A549, HCC827 model or for limiting dilution experiments.
Repeatability of experiments.
At least two independent experiments were carried out for all in vitro tests. For the bar graphs that show a single representative experiment (Figs 1f (with MDAMB-231), 2b, 4g, 5e, 7a, b, e, f and Supplementary Figs 2g, f, 5a, e and 6c), the results from the other independently carried out experiments are provided as the statistical source data in Supplementary Table 3. All of the figures showing immunoblots or micrographs were independently repeated three times to confirm similar findings. The number of independent experiments versus technical replicates is specified in each figure legend.
Accession numbers.
The accession numbers for the previously published data reanalysed in this study include cDNA microarrays from the BATTLE study (GSE33072).World View will have Voyagers gliding peacefully along the edge of space for a two hour sailing like experience (rendering) World View If you've always wanted to glimpse Earth from near-space, there's hope!
A private space tourism company called World View wants to gently float people almost 20 miles above Earth's surface in balloon-toted capsules, and they recently made an important stride to reaching that goal.
On February 20, the company operated a parafoil — a massive, rectangular parachute — more than 19 miles above Earth's surface, twice the previous record, World View chief engineer Sebastian Padilla told Venture Beat.
World View plans on carrying passengers to such great heights by the end of 2016 — at a price of $75,000 per person.
Each trip will involve a 90 to 120-minute ascent, a few hours at maximum altitude with access to a bar and internet connection, and a descent of 30 minutes.
The passenger-carrying capsule is lifted by a massive helium balloon.
In order to return to the ground, the capsule is detached from the balloon and guided down by the parafoil alone.
The balloon itself also falls to Earth, where it is recovered by a World View ground team.
World View The record-breaking event on February 20 proved an important point in this last process of safely bringing passengers back from such great heights, Padilla explained to Venture Beat. During the test, the capsule ferried a scientific payload from Montana State University and the University of North Florida.
"Before yesterday, there was a question of whether you could even fly a parafoil from these altitudes," Padilla said, because of challenges posed by the low air pressure and cold temperatures at that altitude.
Taber MacCallum, the company's CTO, said in a press release: "The successful flight of the parafoil at this altitude brings us closer to flying private citizens safely to the edge of space."Image caption The World Service has been called the jewel in the BBC crown
The BBC World Service will launch 11 new language services as part of its biggest expansion "since the 1940s", the corporation has announced.
The expansion is a result of the funding boost announced by the UK government last year.
The new languages will be Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Gujarati, Igbo, Korean, Marathi, Pidgin, Punjabi, Telugu, Tigrinya, and Yoruba.
The first new services are expected to launch in 2017.
African languages:
Afaan Oromo: Language of Ethiopia's biggest ethnic group
Amharic: Ethiopia's official language
Tigrinya: The main working language of Eritrea, along with Arabic. Also spoken in Ethiopia
Igbo: An official Nigerian language. Also spoken in Equatorial Guinea
Yoruba: Spoken in south-western Nigeria and some other parts of West Africa, especially Benin and Togo
Pidgin: A creole version of English widely spoken in southern Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea
Pidgin - West African lingua franca
Asian languages:
Gujarati: Native to the Indian state of Gujarat but found around the Indian subcontinent and the world
Marathi: From the Indian state of Maharashtra, including India's commercial capital Mumbai
Telugu: Huge numbers of speakers, like many Indian languages, primarily in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
Punjabi: One of the world's most populous languages, it is widely-spoken in Pakistan and parts of India
Korean: Spoken in North and South though the dialects have diverged. Pop culture slang and foreign loan words are notably more common in the South
"This is a historic day for the BBC, as we announce the biggest expansion of the World Service since the 1940s," said BBC director general Tony Hall.
"The BBC World Service is a jewel in the crown - for the BBC and for Britain.
"As we move towards our centenary, my vision is of a confident, outward-looking BBC which brings the best of our independent, impartial journalism and world-class entertainment to half a billion people around the world.
"Today is a key step towards that aim."
'Relevant as ever'
The plans include the expansion of digital services to offer more mobile and video content and a greater social media presence.
On Wednesday the BBC launches a full digital service in Thai, following the success of a Facebook-only "pop-up" service launched in 2014.
Other expansion plans include:
extended news bulletins in Russian, with regionalised versions for surrounding countries
enhanced television services across Africa, including more then 30 new TV programmes for partner broadcasters across sub-Saharan Africa
new regional programming from BBC Arabic
short-wave and medium-wave radio programmes aimed at audiences in the Korean peninsula, plus online and social media content
investment in World Service English, with new programmes, more original journalism, and a broader agenda
BBC World Service expansion £289m investment 11 new languages 12 new or expanded daily TV and digital bulletins
40 languages covered after expansion
500m people reached by 2022 - double the current number
1,300 new jobs, mostly non-UK Getty Images
Fran Unsworth, the BBC's World Service director, said: "Through war, revolution and global change, people around the world have relied on the World Service for independent, trusted, impartial news.
"As an independent broadcaster, we remain as relevant as ever in the 21st Century, when in many places there is not more free expression, but less.
"Today's announcement is about transforming the World Service by investing for the future.
"We must follow our audience, who consume the news in changing ways; an increasing number of people are watching the World Service on TV, and many services are now digital-only.
"We will be able to speed up our digital transformation, especially for younger audiences, and we will continue to invest in video news bulletins.
"What will not change is our commitment to independent, impartial journalism."
The new language services mean the BBC World Service will be available in 40 languages, including English.
Lord Hall has set a target for the BBC to reach 500 million people worldwide by its centenary in 2022.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram at bbcnewsents, or if you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.The "Dancing Israelis" FBI Report - Debunked
Update
Introduction
Transcripts from the official report
The five Israelis
Analysis and further commentary on the transcripts
Corroborating evidence
The impossibility of the official conspiracy theory
Conclusion
Further reading
Index
Update
April 6, 2015
See our latest report on 9/11, which includes further corroboration of the fact that the Israelis were seen at Doric within five minutes of the first plane crash. The 1010 WINS program was interrupted at 08:50:39 for breaking news, and the announcement "a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center" was completed by 08:50:52, which is 4 minutes 22 seconds after the first crash at 08:46:30. The witness who saw the Israelis high-fiving, "horsing around", smiling, hugging each other and looking jovial but not at all shocked, was listening to WINS and did not hear anything about the WTC before she went to look outside. That's corroborated by the fact that she was prompted by the telephone call from her friend who'd heard a "strange noise" (almost certainly the impact or the roar of the plane), and who'd looked outside to see a "small cloud of smoke rising from one of the towers", before "immediately" phoning the witness. The FBI report also states that "According to T-1, it was the call from T-2, who is T-1's neighbor and close friend, which initially prompted T-1 to look out of the window towards the WTC. It was at that time that T-1 had also observed the Israelis atop the white van."
Thus, the physical impossibility of the Israelis learning of the event, deciding to take time off work, grabbing their cameras, running out to take their employer's van for personal use, making a 4 to 5-minute drive from Weehawken to the Doric apartment block in Union City in the rush hour, parking up and climbing onto the van roof with their cameras, etc. - all in less than 5 minutes! - is further confirmed.
Introduction
Thanks to andie531 for obtaining and making available the FBI documents on the "Dancing Israelis": KURZBERG, SIVAN ET AL. As will be shown, this FBI 'investigation' is very similar to the NIST 'investigations' into the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings collapses, in that the conclusion is politically motivated rather than evidence-based. Section 5 even reveals how the FBI's NS-2C Unit of its "National Security Division" based at FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C., ordered FBI Newark to stop their investigation of the Israelis.
The documents were partly declassified in 2005. However, there are many parts that are still blanked out and classified until 2030 or 2035. Apart from names of individuals, the unreleased material includes longer passages such as the section following the question: "1. Did the Israeli nationals have foreknowledge of the events at WTC and were they filming the events prior to and in anticipation of the explosion?" The fact that it's blanked out indicates that the answer is clearly not an emphatic "no".
Nonetheless, the material that has already been released is sufficient to prove that the Israelis did indeed have foreknowledge of the attacks on the WTC. That is of course consistent with Israel's capability and history of staging false-flag terror, the two hours' advance warning of the WTC attack transmitted via the Herzliya / New York-based Israeli instant messaging service Odigo, the failure of Benjamin Netanyahu's friend Larry Silverstein and his children to turn up for work that day at the World Trade Center, Netanyahu's advance warning of, and Efraim Halevy's intimate knowledge of, the London 7/7 attacks, the $250,000 "loan" received by Bernard Kerik from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer together with $236,000 in rent paid by Steven C. Witkoff after Kerik visited Israel from August 26-29, 2001 to meet with Wertheimer and then claimed on September 16, 2001 that a "hijacker's passport" had been "discovered", along with multiple corroborating evidence much too numerous to mention in an introduction. Not surprisingly, experts from such professions as structural engineers, architects, physicists, mechanical engineers, metallurgical engineering graduates, PhD scientists, fire protection engineers, fire-fighters, electrical design engineers, explosives technicians, etc, may be seen speaking out on the ae911truth channel on YouTube, explaining why they know the government's half-baked conspiracy theory about suicidal Arabs with box cutters crashing two planes and managing to bring down three high-rises is believable only by the uneducated and the uninformed.
Excerpts from the FBI official report are included here for easy reference. Commentary on the transcripts within the transcripts section is enclosed within square brackets, in order that it may be readily distinguished from the actual FBI text. Page numbers are generally included only at the start of another excerpt.
The FBI documents are formatted with a fixed spacing, so it is generally an easy job to determine the number of characters within the classified boxes. The beginning of each paragraph is indented by ten spaces, and there is a double-spacing between sentences. Where a paragraph starts with "(S/OC/NF)", for example, that is followed by two spaces before the start of the first sentence. The position of the last character on a line is not predictable, but sometimes the section is repeated elsewhere with the word in question appearing part-way along a line. Moreover, the FBI do not obliterate the exact same words each time a passage is repeated, so an examination of all repetitions reveals more information, such as how Paul Kurzberg worked for the "Jewish Agency".
The index at the bottom of this page covers the "Dancing Israelis" material within the FBI report Sections 1 to 6. Click on any particular entry to jump to the bookmark within the transcripts, and use the back button on your browser to go back to the index.
The documents, Section 1 to Section 6, can be downloaded from:
http://mybigfatanti-zionistlife.blogspot.com/2011/08/official-2001-fbi-docs-on-urban-moving.html
Update: The documents are still available for viewing at the Scribd links on the above page, but there are restrictions on downloading from Scribd. You have to be a paid subscriber, or upload your own file each time. The primary source documents - FBI report sections 1 to 6, and the police report - are publicly available for download from the links at the following page:
http://kennysideshow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-dancing-israelis-docs_4.html
Transcripts from the official report
Section 1
Page 1 of 141:
Date: 09/14/2001
Synopsis: Request SAC approval to open a Full Field Investigation.
Full Field Investigation Instituted: 09/14/2001
Details: A [blank, four characters long] and ACS text search of evidence acquired from a search executed by FBI Newark's Joint Terrorist Task Force, of a vehicle located on Route 3 East Rutherford, New Jersey, a White Chevrolet Van, New Jersey, license plate JRJ13Y, registered to Urban Moving Systems, 312 Pavonia, Pavonia Avenue #1, Jersey City, New Jersey, contained telephone numbers and names directly associated with previously identified [blank] and activities.
[Note: Pavonia Avenue was an early address used by UMS. Page 59 shows that UMS wrote to their insurers Oxford Health Plans on 07/26/2000 to change their address to 3 W. 18th Street, Weehawken, and at the same time they also provided a New York address of 446 W. 50th Street.]
[Section 1, Page 3 reveals that the Israelis had taken 76 photographs; also confirmed on page 80.]
[Section 1, Page 7 of 141 shows that seized items #1 to #3 were maps. Early reports stated that evidence linking the Israelis to the attacks consisted of maps "with certain places highlighted". Subsequently, although it was admitted that there were "tie-ins", the "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11" was "classified". If there was no evidence to link them, there would be no evidence to classify. Other items listed include passports, a flight coupon and itinerary, black organizers, pocket notebooks, and "fabric sample (explosive residue)".]
[Section 1, Page 9 reveals that film was acquired from two cameras: a Canon EOS SLR and a Pentax P550.]
Section 1, Page 22:
Information Received Date: 09/11/2001 Time: 8:40 PM
Event Narrative: [Blank] observed three dark skin men driving a white van bearing New Jersey Plates driving on Spiritbrook Road [should be Spit Brook Road] near Nashua, New Hampshire around 1 PM. The driver of the van appeared to be lost. The van had a sign for Urban Moving Systems. [Spit Brook Road is within a mile of UMS' health insurers Oxford Health Plans, located at 10 Tara Blvd, Nashua, NH.]
Section 1, Page 23:
Information Received Date: 09/11/2001 Time: 8:27 PM
Event Narrative: Spotted a white cube van driving along Rt. 3 South near exit 3 Plymouth Massachuesetts [sic]. The van had double doors in the back and the company name "Urban Moving Systems" in gold lettering.
Section 1, Page 28:
Synopsis: Establish basis linking five (5) Israeli Nationals (detained) [38 characters wiped here before the period. The blanked characters would have to be something like "to the terrorist attacks of 09/11/2001"; if they were discussing links between the Israelis and Mickey Mouse, there would have been no need to classify it].
Details: On instant date, Newark initiated an investigation predicated upon the detention of five (5) Israeli Nationals who may have possessed information about the terrorist incident targeting the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center on 09/11/2001. The following sets forth the basis for linking these five (5) Israeli Nationals (detained) [followed by section blanked out for political reasons; the wiped area continues for the rest of the page and for almost all of page 29; in handwriting the date this section was classified is 7-15-2005; declassify on 7-15-2030; whereas in print at top left of page it states 07-21-2010 as the date classified and says "declassify on: 07-21-2035"].
Section 1, Page 30:
[This is dated 09/14/2001.]
Furthermore, on 09/11/2001, [blank] of the Pennsylvania State Police detained a yellow Penske box truck upon the request of Newark. [Blank] inspected the vehicle and determined that the vehicle's two (2) occupants, [blank] and [blank] both identified as Israeli nationals, were on their way to Columbus, OH. When Newark later questioned [blank] of Urban Moving Systems about the vehicle's presence in Pennsylvania, he could not offer an explanation. According to the moving company's [blank] the two (2) occupants and their vehicle were supposed to complete a moving job in a different part of the country. [Note: By a bizarre 'coincidence', the route from Weehawken, NJ to Columbus, OH passes within 2 or 3 miles of Shanksville and Indian Lake in PA.]
A search of UNI for any references to [blank] revealed one possible reference [blank] investigation) to [blank] born [blank] which further identified [blank] as an Israeli [blank.] [Note: That last wiped area is sixteen characters in length after taking out the period, so the word is not merely "national" or "citizen", which in any case would not need censure. "Covert operative", for example, would fit.]
Similarly, Newark also received reports from law enforcement officials in New England that a second vehicle, displaying markings for Urban Moving Systems, was noted to have stopped somewhere between New York and Boston on 09/11/2001 for the purpose of asking for directions to Boston, MA. The occupants of this second Urban Moving Systems vehicle were also identified as Israeli nationals.
The information provided herein pertains only to the information developed on the detainees in terms of [blank, section wiped is nearly two lines in length.] Connections between the detainees and other terrorism and or intelligence affiliated persons is to be reported under separate cover. [So the wiped section there refers to "the information developed on the detainees in terms of" connections between them and certain "terrorism and or intelligence affiliated persons", and connections between them and other "terrorism and or intelligence affiliated persons" is to be reported separately.]
Investigation at Newark continues.
Section 1, Page 32:
[This is dated 09/15/2001.]
On 09/14/2001, Newark Division, with the assistance of the New York Office (NYO), initiated an investigation predicated upon the detention of five (5) Israeli Nationals who may have possessed information about the terrorist incident targeting the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center on 09/11/2001. The following sets forth a summary of the investigation-to-date. [Dated 09/15/2001]
On 09/11/2001, several complaints (FD-71s) were taken and interviews conducted by the Newark Division with respect to the event surrounding the explosions at New York City's World Trade Center (WTC), the Pentagon, and airline Flight #93 that had departed Newark. On 09/11/2001, [blank] a housewife and Union City, NJ resident, advised that at approximately 9:00am, 09/11/2001, [blank] neighbor, [blank] called her on the telephone to tell her that she [blank] saw smoke coming from the WTC. In order to see the WTC more closely, [blank] used 7x33mm power binoculars to view the scene. From the rear window of her apartment and while looking in the direction of the WTC, [blank] observed three (3) males kneeling on the roof of a white van located in the rear parking lot of her apartment complex. She noticed the individuals and it appeared as though they noticed her.
[Blank] described the males as white, mid-twenties, no facial hair, no glasses, "clean-cut," no hats, all wearing short sleeves, with lean builds. Other identifying data was also provided. [Blank] described the white van as a "box"-style van which had no windows on the side; it reminded [blank] of a telephone company style van.
According to [blank] one of the males appeared to be taking still photographs and video of the other males with the WTC in the background. All of the males appeared to be jovial in that they smiled, hugged one another, and gave "high fives." (See attached photos). As the vehicle later left that area, [blank] recorded the license plate as JRJ-13Y. Later that day when [blank] returned home, she provided the police with the information pertaining to the males.
Another complaint Subsequent investigation by Newark Criminal Division Agents revealed a second eyewitness who reported having observed the a [sic] white van in the same parking lot described by [blank]. This eyewitness, however, observed the van in the parking lot as early as 8:00am on the morning of the explosions at WTC.
A third interviewee later reported, as documented on an FD-71, having seen, on 09/11/2001 (time not noted), a big, white, model 2000 Chevrolet van, or possibly panel truck or U-Haul truck, bearing the words "Urban Movers" in black lettering along the side. The vehicle was observed in the Liberty State Park's Marine Terminal in Jersey City, NJ, located across the Hudson River from WTC.
Pursuant to this information, East Rutherford, NJ police authorities stopped an Urban Moving Systems van at a pre-positioned roadblock which was occupied by males similar to those described by witnesses above. The van had been traveling eastbound along State Route 3 in New Jersey. Following the stop, police detained five (5) individuals, all Israeli Nationals, on the grounds that they may have had information pertaining to the WTC explosions. The matter was later forwarded to FBI Newark, and the individuals were detained based violations of immigration their status [sic].
At the time of the vehicle stop, a search of the van and individuals was conducted. Seizure of the individuals' property yielded the following: a 35mm camera, several personal telephone-style notebooks, back packs, airline tickets with immediate travel dates for destinations world-wide, Israeli passports (in some cases, expired), a German passport, and thousands of dollars of cash. Student identifications later believed to be false were later found. Oddly, equipment typically used in a moving company's daily duties was not found, including work gloves, blankets, straps, ropes, boxes, dollies, rollers, etc. Also not found was the video camera that [blank] observed at least one of the males using to film the explosion at WTC.
Focused on what might have been contained on the film in the video camera reportedly used by the Israeli males, Newark's Criminal Division interviewed each of the Israeli males. Through interviews (and later polygraphs), it was determined that several of the detainees had, by their own admission, [blank.]
For instance, [blank, fourteen characters, so probably Sivan Kurzberg] was formerly employed as a [blank] in Israel and later served as a [blank] and performed [blank] NFI). [Blank, eight characters, probably Kurzberg] also worked with the [blank] when [blank, eight characters again] found Arabs who weren't supposed to be in Israel. [Blank, eight characters] had served in the Israeli Army for three (3) years. [Sivan Kurzberg was 23 in 2001.] At the conclusion of the interview, [blank, eight characters] denied having [blank, 26 characters] while residing in the United States; he also denied ever having contact with [blank.]
Section 1, Page 35:
Film obtained from the 35mm camera of one of the detainees was later developed and processed by the Newark Division. The photos clearly corroborate [blank's] statements in that the Israelis are visibly happy on nearly all of the photgraphs [sic]. Further, the photos revealed that the Israelis had taken photographs from both the top of a van and from another location believed to be a parking lot near the Urban Moving Systems location in Weehawken, NJ. (The Bureau should note that based upon the evidence recovery log as completed by Newark, it is unclear which collected items belonged to which Israeli detainee.)
Newark also received information pertaining to another Urban Moving Systems vehicle which had been stopped while traveling westbout [sic] by the Pennsylvania State Police on 09/10/2001, the day prior to the terrorist attack. At 11:30pm, a Penske truck was stopped for a traffic violation. The vehicle was identified as having been leased by Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ. The individuals questioned, [blank] and [blank] identified as Israeli Nationals, advised that they were bound for Columbus, OH.
On 09/12/2001, the same truck was once again stopped while traveling eastbound in Pennsylvania. [Blank] and [blank] the same Israeli nationals identified earlier, were detained. During questioning by the Pennsylvania State Police, the Israelis advised that they weren't "in New York" on 09/11/2001. A gasoline purchase receipt recovered by the Pennsylvania State Police seems to contradict their claim in that the receipt, dated 09/11/2001, was for gasoline purchased in New Jersey. (Lead set to Williamsport RA presently pending.)
A subsequent interview of the president/owner of Urban Moving Systems revealed that [blank] and [blank] delivery schedule for the morning of 09/11/2001 did not include any pickups or deliveries outside of New Jersey. Oddly, [blank] and [blank] were stopped while traveling in the direction of the site of the hijacked plane that crashed outside of Pittsburgh, PA.
Newark also received information which revealed that on about 1:00pm, 09/11/2001, three dark-skinned males had been observed driving a white van, bearing New Jersey plates, on Spirit Brook Road [should be Spit Brook Road] near Nashua, New Hampshire (just outside of Boston). According to the report, the driver of the van appeared to be lost; the van had a sign on the side for Urban Moving Systems.
A search of Urban Moving Systems, Weehawken, NJ, revealed more oddities which caused the search team leader to characterize the company as a possible "fraudulent operation." Little evidence of a legitimate business operation was found. Evidence recovery agents did seize, however, sixteen (16) separate computer units used by Urban Moving Systems.
The FBI presence at the Urban Moving Systems search site drew the attention of the local media and was later reported on both television and in the local press. A former Urban Moving Systems employee later contacted the Newark Division with information indicating that he had quit his employment with Urban Moving Systems due to high amount of anti-American sentiment present among Urban's employees. The former employee stated that an Israeli employee of Urban had even once remarked, "Give us twenty (20) years and we'll take over your media and destroy your country."
Based on the odd circumstances surrounding Urban Moving Systems, the deception over the alleged usage of a video camera by its Israeli employees, and the observed positive reactions (by the Israeli detainees) to the explosions at WTC, Newark Squad C-9 (SSA [blank] SA [blank], began to focus on the following:
[Blanked off for nearly two pages.]
Section 1, Page 39:
A search of UNI for any references to [blank] revealed two possible references [blank] and [blank] investigations at San Diego) to [blank] born [blank] which further identified [blank, nine characters] as an [blank, up to 25 characters excluding period, so "intelligence operative" could fit.]
Based on information provided by the Miami Division, Newark detained (initially) and interviewed four (4) employees of Classic International Movers, a New Jersey based moving company which was believed by Miami to have been used by one of the nineteen (19) alleged hijackers involved in the terrorist attacks. All four employees, Israeli nationals, had served in the Israeli military, and entered the U.S. from various locations in South America. [Note: It's quite bizarre that an "Arab terrorist" would use an Israeli moving company. However, if Israelis were posing as "Arab terrorists", it would be remarkable if they didn't use an Israeli moving company.]
[Blanked off paragraphs.]
Section 1, Page 59:
Oxford [Health Plans, an insurance company located at 10 Tara Boulevard, Nashua, New Hampshire] began insuring Urban Moving Systems on 07/01/1997. Urban Moving Systems initially provided an address of 312 Pavonia Avenue #1, Jersey City, New Jersey, 07302. On 07/26/2000, Urban Moving Systems wrote Oxford to change their address to 3 18th Street, Weehawken, New Jersey, 07087, telephone number (201) 558-0210. At that time, Urban Moving Systems also provided a New York address of 446 West 50th Street, New York, New York, 10019, telephone number (212) 664-1268.
Section 1, Page 61:
[Blank] definitely saw the individual identified in the photographs as number 5 within the apartment building at around 3:00 p.m. on 09/10/2001, the day before the interview, as well as here and there during the preceding weekend. The individual was observed entering the elevator in the lobby along with another individual with whom he was conversing, perhaps in Spanish. The manner in which the two men were speaking suggested that they knew each other. The second man was not within the pictures presented.
[...]
Several times during the course of the interview, the interviewee independently volunteered that he was positive that the man identified within the photographs as number 5 was the man he saw in the building. [See: Section 6, Page 44; "number 5" is Sivan Kurzberg.]
Section 1, Page 63:
On 09/11/2001, [blank] woke up at approximately 7:30 AM. She recalls the time because her husband woke her as he got prepared for jury duty in Newark, New Jersey (NJ). As her husband was showering and getting dressed, [blank] prepared the coffee and placed a bagel in the oven.
Her husband went downstairs to purchase a newspaper at to [sic] the store located on the ground floor of the apartment complex. He returned and they had breakfast together.
Her husband then left for jury duty at approximately 8:25 AM or 8:30 AM. She then telephonically contacted GENERAL CAB COMPANY for a cab to take her son, [blank] to [blank]. After she contacted the cab company, her son waited in the lobby area for the cab.
[Blank's] neighbors who reside in apartment [blank] left their daughter, [blank] with [blank] to babysit. As these neighbors left the apartment complex, they saw [blank's son] waiting for the cab so they transported him to college.
At approximately 9:00 AM, [blank] in apartment [blank] telephonically contacted [blank] to tell her that she saw smoke coming from the WORLD TRADE CENTER (WTC), in New York City. [Blank] then grabbed her Binolux binoculars, (lightweight triple tested, 7 x 35 mm, 341 feet at 1000 yards) in order to see the WTC closely.
[Blank] recalls that she was listening to 1010 AM news radio station [this would be WINS] and she did not hear any information regarding the WTC. She recalls that the sun had risen, it was a clear day and there was no fog or clouds.
[Joan Fleischer, an account executive on the WINS sales team, was very close to the Towers from her rooftop on North Moore Street. She noticed a plane flying much lower than she had ever seen before in the New York City skies, and knew it was going to crash. She called the WINS newsroom and spoke to Mark Mason, the former executive editor at WINS. As she said, "There's going to be a plane crash," the plane tilted to the left and slammed into the building. It hit just as she said, "crash". Mason called Fleischer back "from a line that could be patched into the studio on the air", and since they had someone from the station on the scene as it unfolded, they were able to go "with such a live report". The audio was available at this page in 2011, but as of 2015, is no longer available at Long Island Press's own archived version of the page. The audio file is archived here from 2011 by the Wayback Machine, or alternatively, may be downloaded from here.]
["Breaking news now, on 1010 WINS. This just in to our newsroom; a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Let's get this live update from 1010 WINS correspondent Joan Fleischer. Joan, what do you see?"]
["Well I'm standing on the top of my roof, and I'm looking at the World Trade Center, and there's a huge hole in it, and there's a fire in the building right now, huge smoke pouring out of it, and things are falling from the building itself. [...] I heard the plane, very close to the top of the buildings. I looked outside, and I saw it hit, and it exploded immediately."]
[At nearly eight minutes into the live report, the second plane hadn't hit - which occurred at 9:03. The eyewitness was listening to the station and could not have missed hearing the news. Thus, this fixes an absolute latest time for the eyewitness to have gone to look outside at 8:55; eight-and-a-half minutes after the first impact at approximately 8:46:30. However, that would be ridiculous because it requires that WINS was so incompetent that it took more than eight minutes to call Joan Fleischer back "from a line that could be patched into the studio |
the conservative Club for Growth, which issued an alert to all members warning they would be given a negative score on spending if they voted for anything less than $100 billion in non-security cuts in the CR.
Aides said the revised measure must be released Friday if it is to have time for a debate and floor vote next week as planned. Under a three-day rule the GOP instituted in January, bills have to be unveiled three days before a floor vote. The House is in session for four days next week.
Staff was scrambling to come up with more cuts to non-security discretionary spending on Thursday after a late-night huddle Wednesday by Appropriations Committee cardinals.
Labor and Health Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) said Thursday he has been instructed to quickly find an addition $11 billion to cut from his area of spending in a matter of hours.
“For me it’s painful... I have to deal with labor, it’s job training; with health, it’s community health centers; with education, it’s kids,” he said. “Mine is a painful process to find the savings necessary.”
At a Thursday subcommittee hearing, Appropriations member John Culberson (R-Texas) urged NASA Inspector General Paul Martin to give him a list of specific cuts immediately because the continuing resolution was being written as they spoke.
“We need real specific, real quickly,” he said.
Under the Rogers bill, NASA was already set to receive a $379 million cut from Obama’s budget request.
If some form of a continuing resolution is not passed by March 4, the federal government will be forced to shut down.
The House will be out of session the last full week of February, leaving only one week for the House and Senate to act before the deadline.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has already said that even if the House passes a CR next week, the Senate would be unable to deal with it by March 4. That means a short-term continuing resolution, perhaps lasting only for a few weeks, will be needed to avoid a shutdown.
Russell Berman and Molly K. Hooper contributed to this report.
This story was originally posted at 11:30 a.m. and last updated at 8:42 p.m.Angela Merkel will use a high-profile visit to London on Thursday, in which she will address a joint session of parliament and have tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, to plead with the British people to remain members of the European Union.
Amid genuine fears in Berlin that Britain may be on a trajectory towards exit, the German chancellor is expected to say that Britain benefits from its membership of the EU. But Merkel is also expected to say that the EU benefits from Britain's open approach to trade and markets.
Her visit, which has many of the trappings of a state visit rarely offered to a head of government, contrasts with the low key reception for the French president, François Hollande, at the Anglo-French summit last month at RAF Brize Norton. Hollande faced embarrassing questions about his private life at a press conference with David Cameron and then sat through an awkward and short lunch with the prime minister at a nearby upmarket gastropub.
Merkel will address a joint session of parliament at midday before having lunch with the prime minister in Downing Street. They will hold a joint press conference before Merkel holds separate meetings with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.
Cameron has invested a great deal of capital in Merkel in the belief that she will be the pivotal figure if he wins the 2015 general election and seeks to renegotiate Britain's EU membership terms. He tried to help Merkel in her re-election campaign last year by offering to give her the full red carpet treatment in London before the election. But Merkel said she would rather wait until this year.
The German chancellor advised Cameron last year to cast his landmark speech on the EU, in which he pledged to hold an in/out referendum on Britain's membership of the EU by the end of 2017, as a campaign to reform the EU as a whole. Merkel has told the prime minister that – if he acts in that spirit – she would be prepared to offer help if the Lisbon treaty were revised to underpin new governance arrangements. A senior Berlin official has said that assurances could be introduced during modest treaty revisions to ensure that the interests of Britain and other non-euro members are protected in the European single market.
But one senior coalition figure said any concessions offered by the Germans would amount to "chickenfeed" that would not satisfy Tory eurosceptics. "David Cameron will get some concessions but it will lack powder and shock. There is an interesting parallel with Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan before the 1975 referendum, who trotted round the capitals of Europe getting a packet of matches rather than a cigar and hailed this as a great triumph."
"David Cameron is caught. He goes to Brussels and gets chickenfeed – that won't satisfy the eurosceptics. He goes there and argues for something more than chickenfeed and his bluff is called."
Willy Brandt was the last German chancellor to address both houses of the British parliament, delivering a speech in 1970 hailed in a Guardian leader as "an unqualified success". Summing up Brandt's visit to Britain on 2 March 1970, this newspaper wrote: "It is doubtful if relations between Britain and Germany have ever been better – not on a basis of overflowing sentiment, but in terms of quiet trust, patience and understanding."
It is unlikely the British media will be championing Merkel's visit in similarly euphoric tones by the end of the week. For a start, Britain was then trying to negotiate its way into the EEC. When Merkel speaks in Westminster on Thursday lunchtime, many of those on the benches in front of her would prefer Britain negotiate its way out.
Those wanting Britain to stay in, such as the prime minister, will be hoping that Merkel will throw them a lifeline, a trophy those wanting to stay inside Europe can produce as evidence for having successfully renegotiated Britain's relationship with Brussels.
But at the top in Germany there is a growing concern this week that British expectations have grown far too high for the chancellor to meet. The room Merkel had to voice her support on Thursday was limited, said Almut Möller of the German Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. "Merkel is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand she would like to help Cameron out of the corner, as Germany wants Britain in rather than out. But in effect, her real game is the eurozone and therefore she will not keep Britain in the EU at all costs. And the rest of Europe will listen carefully to what she says in the British parliament."
Just over a year ago, Cameron's Bloomberg speech, which highlighted the need for European reform, found a surprising number of open ears in Germany, even among Social Democrats. "Not more Europe, but a better Europe" is a phrase you often hear in Berlin these days. German politicians openly talk of the need to reform the EU, something they share with few European countries apart from Britain.
The prime minister is being warned that he needs to be careful not to misinterpret Merkel's approach, as he did in late 2011 when he tabled a series of demands for the City of London at a Brussels summit. These were rejected by Berlin, forcing Cameron to veto the new eurozone fiscal compact. "Cameron's interpretation of Merkel's stance is partially based on a misunderstanding," said Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung and author of an authorised Merkel biography. "He took her support of his stance in the EU budget debate as a statement of blanket support for Britain's renegotiation strategy. One priority for her speech will be to readjust expectations of what she can deliver."
While banking union and further economic integration in the eurozone will require some changes to the treaties, the German government would prefer to do so without having to reopen old agreements entirely: Vertragsanpassungen, "treaty modifications" rather than "treaty change", is the phrase her party uses. "Reopening the Lisbon treaty and having to get it ratified by all member states is the last thing Merkel wants," said Kornelius.
"Renegotiating treaties is definitely not an option," Gunther Krichbaum, the CDU chairman of the commission on European affairs, told the Guardian. "These treaties already are compromises – we'd end up where we started."
In any concession she can make to Britain on Thursday, Merkel will be restrained by her coalition agreement with the Social Democrats, who would never accept reopening the Lisbon treaty and deleting the phrase "ever closer union", as some British Conservatives would like to.
She will also have to take into account her own party's European manifesto, which is set to be presented at the CDU party conference in April. While the current draft hints at some common ground with the Tories over making it harder for EU migrants to access benefits, it also treats it as an issue to be addressed by national parliaments, rather than a problem that requires a wholesale revision of the freedom of movement principle.
Merkel and her speechwriters will be aware of the historic dimension of her visit. While British parliamentarians shouldn't expect rhetorical fireworks, it's possible she will add a personal flavour to her speech, as when she spoke in front of both chambers of the US Congress in 2009.
"Merkel is good at presidential speeches," said Möller. "There are plenty of things she can wax lyrical about without getting into tricky areas: the upcoming first world war centenary, the need for a more global outlook in the economy, the inspiring achievements of British parliamentary democracy." But whether that will be enough to appease Cameron's backbenchers is doubtful.Denver Post sports writer Chris Dempsey posts his Nuggets Mailbag every other Thursday during the NBA season.
Pose a Nuggets- or NBA-related question for the Nuggets Mailbag.
Are the Nuggets seriously considering trading an all-out effort guy with unique talent and crowd appeal like Kenneth Faried? Are they trying to underline how dumb they are after dumping a hall of fame coach for a rookie and tanking this season?
— Tom Silverman, Glenwood Springs
Not to worry, Tom. Nothing like that is going down.
There have already been rumors about Kenneth Faried trades twice early this season, but the team is not shopping their young big. Faried, however, is one of the hottest names on the roster, so expect to hear more of this as the season progresses.
A number of teams have already called the Nuggets to inquire about the availability of Faried, and I don’t expect that to just come to a screeching halt.
I loved seeing Brian Shaw play three point guards against San Antonio. What is the best way to maximize the effectiveness of Ty Lawson, Andre Miller and Nate Robinson going forward this season?
— Ryan, Denver
Ryan, good question. The Nuggets have played three-guard lineups in a number of different combinations already this season — using not just Lawson, Miller and Robinson, but Randy Foye as well.
The Miller/Lawson/Foye trio along with J.J. Hickson and Darrell Arthur has been one of the better field goal percentage lineups this season for the Nuggets. They’d been forced to do this early because of the absence of Wilson Chandler, but his return I think will start to eliminate some of those three-guard lineups because they’ll have sufficient bodies at small forward.
Please help me understand how small point guards (under 6-foot-2) can win in the NBA playoffs. I witnessed what Chauncey Billups did to Chris Paul about five years ago and most experts consider CP3 the best in the league.
–Keith Oliver, Littleton
I don’t think there’s a lot of arguing with Chris Paul’s NBA-leading 12.6 assists (going into Wednesday’s games) to go along with his 19.5 points and 2.6 steals. He does it all on both ends of the court and he’s the Clippers undisputed leader.
I’d argue he generally hasn’t had a team around him good enough to make deep playoff runs in his career. He does now. And he’s got a coach in Doc Rivers that has a championship under his belt. If they don’t get there, the Clippers will at the very least threaten to get to the NBA Finals, and Paul will be a huge reason why they do.
How do you feel Danilo Gallinari’s rehab is coming along, because I have a gut feeling it’s going slow. When he does come back, do you think Brian Shaw will put Wilson Chandler at the two, because Randy Foye is a bust? At the end, we gave up Arron Afflalo for Foye.
–John, New York
I’d continue to be patient with the whole Danilo Gallinari knee injury. He’s working hard and coming along at a steady rate, but is nowhere near ready to get back onto the court.
He hasn’t even begun real running and cutting, so he’s got a ways to go – and obviously won’t be back by the Thanksgiving deadline that was out there. So to think in terms of what the lineups might be when he returns is probably premature. I’d also hold off on the bust talk with any player on the roster just 10 games into the season.
Let’s get into the New Year, more specifically around February before value judgments can begin to be made.
With the slow start of the Nuggets this season there is already talk of trades to be made. My question, what is the Nuggets biggest problem? And which player could they trade for that would be an instant impact?
— Casey, Denver
With all due respect, Casey, I’m going to side-step this one right now. The Nuggets continue to be a work in progress, so my point is we actually don’t know what their needs are because we’re not seeing a team that fully understands the system and runs smoothly.
When that happens then deficiencies will become clearer. So, we’ll all wait and see what happens and evaluate the team from a much firmer foundation later in the year.
I liked your article about the positives in JaVale McGee’s development, but I really wish JaVale could put up solid numbers for at least two games in a row. Somebody told me that former Nugget Dan Issel should be the big man coach for McGee and Kenneth Faried, given how important Issel was in Dikembe Mutombo’s development. Your thoughts?
— Nigel, Philippines
Perhaps. But right now JaVale’s biggest concern is coming back from a stress fracture that he admitted started bothering him late last season.
When he does return, I think he just needs to get back down to basics — rebounding, blocking shots, etc. — and grow from there. If there is no discernible improvement in his game by the end of the season, honestly, I’d be surprised.
But if that is the case, the Nuggets would be forced to think outside of the box and do something along those lines.
Chris Dempsey covers the Nuggets and NBA for The Denver Post. Pose a Nuggets- or NBA-related question for the Nuggets Mailbag. Follow him at twitter.com/dempseypostFile version: 40.24A For DF version: 0.40.24 Downloads: 6,623 (14,064) Size: 11.26 MB Views: 20,819 (39,975) Type: ZIP Home: Forum thread Rating (3 votes) : Description
1/8/2015 - Updated to 0.40.24 - Raws have changed. Happy New Year!
12/26/2014 - Updated to 0.40.23 - Raws have changed.
12/22/2014 - Updated to 0.40.22 - No raw changes.
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11/21/2014 - Updated to 0.40.18 - No raw changes.
11/15/2014 - switched some tiles around so angels don't look like plump helmets.
11/12/2014 -Updated to 0.40.16 - No raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.15 is compatible with 0.40.16
11/6/2014 - Updated to 0.40.15 - Raws have changed
10/25/2014 - Updated to 0.40.14 - Raws have changed -Used the stool/chair/throne icon for the new step ladders.
9/17/2014 - Updated to 0.40.13 - Raws have changed
9/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.12 - Fixed some fish tiles in creature_large_riverlake.txt, such as Carp. They should look like fish instead of meat. Let me know if you find any other tiles that are incorrect please!
9/5/2014 - Updated to 0.40.11 - Raws have changed
8/24/2014 - Update to 0.40.09 - No raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.09 is compatible with 0.40.10
8/17/2014 - Updated to 0.40.09 - Raws have changed
8/11/2014 - Updated to 0.40.08 - No Raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.07 is compatible with 0.40.08
8/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.07 - Raws have changed
8/3/2014 - Updated to 0.40.06 - Raws have changed
7/27/2014 - Updated to 0.40.05 - Raws have changed
7/20/2014 - Updated to 0.40.04 - New version of the.exe No raw changes
7/14/2014 - Updated to 0.40.03 - Added tweaks from Harmonica (tree and plant tiles, and tweaked colors) - Fixed Miners appearing as children.
7/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.02 Miners still look like children for unknown reasons.
Please report graphical bugs and missing/incorrect tiles to the forum thread.
For the upgrade pack:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8758 Ironhand graphics ported to Dwarf Fortress 2014.1/8/2015 - Updated to 0.40.24 - Raws have changed. Happy New Year!12/26/2014 - Updated to 0.40.23 - Raws have changed.12/22/2014 - Updated to 0.40.22 - No raw changes.12/19/2014 - Updated to 0.40.21 - No raw changes.12/18/2014 - Updated to 0.40.20 - No raw changes.11/27/2014 - Updated to 0.40.19 - Raws have changed.11/21/2014 - Updated to 0.40.18 - No raw changes.11/15/2014 - switched some tiles around so angels don't look like plump helmets.11/12/2014 -Updated to 0.40.16 - No raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.15 is compatible with 0.40.1611/6/2014 - Updated to 0.40.15 - Raws have changed10/25/2014 - Updated to 0.40.14 - Raws have changed -Used the stool/chair/throne icon for the new step ladders.9/17/2014 - Updated to 0.40.13 - Raws have changed9/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.12 - Fixed some fish tiles in creature_large_riverlake.txt, such as Carp. They should look like fish instead of meat. Let me know if you find any other tiles that are incorrect please!9/5/2014 - Updated to 0.40.11 - Raws have changed8/24/2014 - Update to 0.40.09 - No raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.09 is compatible with 0.40.108/17/2014 - Updated to 0.40.09 - Raws have changed8/11/2014 - Updated to 0.40.08 - No Raw changes. Upgrade pack from 0.40.07 is compatible with 0.40.088/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.07 - Raws have changed8/3/2014 - Updated to 0.40.06 - Raws have changed7/27/2014 - Updated to 0.40.05 - Raws have changed7/20/2014 - Updated to 0.40.04 - New version of the.exe No raw changes7/14/2014 - Updated to 0.40.03 - Added tweaks from Harmonica (tree and plant tiles, and tweaked colors) - Fixed Miners appearing as children.7/10/2014 - Updated to 0.40.02 Miners still look like children for unknown reasons.Please report graphical bugs and missing/incorrect tiles to the forum thread.For the upgrade pack:Warner Bros has pushed back the release date for its DC tentpole Aquaman starring Jason Momoa from October 5, 2018 to December 21, 2018. That prime location was vacated last week when James Cameron said his Avatar 2 would not be ready in time for that date, which had been penciled in for the first in four planned sequels.
That news set other distribs in motion to ID potential tentpoles for that lucrative Christmas Week date that suddenly was seeking one; it will be the first Christmas box office frame in three years without a Star Wars movie slotted after 2015’s The Force Awakens, last year’s stand-alone Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and this year’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The untitled Han Solo stand-alone pic is set to open May 25, 2018.
Of course, Aquaman‘s movie set off a domino effect. Soon after the news broke, Sony took over the DC superhero’s old date of Oct. 5, announcing that Spider-Man spinoff Venom about the webslinger’s nemesis was officially heading to the big screen. That first weekend in October, which was primed by Gravity ($55.8M) and The Martian ($54.3M) is poised to be a recordbreaker with the debut of Warner Bros./Sony’s Blade Runner 2049. Sony already had Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web on Oct. 5, but has now pushed it to Oct. 19 where it will face off with Warner Bros.’ Jungle Book: Origins and an untitled film from Blumhouse.
Aquaman stars Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe and Patrick Wilson and is directed by James Wan from Will Beall’s script. The marine superhero also is part of the DC Universe gathering for Justice League, which bows this November 17.
Avatar 2 originally was set for a December 2014 bow, but its release date has shifted at least three times. “What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases,” Cameron told the Toronto Star last week. “So, we’re not making Avatar 2, we’re making Avatar 2, 3, 4 and 5.”
Meanwhile, Warner Bros today also set dates for a pair of other pics. The Ed Helms-Owen Wilson R-rated road comedy Bastards, from Alcon Entertainment, will bow this Christmas frame on December 22, a week after The Last Jedi. Already set for that weekend are Sony’s Jumanji, Paramount’s Downsizing, Universal’s Pitch Perfect 3 and The Weinstein Company/Dimension’s The Six Billion Dollar Man. Warners earlier had slotted an Untitled PG-13 Comedy in that frame.
Nicolai Fuglsig’s Horse Soldiers, starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Trevonte Rhodes, Michael Pena, Austin Stowell and Rob Riggle, has been set for January 19, 2018, when it will also get an Imax bow. It will face off with STX’s Gerard Butler action thriller Den of Thieves.There was no shortage of debate in the off-season about what path the Canucks should be taking this season. Should they build for the future, or push for wins in the present? The Canucks chose to try to do both at the same time, to the chagrin of many of their most vocal fans. It can’t be done, they said, either throw in the towel and tank or go all in.
Instead, the Canucks found what appeared to be a happy medium. They cut loose a number of veterans and infused the team with youth and lo and behold, they saw immediate results. The Canucks, without ever using the term, were rebuilding, and they were winning at the same time.
This is Vancouver though, so naturally it’s all gone horribly wrong. The Canucks seem to have lost the ability to win, which is super for the draftist crowd. Unfortunately, they aren’t tanking properly either.
I feel I need to start with a disclaimer, lest I be burdened with any more gross misinterpretations. I’m trying to have a little fun here and make the best of whatever frustrating funk the Canucks are in. Serve your takes accordingly.
I don’t believe the Canucks are currently tanking, nor do I believe their current roster is even capable of finishing near the bottom of the standings. In fact, I’m not even entirely convinced that tanking is the best method to eventual success (though it certainly has its merits).
Despite what some may try to convince you of, there is no proper path to success in the NHL. Yes, teams like Pittsburgh and Chicago are built around top draft picks (though they alienated their fan bases or nearly lost their franchise relocation before getting them), but there are plenty more teams with top picks that have had far less success if any at all.
@HayesTSN You really think the oilers are giving up on the lottery bowl? pic.twitter.com/Hops4Fe8sn — JBH82 (@autotrigerr) October 30, 2015
Likewise, the perennial contender model seems to have stalled out in Detroit for the time being. The old fashioned model of drafting, developing, signing and trading is hit or miss as well. The jury is still out on the quickest and easiest method, and it’s become more about playing the odds. Some see high picks as the greatest odds though others fear that it has the greatest risks.
Anyways, I’m not here to determine which rebuild tactic is best. Instead, I’d like to make some observations regarding one of these methods.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that your team wanted to tank – that is, achieve the worst possible record in order to get the highest possible draft pick. What are the biggest obstacles?
The Problem With the Tank
One of the greatest impediments to tanking is the fact that hockey is a business, and is subject to factors that lay outside of the singular goal of winning.
This doesn’t just mean “THE OWNERS WANT THAT SWEET PLAYOFF REVENUE” (although I’m sure they would appreciate it). It’s also about retaining fan interest. Notoriously fickle fan bases like the one in Vancouver have a tendency to turn their backs on poorly performing teams. Disinterested fans means falling ticket sales, evaporating interest in merchandise and financial losses across the board.
Lots of folks believe that the Canucks can garner fan interest by selling “hope”, while tumbling towards the bottom of the standings. What does hope look like? High pedigree picks that show promise for the future? Surely an active roster that carries names like Jared McCann, Jake Virtanen, Bo Horvat, Ben Hutton, Sven Baertschi and Hunter Shinkaruk will draw skeptical fans out of the woodwork to fill the seats of Rogers Arena.
Instead, fan interest seems to be waning more than it has in a long while, at least in terms of ticket sales as attendance continues to decline. It is because of the stated goals? If the Canucks iced this same youthful lineup but publicly stated that they were in the hunt for Auston Matthews, would that sell more tickets? I don’t believe it would.
In my opinion (and this is nothing more than a hypothesis), hope is not enough to put fans in seats. It will provide interest for the future and maybe fans will watch – but they will do so from home. If you want to keep people coming to the arena, you cannot perform a Tim Murray tank and ice an embarrassment of a team that gets blown out regularly and posts some of the worst statistics in the recorded history of the game. That will not fly in this market. You need to provide entertainment, and good feelings, not soul crushing despair.
You need to look good while being bad.
How to Look Good While Tanking
A team in a market like Vancouver should not be tanking willy nilly. There needs to be a set of criteria established for how to lose without pissing off your fan base. It’s all about perception. Here are ten ideas for looking good while tanking.
Lose a Lot, by a Little
Losses are essential to the tank, that much is obvious. But to retain interest, you can’t be getting embarrassed on a regular basis. When games appear to be in reach, fans will pay closer attention, rather than tuning out expecting yet another blow out. The Canucks’ hearts are in the right place so far this year – they are already adept at losing one-goal game this season, but they’re still making a critical error… Lose in Regulation
Losing in overtime is just plain bad news. First of all, you’re piling up extra loser points – the NHL’s version of a participation ribbon. How long do you expect to last up near the top of the division while losing two thirds of your games? False expectations are a dangerous thing to a tanking team. Moreover, with the new 3-on-3 format, every OT loss is more of a spectacle than ever before. Getting scored on in 3-on-3 is often the result of visually striking breakdowns, making a team’s ineptitude far more pronounced than it would likely be during a goal scored at 5-on-5. Which brings me to my next criterion: Win in Overtime
If you’re going to go to the extra frame, you might as well take the win, for the reasons listed in the previous point. 3-on-3 goals look more spectacular – take advantage of that fact and score some spectacular goals in extra time. Ideally, those wins should bring increased good feelings and take away the sting or rarely winning in regulation. Trail a Lot
This may seem counterproductive, but there are plenty of benefits. First, the overall goal is losing a lot, and trailing makes that much easier. Leading games and losing games are a bad combination – it means leads are being blown, and that pisses people off. So stop leading. Another major benefit is that trailing teams tend to out-possess their opponents, thanks to the magic of score effects. Not only will nice possession number soothe the fancy stat crowd, it also makes the game more visually appealing. A team that is pressing for late goals looks more impressive on the surface than the team clinging to a lead. Make Comebacks, Almost
This goes nicely with Point #4. Go down by two or three goals early in the third and start wailing on teams. Score a couple of goals late in the third to make it seem like you were on the cusp of tying up the game. Don’t actually tie the game very often (see point #2), but if you do, proceed to point #3. As often as possible, try to score the final goal of the game. The goal that puts you within one. The recency effect will soothe the audience. Thinking “we we’re so close, if only the game had gone on for another minute” is a hell of a lot better than thinking “we had that game, and it slipped away”. Win More at Home
Be kind to your fans. The home crowd doesn’t give a damn if your team are “road warriors”. Lose on the road, win at home. Maybe your team gets 30 wins in a season (30-47-5 produces 65 points, which should guarantee you a top five pick with a decent shot at first overall), so why make make 20 of those wins on home ice. That’s practically a.500 record. Not bad for a tank team. Beat Your Rivals
I don’t care how good the top draft picks are, you still should not be losing to the Oilers. Lose to the eastern teams, lose to Nashville and Colorado, no one will care. The Canucks could lose 55 time in a season, but if they sweep the series against Edmonton and Calgary, and take the home games against the Blackhawks and Bruins, they will find the fans to be more forgiving. Win a Blowout Once in a While
You want to keep your total number of wins at a reasonable level, that much is true, but there is no aggregate scoring here – your overall goal total won’t penalize you. Following the same logic as point #1 (losing by a little), when you do win you should win by a lot. This is another great way of making your fans remember the wins more than the losses, even when there are far fewer of them. Get “Better” As the Season Rolls On
This is again about taking advantage of the recency effect, and follows the same logic as point #5 (make comebacks), though on a grander scale. Sure, it’s gonna bum the fans out if 75% of the games are losses in the early going, but if the win percentage creeps up towards the end of the season, the fans are going to feel better once the campaign is mercifully complete. Make Sure Your Stars Still Get Plenty of Points
Nothing attracts eyeballs like a good display of Sedinery. The Sedins don’t deserve to be on an awful team, but if they’re going to be, they should at least continue to put up good numbers. A solid season out of the franchise’s all-time greatest players will numb some of the pain of the team being such big losers – inversely, a poor season out of the twins will add to the misery as it radiates a strong and depressing message that one of the greatest things that the organization had going for it is at an end. So let them score a lot (especially when trying to achieve point #8), even if they’re the only ones doing it regularly.
There you have it. A nice, simple set of criteria to follow to keep your point totals low, while still retaining some semblance of respect from your fan base.
Note: There are still plenty of problems with this method, namely the “winning culture” that NHL teams are often after. Certainly you don’t want to have a situation like Edmonton’s, where the core leadership group is approaching its prime age range, and none of them have experienced anything resembling success. Massive amounts of losses is not exactly the type of environment that you want your McCanns and Virtanens developing in. That issue will have to be a matter for another time, though, this is just a jumping off point.
Off On the Wrong Foot
The 2015-16 edition of the Vancouver Canucks are not a tanking, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t consider following at least some of these rules, if only to benefit how they are perceived. Unfortunately, they’re doing pretty much all of it wrong. Sure, they’re losing plenty, but six overtime losses isn’t doing anyone any favours. All those extra time breakdowns are doing is pissing people off.
Speaking of pissing people off, stop blowing leads. In fact, the Canucks are leading too much, period. Trail more, mount spectacular comebacks. Leading does not feel good right now, it feels uncomfortable.
The Canucks are doing just fine in the almost-comeback category. Games like St. Louis and Pittsburgh were prime examples of falling behind and clawing back to just barely lose in regulation. Heck, both games contains scoring chances in the dying seconds – they were so close!
But in other areas, there are huge issues. Losing to terrible, no good rival teams like Calgary and Edmonton in overtime is breaking multiple rules. Just beat them, and beat them thoroughly.
In all seriousness, I think this team is a lot better that they’ve shown on this road trip, and there is plenty of time to improve their overall play, especially considering how weak the Pacific division is.
I do believe it’s possible to look good while tanking. The Canucks are also demonstrating that it’s possible to look terrible while sticking in a playoff position. All things considered, if they’re going to play the whole season like they’ve played on this road trip, I actually think I’d feel less frustrated if they just started doing the former.Against the original plan, Tom-Jelte Slagter will now focus on making his debut in Tour de France, while skipping the Giro d'Italia which starts May 9.
Slagter was expected to ride Giro before season started, but the team was impressed by Slagter's performance and changed his mind. "We won't put any pressure on him, but I think he can go for a stage win there,"said Johnny Weltz, directeur sportif of Garmin-Sharp.
The Dutch rider's season is quite successful so far. He won two stages in Paris-Nice and then reached 5th in Fleche Wallonne and 6th in Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
This will be the first time for Slagter to ride the Tour de France. He is likely to have more freedom in Tour than in Giro, where the team will concentrate on GC success with the presence of Daniel Martin and Ryder Hesjedal.
For Giro, Slagter will be replaced by neo-pro Dylan van Baarle. "He has proved that he's a great engine. He can learn how to work for your leader there," Weltz said.At this writing, the Mets are 55-71 and in fourth place, 21 games behind the Nationals. In other words, it's been a profoundly disappointing season in Queens. While that's largely because of injuries, it's the manager who usually pays the price when a team trying to contend flops in the standings.
As such, it's looking like Terry Collins won't be the Mets' manager in 2018. Here's this recent report from Jon Heyman of FanRagSports:
No one's saying it, but people around the team all seem to be assuming there's almost no way he'll be back -- whether it be due to his choice or the team's. No one expected the Mets to be 55-70, and it may not be a positive sign that no one will say |
sure you test it inside of the refund time!
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
FIFA 15 is this year’s mobile incarnation of the popular football(soccer) series produced by EA Sports. It features improved graphics and game play over last year’s model as well as updated rosters and more stuff to do. It is true that EA has put a number of in app purchases in this title and that’s a shame but there are few sports games released this year that can compete with the complete experience that FIFA 15 provides. At least it’s free to download!
[Price: $2.99 each]
Widely regarded as the scariest mobile game of all time, Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 and 2 provide an experience unlike any other. You play as a security guard who has to keep watch over a pizzeria that is haunted at night by possessed animatronic robots. In order to keep from being killed by them, you must dress up like one whenever they see you. It’s creepy, it’s brilliant, and the graphics and game lighting work together to create a truly creepy atmosphere.
[Price: $4.99 with in app purchases]
Telltale Games have been on fire this year and this is one of two games from them that’ll appear on this list. In this Game of Thrones title, you’ll play as a member of the House of Forrester as you play around the outside of the TV show’s main story, but right up against it. The graphics and game play are far above average and the story is something that would do the TV show proud. It takes a stroke of genius to make a game where every decision feels wrong but it’s still fun anyway. This is an episodic adventure and you can get a season pass for future episodes for a $19.99 in app purchase.
[Price: $4.99]
Goat Simulator is a game that took PC by storm some time ago and did much the same thing on Android earlier this year. In this game you play the totally realistic life of a goat as you fly around, crashing through walls, blowing things up, and causing general mayhem. This game brought back the phrase “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” in a way few gamers or developers could ever match. The graphics are pretty good too.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Godus is a God-mode simulation game where you act as God and you watch over a world of beings as they evolve into a civilization. You have full control over the world, its environment, and its people. You can do things like grant miracles, create trees, and toss meteors at the people. The choice is yours. There is a lot to do, it’s free to play, and it’s definitely one of the more unique ideas of 2014.
[Price: $2.99]
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Ultimate Weapon was released on Android alongside the movie release. The game play is pretty standard, the concept is solid, and the graphics aren’t bad. The big takeaway from this title is that it shows that it’s possible to create a reasonably priced video game based on a movie that is good and fun without loading it up with pay-to-win in-app purchases like other studios have a habit of doing. We’d like to see more solid movie game titles like this one.
[Price: $15.99]
Square Enix has been hell bent on re-releasing their classic Final Fantasy series on Android. The last two years have seen them release Final Fantasy I through VI (1 through 6) with Final Fantasy 6 coming out earlier this year. It received a graphic overhaul and some unique touch controls but the story line remained relatively unchanged. This is an RPG with 35-40 hours of game play featuring an amazing story along with some extra content like bonus dungeons, extra magic, and more. It’s considered one of the best jRPG titles of all time.
[Price: $9.99, $7.99, and $9.99 respectively]
One of the more impressive releases of this year is NVIDIA re-releasing Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Portal for the NVIDIA Shield and Shield tablet. All three of these games are PC quality games because they actually are PC games. So far their existence has only been heralded as a positive thing with the one huge disadvantage being that you have you to own an NVIDIA Shield Tablet to play all three of them. Nevertheless, all three of these games are fun, they look great, and it has definitely helped a lot of people on the fence make a decision.
[Price: $9.99 with in app purchases]
Icewind Dale is another long lost PC RPG title from 2000 that was resurrected this year on Android. It’s also done by the same people who re-released Baldur’s Gate and that means it has the same kind of controls and graphics as those games. Also, much like the Baldur’s Gate games, Icewind Dale contains well over 40 hours of game play and involves a slight learning curve to get used to the controls.
[Price: $2.99 with in app purchases]
Kingdom Rush: Origins is a tower defense game and is a prequel game to the original two Kingdom Rush games. This seems to have plugged all of the holes that the prior titles had as the game currenly rocks an incredible 4.8 out of 5 rating in the Google Play Store. The game features new towers, new bad guys, and a host of other game play features and improvements to the mechanics. The graphics haven’t been improved too much but literally everything else has.
[Price: $0.99]
Leo’s Fortune was demo’d at Google I/O 2014 and it seems its path to stardom was set in stone. The game features smooth graphics and game play with a simple but effective story. The controls are equally simple but effective and the simplicity contrasts very nicely with the difficulty of each level. Players must help Leo find his lost fortune but you can also retry levels to get all of the stars. It’s a fresh coat of paint over an old premise and that made Leo’s Fortune one of the best platformers of 2014.
[Price: $3.99 with in app purchases]
Modern Combat 5: Blackout was one of the more hotly anticipated releases of 2014. While it did fall somewhat short of expectations, it’s still a shooter that sits far above the average. It improved the graphics over Modern Combat 4 and added in more stuff to do. Alongside that is a new campaign, more weapons, and a bunch of other features. Some diehards will state that Modern Combat 4 is better, but Modern Combat 5 is still good in its own right.
[Price: $3.99 + $1.99]
Monument Valley was the darling of Android gamers in 2014. The game features brilliant optical illusions and the game is essentially a puzzle game that has you trying to find and figure those illusions out. It comes with a simple, albeit dark story line and unique, colorful graphics. Along with the release, an expansion was released called Forgotten Shores for $1.99. Altogether, they’re 15 of the most unique levels you may ever play through with the only complaint being that the game is a tad short.
[Price: $3.99]
Out There is an adventure game where you’re stuck out in space and you must repair your ship with whatever you can find and interact with various alien races. The game was heralded for its unique game play (human vs environment, no combat) and story line premise. It also has three endings, 50 achievements, and 300 adventures to take part in. There isn’t anything quite like this one. Even the music is good and that’s a rarity for a mobile game.
[Price: Free]
Genes in Space is a unique game. It’s not totally amazing and another game with the same mechanics and premise probably wouldn’t make this list. What makes Genes in Space so unique is what is going on behind the scenes. This game was developed by Cancer Research UK in an attempt to get gamers to help out with cancer research. As you play, you collect Element Alpha and meanwhile you’re also helping scientists analyze data. It’s totally free and you’d be playing for a good cause.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
QuizUp was released earlier this year and it’s arguably the best puzzle game ever released on mobile. It contains a great design with excellent mechanics and online multiplayer. There are a multitude of categories (over 600) ranging from pop culture to the obscure along with quiz categories for special events. As you play each topic, you’ll gain ranks and earn nicknames as well as achievements. It’s simple, fun, and about as solid of a multiplayer quiz experience as you can get.
[Price: $0.99 with in app purchases]
République is a unique game with a complicated story and great graphics. The game play mechanics are unique in that you play as a hacker who jumps to various security cameras to guide a woman named Hope who is trying to escape a compound run by people with some dangerous ideas. The title requires complete stealth and also has a number of puzzles for you to solve. It’s an episodic adventure and you can purchase other episodes as in app purchases.
[Price: $0.99]
The Room 2 is a puzzle game that revolves around the strange, fantastical, and arcane. You play as an adventurer who must solve a range of puzzles, unlock things, and progress. Most items in most rooms are puzzles within puzzles within puzzles and the clues can come out of almost anywhere. It’s a great brain teaser with some astounding graphics that have left few people unhappy. About the only problem is that it’s pretty short but nonetheless, we can’t wait for The Room 3.
[Price: $5.99]
Secret of Mana is a legendary action RPG from the early 1990’s. It’s been remade and re-released on Android with updated (but not overhauled) graphics, on screen controls, and likely some translation changes. The main story is more or less unchanged so fans of the classic game that came out 21 years ago can engage in a much needed dose of nostalgia. As it turns out, the game is pretty good all on its own so those who have never played it can probably enjoy it as well.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Shadow Fight 2 was originally a Facebook game that was then migrated to Android. Let us say that they did it a whole lot better than Farmville did. It’s a 2D fighting game where the characters are silhouettes that do combat against colorful and serene backgrounds. On top of being pleasing to look at, the mechanics are easy to learn and the animations make everything look epic. There aren’t a lot of great fighting games on Android. This is one of them.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Sky Force 2014 is a 2D, top-down arcade shooter. You play as a fighter pilot who must level up their ship and defeat the big bad guys. It features, colorful and well-done graphics that is paired wonderfully with intense, action-packed game play. This is one of the few titles where you actually want to compete in the leaderboards and there is a lot to do for such a simple arcade game.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Smash Hit is a different kind of infinite runner. Instead of dodging obstacles and jumping over pits, you play from the first person perspective and throw balls at panes of glass. The graphics are phenomenal for how simple the game is and the dark, smokey atmosphere of the game is strangely relaxing. The mechanics are simple to master but difficult to implement as the game requires good timing more than anything else. It’s about as good as an infinite runner can possibly get.
[Price: $2.99]
Much like Goat Simulator, Surgeon Simulator takes a rather innocuous thing and turns into something extremely absurd and possibly even offensive to some. In Surgeon Simulator you play as a surgeon. Instead of performing surgery and saving your patient (Bob), you pretty much just slap him around, hack him up, and abuse him. It’s hilarious in the same dark sort of way that Cards Against Humanity is which means this isn’t recommended for those with a weak stomach or a
[Price: $9.99]
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is an RPG from the early 2000’s from BioWare, who also recently brought us Dragon Age: Inquisition. KOTOR features a very long story complete with multiple endings based on how the player chooses to play. There is also character customization, support for third party controllers, and even achievements. The graphics and controls have been redone for mobile. Do beware, though, because this one is newer and that means there are almost certainly release day bugs.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
It’s true that this title originally came out in December of last year but thanks to its episodic nature, the final episode of season 2 was released in July. Season 2 continues the story line of Clementine as she continues to try to survive in an undead world. It’s an adventure game where you must make difficult decisions and attempt to survive. You can also port in your game file from season one and some of the story elements will be different depending on who you chose to save in the first game.
[Price: $6.99]
XCOM: Enemy Within is an action strategy game where you must defend against alien invaders. You can customize and train your team with upgradeable weapons and equipment, engage in multiplayer, and play through a pretty decent story. It also features great graphics, fun and simple game mechanics, and more. About the only weird thing about this title is that its predecessor, XCOM: Enemy Unknown was removed from the Play Store so that this could exist which is an odd and usual move.
Wrap up
If we missed any great games for our best Android games list, let us know about them in the comments!Terry Firma shared the above image. It helpfully illustrates what is really going on in fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Their view should never be referred to as “Biblical literalism” since it only insists on the Bible being literally true when it is desirable to do so, and not where it is “obviously” a metaphor, such as the dome over the Earth, or in its teaching about gluttony or giving up all your possessions. Calling the fundamentalist view “Biblical literalism” makes it seem as though they have a high ground of sorts, however dubious it might be. But it is not as though they are being consistent while others are not. Quite the contrary. Indeed, that fundamentalists have managed to convince so many people (including themselves!) that they are in fact “Biblical literalists” deserves to be acclaimed as one of the greatest PR exercises in modern history.
As a liberal Christian, while I am always willing to consider the possibility that the ancients were using metaphors in a particular instance (they were capable of doing that, you know), even so in some instances the Bible is clearly wrong. A failure to admit that is not to uphold the Bible’s authority, but to reject the real-life Bible we have, and substitute in its place an imaginary one which is said to be inerrant, with the help of smoke and mirrors and a sincere hope that no one looks too closely at the claim or the evidence.
Thankfully, many people are looking closely at the claim and the evidence, and noticing that the Bible is appealed to in an effort to condemn others, but often ignored when it condemns oneself (an approach which, ironically, is itself condemned in the Bible!).IT IS the fist fight to make ’Straya proud.
A billionaire and a millionaire belting each other on the streets of Sydney’s exclusive eastern suburbs.
On Sunday, gaming mogul James Packer and his ex-best mate, now best mate again, Nine boss David Gyngell came to blows over a Channel Nine news van lurking outside Packer’s $20 million pad.
Once the aggression subsided, and the mates released a statement saying they were besties once more, Packer decided to heal his wounds and spoil himself with some caviar, darling.
The aftermath party was the best invite in town. The guest list included a selection of Sydney’s elite. They ate caviar, hugged it out and had a laugh. It was the best of times, after the worst of times.
First the doc turned up to check the damage. One broken head. One pair of ripped Packie dacks. One lucky rich dude with a camera.
Not long after, Lachlan Murdoch rocked up to soothe Packer’s angst. He looked remarkably cheerful, despite the fact he missed the high society event of the year.
Then Packer’s ex-best mate, now best mate again, “Gynge”, popped by to kiss and make up. The reconciliation chats ended in a box of seafood and gourmet food, including blueberries, bacon, caviar and pastrami. Smothered in gold leaf.
Upon leaving the Bondi Beach pad, Gyngell looked content with how his apology went down and the feast he was provided. “Thirty-five years of friendship doesn’t change on a few of those — thanks guys,” he said to the media pack before heading off to his office, looking remarkably full.
Not long after, the two were tight as ever. Nine released a statement saying everyone has their “ups and downs”.
Yep. Everyone’s had that moment where they find themselves in their trackies punching on with their childhood friend on the streets of Sydney and then feasting on caviar to recover.
After a long day of brawlin’, Mr Packer worked up quite the appetite. Some unidentified people came and went, then the pizza arrived.
After a wild day entertaining Australia with great puns, Packer called it a night. Tomorrow was a regular day.
Well, until Karl turned up first thing. Bringing a copy of the NT News to brighten Packer’s day. We’re not sure how that joke went down — or how Karl’s face looks now.
After Karl rubbed salt in the wound, mum Roz turned up to support her black-eyed son, reassuring Packer no one will notice the massive shiner on his right eye.
Dressed in a sharp suit, Packer finally emerged and all of Australia noticed the massive shiner on his right eye.
What to do now the party has ended? What all billionaires do. Get the hell outta here on your private jet. It’s been real, James.Hardware: phone
Let's start off with the main specs. The PadFone 2 is powered by Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064, a 28nm, 1.5GHz quad-core SoC based on the Krait architecture (which outperforms Cortex-A9 in many ways). This makes ASUS the second third manufacturer to offer APQ8064 on a phone, right after the LG Optimus G (which we reviewed recently) and the Pantech Vega R3; and it's to be followed by the Xiaomi Phone 2 in China and the HTC J Butterfly in Japan. The graphics are driven by the almighty Adreno 320, and like many recent flagship phones, there's 2GB of RAM stacked on top to keep the gears well-oiled. As for the cameras, what used to be an f/2.2, 8-megapixel main camera is now boosted to a 13-megapixel Sony BSI sensor plus f/2.4, five-element optics. Meanwhile the front-facing imager has gone from 0.3 megapixels to 1.2 megapixels. As usual, we shall take a look at camera performance later on.
Buyers do get a generous 50GB of free ASUS WebStorage service for two years.
In Taiwan, the new PadFone is offered in flavors of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, whereas in Europe it'll only have 32GB and 64GB options. Unlike its predecessor, however, there's sadly no microSD expansion. Users craving for more storage space will have to get their fix via USB OTG or the cloud. Buyers do get a generous 50GB of free ASUS WebStorage service for two years, which is no doubt to help push the ASUS Open Cloud Computing initiative, but more on that in the software part of this review.
Cellular connectivity comes from Qualcomm's MDM9215m radio which supports GSM/EDGE/UMTS/DC-HSPA+/LTE -- compatibility of which will depend on the specific regional variant: worldwide, North America (two versions), Japan, Australia and China. This particular review is based on the worldwide model which supports GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/2100 and LTE 800/1800/2600. However, since there's no LTE network in Taiwan (ironically), we could only use 3G for the majority of the time during our review -- we did sneak back to Hong Kong very briefly and managed to hook the phone onto the LTE networks there. We were happy with performance on both ends of phone calls, even in noisy environments thanks to the ambient noise reduction technology. Other radios include the usual 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, FM radio, GPS and GLONASS.
From afar, the PadFone 2 could be easily be mistaken for its predecessor that sported the same design language. But put the two together and you'll easily spot the larger, sharper and brighter 4.7-inch, 720p, 550-nit Super IPS+ LCD. We should point out that the new display is so bright that even on the dimmest setting, it still blinded us when we were in total darkness. You know, bedtime browsing. Hopefully this isn't a fixed setting so that ASUS can tweak it. Our One X (AT&T) has a similarly impressive viewing angle and gapless display feature, though the PadFone 2 appears to have a more accurate white balance -- the former's culprit being its warmer artificial tone. Some may miss the overly vibrant colors on the original Padfone's Super AMOLED, but in general, LCD's still king when it comes to accuracy, pixel density and outdoor performance.
When switched off, the front side of the phone is dominated by the black screen plus a tapered, glossy plastic lip along the bottom, only to be interrupted by the little shiny silver earpiece near the top. But when switched on, you'll see the three capacitive soft keys light up between the screen and the logo at the bottom. We prefer these to the old virtual keys for the sake of screen real estate, and better yet, you can set the keys' backlight duration to two seconds, 10 seconds or forever.
All of these are surrounded by a rigid aluminum frame that's garnished with a few buttons like before. This time, the power button's been shifted from the top side to the right, just above the volume rocker, which was two separate buttons on the first PadFone. And the spot where the power button used to be -- next to the 3.5mm headphone jack -- is now occupied by a seemingly trending pin-push type micro-SIM tray (a triangular paper clip is included), which is a big change from the old mini-SIM slot underneath the removable battery on the original PadFone.
You'll never get fingerprints on the back of the phone, and the texture feels good, too.
Also changed on the frame are the micro-HDMI port, micro-USB port and contact points for the external antenna (inside the PadFone Station). These are now combined into one 13-pin MHL socket customized by ASUS and located at the bottom of the phone, thus leaving the left of the aluminum frame squeaky clean. The PadFone 2 does come with a 13-pin connector USB cable. Fortunately, you can still use the regular 5-pin MHL plug or micro-USB plug for power and data, but the latter can be a bit loose, and the former won't be able to handle video -- you'll need to get an optional MHL-to-HDMI adapter from ASUS. We doubt this would be too much of a problem for most users, anyway.
Moving on to the backside of the phone, apart from the darker shade of gray, the polycarbonate back cover is very much the same as before. It features an etched ripple pattern surrounding the 13-megapixel camera, thus simulating the cool visual effect of circular-brushed metal as seen on the Zenbooks and the aluminum Transformer Pads. This also means you'll never get fingerprints on the back of the phone, and the texture feels good, too.
The lack of microSD slot is certainly a disappointment.
ASUS admits that the PadFone 2's back cover isn't designed to be removed on a regular basis, in order to minimize the amount of dust and fluff getting in as well as to protect the delicate NFC antenna -- a feature that was missing on the original PadFone. We found it much harder to rip off the new cover, but once it's out of the way, you can see the 3.8V, 2,140mAh lithium polymer cell (instead of the old 3.7V, 1,520mAh lithium ion cell) which is sealed by a big label that screams "Please DON'T remove the battery." Sadly, there's no microSD slot to be seen. So in this case, the removable cover is solely for the convenience of maintenance. We're fine with the semi-fixed battery given that we can use either the tablet or a USB battery pack to juice up the phone, but the lack of a microSD slot is certainly a disappointment, especially for those who have already splashed out on 32GB or even 64GB cards. We'd like to think that adding microSD expansion back in would not have had a huge impact on the phone's thickness.
Last but not least, there's the loudspeaker on the back which is about twice as large as the one on the first PadFone, so as you'd expect, it gets a lot louder. ASUS also claims that this is 40 percent larger than what the other leading smartphones use. With great power comes great responsibility, so the engineers at ASUS' Golden Ear Team have added in a few lines of code to minimize distortion and mechanical interference under high amplitude -- this is apparent when you blast out music at maximum volume (especially with Music Mode enabled in the AudioWizard app, but more on that later). Naturally, this small speaker still lacks in bass, but there's always the bigger one on the PadFone Station.
Hardware: tablet
With the PadFone 2 inserted, the combo is still lighter than the new iPad alone.
You might have already seen us raving about the new PadFone Station in our earlier hands-on, but let's recap: this module is essentially a 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 external IPS LCD display for the PadFone 2, but at the same time it also serves as a 3.8V, 5,000mAh (19Wh) battery pack. That's slightly smaller than the 24.4Wh battery in the first PadFone Station, but remember, the PadFone 2 itself now has a bigger battery. Together they add up to about 27Wh, which isn't too far off from the old 30Wh combination. Besides, what's more important is the weight reduction that ASUS has managed to achieve for the slimmer PadFone Station: from a hefty 724g down to just 514g. That's a 30 percent reduction! In other words, with the 135g PadFone 2 inserted, the combo is still lighter than the new iPad alone (652g). By contrast, the original PadFone and its PadFone Station together weighed more than the first iPad, which made it very difficult for ASUS to sell its "N+1" concept.
The smaller battery, the removal of the battery LED indicator and the new 13-pin MHL connector at the bottom (but, for some reason, upside-down compared to PadFone 2's) certainly helped achieve the lighter weight. Still, we've been told that the engineers also looked at every component to see how they could shave off a tiny bit of body fat wherever possible. The biggest contributors to the weight reduction are probably the obscure Corning Fit Glass (on both the phone and the tablet), the magnesium-aluminum alloy frame and the cover-less docking method. Interestingly, ASUS has been working on the new docking mechanism for a year and a half, which confirms our theory that at some point the two PadFones were developed alongside each other. We recall that back when we interviewed Michelle Hsiao from ASUS Design Center, there were PadFone Station mockups that featured straightforward slide-in docking methods, but Hsiao said at the time they didn't have a way to ensure secure docking for the exposed phone, hence the bulkier solution in the end.
So how does the new docking mechanism work? Well, there's the new 13-pin MHL connector, of course (so the old PadFone obviously won't fit), but that alone wouldn't be enough to keep the phone tucked securely inside the bay. And by secure we mean strong enough to withstand powerful shakes. This is where the cunning part comes in: instead of throwing in a typical slide-lock mechanism, ASUS has devised a system that pushes four toothed, rubber pads -- of the same material used by bicycle brake pads -- against the two long sides of the phone when inserted. You should feel a light click once the phone hits the bottom of the bay, and it usually takes about one second -- instead of two on the original PadFone Station -- for the tablet interface to load up.
The phone managed to stay inside the bay while this author was shaking the upside-down tablet as hard as he could.
As you'll see in our walkthrough video, the phone managed to stay inside the bay while this author was shaking the upside-down tablet as hard as he could (please don't try this at home). And then it gets more intriguing when you realize how easy it is to insert and remove the phone -- it's as if the locking mechanism only comes to life when you shake the device. We'd rip the tablet open to find out what kind of black magic this is, but until we get hold of our own retail unit, ASUS' patent-pending secret is safe. However, at some point later we tried the shake test again and the phone did eventually slip out, and we think it's something to do with the dust or some sort of powder that managed to get onto the rubber pads, so be careful.
There's not much else visible on the new PadFone Station apart from the 1-megapixel webcam at the usual location, as well as the power button and the volume rocker around the top-left corner -- neither of which have been prone to accidental clicks for us. If we have to be nitpicky, our only gripe is that the phone isn't flush with most of the tablet's backside, meaning when placed flat on the table, the slate may wobble if you tap on either side too hard -- we're thinking of scenarios like typing or playing certain games. Hopefully the dedicated PadFone 2 Station sleeve will solve this problem. While using it, we were able to hold the new PadFone Station up for much longer thanks to the combination of rounded edges, soft-touch texture and, most importantly, lighter weight; but when walking around, we do prefer to grip the slate by the top side, with the top of the phone in our palm. We just need to remember to clean the lens every time before using the camera.
What's left to talk about here is the slate's mono loudspeaker, which is apparently 32 percent larger than what other tablet makers use. To our surprise, even with the tighter space inside the new PadFone Station, the speaker still manages to output loud music with surprisingly adequate warmth and crisp treble for its size, but you do need to use the AudioWizard app (enabled by default) to achieve this performance. For those seeking something closer to audiophilic quality, there's always the good old wired headphones (and AudioWizard is disabled when headphones are plugged in). Even the bundled stereo headset sounds way better than what most other phones get -- it's identical to the one that came with the original PadFone, but that does also mean the microphone is still way too far from the user's mouth, so we always end up having to hold the mic up to talk. It's rather odd that ASUS is still using this cable arrangement.
Hopefully ASUS will eventually admit defeat and come up with a matching hinged keyboard dock.
So, what about a keyboard battery dock? Despite reports that "confirmed" a dedicated keyboard dock is in the works, ASUS burst our bubbles by telling us that this is simply not true. We are worried -- sure, you can always just get a Bluetooth keyboard or even plug in a USB keyboard via an OTG dongle, but that's not quite as glamorous as being able to fold everything into a netbook form factor -- which we could with the original PadFone, despite the total weight of 1.49kg. Hopefully ASUS will eventually admit defeat and come up with a matching hinged keyboard dock, because that would add so much more emphasis on using Android for productivity.
Some people were expecting to see a PadFone Infinity, in the sense that the 10.1-inch tablet module would come with a 1080p panel. We asked ASUS whether it would consider releasing such an update any time soon, but the response was that while it's possible to output 1080p from either the phone or the tablet, the manufacturer intentionally chose to keep similar resolutions across the two displays for the sake of easier app and video rescaling, thus saving processing power and battery life. In other words, the time's not right; or maybe ASUS is just putting on a poker face.
Software
Much like the original PadFone, its successor delivers a near-vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich experience that's slick in both phone and tablet modes; and we're certain that the same will apply to the upcoming Jelly Bean update. The only interface customization you'll find here are the thumbnail overview of up to seven home screens (pinch anywhere on any home screen to toggle), as well as the "Pad Only" tab in the app drawer, the handy ASUS Quick Setting panel in the notification tray, and "ASUS customized setting" in system settings. For those who don't know, the "Pad Only" area simply houses apps that are tagged as pad-only by users -- you can do so by tapping and holding an app icon in the drawer, followed by dragging it to the "Add Pad-only Tag" button in the top-right corner.
The ASUS Quick Setting Panel hasn't really changed much since the latest update on the original PadFone. Situated above the main native notification panel, the extra panel has a screen brightness slider sandwiched between the outdoor mode button and automatic brightness button. Above those is a sliding row of quick toggles (albeit in a slightly different order than last time): WiFi, Mobile Data, Smart Saving, Instant Dictionary (which is new), WiFi Hotspot, Bluetooth, GPS, Vibrate and Auto-rotate Screen. One small request for ASUS' developers: it'd be nice if users could rearrange these toggles, as we can with Xiaomi's MIUI as well as LG's UI 3.0 (on Optimus G, Optimus LTE II and others). The next row up in the panel contains three buttons that take you to the advanced menus for WiFi, AudioWizard and system settings. Strangely, in tablet mode said WiFi button is replaced by a dual-battery indicator, but it shouldn't be too hard to add the former back into that row for the sake of consistency.
We still don't understand why the original Android notification panel can't be as intuitive as ASUS' implementation. Google's version requires one more tap to toggle the secondary panel for the common settings, including screen brightness, WiFi, auto screen rotation toggle and airplane mode. On the other hand, ASUS knows how to do it right: give users instant access to all the main settings after just one tap. Google could learn a thing or two from its Taiwanese buddy.
After multiple mentions, now might be a good opportunity for us to properly introduce AudioWizard: it's essentially an audio-tuning app developed in collaboration with Waves, an award-winning audio DSP solutions company. Think of it as what Beats Electronics is to HTC, albeit with less branding power. There are five presets here: music mode, movie mode, recording mode, gaming mode and speech mode. Oh, and there's an "off" button which apparently saves a little bit of power. While the app works in both phone mode and tablet mode (but disabled when headphones are inserted), we've been told that it's tuned specifically for the PadFone Station's loudspeaker, but nonetheless, the improvement is apparent: audio is both louder and livelier with added warmth. Needless to say, this enhancement can only go so far, so don't expect the PadFone Station to replace your high-end speakers any time soon.
SuperNote on PadFone 2 is now at version 3.0 and supports multilingual handwriting recognition.
Like its previous Android products, ASUS has thrown in its usual bundle of apps: App Backup, App Locker, File Manager, Mirror, MyDesktop (powered by Splashtop Remote), MyLibrary, MyNet (DLNA), Polaris Office 4.0, SuperNote, Watch Calendar and WebStorage. It's worth noting that SuperNote on PadFone 2 is now at version 3.0 and supports multilingual handwriting recognition (which worked well for us), WebStorage cloud syncing and PDF export. And while we're at it, ASUS' WebStorage also offers instant photo uploads, Microsoft Office Web Apps integration (so you can edit Office documents online using the official interface) and file collaboration. It's sort of ASUS' own take on Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive. As for widgets, you get the same old battery indicator, task manager and PadFone Station Assistant (for setting the charging mode and how incoming calls are handled), along with both the old version and a new version of the ASUS weather widget. If you prefer the previous weather widget then fret not, it's still available on the list.
Naturally, there are some new apps on the PadFone 2: ASUS Studio, Instant Dictionary and MyBitCast. ASUS Studio is simply a beefed-up version of Gallery, as it lets you view photos and videos by folders, time, location (on top of Google Maps) or album tags, not to mention the magazine-like layout as well. It also comes with the identical set of basic editing tools like cropping, auto-fix, effects and levels. As this is the default viewer for the camera app, users will familiarize very quickly. Our only feedback for ASUS here is that the locations of some of the photos were a bit off (for instance, this author was never on the north bank in the above map), which is weird considering the sky was clear at the time |
the start of the crowdsale and the first period modifier /// @return `two` The unix timestamp for the start of the second period modifier /// @return `three` The unix timestamp for the start of the third period modifier /// @return `endsale` The unix timestamp of the end of crowdsale /// @return `totalwei` The total amount of wei raised /// @return `totalcents` The total number of USD cents raised /// @return `amount` The amount of DGD tokens available for the crowdsale /// @return `goal` The USD value goal for the crowdsale /// @return `famount` Founders endowment /// @return `faddress` Founder wallet address /*function getSaleInfo() public constant returns (uint256 startsale, uint256 two, uint256 three, uint256 endsale, uint256 totalwei, uint256 totalcents, uint256 amount, uint256 goal, uint256 famount, address faddress);*/ function claimFor(address _user) returns(bool success); /// @notice Allows msg.sender to claim the DGD tokens and badges if the goal is reached or refunds the ETH contributed if goal is not reached at the end of the crowdsale function claim() returns(bool success); function claimFounders() returns(bool success); /// @notice See if the crowdsale goal has been reached function goalReached() public constant returns(bool reached); /// @notice Get the current sale period /// @return `saleperiod` 0 = Outside of the crowdsale period, 1 = First reward period, 2 = Second reward period, 3 = Final crowdsale period. function getPeriod() public constant returns(uint saleperiod); /// @notice Get the date for the start of the crowdsale /// @return `date` The unix timestamp for the start function startDate() public constant returns(uint date); /// @notice Get the date for the second reward period of the crowdsale /// @return `date` The unix timestamp for the second period function periodTwo() public constant returns(uint date); /// @notice Get the date for the final period of the crowdsale /// @return `date` The unix timestamp for the final period function periodThree() public constant returns(uint date); /// @notice Get the date for the end of the crowdsale /// @return `date` The unix timestamp for the end of the crowdsale function endDate() public constant returns(uint date); /// @notice Check if crowdsale has ended /// @return `ended` If the crowdsale has ended function isEnded() public constant returns(bool ended); /// @notice Send raised funds from the crowdsale to the DAO /// @return `success` if the send succeeded function sendFunds() public returns(bool success); //function regProxy(address _payment, address _payout) returns (bool success); function regProxy(address _payout) returns(bool success); function getProxy(address _payout) public returns(address proxy); function getPayout(address _proxy) public returns(address payout, bool isproxy); function unlock() public returns(bool success); function getSaleStatus() public constant returns(bool fclaim, uint256 reltokens, uint256 relbadges, uint256 claimers); function getSaleInfo() public constant returns(uint256 weiamount, uint256 cents, uint256 realcents, uint256 amount); function getSaleConfig() public constant returns(uint256 start, uint256 two, uint256 three, uint256 end, uint256 goal, uint256 cap, uint256 badgecost, uint256 famount, address fwallet); event Purchase(uint256 indexed _exchange, uint256 indexed _rate, uint256 indexed _cents); event Claim(address indexed _user, uint256 indexed _amount, uint256 indexed _badges); } contract Badge { mapping(address => uint256) balances; mapping(address => mapping(address => uint256)) allowed; address public owner; bool public locked; /// @return total amount of tokens uint256 public totalSupply; modifier ifOwner() { if (msg.sender!= owner) { throw; } else { _ } } event Transfer(address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _value); event Mint(address indexed _recipient, uint256 indexed _amount); event Approval(address indexed _owner, address indexed _spender, uint256 _value); function Badge() { owner = msg.sender; } function safeToAdd(uint a, uint b) returns(bool) { return (a + b >= a); } function addSafely(uint a, uint b) returns(uint result) { if (!safeToAdd(a, b)) { throw; } else { result = a + b; return result; } } function safeToSubtract(uint a, uint b) returns(bool) { return (b <= a); } function subtractSafely(uint a, uint b) returns(uint) { if (!safeToSubtract(a, b)) throw; return a - b; } function balanceOf(address _owner) constant returns(uint256 balance) { return balances[_owner]; } function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { if (balances[msg.sender] >= _value && _value > 0) { balances[msg.sender] = subtractSafely(balances[msg.sender], _value); balances[_to] = addSafely(_value, balances[_to]); Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value); success = true; } else { success = false; } return success; } function transferFrom(address _from, address _to, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { if (balances[_from] >= _value && allowed[_from][msg.sender] >= _value && _value > 0) { balances[_to] = addSafely(balances[_to], _value); balances[_from] = subtractSafely(balances[_from], _value); allowed[_from][msg.sender] = subtractSafely(allowed[_from][msg.sender], _value); Transfer(_from, _to, _value); return true; } else { return false; } } function approve(address _spender, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { allowed[msg.sender][_spender] = _value; Approval(msg.sender, _spender, _value); success = true; return success; } function allowance(address _owner, address _spender) constant returns(uint256 remaining) { remaining = allowed[_owner][_spender]; return remaining; } function mint(address _owner, uint256 _amount) ifOwner returns(bool success) { totalSupply = addSafely(totalSupply, _amount); balances[_owner] = addSafely(balances[_owner], _amount); Mint(_owner, _amount); return true; } function setOwner(address _owner) ifOwner returns(bool success) { owner = _owner; return true; } } contract Token { address public owner; address public config; bool public locked; address public dao; address public badgeLedger; uint256 public totalSupply; mapping(address => uint256) balances; mapping(address => mapping(address => uint256)) allowed; mapping(address => bool) seller; /// @return total amount of tokens modifier ifSales() { if (!seller[msg.sender]) throw; _ } modifier ifOwner() { if (msg.sender!= owner) throw; _ } modifier ifDao() { if (msg.sender!= dao) throw; _ } event Transfer(address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _value); event Mint(address indexed _recipient, uint256 _amount); event Approval(address indexed _owner, address indexed _spender, uint256 _value); function Token(address _config) { config = _config; owner = msg.sender; address _initseller = ConfigInterface(_config).getConfigAddress("sale1:address"); seller[_initseller] = true; badgeLedger = new Badge(); locked = false; } function safeToAdd(uint a, uint b) returns(bool) { return (a + b >= a); } function addSafely(uint a, uint b) returns(uint result) { if (!safeToAdd(a, b)) { throw; } else { result = a + b; return result; } } function safeToSubtract(uint a, uint b) returns(bool) { return (b <= a); } function subtractSafely(uint a, uint b) returns(uint) { if (!safeToSubtract(a, b)) throw; return a - b; } function balanceOf(address _owner) constant returns(uint256 balance) { return balances[_owner]; } function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { if (balances[msg.sender] >= _value && _value > 0) { balances[msg.sender] = subtractSafely(balances[msg.sender], _value); balances[_to] = addSafely(balances[_to], _value); Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value); success = true; } else { success = false; } return success; } function transferFrom(address _from, address _to, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { if (balances[_from] >= _value && allowed[_from][msg.sender] >= _value && _value > 0) { balances[_to] = addSafely(balances[_to], _value); balances[_from] = subtractSafely(balances[_from], _value); allowed[_from][msg.sender] = subtractSafely(allowed[_from][msg.sender], _value); Transfer(_from, _to, _value); return true; } else { return false; } } function approve(address _spender, uint256 _value) returns(bool success) { allowed[msg.sender][_spender] = _value; Approval(msg.sender, _spender, _value); success = true; return success; } function allowance(address _owner, address _spender) constant returns(uint256 remaining) { remaining = allowed[_owner][_spender]; return remaining; } function mint(address _owner, uint256 _amount) ifSales returns(bool success) { totalSupply = addSafely(_amount, totalSupply); balances[_owner] = addSafely(balances[_owner], _amount); return true; } function mintBadge(address _owner, uint256 _amount) ifSales returns(bool success) { if (!Badge(badgeLedger).mint(_owner, _amount)) return false; return true; } function registerDao(address _dao) ifOwner returns(bool success) { if (locked == true) return false; dao = _dao; locked = true; return true; } function setDao(address _newdao) ifDao returns(bool success) { dao = _newdao; return true; } function isSeller(address _query) returns(bool isseller) { return seller[_query]; } function registerSeller(address _tokensales) ifDao returns(bool success) { seller[_tokensales] = true; return true; } function unregisterSeller(address _tokensales) ifDao returns(bool success) { seller[_tokensales] = false; return true; } function setOwner(address _newowner) ifDao returns(bool success) { if (Badge(badgeLedger).setOwner(_newowner)) { owner = _newowner; success = true; } else { success = false; } return success; } }By Philip Giraldi | September 15, 2011
Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI Hebrew translator, was arrested in May 2010 for revealing restricted information consisting of five reports classified “secret” to an unidentified blogger. He confessed—explaining that he had been trying to reveal illegal activity—repented, and was sentenced to a minimum term of 20 months in prison. He has now been released. There was considerable speculation over what Leibowitz, a left-wing, Israel-born dual national, had actually revealed. A New York newspaper claimed that the information had gone to a “pro-Palestinian Arab group.”
In reality, Leibowitz, who had top-secret clearance, was working as the translator for an undercover FBI counterintelligence team operating out of Calverton, Maryland. The FBI was tapping into all the telephone lines and cell phone numbers associated with diplomats and intelligence officers working out of the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the United Nations in New York. The Israelis practiced good communications security when they were on their phones speaking English, but they were reportedly extremely reckless when speaking Hebrew because they believed that they could not be understood. The FBI compiled a thick dossier on Israeli diplomats and spies and was able to establish linkages to a number of other targets of interest. Analyzing the Hebrew recordings, Leibowitz identified a number of hidden relationships with U.S. government officials and the media, as well as advocacy groups like AIPAC and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as “perception management,” but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action. Much of the activity was illegal or incompatible with the role of foreign diplomats in the United States, which is why Leibowitz took action after his supervisors refused to proceed with prosecution. The focus was on Iran, with Israeli officials intent on preparing the American public for war against the mullahs. They were spreading disinformation on Iran’s nuclear program, promoting international sanctions, and trying to obtain Washington’s support for an ultimatum on the nuclear program as a final diplomatic gesture that would be turned down by Iran, leading to war with the U.S. playing the lead role. The Israeli Embassy’s activities consisted of drafting articles and editorials that were placed with an accommodating media, paying journalists to write pieces making the same points, and working closely with groups like WINEP and AIPAC to present policymakers with a coordinated list of arguments for war. At least one congressman from Indiana was approached directly by Israeli intelligence and agreed to host an anti-Iran conference as well as to introduce legislation tightening Iran sanctions. The recorded telephone conversation between an Israeli intelligence officer and Rep. Jane Harman in April 2009, in which she agreed to intervene on behalf of accused AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in exchange for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, was also part of the special FBI counterintelligence operation.
Leibowitz’s concern that the illegal activity would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department proved correct. No Israeli or American named in the extensive FBI investigative dossier has been in any way punished.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
Apparently you can have free cake and steal it, too.
While Buddy Valastro, star of TLC’s “The Cake Boss,” gave away cakes and posed for photos Tuesday afternoon in Market Square, a man sneaked into an unattended storage area and grabbed a case of four cakes, which retail at about $27 apiece, Pittsburgh police said.
His getaway ended when an event organizer pointed him out to officers.
They identified him as William Davenport, 52, of Sheraden. The icing on the cake: Police wanted him on three outstanding warrants for violating his probation on theft charges.
Police said Davenport apologized and said he was intoxicated. They charged him with theft and disorderly conduct.
Valastro came to Pittsburgh to hand out up to 10,000 cakes in a promotional event that continued until after 4 p.m. Thousands of fans mobbed Market Square throughout the day.
Police said officers broke up scuffles between people waiting in line and those who tried to cut into it. Most waited their turn.
“I understand that the cakes were being handed out for free at the event,” police spokeswoman Diane Richard said. “But they aren’t free until someone hands them to you. I don’t think that’s what the ‘Cake Boss’ wanted, for people to just come in and take the cakes.”
Tom Fontaine is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7847 or tfontaine@tribweb.com.Welcome back to the Fast and Dirty Sours series. Here we’ll cover batches 3 – 7.
The goal of a quick sour beer is entertaining to me. Most “fast sour” beers are simply that: sour beers. What I’ve been looking for are quick ways of making “Sour” Beers – however that term does include beers that are fermented with Brettanomyces and are often not sour at all. (I’ll stick to the term sour beer, but know that what I’m looking for is a drinkable beer with both sour and brettanomyces character.)
Soon after I started the F&D sour series I found myself busy prepping for my HomebrewCon talk, getting my house in order for child #2 (expected any day now), and trying to pour most of my efforts into learning about personal finance. I’m also working to help update the Milk the Funk “Getting Started” page, which I hope to have completed soon. Needless to say, I am deciding to give you updates on the last few batches of F&D sours all at once so as not to prolong writing about these crappy beers.
In the first several batches of this series, I found myself experimenting with different sources of yeast/microbes. Some of them were starters I grew and tasted nasty, so they never made it into an official “batch”. Others passed the starter test and found themselves in 2.5 gallons of wort, as always, a 60/40 blend of Pilsner and Wheat malt. Many are still to be tested, I’m kind of a yeast hoarder. In batches 3-6, I experimented with lactobacillus from yogurt, a lacto blend with “Bring on da Funk”, my Partial Eclipse blend, and a kombucha culture. Each one had its own special outcome. You’ll notice this post is titled batches 3-7, however – and we’ll discuss Batch 7 at the end.
Batch 3 used Lactobacillus from Yogurt as well as a blend of a farmhouse strain and brettanomyces brux I had from a previous beer. It was “cold side soured” after the boil using lactobacillus from yogurt (which I had grown on a stir plate for 3 days). After being “soured”, it was cooled and the blend of Farmhouse/Brett was added. After a month, this beer was what I called “Nothing Special.” It had a thin, very light one-dimensional sourness, and was very, very dry. I speculate the yogurt didn’t end up souring as much as I had thought it would, each sample I tried wasn’t very tart at all. My pH meter died so I didn’t take a reading. I ended up blending this beer with another sour beer that was a little “too much.” The blend is fine.
Batch 4 used Lactobacillus from grain, as well as the “Bring on da Funk” blend form Omega Labs. Using the same methods (although skipping the yogurt this time and using grain) the beer came out lightly sour, although it had a dirty/sweaty flavor to it, with a lot of dryness and astringency. It was also slightly sweet. This one I blame on the yeast possibly dying in transit. This yeast came during the ‘cooler’ months up here and I believe it spent a little too long in the mail truck/box. I never got a lot of carboy action out of this (although there was a little bit), and I think it eventually just sat there and decided to crap out bad flavors. I’m calling it a failure based on yeast. Dumped.
Batch 5 used my Partial Eclipse blend of brettanomyces and had really great sourness. However, while I was on vacation in April the airlock went dry. (The air here can be very dry.) Judging from the oxidized flavors, astringency, and armpit flavors I tasted/spat out, I dubbed it a “whoops.” Dumped.
Batch 6 used Kombucha Dregs I had from a tasty bottle of kombucha. I stepped them up slowly. Each stepping yielded a tasty few ounces so I pitched them into a 2 gallon batch. The result was disgusting. Dirt, bile, moss, etc. Nothing great. If I was going to do this again, I’d try using a Scoby from someone rather than stepping them myself. (A friend of mine used dregs to make his scoby, which is why I thought this would work.)
This brings us to Batch 7.
Batch 7 was brewed only two weeks ago. I received a generous portion of Funk Weapon #2 from a brew buddy Matt of “To Brew a Beer.” The first starter tasted delicious and it revitalized my desire to brew beer using a stir plate. As I’ve mentioned before, many of the starters I’ve made go down the hatch and taste great. So I brewed a one gallon batch, this time using some oats and a bit less wheat. I hoped the oats would provide some more body that I was wishing I had in a few of the earlier versions. I brewed the batch and let it sit on a stir plate for 7 days. Afterwards, I crash cooled and carbonated using a carb-cap and served from a 2L plastic bottle (something I was a little too well known for at HomebrewCon). It should be noted in the tasting that the first time I stepped it up I let it ride too long on the stir plate and it got extremely acetic, undrinkably so. I didn’t decant as well as I should have and some of that acidity did make it into the final beer in a level slightly higher than I would have liked.
The results? Not bad. Not bad at all. Actually this beer is pretty good. Definitely tastes young, but summertime-crushable.
Aroma is grainy with light overripe tropical fruit. “Punchy ripeness” (from the Bootleg Bio page) fits this appropriately. Some acetic acid (as noted above). A light doughiness.
Appearance is hazy, probably from the oats. I didn’t fine this batch. I plan to next time.
Flavor is pleasant. Light doughiness, some acidity, comes across to me as lemonesque. No hop bitterness. Light acetic notes. Normally I can’t stand acetic, but in this beer it works in tandem with some lactic-flavored acidity. It’s not perfect by any means, but is really quite pleasant for a week and a half out, being 6% ABV, and having not been kettle-soured.
Mouthfeel is medium bodied with a medium dry finish. This water profile is the same as the one I used in Amerihops, which I feel helps smooth this otherwise harsh beer out.
Overall, I’m quite happy with how this came out, especially given the nastiness of some of the previous batches. What’s next for the F&D Sours? I’m going to continue my stir plate method, perhaps with an overnight “flask sour” in the future if it doesn’t end up as sour as I’d like. I plan on testing various strains and messing with my malt bill slightly. I’m also enjoying kind of using the NEIPA style malt/water profile, just without all the hops: crushable, yet complex.North Carolina’s freshman Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, last featured in RWW’s The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress, refers to herself as a “product of the Tea Party” and even opposes mandating that insurance companies cover matenity care because it is “very costly.” Despite her staunch hostility to the Democrats’ “imperial ruling class attitude” and the “socialistic form of government,” Ellmers has decided to take taxpayer-subsidized health care plan because of the high cost of living in Washington DC. Apparently, the Congresswoman’s $174,000 annual salary isn’t enough to live part-time in the nation’s capital without taxpayer-funded health insurance:
Appearing on a WPTF radio call-in show Monday, Ellmers was asked by a caller whether she intended to participate in “that luxury plan” offered to members of Congress. Ellmers responded that she signed up for a Blue Cross, Blue Shield federal employees plan, one of the options offered to members of Congress. “Unfortunately, being here in Washington is very expensive,” Ellmers said. “Yes, we do have a salary, and we do have benefits. It costs a lot of money to be here. I’ve signed on to the private plan, just like so many in America are on. “The benefit is available to me. People need to understand out there, it costs a lot of money to be here in Congress.” Ellmers, a nurse who is married to a physician, makes a congressional salary of $174,000 per year.
While Ellmers believes that residents of Washington DC who don’t have health insurance (and most likely earn less than $174,000) shouldn’t receive any government assistance to receive coverage whatsoever, she is fine with taxpayer-funded health insurance for herself.
Ellmers recently rejected an invitation by President Obama, who she likened to “Louis XIV, the Sun King,” to attend a reception at the White House for all new members of Congress “because she chose not to go.”Eminem and Pink will be joining forces once again, as it is being reported that a new collab from the music stars will be coming out very soon.
The cat was apparently let out of the bag by Tony Travatto, Senior VP of programming at iHeartMedia in Michigan, on the Mojo in the Morning show. “[Tony] says that there is a new Eminem, Pink song coming out, that he said is unbelievable,” the host announced. “He said he got a chance to be one of the first to hear it and it’ll be coming out here very soon.”
Em and Pink previously collabed on the song “Won’t Back Down” off Shady's 2010 album, Recovery. The single peaked at No. 62 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
We keep getting more and more intel that Marshall is cooking up something big. The new album will also reportedly feature a reunion with Dr. Dre. “People don’t know this: Dre records every day," The Defiant Ones director, Allan Hughes said in a recent interview. "Literally, he’s in there recording songs every day. He’s like Picasso in that way. He’s always painting. Right now he’s producing, in the 11th hour, a track for Eminem’s latest album. So Dre’s still real active in music, you know? But I hear what you’re saying. It’s the truth.”
Most recent reports have the album coming out this fall.
Check out the interview clip about the new Em track below.Unity’s controversial online search feature is being disabled by default in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, due for release in April.
Search terms typed into the Unity 7 Dash search bar will only show local file, folder and app results. No search terms will be sent to Canonical or passed to third party results providers, as is currently the case.
‘Unity online searches are now turned off by default.’
In currently supported versions of Ubuntu the Dash sends search queries the user enters to a remote web server run by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.
No user-identifiable data is included with these queries, which are used to retrieve contextually relevant results from over 50 online services, including Wikipedia, YouTube and The Weather Channel.
A switch to disable online search entirely is available in Ubuntu through the Ubuntu System Settings > Privacy pane.
But some in the open-source community object to the feature being turned on by default.
Ubuntu Online Search Controversy
‘Richard Stallman describes the feature as ‘spyware”
Boiling over since 2012, the open-source community was quick to express concerns about user privacy in the wake of Ubuntu Amazon integration. Concerns continued with the rollout of the comprehensive ‘Smart Scopes Service’ a year later.
The furore was so big it led free software stalwart Richard Stallman to call Ubuntu ‘spyware’.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation also shared its concerns in a series of blog posts and suggested that Canonical make the feature opt-in. Privacy International went further than most by awarding Ubuntu’s makers a ‘Big Brother award‘ for work on, quote: “invading personal privacy”.
Canonical maintains that the data collected through Unity’s online search feature is anonymised and “not user-identifiable”.
In blog post from 2013 the company explains that it “make[s] users aware of what data will be collected and which third party services will be queried through a notice right in the Dash, and we only collect data that allows us to deliver a great search experience to Ubuntu users.”
Ubuntu Gets Serious About Data Privacy
Canonical disabled Amazon product results on fresh installs of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and up (though results from other online sources and services continue to appear until the opt-out is chosen).
For the next LTS, Ubuntu 16.04, Canonical curtails the contentious online searching feature entirely, right out of the box, just like the EFF asked them to do in 2012.
“None of your search terms will leave your computer,” Ubuntu desktop manager Will Cooke explains, noting that the “finer control over what is searched and [the] more targeted results” that Unity 8 offers “cannot be added into Unity 7.”
It’s for this reason that “the online search features [of Unity 7] will be retired.”
The change will also lower the support and infrastructure burden of Unity 7. With fewer Unity search results to handle Canonical can redirect time and engineering effort to more exciting avenues, like the promising Unity 8 desktop.
You Will Need to Opt-In To Get Online Results
The decision to disable the online search element of the Ubuntu desktop will be greeted with considerable cheer by many in the open-source and free software communities.
But not everyone is antagonised by the semantic search skills being served up in the Dash.
If you think you’ll miss the efficiency of searching and previewing weather, news and other content through the Dash, you can re-enable online search results in a couple of clicks. Just head to Ubuntu System Settings > Privacy > Search and set the slider to ‘On‘.
Flicking this won’t automatically bring back Amazon product results. The ‘shopping lens’ is decoupled from the opt-in toggle. You’ll need to okay a second opt-in to see product results from Amazon (and Skimlinks).
Summary
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will no longer search online sources in the Dash by default
Online results can be turned back on manually using a toggle
A second opt-in allows Amazon product results
The change only affects new installs. In-place upgrades will retain user preferences
Do you agree with this decision? Or is Canonical about to reduce the experience of Ubuntu for new users? Let us know in the comments.When Malissa Sargent Lewis took the back route to work one day through a rural Kentucky neighborhood, she didn’t expect to see a black trash bag moving around on the side of the road.
She also didn’t expect to find a perfectly healthy, 8-week-old puppy inside of it.
In an moment of exquisite luck, Lewis opened the trash bag to find not a rabid possum or other wild animal inside, but an adorable black and white puppy.
Lewis posted a video of the moving bag to Facebook, along with a message: “If this is your puppy, let me know. If you are the scoundrel who put it in a garbage bag and tossed it on the side of the road… you’re a sicko.”
The Kentucky Animal Control and the Sheriff’s Department are further investigating the incident, but Lewis and her sons have decided to keep the (extraordinarily lucky) pup. They’ve decided to name him Hefty.
Miraculously, when Lewis took the baby to the vet, he was perfectly healthy!
RELATED: Study Proves That Dogs Are Good Judges Of Character
“He is playful,” Lewis told LittleThings in an interview. “He romps around playing with his new toys. He’s good-natured. Even the day that I brought him into the school where I work the day I found him, he was precious. The guidance counselor, Mrs. Kelly, is a big animal lover, she took the pup to visit second grade and the kids loved him.”
Malissa Sargent Lewis/Facebook
It’s not every day that a story like this has a happy ending, so we can all be grateful for people like Lewis who take the time to stop and do the right thing instead of just driving by.
RELATED: A Touching Moment Between A Boy And His Service Dog
And now she’s got a puppy to show for it, which seems like a pretty good deal.
RELATED: This little boy’s plea to find a home for a deaf Labrador is absolutely adorable:
Sweet Momma Dog Adopts Abandoned Puppy
Daya the dog was pregnant with nine puppies and living in an overcrowded shelter when Halfway There Rescue put her into a foster home.
When her foster family brought her in for a checkup, they received the devastating news that none of her puppies were alive.
“X-rays showed no evidence of living babies,” Jennifer Werner, a volunteer for the rescue, told The Dodo. “Her nine puppies were in the process of being absorbed by her body. This had caused a severe infection in her uterus that required emergency surgery within an hour of her arrival at the vet hospital.”
Daya was pregnant but had no viable puppies. After surgery for her miscarriage she was confused to not have puppies and started mothering her toys. Raisin was an orphaned puppy w/ a ruptured eye that had to be removed. Halfway There Rescue paired them to foster together. THREAD pic.twitter.com/YDILBDh9m2 — Katie Levans Loveluck (@katie_levans) January 21, 2018
Although Daya survived the surgery and was OK physically, her mental state suffered as she coped with the loss of her puppies.
Daya’s maternal instinct caused her to treat toys or socks as if they were her puppies, laying with them, licking them and bringing them everywhere with her.
Shortly after Daya’s surgery, the rescue received a call about a female puppy abandoned on the side of the road who was in need of a home and a mother. The puppy, Raisin, met with Daya, and the two hit it off immediately.
It was clear to everyone that Daya needed Raisin and vice versa.
Here they are spooning at the shelter! Look at how cute they are:
“They were snuggled up together and it was obvious a relationship was forming,” Werner said. “Even though the two were not related, they served a need for each other that would lead to an incredible bond.”
The pair continued to take care of each other, and each of them eventually found their forever homes. In fact, the tiny Raisin ended up staying with her foster mom!
She has her very own Instagram account. Unsurprisingly, Raisin is wildly popular — the account has more than 17,000 followers!
BFF A post shared by Raisin Loveluck (@helloraisin) on May 15, 2018 at 3:43am PDT
If you’d like to learn more about the other dogs that have been rescued by Halfway There Rescue and are still up for adoption, you can get more information at their website.A Brighton, MI auto dealership put out a sign discouraging people from giving money to a local panhandler after managers said they offered him a job that he turned down because it was less money than he was currently making, says a ClickonDetroit report.
The sign, placed under the hood of a car at the dealership was created as a public service announcement, read, “Please do not give anything to this panhandler. We offered him a full-time job at $10 per hour. He said, ‘I make more than any of you,’ and he did not want the job. Please donate to a more worthy cause.”
Per the report, a duo of men, described as father and son, stand on the side of the road with signs saying, “Homeless, please help.”
The two men were arrested but were reportedly back on the side of the road again not long after with two new signs.
One read, “You can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment on $10 per hour.” The other said, “The median income in Livingston County is $70,000.”
Michigan State Police troopers said two people were arrested for vagrancy and disorderly conduct. No names were released because they have not been charged.
The dealership has since removed its sign.
Follow Breitbart.tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideoCould Will and Emma get married this season? When will Kurt find out about NYADA? Sue and Roz working together again? THR caught up with the cast and got the dirt on what to expect from the remainder of the third season of the Fox musical.
With only three weeks until Glee's third season comes to a close, there's a lot going on for the kids at McKinley High before graduation day arrives May 22.
This week during "Prom-asaurus," Heather Morris' Brittany -- as senior class president -- stages a prehistoric prom for the ages that will see Quinn (Dianna Agron) and perhaps even Brittany and her girlfriend, Santana (Naya Rivera), in the running for prom queen.
Next week, Gleeks can rejoice with back-to-back episodes in which Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) wakes up to find a very Freaky Fridaysituation going on in "Props," during which everyone swaps bodies (she swaps with Rachel, Kurt is Finn, Puck becomes Blaine and Mike becomes Joe, with Santana as Artie).
Then, Glee's second hour will feature what Cory Monteith dubs an "epic" New Directions song and performance during "Nationals." Oh, and that May 22 season finale? It's "Goodbye," during which seniors including Rachel (Lea Michele), Finn (Monteith) and Kurt (Chris Colfer), among others, will don caps and gowns and graduate from McKinley.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the Glee cast on the red carpet before they took to the stage for a recent TV Academy panel and got the dish on what's to come. Here are 10 things to look forward to in the remaining four episodes of the season.
PHOTOS: 'Glee' Season 3: The Episodics
1. After Rachel's botched NYADA audition, New York isn't totally out of the question, Monteith, Michele and Colfer say. "That's what everybody is going to think, right? It's possible," Monteith says. "It all depends what happens but a lot happens in the next few episodes after 'Choke.' " Notes Michele: "She messes up and now she has to fix it. She's going to have to fight for it now and make it better and she works very hard to do so; she really wants to get out of Ohio and she's going to do everything she can to do that." Adds Colfer: "[Rachel's audition] is definitely a bump on their yellow brick road of dreams, [but New York] is still a possibility."
2. Rachel and Finn are stable, and the aspiring actor will continue to be there to support his partner, Monteith says. " |
California Edison, the average time needed to complete the 576 hourly calculations to determine the HCA for a single, average size feeder using the streamlined methodology was approximately 2 minutes. The iterative methodology, by contrast, took approximately 23 minutes for the single feeder, but “produces the most accurate results that could be applied more seamlessly in the interconnection process,” according to the utility’s report.
The EPRI DRIVE methodology selected by the New York utilities uses a different methodology and takes 3 minutes to 5 minutes for an average feeder, McGranaghan said.
“We have to figure out a methodology that is scalable, replicable, and compatible with utility systems,” he said. “There will be methodologies on the spectrum that will work but it won’t be as simple as just California’s streamlined and iterative methodologies.”
The utilities’ initial roll-out of the online DER maps and data is likely to be in the next year to 18 months and will probably be updated monthly, CalSEIA’s Heavner said. “The closer the data updates are to real-time, the more useful it will be for developers.”
“The ultimate but ambitious goal is a real-time hosting capacity analysis, but there are more things to figure out,” IREC's Stanfield said.
Complete results of the demonstrations, as reported by the utilities, were incorporated into the working group’s draft final report recommendations.
Preliminary utility findings
Picker's ruling requires demonstrations to be performed in at least two distinct Distribution Planning Areas (DPAs) and evaluated with each of the two methodologies, SCE reported.
SCE’s two demonstrations totaled “eight distribution substations and 82 distribution feeders serving a representative mixture of residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural customers.”
Its top-level conclusion: “The characteristics of local distribution systems are significant factors which dictate the level of DERs that can be interconnected to the distribution grid without adversely affecting the critical distribution system components.”
Hosting capacity and the impact on the interconnection process will vary with physical and load characteristics, SCE’s Takayesu said. The HCA-derived data will “inform developers of areas where interconnection projects are more likely to pass Fast Track and where more detailed study may be needed.”
As required by Picker’s ruling, SCE evaluated both HCA methodologies. It used one day per month of typical light-load conditions for 12 months. The 576 hours of data produced the 2 minute per feeder average for the streamlined method and the 23 minute average for the iterative method.
The streamlined method achieves results more quickly than the iterative method but “the level of accuracy is highly dependent on the complexity of the distribution system, and, in some cases, yields sub-optimal ICA results that would require further study during interconnection,” SCE acknowledged.
SCE was looking for a balance between “accuracy of results and computational time requirements” that could be used in the near term and refined “for long-term applications,” it added.
Its proposed solution for the first online mapping and data roll-out is “a blended ICA method” that would apply the iterative method to a “typical 24-hour, light-load day” and the streamlined method to a 576-hour analysis. This would provide the “balance of computational accuracy and time” as well as “a solid baseline for the development of a more complex, long-term ICA analysis.”
SDG&E
SDG&E’s study of its demonstrations found the hosting capacities derived using the two methods “were within 30% of each other 75% of the time.” The report attributed the differences to technical limits in the streamlined method.
The important difference between the two methods was that the streamlined method “could be up to 50 times faster depending on how the iterative analysis is applied,” SDG&E reported. “For this reason, performing iterative analysis updates on a frequent basis is prohibitive." Its recommendation is an annual update for interconnections analysis.
SDG&E also included a comparison for each utility’s analysis of the hosting capacity on a common test circuit. “There was not a significant difference, in either integration capacity value or computer time,” it reported.
The demonstrations were “a good launching pad” for the tools and methods needed to do HCA because they revealed “challenges to be overcome,” SDG&E reported.
“There is general consensus on using an iterative simulation-based approach for the hosting capacity analysis, due to its more accurate results that can be used in interconnection review,” SDG&E’s Albrecht said. But it will require “vendor collaboration to improve and streamline the process.”
Only the iterative method is accurate enough for interconnection purposes, despite its long “run times” and the “daunting” size of the data files it produced, the utility reported. But, because the streamlined method is more workable for the “what if” scenario analysis used by planners, a blended methodology is likely to be the “optimal approach,” SDG&E concluded.
PG&E
The Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) report on its demonstrations also supported using both methodologies “as appropriate” because each “is better suited for specific applications.”
Results from the utility’s demonstration project “determined that more research and development is needed to produce robust automated algorithms to accurately determine hosting capacity through iterative approaches,” said Mark Esguerra, director of integrated grid planning. Of the three IOUs, PG&E raised the most questions about how the ICA is impacting its IT system. The utility called for greater “cooperation with software vendors” to “optimize and enhance” data management to meet HCA needs.
A blended methodology can be “on the spectrum of methodologies at a place where it has the right combination of computational efficiency and effectiveness, EPRI’s Smith said.
Toward HCA consensus
For calculating the HCA needed to make the processing of interconnection applications more timely, “a majority of the working recommended the iterative methodology,” according to the draft final report.
In fact, “the non-utility parties solidly agree and the utilities mostly agree, though not finally,” CalSEIA’s Heavner said.
“We believe the ultimate methodology will provide the highest level of accuracy while balancing complexity,” SCE’s Takayesu said. “We are optimistic that we will be able to arrive at consensus on key issues.”
The IOUs are concerned that the amount of granular and complex data will overburden their resources. The non-utility participants want a methodology that provides adequate data for fast-tracking interconnections at available locations and avoiding burdensome impact studies.
The non-utility parties understand the utilities’ arguments about what the iterative method imposes, Heavner said. “But we are going through all the work so we want the methodology to be right. The judgment of whether it is worth the cost depends on how granular the data is that comes out of it.”
An emerging strategy is looking for computational efficiencies that can collapse the burden on utility resources, he added. “Also, there may be offsetting benefits from using the iterative method. If it significantly reduces the time for detailed interconnection analyses, that might offset the cost of the hosting capacity analysis.”
The working group draft report accepted in theory the utilities’ consensus recommendation to use the streamlined methodology for planning. But the many ongoing CPUC proceedings on system planning, utilities’ annual planning processes, and grid modernization will inform how the ICA and its companion locational analyses are applied, it noted.
Until those proceedings advance, the methodology to be used for planning should remain “a priority long-term refinement item,” the report concluded.
There were other important recommendations from the working report. The mapping and online data should be “updated frequently enough to allow for a meaningfully faster (if not ultimately ‘automatic’) interconnection process.”
While SDG&E found an annual update to be adequate, the non-utility stakeholders argued updates should be at least monthly. SCE accepted this. PG&E warned of the costs for that degree of processing.
To make the online maps and data usable, the values must match those used for interconnection reviews, the working group report added. The values should “provide monthly and hourly data about hosting capacity limitations that enables a developer to design a system that takes full advantage of the available hosting capacity at their proposed point of development,” it concluded.
After the ICA is finalized, PG&E will focus on planning tools to automate analyses and on developing internal processes to enable regularly updated ICA values, Esguerra said.
“The ICA is a complex and resource intensive effort and, ideally, we would want to automate this process as much as possible,” SCE’s Takayesu acknowledged.
Ultimately, he added, “more resources will be required even as we add more automation and computing power to support the iterative nature of this analysis.”
The distributed grid of the future
The next question is how the availability of the data will change the handling of DER, IREC's Stanfield said. “It remains to be seen how they will use the data in their distribution planning.”
It will take the utilities “a long time” to have the data and models needed for “perfect” representations of their systems, EPRI’s Smith said. “Operational flexibility is the next big issue.”
CalSEIA’s Heavner agreed. “It is the next big point of contention. Utilities do not want DER to limit in any way their ability to make operational decisions in emergency situations,” he said. “There is a less conservative but still transparent and efficient standard, but it is not yet clear what it is.”
A standard for operational flexibility that allows more DER but satisfies utilities will require “a more sophisticated system that gives utilities real-time visibility of DER,” he added. “We need smart inverters and other technologies to do that.”
SCE recognizes that smart inverters may “alleviate some DER-driven technical issues that create hosting capacity limitations,” Takayesu agreed. But “more work is needed to integrate smart inverter technology.”
Heavner also sees a debate coming about how to include the outcomes of the DER proceedings into the commission’s complex Rule 21 technical standards.
SDG&E’s Albrecht agreed. “While the parties are generally in agreement on using ICA within Rule 21, there are nuances between their positions on how exactly the ICA results are applied.”
EPRI’s McGranaghan is looking even farther into the future. The right methodology could move the discussion from simply an analysis to understanding how to actually increase a system’s hosting capacity at the lowest cost, he said.
“That will involve the full range of new technologies and be part of the decisions on grid modernization investments,” McGranaghan said.
“Ultimately, the goal is dynamic protections in an intelligent operational system that can deal with two-way power flows,” he added. “But that means new controls, sensors, and new distribution system operations.”When you look at the career trajectory of Charles Woodson, it seems like he has been in the NFL forever, and you wouldn't be far off. He is in his 17thseason. But when you look at him play, you wouldn't believe he just had his 38th birthday (Well, 39th if you count his actual BIRTH day).
Not only is Woodson still playing, he is still performing at a high level. And as the most veteran member of a veteran laden team in Oakland, he is the best player on their struggling defense.
When he originally came to Oakland, they had only been back in Oakland for three years. He was a rookie in Jon Gruden's first season as Raiders head coach and he was in his fifth season when the Raiders went to the Super Bowl. That was 12 years ago.
After eight seasons in Oakland, he signed with the Green Bay Packers where he would eventually get his Super Bowl ring.
The following year, at the age of 35, he was named NFL defensive player of the year. As a cornerback. So I guess it shouldn't come as a big surprise that he is still performing at such a high level after a switch to the safety position.
Last season on the eve of his 37th birthday, he tied an NFL record with his 12th career defensive touchdown. He also had an interception to extend his sizable lead among active players.
This season he got an interception in the first game of the season. On the play, he showed rare athleticism for any age player. Since then he has had three passes defended and a fumble recovery to go along with a Raiders team leading 29 tackles (24 solo). He is the eighth ranked safety in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus which charges him with just one catch given up this season for nine yards.
This off-season, he would not say definitively if this was going to be his final NFL season. He played all 16 games last season and at the level he is still playing, there's nothing to suggest he's ready to hang up the cleats.
Follow @LeviDamien(I’m standing outside the main gates of where I live waiting for my ride when another resident comes out to check the mail with her cute hyper four-year-old son.)
Me: “Hi, [Resident]. Hi, [Son]. How are you?”
Son: “SPIDERS!”
Me: “Well, okay, then.”
(About a week later I bump into them again:)
Me: “Hi, [Son]. How are you today?”
Son: “I have a red towel. Do you have a red towel? I like this car.” *points at the car in front of us* “I read a book about a black cat today. Do you like purple? My favourite colour is green. Hey, mum can we go on a train and see some tigers?”
Me: “Wow! Okie dokie, then.”
Resident: “Yeah, we’re taking him to tested for A.D.H.D tomorrow…”Top Hillary Clinton adviser Karen Finney said on CNN Sunday that Clinton’s campaign faced “a perfect storm” of problems that cost her the election, the Daily Mail reported.
“Look, there are any number of things that you could point to to say that it was a mistake that we made that probably has some merit to it, because it was such a perfect storm of a lot of different things,” Finney told Jake Tapper, sitting on a panel of Democrats on CNN’s State of the Union.
Finney said there was no “magic bullet” that could have changed the direction of the doomed campaign.
Even though she said the campaign was doomed, she also said that it was a close race.
“Particularly when you look at the fact that in those Rust Belt states … that gap is about 70,000 votes that we’re talking about,” she continued.
“A majority of those people agreed with [Clinton] on the economy, thought she’d be better on the economy,’ Finney said. ‘And she’s won 2.8 million more in the popular vote.”
Finney suggested to Tapper that outreach could be better, like former DNC chairman Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” that helped Obama get elected.
“I think we need to learn some of the lessons coming out of this election, no question, in terms of how we talk to working families, whether they are black, white, brown and where those families are located, how we talk to them about the issues they care about,” Finney said.
“But I don’t think that this is an example of, you know, there are one or two things that was just flip a switch and everything will be perfect,” she said.
In November, Finney blamed the election loss on everything but Clinton, saying she lost because of sexism, James Comey, and the media, among other reasons, the Washington Free Beacon reported.Tony Cartalucci, Contributor
Activist Post
– Muslim Brotherhood serves as the primary instrument of US, Israel, & Saudi Arabia.
– Lebanon was designated as staging ground to destabilize Syria with Sunni extremists.
– Saudi and Muslim Brotherhood anti-Israeli and American sentiments are feigned.
– US intelligence knew in advance unleashing Sunni extremists would result in genocide.
– Saudis and Americans admit Sunni extremists are under their control.
As previously stated, the Muslim Brotherhood and various “hardline” Sunni political factions sweeping into power in the wake of the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” have been feigning anti-Israeli and anti-Western sentiments in an attempt to swell their ranks with followers before ultimately forming a united Sunni-front against Iran. The creation of a united Sunni-front was noted by geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley who has from the beginning stated that the various possible governments resulting from these engineered revolutions “could then be used to support the fundamental US-UK strategy for the Middle East, which is to assemble a block of Arab and Sunni countries (notably Egypt, Saudis, Gulf states, and Jordan) which, formed into a front with the participation of Israel, would collide with the Iranian Shiite front, including Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and various radical forces.”
Image: Red = US-backed destabilization, Blue = US occupying/stationed. Iran and Syria are completely surrounded by either client states or nations occupied by US forces. And while the complexity of West’s reordering of the Arab World is staggering, it is but a part of a grander strategy to eliminate the nation-state and establish global hegemony.
A reader recently pointed out this confirmed 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” Written by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh, it covers everything from admissions that the US, Saudis, and Israelis are working together, despite the Saudis and their Sunni proxies’ attempts to portray themselves as “anti-Israeli,” to admissions that the US is funding a region-wide network of militants and terrorists, many of whom have literally trained at Al Qaeda camps. The article also describes in great detail the role of the Hariri faction in Lebanon, working closely with the Saudis and Americans, and their role in creating a safe haven for terrorist organizations on Lebanese soil, now involved fully in destabilizing neighboring Syria.
Clearly, what has been recently portrayed by the West as mere “claims” by the Syrian government that the Saudis, Lebanese, and NATO were conspiring against them, is simply the fruition of the US policy exposed fully in the New Yorker in 2007. While many analysts have treated the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their involvement in Syria’s uprising as a somewhat nebulous phenomenon, the New Yorker’s 2007 article makes it clear that the Brotherhood is one of the primary instruments used by the Saudis as part of a US-Israeli-Saudi effort to eliminate Syria and Iran. Not only that, but the report indicates that the US itself has been funding and using the Muslim Brotherhood as well.
Just as the US State Department feigned shock and confusion at the “Arab Spring” it had been preparing for the last 3 years, it is likewise reacting with feigned confusion and dismay over the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the “Arab Spring’s” wake. In reality it is a premeditated consequence of US foreign policy spanning both the Bush and now the Obama administrations.
While in 2007, all of this was, “soon to be,” in retrospect we see just how devastatingly accurate Hersh’s reporting was. It is clear now, with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sunni-extremist dominated, foreign-funded destabilization ravaging Syria, that this policy created during the Bush administration, has transcended presidencies and is being brought to its premeditated conclusion under Obama – yet another example of “continuity of agenda.”
Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States Are Behind Syria’s Violence.
The evidence trickling out of the corporate-media regarding who the armed Syrian opposition is, reveals that it is predominately an extremist Sunni-movement, not only including Syrian extremists, but militants crossing the border from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and even from as far as Libya. An alliance of Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia have pledged funds for Syria’s militants and has repeatedly called for openly arming them. The US is likewise openly equipping Syrian militants.
This reality is not merely a spontaneous reaction by the “international community,” but verbatim what was planned in detail amongst the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia years in advance to topple the Syrian government before moving on to Iran, according to Hersh’s 2007 report:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
Hersh’s report would also include:
the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
This mirrors sentiments included in the Brookings Institution’s 2009 report, “Which Path to Persia?” where it was stated that reaching some sort of conclusion with Syria first was a prerequisite before attacking Iran:
…the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus. -Which Path to Persia? page 109 (.pdf)
Clearly, what we are seeing today in Syria is the full manifestation of this premeditated conspiracy against the government and people of Syria, and in turn, against the Iranians. It should be noted that a US intelligence professional interviewed by Hersh for his story, predicted that the Sunni extremists being prepared in 2007 for today’s violence, would most likely go on a genocidal killing spree, as seen in Libya, and now being quietly reported by the Western press in Syria as well:
Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
That the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia premeditated a regional conflict utilizing militant-extremists with full knowledge they would commit wide ranging, genocidal atrocities, is clearly as much in reality a war crime as the US State Department and US representative to the UN Susan Rice have claimed the Syrian government has committed as it desperately attempts to restore order in the face of an admitted act of foreign aggression.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a Tool of US-Israeli-Saudi Machinations.
The Muslim Brotherhood is often portrayed as being anti-Israeli, anti-US, and anti-West in general. In reality they are a creation of and have been ever since servants of expanding Wall Street and London’s corporate-financier hegemony across the Islamic World. In Hersh’s 2007 report, it is made clear that the Brotherhood was the tool of choice of the US, Israeli, and Saudi elite – with the US and Saudis reported as even then directly funding and backing them – backing that continues to this day, not only in Syria, but in Egypt as well.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s rank and file surely believe in what they are being told by their leaders, but their leaders are professional demagogues peddling anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric solely for public consumption while being fully complicit in the West’s designs against the Arab World.
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Hersh reports that a supporter of the Lebanese Hariri faction had met Dick Cheney in Washington and relayed personally the importance of using the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in any move against the ruling government:
[Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be ‘the ones to talk to,’ Jumblatt said. – The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007 US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood:
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, ‘The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.’ He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
It was warned that such backing would benefit the Brotherhood as a whole, not just in Syria, and could affect public opinion even as far as in Egypt where a long battle against the hardliners was fought in order to keep Egyptian governance secular.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, also interviewed by Hersh for his 2007 article, perhaps described best the geopolitical gambit the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were and are currently attempting to unfold:
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean ‘insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.’ ‘In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,’ he said. ‘I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.) – The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
Indeed, divide and conquer has been used by empires since the beginning of time, and it appears that the very radical extremists the West has featured as civilization’s greatest enemy in their fraudulent “War on Terror” is a creation and perpetuation of their own design. The role of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood, betraying millions of Sunni Muslims by exploiting their justified outrage of US-British and Israeli foreign policy, has resulted in terrorism and violence, both spontaneous and engineered, that has destroyed millions of lives. The very “War on Terror” is the “management” of these exploited and cultivated extremists:
…[Saudi Arabia’s] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh
For Empire, not National Security.
The only fault that can be found in Hersh’s tremendous journalistic accomplishment is perhaps the pandering to the notion that all of this demonstrative deceit and indeed, criminality, may be being done in the interest of protecting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. In reality, even the Brookings Institution, which was also included in Hersh’s report, admits that containing Iran is not a matter of national security for either the US or Israel (let alone Saudi Arabia), but a matter of maintaining the status quo, namely Western hegemony across the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and Israel the principle dual benefactors.
While behind closed doors US policy makers admit Iran, even if it were to obtain nuclear weapons, is driven by self-preservation and protecting the influence it is steadily gaining throughout the Middle Eastern region it borders, the message they desperately seek to relate to the public is one of an irrational apocalyptic theocracy eager to usher in Armageddon.
American Natural Superfood - Free Sample However, reports out of the RAND corporation note that Iran has had chemical weapons in its inventory for decades, and other reports from RAND describe the strict control elite military units exercise over these weapons, making it unlikely they would end up in the hands of “terrorists.” The fact that Iran’s extensive chemical weapon stockpile has yet to be disseminated into the hands of non-state actors, along with the fact that these same elite units would in turn handle any Iranian nuclear weapons, lends further evidence to the conclusion that Iran is indeed driven by self-preservation and self-defense. Brookings notes on pages 24 and 25 of their “Which Path to Persia?” report, that the real threat is not the deployment of these weapons, but rather the deterrence they present, allowing Iran to counter US influence in the region without the fear of an American invasion. The US and the West in general, have viewed the Middle East as nothing more than a divided, broken Ottoman Empire to be used and exploited, and when nationalism or resistance emerges, to be pitted against itself in destructive conflicts. The fear of a powerful Iran overturning the status quo of Anglo-American hegemony expressed through proxies and multiple strategies of tension, Israel itself being one of them, would open the door for other nations to climb out from beneath the modern heirs of the British and French Empires and begin down the path of true self-determination. That includes freeing the people of Israel laboring under a hijacked government misleading them into a pointless and perpetual conflict with not only the Palestinians, but with the Islamic World itself. Indeed, the ploy described in incredible detail by Seymour Hersh in 2007, and demonstratively playing out before our eyes today, is not to protect against existential threats to the people of Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the United States, but against existential threats to their leadership’s self-serving hegemonic ambitions. It is being peddled by a coalition of Saudis, Americans, and Israelis lying not only to the world, their allies, and their enemies, but to their own people about the nature of the conflict they demand troops and taxpayers to facilitate.
Image: Terrorist bombings have recently ripped through Damascus, Syria, bearing all the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, funded and directed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia since at least 2007, according to Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Redirection.” With the back-story now fully established, and the violence in Syria exposed as not only premeditated, but the devastating consequences of unleashing Sunni extremists being well known ahead of time, those insisting on backing this horrendous crime do so amidst a public increasingly aware of their transgressions against humanity. Balking these murderous machinations is accomplished by Sunnis and Shi’ia not falling into the traps laid out by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, and terror groups and “civil society” NGO’s alike, cultivated by these admitted international manipulators. Christians and Jews must likewise avoid the contrived “clash of civilizations” between themselves and hordes of terrorists created and cultivated by their own demagogic leaders. Finally, it is essential that people around the world recognize that the corporations and institutions they patronize on a daily basis with their time, money, energy, and attention are the ones ultimately devising and driving not only these plots, but the disingenuous politicians and media personalities we’ve mistakenly placed our trust in. We must begin to boycott and replace these corporations and institutions with genuine local alternatives or suffer the tragic conclusion of allowing such deceitful megalomaniacs construct an inescapable world order they shall presume absolute dominion over.
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here. var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’There are three people in every Bollywood person—the star as he actually is, the star as he thinks he is, and the star as he wants you to think he is. These three selves could overlap but it is also possible that they exist independently. For example, one of your correspondent’s rare interactions with a film star was a 20-minute interview with John Abraham at a Juhu hotel. It was peppered with bytes of John talking about John as John, with him mouthing lines like “John’s fans know…”, “John’s critics are…”, “They wonder why John does not do this…” Every time the first pronoun ‘I’ cried out for release, John swatted it aside with a John, and you frantically looked around to see if there was a John hiding behind the curtain.
In a Bollywood personality, image and reality are conjoined, but you can still get an insight into what lies behind the projection through a perusal of his words—for which Twitter is a readymade tool. This is true only for Twitter handles which the star operates himself. If he has outsourced it to a normal human being, all you will get are updates on being stuck in traffic or irrelevant promotions of insipid movies.
That disclaimer done, let’s begin with a filmmaker who likes to project himself as abnormal but from whose tweets you can gather the exact opposite. Many of Ram Gopal Varma’s tweets go like this:
» ‘The only teacher I ever loved was my English teacher because she used to be very hot’
» ‘If universe existed fr billions of yrs nd earth existed fr millions God mst hv bn pretty bored unless was hvng an affair wth sm othr planet’
» ‘Does Aarushis mother also deserve a happy mothers day?’
It is every man’s right to be an iconoclast and announce it. But it is also true that talk is cheap and character comes through when it’s tested. So, you wonder, how is it that when he had a run-in with his producer and actor after the well-deserved debacle of Department, Varma’s Voltaires and Ayn Rands went for a walk, with pedestrian pettiness taking their place? His tweet: ‘Whatever else happening to Department I am supremley happy tht I don’t nd 2 see the faces of Sanjay dutt nd Dharam uberoi fr rest of my life’. There were more like this. Or, why is it that when he tweets of superstars, the impression you unfailingly get is of him lathering them with butter?
» ‘Never believed in Ram, Jesus or Allah bt cing the variation cmng frm js 1 man frm lagaan 2 Tzp 2 DB I am seriously cnsdrng believing in Aamir.’
» ‘Just watched Bbhuddah and am. angry with bacchan that hes such a chootiyaa not to do films like this nd am such a lund not to realize this.’
» ‘I think from now on the only way Salman khan can ever hope to have a flop is if he ever does a film with me!’
Unlike Varma, Mahesh Bhatt is not a suck up artiste posing as a nihilist. Sure, he plugs actors and crewmates who star in movies made by his production house, but that’s straightforward business. Where this filmmaker gets interesting is in the neverending aphorisms he doles out. Like these:
» ‘The hunger for truth must burn itself out completely without knowing satisfaction. The thirst must burn itself out without being quenched.’
» Someone said never apologize for how you feel... Thats like saying sorry for being real...’
Don’t be guilty about being befuddled. To understand Bhatt, you must go into his past. He was once a follower of Rajneesh, and it was not armchair pop spirituality. He was a full-timer who gave it up. Like all extremists, he then turned to the other end—claiming that materialism was the only truth. He also still needed to follow someone, and that was UG Krishnamurthy, a self-styled anti-guru but who in Bhatt’s biography of him comes across as exactly that, a guru. From Bhatt’s tweets, you can see that his own yearning for gurudom persists. Can there be any other explanation for this need to thrust one-liners so relentlessly upon the world? It’s a condition associated with spiritualism—proselytise by being cryptic.
When it comes to the three Khans, alas, there is little to dig out from their words because you just don’t know if they are the ones whose words they are. Take two tweets made by Salman (@beingSalmanKhan) after speculation arose that he would be bidding for the Deccan Chargers T20 team. They went like this in quick succession:
» ‘No IPL team for me jst being human n movies.’
» ‘Clear? GOOD.’
That reeks of attitude, right? The sort of thing that got him court cases and also made him a superstar. So you almost believe that Salman does his own tweets. And then suddenly, you get this: ‘ Omg! Jst heard priyanka chopra’s english track 3 times bak to bak, called in my city. Its fab, outstanding! SALAAM miss chopra.’ Do supermen say ‘OMG’? Isn’t that too girly in tone? And how is it that he stays in hibernation and suddenly awakens with enough Twit-energy to write a micro novel on Sarabjit Singh just as promotions for his film Ek Tha Tiger start?
Shah Rukh Khan’s tweets (@iamsrk) do look like he is doing them himself, but there’s really not much in them except how nice a person he is. Once in a while, he deigns to do a question-and-answer session with his followers—again, to re-emphasise how nice a person he is. The image, it appears, has completely taken over. The best insight you get from his handle comes from what he did to the account itself. Some time ago, he dropped out of Twitter and later explained that it was because he was getting abuse from strangers. It is not something people of his stardom are used to, but then Twitter is a great leveller—king and ugly commoner all walk the same road. And it said something of his authentic self again when he returned to Twitter, despite the abuse, in good time to promote his home production Ra.One. So here’s the deal—there is no reason for him to suffer such abuse, but when it comes to his career, he will still do it. This, incidentally |
who can be surprised by this sort of thing these days? Not, I assume, Barbara Garson, known in the Vietnam era as the author of the satiric play "MacBird," who has since gone on to write books on American work life (All the Livelong Day) and on a single bank deposit as it made its dizzying way around our planet (Money Makes the World Go Around). For TomDispatch, she's written a little mystery story about those financial-products types, what's happened to them, and -- most strikingly -- their possible rebirth. Think of her as this site's equivalent of Miss Marple, set loose on our financially melted-down planet. Tom
F inanciers were further from my life experience than either die casters or editors. Yet the "do you know anyone who?" method still proved an effective way of turning up unemployed hedge-fund analysts and bank loan officers -- and within a week at that. It was only when I refined my search to ferret out unemployed financiers who had actually handled those infamous "toxic assets" that I hit the proverbial brick wall.
For the book I'm writing about unemployed Americans, I had no trouble finding a ccountants, b rokers, c ashiers, or d ie casters. Admittedly, I had to go out of town to interview the die casters. But when I arrived, alphabetically, at unemployed e ditors, I had only to look in my address book.
Since mortgage-backed securities and the swaps that insure them had been the downfall of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and the giant insurance company AIG, packs of bankers who worked on them must, I assumed, be roaming free on the streets of Manhattan. Yet I couldn't find a single one.
Finally, I phoned a law firm representing Lehman Brothers employees in a suit for the pay they were owed when the company shut down without notice. I asked the lawyer if he could possibly inquire among his unemployed clients for someone, anyone, who used to work with mortgage-backed securities and might be willing to talk about how he or she was getting by today. "I don't have to use real names," I assured him. Many of the unemployed people I'd already interviewed felt so lost and ashamed that I had decided not to use their real names. Unemployed bankers deserve anonymity, too.
But the lawyer made it clear that that wasn't the problem. "Most of them were snapped up immediately by Barclays," he said. He represents other financial plaintiffs as well, and he seemed to think that the kind of person I was looking for hadn't remained unemployed very long.
The Clues
How could that be? We've heard ad nauseum about mortgage-backed securities. They're bonds "structured" out of thousands, or tens of thousands, of home or commercial mortgages. The bond's owner was to receive interest out of the mortgage payments from all those property owners. He could earn a low 5% interest if he opted to be paid out of the first money that came in. (Institutional investors often chose that safe "tranche," or slice, of the security.) But back when mortgages seemed so safe, a hedge-fund gambler might have been happy to opt for the last mortgage payments to come in -- in exchange for heftier 7% to 8% interest rates. Of course, that was the gamble. Too many missed mortgage payments meant little or no returns for his fund.
When last I heard, more than half of U.S. mortgages were held this way, so it was a reasonable supposition that a lot of people had been employed structuring, trading, and insuring those bonds. But who in his right mind would touch this stuff now? While that lawyer sounded like an honest, helpful fellow, I still wondered whether he wasn't just brushing me off to protect his embarrassingly unemployed clients.
Soon after, however, I met a bank corporate loan officer who confirmed that his colleagues on the "structured side" were indeed still employed. In fact, he thought he noticed a couple of new chairs at their trading desk in the bank's trading room. "Those damn things" had become so complicated, he speculated, that the people who put them together were now needed in similar numbers to "unwind the bank's positions" -- that is, get them out of the deals.
That must be it, I thought, and recalled a moment soon after AIG got the last of its $182 billion bailout from the government. At that time, the company braved a massive public outcry to award big bonuses to its top employees, including those who had created the "swaps" (short for credit default swaps, or CDSs) that swamped the company. Like so many other companies, AIG claimed that bonuses were necessary to retain the "best brains," especially those who understood the credit-default swaps.
These swaps are a type of derivative that was supposed to represent a way of insuring the very bonds we've been talking about. Here's how it worked -- at least theoretically, at least before the ship went down: On a given bond, say number 123456, an insurance company like AIG would essentially say to a large investor, perhaps a mutual fund, "You pay us $7,000 a month and, if you fail to receive the interest on that bond for, say, two months, then we'll buy the whole bond from you for the $200 million you paid for it." In other words, it was a private, custom-written contract to simply "swap" one of those bonds for money under certain agreed circumstances.
These deals were couched in such terms, rather than as straight insurance policies, because insurance is regulated and the regulations require setting aside relatively small amounts of money in reserve in case the disasters insured against occur. But swaps aren't regulated. Nothing need be set aside.
Here's the remarkable thing: both the Bush and Obama administrations decided that the government would make good on these non-regulated, non-insurance policies. The costs could be humongous.
Now, here's an even more distressing complication. You didn't have to own the original bond to buy the swap that was really an insurance policy. An "investor" could approach AIG and say, "You know that Merrill asset-backed bond -- number 123456? I'll pay you $7,000 a month, too, and if the bond defaults, then you owe me 200 million also."
It's as if any number of people could buy (or, really, bet on) your life insurance policy. Or think of a race track where anyone can go to the window and bet on any horse in any race -- and collect if it comes in. (Or in this case, collect if mortgage payments didn't come in.)
If our government were merely going to cover the original mortgage-backed securities, the maximum payouts, though large, would at least be calculable. If 50% of the mortgages in the U.S. were, as they say, securitized, and if they all were to default, that would be a vast but finite loss. But since any number of people could buy into the swaps on those bonds, the swap payouts could be an unknown amount that would be many times the value of the real buildings. How many multiples of reality might that come to? Two times, 10 times, 100 times? Who knows? Remember, these are unregulated transactions.
And keep in mind that the "investment" being bailed out here has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Neither party to these "me too" swaps owned, built, or financed the original housing, or anything else for that matter. They were simply betting on whether a certain group of people would pay their mortgage bills.
Why our government would underwrite these bets, and why such gambling contracts are legal in the first place, is beyond me, but as we know, they were placed on a vast scale. No wonder, I thought, that my swap men were all still employed. After all, even if there's no work for die-casters or editors, there's still all that "unwinding" to do by the people who did the winding in the first place.
The Crime
Then I read this headline in the Financial Times: "Strange but true -- the credit specs are back." According to the column that followed by John Dizard, "[T]hanks to the Geithner Treasury's policy of reform, rather than dissolution, CDS trading has regained a vampiric strength that the real economy still lacks."
So, now I understood: the man I couldn't find, the man who wasn't unemployed, wasn't just doing that final bit of unwinding or cleaning up old messes. He was busy making new ones!
How could Dizard be certain, though, that the debt trade is really booming again? He cites "one friend of mine in the credit fund trade" who has "made money on both the downside and the upside during the past year."
Of course, who can know for sure? If there was a derivative exchange along the lines of the New York Stock Exchange, we'd have a good idea of the volume of the trade. But derivatives -- I know you've heard this more than once -- are unregulated.
President Obama's recent white paper on financial reform suggests that derivatives should, in fact, be regulated, except for what it refers to as "custom" products. That, unfortunately, sounds like just the right-sized loophole for the financial instruments I've described. And -- I'm sure you won't be surprised by this -- financiers are lobbying furiously to expand that hole.
The Motive
Why is there such an interest in reviving the debt market and why are financiers so determined to keep it unregulated? Aren't they scared of it, too? Let me quote Dizard one last time:
"After all, if the dictates of style and tax auditors say you have to go easy on conspicuous consumption, and if there's no demand for the products of real capital spending, then you might as well take your cash to the track, or the corner credit default swap dealer."
In other words, people are speculating on derivatives and derivatives of derivatives because there's no action in the real world. You can't invest in new real businesses or lend money to old real businesses for expansion unless people can afford to buy the products they'll produce. That brings me back to where I started: our real world. You know, the one where just about everyone's unemployed except those swap guys.
Barbara Garson is the author of two classic books about work: All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work and The Electronic Sweatshop. She's the author of several plays, including the Obie-winning children's play "The Dinosaur Door" and the Vietnam-era play "MacBird." Her latest book, Money Makes the World Go Around, published in 2000, described the hollowed-out global economy that was heading for a crash. Now, she's embarked on a book about the current Great Recession.
Copyright 2009 Barbara GarsonWAYNE COUNTY, Ohio (January 19, 2016) – A sheriff’s office in Ohio is receiving a lot of attention after posting a picture of an electric chair on their Facebook. The caption on the picture says “Time to bring back consequences,” and it’s in reference to the fatal shooting of an Ohio police officer.
Captain Doug Hunter with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department posted the picture. He responded to some of the comments and explained his reasoning behind the post in his daily video update on Monday. The video (which is also going viral on Facebook) is titled “The world is not rainbows, puppy dogs and unicorns folks.”
The picture is still up on the sheriff’s office Facebook page, and it has been shared more than 4,600 times.Remember the curious case of Noah Kravitz, the tech blogger who was sued by his former employer for his Twitter followers — in a lawsuit that set the worth of a Twitter follower at $2.50 each?
If so, you can stop being outraged about it. Kravitz and the former employer, tech site PhoneDog, have settled the case after a year and a half of tough mediation. And although no one is offering details about the settlement, it sounds like no money is changing hands for Twitter followers.
PhoneDog, a mobile reviews site, currently has 27,000 followers on Twitter. When Kravitz left the site in October 2010, he took his @phonedog_noah account and turned it into @noahkravitz, which now has 23,000 followers. He claims to have done so with the site's blessing (and court documents showed evidence of an agreement where Kravitz was asked to send occasional PhoneDog tweets from the account).
But a dispute over back pay erupted into a lawsuit where PhoneDog wanted compensation for all followers Kravitz acquired while working for the company. The suit became a cause célèbre as it was the first to put a price tag on the worth of a Twitter user, and tackled the question of who owns a professional Twitter account started during a period of employment. Kravitz will retain custody of @noahkravitz.
"I'm very glad to have worked this out between us," Kravitz said in a statement. "If anything good has come of this, I hope it's that other employers and employees can recognize the importance of social media... good contracts and specific work agreements are important, and the responsibility for constructing them lies with both parties."
Reached by Mashable, Kravitz could not comment further on the settlement — only on his mood. "It's a good day," he said. "The sun is out."
Have you reached any social media agreements with your employers or employees? Share them in the comments.Executive defends the show’s gritty violence and says he is open to the idea of a prequel to the series
Game of Thrones likely to continue for three more seasons, HBO says
HBO’s most-watched series, the medieval fantasy drama Game of Thrones, is likely to continue through three more seasons, a network executive said on Thursday, as he defended the show’s gritty violence.
The sixth season is now being filmed.
Executives have planned to run at least seven seasons and are discussing with the show’s creators how much longer the show will extend beyond that, according to Michael Lombardo, president of HBO programming.
“They are feeling two more years after six,” Lombardo said at a Television Critics Association meeting.
Lombardo said he’d like to have more beyond that and would also be open to a prequel to the story of the epic battle for the Iron Throne in the fictional kingdom of Westeros, based on George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books.
This year, Game of Thrones hit 20 million viewers on average for its fifth season, which received 24 Emmy nominations including a best drama nod. The series also generated controversy for a brutal rape scene and burning of a child.
Lombardo defended its graphic depictions as part of the story and said he supported show the show’s creators, Dan Weiss and David Benioff.
“This show has had violence as part of its many threads from first episode,” he said. “There are no two showrunners more careful about not overstepping what they think the line is.“
The fifth season also ended by killing off one of its lead characters and fan favourite, Jon Snow, but viewers have been speculating that the character will return – not that Lombardo was giving away anything on Thursday.
Game of Thrones' Brienne models for Vivienne Westwood – Stylewatch Read more
“Everything I’ve seen, heard and read, Jon Snow is dead,” he said.
Game of Thrones this year also helped launch HBO’s standalone streaming service HBO Now, where viewers can watch HBO programming at any time without a cable subscription, as television continues to move toward on-demand viewing.
Lombardo told Reuters he was happy with HBO Now’s rollout but would not reveal subscriber numbers. He also said marketing had become more challenging amid an explosion of critically acclaimed shows.
Viewers of HBO, a unit of Time Warner Inc, routinely tune in Sunday nights, but other days are less certain, he said.
“I worry about that all the time,” he said. “Particularly with a digital platform and on-demand where things are available, I think quality will ultimately win out.”Among the stranger aspects of Chip Kelly's head coaching tenure in Philadelphia is his hesitance to admit just how much power he has over the team's personnel. He especially does not like to be referred to as the team's general manager.
"I'm not the general manager," Kelly told Buffalo Bills reporters on a conference call Wednesday. "There's another false assumption."
And while there's some truth to that -- technically, the Eagles do not have anyone listed by that title on their team directory -- is there really any doubt that he does a majority of the tasks that are typically assigned to a general manager? Kelly does not manage the cap or draw up contracts, but when it comes to setting the standard by which his players will be evaluated, and making moves to acquire players that fit his system, Kelly is pretty much at the top of the food chain.
The only real, sensible explanation for all of this is that Kelly is messing with all of us. Would it surprise anyone if Kelly had a sort of avant garde sense of humor? Maybe he keeps thinking that the more he insists he's not the general manager, the more hysterical sports writers will get insisting that he is. Like the famous 6-1 Panthers troll of early November, sometimes it's just funny to be stubborn.
His plan may be working, or could at least provide him enough room to separate from the bizarre DeMarco Murray situation unfolding around him. Kelly said that Murray and owner Jeffrey Lurie did not meet in private to talk about Murray's gripes. Instead, they were just sitting next to each other on the charter flight home.
Potential awkwardness aside -- couldn't anyone else hear Murray if they were all crammed on a plane together? -- it might be the least enjoyable thing on Kelly's plate right now.
Thank goodness he's not the general manager.Hope Hicks Kellyanne Conway Stephen Miller Jason Greenblatt Omarosa Manigault President Trump Sebastian Gorka Jared Kushner Stephen K. Bannon moderates anti- establishment Keith Schiller republican establishment family/ friends Ivanka Trump Vice President Mike Pence Reince Priebus Sean Spicer John DeStefano Gary D. Cohn Steven Mnuchin Dina Powell Wall Street Pinch to zoom
Anti-Establishment
Stephen Miller Sebastian Gorka Stephen K. Bannon
The influence of Mr. Bannon, once one of the strongest forces in the administration, seems to have waned significantly after weeks of combat with aides allied with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. After initially clashing with him, Mr. Bannon has formed something of an alliance with Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser and once Mr. Bannon’s closest ally, has aligned himself with Mr. Kushner. Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president, is a former editor at Breitbart, the right-wing opinion and news website Mr. Bannon ran until last August.
Republican Establishment
Reince Priebus Sean Spicer John DeStefano Dina Powell
Mr. Priebus leads the camp most closely aligned with the Republican establishment and has been on somewhat shaky ground since the collapse of the health care overhaul. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has had a series of missteps. John DeStefano, a longtime aide to the former House speaker John A. Boehner, is the director of personnel. Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser who was previously an aide to President George W. Bush and worked at Goldman Sachs, has close ties to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and Mr. Kushner.
Wall Street
Gary D. Cohn Steven Mnuchin
Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn — a former president of Goldman Sachs and a Democrat — heads up a group of moderate financiers who are in direct conflict with Mr. Bannon’s wing. They are closely aligned with the “friends and family” faction, and their influence seems to be growing. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, is also a former Goldman Sachs top executive.
Friends and Family
Hope Hicks Kellyanne Conway Jason Greenblatt Omarosa Manigault Jared Kushner Keith Schiller Ivanka TrumpAdvertisement Yeti sighting reported in Maine Online poster claims seeing white bigfoot in Litchfield Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A yeti sighting in Litchfield? It's not impossible, according to International Cryptozoology Museum Assistant Director Jeff Meuse.The sighting is being discussed after a person going by the initials M.P. told Cryptozoology News he saw a "white bigfoot" in Litchfield.According to Cryptozoology News, M.P. told them, "I never thought I'd get to see something like this. I've always laughed at all these bigfoot nuts, I had my reasons. Now I guess I'm the crazy one here. Unless it was a very good hoax played on me, that could be, but I tell you again, it ain't easy for a man to make those kind of moves. That didn't look human to me."Click here to watch the reportCryptozoology News also includes stories about leprechauns, mermaids and "Pig-man.""Let's face it, when it comes to any story about bigfoot, yetis or the abominable snowman, most people will answer with skepticism," said Meuse.But that's what Meuse says he embraces about cryptozoology."You need to have a little skepticism, because you can't accept everything in this field," Meuse said.Meuse said an important part of cryptozoology are the hoaxes and fakes because they help provide proof for real artifacts.Skepticism may not be the only reason sightings may not be reported."Some people just don't want to talk if they've seen something like that," he said.But not everyone wants to believe in yetis."Most likely, its one of the big hairy guys around here, roaming around," said Litchfield resident Percy Gowell.Norm Bosse of Litchfield was more open to the possibility."I wouldn't be surprised if there were some in Maine if there is any. Why not? They're out, out west and they say there's some in Alaska so why not? Why not here in Maine?" he said.Meuse thought approaching the question of a yeti in Litchfield with some doubt was a good idea."It is not good to have no level of skepticism," he said. "You need to really look at what you have and make those decisions on your own, what you determine to be actual."The museum's sign uses a Coelacanth. A Coelacanth is a living fossil considered extinct for over 65 million years but was rediscovered in the 1930s and is still around today.Meuse said 150,000 animals are discovered every year, from microscopic to the size of a cow."Does that mean bigfoot could be the next to be discovered? Not necessarily. But it could," Meuse said.Gowell was going to wait and see."Who's to say? There might be something out there, lurking around. But… I don't know, until I see it, hard to say," he said.This article is about the leather known as "shark skin". For the woven fabric, see sharkskin
An antique round box covered with pearl ray shagreen, ground down to produce a smooth, puzzle-like surface.
Shagreen is a type of rawhide consisting of rough untanned skin, historically from a horse's or onager's back, or from shark or ray. In modern times, shagreen is produced from the skins of commercially-farmed Asian stingrays.
Etymology [ edit ]
The word derives from the French chagrin and is related to Italian zigrino and Venetian sagrin, derived from the Turkic sağrı / çağrı 'rump of a horse' or the prepared skin of this part. The roughness of its texture led to the French meaning of anxiety, vexation, embarrassment, or annoyance.[1]
Uses and preparation [ edit ]
tantō (left) is covered with shagreen in its natural form. The white handle of this(left) is covered with shagreen in its natural form.
Shagreen leather used in bookbinding
Two small decorative elephants made of silver and shagreen.
Shagreen has an unusually rough and granular surface, and is sometimes used as a fancy leather for book bindings, pocketbooks and small cases, as well as its more utilitarian uses in the hilts and scabbards of swords and daggers, where slipperiness is a disadvantage.
In Asia, the Japanese Tachi, Katana, and Wakizashi swords had their hilts almost always covered in undyed rawhide shagreen, while in China, shagreen, whose use dates back to the 2nd century CE,[2] was traditionally used on Qing dynasty composite bows. Typically the ears and the spaces above and beneath the grip were covered by polished shagreen (in which the calcified papillae are reduced to equal height and form a uniform surface), sometimes with inlay work of different coloured shagreen. Shagreen was a very common cover for 19th-century reading glasses containers as well as other utensil boxes from China.
The early horse-skin variety of shagreen was traditionally prepared by embedding plant seeds (often Chenopodium) in the untreated skin while soft, covering the skin with a cloth, and trampling them into the skin. When the skin was dry, the seeds were shaken off, leaving the surface of the leather covered with small indentations. Sources are not clear whether this was being done to imitate pearl ray-skin shagreen from East Asia or if the technique was developed separately.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the term "shagreen" began to be applied to leather made from sharkskin or the skin of a rayfish (probably the pearled ray, Hypolophus sephen). This form is also termed sharkskin or galuchat. Such skins are naturally covered with round, closely set, calcified papillae called placoid scales, whose size is chiefly dependent on the age and size of the animal. These scales are ground down to give a roughened surface of rounded pale protrusions, between which the dye (again, typically green vegetable dye) shows when the material is coloured from the other side. This latter form of shagreen was first popularised in Europe by fr:Jean-Claude Galluchat (d. 1774), a master leatherworker in the court of Louis XV of France. It quickly became a fashion amongst the French aristocracy, and migrated throughout Europe by the mid-18th century. "The appeal of shagreen in Europe was closely bound up with the way the translucent skin absorbs colour, but in Japan, its whiteness was the measure of value".[3]
Scholars concur that its popularity in Central Asia, where green footwear made of shagreen was popular into the 19th century, probably came as the result of its introduction from China perhaps during the 16th century rule of Suleiman the Magnificent.[4] Three items made of shagreen can be found in the Topkapi collection.
Since the 18th century Shagreen has typically been used for covering portable items such as luggage, toilet cases and other boxes, the hard and robust looking finish seeming to assure its reputation for standing up to rough handling; book coverings are also known as well as larger pieces of furniture. The water resistant qualities ascribed to the finish are probably why there are many toiletry cases and associated objects such as shaving kits, snuff boxes and other items of a personal nature. The restrained look of the skin was felt to be very suitable for men.
Items continued to be manufactured during the 19th century, usually influenced by 18th century examples. There was a definite resurgence in items being made during the 1920s and 1930s, the lean hard finish and traditional pale green tone lending itself very well to the prevailing Art-deco style. Many of these items are designed along modernist lines with little 18th century influence. A broad range of items date from this period including furniture and luggage.
In the 1970s, Shagreen became fashionable again, partly due to the renewed interest in the Art-deco period. A range of items, including furniture such as small tables, have been manufactured since then, providing work for a small number of craftspeople catering to the luxury market. Small decorative items made of shagreen and silver have become popular in Southeast Asia; most are manufactured by high-end design studios in Thailand.
Medicine [ edit ]
In medicine, a shagreen patch is a patch of shagreen-like rough skin, often on the lower back, found in some people with the genetic condition tuberous sclerosis.
See also [ edit ]
La Peau de chagrin (19th century novel by Balzac)
Further reading [ edit ]
Perfettini, Jean (1989). Le galuchat (in French). Henri Vial. ISBN 2-85101-021-2.
Christine Guth, "Towards a Global History of Shagreen" in The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World, ed. by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Aiello. London: Rutledge, 2015, pp. 62–80.
References [ edit ]Community creator Dan Harmon’s new series, the animated Adult Swim sci-fi comedy Rick and Morty, has been renewed for a second season. Adult Swim has yet to confirm the renewal, but one of the writers who was added for Season 2, Matt Roller (Community), posted a picture of the show’s Season 2 writing staff on Twitter earlier this week that has since been removed. There’s no word on how many episodes the new season will be.
Co-created by Harmon and Justin Roiland and loosely based on Roiland’s failed Channel 101 pilot and subsequent web series The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, it’s a Back to the Future-esque story about a crazy old inventor who takes his grandson on wild adventures. Season 1, which premiered on Adult Swim in December, is currently airing new episodes Mondays at 10:30 and has been doing well in the ratings so far.
UPDATE: The renewal has now been confirmed from Dan Harmon via Twitter:The Pittsburgh Steelers are enjoying some of the best defensive line depth they’ve had in years. And it’s been tested and weathered after losing Stephon Tuitt on the second play of the season. But one of those pieces, a bonafide budding star, is too often helmet in hand on the sideline – Javon Hargrave. That’s a problem. And it’s got to change.
Through three weeks, Hargrave has played 86 of 195 total snaps, a touch more than 44%. That’s partially buoyed by how much base defense the Steelers played against the Chicago Bears and when the team is in their 3-4, Hargrave is usually the nose tackle. No shock there, he’s involved in 87% of snaps in base.
Sub-packages? That’s the issue.
For the year, Hargrave has logged just 22 plays, 18%, of nickel/dime snaps. Last week, that number dropped to just 9%, a whole two of them. That, despite Hargrave being the Steelers’ best pass rusher of the afternoon. He racked up an incredible four pressures on 13 pass rush chances, including one of his two in nickel. It’s even all the more impressive knowing Keith Butler blitzed just once Sunday and regularly sent three man rushes, a tactic he often uses against statues like Mike Glennon.
Simply put, Hargrave couldn’t be stopped. Doubled, triple-teamed, it didn’t matter. The only thing that slowed him down? How the Steelers used him and how they’ve used him throughout the season.
Last year, granted, the depth was a little worse, Hargrave played 45% of the sub-package snaps. That number has been cut by more than half even though Hargrave has only improved as a pass rusher. His run support hasn’t been a liability either; if anyone performed how they should versus Chicago, it was him. He missed just one tackle, per our Josh Carney, and it’s hard to think of a play where Hargrave struggled. If anything, he was a focal point for Chicago, regularly pulled, grabbed, and restrained as he flowed down the line.
You can only imagine how much smaller his sub-package role will become once Tuitt returns, presumably this weekend. In a way, it’s a good problem to have. No matter what, Tuitt and Cam Heyward will – and should – dominate those snaps. And Tyson Alualu has played well, too. But the Steelers must find a way to get 79 on the field. His seven pressures this season is tied for most on the team and he’s the runaway winner on a per-snap basis.
Hargrave has been a home run pick since the team took him. He became the starter in nanoseconds, tossing aside Daniel McCullers the way he does undersized centers, had the steadiest rookie campaign of the “Big Three” and has only taken off in his second year. He’s a budding star, a legitimate Pro Bowl talent, though a lack of name recognition will surely keep him out of Hawaii/Orlando/Portland, wherever the NFL decides to put the game next.
I think we all can see that. Except for the Steelers. That’s gotta change.The Government of Canada will be holding a symposium on cannabis public education and awareness on Friday, Nov. 10 in Ottawa with various national health and safety organizations, provinces and territories, indigenous groups, and more.
The government unveiled the symposium as part of their announcement on Oct 31 for an additional $36.4 million in funding over the next five years for a ‘cannabis education and awareness campaign,’ used to “inform Canadians, including youth and other priority populations such as Indigenous peoples, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and Canadians with a history of mental illness, of the health and safety risks of cannabis use and drug-impaired driving.”
According to Tammy Jarbeau, Senior Media Relations Advisor at Health Canada, the Partnership Symposium on Cannabis Public Education and Awareness will bring together about 90 representatives of national health and safety organizations; federal, provincial and territorial governments; Indigenous groups; and others that “have an important role to play in raising awareness and educating the public on risks of cannabis to their health and safety.”
“By working together, we can maximize the reach and impact of our collective efforts to raise awareness and educate the public about the health and safety risks of cannabis use and drug-impaired driving,” Jarbeau told Lift News.
“The Symposium will provide an opportunity for participants to share their insights on successes, proven practices, and challenges in raising awareness and educating the public on risks to health and safety,” she continues. “It will also provide an opportunity to discuss the development of evidence-based content for public education campaigns, explore tools and strategies to effectively reach target audiences, and discuss priority areas for collective action and partnership that will support a coordinated and consistent approach to cannabis public education and awareness.”
Jarbeau says the symposium will look at the “unique” needs of youth and young adults, as well as a focus on other “priority segments” of Canada, like indigenous communities, seniors, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and individuals living with or predisposed to mental illness. She notes Canada has the highest rates of cannabis use relative to its counterparts in other developed countries. This factor has been a key piece of reasoning for why the current government seeks to legalize, regulate and restrict the sale and use of cannabis in Canada.
Jarbeau says one example of such a partnership is Health Canada’s work with Drug Free Kids Canada (DFK) to promote the Cannabis Talk Kit, a guide to help parents talk with their kids about cannabis.
“Health Canada has distributed more than 100,000 copies of the Talk Kit to physicians, schools, community organizations and others across Canada, with more being requested every day,” the Senior Media Relations Advisor at Health Canada explains. “To date, more than 25 organizations, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Peediatric Society and the College of Family Physicians of Canada, have agreed to support and distribute the Talk Kit. Additionally, the Canadian Psychiatric Association has publicly endorsed the Talk Kit and has committed to distributing this tool to its members.”
The investment is in addition to another $9.6 million over five years the government has already pledged for similar awareness campaigns, as well as surveillance, or monitoring, of the legalization process.
“We are tackling the issue of cannabis use with long-term investments in our education and awareness efforts,” said Minister of Health Ginette Petitpas Taylor in a press release in October. “We want to make sure all Canadians, particularly our young adults and youth, understand the health and safety risks of cannabis. These efforts also aim to equip parents and teachers with tools to have meaningful discussions with young Canadians about the risks of cannabis use.”
Public education programming is expected to cover issues like safe consumption, impaired driving, and available medical research on benefits and harms, among others. Other jurisdictions that have passed legalization measures have rolled out similar programs, from Uruguay to Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and others, utilizing traditional advertising mediums, as well as social media and peer-to-peer messaging. Figures from 2015 show the Conservative government spent over $7 million on a 12-week anti-drug advertising campaign focusing on cannabis.
The government's task force report on the legalization and regulation of cannabis in Canada, released last December, makes several recommendations for investments in baseline data collection and ongoing surveillance and evaluation in collaboration with provinces and territories.
Featured image via Wiki CommonsWhen Peter Coyne’s 6-year-old son was diagnosed with ADHD 12 years ago, Coyne, 53, hardly knew what the disorder was. So he decided to read up on it.
“Suddenly I thought, ‘oh my God,’ this is what I’ve had my entire life,” says Coyne, a designer at a public relations firm. He flashed back to his younger years in school. He never thought he was stupid, but as classes progressively required more reading and attention, he suffered.
“It was frustrating. I used to think, maybe I don’t try hard enough. Maybe I don’t care. Maybe I’m lazy,” says Coyne. He scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist, and Coyne got his own ADHD diagnosis the same year as his son. He finally had an answer for why he was the way he was. It was a relief.
The number of adults taking ADHD drugs rose by more 50% between 2008 and 2012, according to a report out this week from pharmacy management company Express Scripts. In 2001, 0.5% of adults ages 20 to 44 were on ADHD drugs, says Dr. David |
the occasional Bob Woodward book. After 25 years or so, most of the key documents are declassified and published in Foreign Relations of the United States, a many-volume compendium of primary-source documents. Until then, however, scholars wonder if there are top-secret memos somewhere that vindicate or vitiate our hypotheses.
Seen in this light, WikiLeaks clearly has the potential to be a game changer. The organization's latest document dump contains 250,000 U.S. State Department cables, to be released over the next few months. The bulk of the cables were written in the past five years, and will be available far earlier than political scientists or diplomatic historians ever expected. In the short term, this is a potential gold mine for foreign-affairs scholarship. In the long term, however, what WikiLeaks wants to call "Cablegate" will very likely make life far more difficult for my profession.
For now, things certainly look very sweet. Timothy Garton Ash characterized the documents as "the historian's dream." Jon Western, a visiting professor of international relations at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, blogged that WikiLeaks may allow scholars to "leapfrog" the traditional process of declassification, which takes decades. While the first wave of news reports focused on the more titillating disclosures (see: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's Ukrainian nurse), the second wave has highlighted substantive and trenchant aspects of world politics and American foreign policy. The published memos reveal provocative Chinese perspectives on the future of the Korean peninsula, as well as American policy makers' pessimistic perceptions of the Russian state.
Scholars will need to exercise care in putting the WikiLeaks documents in proper perspective. Some researchers suffer from "document fetishism," the belief that if something appears in an official, classified document, then it must be true. Sophisticated observers are well aware, however, that these cables offer only a partial picture of foreign-policy decision-making. Remember, with Cablegate, WikiLeaks has published cables and memos only from the State Department. Last I checked, other bureaucracies—the National Security Council, the Defense Department—also shape U.S. foreign policy. The WikiLeaks cables are a source—they should not be the sole source for anything.
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For example, some cables from 2009 and 2010 suggest that Chinese officials were growing weary of their North Korean allies and even envisioned a reunified Korea run by Seoul and allied with the United States. The Guardian, in Britain, hyped those cables as a signal that China would rein in North Korea's bellicose behavior. Those Chinese sentiments, however, usually came second or thirdhand, via South Korean diplomats. The Chinese officials, moreover, were talking primarily about the far future rather than the near term.
Most important, Chinese actions over the past six months do not match the views that appear in those cables. China's muted responses to the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, to North Korea's development of a light-water nuclear reactor, and to the latest exchange of artillery fire between North and South Korea hardly suggest that the leadership in Beijing will soon abandon its partners in Pyongyang.
As confused as the early analysis of the WikiLeaks cables has been, it is in the long term that their effect will be most negative for political scientists and diplomatic historians. In his public statements, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has evangelized for transparency. In July he said, "We are transparency activists who understand that transparent government tends to produce just government. And that is our sort of modus operandi behind our whole organization."
Assange's hypothesis may or may not be true, but his belief that WikiLeaks will lead to greater government transparency is blinkered in the extreme. Governments do not respond to security breaches by surrendering themselves to the fates. American foreign-policy bureaucracies have and will continue to respond to WikiLeaks by clamping down on the dissemination of information.
That means more compartmentalization, to make sure that someone like Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst suspected of disclosing documents to WikiLeaks, can't download classified files from multiple agencies. It means that more cables will be classified, reducing the number of people who can access them and delaying their release to the public. Most important, a lot less will be written down. State Department officials will opt for telephones over e-mail. As a result, future data dumps from WikiLeaks or its imitators are less likely. The cumulative effect of these measures will make it much harder for political scientists and diplomatic historians to piece together how decisions were made.
Julian Assange and other true believers in transparency argue that they have discovered the very crowbar to pry open the U.S. government. Unfortunately for them, WikiLeaks will be more like a boomerang—and the next generation of scholars are the ones who will be hit on the head.Yesterday’s report by the Institute for Public Policy Research revealed how the number of students disclosing a mental illness when they arrive at university has risen almost fivefold in the past decade. Left untreated, mental ill health problems grow, with students more likely to drop out of university, and there is also an increase in alcohol and drug misuse, self-harm and vulnerability to suicide.
This is a reflection of the substantial increase in the number of children receiving care for their mental health. This is a good thing. Data covering 60% of NHS mental health trusts revealed staggering figures: about a quarter of a million children were receiving mental health care in England. There were 11,849 boys and girls aged five and under receiving help, while 235,000 children and young people under the age of 18 were receiving specialist care.
But the figures also speak to a wider truth: there is no doubt that children and young people are now in environments that make mental health worse. In March, stem4, the teenage mental health charity I founded and am chief executive of, published the results of a survey of 500 12- to 16-year-olds. It revealed a number of anxieties, including exam worries (41%), work overload (31%), friendship concerns (28%), lack of confidence (26%), concerns over body image (26%) and feelings of being overwhelmed (25%). While anxiety may long have been part and parcel of the changes encountered in adolescence, where you feature in the academic and social hierarchy and performance worries are more of a modern-day phenomenon.
Mental health: what can new students do to prepare for university? Read more
One statistic from this survey stood out for me: one in 10 teenagers reported strong feelings of anxiety over current world affairs. This is confirmation of the many reports I have from students I meet through the charity and in my clinical work. The world’s instability and unpredictability – in relation to terrorism, Brexit or the Trump leadership and ensuing world issues – have left children and young people scared and bewildered. In a world of having to constantly focus on success, competition, perfection and uncertainty, they are scared about the decisions that adults around them take and the legacy of these decisions. The Children’s Society’s The Good Childhood Report 2017, released last month, confirms this. Among its key findings were that young people’s happiness is at its lowest since 2010 and that fear of crime was the most common problem, affecting 2.2 million 10- to 17-year-olds, with one in three teenage girls afraid of being followed by a stranger and one in four boys worried about being assaulted.
The feeling of insecurity in children and young people is intensified by the number of adults suffering from mental ill health. One in four adults in England experience a mental health problem while one in five mothers have anxiety or depression during pregnancy or during the first year after childbirth. It is estimated that nearly two million adults were in contact with specialist mental health services at some point in 2014-15, but that probably represents 20% of the people who needed help.
It is not surprising that children and young people are experiencing increasing problems with their mental health. Many have continuous, low-grade levels of anxiety and fearfulness. They face challenging, high expectations when it comes to schoolwork and friendships. Furthermore, they experience a range of adversities, including family financial difficulties, family breakdown, homelessness and emotional neglect.
The Good Childhood Report confirms that one million 10- to 17-year-olds (18%) have seven or more serious problems in their lives (such as a fear of crime, domestic violence and bereavement), while more than half (53%) have three or more problems to deal with. Meanwhile, they look on a world where their parents and elders are vulnerable, their friends are often troubled and the geopolitical situation is unpredictable, hard to comprehend and sometimes terrifying.
Number of university dropouts due to mental health problems trebles Read more
With all this at stake, essential local authority mental health services for children and young people are being cut. This makes no sense. It has meant less funding for training and recruitment of specialist mental health professionals and, as a cheaper option, a drive to recruit non-specialists, who cannot offer the treatment needed for recovery. More effective signposting from schools is a positive, but there are fewer services to signpost children to. This is all the more frustrating since, as a clinician, I know there are many effective, evidence-based treatments available to help children and young people recover quickly and effectively.
At a time of transition from the safety of school and home to university, it is not surprising that so many students are presenting with increased anxiety and depression. If we are to stem the increase in mental ill health problems in young people we need to find ways to make them feel safe. They need prompt access to effective interventions delivered by qualified clinicians and mental health professionals that can alleviate their internal turbulence.
At the same time, we need to offer equally rapid support and effective intervention to the adults in their lives. At the level of society, we must take more steps to ensure that we are taking measures to ensure their continued safety in areas such as terrorism and world affairs and be open to listening and allaying fears they may have. Most of all, we need to reassure young people that decisions taken by adults will take their safety and wellbeing into consideration, now and in the future.
• Nihara Krause is a consultant clinical psychologistA well-respected advocate for whistleblowers in the United States government, he served the inspector general of the the Pentagon as the first director of civilian reprisal investigations and also as director of whistleblowing and transparency.
He now serves in the position of Executive Director for Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection (ED-ICW&SP) and directly reports to the inspector general of the intelligence community. But the Pentagon inspector general is reportedly moving to shut Dan Meyer down by suspending him and revoking his top secret security clearance in possible retaliation for his diligent efforts to represent whistleblowers.
According to McClatchy Newspapers, the moves by management at the Pentagon stem from the fact that “Meyer and other Pentagon inspector general employees were grilled about whether they leaked a draft of a report that concluded that former CIA Director Leon Panetta and the Defense Department’s top intelligence official disclosed sensitive information” to Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers. The report was not classified, but the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) did manage to obtain a copy of the report and posted it on the organization’s website in 2013.
The draft report, which was not classified, was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group, and posted on its website last year.
Meyer denies that he is the one who leaked the draft report, but the Deputy Chief of Staff Brett A. Mansfield of the inspector general’s office referred to this “unauthorized disclosure” in a memo and contended that Meyer had acknowledged providing the draft report to a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer and to the chief of staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The whistleblower advocate has shared that he was found to have made an “unauthorized disclosure” to Congress.
At an event at Georgetown University Law Center on February 25 called “Whistleblowers, Leakers and Traitors: An Evolving Paradigm,” Meyer spoke on a panel the “current legal framework” for whistleblowers. The fact that former CIA officer John Kiriakou is in jail for his unauthorized disclosure while former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta and a former top adviser to Panetta, Michael Vickers, have not been punished at all for their unauthorized disclosures was raised at the panel.
Meyer stated, “I have been found actually to have made an unauthorized disclosure to the Congress with the insider threat protocol. It was on Zero Dark Thirty. So I can’t really comment on some of the investigations, but I was completely shocked when I saw that finding because in doing what I did with both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee I was working at the behest of my boss.”
He added that “about a month later” he realized that the “game” had “broke in a different direction.” Now he was on the other side of the choices and options management wanted to make going forward.
Meyer also said, “I have to be careful on this because this touches on some of my former cases,” but the reason why someone like NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake might be prosecuted while Panetta is not is because of a “broader game.”
“It’s game theory actually,” Meyer added. “A whistleblower becomes a piece in a larger game in Washington and some of those pieces are moved in a way that’s perfectly permissible to the establishment and the power elite.”
McClatchy detailed how Lynne M. Halbrooks, then the acting Pentagon inspector general, authorized an investigation in December 2011 into Panetta and Vickers. A final report was prepared along with talking points to be used when it was released, but this version was not released. It was sanitized. Details on Panetta and Vickers that were politically sensitive, particularly to their careers or reputations, were removed and that ignited a dispute.
“As the disagreement escalated,” Taylor reported, “Meyer in September 2012 accompanied one of Halbrooks’ staffers to a meeting on Capitol Hill, at which the staffer told congressional aides that Halbrooks and her general counsel, Henry Shelley Jr., were trying to delay the investigation until Panetta left office.” Then, Meyer “accused Halbrooks of preventing her office’s interview of Army Col. Mark Fassl, then the inspector general for the training command, who had alleged that his supervisors tried to interfere with his ongoing investigation of the Afghan National Military Hospital, according to two sources.”
“Fassl had presented evidence of the medical neglect of allied Afghan soldiers, including the starvation of one. The inspector general later substantiated his allegations, but Fassl was not treated as a whistleblower.”
Inspector generals are the officials in government, who the White House, Congress, other government officials and pundits in media say whistleblowers should go to when making disclosures. But often these are people who end up working to stifle and prevent good government employees from blowing the whistle and having any meaningful impact in an agency.
Meyer’s current job is to make the most of some of the whistleblower protection reforms approved by President Barack Obama. He “hears appeals and oversees investigations into whistleblower retaliation complaints from intelligence community employees and contractors, including the NSA and the CIA.”
Previously, Meyer has investigated or provided oversight to cases involving disclosures on the September 11th attacks, the use of security clearances as form of reprisal or discrimination against an employee and the treatment of soldiers and their remains after injury or death.
Before 2004, he was the general counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and argued a case before the First Circuit Court of Appeals that changed how protections for whistleblowing could be extended to federal government employees.
Meyer survived the 1989 explosion on board the battleship Iowa, which resulted in the deaths of 47 of his shipmates. He became a whistleblower after the explosion when he alleged in a disclosure to the Senate Armed Services Committee that misdirection of the investigation into the explosion had occurred.
During the Georgetown Law Center panel, Meyer expressed his belief that the “most important thing to get adequate whistleblower protection is culture change.” That takes five to seven years, and it is possible with intelligence agency employees. He is “far more pessimistic in getting the supervisors and managers to understand their role in this process. By far the pride of our federal officials is a much bigger impediment.”
The reason it is so difficult is because supervisors and managers have this kind of “caveman mentality” and this visceral reaction to their loyalty being violated. They feel like they then need to smash the person who is whistleblowing.
“What you have to be able to do is change the culture so the official knows that when they hear the allegations they sit on their hands and they keep their mouth shut for about three to four weeks and by that time all the processes have kicked in and they’re not going to do anything hasty,” Meyer said.
Some employees have never been exposed to the “nastiness of Washington.” They can wander into this environment and not be prepared. So, Meyer talked about how he has provided “complete anonymity” to whistleblowers by taking their disclosures and putting his name on them.
Government officials have objected to this practice, but he has told them that all they need is the information to investigate what an employee is alleging. The identity is unimportant and the longer that person’s identity remains “out of circulation” the safer they will be.
If the Pentagon succeeds in exiling Meyer from government, indisputably, efforts to protect whistleblowers will be set back significantly.
There aren’t many people in government willing to be tenacious and fight on behalf of those at the bottom in defense against illegitimate or improper acts of those at the top. But Meyer believes that whistleblowers “complete the constitutional feedback loop.”
“Whistleblowers are the transmission between the Congress and the people. So, when a whistleblower comes to me and they want to go to the Congress,” they are completing a key component of this country’s representative democracy.There’s no shortage of risqué bondage in Fifty Shades of Grey but there seems to be one person producers had trouble tying down: their leading man.
Charlie Hunnam, who had been cast as Christian Grey in the high-profile movie adaptation of the steamy literary saga, has exited the project.
“The filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam s immersive TV schedule which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey,” Universal Pictures and Focus Features said Saturday in a joint statement.
Shortly after the news broke, Fifty Shades of Grey author E L James took to Twitter to offer up a sweet send-off to the film’s erstwhile star.
“I wish Charlie all the best,” the scribe wrote.
In early September, producers announced that Hunnam, who is best known for his portrayal of Jackson “Jax” Teller on Sons of Anarchy, won the coveted role of Grey after a whirlwind casting search.
Names bandied about for the role included Matt Bomer and Ian Somerhalder, among a slew of other contenders.
RELATED: Charlie Hunnam Serves as Best Man at Friend’s Wedding
Dakota Johnson eventually snagged the role of the film’s leading lady, Anastasia Steele.
Immediately after he was cast, Hunnam, 33, spoke to reporters about his initial meeting with the film’s director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, to discuss the project.
“We both suggested I do a reading with Dakota, who was her favorite,” he recalled. “As soon as we got in the room, I knew that I definitely wanted to do it. There’s just a tangible chemistry between us. It felt exciting and fun and weird and compelling.”
RELATED: Charlie Hunnam’s Fifty Shades Freed – But Who Tied the Knot this Weekend?
No word yet on whether Hunnam’s exit will impact the film’s production schedule – it was reportedly set to begin shooting in November and hit theaters on Aug. 1, 2014.Casey Wilson and David Caspe are to be married Sunday at the Ojai Valley Inn in Ojai, Calif. Fletcher T. Wilson, the bride’s brother who became a Universal Life minister for the event, is to officiate.
The bride, 33, an actress and writer in Los Angeles, and the groom, 35, a writer and producer of television shows and films there, are working together on a new television sitcom, “Marry Me,” which is to appear on NBC in the fall. The show, about a couple who find out that being engaged is more difficult than they anticipated, is being written by Mr. Caspe and will feature Ms. Wilson in a leading role. Mr. Caspe was the creator of the ABC sitcom “Happy Endings,” which ran from 2011 to 2013; Ms. Wilson also had a starring role.
The bride was in the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in 2008-9. In October, she will appear in the film drama “Gone Girl” and is in the upcoming film, “Me Him Her.” She was also a writer on the movie “Bride Wars” (2009) and performs regularly with the Upright Citizens Brigade, a comedy troupe, in New York and Los Angeles. She graduated from New York University.
She is the daughter of Paul O. Wilson of Alexandria, Va., and the late Kathy Wilson. The bride’s father owns Wilson Grand Communications, an Alexandria-based political consulting firm. Until 2005, her mother was the director of Abracadabra Preschool in Alexandria.“We only took a Friday afternoon off twice a month but had to spend the time studying books or watching videos about the greatness of our leader back home,” Mr. Rim said at a recent news conference in Seoul, the South Korean capital. “We were never paid our wages, and when we asked our superiors about them, they said we should think of starving people back home and thank the leader for giving us this opportunity of eating three meals a day.”
Tens of thousands of North Koreans work long hours for little or no pay, toiling in Chinese factories or Russian logging camps, digging military tunnels in Myanmar, building monuments for African dictators, sweating at construction sites in the Middle East or aboard fishing boats off Fiji, according to former workers and human rights researchers.
For decades, North Korea has been accused of sending workers abroad and of confiscating most of their wages. But in the years since Kim Jong-un took over as leader, human rights researchers say, the program has expanded rapidly as international sanctions have squeezed the country’s other sources of foreign currency, like illicit trading in missile parts.
A 2012 study by the North Korea Strategy Center, a group in Seoul that works with North Korean defectors, and the private Korea Policy Research Center estimated that 60,000 to 65,000 North Koreans were working in more than 40 countries, providing the state with $150 million to $230 million a year. That number has since grown to 100,000, human rights researchers said.
“North Korea is exploiting their labor and salaries to fatten the private coffers of Kim Jong-un,” said Ahn Myeong-chul, head of NK Watch, a human rights group in Seoul. “We suspect that Kim is using some of the money to buy luxury goods for his elite followers and finance the recent building boom in Pyongyang that he has launched to show off his leadership.”A 15-year-old student at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School was found dead in Rock Creek Park on Tuesday, and authorities said he may have died in a freak accident caused by Monday’s storms.
Montgomery County police identified the youth as Joshua Davis, who lived in Chevy Chase. They said a preliminary investigation indicated that he was struck by a falling tree while he was riding his bike.
Investigators believed that the storms that swept through the area Monday afternoon and evening “may be a factor in his death,” police said in a statement.
Joshua was reported missing Monday night by his parents after he failed to return from a bike ride, and search efforts that night were unsuccessful.
“I personally will miss his positive attitude and bright smile,” said Karen L. Lockard, principal of B-CC, where Joshua was a sophomore. “The entire community mourns the loss of this bright, kind young man,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Joshua was an enthusiastic Boy Scout and bicyclist and an active member of a service-oriented church youth group, according to those who knew him.
“He was an outstanding gentleman with a strong faith in God,” said Daniela Helton, a youth leader at North Chevy Chase Christian Church. As a member of the youth group, she said, he helped prepare meals at homeless shelters.
A member of a Scout troop sponsored by another church, he was planning a service project at B-CC to help earn the rank of Eagle Scout, Lockard said. She had met with him two weeks ago to discuss his plan to build planter boxes and help children at a child development preschool at B-CC to grow vegetables and flowers.
It was not clear who found Joshua on Tuesday in woods near the 9200 block of Jones Mill Road in Chevy Chase, about a half-mile south of the Capital Beltway. Police said he had been riding on one of the side trails off the main Rock Creek trail.Dashboard video showing Bryan Lee during a traffic stop (WBNS)
Newly released video and Facebook messages show a former Ohio state trooper trying to coerce women into sex during traffic stops and then creeping them out by contacting them through social media.
Bryan Lee pleaded guilty last year in federal court to four counts of violating the civil rights of female motorists and one count of engaging in cyber stalking after admitting that he offered to drop criminal charges or traffic citations against women in exchange for sex.
Lee, a seven-year veteran, resigned at the start of an investigation that was launched during a routine review of his dashboard camera recordings, which revealed inappropriate conduct with a female driver and passenger he stopped for a traffic violation.
Dashboard camera video released this week from a September 2013 traffic stop shows Lee flirting with a woman who appears to be driving drunk and her passenger, who offers to flash her breasts at the trooper, reported WBNS-TV.
“We’ll play this game,” the passenger says in the recording, which launched the investigation after the video was randomly selected for a routine review.
Lee tells the woman they can play that game after he turns off his camera, and the former trooper repeatedly cuts off the audio microphone on his uniform during the 30-minute traffic stop.
The ex-trooper told the driver, who cut him off prior to the traffic stop, that he can smell alcohol on her breath, but he allows her to drive off without being charged.
Lee tracked the woman down the following day on Facebook and began sending her messages over the next two months, saying that he had seen her at a local fair and describes what she had been wearing.
“OK. I don’t take hints very well,” Lee wrote. “Last thing I remember you were flirting with me now you aren’t talking. Want me to leave you alone just respond and say so.”
The woman rarely responded to the messages, and she tells Lee at one point that she found his repeated attempts to contact her “creepy.”
Another woman told investigators that she had sex with Lee in his patrol car at least twice, and another woman who was found to be in possession of heroin was allowed to escape charges after she showed the former trooper her breasts.
Additional records released Monday as part of a records request showed Lee advertised at least twice on Craigslist seeking women for “traffic stop sex.”
Lee, who is married with three children, was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison.
Watch this video report posted online by WBNS-TV:Koalas make coo-worthy photos when they cuddle up to Australia’s trees, where they live. But trees are more than shelter to the arboreal marsupials. Scientists recently learned that koalas use trees as their personal air conditioners.
The bears are vulnerable to dehydration and Australia’s hot climate, said Andrew Krockenberger, a researcher at James Cook University. A quarter of the koalas in one New South Wales population perished during the 2009 heatwave, he said. Koalas can pant like a dog or lick themselves to keep cool, but that can dehydrate the animals quickly, said Natalie Briscoe from the University of Melbourne.
Trees not only provide shade, but keep a cooler temperature, even during extreme heat. Krockenberger, Briscoe and their team observed 30 koalas on French Island in southeast Australia during a heatwave. Using thermal imaging cameras, they watched the bears choose trees in the heat.
The images showed that the animals chose to hug trees that were cooler than the air by as much as 9 degrees. Hugging the branches helped the koalas cool off.
“Access to these trees can save about half the water a koala would need to keep cool on a hot day,” Briscoe said.
Co-author Michael Kearney said the findings were important as climate change is bringing about more extreme heat, something already evident in Australia. Maintaining a healthy tree population will help koalas and other animals survive, he said.
“Cool tree trunks are likely to be an important microhabitat during hot weather for other tree dwelling species including primates, leopards, birds and invertebrates. The availability of cooler trees should be considered when assessing habitat suitability under current and future climate scenarios,” he said.
Their findings were published this week in the journal Biology Letters.This wedding cost $6.3 million, and wait ’til you see the cake
There are weddings, and then there are weddings. After seeing seeing this couple’s wedding, you might never see flowers the same way again. Folarin Alakija, entrepreneur and son of a Nigerian family that owns an oil company, married model Nazanin Jafarian Ghaissarifar, and their special day was a sight we’ll never forget.
Celebrity florist Jeff Leatham, who is the mastermind behind all the floral arrangements at the Four Seasons, was brought on board to turn the Blenheim Place (the residence of the Duke of Marlborough in Oxfordshire, England) into a white wonderland. Let’s just say he knew what he was doing.
Nazanin got married in a strapless gown that was timeless and elegant. She had eight gorgeous bridesmaids, who wore elegant one-strap dresses.
Of course, one dress isn’t enough for this billionaire couple and their millionaire wedding, so Nazanin switched into a sheer number for the party portion of the wedding.
She looked stunning—and she sorta matched the flower arrangements.
The dance floor was elegantly decorated with the happy couple’s initials in gold. If this wasn’t a fairytale wedding, we don’t know what is.
And what good would an over-the-top wedding be without a surprise serenade from Robin Thicke?!
Now let’s get to the good stuff: the food. Here’s a picture of their decadent menu, which featured a five-course menu, complete with foie gras, crispy duck egg, and poached summer fruit pudding.
Here’s the kicker. The wedding cake was 12 feet tall, which basically means it’s bigger than the first apartment you lived in. #BillionaireLife
We feel like we need to know whether those were edible flowers, regular flowers, or just decorative icing? Whatever it was, we’re sure that cake tasted damn good.
All in all, this lavish wedding cost $6.3 million dollars.
We can’t say we’ll be expecting all that at our wedding, but it sure is nice to see what we’re up against. Congrats to the happy, gorgeous couple!Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the red-hot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, scoffed at global warming at a breakfast meeting with business leaders in Bedford, N.H., this morning.
“I think we’re seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change,” the Texas governor said on the first stop of a two-day trip to the first-in-the-nation primary state.
He said some want billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to address the issue, but he added: “I don’t think from my perspective that I want to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.”
His comments came at a packed breakfast meeting with local business leaders in a region known for its strong environmental policies. And he made his global warming comment in response to a question by an audience member who cited evidence from the National Academy of Sciences.
Two Perry rivals for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, quickly distanced themselves from Perry’s pronouncements.
Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. seized on Perry’s comments to portray the Texas governor as outside the mainstream with his climate change views. Huntsman himself does believe in the science behind global warming.
“We’re not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party,” John Weaver, Huntsman’s chief strategist, told the Washington Post. “The American people are looking for someone who lives in reality and is a truth teller because that’s the only way that the significant problems this country faces can be solved. It appears that the only science that Mitt Romney believes in is the science of polling, and that science clearly was not a mandatory course for Governor Perry.”
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Want to learn more about Rick Perry and his presidential campaign? Visit TxPotomac’s Perry Watch pages for the latest polls, media hype, issues, supporters and critics, details about ‘Who is Rick Perry?,” and highlights from the Rick Perry explor-a-tour and campaign trail.
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>>> Get an RSS feed of every Rick Perry story from Texas on the PotomacOn July 5, 1989, the "Seinfeld Chronicles" aired on NBC for the first time and 25 years later, the Cyclones will celebrate the "show about nothing" that has left an indelible mark on popular culture. The first 2,500 fans in attendance will receive a Keith Hernandez "Magic Loogie" Bobblehead. In addition, there will be non-stop Seinfeld themed entertainment from beginning to end. Yada yada yada...you'll have an awesome night.
Here's a look at some of the things we have in store for the evening:
The options for in-game entertainment are endless and are sure to change between now and game day. From "No Soup for You" after a visiting player strikes out, who knows, maybe the staff will even dress in velvet from head to toe.
Be sure to get your tickets early, as this night is surely to be one of the most popular of the 2014 season. Single game tickets will go on sale Saturday, May 10th at 10 AM. But if you follow the Cyclones on Facebook or Twitter, you will get access to a special pre-sale before the general public. For more information please call us at 718-37-BKLYN.Bay City News - BERKELEY (BCN) -- A man allegedly harassed a female student and tried to get her to go into his car last week at University of California at Berkeley, campus police said Monday.
At 12:39 p.m. on March 7, the student was walking on Warring Street near Channing Way when a silver Acura pulled up alongside her, according to UC police.
A man inside the Acura spoke aggressively to the woman and tried to convince her to get inside his car. The victim refused and when she threatened to call 911, the Acura sped off, police said.
The victim then called 911 to report the incident and as she was on the phone, the Acura returned. This time, the suspect got out of the car and began yelling at the victim, according to police.
The victim screamed and a person passing by intervened and began taking pictures of the Acura. The suspect then got back in his car and drove away, police said.
When officers arrived, they searched the area for the Acura, but were unable to locate it.
The suspect is described as a Hispanic or Middle Eastern man in his late 20s or early 30s with an average build and short dark hair. He was wearing a beige sweatshirt and dark jeans, police said.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Berkeley Police Department's special victims unit.NYPD Officer Ryan Nash was out on a routine call — to locate an emotionally disturbed person — when suddenly he came face to face with a terrorist committing the worst massacre in New York City in years.
Nash, 28, who is stationed in the 1st Precinct, stopped the killing spree by shooting Sayfullo Saipov near Stuyvesant High School at Chamber and West streets on Tuesday, police sources said.
Saipov shouted “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” — after allegedly ramming a Home Depot rental pickup truck into people along a bike path, killing eight. He then whipped out two weapons — which turned out to be a paintball gun and a pellet gun — as he ran from his smashed truck.
Nash gave chase, drew his weapon and opened fire, bringing down the 29-year-old suspect before he could do any more harm, law enforcement sources said.
Nash, who lives in Medford, Long Island, was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was treated for ringing in his ears.
The fast-acting cop has been on the job for more than five years with more than 50 arrests to his credit, sources said.
“A uniformed police officer... confronted the subject and shot him in the abdomen,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said.Recount requests filed by the Green Party's Jill Stein continue to gain momentum in key swing states as her campaign raises millions in a matter of days.
Stein said she plans to request a recount in Michigan over its 16 electoral votes as similar cases progress in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Donald Trump was the apparent winner in all three states, defeating Hillary Clinton by margins in the range of tens of thousands of votes.
While the effort has raised more than $6 million, Stein's campaign said in a statement the average donation was about $46.
The recounts would not change the election outcome for Stein, who finished fourth behind Libertarian Gary Johnson, but there is a very small chance they could flip the states for Clinton.
That result remains highly unlikely, as the Democrat would need to overcome Trump's winning margins in all three states to wrest the Electoral College majority from him. Clinton currently leads Trump by more than 2 million in the popular vote, according to an ongoing count by the Cook Political Report.
Clinton's campaign has said it will participate in the recount in Wisconsin while Trump claims the process is a "scam."
In a Monday statement, Stein's campaign said, "The recount funds are being held in a dedicated account, separate from Stein's Presidential campaign treasury, and will be used to pay for all costs associated with the recounts, including required payments to states, lawyers, volunteer recruitment and other technical assistance."
Below is the latest on the recounts:On that spring day across America, the CrossFit faithful gathered--and toiled. There were hundreds of thousands of them, certainly. Maybe a million, maybe two. In an old industrial facility in New Orleans, they hoisted themselves on gymnastic rings and did dips up there. In a strip mall in Santa Cruz, California, they threw 20-pound |
Brom’s 3-1 victory over Accrington Stanley in the second round of the Carabao Cup last week.
Harper signed his first professional contract with West Brom earlier today, before completing his move to Ewood Park.SINGAPORE - A cabby with taxi company SMRT Taxi has been praised for his honesty, after he purportedly returned a laptop bag containing $235,500 in cash to his drunk passenger.
In a letter published on Facebook last Saturday (July 9) by road safety community site Beh Chia Lor, Thai businessman Chukamon Khammat wrote that he boarded the taxi - licence plate number SHB1881L - at about 4am.
The cabby was later identified by Beh Chia Lor as Mr Lee Koh Wee.
Mr Khammat claimed he had been drinking with some of his business partners at Clarke Quay and was headed back to Marina Bay Sands, where had been staying.
But upon alighting from the taxi, he realised that he had left behind his laptop bag, which contained the cash.
The money, according to Mr Khammat, was given to him by investors in Singapore and was meant for business plans in Thailand.
To his immense relief, Mr Khammat said he was greeted by the sight of a panting Mr Lee in the lift lobby at about 5am.
Mr Lee shared that he had stopped at a petrol kiosk after dropping off Mr Khammat when he discovered the bag, and was shocked to discover the large amount of cash inside.
While Mr Khammat said the cabby had not requested any reward, he decided to give Mr Lee $1,000 out of sheer appreciation for his unselfish act.
Mr Khammat also learnt that Mr Lee was declared bankrupt in 2014 and had only just recently become a taxi driver.
In a Facebook post on Sunday night, SMRT said it was verifying the accuracy of Mr Khammat account and would provide an update after conducting its investigations.
An SMRT spokesman, in response to queries from The Straits Times on Monday afternoon, said that investigations were still ongoing.The mother of Making a Murderer's Steven Avery has told Daily Mail Online that she believes victim Teresa Halbach's brother might have had something to do with her murder and said she was convinced of all her sons' innocence after Steven had earlier pointed the finger at his two brothers.
Dolores Avery, 78, addressed the issue for the first time with Daily Mail Online after Steven Avery filed legal documents in 2009 suggesting his brothers' involvement.
In court papers, Steven Avery, who had just been sentenced to life without parole, claimed that his two brothers, Charles and Earl Avery may have murdered the 25-year-old photographer whose last known whereabouts were a visit to the family's auto salvage yard on October 31, 2005. The legal documents were originally obtained by TMZ.
According to the paperwork, Avery wrote that both of his brothers had a history of sexual violence against women - with Earl once pleading no contest to sexually assaulting his daughters meanwhile Charles was once charged with sexually assaulting his wife.
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Convinced: Dolores Avery believes the new Netflix series will lead to a fresh trial for Steven, at which he can prove his innocence
Life without parole: Steven Avery on his way to be sentenced in June 2007 for the murder of Teresa Halabch. Two years later he said he believed his brothers Earl and Charles could have murdered her
Implicated: Charles (left) and Earl (right) Avery were named in 2009 appeal documents as possible suspects in Teresa Halbech's murder by their own brother. But their mother says all three are innocent.
When asked about Steven's 2009 filing and the potential involvement of her other sons by Daily Mail Online, Dolores sprang to the defense of all three.
She said that Steven may have been extremely desperate about being sent back to prison after he was freed in 2003 on DNA evidence following 18 years in jail for a rape he did not commit.
She said: 'He wrote that [legal document] when he was prison, maybe he felt he had to do something. But it wasn't anything to do with them [Earl and Charles Avery].'
Speaking from her home on the outskirts of Two Rivers, Wisconsin on Thursday, the 78-year-old grandmother hopes that renewed interest in Steven's case will help free him.
She has watched the entire Netflix series and said that although the attention has been difficult for the family to cope with, she was pleased to have taken part in the documentary.
Avery, 53, is currently serving life without the possibility of parole for the murder of Miss Halbach in 2005.
His nephew Brendan Dassey, then 16, was also found guilty of her murder and sexual assault, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of early release in 2048.
Both men claim that they are innocent. Dolores told Daily Mail Online: '[The series] better make a difference.
'I think Steven will get a new trial. I don't know what it will take but I hope it comes out with the truth instead of a bunch of lies.'
Steven Avery had initially served 18 years for rape before being exonerated by DNA evidence in 2003.
Two years later, while Avery was suing Manitowoc County for $36 million over wrongful imprisonment, he was arrested for the murder of Miss Halbach, whose last known whereabouts were a visit to the family's auto salvage yard on October 31.
Victim: Teresa Halbach was murdered in 2005 and last seen at the Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, car yard belonging to the Avery family. Steven - who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit - was convicted of her murder, along with his nephew Brendan, who was 16 at the time
Alternative theory: Dolores Avery tells Daily Mail Online of Teresa Albach: 'They say her brother [Michael, right] might have had something to do with it.
Life sentence: Brendan Dassey was 16 when Teresa Halbach was murdered. He was sentenced to life. His grandmother, Dolores Avery, reveals that he has achieved his high school diploma behind bars
Avery's story is the subject of a ten-episode series, released last month, which has captivated viewers around the world.
More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition for Avery and Dassey to be exonerated although Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stated on Wednesday that they will not be pardoned.
The White House yesterday turned down a similar petition on the grounds that presidential clemency powers only apply to federal prisoners.
Dolores does not think there is chance for her son to be treated fairly in Manitowoc County.
'He won't get a fair trial around here, if he gets one. Somebody said that it could be in Texas, that's a way from here,' she said.
The renewed interest in Steven's case, which has gone past the point of his last appeal, has also reignited a spark of hope in him, according to his mother.
She said: 'I think he's happy and I hope that he's going to be getting out. Steven gets a lot of letters now and I think Brendan is getting them too.'
Dolores, who has received cards and flowers from as far as Spain, said that she hoped the documentary might change local opinions.
She said: 'In the town everyone looks at you but they don't say anything. People are being kind, better than they were before.
'Before a lot of people looked at you or else they said something. I always told them, my son and my grandson are innocent.'
She shared early memories of Steven with Daily Mail Online at her home, filled with family photographs. 'He was just a boy – boys ain't all angels, you know.
'He was okay, he used to work on cars and cleaning up the garage here. That whole garage he used to work on when it needed cleaning, he didn't like it all messy.'
The 78-year-old said that her son wasn't much into partying 'not any more than any other kid'.
Dolores believes the police have had a grudge against him since he was a teenager.
'They are crooked people those cops in Manitowoc - and in Calumet [county] I heard too.'
She hopes that investigators will reopen the Teresa Halbach murder case.
Crime scene: The Avery scrap yard was searched for days by police after the discovery on it of Teresa Halbach's car
Family home: Dolores Avery and other members of her family still live at the scrap yard, with Dolores living in this home. Steven's trailer still lies empty, awaiting the return his family hope for
Scrap: The Avery family business of auto salvage means the yard is full of cars. One of them fatefully turned out to be the RAV4 driven by Teresa Halbach
'I wish they would find the person,' she said. She believes that her son had been framed for Miss Halbach's murder.
'I don't know [who is behind this], the cops I bet,' she said.
She spoke scathingly of Ken Kratz, the district attorney drafted in from Calumet County by Manitowoc County to prosecute Steven in order to quash any suggestion of bias.
'He was just as crooked as the rest,' she added.
The 78-year-old said she didn't remember much from the day that Teresa Halbach visited the family's auto salvage yard in order to photograph a minivan for AutoTrader magazine.
'I don't remember it much,' Dolores said. 'She was here but then she left, that's what I know. They say her brother [Michael Halbach] might have had something to do with it.'
Teresa Halbach was reported missing on November 3, 2005, and police focused on Steven Avery, believed to be the last person to see her alive.
For nine days, Wanitowoc and Calumet County Sheriff's Department searched the Avery property along with teams of volunteers which included Teresa's immediate family.
The Avery family were forced to move to their cabin 90 miles away.
Dolores said: 'My Medicare medicine was left behind on the kitchen table, I couldn't even come back and get it.
'The Manitowoc Sheriff's Department told me to go to the doctor again but I said I can't go again, I was just there. After a while, they got it for me.
'They were in my whole house, the basement, everywhere. I think all of them [police and volunteer searchers] were all over.
'They took my sheets off the bed, good thing I had another pair of new ones. I couldn't tell you if anything went missing from the house.'
She added: 'We never knew what was going on. We couldn't come back home for eight days.'
Dolores doesn't believe that the police interviewed anyone other than Steven.
'They said they had him, so that's how it went,' she said.
On November 8, Teresa Halbach's car key was found in Steven Avery's bedroom along with her car and charred bones found at the salvage yard.
None of Halbach's DNA was ever discovered inside of Avery's home, where the prosecution claimed she was tied to the bed, raped, stabbed and shot in the head.
On November 11, Avery was charged with murder and has been behind bars ever since.
Dolores described an incident which left her frightened soon after her son's arrest.
She said: 'I was in the living room one night at nine o'clock and the squad car was out there with a spotlight on, shining in my patio door, when I was sitting in my nightgown. They [the police] are troublemakers.
Steven Avery's trailer, a short distance from his parents' home, still lies empty.
Dolores said: 'They ripped Steven's whole house apart. They ripped the walls apart and the bed. No one could live there, the plumbing is all frozen up and broken. It's a piece of junk now.'
The auto salvage yard also lies quiet with the number of customers dwindling since Steven was arrested a decade ago.
Dolores said: 'Things are not so good with the business, it has slowed way down compared to what it was before Steven was arrested.
Brothers: Charles (left) and Steven Avery seen together in 2003, shortly after Steven's release from custody when he was cleared of the sexual assault of Penny Beernsteen, for which he spent 18 years wrongly imprisoned
First victim in series: The sexual assault of Penny Beernsten led to Steven Avery being wrongly jailed for 18 years, the starting point for Making a Murderer
Horror: The remains of Teresa Halbach were found in the 'burn pit' of the Avery salvage yard in February 2007, after she had gone missing
'Maybe some believe in that stuff that he's guilty - but he's not.'
Most of the family have rallied around each other. 'They are all coping alright I think,' Dolores said. 'But it depends on who they are though.
'Maybe they don't want to talk to the outside world but we always talk.'
Dolores said she and her husband Allan, 80, remain in good health despite the strain of Steven's conviction.
She said: 'I'm pretty good but I've got to be, I suppose.
'Allan is okay but he hates what's going on with Manitowoc County. They are so crooked.'
Recently, Dolores and Allan have not seen their grandson, Brendan, because it is difficult for them to get up the stairs at Green Bay Correctional Facility where he is serving his life sentence.
Dolores believes Brendan, now 26, is coping fairly well and had completed his high school diploma while in jail.
But she shared her concerns for her daughter, Barbara Tadych, Brendan's mother.
Dolores said: 'Brendan is doing pretty good compared to his Ma. He was only 16 and now he's 20-something already.'
Making A Murderer casts doubt on Dassey's testimony during the trial. He was 16 at the time and told authorities that he helped his uncle commit the murder.
He's studying his own case, I think he'd be a better lawyer than the lawyers are. Some of his lawyers have been no good. He reads his scripts to see what he can do and goes to the library. Dolores Avery on her son Steven's life behind bars
Dassey, who reads at a fourth grade level, told police he helped Avery rape, stab, shoot and dismember Halbach.
Dassey confessed to sexually assaulting Halbach and cutting her throat on his uncle's orders. He later said the confession was coerced.
Dolores said that her grandson was angry about how he had been treated by the judicial system.
'I think he knows now what happened,' she said. 'He was a young kid, a tiny kid, and he isn't anymore.
'He was always very quiet. He used to sit here and play the Nintendo.'
A lawsuit for Dassey has been taken to federal court in Wisconsin by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth.
The suit claims that Dassey was illegally imprisoned in 2005 and asks that Dassey be granted a writ of Habeas corpus, meaning his case must be re-examined.
A decision is likely to be made in the next year.
Dolores said: 'Brendan's got a lawyer for that now. He has a chance and I hope it gives Barb hope.'
Meanwhile, she and her husband continue to regularly visit Steven at Waupun Correctional Institute, a 180-mile round trip from their home.
Dolores said: 'It's much closer than the other prisons he has been in. We get up once every week and a half, depending on the roads now.
'We used to drive all the way to Tennessee. We used to leave on Friday morning and stay until Sunday. We went once every two months or so. We were younger then.
'We can hug him but only when we get there and when we leave. I suppose all the prisons are like that.'
Avery, who has an IQ of 70, has spent a number of years studying his case in the prison's law library after the failure of his Supreme Court appeal meant he was left without a lawyer.
Last year, Avery petitioned the circuit court without an attorney but the motions were denied in November.
Dolores said: 'He's studying his own case, I think he'd be a better lawyer than the lawyers are. Some of his lawyers have been no good.
'He reads his scripts to see what he can do and goes to the library.'
Avery's parents often visit with Steven's girlfriend, Sandra Greenman, who initially came into contact with him after writing a letter of support when he was convicted in 2007.
After a total of 25 years in prison, Steven Avery continues his fight to be freed as an innocent man. His mother remains similarly unwavering in her belief in her son.SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Doug McDermott put on a one-man show for Creighton.
The All-America forward scored a season-high 39 points, including all 18 for the Bluejays in the first 7:12 of the second half, and No. 13 Creighton beat Missouri State 74-52 on Friday night.
"I was just in a zone," McDermott said. "My teammates saw that and they kind of kept giving me the ball."
McDermott, the reigning Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, was perfect on his first 10 field goal attempts in the second half as he sent the Bluejays (16-1, 5-0) to their 10th consecutive win. He outscored Missouri State 18-5 over the first 7:12 after halftime, hitting from the perimeter and bulling his way in the lane.
He finally missed from the field with about 5 minutes left and soon his night was done.
McDermott shot 15 of 19 from the floor and 6 for 7 at the foul line. He also grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds and went 3 of 4 from 3-point range. His 39 points were five more than he had against California last month and five shy of his career high set a year ago against Bradley.
"It was one of the better games I've ever played in my life," McDermott said.
Creighton led 32-27 after a sluggish first half in which Missouri State (5-12, 3-2) deliberately ran a slow, half-court offense and then took advantage when the Bluejays left an opening.
"They fought us that first half," said Creighton coach Greg McDermott, father of the team's star player. "We were able to get the rebounds, and Doug got on an unbelievable roll, one you don't see too often in college basketball. When that happens with him, we kind of give him the ball and get out of his way."
Keith Pickens scored 11 points and Anthony Downing added 10 to lead the Bears, who shot 11 of 31 in the second half as Creighton turned to a triangle-and-2 defense and scuttled their surprising start to the conference season.
With McDermott leading the way, the Bluejays stifled Missouri State and benefited from the Bears' impatience. They were 3 of 15 on 3-pointers after halftime.
It was a tough setback for Missouri State, which was playing well after a 2-10 start this season.
Creighton struggled to establish a rhythm in the first half as Missouri State employed a defense that dared the Bluejays to hit 3-pointers while the Bears doubled 6-foot-9 Gregory Echenique.
Echenique, who averages almost 11 points and eight rebounds per game, had only one field goal in 10 minutes of first-half play.
"That was the focus of the game," Downing said. "Before we came out, Coach said that we needed to dictate the tempo of the game because if we got into a horse race with them, they'd end up scoring 90 on us."
The Bears got a nice lift from little-used reserve Tommie Aromora, who hit a pair of baskets, including a 3-pointer, as Missouri State stayed close throughout the first half.
But the Bears withered and clearly missed freshman guard Marcus Marshall, a starter who twisted his ankle in Tuesday's surprise win against Illinois State. Marshall, bothered by flulike symptoms in recent days, is Missouri State's second-leading scorer at 10. 1 points a game.
Jahenns Maniget scored 11 points for the Bluejays, who shot 57 percent (27 of 47) for the game.
"I thought we had a pretty good first half and then I thought Creighton just picked it up a notch," Missouri State coach Paul Lusk said. "We didn't guard a couple of guys to start the second half, and it was a domino effect after that and then McDermott got going. He wore us out in every aspect."WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands on the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Feb. 5, 2016. (Photo: Frank Augstein, AP)
"We don't want innocent people who have a decent chance of being hurt to be hurt," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told PBS in 2011.
Guess he changed his mind.
In the past year alone, WikiLeaks has published highly personal information about hundreds and hundreds of private citizens with absolutely no public policy implications, material that ranges from embarrassing to life-threatening, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
The AP says "the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the Web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality can lead to social ostracism, a prison sentence or even death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom."
Which is a complete disgrace.
Since its inception, WikiLeaks, under Assange's domination, has been committed to exposing government secrets. But there is no excuse for not editing out private material that has no earthly reason to be made public.
As Gawker Media founder Nick Denton said when he repudiated and took down an atrocious story that essentially outed an unknown media executive, "secrets... are not all equally worthy of exposure."
The gratuitous cruelty to the WikiLeaks approach is staggering.
Assange, stuck in Ecuador's London embassy for more than four years to avoid questioning in Sweden about a sexual assault, didn't respond to the AP's requests for an interview. After the article appeared, the organization reacted in the manner of a third-rate political hack, tweeting, “US big media scramble to side with presumptive winner #Clinton. We expect many more recycled attacks like AP’s today as our leaks continue.” It cast the matter as a political flap — its most recent big splash was its release of hacked Democratic National Committee records — rather than addressing the substantial merits of the AP story and its own repugnant behavior. It did tweet a denial of leaking the info about the Saudi gay, blaming the government.
Say what you will about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He commendably did not resort to the document dump when he released his government secrets. Instead, he worked closely with top news organizations so the disclosures had proper context and unneeded personal information could be redacted, reducing the risk of collateral damage a la WikiLeaks.
Assange took that approach years ago, working with The New York Times. the British newspaper The Guardian and the German publication Der Spiegel when reporting on classified military documents leaked by Chelsea Manning in 2010.
A selection of private medical files published by website WikiLeaks is shown in Paris. WikiLeaks' global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found. (Photo: Raphael Satter, AP)
But over the years he has become a freedom of information absolutist. In 2013, the group took the position that failing to release any information "legitimizes the false propaganda of 'information is dangerous.' "
It's a position as breathtakingly arrogant as it is pernicious.
Consider the reactions of some of the people whose most personal information was exposed to the world. "They published everything: my phone, address, name, details," the AP quoted one Saudi man as saying. He was stunned WikiLeaks had published details of a paternity dispute. "If the family of my wife saw this... Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people," he said.
"This has nothing to do with politics or corruption," a doctor in Jordan, whose brain cancer patient's medical records were published by WikiLeaks, told the AP.
Said a Saudi woman who had secretly gone into debt to support a sick relative, "This is a disaster. What if my brothers, neighbors, people I know or even don't know, have seen it? What is the use of publishing my story?"
An excellent question.
Think of how you would feel if your own private information was thrust into the spotlight, for no reason.
Make no mistake, uncovering government secrets can play an important, positive role. Think of the Pentagon Papers and the disclosure of the Watergate horrors. I'd argue Snowden performed a public service when he revealed hitherto unknown government surveillance, prompting a critical national debate. More recently, the Panama Papers and their revelations about shadowy offshore financial transactions had international impact.
Bringing truth to light is what journalism — at its best — is all about. But minimizing harm is also a vital part of the equation. All of the ambitious goals and lofty rhetoric are no excuse for gratuitously damaging innocent people in the process.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on Twitter @remrieder
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2bo0A6gThis amazing vegan Breakfast Burrito with Chickpea Crepes is THE bomb when it comes to vegan breakfasts. Including Tofu Scramble & Potato Hash.
This savory chickpea crepe is the bomb! The crepe tastes like a super thin omelet, because of the kala namak in there. Also it’s super simple to make, don’t let the number of ingredients discourage you. You can sub them with your favorite breakfast fillings.
As a filling I made some potato hash, tofu scramble, mushrooms and arugula. And the combination is so good, but there a lot of variations possible. It basically is THE perfect vegan Breakfast Burrito!
Breakfast Burritos with Chickpea Crepes With Chickpea Flour you can make awesome glutenfree crepes! The Kala Namak gives it an eggy tastes - they are like super thin omelettes. The ingredients given are for 2 burritos. 5 from 1 vote Print Pin Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Servings: 2 burritos Calories: 319 kcal Author: Elephantastic Vegan Ingredients Ingredients for the chickpea crepes 1/2 cup besan/chickpea flour
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon kala namak highly recommended, if you don't have it already at home
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
ground pepper Ingredients for the potato hash 3 small potatoes
1 teaspoon chopped rosemary
2 teaspoons plant-based oil
salt to taste Ingredients for the mushrooms 1 cup mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon chopped dill
salt to taste Ingredients for the tofu scramble 3/4 cup firm tofu
1/2 teaspoon kala namak
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 splash unsweetened plant-based milk I used rice milk
arugula Instructions Instructions for the chickpea batter In a bowl mix all the ingredients for the chickpea crepes. You don't want any raw besan flour clumps. Set aside. Instructions for the Potato Hash Wash, peel and cut the potatoes. In a pan, heat the plant-based oil and toss in the potato pieces. On medium high heat fry the potatoes and add rosemary and salt. Put a lid on top and stir every few minutes. Instructions for the Tofu Scramble Meanwhile in another pan, heat a little bit of oil and add the scrambled tofu. Add the spices and the milk and cook it on medium heat. Instructions for the mushrooms Clean the mushrooms, cut off the stem and quarter them or cut them again if you think they are too big. Heat them in a small pan, add dill and salt. Instructions for the Chickpea crepes When everything is slowly getting ready heat up a crepe pan (you can add a little bit of oil) and pour in the chickpea batter. Tilt the pan until it is coated. When the sides losen up and there are small bubbles in the middle, you can turn them. Leave them for about 1 minute on the second side.
As soon as everything is done, you can assemble it. There are so many varieties. You can also add some olives, dried tomatoes,... to give it an interesting twist. Enjoy! Estimated Nutrition Info Serving: 1 burrito | Calories: 319 kcal | Carbohydrates: 41 g | Protein: 17 g | Fat: 9 g | Saturated Fat: 1 g | Sodium: 1228 mg | Potassium: 1060 mg | Fiber: 6 g | Sugar: 6 g | Vitamin C: 28.1 % | Calcium: 5.7 % | Iron: 22.4 % Tried this recipe? Mention @elephantasticvegan or tag #elephantasticvegan Rate the recipe! A recipe rating helps other users to figure out if they should try a recipe. Please leave a good rating, if you like the recipe!
Did you make this Breakfast Burrito with Chickpea Crepes? Tag @elephantasticvegan on instagram and use the hashtag #elephantasticvegan. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Elephantastic Vegan Newsletter to see Reader Remake Features!
Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that I have recommended. While clicking these links won't cost you any extra money, they will help me keep this site up and running!An analyst report making the rounds today suggests that Apple will get ARM-based Macs into production sometime next year. Forgive me if I yawn a bit, but this is nothing new. Last year, Rene wrote an editorial about a previous ARM Mac rumor too. According the new rumor, propagated by KGI Research, Apple will get into production a Mac using a future version of the same ARM CPU hardware it already manufactures for the iPhone and iPad. The report suggests that Apple would build a low-end machine based on this hardware, leaving Intel to provide faster chips for the rest of the Mac line, at least for now.
First off, it's reasonable to expect that Apple is developing new gear all the time, and I'd be utterly unsurprised to find out that the company already has ARM-based Macs chained up in a skunkworks office somewhere in the bowels of Cupertino. In fact, I consider it eminently likely.
Apple's changed the central processing architecture of the Macintosh twice before. The original Mac and its successors shipped with Motorola's 68000-series microprocessors; eventually Apple migrated the Macintosh platform to a new RISC-based processor called the PowerPC chip, which ushered in the era of the Power Macintosh (though the first few generations of PowerBook still used 68K processors). In 2006 Apple switched platforms once again, bringing the Macintosh into the Intel era.
Each transition presented certain challenges both for Apple and its developers. In retrospect, Apple handled the transition from PowerPC to Intel easier than it had previous transitions. That's because the underpinnings of OS X had long been disconnected from hardware dependency: the NeXTStep OS ran on a variety of computer platforms, not just the fabled black NeXT computer.
That level of abstraction is partly what made it possible for Apple to make the next progression, too, when it further abstracted OS X to run as a mobile operating system, eventually calling that effort iOS. From day one, iOS devices have run on different hardware from Macs.
Obviously any kind of transition like this is not without its pitfalls and its challenges. Casualties in such a change would include Mac users who still rely on Boot Camp or virtualization software like Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox, all of which rely on the Mac's Intel underpinnings to run Windows (and other non-OS X operating systems) relatively quickly, thanks to the Mac's current PC-like architecture. I report on Mac games, and that's another business that might suffer greatly if the architecture changes too far from Intel.
Right now Apple's dependent on Intel being able to provide regular, consistent updates to its own PC processor line in order to provide regular refreshes to the Mac which provide quantitative performance and efficiency improvements. The latest change that did that was the introduction of Haswell chips in 2013: That's when Apple saw big boosts to battery life on the MacBook Air and other changes it was able to leverage into solid user experience improvements for the Mac.
2014 was largely a snoozer — Intel got way behind schedule in its introduction in a replacement for Haswell, and it's only now catching up: Last week at CES Intel announced the 2015 roadmap for Broadwell chips, and some of the models that look like likely options for new Mac hardware won't be available in quantity until mid-year.
So if Apple rattles its saber from time to time to remind Intel that it isn't slaved to the company, don't be surprised. And even if a transition happens, expect Apple to come prepared, and be ready to help developers along with the process. Even if there are a few bumps in the road.We get to see a lot of computer generated special effects breakdowns these days, but nothing like this. Today I came across a video showing the before and after shots from Steven Spielberg‘s Jurassic Park. While the film is known as one of the first blockbuster films to extensively employ computer generated effects, there are actually only 15 minutes of dinosaurs in the film: 9 minutes of which are Stan Winston’s animatronics, and only 6 minutes of ILM’s computer animated versions. But those six minutes are quite impressive for a film released over 20 years ago (1993). After the jump you can watch a six minute video which breaks down the Jurassic Park special effects showing how the computer generated dinosaurs were added to shots in post production.
Here is a bit of backstory from IMDB:
Steven Spielberg didn’t want people to be constantly reminded that what they’re seeing is CGI, but real, full-blooded dinosaurs, starting with the Brachiosaur scene, where Spielberg was keen on the dinosaur interacting with the background, and would offer suggestions to the animators on how to make it better. The second scene done in that same vein was the Gallimimus scene, which made use of 25 animated individual Gallimimuses. Geometric shapes represented them initially and were choreographed onto the scene. Spielberg needed complete freedom to convey the energy of the scene, so worked with Dennis Muren to shoot it, because he wanted to move the camera and not lock it down everytime a Gallimimus came into frame. The scene was shot gradually with Sam Neill, Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards running through a field by themselves. A grid was placed over the ground as a frame to chart the movement of the camera by computer, using what looked like golf balls whenever an actor looked somewhere. The dinosaurs were than added later.
The T-Rex chasing the Jeep was the most difficult scene to animate. Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams had to do research because there’s no frame of reference for a running animal of that size; it took two months to figure out how to get it to run, for instance. He would run the sequence backwards to see all the mistakes. They were also able to use the computer to add little details to authenticate the scene, e.g. the T-Rex running through puddles of water and leaving splashes, etc. The splashing was filmed individually and then the computer added it to the T-Rex’s footsteps.Getty Images
Tight end Jermaine Gresham is one of the few unsigned players left from PFT’s original list of the top 100 free agents this offseason and a back injury may be a big part of the reason why he hasn’t landed a job.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Gresham will be meeting with a doctor on Wednesday to determine whether or not he needs to have surgery to correct the problem. Per Rapoport, the injury was “discovered in the free agent process” and that Gresham could have the operation on Thursday if that’s what’s recommended on Wednesday.
Gresham would reportedly be healthy in time for camp, but it makes sense that a team would want to know that for sure before making any commitment to Gresham for the coming season. Gresham caught 62 passes for 460 yards and five touchdowns with the Bengals last season.
The Raiders were linked to Gresham early in the free agent process. They signed former Bill Lee Smith, but could still probably find a place for Gresham if he checks out medically.CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - U.S. first lady Michelle Obama lunched at a Tibetan restaurant in China’s Sichuan province on Wednesday, prompting murmurs about “political overtones” on the country’s active Internet social networks.
U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is greeted by Tibetan students (L) and attendants holding gift scarves as she arrives for lunch at the Zangxiang Teahouse in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, March 26, 2014. REUTERS/Stephen Shaver/Pool
Obama, her two daughters and mother visited the city of Chengdu as part of a week-long trip to China, where she has sought to promote education and boost cultural ties.
China has criticized the White House for its support for exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, denounced by Beijing as a separatist “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
A senior administration official who accompanied Obama said the first lady simply wanted to meet Tibetans in Chengdu.
“Tibetans are an important minority group, and there is a sizeable Tibetan community in Sichuan,” the official said last weekend.
The restaurant was chosen because of the first lady’s interest in the rights of minorities in China, a member of Obama’s staff said, according to a pool report.
U.S. President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama in February, a meeting denounced by Beijing as interference in its internal affairs.
President Obama said he did not support Tibetan independence from China and the Dalai Lama has always denied seeking it, the White House said in a statement at the time.
Internet users saw the lunch as a thinly veiled message.
“This carries strong political overtones, |
#WheresTheGunGary have been surfacing in pro-Petersen circles.
If Johnson’s campaign responds to inquiry or new material facts come to light, this reporting will be updated.
Update: Two sources close to Petersen’s campaign have verified that on May 30th 2016, a representative from Johnson’s campaign reached out to a group of Petersen volunteers to attempt to extend an offer of $500 in exchange for the discarded pistol. Johnson’s campaign has not offered an official comment on the matter.A hero broken by war: Afghanistan veteran Jake Wood admits he's a walking timebomb - and there are hundreds more like him
Struggle: Jake Wood spiralled into the bleakness of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Jake Wood is paranoid. To stand any chance of sleep at night, he must lie facing a closed bedroom door with a hammer close to hand under the bed, so he can kill any night intruders before they kill him.
And even then he may well wake up screaming and drenched in a sweat of terror.
Taking a shower in the morning, he never takes his eyes off the bathroom door, though he knows full well that it is locked and bolted.
Out in the street, the sound of a pneumatic drill sends him to the ground on one knee, arm raised, primed to fire.
‘Just the bang of a door and I am back in Afghanistan,’ the former soldier says.
Everyday life defeats a man whose courage under fire cannot be questioned, but who is haunted by what he has seen and done.
‘I cannot stand the sensation of anyone walking unseen behind me. On the Underground, I never take my eyes off anyone with a backpack in case their hands make a sudden movement towards a detonator.’
His senses deceive him. ‘I see blood in the blank canvas of snow, just as I saw blood in the pale sand of Helmand Province.
'I know I am hallucinating, but when I turn away and force myself to look again, it is still there.’
And, as he explains movingly in a new book, Wood knows the precise moment he finally lost control in Afghanistan.
As an experienced Territorial Army NCO, he was trying to stay alive under an enemy onslaught on forward operating base Inkerman — a makeshift outpost behind mud walls in the dangerous Sangin Valley — when a mortar eviscerated his respected, loved company commander.
As the ‘boss’, Captain Dave Hicks, lay dying in front of him in 2007, Wood’s mind went blank and his eyes took on that far-away look known as the ‘thousand-yard stare’ — the indication of a man who’s seen too much blood-letting and done too much killing.
What angers him is that ‘idiots’ back home who know nothing about the reality of war try to emulate that look.
‘I know of young men, sitting in front of war films and war games, who idolise this condition as a mark of a true warrior. But only some naive soul who had never felt this nothingness would think something so dumb.
‘You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion of a normal person. There is no feeling any more.
‘My mind has locked all this down. Instead, there is just an overwhelming blackness.
‘But when I close my eyes, I see the faces of the Taliban I killed. And I see Dave Hicks on a stretcher, a gaggle of anxious soldiers around him, an arm holding an IV fluid bag above him, voices urging him to hang on and him shaking gently as he tries to stay in this life, but can’t...’
Taking a shower in the morning, Jake Wood never takes his eyes off the bathroom door, though he knows full well that it is locked and bolted (stock pic)
Here is the almost unbridgeable gulf of understanding between the reality experienced by front-line soldiers we send to fight in Afghanistan and ‘home’ — the safe place they leave and then return to, many scarred in a way that the rest of us can barely imagine.
As a military historian, I have read thousands of first-hand accounts of war, in all its gore and glory, brutality and suffering. But there were tears in my eyes as I followed Wood’s story of his descent into the bleakness of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I fear that, having sent tens of thousands of our young men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, our society sits on a volcano of suppressed emotion like his that — with the condition still not fully grasped and sympathised with — may erupt in our faces in years to come.Wood, a lance-sergeant, was a part-time soldier, dropping in and out of three-month and six-month tours.
It made the contrast with ‘normal’ life even sharper and more painful.
One minute he was just another grey-suited systems analyst in a bank in the rat race of London’s financial district, fighting for a place on the Tube or a drink at a bar.
The next, he was a squaddie in sand-coloured fatigues, toting an SA89 assault rifle in the badlands of Helmand Province, being shot at by Taliban insurgents.
The dissonance was huge and mind-blowing. He chose to go to war. He was bored at work, he had girl trouble, he wanted some excitement.
After months of killing, the thoughts of what he had done would keep him awake at night
So, as a fully-trained member of the Honourable Artillery Company, the City of London’s centuries-old volunteer regiment, he went to Iraq in 2003 with the invasion force to oust Saddam Hussein.
Out on patrol, he lapped up the danger and thrived on the camaraderie.
Then, back home in the office, he was among people he could no longer relate to, living lives he thought frivolous. He felt like an outsider.
At the next opportunity, he took leave from his job again and returned to Basra in Iraq, where the British occupation force was fighting an increasingly bloody war against the insurgents armed with deadly roadside bombs and rocket- propelled grenades.
Under siege in their fortified camps, he and his mates endured ‘bowel-turning, sweating wet eternities of terror’.
Out on patrol, each man faced the extra horror of knowing that capture could well mean being beheaded.
Then again, the buzz of action thrilled him, and he revelled in the aggression needed to do his job and stay alive.
Amid the adrenaline and fear, his long-distance love affair with a girl back home soured — foundering on her loneliness, his jealousy and the fact he could not talk even to her about how it felt to be constantly balancing between living and dying.
The official Army advice to soldiers is to ‘communicate’ their feelings. But avoiding them is precisely what he — and thousands of others — did. Walled up inside their experiences, they suffered their traumas in silence.
Another return to ‘real’ life in London turned into disaster. He was losing his grip, exploding into violence in a bar, curling into a ball and crying when alone.
He was at odds with the world he came home to, where people seemed obsessed with celebrities but ignorant and uncaring of his reality.
When the call came to return to the front line — in Afghanistan — he leapt at the opportunity, because soldiering was the only life that made any sense to his troubled mind.
Up to this point, he had never knowingly killed anyone. He had nearly pulled the trigger several times, but never committed the ultimate act.
And, bizarrely, in his increasing frenzy, he longed to.
‘In the darkest, most naive recesses of my soldier’s soul, I wanted a “kill,” ’ he confesses. ‘Maybe it would be a thrill or as straightforward and impersonal as aligning sight and target and squeezing a finger.’
In Afghanistan in 2007, he got his wish. From a hilltop, he trained his monster of a 50-calibre heavy machine gun on a house in a compound where four Taliban were hiding. ‘I fired, a man died. I tried to feel something, anything, but there was nothing.’
But later he heard a radio transmission from that compound and the terrified voice of one of the wounded men trapped there calling for help.
He had a name — Musafer — and when no help came he bled to death. Suddenly, Wood could not get the image of this dying man out of his head.
After months more of killing, the thoughts of what he had done would keep him awake at night.
‘Much later, back home, feelings ambush me when I’m on my own, and I shake and break down.
‘I remind myself of what the Taliban would have done to me or my friends. But it does not take away the memory of methodically firing bursts into every corner of that compound — cold, pathological.
‘I scream and wither as my soul screams and withers, too, as my mind’s eye brings the gun sight to the fore — and I remember the bleeding, terrified Musafer.’
And then, not long after he had poured death on another human being, he was in the firing line as 150 Taliban surrounded the Inkerman military base and threw everything they had at its flimsy defences.
A grenade punched through the wall and blew the legs off an Afghan Army soldier nearby.
‘He is bleeding everywhere from the waist down. He looks up into my face with glazing eyes, smiles the faintest of smiles and murmurs soft snatches of song as he slips away into the darkness coming to take him.’
Then came the death of Captain Hicks, and Wood could take no more.
A sergeant-major saw that ‘thousand-yard stare’ in his eyes and sent him off to a psychiatric nurse, who diagnosed Acute Stress Reaction. He was told he was the 50th psychological casualty on that six-month tour alone.
Soon he was on his way home — and, as a part-time soldier, straight back into civvy street.
He came back to a country that seemed utterly indifferent to the suffering of its soldiers.
‘There are no flags or crowds of waiting loved ones, just the steadily corrosive feeling of being overlooked — and in favour of Paris Hilton and all the latest meaningless distractions inherent to our celebrity culture. I realised the so-called Military Covenant between soldier and nation was just a piece of paper, filed out of sight and out of mind.’
Meanwhile, ‘the ghost of Afghanistan walked with me in every footstep I took.
The war had come home with me. In my dreams, I run alone through streams and alleyways from innumerable hordes that want my blood.
‘Sometimes I kill some of my pursuers and wake just as their waxen faces and glassy eyes stare back at me. In other dreams I wake just as I am about to be ripped apart.’
It wasn’t just the memories and guilt that affected Wood. It was also the fact that the things that had kept him alive in Afghanistan — innate aggression, suspicion of any untoward movement, instant reaction — were unwanted in ‘normal’ life.
As a soldier on the front line, he was constantly alert for lethal threats.
'The book’s title is Among You, and its message is that mentally and morally wounded soldiers like him are all around us, but society tends not to see them.'
His life depended on that. Back home, this had him ducking for cover whenever a car backfired.
He found it harder than ever to get on with people. He couldn’t concentrate on his job at the bank.
‘One moment I’m a heartbeat away from fainting and the next having to clench my sweating fists under the desk to stop me exploding. I feel like the walking dead.’
He was not surprised when the bank sent him home on sick leave — but disgusted when the private health care company he had been paying into refused the cost of treatment, because his condition was ‘caused by war’.
Wood’s problems piled up. The bank fired him, he was medically discharged from the Army and — the final straw — banned from going to his old regiment to meet mates because he dared to criticise the lack of support his family had received while he was away, and the lack of care he was getting.
With no job, forced to live on benefits, he self-harmed and contemplated suicide.
‘The ghosts and demons never leave me alone. I cannot sleep.
And I do not want to be part of a life that is just going to fade away into financial poverty, as a waning shade of my former self.’
The Army’s offer of a derisory £9,000 lump sum for his pains only added to his crippling sense of abandonment and betrayal.
Therapy, followed by a stay in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, dragged him back from the brink. Then a sympathetic lawyer took up his case for proper compensation.
He won. His claim that his mental health had been seriously affected by his battlefield experiences was successful, he was awarded £140,000 and a guaranteed income for life.
He began, slowly, to mend. Writing the book was part of the process. It deserves a wide, appreciative audience because it takes us on a haunting journey into the mind of someone who was no saint, who went to war for his own purposes and of his own free will, but did our dirty work and suffered gravely as a result.
The book’s title is Among You, and its message it that mentally and morally wounded soldiers like him are all around us, but society tends not to see them.
‘Wounds may heal, but scars remain,’ he says. He longs for a wife, children, love, but fears he may be too damaged.
But there is hope. At a Bonfire Night party, he nerved himself to endure the bangs, and the six-year-old daughter of a friend took his hand. ‘Don’t be scared, Jake,’ she said. For the first time, he wasn’t.Jake threw another log on the sparking fire and then looked back up at the fading sunset. The last stands of violet blended into the darkening greys of an approaching storm front. All around him his friends and allies hurried to set up tarps and bring their meager gear into concise piles. He felt like the calm eye in the center of a storm of activity, but then again he had prepped his supplies hours earlier.
Heavy boots paused next to where he sat. He knew they belonged to Mitchum before he spoke. “I needed to ask you something.” Mitchum had been a retired officer in the Air Force long before the zombie apocalypse had begun. His leadership and knowledge had helped keep them alive, although since Jake had saved the entire camp by luring thousands of undead to their deaths, he had gained the man’s respect and trust.
Jake looked up at the older man. White sideburns phased into a greying head of close cropped hair. “What is it?”
“I was out hunting earlier and I discovered some geek tracks to the south.”
Jake poked at the blaze just as the first drops of rain created dark round spots on the forest floor. “Well, with us headed further south through the canyon every month, it isn’t to surprising that we’d run into something from that direction.”
“True, but Tal had taken a group south to forage and he hasn’t returned yet. Also I’m surprised you didn’t notice that your pal Dag isn’t back yet. You know he took Ellie and Renni with him. Your lady had said something about seeing some eatable mushrooms that way.”
Jake bolted out of his chair. “They aren’t back yet? Son of a… I need to go look for them right now.”
“Wait,” his arm reached out and grasped Jake by the shoulder. “They went north, the tracks were south, near Tal’s group. I need you to take a few men and check on them.” As the Captain spoke the rain moved from drizzle to outright downpour.
“That doesn’t mean anything. Geeks could be anywhere.”
Mitchum’s stern face regarded him. “If they’re heading from the south and you are between your lady and the south, you’re protecting her that way too. I’ll organize a group to search for Ellie, but right now I’m more concerned for Tal. I need you to handle this and with the rain crashing into us, the sooner the better.”
Jake grabbed his throwing sledge and slid it through the steel ring attached to his belt. His hand checked to make sure his pistol remained secure and then hefted up his big war sledge. “Flack still has a loaded rifle right?”
“Yes, but as always try to avoid shooting for multiple reasons.”
“As always, but he’s coming with. I want Boxer to lead the group looking for Ellie, or I’ll do it myself.”
“Done, now get going. This rain won’t be making anything easier.”
“No, it sure won’t.”
Jake cast one look back at the inviting fire that he’d just lit and then headed off to find Flack.
It was going to be a long wet night.
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Thanks for reading Mitch’s journey into the second year of the Eternal Aftermath and come back next weekend for the beginning of a new tale.
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You can explore more of the Eternal Aftermath here!
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.Seafarers 'devastated' by influx of foreign workers in maritime industry
Posted
Australian seafarers are warning that the local industry is at risk of going under unless the influx of foreign workers is halted.
Key points: Seafaring industry in one of worst downturns in half a century
Union claims foreign workers getting paid $2 per hour
Law lecturer says 457 visa system poorly policed
Hundreds of overseas contractors are currently working on the Australian coast despite close to 1,000 local maritime workers looking for jobs — about one sixth of the entire workforce.
"Families are devastated," said Thomas Mayor, secretary of the NT branch of the Maritime Union.
The lack of jobs has been blamed on falling commodity prices and a decline in manufacturing, but unions have said that is only half the story.
"[Jobs] aren't drying up because there's no work, but drying up because the Government is allowing $2 an hour exploited labour to replace them on the coast," Mr Mayor said.
"The industry at the moment is going through a very, very tough time, there's no question about that," said the chief executive of Maritime Industry Australia, Teresa Lloyd.
Maritime unions have been running a campaign against the laws that allow so-called $2-per-hour workers.
Under the national shipping regime, foreign vessels can obtain temporary licences to operate in Australian waters without needing to pay their workers Australian wages.
The temporary licences are meant to apply for two trips only, but industry insiders say companies are easily able to obtain 'rolling' licences.
"Seafaring jobs are just the same as carrying cargo on a truck from Darwin to Adelaide — on a truck you expect Australian wages, Australian safety conditions, Australian work conditions," Mr Mayor said.
The job hunters include Darwin's Myra Leong, who is part-way through her training to become an integrated rating, but cannot find anyone to take her on.
The 23-year-old worked as a deckhand before undertaking further training at the Australian Maritime College last year in Launceston, where she was the only woman in her class.
Her timing could hardly have been worse, with shipping going through one of its worst downturns in half a century.
'The only way to stay competitive'
Some in the industry have said the use of cheap foreign labour is often the only way the Australian industry can remain competitive.
"At the end of the day, it's cost," said the chairman of Shipping Australia, Ken Fitzpatrick.
The Government's aim is to reform our coastal shipping sector to make it viable. Federal Transport Minister Darren Chester
"In some cases that's been absolutely the only way they can survive without having to resort to importing from overseas."
Shipping Australia represents both local and overseas companies and has been pushing for further deregulation in the industry.
That position is opposed by another lobby group, Maritime Industry Australia (MIA), which speaks exclusively on behalf of local businesses.
MIA chief executive Teresa Lloyd said the maritime sector is treated differently to other industries when it comes to protecting local workers.
"It's one area of the Australian economy where for whatever reason, the idea that that particular activity needs to be done by Australians isn't supported the same way it is in almost every other aspect of the domestic economy," she said.
But Ms Lloyd said it may be too late for change and it had been a long time since job protection existed in the maritime industry.
Last year, the Federal Government failed to pass its Shipping Legislation Amendment Act which would have made it easier for foreign ships to operate in Australian waters, but Transport Minister Darren Chester said if re-elected the changes will be back on the agenda.
Labor and the Greens opposed the legislation, dubbing it "WorkChoices on water".
Calls to overhaul 457 visa program
The Government is also facing calls to overhaul its 457 visa program, which enables skilled workers to be employed in Australia for up to four years.
High-level maritime jobs like ships masters and ships engineers are currently listed on the Government's skilled shortage list, meaning foreign workers can be hired under the 457 system.
According to the most recent figures from the Department of Immigration, there are 303 foreign workers employed in the maritime industry under the 457 program — that is despite hundreds of similarly qualified Australians looking for work.
The 457 program is designed to give employers more flexibility in accessing skilled labour when demand is particularly high.
MIA has said the inclusion of seafaring jobs on the skilled shortage list made sense during the commodities boom, but not today when a large number of people in the sector were unemployed.
The 457 system requires employers to try the local job market before hiring overseas workers, but law lecturer at the University of Adelaide Dr Joanna Howe said it is poorly policed.
"There is currently no proper mechanism, no robust mechanism for identifying a skill shortage and for ensuring that where a foreign worker is coming in, they're not taking a job away from a local worker," Dr Joanna Howe said.
The Federal Opposition has called for a review of the skilled shortage list, while the Government has said it is awaiting further advice from the Department of Education and Training.
Topics: unions, federal-government, work, darwin-0800Happy New Year 2017.
Here are some 21 great new year resolution ideas, which generally don't last more than 21 days without self motivation and perseverance.
New Years and Birthdays are not about achievements but we still celebrate them. But have you ever wondered how much we actually achieve every year. In our sub conscious mind we may remember and cherish some of our significant achievements but most of us really don't have an organized way of tracking and measuring our personal goals.
Looking at the bigger picture may not always be easy, for example, How much debt am I going to pay away? Can I afford another house? Breaking these bigger goals into small manageable chunks may certainly help.
New Year and Birthdays may serve as an important milestone to track these personal goals and review our personal metrics. Some of us do this day in and day out at our work/ job so it may be very simple and effective if we utilize the same process to track our personal goals.
Here is a sample tracker:
No S. Personal Metric Year 2015 Year 2016 How many new friends/ contacts did I make? Current Year Score/ Count Target for Next Year How many new places did I visit?
How many needy people did I help?
What skill did I upgrade/ learn?
Charity – Donation? Teaching? Social Cause?
Health – Improvement in the fitness cycle
Mentoring an employee/ student
Increase income by X percent
Increase investment by X
10 Adopt a good habitThe Linux Mint bad news keeps on coming. After a website hack that tricked users into downloading a fake Linux Mint ISO with a backdoor, now the developers are also warning users to change their passwords for the forums.
It was revealed yesterday that the Linux Mint website was hacked, and users were redirected to download a modified Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition that was infected with a trojan named TSUNAMI. As if this wasn't bad enough, the hackers also gained access to the forums database, which means only one thing. People really need to change their passwords.
In fact, earlier today the forum database (Linuxmint.com shell, php mailer, and full forum dump) was made available for purchase for the measly sum of $85. As our colleague already explained in much greater detail, this is a really small sum and the entire operation seems weird.
The trojan was really old, and they could have chosen much better tools for their dastardly plans, and selling the database for 85$ is, at least, weird. The only good explanation is that they just wanted to make it clear that the website was exposed.
Forums database compromised, new passwords required
Pretty much everything that's related to the forums has been compromised. The only consolation is that the user's password was encrypted, but we all know that the protection can only last so long if they put their mind to it.
“It was confirmed that the forums database was compromised during the attack led against us yesterday and that the attackers acquired a copy of it. If you have an account on forums.linuxmint.com, please change your password on all sensitive websites as soon as possible,” the leader of the Linux Mint project, Clement Lefebvre revealed.
This is what was affected: the forum usernames, the passwords (encrypted), email addresses, any information in the signature, profile and so on, and any information posted on forums, including private messages and private topics. It's pretty much everything.Two Virginia middle school students were given long-term suspensions in a unanimous decision Tuesday morning after shooting airsoft guns near one of the students' homes.
Seventh graders Aidan Clark and Khalid Caraballo are suspended until June of next year, and may face being expelled altogether, WAVY reported. The children were suspended for possession, handling and use of a firearm.
Caraballo and Clark shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus. Because the bus stop is technically on school grounds, Larkspur Middle School said it had the right to suspend them.
The two seventh graders said they never went to the bus stop; they fired the airsoft guns while on Caraballo's private property, 70 yards away.
"We see the bus come, we put the gun down," Caraballo said. "We did not take the airsoft gun to the bus stop. We did not take the gun to school."
Airsoft guns fire small, spring-loaded plastic pellets. They are generally considered safer than BB guns, which fire copper pellets.
Seeing the kids playing with the toy guns, a neighbor called 911, according to the Washington Post. In the 911 call, the neighbor admitted she knew the guns were not real.
"This is not a real [gun], but it makes people uncomfortable," she told a dispatcher. "I know that it makes me [uncomfortable], as a mom, to see a boy pointing a gun."
"And you know what, do have someone contact me and tell me what was done," she continued. The dispatcher informed the woman that police would not contact her but could talk to her at the scene. The neighbor said in the call she would not be on the scene.
"It is my sincere hope that they will learn important life lessons; the most important being that there will be consequences when they do things that can result in harm to another person," Principal Matthew Delaney said in a written statement.
Caraballo said he will now have to attend an alternative school.
"It's terrible," the seventh grader said. "I won't get the chance to go to a good college. It's on your school record. The school said I had possession of a firearm. They aren't going to ask me any questions. They are going to think it was a real gun, and I was trying to hurt someone. They will say 'oh, we can't accept you.' "Introduction
Google was always a service - the best search engine on Earth. Now under the Alphabet umbrella, Google is becoming a brand - for online services yes, but also for hardware. Leading the charge are the Pixels, Google's equivalent to Samsung's Galaxy or Apple's i-gadgets... and every bit as premium.
True, the Pixel name debuted with a Chromebook, later adopted for an Android tablet, but it will definitely be remembered for the phones. This must be the company's biggest marketing push for a Google-branded hardware product.
It's not just that, Google even put a promo for Allo on the most valuable real estate on the web - Google.com. Allo, if you haven't heard, is the new messaging client (paired with video chat app Duo) and is at the heart of the Pixel phones. The AI assistant available in Allo is more prominently featured in the Pixels and you can talk with it, not just text. Then there's Google Photos, Google Drive and so on. This perfectly mirrors Apple's strategy of iMessage, iCloud, etc.
Software is Google's forte, but the company is new to hardware. With both Apple and Samsung flexing supply chain muscle, will the hardware of the Google Pixel XL live up to the pricing that exactly matches the iPhone 7 Plus (and tops the Galaxy S7 edge)? Let's see.
Google Pixel XL key features:
Aerospace-grade aluminum unibody (glass window on the back); splash and dust resistant (IP53)
5.5" AMOLED screen of QHD resolution, 534ppi, 100% NTSC; 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4
Quad-core Kryo processor, Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB of RAM, Snapdragon 821 chipset
Google-loaded Android 7.1 Nougat; 2 years of OS upgrades from launch, 3 years of security updates
12.3MP camera, f/2.0 lens, 1.55µm pixels, Phase and Laser AF, dual-LED, dual-tone flash; 2160p and 1080p @ 30/60/120fps video capture
8MP selfie camera, f/2.4 lens, 1.4µm pixels; 1080p video capture
Comes with 32GB or 128GB of built-in storage, no expansion
Fingerprint reader, Android Pay
LTE Cat 9 or 11 (450Mbps or 600Mbps downlink, 50/75Mbps uplink); Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 (A2DP, LE), GPS + GLONASS, NFC
3,450mAh battery; Fast charging over USB Type-C
Main shortcomings:
Most expensive Google phone yet
No stereo speakers
No water resistance
No OIS for the camera
No wireless charging, no IR port or FM radio
Snapdragon 821 chipset is downclocked to 820 speed
Standard Nexus cons: no microSD slot, sealed battery
Design is arguably bland
We openly admit to being a little salty. Don't get us wrong, we haven't been spoiled by the likes of Xiaomi, OnePlus, ZTE and others. Hell, you can buy TWO Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus phones for the price of one Pixel XL, that one has a Snapdragon 821 too, not to mention dual cameras and no weird glass windows on the back.
What we're pouting about is that the Pixel XL isn't clearly better than the Nexus 6P it is supposed to replace and it didn't bring back any of the features that the 6P dropped from the Nexus 6 spec sheet.
Not a good time to be cutting features, especially when Apple has everything short of an Always on screen (which the Pixels also lack) - dual cameras, water resistance, the best mobile chipset, truly awesome screen, even stereo speakers!
Apple was in the opposite situation compared to Google - it was known for its hardware, its software was laughed at (remember Apple Maps at launch?). But now iMessage is one of the best respected messengers, iCloud is reliable and cheap, even Maps has improved massively.
Can Google walk the same path in the other direction - from beloved software (Search, Maps, Android) and an overpriced Chromebook Pixel to the world's best smartphone? We have a ticket to the preview show and it's called the Google Pixel XL - shh, the trailers are starting!As much as we love to fawn over artificial intelligence (AI), it’s still not great at recognizing and parsing natural language. That’s why Google is open sourcing its new language parsing model for English, which it calls ‘Parsey McParseface.’
Before you even ask, the name doesn’t mean anything. When Google was trying to figure out what to call its language parsing technology, someone suggested Parsey McParseface; it’s a bit like Apple’s Liam, which has no clever backstory either. The overall AI model model is called SyntaxNet (please make your SkyNet jokes now); ‘ol Parsey is just for English.
Note: Sore readers have (often rudely) pointed out the name may be in reference to Boaty McBoatface. Truth told, I don’t really care why Google named it what they did. The underlying tech is far more important and interesting than a silly name. Please continue Ready McReading the article now.
Combining machine learning and search techniques, Parsey McParseface is 94 percent accurate, according to Google. It also leans on SyntaxNet’s neural-network framework for analyzing the linguistic structure of a sentence or statement, which parses the functional role of each word in a sentence.
If you’re confused, here’s the short version: Parsey and SyntaxNet are basically like five year old humans who are learning the nuances of language.
In Google’s simple example above, ‘saw’ is the root word (verb) for the sentence, while ‘Alice’ and ‘Bob’ are subjects (nouns). Parsey’s scope can get a bit broader, too.
And if you’re wondering why Parsey McParseface is even necessary, here’s Google’s explanation:
One of the main problems that makes parsing so challenging is that human languages show remarkable levels of ambiguity. It is not uncommon for moderate length sentences – say 20 or 30 words in length – to have hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of possible syntactic structures. A natural language parser must somehow search through all of these alternatives, and find the most plausible structure given the context.
Parsey McParseface and SyntaxNet aren’t a solution; Google considers them a first step toward better AI language parsing, which is a persistent hurdle.
Besides, a more natural conversation could make Chirp really awesome someday.
Announcing SyntaxNet on Google
Read next: I took a slow-moving bus to watch Hyperloop One's fast-moving trainWater On the Klamath, a surprising win for river advocates Dam removals on the Oregon-California border move forward without water deals for irrigators.
Earlier this week, the Department of the Interior announced that four dams on the Klamath River would come down. The dam removals signal a win for environmentalists, sportsmen, and tribes, but they also come without an accompanying set of water agreements, which Congress failed to enact late last year. In the end, it didn’t come down to negotiations, but simple economics: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined that the costs of retrofitting the dams along the Oregon-California border far exceeded the costs of decommissioning them.
The dams on the Lower Klamath will be removed in 2021, and although river and salmon restoration look likely, the basin’s irrigators could experience shut-offs in drought years that could re-spark the water wars that have waged in the basin for decades. The dam removals will allow 300 miles of river to flow freely, restoring salmon runs and improving water quality. In turn, the tribes and fishermen that depend on the river and the environmental groups that have long sought to improve water quality for marine birds and fish have succeeded.
“The sad thing is that a much needed dam removal has been delayed for many years because it was held hostage for political reasons by a wildly expensive and controversial water deal,” says Jim McCarthy, a spokesman for WaterWatch, a conservation group involved in the early stages of the broader pact’s negotiations. “Now finally salmon runs can be restored.”
Patrick McCully, Flickr User
The decision vindicates groups that felt the Klamath Agreements, which were negotiated for decades, fell short. Conservation and environmental groups and many of the Basin’s tribal nations were excluded from the Klamath Agreements’ final package. Now, they’re getting exactly what they wanted: Dam removal with no strings attached.
“The irony is that environmental groups thought it was so important to make a deal with irrigators because they had political power, but 10 years later and no, we didn’t need them at all,” says Steve Pedery, conservation director of Oregon Wild, an environmental group left out of the final Klamath Agreements’ three-part pact because of an impasse with irrigators over potato and onion farming within wildlife refuges.
The Klamath Agreements were designed to settle one of the West’s most unbending water conflicts. For decades, farmers, fishermen, tribes and environmental groups in 15 counties in Oregon and California battled over more than 700 river miles in the Klamath River Basin, a 12,000-square-mile swath of Northern California and southern Oregon. In 2001, the federal government shut off farmers’ water to protect endangered coho salmon and suckers. The following year, irrigators got their water, but a massive fish die-off ensued, beginning an intractable tug of war.
So, for over a decade, more than 50 stakeholders — from conservative ranching and farming irrigators to utility groups, politicians, Tribal Nations, conservation and environmental groups — all came together. And they more or less came to a compromise.
The result was the three-part Klamath River Agreements, a set of compromises that seemed to have something for nearly everyone. But Congress failed to enact the pact in 2010 and again in 2015, rendering much of that effort moot: no minimum flows for irrigators, or tribal development, or river restoration or fish or wildlife.
Conservative legislators primarily objected to the prospect of dam removal, which “presents a very tough ideological challenge for some members of Congress,” says Bob Gravely, spokesman for PacifiCorp, the utility company that owns the dams on the Klamath River.
Congressional inaction — due largely in part to avoid the precedent of a significant dam removal — restarted the FERC relicensing process, which expedited dam removal. Pedery, of Oregon Wild, says he knew dam removal would have to happen outside of federal approval.
But the dams became an issue of economics, outside of politics. Implementing the Klamath Agreements would have required $800 million of federal funding to remove the dams and to implement the ensuing water deals made contingent on decommissioning. Retrofitting the dams would have cost more than $460 million, according to the Department of Interior. Removing them will cost an estimated $250 million. FERC decided on the latter.
“It’s bittersweet because we’ve really come full circle,” Pedery says. “The real tragedy is we squander |
lation of being at all, a relation which can only be accounted by activity which negates and splits while at once uniting through this very split.
Continuing:
When it has shown this completely, Spirit has made its existence identical with its essence ; it has itself for its object just as it is, and the abstract element of immediacy, and of the separation of knowing and truth, is overcome. Being is then absolutely mediated ; it is a substantial content which is just as immediately the property of the ‘I’, it is self-like or the Notion [Concept].
To skip a bit ahead in the Phenomenology, Spirit in the end shall find nothing but itself in its objects of investigation. The reason is already clear in one sense, first because Spirit too is negativity and the I, but as already noted so is substance. Secondly—and this shall be shown in the next section—because Spirit is thought and its knowledge of objects is their very Notion/Concept, and substance shares the nature of thought. And lastly, because as Hegel intends to show beyond the Phenomenology in his actual philosophy, the entire system of knowledge is one absolute system united and moved by negativity, and the world itself shares this negative nature. To make it clearer: substantial content is self-like, substance is subject, because there is no distinction to be made. Independent objects are only possible if they are their own active self-determination from within.
Finally, in §54 Hegel brings forth for a moment the concepts of identity and thought.
The subsistence or substance of anything that exists is its self-identity ; for a failure of self-identity would be its dissolution. Self-identity, however, is pure abstraction ; but this is thinking.
Self-identity is the locus of being that keeps substance together as the negative unity of self-relation. Self-identity is also pure abstraction in a literal sense: it rips substance away from any connections and determinations, and as Hegel has already told us earlier in the Preface, abstraction is thought. Being, he goes on, is thought. This is meant literally and not in any metaphorical way. Being really is thought, for it is a concept of abstraction, yet it is a “thought” that certainly applies to existent beings despite its poverty of meaning. But Hegel means something more radical than simply saying that Being is just a mental concept, no, to be is to be a thought in the sense that to be is to be abstracted. From the absolute standpoint the Absolute must negate itself, create difference in itself, and in that difference the oppositions stand against each other as independent and separate to some degree, they are literally abstracted, but as already noted abstraction is thought. Without negativity, without difference and its abstractions of being, there would be no possible existence and all that would remain is an indeterminate nothing. Don’t confuse thinking and thought to be mental, they are not. They are not our subjective mental phenomena, nor are they the mental phenomena of some God-mind. Thought is the name for the fact of abstraction as the standing opposition of things.
Now, since the subsistence of an existent thing is a self-identity or pure abstraction, it is the abstraction of itself from itself, or it is itself its lack of self-identity and its dissolution—its own inwardness and withdrawal into itself—its own becoming.
Things are, they subsist, through their self-abstraction, i.e their self-negation. This abstraction, however, is itself a difference and self-identity is only possible through this difference. Without negativity and abstraction A could not enact the fact of A=A, it could not stand out for itself and exist. True substance is not dependent, it exists only in need of its own self-relation. But if being as substance splits itself from itself in abstraction, then it becomes other to itself, it becomes its own opposite and dissolves its static identity and becomes another. But if substance is subject, it is as it does, but if subjectivity is negativity, it is the undoing of itself; therefore, substance is its own vanishing in the fact that its being is only its perpetual undoing—it is its own becoming in the fact that it is and at once is not. Becoming is the truth of substance, the static is truly the static reality of dynamism, i.e. endless change itself is the only enduring and changeless thing. The being of substance left to itself is its own free self-negation, self-determination, and shows the link to that which is beyond the static thing we imagine it to be. This movement maps the path of Spirit which goes beyond itself only to find itself. The process of the negative returns to the negative in absolute unity: the negative is a negative of a negative, an opposite is the opposite of an opposite.
Some of the equivalencies aside, it goes to show that Hegel really had something interesting to say in all these seemingly bizarre terms and phrases, however, he was unable to explain them due to the constraints of a Preface, and well… it demands a lot of us as readers. It demands that we be very careful to detail, to keep things in mind, it demands that we be very charitable. Even with an everyday view of things Hegel’s claim make very good sense.
Substance is subject because substance is the enduring image of endless activity (activity) which relates to itself. This endless activity acting upon itself seems from the outside as a merely complete and static circle. To give an image: the concept of substance as subject is like a ball tied to a string spinning so fast that to us it seems like a solid wheel. Concepts are, however, not spatio-temporal and thus there is no temporal gap to finish their process. They are always already complete. The Absolute is substance and subject at once in that we can see it as the unity of their opposition, but also in that they are both the single process seen from two standpoints of the dynamic and static.
Advertisements(Ed. Note: It’s the NHL Alternate History project! We’ve asked fans and bloggers from 31 teams to pick one turning point in their franchise’s history and ask ‘what if things had gone differently?’ Trades, hirings, firings, wins, losses, injuries … all of it. How would one different outcome change the course of history for an NHL team? Today: Dave Davis on the Buffalo Sabres! Enjoy!)
By Dave Davis
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Gary Bettman has had a vision of parity for the NHL pretty much since the day he became commissioner.
But in the 1990’s, before the days of loser points and salary cap ceilings and floors, the financial landscape of the league looked a bit like the Wild West. If you owned a team, the amount of money that could be spent on players was limited only to your resources and appetite for risk.
As it turned out, there was a select group of about a half dozen teams — residing in large markets and/or having owners with deep pockets — that had the inside track on the best players.
Buffalo was about as far away from that group as Siberia.
The Sabres fell into deep financial trouble. The team was losing well over $10 million per season in its last few years at Memorial Auditorium. It got to the point where payroll wasn’t being met on time.
As it turned out, Adelphia Communications CEO and future white collar criminal John Rigas became majority partner of the Sabres and kept them afloat financially, at least until the truth about his blatant misuse of funds came to light.
But consider this:
What would happen if the lifetime dream of a certain diehard Sabres fan/wealthy businessman came true 13 years earlier?
{Cue the Zamboni time machine graphic and cheesy alternate reality music.}
Story continues
It’s 1997, and Rigas is in negotiations to bump up his ownership stake in the Sabres to 52%, which would give him operational control of the franchise.
Enter Terry Pegula, who sold East Resources a year earlier for $500 million. The 46-year-old oil & gas tycoon jumps into the mix and significantly outbids Rigas with an all-cash proposal.
The best offer wins. Pegula takes control of the Sabres in January of 1998.
After staying in the background and letting GM Darcy Regier do his thing through the end of the 1997-98 season, Pegula is feeling frisky and ready to make his mark.
The NHL Draft is in Buffalo that summer, and the new owner has visions of drafting Vinny Lecavalier first overall in front of the hometown crowd. But Regier’s attempt is futile as Tampa wants nothing to do with trading the pick.
Frustrated but undaunted, Pegula flies Regier and head coach Lindy Ruff with him to Pittsburgh to incessantly stalk Ron Francis until the veteran forward finally agrees to a four-year, $22 million dollar contract. While they’re out there, the triumphant trio also land another ex-Pittsburgh Penguin, talented offensive defenseman Fredrik Olausson.
For the 1998-99 season, Francis is named Sabres captain. He and Olausson finish second and third behind Miroslav Satan in team scoring.
The additions of a two-time Stanley Cup winner and the scoring touch from the blue line, to a resilient and well-coached team that already has the best goaltender in the world in Dominik Hasek, puts Buffalo over the top.
The Sabres are up three games to two against the Dallas Stars in Game Six of the Stanley Cup Final. Brett Hull flips the puck over a sprawling Hasek and into the net in the third overtime.
But as the polished Cup is slowly being packed and readied for a trip to Dallas for Game 7, video review shows that Hull’s skate was in the crease. The goal is disallowed, and Michael Peca scores the game-winner moments later.
The Sabres defeat the Stars in six games, becoming champions in Pegula’s first full season as owner.
Hull cries foul to the media about Buffalo getting preferential treatment for being an established hockey market.
After a down season and first-round exit the following year due in large part to a Hasek injury, the Sabres contend again in 2000-01. Peca signs a 5-year, $20 million contract and Hasek wins another Vezina. Buffalo reaches its third Eastern Conference Final in four years but falls to Martin Brodeur and the New Jersey Devils in six games.
Pegula and the Sabres make a huge splash by acquiring Jaromir Jagr from the Penguins for Maxim Afinogenov, Dmitri Kalinin and prospects. Buffalo then shocks the hockey world by signing Jagr to an 8-year, $92 million contract – the richest deal in NHL history.
Buffalo also signs trade deadline acquisition and familiar friend Dave Andreychuk. Hasek appears at the presser and tells the media how happy he is to be part of an organization committed to winning and willing to spend whatever it takes.
After losing in the second round to Toronto, the following two seasons are even more painful for Buffalo, as their veterans show signs of age. They miss the playoffs twice.
As the NHL races on a crash course to a work stoppage, Pegula is targeted in the national hockey media as the main culprit for skyrocketing player salaries.
During this period, Francis, Peca and Jagr are traded while Regier wheels and deals to bring in centers Daniel Briere and Chris Drury.
Hasek announces his retirement to spend more time with his family. Following the lockout, however, he decides to come back but is rebuffed by the Sabres. An angry Hasek signs with Ottawa and declares his intention to someday enter the Hall of Fame as a Senator.
Two months before the 2005-06 season opener, Pegula outbids the Hurricanes to land free agent Cory Stillman, who ends up leading the Sabres in scoring.
Andreychuk is waived during the season and Jaroslav Spacek is acquired at the trade deadline.
Despite a rash of injuries on defense, the Sabres overcome Carolina in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final on a late third period goal by Stillman.
Buffalo goes on to win its second Stanley Cup, beating the Edmonton Oilers in six games.
After winning the Presidents’ Trophy but falling to Ottawa in the 2007 Eastern Conference Final, the Sabres are in a predicament. Making the deals necessary to be a champion had taken its toll on the payroll.
Buffalo’s cap situation makes it extremely difficult to keep both Briere and Drury. The Sabres sign the latter to a 4-year, $21.5 million extension during the season. Briere signs with the Flyers at the opening of free agency.
Things go downhill from there. Drury has two productive seasons with the Sabres but isn’t able to lead them past the first round of the playoffs. Meanwhile, Briere is having the better of it in Philadelphia, which stirs up criticism in Buffalo for keeping the wrong co-captain.
The controversy intensifies during the 2009-10 season when Drury has issues with his knee and sees a huge drop in production, relegating him to reduced ice time and even some fourth-line duty. His eventual contract buyout causes more problems with Buffalo’s cap situation.
Pegula, challenged by the media and fans for failure to adapt to the salary cap era, doubles his investment in the scouting department and focuses on finding his best players via the draft.
After repeatedly failing to make the playoffs, Regier and Ruff are eventually fired and replaced by Jason Botterill and Phil Housley.
Sabres management makes the tough decision to go full tank, errrh, aggressive rebuild. Buffalo drafts Sam Reinhart second overall in 2014 but has quite a battle for the bottom on its hands the following season.
Senators GM Tim Murray is awarded the moniker “Tanking Tim” from the Ottawa media after trading Robin Lehner and Craig Anderson during the season while both goaltenders are on hot streaks.
Buffalo barely wins 30th place by finishing one point lower than Ottawa and two behind Arizona. The Sabres fail to win the draft lottery but select Jack Eichel at No. 2.
Botterill is lauded as a patient GM who has the Sabres on the right track, while Murray is fired in Ottawa and days later is spotted having a beer at a Don Cherry’s Sports Grill with recently canned Redblacks GM Doug Whaley.
—
Dave Davis recently left Kukla’s Korner for his own sports media venture, which will be announced shortly.
PREVIOUSLY ON NHL ALTERNATE HISTORY
What if … the Islanders never hired Mike Milbury?
What if … Dallas drafted the other Lundqvist brother?
What if … Jonathan Drouin’s Tampa time wasn’t so chaotic?
What if … Minnesota Wild hired Pierre McGuire as GM?
What if … Florida had traded Roberto Luongo for Joe Thornton?
What if … the Martin Gelinas goal counted for Calgary?
What if … the Oilers never traded for Chris Pronger?
What if … the Blues had drafted Jonathan Toews instead?
What if … the Bruins never lost Marc Savard?
What if … the Anaheim Ducks drafted Sidney Crosby?
What if … the Red Wings had signed Marian Hossa?
What if … the Canucks won the first NHL Draft Lottery?
What if … the Hurricanes had signed Sergei Fedorov?
What if … the Flyers hadn’t lost Chris Pronger?
What if … Avalanche never matched Joe Sakic offer sheet?
What if … the Capitals didn’t hire Dale Hunter and Adam Oates?
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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill on Tuesday clarified the state’s law regarding the use of cannabidiol (CBD) oil that has led to confusion.
Hill told FOX59's Matt Smith that CBD oil is illegal to sell or possess in Indiana--with the only exception being people with epilepsy conditions specifically outlined in legislation. "CBD is a derivative of the marijuana plant, and by definition is still marijuana, and by definition is still a schedule 1 drug which is still unlawful under the current state of the law," Hill told Smith.
Hill said this means the oil is subject to seizure from retail outlets that sell it. That leaves an unanswered question: How will people who are lawfully allowed to use CBD obtain it?
BREAKING: In interview with @CBS4Indy and @FOX59 AG @AGCurtisHill determines CBD oil is illegal to sell or possess in Indiana pic.twitter.com/8vRppgfQWy — Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) November 21, 2017
Exception AG says is people with epilepsy condition lawmakers specifically outlined in legislation — Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) November 21, 2017
But as AG notes, question now is how those people will obtain it — Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) November 21, 2017
“There is no doubt, as a matter of legal interpretation, that products or substances marketed generally for human consumption or ingestion, and containing cannabidiol, remain unlawful in Indiana as well as under federal law," Hill said in his opinion, which can be read in full here.
State lawmakers passed a bill—later signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb in April—that allowed people with treatment-resistant epilepsy to use CBD as part of a state registry.
The law requires that products containing CBD, an oil derived from marijuana, must contain less than 0.3 of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
Advocates of the treatment said it can help lessen the severity of seizures—and studies appear to bear that out. Parents whose children have treatment-resistant epilepsy voiced their support for CBD oil during legislative hearings.
Earlier this year, the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission announced a moratorium on the confiscation of CBD products from area stores. The announcement came after excise police cited stores for selling CBD products.
Even after the moratorium was announced, excise police warned one store and cited another for potential violations. A spokeswoman said those incidents were “issued in error.”
However, the cases illustrated how confusion over the law has led to difficulties in enforcing it.
Even state law enforcement disagrees on the legality of CBD products. Excise police thought the new law made CBD products used for non-seizure purposes a crime; Indiana State Police said a 2014 law removed industrial hemp products from the state’s controlled substance statute, making CBD products legal.
Earlier this month, parents of a southern Indiana girl said DCS threatened to take away their daughter because they used CBD oil to treat her seizures instead of using what doctors at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health had prescribed.
Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, intervened on the family’s behalf and said the new law needs to be clarified. He said the state’s response was “heavy-handed” and an “overreaction.”
In response to Hill's opinion, Rep. Jim Lucas says he will introduce legislation to legalize CBD oil.
Meanwhile, other groups continue to push for medical marijuana in the state, which CBD oil would not classify as. The Indiana American Legion wants medical marijuana for use by veterans as a treatment option, and Indiana NORML put up this billboard in Indianapolis.
It's located near I-70, west of the Harding Street exit.The multimillion dollar brain training industry is under attack. In October 2014, a group of over 100 eminent neuroscientists and psychologists wrote an open letter warning that “claims promoting brain games are frequently exaggerated and at times misleading”. Earlier this year, industry giant Lumosity was fined $2m, and ordered to refund thousands of customers who were duped by false claims that the company’s products improve general mental abilities and slow the progression of age-related decline in mental abilities. And a recent review examining studies purporting to show the benefits of such products found “little evidence... that training improves improves everyday cognitive performance”.
While brain training games and apps may not live up to their hype, it is well established that certain other activities and lifestyle choices can have neurological benefits that promote overall brain health and may help to keep the mind sharp as we get older. One of these is musical training. Research shows that learning to play a musical instrument is beneficial for children and adults alike, and may even be helpful to patients recovering from brain injuries.
Imagine the journey of the future… and win the latest iPadPro Read more
“Music probably does something unique,” explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. “It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it.”
Playing a musical instrument is a rich and complex experience that involves integrating information from the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, as well as fine movements, and learning to do so can induce long-lasting changes in the brain. Professional musicians are highly skilled performers who spend years training, and they provide a natural laboratory in which neuroscientists can study how such changes – referred to as experience-dependent plasticity – occur across their lifespan.
Is the internet killing our brains? Read more
Changes in brain structure
Early brain scanning studies revealed significant differences in brain structure between musicians and non-musicians of the same age. For example, the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two sides of the brain, is significantly larger in musicians. The brain areas involved in movement, hearing, and visuo-spatial abilities also appear to be larger in professional keyboard players. And, the area devoted to processing touch sensations from the left hand is increased in violinists.
These studies compared data from different groups of people at one point in time. As such, they could not determine whether the observed differences were actually caused by musical training, or if existing anatomical differences predispose some to become musicians. But later, longitudinal studies that track people over time have shown that young children who do 14 months of musical training exhibit significant structural (pdf) and functional brain changes (pdf) compared to those who do not.
Together, these studies show that learning to play a musical instrument not only increases grey matter volume in various brain regions, but can also strengthen the long-range connections between them. Other research shows that musical training also enhances verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills, such that professional musicians usually outperform non-musicians on these abilities.
Long-lasting benefits for musicians
Importantly, the brain scanning studies show that the extent of anatomical change in musicians’ brains is closely related to the age at which musical training began, and the intensity of training. Those who started training at the youngest age showed the largest changes when compared to non-musicians.
Music reaches parts of the brain that other things can’t Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster
Even short periods of musical training in early childhood can have long-lasting benefits. In one 2013 study, for example, researchers recruited 44 older adults and divided them into three groups based on the level of formal musical training they had received as children. Participants in one group had received no training at all; those in the second had done a little training, defined as between one and three years of lessons; and those in the third had received moderate levels of training (four to 14 years).
The researchers played recordings of complex speech sounds to the participants, and used scalp electrodes to measure the timing of neural responses in a part of the auditory brainstem. As we age, the precision of this timing deteriorates, making it difficult to understand speech, especially in environments with a lot of background noise. Participants who had received moderate amounts of musical training exhibited the fastest neural responses, suggesting that even limited training in childhood can preserve sharp processing of speech sounds and increase resilience to age-related decline in hearing.
More recently, it has become clear that musical training facilitates the rehabilitation of patients recovering from stroke and other forms of brain damage, and some researchers now argue that it might also boost speech processing and learning in children with dyslexia and other language impairments. What’s more, the benefits of musical training seem to persist for many years, or even decades, and the picture that emerges from this all evidence is that learning to play a musical instrument in childhood protects the brain against the development of cognitive impairment and dementia.
Do our brains have extraordinary untapped powers? Read more
Unlike commercial brain training products, which only improve performance on the skills involved, musical training has what psychologists refer to as transfer effects – in other words, learning to play a musical instrument seems to have a far broader effect on the brain and mental function, and improves other abilities that are seemingly unrelated.
“Music reaches parts of the brain that other things can’t,” says Loveday. “It’s a strong cognitive stimulus that grows the brain in a way that nothing else does, and the evidence that musical training enhances things like working memory and language is very robust.”
Learning to play a musical instrument, then, seems to be one of the most effective forms of brain training there is. Musical training can induce various structural and functional changes in the brain, depending on which instrument is being learned, and the intensity of the training regime. It’s an example of how dramatically life-long experience can alter the brain so that it becomes adapted to the idiosyncrasies of its owner’s lifestyle.
Keep up with the latest on Guardian Students: follow us on Twitter at @GdnStudents – and become a member to receive exclusive benefits and our weekly newsletter.Visitors try out the PlayStation 4 at the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, suburban Tokyo in September. (Photo11: Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP/Getty Images)
The booming mobile games space combined with the arrival of new home consoles are expected to drive video game market revenue to $111 billion by 2015, says a report from research firm Gartner.
This year, the video game industry will generate $93 billion in revenue, up from $78 billion last year, led by consoles as the fast-rising mobile market.
"This growth is fueled by healthy premium mobile device sales globally and a desire by consumers to play games on these multifunction devices that are capable of displaying increasingly sophisticated game content," says Gartner's Brian Blau.
The mobile games space is expected to surge from $13 billion in revenue this year to $22 billion in 2015.
Meanwhile, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, launching in November, will spur a boost in video game console revenue, topping the $55 billion mark in two years.
However, dedicated handheld gaming devices such as the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita will continue to see declines. Last year, that piece of the market pulled in $17 billion in worldwide revenue. By 2015, it will sink to $12 billion.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @bam923.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gXUSaFBy: Russell Cragun
The BYU Cougars have won four in a row after beating San Francisco Thursday night; this comes after the Cougars dropped four in a row against Oregon, Utah, LMU and Pepperdine. Over the past four games the Cougars have scored over 80 points in each win and have won some games without Forward Eric Mika, and Tyler Haws and company have been getting hot just in time for a tough WCC schedule that will feature ranked Gonzaga twice and St. Mary’s.
So what have the Cougars been doing differently lately to win? How have they managed to win without their dominant center Mika? Here are some reasons why the Cougars have made a quick rebound to try to save the season.
Matt Carlino Is More Efficient Off The Bench Than A Starter.
During BYU’s losing streak we saw some of the worst playing from Matt Carlino as a Cougar. His play was erratic and ill-advised. He turned it over and never really passed around the ball to his teammates. We have often seen him take on the “hero” role and take on all the responsibility and try to win the game.
While Carlino struggled Skyler Halford rose up and helped the team get those much needed points. Halford at times seemed like the only player who seemed capable of scoring any points and kept a lot of the games in reach. He shot almost 60% from the field and 83% from the free throw while only turning it over twice in those four games. Because of this Halford has since taken the starting role from Carlino and saw a season high 31 minutes against San Francisco.
This has really given Carlino some time to think and calm down as a player. He has relished in as the sixth man. During the Cougars four game winning streak his shot percentage alone has almost double than that of their four game losing streak: He has shot 14-29 (48%) from the field compared to 13-52 (25%) during the previous losing streak, and his turnovers have decreased by 25%.
Something that people overlook is his ball handling skills, yes he does turn it over more than we would like to see but he is great in advancing the ball down the court in press situations. Something that the team would need late in the game when everyone else is in foul trouble.
It’s uncertain if Carlino will remain on the bench and keep this role. Don’t be surprised if we see him take his old job back soon and be in the starting 5.
Improved Free Throw Shooting and Three Point Shooting
Before the winning streak BYU was struggling at shooting free throws. They were going to the line on average 29.9 times a game; however, they would only convert 67% of the time. This is a horrible statistic when considering most of the team is a guard. Over the last four games, BYU has really improved their free throw percentage from 67% to 75%, and have found more opportunities to draw the fouls averaging 32.5 trips to the stripe.
When BYU lost to LMU and Pepperdine their three-point shooting was atrocious. They only made 4-21(19%) attempts. Since the start of the new streak BYU has improved and gone from that embarrassing 19% to a respectful 42% going 23-55.
Coach Rose claims that this has been the teams biggest improvement stating: “I mean, (the WCC is) the best three-point shooting league in the country, and you really have to respect that. I think our coaches have done a great job of adjusting to it, and hopefully we just keep getting better at it.” (KSL)
Because the team is improving their free throw and three-point shooting the team now leads the WCC in efficiency at 117.2.
Kyle Collinsworth is the Cougars Unsung Hero
You can sit anywhere in the Marriott Center and hear people say “Come on Haws” or scream at Coach Rose to give the ball more to Mika. Most people forgot and often overlook the teams staple and hero of the team. It’s not Haws, Mika or Carlino, Its Kyle Collinsworth. KC is third in scoring on the team behind Haws and Carlino, second in total rebounds, steals and blocks. He has always proven to be dependable and seems to never come out of the game, leading the team in total minutes by 75 minutes; more than two full games ahead of Haws at number two.
The Cougars have improved their game and efficiently over the past four games. Look for the Cougars to win five in a row against Santa Clara who is 10-10 on the season. You will be able to watch the game on ROOT Sports.
Hopefully we will see some more sweet dunks like this from Tyler Haws!When the house lights go down in Omaha’s 1200 CLUB on June 7, three Nebraska bands will in succession take a stage unlike any they’ve played before: in a setting similar to Austin City Limits.
While some of its most known acts are nationally and internationally touring jazz and blues musicians, this venue in the Holland Center will play host to "Hear Nebraska — Live at the 1200 CLUB" next month. The show is the product of a new collaboration among Omaha Performing Arts, NET Television and Hear Nebraska. Tickets are on sale here.
The evening will feature three Nebraska bands — Digital Leather, Big Harp and Kill County — and will be recorded for four TV programs produced by Nebraska Public Television. These television specials will be broadcast throughout the state, with the potential for national distribution.
Kendra Whitlock Ingram, vice president of programming and education with Omaha Performing Arts, said the goal for June 7 is increased exposure for the organizations, but also an expanded definition of the cultural programming that Omaha Performing Arts presents.
“The real gist of it is Omaha Performing Arts wants to be a venue for all people,” said Ingram, talking about her mission for booking at 1200 CLUB, the Holland Center and the Orpheum Theater. “It’s totally cool to hear a band like Kill County at a venue in Lincoln or Digital Leather at Maha (Music Festival), but it’ll be a different experience hearing them at our space. And I think making that accessibility and providing that cultural connection for all different genres is really what our goal is.”
While the three bands were selected by Hear Nebraska, Ingram said the structure and customs of the 1200 CLUB could mean seeing the bands in a whole new light for fans: in an environment that asks for engagement with the musicians that’s both respectful and lively.
“It’s not a place where you go to talk to your friends and drink some beer … and the music is more in the background,” Ingram said. “It’s a room where you go and really listen to music. But it’s still a more casual place than going to the concert room. It does have that club feel, but it’s more of a jazz club.”
The semi-formal tone of the 1200 CLUB will be one of many new flavors for Lincoln’s Kill County on June 7. Until now, the band has found its home performing in Lincoln’s college bar scene.
“We were trying to figure (the dress code) out,” said Josh James, one of Kill County’s two singers and songwriters. “Joe (Salvati, steel guitar) is the nicest looking one of all of us. We had talked about getting nudie suits like the Flying Burrito Brothers, but it’s not in the budget. I don’t know. We’ll have buttons on our shirts, hopefully. I think we’ll definitely all have sleeves for sure.”
Ingram said that Omaha’s Digital Leather, in particular, will be a first foray for the venue into indie music and might require the minor use of some sound-deadening curtains, since the venue is most accustomed to housing acoustic acts.
“The room is really versatile, fortunately,” she said.
The televised component, though one of the most exciting elements of the June 7 show in Ingram’s estimation, is a completely new experiment for the operators of the 1200 CLUB. The key, she said, will be preserving the live electricity of the show, while still tailoring the room’s lighting and staging top-to-bottom for television production.
“It’s going to be interesting, I have to say,” she said. “It’s a fully produced television show, so that means multiple camera positions and an arm … that extends over the audience. It’s a full-on Austin City Limits-type show. NET definitely wants to keep as much of the original essence of the show as possible. One of things that’s really desirable to them is that live feel.”
“This will be the first time all Nebraskans — from Valentine to Fremont — will be able to experience original Nebraska bands from their living rooms,” said Andrew Norman, executive director of Hear Nebraska.
James said he thinks the show represents a unique opportunity for the band on the biggest stage it’s played, while simultaneously commanding an audience’s full attention in a “listening-room” atmosphere.
“The quieter the audience, the better we’re doing,” James said. “I’m really excited to have that big of connection with the audience, hopefully.”
Musically, though, the band members will have to meet the evening on their own terms, accounting, as they always do, for living in three different states (Nebraska, Michigan and Texas) and how rarely they’re able to rehearse their work.
“We have to approach it with the same comfort level and still feed off each other and have the same chemistry,” James said. “We’re looking to strike a balance between that and taking it a little more seriously, really. We all view this as a really good opportunity for the band. Maybe try to put on a little more cohesive show or be a bit more directed.”
“Maybe a few less shots than we normally take,” he joked.
While “Hear Nebraska — Live at the 1200 CLUB” is a litany of firsts for Omaha Performing Arts, NET and Hear Nebraska, a successful and ongoing collaboration could open doors for a sequel or further promotion of Nebraska artists at the new venue, Ingram said.
“We’re always going to present the 2,000-seat concert hall show and 2,600-seat theater shows,” she said. “That’s our primary venues, but the 1200 CLUB has given us a lot of flexibility to do a variety of other things. Anything is up for grabs at this point if we have the right partners, like we do with Hear Nebraska and NET.”
Chance Solem-Pfeifer is a Hear Nebraska intern. He also promises to wear sleeves to this show. And all of the time. Reach him at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.Greece's prime minister lashed out Friday at European "ineptness" in handling the continent's massive immigration crisis after 31 more people — mostly children — drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea.
Greece's Merchant Marine Ministry said 19 people died and 138 were rescued near the eastern island of Kalymnos, in one of the worst accidents in Greek waters since hundreds of thousands starting fleeing the war in Syria. Eight of the victims were children and three were babies.
At least three more people — a woman, a child and a baby — died when another migrant boat sank off the nearby Greek island of Rhodes, and three more were missing. On the islet of Agathonissi, a fisherman recovered the body of a boy missing from yet another accident on Wednesday.
The death toll in the Aegean over the past three days has now reached at least 50. On the Turkish side, Turkey's state-run agency said four children drowned and two others were missing after two new accidents Friday involving boats en route to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos.
Refugees and migrants arrive at Lesbos island after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey on Oct. 29. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)
Nearly 600 people were rescued by the Greek coast guard in the past 24 hours, while thousands more made it safely from Turkey to Greece southeastern islands.
Far to the west in Spain, rescuers found the bodies of four migrants and were searching for 35 missing from a boat that ran into trouble trying to reach Spain from Morocco.
Greece is the main point of entry for people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa and seeking a better life in Europe, after an alternative sea route from Libya to Italy became too dangerous. Well over half a million people — mainly Syrians and Afghans — have arrived so far this year from the nearby Turkish coast, as European governments weigh taking tougher measures to try to limit the number of arrivals in Europe.
The influx has overwhelmed authorities in financially struggling Greece.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Europe of an |
series, of this Cylon culture that has this belief system in one god that is literally wiping out this pagan belief system and then is pursuing them across the galaxy. There was a certain resonance in history.
Some viewers say the show stereotypes fundamentalist Christians as kind of robotic, while others are saying, "This is great...pagans are finally the good guys!"
The parallels between the Cylon beliefs and fundamentalist Christian beliefs, yeah, there are certain aspects of it there, but there's also the roots of the drama, also contains things such as Al Qaeda's use of its religious practice to justify what it does. That's part of who the Cylons are too, they aren't just really stalking horses for fundamentalist Christianity.
There also seem to be elements of Eastern religions in the show with Leoben Conoy, another Cylon, talking about consciousness and reincarnation. Does each of the different models of Cylons represent a different religious point of view?
I think that's true. Part of the idea of Leobon was to separate it from easy stereotypes of Christian beliefs. There wasn't really a hierarchical church, there wasn't an easy notion of heaven and hell. Leoben was starting to talk about things that were more Buddhist--consciousness, enlightenment and reincarnation. I thought it was interesting to marry those notions to the idea of one deity.
The Cylon named Number 6 seems to be suffering from a Madonna/whore complex, talking about sin and redemption while leading Dr. Baltar to bed.
Part of that is who those characters are within the Cylon pantheon. We've said that there are only 12 models of Cylons, because the Cylons look at humanity and say there's only 12 different kinds of human, when you get right down to it.
Part of that is who those characters are within the Cylon pantheon.
We've said that there are only 12 models of Cylons, because the Cylons look at humanity and say there's only 12 different kinds of human, when you get right down to it.RIYADH (Reuters) - A prominent Saudi cleric has issued an edict calling for opponents of the kingdom’s strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas.
Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak said in a fatwa the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education “as advocated by modernisers” is prohibited because it allows “sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women”.
“All of this leads to whatever ensues,” he said in the text of the fatwa published on his website (albarrak.islamlight.net).
“Whoever allows this mixing... allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam... Either he retracts or he must be killed... because he disavows and does not observe the Sharia,” Barrak said.
“Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honour and this is a type of pimping,” Barrak said.
Barrak, believed to be 77, does not hold a government position but he is viewed by Islamists as the leading independent authority of Saudi Arabia’s hardline version of Sunni Islam, often termed Wahhabism.
Western diplomats believe that King Abdullah’s push for reforms is resisted by a mainly older generation of clerics who still control the religious establishment.
The monarch dismissed a cleric from a top council of religious scholars in October after he demanded that religious scholars vet the curriculum at a new flagship mixed-gender university.
The kingdom, a major U.S. ally, is ruled by the Al Saud family in alliance with clerics from the strict Wahhabi school of Islam who oversee mosques, the judiciary and vast parts of education, and run a religious police body.
The Saudi government pays a morals police squad that roams streets and shopping malls to make sure unrelated men and women are kept apart, that women are covered from head to toe and search for alcohol and drugs under the kingdom’s austere interpretation of Islam.
In 2008, Barrak issued a fatwa that two Saudi writers should be tried for apostasy for their “heretical articles” and put to death if they did not repent after the two wrote articles that questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that Christians and Jews should be considered unbelievers.
He has also denounced Shi’ite Muslims as “infidels” in another edict that coincided with sectarian tensions in Iraq.Chapter 8
Dark Tunnels
Doran walked down a long hallway, carful not to step in the muddy river of water that covered the center of the ground. The lack of windows made him nervous, and the echo of every drop of water made him jump. The lantern he held in his hands barley illuminated the dingy tunnel in front of him, resulting in him stepping in multiple unpleasant substances. The sounds of little feet, moving all about him, let him know that he was not the only creature down there.
He came across a fork in the road and paused, one path stretched right, the other left, and both reeked of urine and feces. He bent his knees and inspected the walls around both entrances, looking for the sign. He found the little black bird painted on the tunnel wall to his right. He inspected it for a moment, brushing the long black hair out of his eyes, stood up, and turned left.
Doran thought of himself as a rock. Through a steady, practiced, self control, he had gotten people to believe that he had no joy, or fear, or any emotion, earning him the name "The Statue" amongst those who knew his profession. He had even began to believe the rumors himself, until he met the council. Now he knew that everyone has at least one emotion, fear.
The tunnels had his nerves on edge. Every turn and shadow seemed to set his heart beating fast. More than once, he had drawn his bow and turned around, ready to loose and arrow, only to find a lizard mouse staring up at him with blank eyes. After what felt like hours of trudging through sludge and feces, he came across his destination.
The door in front of him stood in contrast with it's surroundings. The tunnels were dark, dreary and grey. This door, however, was bright red and gold, except for it's knob, which seemed to be a polished glass that reflected his image. His bright blue eyes stared back at him with a hollow look. He walked up to the door and knocked three times, then two times, then once. Someone on the other side replied with two quick knocks, and Doran gave two more.
The door swung open, and a tall, thin, pale-faced man with two long, slender swords strapped to his back, stepped out. Doran put down his lantern, and his bow and arrows, and raised both arms. The pale-faced man frisked him, finding a knife hidden in his boot. Doran simply shrugged at the pale-faced man, "forgot I had it." He said in an emotionless voice. The man didn't reply, but picked up Doran's affects and made a motion for him to enter the door in front of him, which he obliged.
Upon the door closing behind him, the stench of the tunnels vanished, and was almost immediately replaced with the scent of roses and lavender. The room he entered was as large as a theater, and held none of the offensive sights and smells of its surrounding tunnels. The theme of red and gold extended from floor to ceiling, all mixed with an assortment of intricate engravings. Servants walked too and fro delivering food and wine to the group of three men, who sat at a large semi-circular table.
"Ahh Statue," Said the man in the middle of the three, "Glad you could make it. Come, sit." His voice was energetic, and gave no inkling of mal-intent. A servant brought out a chair, and seated it at the table, across from the three men. Doran did as he was bid, knowing that it was a command, not a request. "We gave you a task, did we not?" said the man again. He was large, with no visible hair anywhere on his body. His eyes were intense, and his gaze made Doran uncomfortable. The two others to his left and right were indistinguishable from one another, from their red robes, to their narrow cheekbones. Doran knew from experience that they were lackeys, and that only one man on their council held the power. He spoke directly to him.
"Yes sir." His voice was emotionless, but even The Statue felt the effects of the bald man's eyes. "And I have failed. Her teammate jumped in front of my arrow. Forgive me sir."
"I was under the impression that you never missed." The bald man said incredulously. "In fact, according to you reputation, you never have. Surely this isn't the first time someone tired to sacrifice themselves, to stop one of your arrows. What made this special?"
Doran thought about his answer carefully. In truth, he didn't know how he had missed. He had seen the boy push The Avatar out of the way, he had used his gift to adjust the arrows path to compensate, yet, it didn't find it's mark. "The master Airbender must have interfered," he lied, "it caught me off guard."
"Why is it that you did not fire a second arrow?" demanded the lackey on the right.
"Chief Beifong, the master Airbender, and The Avatar had seen me. They would have captured me if I had stayed." Doran listed off in his monotone voice, "I thought it might serve your interests better if I were to finish my work another night, rather than be caught and stopped."
This answer seemed to annoy the lackeys, as they both spoke up, "How dare you presume to know what the interests of this council are," said the one to the right.
"We would have been much happier if you and your partner would have completed the task and perished. Now we must be delayed, our plans are stalled because of YOU. " finished the other one.
"You know what happens to those who fail us." continued the first, "We needed you to succeed in order to continue. The weapon will soon be-" the man in the middle slammed his had down on the table, cutting off the man, before he said too much.
The second man motioned to the pale-faced man, "Faust, Show The Statue to our lovelies." He turned back to Doran, "Maybe then, you will see what it means to fail us."
Doran felt panic grip his chest, he started to weigh the odds of being able to overtake the pale-faced man named Faust. He knew that by reputation he didn't stand a chance, but even death was preferred over what he had been sentenced to.
"Councilman Granis, Councilman Gryves," said the bald man, waving Faust away with his hand, "surely this man speaks the truth. If he had stayed, they would have captured him. If they had captured him they would have questioned him." The two other men looked upset, but said nothing. Doran wanted to feel relief, but knew that he wouldn't until he was safely back above ground. "And we don't want that, do we?" Doran shook his head, " Though, out of curiosity, what would you have said if they had captured you?"
Doran's answer was quick and honest, "Nothing, sir. To betray the council is a highest offence."
"Indeed it is." He waved a servant over to pour him more wine, "We are an order of secrecy. Our power lies in the fact that, to everyone else, we are invisible." He took a long drink, making Doran sit in silence. "But are we invisible, Doran Long?"
Doran froze. No one knew his real name. It was a secret that he had buried a long time ago. Less then 5 people in the world had ever known it, and he had personally silenced 3 of them. His shock almost made him forget to answer, "No sir." He managed to spurt out, his inflection changing almost imperceptibly.
"Goood, and since we are not truly invisible, we must act it, or we are lost. Tell me, how does one act invisible."
"I don't know sir."
"With fear." The bald man motioned to another servant, who brought Doran a folder, printed on it's cover was the black bird stamp. Doran opened it, and clenched his teeth. Inside, were pictures of a young girl, no older than sixteen. She was dressed in rags and was chained to a table, her face was covered with cuts and bruises and the latest Republic City Daily was resting on her stomach. "Don't forget why you're here for us Doran." The bald man's voice had turned sour, revealing the anger in his voice, "You said, you have failed. You could not be more right." He took a large bite of meat from his plate and pointed it at Doran with his fork, "If you were smart, and I believe you are, then I wouldn't fail us again." His eyes were dark and intense on Doran, "Or next time, she'll wish we were as merciful as we were today."
Doran put his hands under the table so that the council wouldn't see him clench his fists. "I wont fail you again…" he manage to say, barley able to control his voice through his anger.
"I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that. Can you say it one more time?"
"I wont fail you again… sir"
"Much better. That will be all Doran, we will send you instructions for your next task. Your are dismissed." Doran got up and left the room. "Oh Doran… Leave the folder please." Though his demeanor was statuesque, inside his mind, Doran was screaming.
When he left the red door, Faust wordlessly gave back his weapons. He slung his bow over his shoulder, and began to traverse the maze of tunnels beneath Republic City. He made it five minutes, before what he saw in the folder overwhelmed him. 'The Statue' leaned against a wall, closed his eyes, and broke down. His body was racked with sobs.He added, “I don’t know, if you delayed it for six weeks, if anything changes.”
Under the bill, the budget office said, subsidies to help people buy health insurance would be “substantially smaller than under current law.” And deductibles would, in many cases, be higher. Starting in 2020, the budget office said, premiums and deductibles would be so onerous that “few low-income people would purchase any plan.”
Moreover, the report said, premiums for older people would be much higher under the Senate bill than under current law. As an example, it said, for a typical 64-year-old with an annual income of $26,500, the net premium in 2026 for a midlevel silver plan, after subsidies, would average $6,500, compared with $1,700 under the Affordable Care Act. And the insurance would cover less of the consumer’s medical costs.
Likewise, the report said, for a 64-year-old with an annual income of $56,800, the premium in 2026 would average $20,500 a year, or three times the amount expected under the Affordable Care Act.
The budget office report was a major setback to Senate Republican leaders, but it was too early to declare the legislation dead, and turmoil in health insurance markets could still induce Congress to take action this year. Many people thought the House repeal bill was dead after Speaker Paul D. Ryan pulled it from the floor on March 24, but a slightly revised version was narrowly approved by the House six weeks later.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Republican leadership, suggested that leaders would press forward with the Senate bill. He said that an argument could be made for delaying it “if you thought you were going to get a better policy,” but that that was not the case.
“This is the best we can do to try and satisfy all the different perspectives in our conference,” Mr. Thune said, adding that he did not think the politics would improve by waiting. “It’s time to fish or cut bait.”Who doesn't love Pandora Radio? But listening to it on my Android phone is the fastest way to kill the battery and what good is a mobile phone if it has to be constantly plugged in? New research shows that Android phones are the most data hungry smartphones out there. A group of researchers at AT&T Labs are calling on app makers to fix this problem by building more energy-aware apps. Not surprisingly, Pandora is one of their test subjects. (Facebook is another).
It's about time! All smartphones could use more energy efficient apps, but Android users suffer the most. New research from Nielsen found that although iPhone users engage in as much or more data-intensive activities (downloading apps, streaming music or video), as Android users, Android phones gobble up more monthly data. Each month, Androids are consuming 90MB more data than iPhone users.
As every smartphone user knows, the more data transferred, the faster the battery drains. But apparently it's not the OS that's the issue... it's the underlying apps, researchers say.
Enter new research being done by AT&T to create energy-efficient apps that recognize they are on a cell network, and limit both the number of times an app connects to the network and the time needed to connect. They have developed a tool that helps app developers figure out when their apps really need full power connections (download speeds of around 7.1Mbits/sec) or when the app can get by on a proposed "intermediate state" which consumes half the power and transmits less data at a slower speed, typically by sharing a low-speed channel, (often 16kbps).
For instance, the researchers found that when they ran Pandora for 12 minutes, the app conducted a series "of short bursts once every 62.5 seconds... While the music itself was sent simply and efficiently as a single file, the periodic audience measurements — each constituting only 2KBs or so — were being transmitted at regular 62.5-second intervals. The constant cycle of ramping up to full power (2 seconds to ramp up, 1 second to download 2KB) and back to idle (17 seconds for the two tail times... was extremely wasteful," they wrote.
After reading the paper, I had many questions. I contacted the researcher Alexandre Gerber, a principal member of the technical staff at AT&T Labs Research, and asked them.
How do the different platforms compare when it comes to energy efficiency already? Apple/iPhone/ios vs. Android vs. BlackBerry vs. Windows Phone 7. Does development platform influence this? Are some better than others?
Different OSs may have different energy efficiency in terms of some system components such as CPU and memory. But we are looking at the efficiency of accessing network (3G power consumption contributes about 50% of overall handset power consumption). That is mostly determined by the application instead of OS.
How do different network speeds/types influence this … 3G vs. 4G vs. WiFi?
It is the resource control policy of different networks that influence the energy efficiency. Cellular networks usually have similar resource control mechanisms, but cellular network technology is also getting better over time. WiFi has a different approach and it is more energy efficient than cellular.
The paper mentions, “One popular app was found to be using 40% of its power consumption to transmit 0.2% of its data.” … was this a typical finding? Or was it an extreme finding?
This is a common observation for applications with periodic data transfers (e.g. ads, keep alive, pull instead of the more efficient push, audience measurements), although the numbers may not always be that high.
In terms of hours of battery life, how much power overall would you guess is wasted by apps that do a poor job of managing state? (What I mean is, if you have a battery that is supposed to give you six hours of talk time, but dies in three hours of app usage, how much battery life would you get back if all of your apps were energy efficient? A few minutes? A few hours?)
Clearly that depends on the application you are using. For a large Internet radio, for instance, if 40% of its radio power, which contributes to 50% of total device power, is wasted, then you can save about 40% * 50% = 20% of overall battery life. So this could end up being a significant amount of time.
How much is app battery usage influenced/dependent on the handset? Do the same apps consume different amounts of energy on different handsets (and HTC android phone vs. a Motorola one? An iPhone 3 vs an iPhone 4)?
Yes they differ. The table below compares power consumption of three radio states (IDLE, FACH, and DCH) of two phones: HTC TyTn II and Google NexusOne. These are measurements made as part of our study in our Research group; it is independent of measurements made by our official device testing group:
Radio State | TyTn | NexusOne
-----------------------------------------
P(IDLE) | 0 | 0
P(FACH) | 460mW | 450mW
P(DCH) | 800mW | 600mW
In your paper, you detailed the results of analyzing the Pandora app, what smartphone platform did you use to analyze it?
Google Android.
Generally speaking, did you discover the Facebook app was more (or less) energy efficient than Pandora?
This is an apple to orange comparison. These are applications that are difficult to compare; the content is completely different. A comparison would only make sense between the same type of applications. For instance, we noticed that Pandora is more efficient than other Internet radios because it is sending data in bursts followed by long periods of inactivity, as opposed to continuously streaming content like some other Internet radios.During a town hall Thursday evening in Iowa, Donald Trump told voters the "only way" to make college more affordable for low-income students is "to start some governmental program."
The Republican presidential hopeful was asked what measures he would take, as president, to ensure middle-to-low income Americans are able to "pay their tuition [and] afford books while they're going to school."
"Well the only way you can do it is you have to start some governmental program and you have governmental programs right now," Trump told the moderator during the forum, which was held at a local community college.
"They go, and they work, and they take loans, and they're borrowed up, and they can't breathe, and they get through college and the worst thing is, they go through that whole process and they don't have any job," the billionaire said, referring to the majority of undergraduates enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities.
He continued, "You know the one program that the U.S. makes a whole lot of money with is student loans, and that's maybe the one program they shouldn't be making money with."
"So we're going to have to start a program," he said. "We're going to do something very big with loans because you have to get these people going. They really feel down and out."
Pressed on what he would do to solve the burgeoning student debt crisis, Trump said, "we're going to do refinancing for people who have loans who literally can't do anything."
"We're going to do refinancing and extensions," he said. Both of Trump's leading Democratic opponents, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have proposed refinancing existing student loans.
Last June, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on legislation sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that would have enabled students to refinance their student loans at lower interest rates.
Meanwhile, GOP candidates Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee have said during separate campaign events they would support allowing students to refinance their student loans.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Green Beret sergeant was electrocuted in Iraq in 2008 because of failures by the U.S. military and a major defense contractor, which did not properly ground and inspect electrical equipment, according to a Pentagon report out Monday.
Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a 24-year-old Green Beret, died in a shower at his base in Iraq in January 2008.
Nine of 18 electrocution deaths reported in Iraq were caused by "improper grounding or faulty equipment," including the January 2008 death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, the Defense Department's inspector-general found.
Investigations remain open in five of those cases, according to a summary of the report obtained by CNN.
The new report concluded that "multiple systems and organizations failed," leaving Maseth "exposed to unacceptable risk."
The decorated soldier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was electrocuted in a shower at a U.S. base in Baghdad that once served as one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.
The report found that a water pump installed by military contractor KBR was not grounded, leading to Maseth's electrocution when it short-circuited.
It found that Maseth's commanders failed to ensure that renovations to the palace had been properly done, the Army did not set standards for jobs or contractors, and KBR did not ground electrical equipment it installed at the facility.
The Houston, Texas-based company has defended its performance in the war zone from extensive criticism by Congress and has argued that it was not to blame for any fatalities.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, it said it had not seen the Pentagon report and would not comment.
"While the death of Staff Sgt. Maseth was tragic, KBR continues to maintain that it was not responsible for his death," company spokeswoman Heather Browne said. "The building in which Staff Sgt. Maseth lived was built by Iraqi and other contractors under the previous Iraqi leadership."
Brown said the building, "like many other pre-existing buildings in Iraq, had not been grounded or bonded by the contractors who built the structure," and she said KBR had warned the military about the hazard nine months before Maseth died.
"Prior to that incident, the military never directed KBR to repair, upgrade or improve the grounding system in the building in which Maseth resided, nor was KBR directed to perform any preventive maintenance at this facility," Browne said.
But Maseth's mother, who has filed suit against KBR in her son's death, said she was "pleased" by the findings.
"The results are revealing and contrary to what KBR and its president have continuously stated over the past year," Cheryl Harris said. "On that note, the DOD IG report states that KBR installed the water pump that killed my son, a point that KBR has flatly denied over the past year."
Maseth's death led to congressional hearings in 2008 and demands for a full investigation by the military, which resulted in the report out Monday.
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who pushed for the investigation, said Monday's report should not be the end of the process.
"We cannot stop with the publication of this report alone," the Democrat said in a written statement. "Those who failed to carry out their contractual obligations in a way that contributed to the death of a U.S. soldier should be held fully accountable for their negligence."
Another report is being prepared by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, Casey said.
Maseth's family and that of Christopher Everett, another soldier mentioned in the report, have sued KBR over their deaths.
Everett, an Army sergeant, was electrocuted in 2005 while using a power washer at an American base outside Ramadi.
Other deaths the inspector-general's report found were caused by faulty electrical equipment or improper grounding include the death of Army Spc. Marvin Campo-Siles in April 2004 in Samarra; Spc. Chase Whitham, May 2004, in Mosul; Spc. Marcus Nolasco, also May 2004, in Baiji; Marine Pfc. Brian Cutter, in Fallujah, the same month; Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class David Cedergren, killed in Iskandariya in September 2004; Sgt. Michael Montpetit, who died in Baghdad in June 2007; and Sohan Singh, a private contractor killed in Fallujah in July 2005.
In March, a top Army inspector said that thousands of buildings on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have such poorly installed wiring that American troops face life-threatening risks.
Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey, said problems were "everywhere" in Iraq, where 18 U.S. troops have died by electrocution since 2003. The nine electrocutions not caused by faulty grounding were caused by other electrical accidents, such as contact with live power lines.
CNN's Matt Smith contributed to this report.
All About Iraq • KBR Inc. • U.S. Department of DefenseColonel Oliver North has never been one to mince words — prior to his career as a political commentator or Fox News, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps.
So when President Obama observed recently that “America is safer and more secure than it was eight years ago,” North had something to say. But after announcing that he would be appearing on Fox News over the weekend to discuss the matter, plans changed.
Instead, along with an apology, North shared his response via Facebook:
Please forgive my error in posting I would be on Fox News Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning to give you my take on… Posted by Oliver North on Saturday, December 17, 2016
He began with an apology for passing along bad information:
“Please forgive my error in posting I would be on Fox News Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning to give you my take on Obama’s claim that, ‘America is safer and more secure that it was 8 years ago.’ My apologies. I screwed up. It didn’t happen.”
Then he immediately called out the media outlets who had failed to challenge President Obama’s statement — or at least ask for clarification:
“So, instead, here are my North Points you would have heard had I been on air: Obama says: ‘THE USA is stronger & more respected than 8 years ago.’ On its face that statement is delusional. Why didn’t any of the main stream media ask ‘where are we stronger or more respected?'”
And North proceeded to give a point-by-point lecture on what he believed to be the laundry list of security failures of the current administration:
“The utopian Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. Our allies no longer trust us and our adversaries don’t respect us.
Russians thumb their noses at us all over Europe and the middle east. When Moscow hacks, Obama says he told Putin ‘cut it out.’
Putin delivers high-tech SAMS to Iran and the U.S. complains at the UN. Russian aggression in Ukraine and threats to Baltics are met with empty hollow threats of ‘consequences.’ Chinese build armed bastions & airstrips off Philippine coast and O-team whines about ‘ecological consequences.’ Beijing orders ‘snatch and grab’ of U.S. Navy unmanned submersible and Obama files a diplomatic protest. In the Middle East, the legacy of the Obama admin is genocide, a horrific refugee diaspora and a complete destabilization of the Middle East. When Obama made his grand apology tour, utopian Arab spring speech in Cairo in June 2009, Syria had 23m people. Today 12m people have been displaced; 400k+ Killed in Action; and 1.6m wounded. Syrian civil war, Obama bug-out from Iraq, rise of ISIS, the IS invasion of Iraq, Al-Baghdadi’s “caliphate,” the overthrow of Gadhafi, global spread of radical Islam to 38 countries – all because of the Obama administrations weakness & failure to lead. In South Sudan and Yemen, millions more innocent civilians are being driven from their homes and left to die. Clear now that Obama admin – right from the start – was prepared to do whatever necessary to get a nuke deal with Tehran. Today: Russia and Iran are calling the shots in the middle east.
In NATO ally turkey, Tayep Erdogan is dealing with Moscow and Tehran and putting NATO’s southern flank and the US base at Incerlik at risk. Iranians, with help from North Korea and the $1.4 b Obama gave the Ayatollahs, are building nuke weapons and means of delivering them. Obama says ‘we couldn’t stop it.’ That’s untrue. A real POTUS would have built consensus with moderate Sunnis in Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE to stop the civil war in Syria. Would have required U.S. logistics support & advisors but not combat troops to thwart Russian & Iranian ambitions. But O-team didn’t want to do anything to threaten Iran nuke deal and Putin’s support for it!”
North wrapped it all up with four points of advice for the incoming administration:
“Four lessons for new administration: Cannot lead from behind. No POTUS should tell adversaries what we won’t do. Diplomacy must be backed up by “force” [mil or econ] or it’s hollow. Peace thru strength still works.
North, whose service in the Marine Corps began with Vietnam and ended with the Iran-Contra scandal, served as Deputy Director of the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan.Quick, alert the Minister for Women! Wait...never mind.
International Women’s Day is this weekend, and the nation’s gearing up to think briefly about equality and gender issues for a few minutes before getting back to watching I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Earlier today Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called on Tony Abbott to hold a national conference addressing violence against women, and on Monday Q&A are having their first all-female, female-hosted episode, with Annabel Crabb in the driver’s seat and featuring personages like Germaine Greer, Julie Bishop and Queensland Young Australian of the Year Yassmin Abdel-Magied.
If you’re an institution not exactly known for championing women’s representation — like, for instance, a state political party that only has eight female representatives out of 42 — this is the time of year to stay home, turn your phone off and focus on working through the box set of Entourage you got for Christmas lest anyone remember you exist. If that was their strategy this year, Queensland’s Liberal National Party just threw themselves under the bus by deciding to throw their International Women’s Day bash at the Brisbane Tattersall’s Club — a place that doesn’t allow women to join.
The Brisbane Tattersall’s is one of Australia’s last men’s-only clubs, right up there with a Julien Blanc TED Talk, the patented Night Out With The Bois beloved by desperately sad, prematurely bald office bros everywhere, and your older brother’s treehouse. In the FAQ section of its website, Tattersall’s asks itself “How does a Private Membership Club for men remain relevant today?”, somehow without immediately arriving at the conclusion of “it doesn’t”. While women can physically enter the club, they either need to be signed in by a member or show their “Partners Card,” which can be obtained with a member’s (read: husband’s) permission or by asking Daddy very nicely for one.
By the way, this is actually a thing that’s still legal — back in 2009 the Melbourne Club, which was established in 1838 by the kind of people whose idea of a good time was saddling up and hunting poor people for sport, formally won the right to be exempt from anti-discrimination laws that would’ve impinged upon their precious No Girlz Allowed feels. Also, cooties.
Former LNP Speaker Fiona Simpson, who’s speaking at the event, told the Courier Mail that she was “less troubled by openly male-only clubs or openly women-only gyms than I am by areas of society that have a veneer of equality but which hide structural impediments or unconscious bias that block women from opportunities.” The existence of women’s-only gyms being vastly, vastly different from old white bloke’s clubs aside, Simpson’s broader point is almost fair enough — there are plenty of prominent people and organisations that pay lip-service to gender equality without actually doing anything. Feel that argument might’ve been made a little stronger by someone whose party isn’t headed up by a male Minister for Women, though.
Speaking of, Prime Minister Tony Abbott thinks this is a great idea, because of course he does. Trying to somehow spin this as evidence of the LNP’s commitment to gender equality, Abbott said the party was a “broad church” and ended up talking about trumpets and the walls of Jericho because he has been under a lot of stress lately.
Our Minister for Women re holding International Women’s Day event at men-only club. http://t.co/YWN5kRSBSp #auspol pic.twitter.com/ijSPvw5Vp3 — Glenn Murray (@divinewrite) March 4, 2015
Do yourself a favour and go read everything on the Tattersall’s website in the voice of a British lord with a severe case of bulldog jowls, liberally interspersed with exclamations of horror like “capital gains tax? By God!” Lots of fun.Receive an email when new articles are posted on this topic.
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Carla J. Greenbaum
The risk for type 1 diabetes development was not decreased in autoantibody-positive relatives of patients with type 1 diabetes randomly assigned to oral insulin, and oral insulin did not delay the time to diabetes progression, study data show.
“We now know that we can identify people long before they have clinical type 1 diabetes,” Carla J. Greenbaum, MD, chair of Diabetes TrialNet and director of the diabetes program at Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle, told Endocrine Today. “Indeed, we now consider that having two or more islet autoantibodies (immune markers in the blood) is an early stage of type 1 diabetes. TrialNet’s aim is to find therapies that can delay or prevent disease progression from early stages to clinically apparent disease.”
Greenbaum and colleagues evaluated data from 560 relatives of patients with type 1 diabetes randomly assigned to daily 7.5 mg oral insulin or placebo; participants underwent an oral glucose tolerance test every 6 months. Participants were enrolled between March 2, 2007, and Dec. 21, 2015, and followed until Dec. 31, 2016.
“We know that family members have a 15 times increased risk of developing type 1 diabetes.... Thus, an important clinical implication about this study is that family members should be told about their increased risk and be offered the opportunity to be tested for antibodies in a research study,” Greenbaum said.
Researchers stratified participants by antibody type: The main study group included participants positive for islet cell antibodies or insulinoma antigen 2 and glutamic acid decarboxylase antibodies, and insulin release |
second electrolyte to consume the hydrogen produced by the first. In 1836 he invented the Daniell cell, which consisted of a copper pot filled with a copper sulfate solution, in which was immersed an unglazed earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid and a zinc electrode. The earthenware barrier was porous, which allowed ions to pass through but kept the solutions from mixing.
The Daniell cell was a great improvement over the existing technology used in the early days of battery development and was the first practical source of electricity. It provided a longer and more reliable current than the Voltaic cell. It was also safer and less corrosive. It had an operating voltage of roughly 1.1 volts. It soon became the industry standard for use, especially with the new telegraph networks.
The Daniell cell was also used as a working standard for definition of the volt, which is the unit of electromotive force. [6]
Bird's cell [ edit ]
A version of the Daniell cell was invented in 1837 by the Guy's hospital physician Golding Bird who used a plaster of Paris barrier to keep the solutions separate. Bird's experiments with this cell were of some importance to the new discipline of electrometallurgy.
Porous pot cell [ edit ]
Porous pot cell
The porous pot version of the Daniell cell was invented by John Dancer, a Liverpool instrument maker, in 1838. It consists of a central zinc anode dipped into a porous earthenware pot containing a zinc sulfate solution. The porous pot is, in turn, immersed in a solution of copper sulfate contained in a copper can, which acts as the cell's cathode. The use of a porous barrier allows ions to pass through but keeps the solutions from mixing.
Gravity cell [ edit ]
A 1919 illustration of a gravity cell. This particular variant is also known as a crowfoot cell due to distinctive shape of the electrodes
In the 1860s, a Frenchman named Callaud invented a variant of the Daniell cell called the gravity cell. This simpler version dispensed with the porous barrier. This reduced the internal resistance of the system and, thus, the battery yielded a stronger current. It quickly became the battery of choice for the American and British telegraph networks, and was used until the 1950s.
The gravity cell consisted of a glass jar, in which a copper cathode sat on the bottom and a zinc anode was suspended beneath the rim. Copper sulfate crystals would be scattered around the cathode and then the jar would be filled with distilled water. As the current was drawn, a layer of zinc sulfate solution would form at the top around the anode. This top layer was kept separate from the bottom copper sulfate layer by its lower density and by the polarity of the cell.
The zinc sulfate layer was clear in contrast to the deep blue copper sulfate layer, which allowed a technician to measure the battery life with a glance. On the other hand, this setup meant the battery could be used only in a stationary appliance, else the solutions would mix or spill. Another disadvantage was that a current had to be continually drawn to keep the two solutions from mixing by diffusion, so it was unsuitable for intermittent use.
Poggendorff cell [ edit ]
The German scientist Johann Christian Poggendorff overcame the problems with separating the electrolyte and the depolariser using a porous earthenware pot in 1842. In the Poggendorff cell, sometimes called Grenet Cell due to the works of Eugene Grenet around 1859, the electrolyte was dilute sulphuric acid and the depolariser was chromic acid. The two acids were physically mixed together eliminating the porous pot. The positive electrode (cathode) was two carbon plates, with a zinc plate (negative or anode) positioned between them. Because of the tendency of the acid mixture to react with the zinc, a mechanism was provided to raise the zinc electrode clear of the acids.
The cell provided 1.9 volts. It proved popular with experimenters for many years due to its relatively high voltage; greater ability to produce a consistent current and lack of any fumes, but the relative fragility of its thin glass enclosure and the necessity of having to raise the zinc plate when the cell was not in use eventually saw it fall out of favour. The cell was also known as the 'chromic acid cell', but principally as the 'bichromate cell'. This latter name came from the practice of producing the chromic acid by adding sulphuric acid to potassium dichromate, even though the cell itself contained no dichromate.
The Fuller cell was developed from the Poggendorff cell. Although the chemistry was principally the same, the two acids were once again separated by a porous container and the zinc was treated with mercury to form an amalgam.
Grove cell [ edit ]
The Grove cell was invented by Welshman William Robert Grove in 1839. It consisted of a zinc anode dipped in sulfuric acid and a platinum cathode dipped in nitric acid, separated by porous earthenware. The Grove cell provided a high current and nearly twice the voltage of the Daniell cell, which made it the favoured cell of the American telegraph networks for a time. However, it gave off poisonous nitric oxide fumes when operated. The voltage also dropped sharply as the charge diminished, which became a liability as telegraph networks grew more complex. Platinum was also very expensive.
Dun cell [ edit ]
Alfred Dun 1885, nitro-muriatic acid (aqua regis) - Iron & Carbon
In the new element there can be used advantageously as exciting-liquid in the first case such solutions as have in a concentrated condition great depolarizing-power, which effect the whole depolarization chemically without necessitating the mechanical expedient of increased carbon surface. It is preferred to use iron as the positive electrode, and as exciting-liquid nitro muriatic acid, (aqua regis,) the mixture consisting of muriatic and nitric acids. The nitro-muriatic acid, as explained above, serves for filling both cells. For the carbon-cells it is used strong or very slightly diluted, but for the other cells very diluted, (about one-twentieth, or at the most one-tenth.) The element containing in one cell carbon and concentrated nitro-muriatic acid and in the other cell iron and dilute nitro-muriatic acid remains constant for at least twenty hours when employed for electric incandescent lighting. (p. 80 at Google Books)
Rechargeable batteries and dry cells [ edit ]
19th-century illustration of Planté's original lead-acid cell
Up to this point, all existing batteries would be permanently drained when all their chemical reactions were spent. In 1859, Gaston Planté invented the lead–acid battery, the first-ever battery that could be recharged by passing a reverse current through it. A lead acid cell consists of a lead anode and a lead dioxide cathode immersed in sulfuric acid. Both electrodes react with the acid to produce lead sulfate, but the reaction at the lead anode releases electrons whilst the reaction at the lead dioxide consumes them, thus producing a current. These chemical reactions can be reversed by passing a reverse current through the battery, thereby recharging it.
Planté's first model consisted of two lead sheets separated by rubber strips and rolled into a spiral.[7] His batteries were first used to power the lights in train carriages while stopped at a station[citation needed]. In 1881, Camille Alphonse Faure invented an improved version that consisted of a lead grid lattice into which a lead oxide paste was pressed, forming a plate. Multiple plates could be stacked for greater performance. This design was easier to mass-produce.
Compared to other batteries, Planté's was rather heavy and bulky for the amount of energy it could hold. However, it could produce remarkably large currents in surges. It also had very low internal resistance, meaning that a single battery could be used to power multiple circuits.[5]
The lead-acid battery is still used today in automobiles and other applications where weight is not a big factor. The basic principle has not changed since 1859. In the early 1930s, a gel electrolyte (instead of a liquid) produced by adding silica to a charged cell was used in the LT battery of portable vacuum-tube radios. In the 1970s, "sealed" versions became common (commonly known as a "gel cell" or "SLA"), allowing the battery to be used in different positions without failure or leakage.
Today cells are classified as "primary" if they produce a current only until their chemical reactants are exhausted, and "secondary" if the chemical reactions can be reversed by recharging the cell. The lead-acid cell was the first "secondary" cell.
Leclanché cell [ edit ]
In 1866, Georges Leclanché invented a battery that consisted of a zinc anode and a manganese dioxide cathode wrapped in a porous material, dipped in a jar of ammonium chloride solution. The manganese dioxide cathode had a little carbon mixed into it as well, which improved conductivity and absorption.[8] It provided a voltage of 1.4 volts.[9] This cell achieved very quick success in telegraphy, signalling and electric bell work.
The dry cell form was used to power early telephones—usually from an adjacent wooden box affixed to the wall—before telephones could draw power from the telephone line itself. The Leclanché cell could not provide a sustained current for very long. In lengthy conversations, the battery would run down, rendering the conversation inaudible.[10] This was because certain chemical reactions in the cell increased the internal resistance and, thus, lowered the voltage. These reactions reversed themselves when the battery was left idle, so it was good only for intermittent use.[5]
Zinc-carbon cell, the first dry cell [ edit ]
Many experimenters tried to immobilize the electrolyte of an electrochemical cell to make it more convenient to use. The Zamboni pile of 1812 was a high-voltage dry battery but capable of delivering only minute currents. Various experiments were made with cellulose, sawdust, spun glass, asbestos fibers, and gelatine.[11]
In 1886, Carl Gassner obtained a German patent[12] on a variant of the Leclanché cell, which came to be known as the dry cell because it did not have a free liquid electrolyte. Instead, the ammonium chloride was mixed with plaster of Paris to create a paste, with a small amount of zinc chloride added in to extend the shelf life. The manganese dioxide cathode was dipped in this paste, and both were sealed in a zinc shell, which also acted as the anode. In November 1887, he obtained U.S. Patent 373,064 for the same device.
Unlike previous wet cells, Gassner's dry cell was more solid, did not require maintenance, did not spill, and could be used in any orientation. It provided a potential of 1.5 volts. The first mass-produced model was the Columbia dry cell, first marketed by the National Carbon Company in 1896.[13] The NCC improved Gassner's model by replacing the plaster of Paris with coiled cardboard, an innovation that left more space for the cathode and made the battery easier to assemble. It was the first convenient battery for the masses and made portable electrical devices practical, and led directly to the invention of the flashlight.
The zinc–carbon battery (as it came to be known) is still manufactured today.
In parallel, in 1887 Wilhelm Hellesen developed his own dry cell design. It has been claimed that Hellesen's design preceded that of Gassner.[14]
In 1887, a dry-battery was developed by Yai Sakizō (屋井 先蔵) of Japan, then patented in 1892.[15][16] In 1893, Yai Sakizō's dry-battery was exhibited in World's Columbian Exposition and commanded considerable international attention.
NiCd, the first alkaline battery [ edit ]
In 1899, a Swedish scientist named Waldemar Jungner invented the nickel–cadmium battery, a rechargeable battery that had nickel and cadmium electrodes in a potassium hydroxide solution; the first battery to use an alkaline electrolyte. It was commercialized in Sweden in 1910 and reached the United States in 1946. The first models were robust and had significantly better energy density than lead-acid batteries, but were much more expensive.
20th century: new technologies and ubiquity [ edit ]
Nickel-iron batteries manufactured between 1972 and 1975 under the "Exide" brand, originally developed in 1901 by Thomas Edison.
A set of modern batteries
Jungner had invented a nickel–iron battery in 1899, the same year as his Ni-Cad battery, but found it to be inferior to its cadmium counterpart and, as a consequence, never bothered patenting it. It produced a lot more hydrogen gas when being charged, meaning it could not be sealed, and the charging process was less efficient (it was, however, cheaper). Thomas Edison picked up Jungner's nickel-iron battery design, patented it himself and sold it in 1903. Edison wanted to commercialise a more lightweight and durable substitute for the lead-acid battery that powered some early automobiles, and hoped that by doing so electric cars would become the standard, with his firm as its main battery vendor. However, customers found his first model to be prone to leakage and short battery life, and it did not outperform the lead-acid cell by much either. Although Edison was able to produce a more reliable and powerful model seven years later, by this time the inexpensive and reliable Model T Ford had made gasoline engine cars the standard. Nevertheless, Edison's battery achieved great success in other applications such as electric and diesel-electric rail vehicles, providing backup power for railroad crossing signals, or to provide power for the lamps used in mines.[17][18]
Common alkaline batteries [ edit ]
Until the late 1950s the zinc–carbon battery continued to be a popular primary cell battery, but its relatively low battery life hampered sales. In 1955, an engineer named Lewis Urry, working for Union Carbide at the National Carbon Company Parma Research Laboratory, was tasked with finding a way to extend the life of zinc-carbon batteries, but Urry decided instead that alkaline batteries held more promise. Until then, longer-lasting alkaline batteries were unfeasibly expensive. Urry's battery consisted of a manganese dioxide cathode and a powdered zinc anode with an alkaline electrolyte. Using powdered zinc gave the anode a greater surface area. These batteries hit the market in 1959.[citation needed]
Nickel-hydrogen and nickel metal-hydride [ edit ]
The nickel–hydrogen battery entered the market as an energy-storage subsystem for commercial communication satellites.[19][20]
The first consumer grade nickel–metal hydride batteries (NiMH) for smaller applications appeared on the market in 1989 as a variation of the 1970s nickel–hydrogen battery.[21] NiMH batteries tend to have longer lifespans than NiCd batteries (and their lifespans continue to increase as manufacturers experiment with new alloys) and, since cadmium is toxic, NiMH batteries are less damaging to the environment.
Lithium and lithium-ion batteries [ edit ]
Lithium Ion Battery
Lithium is the metal with lowest density and with the greatest electrochemical potential and energy-to-weight ratio. The low atomic weight and small size of its ions also speeds its diffusion, suggesting that it would make an ideal material for batteries.[22] Experimentation with lithium batteries began in 1912 under G.N. Lewis, but commercial lithium batteries did not come to market until the 1970s.[23][24] Three volt lithium primary cells such as the CR123A type and three volt button cells are still widely used, especially in cameras and very small devices.
Three important developments marked the 1980s. In 1980 an American chemist, John B. Goodenough, discovered the LiCoO 2 cathode (positive lead) and a Moroccan research scientist, Rachid Yazami, discovered the graphite anode (negative lead) with the solid electrolyte. In 1981, Japanese chemists Tokio Yamabe and Shizukuni Yata discovered a novel nano-carbonacious-PAS (polyacene,) [25] and found that it was very effective for the anode in the conventional liquid electrolyte. [26] [27] This led a research team managed by Akira Yoshino of Asahi Chemical, Japan, to build the first lithium-ion battery prototype in 1985, a rechargeable and more stable version of the lithium battery; Sony commercialized the lithium-ion battery in 1991. [28]
In 1997, the lithium polymer battery was released by Sony and Asahi Kasei. These batteries hold their electrolyte in a solid polymer composite instead of in a liquid solvent, and the electrodes and separators are laminated to each other. The latter difference allows the battery to be encased in a flexible wrapping instead of in a rigid metal casing, which means such batteries can be specifically shaped to fit a particular device. This advantage has favored lithium polymer batteries in the design of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, and of radio-controlled aircraft, as such batteries allow for more flexible and compact design. They generally have a lower energy density than normal lithium-ion batteries.
See also [ edit ]A majority of registered voters support a proposal to impose a new 20 percent tax on imports, according to a new poll.
The Harvard-Harris Poll survey found that 62 percent of Americans would support a 20 percent tax on all goods made outside the United States.
The idea is backed by 77 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of independents and 51 percent of Democrats, according to the poll.
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A new tax on imports is a key part of the tax-reform plan from Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.). The border-adjustment tax would impose the 20 percent tax on imports and reduce taxes on exports.
It has split Republicans and the business sector, however, with retailers loudly protesting the idea of hiking taxes on imports.
President Trump was once opposed to the tax but has since said he believes it could boost job growth in the U.S. by encouraging domestic production.
Fifty-three percent of Americans agree with that reading, saying the tax would create domestic jobs and stimulate the economy.
Fiscally conservative groups, including the Charles and David Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, oppose the tax, arguing that costs will be passed on to consumers.
It’s believed that any House tax-reform plan that includes the border-adjustment tax would be met with opposition in the Senate, greatly complicating the GOP’s tax-reform efforts.
The Harvard-Harris survey also found that 80 percent of voters support a 10 percent surcharge on all income over $5 million.
Two-thirds would like to see a tax on robots that replace human jobs, and 50 percent support a carbon tax.
Voters are split on whether corporations should get a tax break, but 78 percent would support cutting the corporate tax rate on money repatriated from overseas. That number grows to 82 percent if the repatriation taxes are used to fund a government infrastructure program.
Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn believes the poll’s overall findings show a bipartisan deal could be forged on taxes.
“Democrats might bargain for a ten percent surcharge on incomes over $5 million, which is favored by 80 percent,” Penn said.
“The public would support a corporate tax reform that includes repatriation and infrastructure. Voters want lower rates and to keep their deductions — caps on deductions however were popular. This is a deal waiting to be made if Democrats and Republicans can work together.”
Ninety-one percent of voters said they want to see Trump and Republicans in Congress bring Democrats into the fold for tax reform.
And there is broad support among voters for any proposals that cut income taxes.
Seventy-one percent of Americans favor a tax reform plan that would reduce individual tax rates, eliminate gift and inheritance taxes, limit itemized deductions, replace personal and dependent exceptions with a higher standard deduction and eliminate the alternative minimum tax.
“The Trump administration has a real opportunity for tax reform now — there is significant support for reducing rates and capping deductions,” Penn said.
The online survey of 2,027 registered voters was conducted from April 14 to 17. The partisan breakdown is 36 percent Democrat, 31 percent Republican, 30 percent independent and 3 percent other. Harvard-Harris Poll uses a methodology that doesn’t produce a traditional margin of error.
The Harvard-Harris Poll survey is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard-Harris throughout 2017. Full poll results will be posted online later this week.Two seasons ago, he won the OHL scoring race while playing second fiddle to Connor McDavid on the Erie Otters. Last season, he finished third in points per game - behind London linemates Christian Dvorak and Mitch Marner - while leading Team Canada in scoring at the World Junior Championship. Now, Dylan is using his last few games as a junior hockey player to remind the hockey world just how good he is as he puts on a show at the 99th Memorial Cup.
When the season started, there were many - including the player himself - that believed Dylan Strome might be ready for the NHL, both thanks to his outstanding performance in Erie and due to the success of his draft peers. He wasn’t yet ready for the NHL, and in retrospect, he seems to know that now:
"You are going against very special players at that level, when you make a mistake, it turns into a goal. You have to play faster and you have to be better in your defensive end."
Right away, there were Coyotes fans that turned to the negative, downgrading Strome’s potential as a prospect. Some have gone as far as to call him a bust, which is odd, given that only two years earlier, fan favorite Max Domi was sent back to the OHL for his draft+2 season.
It’s been fashionable over the last few years for hockey fans to write off prospects if they take a little longer to make an impact in the NHL. The recent influx of high-end youth in the league has done a lot to warp the perception of prospects and the normal development curve. The talent coming out of junior hockey and the OHL in particular over the past few years has been at an all-time high. The format of draft+2 players making an impact in the NHL is new, and one that isn’t going to be sustained given the next wave of junior talent.
Mitch Marner’s fantastic rookie season hurts Strome’s case. He might not have been the proper pick at #3, though some would still argue he is, that doesn’t make him a bad player or a diminished prospect. The two are very different players, with very different skill sets and therefore, a very different development curve should have been expected - and probably was by Coyotes management.
When Strome was sent back to Erie, what did he do? He went on to have the best season of his life and produce offensively at a higher rate than anyone else in the CHL. His 2.14 points per game are the highest in junior hockey since Connor McDavid in 2014-15. Leading the league in point production is a good sign, doing it 5v5 is an even better one.
Dylan Strome OHL Statistics TEAM GP G A TP P/GP TEAM GP G A TP P/GP Erie Otters 60 10 29 39 0.65 Erie Otters 68 45 84 129 1.9 Erie Otters 56 37 74 111 1.98 Erie Otters 35 22 53 75 2.14
It’s been argued by some that Dylan Strome’s development has been stalled, though that is fictitious and mostly based on anecdotal negativity. The fact is that Strome’s offensive production has gone up every season and he is currently playing the best hockey of his life. He's been the best player on the biggest stage this week at the Memorial Cup.
#Coyotes prospect Dylan Strome displays so many wonderful things on this goal for the @ErieOtters last night. | #BellLetsTalk pic.twitter.com/4EtkSGBxR0 — Kathryn Jean (@msconduct) January 26, 2017
Strome’s development goes well beyond the numbers as well. Skating has always been the biggest issue for the big center, something that one Ontario-based scout told Sportsnet isn’t the case anymore:
"[Dylan] wasn’t a great skater in his draft year, but you had a sense that it was just a matter of strength—if he put the work in, then it was going to improve, which is exactly what happened in the season after his draft year, a big step up.”
Now, Strome is nowhere near a finished product, but he’s a lot closer than the nay-sayers would have you believe. His skating has improved, but the Coyotes would definitely like to see a little more progress this summer. Beyond that, putting some muscle onto his lean frame is the other physical training he will need to do this offseason.
The other work Dylan Strome needs to do is between the ears. During last year’s training camp, there were rumblings of immaturity standing in his way. Being able to change his mental state from a junior player to a professional is going to be the biggest necessity and challenge for Strome this summer.
He has been usurped at the top of Arizona’s depth chart by Clayton Keller, but that says more about Keller’s elite skill than anything else. Strome was the best player in the CHL this season and still one of the best prospects in the game. He will be a regular in a very young, very exciting Coyote’s lineup next season and more likely than not, he’ll be centering the team’s top line before too long.
With only a couple games left in his junior career, Dylan Strome is still setting records. His 7 points against Saint John are the most ever by a player in a single Memorial Cup game. He finally got his elusive OHL Championship this spring and now he’s looking to put an exclamation mark on a wonderful junior career with a Memorial Cup victory.
You can tell he wants it. Strome has been Erie’s best player for two of the three games so far. A win on junior hockey’s biggest stage would be a great final chapter and worthy of celebration, though I think, and Yotes fans should hope, that Strome knows that the celebration should be short lived. He’s a lock to be in Arizona’s top-9 on opening day next fall and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it won’t take him long to make the organization and fans forget all about the angst caused when he was sent down this season.
Thanks to Tom Hunter (@PuckDontLie on twitter) for this piece on Dylan Strome.Fabio Fognini is not having his best days at the moment. His verbal abuse of a female umpire in the US Open first round cost him plenty.
Back at home, where he is having time to meditate on what happened, he concducted an exclusive interview with Sky Sport, the Italian-leading sports media outlet. In this interview, the world #26 seemed very unhappy and sad about the situation he created, and was about to cry for almost the whole talk. After a first brief Instagram post on his story where he gave some signs of apology, this time the situation was more serious so that he could focus more and give the right comments.
(You can see the Italian article with the video of the interview, which was in Italian, here; however, the video is not available in all countries, including the United States.)
“I know I’m unsustainable, I’m here to apologize to everyone, not only to the chair umpire to whom I already apologised in Ney York, but to everyone who felt offended, especially women.” Fabio started off. “I have nothing against women. I’ve been described as a sexist but it’s not true. I have a family now, I’m married, I have a mum and a sister and I’ve always respected them.”
The Italian also showed compassion to his young fans and said that he’s willing to go into schools to talk about sexism and tell his personal experience. “I know I’ve done a stupid thing, as I said I’m here to apologize and I’m very sorry to my many young fans who can call me an idol. I can also tell them my thoughts in tennis schools or normal schools.”
“Errare humanum est” Latins said, “Perseverare autem diabolicum.” It’s human to make mistakes but to keep doing them isn’t. Fognini isn’t new to these kind of behaviors on court, but in the interview he seemed mature and confessed: “I have a limit. I recognize it. I’ve been working with a mental coach to try to avoid this things, and in the last while it was going well. This idiocy is inexplicable and I take responsibility for that, it won’t happen again.”
Fognini also admitted he talked with his wife Flavia Pennetta about it: “Of course she’s sorry, not for what happened on court but because she knows I’m not like this in everyday life. She knows the sacrifices I do because she did them too, and she had a beautiful career, more successful than mine.”
In the end, the interviewer asked the 30-year-old if he felt emotional about the situation and the player’s answer was something unexpected: “When I was alone I admit that I cried. The things that hurt me the most are the articles I keep reading, I know I’m better than this.”
After the initial fine that Fognini received, the Grand Slam board is thinking about a further provision, who would ban him from future Grand Slams and raise his fine to $250,000 if his conduct would be considered as a “Major Offense.” But the Italian is ready to face this risk: “I know that the troubles aren’t over but I accept it. We pay for our mistakes.”
Is this enough to be forgiven?
Considering all the times that Fognini had the “last opportunity,” the answer could be negative, but I want everyone to think about it. People make mistakes and Fognini is human and does that too. This time he did a very bad thing and he will pay for this, but the reaction he had is what surprises me the most. This is a new Fognini who is trying to control himself; the old player we remember would have never done such an interview of apology. He knows he’s wrong and if he could come back he would never do it again.
He can recognize his errors. He even cried, and of course this would be the real “last” opportunity for him, but I’m sure that he will work hard to not repeat it, even if it will be very difficult.
Main Photo:
Embed from Getty ImagesLUAS drivers are to stage two 48 hour strikes next month.
LUAS drivers are to stage two 48 hour strikes next month.
Luas strike: Drivers to carry out two 48-hour stoppages
Dubliners face travel chaos when workers down tools on February 11 and 12, and a week later on February 18 and 19 – both Thursdays and Fridays.
Siptu trade union confirmed three of four groups of workers, who balloted overwhelmingly to take industrial action, said their preference was to strike for 48 hours at meetings this week.
It will be the first strike for the Dublin tram operator.
A majority of the 180 drivers, 37 revenue protection officers, and eight revenue protection supervisors backed the 48-hour option.
The fourth and final group of staff - 16 control room officers – will work to rule.
The meetings come as their employer Transdev released figures showing drivers are seeking a massive pay rise of almost 54pc.
It said tram drivers on €42,247 a year are seeking a 53.8pc increase to €64,993 – substantially more than an Irish Rail driver.
This is far above the average pay claims of between two and three percent on average, which were lodged by unions with employers last year.
However, SIPTU says the amounts being sought would be spread over five years, although a 54pc increase would still represent an annual rise of over 10pc.
The strike is set to cause major chaos for the travelling public and government just ahead of the general election.
Transdev said:
* Revenue Protection officer (ticket inspector) on a current salary of €36,434 is seeking an increase to €43,720, or 20pc, by 2017.
* A revenue protection supervisor (ticket inspector supervisor) on a current salary of €39,541 is seeking an increase to €50,771.33 (28pc) by 2017.
*Traffic supervisors on a current salary of €47,941 are seeking an increase to €57,941 by 2017.
Transdev said the pay claims being pursued by SIPTU are between 8.5pc and 53.8pc and would cost it €30m over its five year contract, or €6m a year.
It said it lost €700,000 last year and is predicting further losses this year.
“It is disappointing for us to learn that union employees plan on stopping the Luas service in pursuance of their pay claims,” said Transdev Managing Director, Gerry Madden.
“We believe the pay and terms and conditions of Luas employees are, and always have been, very favourable.”
It said the Labour Court recommended that they hold “meaningful” talks at the Workplace Relations Commission, and this was the only way the row could be resolved.
Online EditorsA workshop organised by NDF in Helsinki on August 22nd spotlighted the many benefits of biochar, aiming to increase donors’ interest in supporting the replication and scaling up of successful work done in Nepal, where an NDF/Asian Development Bank project has piloted the small-scale low-cost production and use of biochar fertiliser through extensive field trials run in various agro-ecological regions with local crops.
Hans-Peter Schmidt of the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence, who also chairs the European Biochar Foundation, worked as a team leader on the project in Nepal on behalf of British consultants Landell Mills. “Biochar, which is essentially charcoal, can be made with many kinds of biomass feedstock, from wood and bulky harvesting residues to organic wastes such as rice husks,” he explained. In Nepal the project particularly found that harmful invasive Eupatorium weeds, known locally as “forest killer”, could be viably collected, dried and burnt to make carbon-rich biochar – converting a problem into an asset.
In a demonstration at the workshop in Helsinki, Schmidt showed how biochar can be quickly made from twigs and branches in a simple cone-shaped metal Kon-tiki flame curtain kiln, designed to enable feedstock to burn at high temperatures with low oxygen levels to form biochar. “In Nepal we also trained farmers to dig soil pits that can be lined with clay and used in the same way, as natural kilns,” he added. In such cases farmers only need to invest their time and effort to adopt the technology, with no financial costs.
The comparative field trials run in Nepal showed that farmers using crushed biochar instead of costly imported fertilisers achieved much greater yields in both degraded and fertile soils for typical local crops including pumpkins, tomatoes, maize, chili peppers and cabbage – especially when the biochar was soaked in readily available nutrient-rich cow urine before adding it to soils. “This is because the highly porous biochar can soak up many times its own weight in liquid, and gradually release its nutrient content into the surrounding soil,” explained Schmidt.
Using waste biomass and livestock urine in this way leads to environmental benefits including reduced emissions of nutrients and greenhouse gases, while the biochar itself represents a valuable carbon sink, since it only degrades extremely slowly. For farmers the most welcome benefits are bumper crop yields and savings on fertiliser costs. In some localities it was realised that the heat generated while making biochar could be profitably utilised for other processes such as extracting essential oils from local plants.
“The biggest challenge now is to find how to scale up the use of this appropriate technology after the successful field trials,” said project director Simon Foxwell of Landell Mills. “The Nepali authorities have been impressed by the trials, and they are keen to train more farmers. Practical brochures and leaflets have now been produced for local farmers, but there is still a need for support from donors for more extensive field trails across Nepal. We also believe that the lessons learnt from Nepal will help with the replication of this kind of project in other countries.”
More information
NDF C55 Pilot project to test the Climate Change Benefits of Biochar
Asian Development Bank, Mainstreaming Climate Change Risk Management in Development
The biochar work of the Ithaka Institute
Landell MillsGet the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Craig Bellamy’s autobiography, GoodFella, lays bare one of the most notorious incidents in recent English football history.
In February 2007, Liverpool travelled to Portugal for a five-day training camp to prepare for their Champions League second round tie against Barcelona.
On the last night on the Algarve, Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez allowed the players out for a meal but it was disrupted by an argument between Craig Bellamy and John Arne Riise, whose nickname was Ginge...
Ginge was a nice enough lad.
He was a bit of a child. He was insanely competitive. If there was a competition to see who could ping a shot against the crossbar, he was always mad keen to win it.
People used to make a joke of it and say: ‘I bet Ginge could do that’.
That night at Vale do Lobo, I was sitting with Steve Finnan, who was my room-mate, Sami Hyypia and Ginge.
I told Ginge he had to sing a song. I might have said it a couple of times. He said he didn’t want to do it.
I mentioned it again and he snapped. He got s****y about it. He got up and started shouting. “Listen,” he yelled, “I’m not singing and I’ve had enough of you banging on about it.”
Sami told me to ignore him and Ginge left fairly soon afterwards. But as the evening wore on and I had more to drink, it started eating away at me.
At that time, the way I was, I didn’t know how to control my emotions if someone disrespected me in front of the rest of the |
the whole family at Ray's The Freshest Beer in Milwaukee... Just got Fresher! What are Growlers? Growlers are the perfect vessel for transporting the freshest beer directly from the tap to your glass. Growlers come in many different shapes, colors, and styles, but the two most common sizes are 64oz and 32oz (we've taken to calling this lil guy a "Duckie" but you can call it what you want). But no matter what your growler looks like on the outside, know that when you fill it at Ray's Growler Gallery, the liquid inside will be some of the best around! Why We Love Growlers!
+Freshness
+Supporting Local Brewers
+Environmentally Friendly
+Delightfully delicious beer! What's Coming? A Sneak Peek of Ray's Growler Gallery Grand Opening! Here are just a few of the breweries you can look forward to enjoying with us in roughly six weeks (still tentative) for the Growler Gallery Grand Opening! - Solemn Oath
- Karben4
- Black Husky
- Three Floyds -Hinterland's Ray's Exclusive: IrRAYsistible Rye
and...
A certain beer aged in Pappy van Winkle Barrels. Please note: As with any grand opening, this lineup is subject to change, but we will keep you updated every step of the way! This is only the beginning of something great. We have a ton of fun things in the works including new, exclusive beers from Wisconsin's most talented brewers, tap take-overs (Solemn Oath, O'so, and New Holland are just a few tap take-overs scheduled for you to look forward to!) with brewers and brewmasters from around the country, and plenty of the rarest, geekiest, and best brews around! All the Details Initially Ray's Growler Gallery will be solely a growler filling station. While we will be able to give you samples to try before you buy, folks will not be able to pull up a chair and sip on a pint (yet!). All growlers will be sealed and labeled, and will be solely for take away, so that you can enjoy the freshest beer in the comfort of your own home. Although we are still finalizing the Growler Gallery's operating hours, Ray's Tasting and Educational Center will still be open for Wine, Spirit, and Beer events (as well as being available to rent for private functions) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday every week. So swing by our Tasting Room Calendar to see the updated schedule of events! Last, But Not Least We have a new member to welcome to the Ray's Twitter Family! Follow the Growler Gallery on Twitter @RaysGrowler! So while this Newsletter, @RaysBeer, @RaysWine, and our Facebook Page will still be your go to source for what's new in the world of Ray's, the @RaysGrowler will be your up-to-the-minute feed for what fresh goodies are on tap once the Gallery is open! We don't often ask, but we are really excited about our new adventure, so please, if you have a moment, use the social media buttons at the top to share the news with your friends, family, and anyone else who enjoys fresh, delicious beer! #RaysGrowlerGallery
Rick, Orey, Kaleb & the Gang at Ray's
Ray's Bonus Coupon: FREE BEER MONEY
Congrats! You got to the end of the email! And since it is Milwaukee Beer Week, we decided to give you some FREE BEER MONEY!
Use this FREE BEER MONEY coupon to SAVE $1 OFF (on up to 3 items) of your choice of 6-Packs, 4-Packs, or Single Bottles (22oz, 750mL, 16.9oz)!
Coupon Expires: Sunday, May 4th 2014 at 5:00PM
Please Note: Can't be used in conjunction with any other Sale, Coupon, or Special Offer.After Damon Dash claimed that he and Kanye West were in bids to purchase the struggling webstore Karmaloop, which just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, all rumors have now been put to bed as the two took to Instagram to confirm their final purchase. Dash uploaded two videos of himself and Kanye, stating, “You know, honorable people stick together, so this is how the generations do. Now you super famous (pointing to West) and we linking up and we decided to go buy Karmaloop. We just talked about it, so it’s gonna happen, and a couple other cool things.” Karmaloop founder Greg Selkoe, meanwhile, confirmed the new partnership via Twitter, and mentioned that he plans to remain a part of the e-store’s future.
Stay tuned for more information as and when it drops.
Good speaking today @kanyewest say what up to Don for me! — greg (@Selkoe) March 26, 2015
SubscribeMYSTERIOUS orange lights spotted hovering over Cranbourne last night were most likely ceremonial lanterns, Venus, or aircraft, an astronomy expert says.
Video footage posted on rea lufos.net shows four bright lights floating low over rooftops near Camms Rd for several minutes, before some disappear.
>> Now see it for yourself - watch the video below and tell us below what you think the lights are
News_Rich_Media: Is this a UFO?
Mt Burnett Observatory president Perry Vlahos said had not received any calls regarding the sighting.
Mr Vlahos said it was difficult to say conclusively what the objects were, without knowing the direction from which the footage had been shot.
"One thing I can guarantee is they were not little green men from Mars," Mr Vlahos said.
Possible explanations included a combination of aircraft, such as helicopters with search lights, a bright planet such a Venus, Rigel or Sirius, weather balloons, or ceremonial lanterns.
"It's really very difficult to say from looking at this footage, without seeing first-hand," he said.
"It could be lanterns, it could be satellites, the international space station, aircraft, the police helicopter, a plane.
"If they were looking west from Cranbourne, they would have been looking over Moorabbin airport.
"Something like the police helicopters have strong search lights, which resemble that from a distance."
Mr Vlahos said a likely explanation was ceremonial lanterns, given the time of year.
"Sometimes people put a candle inside a paper lantern and the heat, because its very light, carries them up into the sky. It's an Asian ceremonial exercise," he said.
"They would float up for a period of time, then disappear once the candle goes out. "Portugal central bank takes over Banco Espirito Santo
Posted
Portugal's third biggest bank, formerly its largest, has been taken over by the central bank in a 4.9 billion euro bailout.
The Bank of Portugal is rescuing Banco Espirito Santo by injecting 4.9 billion euros ($7.1 billion) in capital from its resolution fund into a bridge bank, which will be known as Novo Banco and hold the firm's customer deposits and safest loans, and pay senior bondholders.
The remaining Banco Espirito Santo will hold the riskiest loans and be owned by the bank's shareholders and junior bondholders.
"Banco Espirito Santo deposits are fully preserved, as well as all non-subordinated bonds," the Bank of Portugal said.
"Shareholders and subordinated creditors of Banco Espirito Santo will bear losses."
The European Commission has rubber stamped the deal saying it meets the body's state aid rules.
"The measures notified by Portuguese authorities will allow the orderly resolution of the remaining bad bank and provide the bridge bank with the necessary means to maximise the value of its assets in the sale process, while limiting the distortions of competition created by the state aid granted," the commission said in a statement.
Banco Espirito Santo shares plunged 73 per cent in Lisbon last week, falling to just 12 euro cents and a market value of 675 million euros, while bonds were also trading well below face value.
The Portuguese banking giant has over 80 billion euros worth of assets and nearly 37 billion in customer deposits, with operations across 25 countries in four continents and employing almost 10,000 people.
Topics: banking, international-financial-crisis, economic-trends, portugalBy Georgina Pattinson
BBC News
Who could resist eating every last bit of curry?
While English speakers have to describe the action of laughing so much that one side of your abdomen hurts (hardly an economical phrase), the Japanese have the much more efficient expression: katahara itai.
Of course, the English language has borrowed words for centuries. Khaki and croissant are cases in point.
So perhaps it's time to be thinking about adding others to the lexicon. Malay, for instance, has gigi rongak - the space between the teeth. The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front. Then there's a nakkele - a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (from Tulu, India).
I'm trying to celebrate the joy of foreign words
Adam Jacot de Boinod
"What I'm really trying to do is celebrate the joy of foreign words (in a totally unjudgmental way) and say that while English is a great language, one shouldn't be surprised there are many others having, as they do, words with no English equivalent," he says.
Having pored over 280 dictionaries and trawled 140 websites, he is also convinced that a country's dictionary says more about a culture than a guide book. Hawaiians, for instance, have 108 words for sweet potato, 65 for fishing nets - and 47 for banana.
Mania
The German propensity for compound words pays dividends. Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.
A Putzfimmel is a mania for cleaning and Drachenfutter - literally translated as dragon fodder - are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives.
Or there's die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen - to stick one's lower lip out in a sulk (literally, to play the insulted liver sausage). Perhaps it's a Backpfeifengesicht - a face that cries out for a fist in it.
Words and phrases can suggest the character of a nation.
The Dutch didn't have hurricanes in mind when they coined the word
The Dutch vocabulary, for instance, seems to confirm the nation's light-hearted reputation. The word uitwaaien is Dutch for walking in windy weather for fun.
The Maori-speakers of the Cook Islands sound like an enthusiastic bunch: the word toto is the shout given in a game of hide-and-seek to show readiness.
Perhaps the Inuit notion of a good time must be, of necessity, a little more constrained. The long winter nights must fly by as they play a game called igunaujannguaq, literally meaning frozen walrus carcass. (The game involves the person in the centre of a ring trying to remain stiff as he is passed around the ring, hand over hand.)
But it's those fun-loving people in the Netherlands who should have the last word - the phrase for skimming stones is as light-hearted as the action: plimpplampplettere.
The Albanians exhibit a strange fascination for facial hair. There are no fewer than 27 separate expressions for the moustache.
Madh means a bushy moustache, posht is a moustache hanging down at the ends and fshes is a long broom-like moustache with bristly hairs.
This hirsute obsession is not confined to moustaches. Vetullkalem describes pencil-thin eyebrows, vetullperpjekur are joined together eyebrows and those arched like the crescent moon are vetullhen.
Perhaps nothing so intriguingly displays differences between nations as the unusual occupations of some of its citizens. Geshtenjapjeks is an Albanian who sells roast chestnuts on the street. A koshatnik in Russian is a dealer of stolen cats.
A kualanapuhi is a Hawaiian officer who keeps the flies away from the sleeping king by waving a brush made of feathers. In Turkey a cigerci is a seller of liver and lungs and the Danish have a fyrassistent - an assistant lighthouse keeper.
And Spanish speakers in central America have a description of a government employee who only shows up on payday - an aviador.
Which brings us back to de Boinod's title: tingo is an invaluable word from the Pascuense language of Easter Island meaning "to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left".
The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod is published by Penguin.
Add your comments on this story, using the form below.
My favourite Norwegian word is dugnad, its a party where the object is to help the person throwing the party with something, i.e. moving into a house, painting, building a cabin etc. usually the host provides food and drink!
Liam Turner, Oslo, Norway
I was told once not to "paint the devil on the wall" by a German. Apparently it means "don't tempt fate".
Sarah, Reading, UK
In Afrikaans we sometimes call a stapler, a 'pampiervampier'. Literally, 'paper-vampire' If you look at your stapler and use it, the meaning becomes obvious.
Tjaart Kruger, Cambridge, UK
From German, "Blechlawine" literally a "metal avalanche" which is a long queue of stationary cars on the Autobahn.
John, London
In words of Blackadder, I would like to offer the author of this book my most enthusiastic... contrafibularities.
Jim McCormick, Bedfordshire
My favourite is the fact that the British call a certain type of fish "goldfish" - when they're basically either orange or orange/white/black. The French call them "poisson rouge" - or "red fish" but they're not red either. The Spanish opted for "pez de colores" which means "coloured fish" - probably the best choice of the three.
Chris booth, Valencia, Spain
We have a word in our house to describe the action of putting right clothes which are inside out. It is used virtually every night when the kids undress, as they attempt to put everything in the wash still inside out. The word is "unscribble"...
Andrew, UK
Fijians have a brilliant term to describe married men who are regularly unfaithful to their wives - Vori Vori.
David Larkin, London
Monobrow is great - it's inventive and efficient. I think it should be celebrated.
Becky, Didcot, UK
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Your commentThe B.C. government will be better able to work with paramedics on their most pressing issues once they have their own union bargaining unit, Health Minister Adrian Dix says.
Dix announced Tuesday that the change is to help the paramedics deal with the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic, which has put pressure on ambulance and other emergency services. It will also help with a long-term project to integrate rural paramedics with residential care and allow house calls with elderly people, he said.
“A standalone bargaining unit would provide members of CUPE local 873 the opportunity to integrate emergency health services provided by paramedics and dispatchers further into the health-care system,” Dix said. “By helping to ensure a strong voice for paramedics, this change would also support patient care, with a focus on key areas such as response times, rural and remote staffing, and innovative ways of treating patients with non-emergency injuries and illnesses.”
Former health minister Terry Lake announced in March 2017 that a pilot project for rural paramedicine is to be expanded. It started in Tofino, Ucluelet, Port Hardy, Cortes Island, Fort St. James, Hazelton, Chetwynd, Creston and Princeton.
The program has been expanded to more than 70 rural communities, allowing paramedics to visit patients between emergency calls to help them treat people at home or on scene in response to a 9-1-1 call where the patient does not require transport to a hospital.
The B.C. Liberals’ pre-election budget included $91.4 million over three years to fund the new paramedic system, hire 60 more paramedics and 20 ambulance dispatch staff.
A “universal hourly wage” for rural paramedics took effect in April 2017, replacing paid-on-call and giving part-time paramedics a raise.
Communities to receive rural paramedicine service, as announced in March:
• Island Health region: Alert Bay, Cortes Island, Denman Island (including Hornby Island), Gabriola Island, Galiano Island, Gold River, Mayne Island, Pender Island, Port Alice, Port Hardy, Port Renfrew, Port McNeil, Quadra Island, Sayward, Sointula, Tahsis, Tofino, Ucluelet, Zeballos
• Northern Health region: Atlin, Chetwynd, Dease Lake, Fraser Lake, Fort St. James, Granisle, Haida Gwaii, Hazelton, Houston, Hudson Hope, MacKenzie, McBride, Kitwanga, Southside, Stewart, Tumbler Ridge, Valemount, Wells
• Interior Health region: Alexis Creek, Anahim Lake, Blue River, Clearwater, Clinton, Creston, Edgewood, Elkford, Field, Fruitvale, Gold Bridge, Golden, Greenwood, Kaslo. Keremeos. Lillooet, Logan Lake, Lumby, Lytton, Midway, Nakusp, New Denver, Princeton, Revelstoke, Riondel, Rossland, Salmo, Seton Portage, Sicamous, Sparwood, Winlaw
• Vancouver Coastal region: Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Bowen Island, Madiera Park, Texada IslandShout at your spouse and risk losing your home: It's just the same as domestic violence, warns woman judge
Lady Hale: The word violence has several meanings
Men and women who shout at their partners risk being thrown out of their homes under a sweeping ruling by judges yesterday.
Raising your voice at a husband or wife, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, now counts as domestic violence under the landmark Supreme Court judgment.
The decision also means that denying money to a partner or criticising them can count as violence and bring down draconian domestic violence penalties from the courts.
The Supreme Court made its decision in the case of a woman who left her husband’s council flat and then demanded a new council home.
She said she left because she had suffered domestic violence – even though her husband had never harmed her.
Lady Hale, leading a bench of five justices, said the definition of violence must change so that a range of abusive behaviour now counts in law.
The decision will affect domestic violence and family law which has given the courts powers to throw someone out of their home if their partner accuses them of violent behaviour. Until now violence has always had to mean physical assault.
The judges were hearing the case of Mihret Yemshaw, 35, who said she had been subjected to domestic violence and was entitled to be rehoused under the 1996 Housing Act.
Officials in Hounslow, West London, turned her down after hearing that her husband had never hit her nor threatened to do so.
Mrs Yemshaw told them he had shouted in front of their two children, failed to treat her like a human, had not given her housekeeping money, and she was scared he would take the children away from her.
A woman does not have to be physically attacked to be the victim of 'violence' - but could be shouted at repeatedly, the Supreme Court ruled (file picture)
Lady Hale said the meaning of the word ‘violence’ had moved on since Parliament passed the Housing Act.
The word ‘is capable of bearing several meanings and applying to many different types of behaviour. These can change and develop over time’. The judge added that ‘it is not for Government and official bodies to interpret the meaning of the words which Parliament has used. That role lies with the courts.’
Lady Hale said that according to the dictionary, violence means physical attack, but can also apply to extreme fervour, passion or fury.
One judge, Lord Brown, said he had a ‘profound doubt’ as to whether the domestic violence provisions were ever intended ‘to extend beyond the limits of physical violence’.
'Thrown out': The former home of Mirhet Yemshaw in Feltham, west London
The judgment means that Mrs Yemshaw will now have her case reconsidered by Hounslow. It will also apply to a wide field of legislation, including the 1996 Family Law Act which allows people to be ejected from their homes if their partners complain of domestic violence.
The decision comes at a time of growing concern over the powers of senior judges and their willingness to alter laws made by Parliament.
Family law expert Jill Kirby yesterday drew a comparison between the ruling and the Humpty Dumpty character in Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking-Glass, who said words meant whatever he wanted them to mean. She said: ‘The judiciary are taking the Humpty Dumpty view, and it risks undermining confidence in the legal system.’
Mihret Yemshaw’s husband told the Daily Mail last night he had never been violent towards his wife who, like him, was born in Ethiopia. They married in London ten years ago.
Samuel Estifanos, a 40-year-old bus driver, claimed she left the flat where he still lives because she was ‘unhappy’. He added: ‘I never hit her and I never even screamed or swore at her.’It’s time for the U.S. men’s national team to take a long look in the mirror.
For nearly 85 minutes on Tuesday, the U.S. was facing an existential crisis. It was teetering on the brink of two must-win games in October just to reach a playoff to get to the World Cup. It was facing consecutive losses in World Cup qualifying for the second time in this hexagonal round, this time on the road against a not-great Honduras team.
A late Bobby Wood pulled the U.S. out of crisis mode. Or did it?
Paul Tenorio Too many questions linger for USMNT after loss to Costa Rica
Wood’s goal provided some breathing room when it comes to the actual qualifying cycle. The 1-1 tie against Honduras means the U.S. still has a 74 percent chance of qualifying for the World Cup, per ESPN’s Soccer Power Index. That shouldn’t be too much of a comfort, though.
This team has some serious identity issues. When Bruce Arena took over the U.S. program, he inherited a team that lacked a true direction. Let’s not pretend Jurgen Klinsmann had nothing to do with where the U.S. currently stands. But while Arena rattled off 14 straight games unbeaten in his second tenure as U.S. coach, he never really honed in on what this team was going to be in the biggest match-ups.
Arena’s teams have changed formations. He’s been loose with the personnel, swapping numerous players in the lineup due to quick turnarounds, weather and form. It’s a novel idea, but one that ultimately has shown its biggest drawback in the last two games.
The U.S. has failed to settle on a consistent back line. It’s center back pairings have been rotated so much that the lack of communication and consistency in the middle of the defense has directly led to goals. It looks lost too often in games, including for a healthy chunk of Tuesday’s draw in Honduras. An attack that features plenty of talent – Christian Pulisic, Jozy Altidore, Bobby Wood, Clint Dempsey, Jordan Morris, Darlington Nagbe – looks disconnected, out of sorts and rarely creates the types of chances you would expect against teams it should dominate. Even the goalkeeping position is up for grabs.
So where does that leave this program?
Steve Davis USMNT forced to embrace new reality after Costa Rica letdown
Going into two more must-win games in October – at home against Panama and on the road against Trinidad and Tobago – the U.S. has to sort out what it wants to be, how it wants to play and who should be on the field.
Arena has to settle on a system and a lineup that he trusts in every outing. Whether it’s a three-man back line, a single-forward system or the attack-minded 4-4-2 he fielded against the Ticos. He has to make some tough decisions, including the reality that while Altidore and Wood are probably the two best forwards on the team, they don’t operate well together. He has to commit to empowering a player like Pulisic and putting him in a position to lead this team forward; playing him on the wing has removed his influence too much. He might even have to introduce some new talent back into the pool, including players like Danny Williams, Justin Morrow and Timmy Chandler. Faith in the MLS players in the pool is fine, but this national team needs more competition in several key positions.
Most importantly, Arena has to confront an idea that this U.S. team isn’t good enough right now. If it can’t find a way to get a result at home against Costa Rica and has to gut out a 1-1 draw in Honduras, there is no guarantee it will find the three points it needs against Panama or T&T. There has to be some kind of mental makeover within this team, and there has to be a real identity established if the U.S. wants a chance to perform well in Russia – or to even get there.
Arena was brought in to right the ship and point the U.S. back in a positive direction. That job is not anywhere near done, and Arena is running out of time to do it.
The pressure is on.
Click here for more of FourFourTwo USA’s ongoing USMNT coverageOh my gosh, I’ve just noticed what I’ve been missing lately on this podcast! Ska-Punk! So you better believe that I weaved a some of that into this episode. Not that I dropped any more traditional stuff, it’s just all in a nicer, more balanced blend this time.
Bomb the Music Industry! – Hits Set (Find the Place / Hits Set ’11)
Fishbone – Ma & Pa (Truth & Soul ’88)
Ruder Than You – Give the People What They Need (Creation Sounds ’09)
doctormanette – Sap (the Same Thing Over & Over ’99)
the Dropsteppers – Suzy’s Got it Wrong (Get Up In It! ’11)
Manic Sewing Circle – Whaddya Say? (Summer Spins ’07)
Rotterdam Ska-Jazz Foundation – Backlash (Sunwalk ’05)
Steady Earnest – Roll On (Out of Line ’93)
Find & like 23min of Ska on facebook. Also, feel free to download this episode. Ska is better on vinyl. Hit up Grandpa’s Casino Recordings, we have what you need!Police in New York say they are gathering evidence for a possible arrest warrant against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
Dozens of women claim the film mogul sexually harassed or assaulted them over the past three decades.
Among them is actress Paz de la Huerta who has been interviewed by the NYPD over her claims that Weinstein raped her twice at her apartment in 2010.
New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told a news conference on Friday that the alleged victim “put forth a credible and detailed narrative”.
BREAKING: Police official says NYPD has "actual case" against Weinstein https://t.co/Sc8jngdaiupic.twitter.com/HeoUaDzLEi — NBC News (@NBCNews) 3 novembre 2017
“I will say we have an actual case going forward,” he told reporters.
“If this person was still in New York and it was recent, we would go right away and make the arrest, no doubt.”
Asked what made her story so credible, he replied:
“The ability to articulate each and every movement of the crime: where she was, where they met, where this happened and what he did.”
Weinstein denies having non-consensual sex with anyone.
But investigations are also underway in London and Los Angeles and a senior sex crimes prosecutor is assigned to the inquiry in New York.
with ReutersNow that we're about a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting, it's time for those last remaining upmarket free agents to find homes. Sometimes that requires out-of-the-box thinking.
Consider Jose Bautista, whose name has recently surfaced in association with the Philadelphia Phillies and -- as of Tuesday afternoon -- the Minnesota Twins. Yes, really. Here's what Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com reported:
Coming off a 103-loss season, Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have spent much of the offseason evaluating the franchise and building out the baseball operations department. But the Twins have also met with several agents for position players throughout the winter, including the representative for outfielder Jose Bautista.
Bollinger notes that the level of interest on either side is unclear -- and it should be noted his piece is largely about a bold prediction, in which the Twins keep second baseman Brian Dozier and add Bautista.
All the same, the Twins' thinking probably resemble that of the Phillies -- it only makes sense to check in, given the potential that Bautista's price continues to drop. If the Twins (or Phillies) find Bautista's price to their liking at some point between now and whenever he agrees to a deal, they could sign him with an eye on trading him at the deadline.
Of course, you would think Bautista would be able to cut out the middle man and sign with a contender now. That doesn't seem to be the case, however. Blame it on Bautista's age and the required draft-pick compensation. Just don't blame the Twins, Phillies, or another team if they take advantage of the situation in pursuit of positive arbitrage.Well… the wipe changes were a little unexpected. Cabal Countess strikes me as needlessly strong. She is good against enemy sweepers- she can be played after the sweeper and get in 4 or 6 damage while leaving a very strong body behind. Any card that can reliably deal 6 face damage is very good in Burn Queen. She looks like a very good addition.
Control decks that relied on Secret Pages for influence fixing and getting to double justice for Harsh Rule (or a single Primal for Lightning Storm with only 2 power) have basically been nerfed. I don’t think that these control decks will fare well against the new annoyingly-fast queen decks.
Deck list
4 Flame Blast (Set1 #2)
2 Dark Return (Set1 #250)
4 Grenadin Drone (Set1 #5)
4 Oni Ronin (Set1 #13)
4 Pyroknight (Set1 #16)
4 Rapid Shot (Set1 #259)
2 Suffocate (Set1 #251)
4 Torch (Set1 #8)
4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268)
4 Kaleb’s Favor (Set0 #3)
1 Ornate Katana (Set1 #23)
2 Cabal Countess (Set1 #37)
4 Champion of Chaos (Set1 #402)
3 Bandit Queen (Set1 #389)
4 Obliterate (Set1 #48)
9 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
5 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249)
3 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)
4 Seat of Chaos (Set0 #60)
4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419)
The correct # of Cabal Countesses may be 4. Cut Ornate Katana and maybe Grenadin Drone.
Pyroknight received a very mild nerf that shouldn’t impact this deck that much.
For information on piloting this deck and card substitutions, see:
EDIT: Nov 20 decklist
My current version subs out the Ornate Katanas and a Grenadin Drone for Vara’s Favor and another Countess. Too many Countesses aren’t good since the card is very power intensive. If sweepers and relic weapons see less play, then dropping down to 2 Countesses may be correct. Against beatdown decks, she is a very strong attacker but a little slow due to needing 7 power.
4 Flame Blast (Set1 #2)
2 Dark Return (Set1 #250)
3 Grenadin Drone (Set1 #5)
4 Oni Ronin (Set1 #13)
4 Pyroknight (Set1 #16)
4 Rapid Shot (Set1 #259)
2 Suffocate (Set1 #251)
4 Torch (Set1 #8)
4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268)
4 Kaleb’s Favor (Set0 #3)
1 Vara’s Favor (Set0 #35)
3 Cabal Countess (Set1 #37)
4 Champion of Chaos (Set1 #402)
3 Bandit Queen (Set1 #389)
4 Obliterate (Set1 #48)
8 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
6 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249)
3 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)
4 Seat of Chaos (Set0 #60)
4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419)
EDIT: Nov 22 decklist
Seeing a lot more aggro in the meta. Aggro mirrors are medium-speed, so you actually don’t want to go in the ultra-fast Jito direction. You want to go slower and have certain cards that are good in the mirror like Vara’s Favor to kill their Pyroknights. I’m not sure what to do about the Feln matchup… the new 5/2 Soulfire Drake might be good but I haven’t tried it.
3 Flame Blast (Set1 #2)
2 Dark Return (Set1 #250)
2 Grenadin Drone (Set1 #5)
3 Oni Ronin (Set1 #13)
4 Pyroknight (Set1 #16)
4 Rapid Shot (Set1 #259)
2 Suffocate (Set1 #251)
4 Torch (Set1 #8)
4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268)
2 Kaleb’s Favor (Set0 #3)
4 Vara’s Favor (Set0 #35)
3 Cabal Countess (Set1 #37)
4 Champion of Chaos (Set1 #402)
3 Bandit Queen (Set1 #389)
2 Impending Doom (Set1 #286)
4 Obliterate (Set1 #48)
9 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
5 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249)
3 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)
4 Seat of Chaos (Set0 #60)
4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419)
The problem with the annoyingly-fast decks
The issue I see with Burn Queen is that it shuts down some fun decks and leads to some un-fun matchups. For example, Burn Queen versus Clockroaches does not strike me as a very interesting matchup. Burn Queen is a little too fast so Clockroaches doesn’t have much of a chance of going off and winning.
Making Bandit Queen more interesting to play against
Let’s start with the least interesting parts of Bandit Queen – the hyper-aggressive Jito Queen version. The games are fairly un-interactive. Either Jito gets a god draw or it doesn’t. Either the defending player has a lightning storm or doesn’t. There’s not a lot of agency in the matchup. The decisions are fairly simple- “A + space + face” as SirRhino would put it. I would welcome pre-emptive nerfs to KnifeJack, Lurking Sanguar, and any other card that only sees constructed play in Jito Queen.
The next worst offender in the Bandit Queen matchup is Bandit Queen herself. When she’s good, she’s really good. She contributes to un-interactive god draws. Getting crushed on turn 4 is a little too soon. Maybe nerf her a little by pushing her cost up to 5 (and buffing her attack by 1). That way, Bandit Queen decks will play fewer copies of her and games won’t end really early. Other decks will have a chance to play answers (e.g. Harsh Rule).
Next, I would look at pushing the interesting parts of Bandit Queen.
While the Shadowlands Guide / Ticking Grenadin combo no longer sees much play, it had very interesting gameplay. If you blocked the grenadin, the opponent could recur grenadin for a lot of value. So, a very reasonable line of play would be to NOT block grenadin when the opponent had 3 power open. Knowing this, a good Bandit Queen pilot could bluff and attack with grenadin when they didn’t have Shadowlands Guide in hand. This bluffing dynamic led to interesting gameplay and was a very unique play pattern.
While I doubt that Ticking Grenadin would see much Tier 1 play today, I think that a buff to Shadowlands Guide would lead to interesting gameplay. One possible buff:
Shadowlands Guide
2/1
Summon: Play a 1-cost unit from the void. Give it +2/+1.
From a strategy perspective, this pushes the power of the card into the recursion ability. This creates a greater incentive for the defending player to not block, leading to interesting bluff attacks.
Unfortunately, the 3-drop slot has Cabal Countess and Champion of Chaos so I’m not sure this buffed Shadowlands Guide would see constructed play. This is why I disagree with the addition of Cabal Countess. The card eats up a lot of the complexity budget (she’s very wordy) without adding a lot of gameplay. I personally think that a Shadowlands Guide buff (with nerfs to the less interactive parts of Bandit Queen) would’ve been better for the game.
Evolution of the meta
The wipe basically nerfed control decks that used Secret Pages. While Feln-based control might be viable, I think that the meta will shift to a lot of aggro decks. In a more aggro heavy meta, Bandit Queen will want to ditch a lot of the burn and pivot to going deeper on the go-wide plan. We might see a comeback of Frontier Jito and its lifestealing Lurking Sanguar buddies.
Unfortunately, two words come to mind: fun police. It will be hard to construct sweets decks that can answer Bandit Queen and still have enough card slots left over to do sweet things. I want to see Clockroaches see fringe play on ladder. That deck is sweet, even if it is never better than a Tier 3 deck. But if the meta is dominated by aggro, I think that we will see fewer fun and quirky decks on ladder.
The direction that I would like to see Bandit Queen go is a more |
and requirements, themes can be found for free or can be purchased for as much as $100.
Generally, small businesses do not need to purchase an expensive theme and hosting is very inexpensive at around $3 per month with Bluehost. In addition to these costs, small businesses may choose to pay for premium plug-ins to add advanced functionality; the cost of these plug-ins varies widely, and some cost as much as premium themes.
How to Make a WordPress Website in 5 Steps
Creating a WordPress website is easy and does not require coding or development expertise. To create your WordPress site, you need to get hosting, choose your theme, and design your site. When you’ve created and designed all of your pages, posts, and site elements, then you can add additional functionality via plug-ins.
Here is how to make a WordPress website in five steps.
1. Sign Up for Hosting
A host is a service that “stores” your website’s files, and typically also allows you to register your domain name (www.YourSite.com) and business email accounts. While you can use most major hosts to set up a WordPress website, a few have the WordPress CMS pre-installed.
We suggest you go with Bluehost, which lets you register a domain, host your website, and get a professional email address (AnyName@YourSite.com). You also get an easy one-click WordPress installation and the first month of hosting is free. Bluehost normally charges $7.99 per month but, with our exclusive offer, you can click here to get started for $2.95 per month.
Visit Bluehost
If you want to compare hosting options in greater detail, check out our full guide to WordPress hosting costs or take a glance below:
WordPress Hosting Options Compared
Bluehost Wordpress.com Paid Hosting Wordpress.com Free Hosting Starting Price $2.95/month $4/month Free Storage 50GB 10GB 6GB Custom Domain Included? Included free 1 year, then $13/year Included free 1 year, then $13/year No; must use WordPress subdomain Email Included? Yes, up to 5 professional email accounts No No
As Bluehost is the best option for WordPress website hosting, we will continue to use them throughout our steps.
2. Choose Your Domain Name
Next, you’ll choose your website domain — like www.YourBusiness.com. Most businesses prefer to use a.com name since it’s the most popular and best-known extension. If your top choice is taken, consider adding an extra word, like your city name, or check out our top 25 domain name ideas for additional tips.
Lastly, you’ll enter your payment information and finalize your order. Keep in mind that to get the best pricing, you do need to pay for three years upfront. However, you can also cancel within 30 days for a full refund. If you aren’t happy how your website turns out, cancel and try a different option.
3. Access WordPress Through Your Bluehost Account
Once you’re registered with Bluehost, you’ll be prompted to set a password and confirm your email address. After this, you’ll reach the Bluehost welcome page. Before you begin working on your site, there are three quick steps to complete:
To start, click “My Sites” on the left panel, then “Manage Site.” Find the “Settings” panel. In the box that says “Site URL,” change the temporary URL to the one you purchased. This ensures your new domain is linked up with your new site.
Now click the “Security” tab. In the box that says “Free SSL Certificate,” click “Enable.” This will change your website to an “https,” or a secure website that encrypts transfer of data, which is better for search engine rankings and protects user information.
Once those steps are complete, click “Log in to WordPress” to start working on your site.
4. Choose Your WordPress Theme
After installing WordPress, you need to choose a theme. A theme is a predesigned website template that you personalize with your own text and photos. It’s much easier than starting from scratch since you get to follow a visual template that is editable with next text and photos.
We’ve designed a few free WordPress themes ourselves at FitSmallBusiness. Pictured above is our Business Edition, designed specifically for business-to-business (B2B), service, and retail businesses. We also have special free themes for restaurants and salons.
To create these, we analyzed how visitors are using business websites in 2019. Customers often browse from their smartphones and are looking for quick information at a glance, like operating hours, phone numbers, or street addresses. As a result, we designed our themes to look great on both mobile and desktop and provide this essential information upfront.
To design your website, you need to input your text and photos. There’s no programming required, although you can modify just about everything — like fonts, colors, and formatting — from the simple customization menu.
Find and download our themes based on your business type:
If you want to see even more options, you can browse through the WordPress free theme database, or view premium themes by clicking “Commercial Themes.”
FitSmallBusiness also offers a host of themes and templates to choose from; click here to browse our picks.
5. Customize Your WordPress Theme & Design Your Site
When you first log into WordPress, you will reach your WordPress dashboard. This is the main “control center” of your website where you’ll design your pages, make edits, add blog posts, and other elements using the menu options on the left side:
Here’s a quick rundown of each of these menus:
Posts: If you want to add a blog to your business website, “Posts” is where you’ll go to write, edit, and publish new blog post articles
If you want to add a blog to your business website, “Posts” is where you’ll go to write, edit, and publish new blog post articles Pages: This is where you create website pages like your About, Contact, or Pricing pages
This is where you create website pages like your About, Contact, or Pricing pages Appearance: This is the main menu for editing your website’s style’ under “Appearance,” you can choose between different themes and then customize the colors, fonts, and other formatting options for your website
This is the main menu for editing your website’s style’ under “Appearance,” you can choose between different themes and then customize the colors, fonts, and other formatting options for your website Plug-ins: These are additional features you can add to your website like contact forms or ecommerce carts; some plug-ins are free while others charge a one-time or recurring fee
The steps for setting up your website will vary depending on your theme, so it is recommended that you choose a theme first, then finding specific instructions for that theme. For example, if you chose a Fit Web Themes WordPress theme, you can find instructions linked above.
Pro Tips for Beginner WordPress Users
WordPress for beginners can be challenging as there is a learning curve. To help ensure your new website meets form and function, there are some things to keep in mind, including aligning themes to your brand, keeping the design clean, and making sure your site is secure.
Here are top tips for WordPress for beginners:
Choose a theme that suits your business: It’s worth taking the time to find a WordPress theme that is a good match, both in design and function, for your website needs; this will help make it easier to build a site that is effective
It’s worth taking the time to find a WordPress theme that is a good match, both in design and function, for your website needs; this will help make it easier to build a site that is effective Avoid clutter: Keeping your web design clean is important. Too many images or too much text can be overwhelming and will likely lead to more website bounces
Keeping your web design clean is important. Too many images or too much text can be overwhelming and will likely lead to more website bounces Use quality images: Make sure the images you use look high-quality on your site; poor quality images quickly devalue your brand by making it look unprofessional
Make sure the images you use look high-quality on your site; poor quality images quickly devalue your brand by making it look unprofessional Take advantage of the built-in SEO tools: Don’t bypass the WordPress’s built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools; taking the time to utilize these can help your website rank organically, increasing your brand’s exposure; click here for more guidance on the best SEO tools
Don’t bypass the WordPress’s built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools; taking the time to utilize these can help your website rank organically, increasing your brand’s exposure; click here for more guidance on the best SEO tools Maintain site security: Online security is important. It can secure your data, protect from hacking, and keep your website up and running; if you use a web hosting service like Bluehost, your site will have added security features; if not, there are security plug-ins available
Online security is important. It can secure your data, protect from hacking, and keep your website up and running; if you use a web hosting service like Bluehost, your site will have added security features; if not, there are security plug-ins available Use plug-ins: Plug-ins are WordPress-specific apps that can be added to your website to give your site more functionality; plug-ins are available for everything from lead capture to secure payment processing systems. You can search these in WordPress under “Plugins”
Plug-ins are WordPress-specific apps that can be added to your website to give your site more functionality; plug-ins are available for everything from lead capture to secure payment processing systems. You can search these in WordPress under “Plugins” Consistently update your site: Frequently adding new content not only keeps your website relevant but can also increase your domain authority
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Visit BluehostDear Activision,
We need to talk about your Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare advertising.
No, not the one featuring Kevin Spacey and hover bikes. I have no problem with that one. I'm referring to the documentary short "Superpower for Hire" that you produced in association with Vice and the advertising agency 72andSunny.
"Superpower for Hire" is now the second documentary trailer you've made - the first being "The Future is Black" for Call of Duty: Black Ops II - and while I let that one go, I feel compelled to comment now that it's a trend. I had my issues with "The Future is Black" as well - mostly the unsourced scare quotes and use of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North without explaining his history with the Iran-Contra scandal - but compared to "Superpower for Hire," it looks positively responsible.
You see, while "The Future Is Black" is advertising masquerading as a documentary, "Superpower for Hire" is advertising masquerading as journalism. This is a dangerous line to cross - particularly because whoever created this product filled it with distortions, misrepresentation by omission and embarrassing factual errors.
First let's discuss why advertising via journalism crosses a line.
I could be facetious here, and suggest that journalism and advertising are opposing forces. Journalism's goal, theoretically, is to tell truths and inform the public - while advertising does exactly the opposite. But let's face it; journalism and ads have coexisted in the same space for quite awhile. It's been several centuries since you could open a newspaper without seeing an ad for men's shoes. It doesn't escape my sense of irony that I myself am writing this for an ad-supported website. However, as a journalist you must be very, very clear as to what role advertising and sponsorship plays in your writing, and work to avoid influence in order to uphold ethical standards. And when you directly partner with a journalistic entity to produce advertising, it's very important that all parties involved - from the ad agency, to the journalist, to the interviewees and the audience - are aware that this is not straight journalism.
For example, David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times appears in your documentary. According to statements he made to the Poynter Institute, Vice never informed him that they intended to use the footage in a video game ad - he was under the impression it was a documentary about private military corporations. (And indeed, "Superpower for Hire" - though currently not on the Vice website - is apparently a cross-promotion for a larger Vice investigation concerning PMCs.)
This isn't the first time Vice has pulled this trick with branded game content either. In 2012 they produced a documentary about Chicago violence prevention group Cure Violence, who try to stop violent reprisals with conflict mediation. Vice published the documentary on a website called Eye for an Eye, which collected stories on revenge to promote Dishonored.
No one at Cure Violence knew that the piece was intended as branded content. Vice ultimately removed the video.
Vice's breach of trust with David Sanger is especially damaging since high-level interviewees are "Superpower for Hire's" only claim at legitimacy. And I must commend you and your partners there - you've got a good crop. Blackwater founder Erik Prince is there to drum up controversy much like Ollie North was for "The Future is Black." Former Sandline International and Executive Outcomes employee Simon Mann - who served five years in prison after attempting a coup in Equatorial Guinea - can talk about the legal vagaries surrounding contractors. P.W. Singer is the moderate voice and go-to-guy for emerging trends in warfare, and David Sanger for Washington insider political talk. That's a pretty wide spectrum, with a good mix of current and former PMCs plus some outside analysts to keep them honest and problematize their often too-rosy outlook on the industry. If you play them off against each other and aren't afraid to question Prince and Mann hard, it'll be good material - just don't lob softballs and avoid controversy like you did with Ollie North.
But what worries me about the whole production is its emphasis on style over substance. The piece lacks both background information and context, assuming that the audience knows the people talking and the organizations they represent. Not everyone, for example, is politically astute enough to remember the various controversies surrounding Blackwater or how Executive Outcomes was Africa's go-to private army. And that's assuming they've even lived long enough to hear about it - many of the teens and pre-teens that play Call of Duty are too young to remember 9/11 or even the Invasion of Iraq. Someone who's 16 now would've been around 9 years old when Blackwater guards opened fire on civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square.Manuel Lanzini'very happy' at West Ham United after an impressive second season in Claret and Blue
Argentinian scored eight Premier League goals in team-high 34 appearances for Hammers
No10 is also hoping to his form could create opportunities to play for the Argentina national team
Manuel Lanzini is ‘very happy’ at West Ham United and is already targeting a successful 2017/18 season.
West Ham United’s No10 has been a standout performer this term, scoring eight goals, registering two assists and completing an accurate 87.2 per cent of his passes in a team-high 34 Premier League appearances.
The Jewel has shone particularly brightly in the second half of the season following the departure of Dimitri Payet, setting up two goals in the vital victory at Middlesbrough before scoring an even more important goal in the memorable home win over Tottenham Hotspur.
“The season was good for me on a personal level,” said the Argentinian star. “At the beginning it was not great [as I suffered an injury on international duty in pre-season], but then I could achieve a good level.
“Dimi is a great player. He left and it was not a good news for the squad but luckily at the end I had a very good season.
“[With the win over Tottenham], we achieved the points to stay in Premier League, which was the most important thing. We did not have a good start of the season, but now we need to think in the next game and the next season.
“For now, I am thinking of the next game then thinking of having good holidays with the family. I am very happy here.”
For now, I am thinking of the next game then thinking of having good holidays with the family. I am very happy here Manuel Lanzini
Lanzini was one of a number of important players to miss portions of the campaign through injury but, with the season now at its conclusion, the Players’ Player of the Year insisted now it is a time to look forward rather than lament the past.
“We did not start [the season] as we expected but we had few problems and injures to deal with and now we have to work hard for the forthcoming season.
“All changes need time to adapt to. The pitch and the stadium are much bigger than the previous ones [at the Boleyn Ground]. Now we have adapted to these changes and we achieved our target of remaining in Premier League.
“Next year, if we work hard, we will get a better result.”
While his Club commitments may be at an end for 2016/17, Lanzini’s outstanding form in Claret and Blue have seen him tipped for a first call-up to the senior Argentina squad.
With La Albiceleste struggling to secure automatic qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals and currently without a head coach, there may be an opportunity for the 24-year-old to force his way into the national-team set-up.
“When there are changes in the national team, there are opportunities,” he observed. “I am obviously working to get there as it is an honour for every player to play for his national team, but I only have to work hard and play good football.”Hummingbird Nests
Hummingbird nests are very hard to spot because they are so small and so well camouflaged. Both animals and people can easily look right at a hummingbird nest and think it is just a small knot on a tree limb. You may have to search high and low, but the easiest way to find a hummingbird nest is to follow a female hummingbird.
Building a hummingbird nest is complicated business. Every year after migrating to breeding grounds (for those hummingbirds that migrate), a hummingbird's first order of business is to eat. After refilling their energy supplies and meeting up with a fella, the female hummingbirds will immediately start to build a nest.
When building a hummingbird nest, the female hummingbird must choose the perfect location. Female hummingbirds do not like to use regular bird house as they are too confining. She is looking for a place that is well off the ground to prevent predators like ants, snakes, and predatory birds. Plus, the nest must be sheltered from wind to prevent baby hummingbirds being thrown from the nest in a wind storm. She will need a good sold base like in a "Y" or crossed branches of a tree or bush. You may see her test the strength of a prospective nest site by repeatedly landing on it and clinging to it. A place with leaves over top to shelter from rain and sun is ideal because if the nest gets above 96 degrees Fahrenheit the little hummingbird eggs will be too hot to hatch. Since temperature is such an issue in raising baby hummingbirds, many female hummingbirds may prefer higher altitudes and locations close to bodies of water where the weather is cooler.
There is a way to help your local hummingbirds find that perfect nesting place with a Hummingbird House. If you place one of these Hummingbird Houses in a safe location that is sheltered from the wind your Momma Hummingbirds may decide to set up shop right before your very eyes. We recommend the Hummingbird House over trying to make one on your own. A homemade one may work just fine; however, the Hummingbird House has taken into account the shapes, angles of the branches, and the dimensions that have proven to make nest building were extremely desirable for hummingbirds.
Female hummingbirds will need nesting material to make her nest. She likes to use nice soft material like moss and lichen. She also likes to use cotton fluffs, bits of willows, soft plant pieces, dryer lint, and leaf hairs. She will bring these items back to her nest a little at a time, gluing it all together with spider webs. The spider webs make terrific glue for the nest, allowing the nest to stretch and be flexible as the baby hummingbirds grow. The spider webs also make it easier for the mother hummingbird to repair the nest when damaged or when kids do what kids do. While building the nest, the female hummingbird will try to camouflage it as much as possible by using small sticks, seeds, and plant pieces to shade the outside of the nest. She will make sure the lighter parts of the nest are in the sun, while the darker parts of the nest are in the shade, blending it in with the surroundings.
Don't be surprised if you notice one female hummingbird stealing nesting material from another female hummingbird. This is common practice among hummingbirds. Don't worry, the original hummingbird will most likely go and steal supplies from the other as well.
When a mother hummingbird is gathering the materials for her nest, she will carry the items in her beak. When she arrives at the nest, Momma Hummingbird will painstaking tuck the material into the fork of the branches to make the base of her nest. When she carries the spider webs to the nest, you will notice them all around her beak, under her chin, and across her breast. She will use her chin and body to press the spider webs and material into her nest so that every piece will go exactly where she wants it. When using a Hummingbird House that is against a building you may even notice the mother hummingbird gathering paint chips to help camouflage the nest against the building.
A mother hummingbird will sit in a nest and use a wing to press the nest against her body to mold it into the perfect shape. She will press her rump into the center of the nest and against the walls to round the inside. She also uses her feet. With one foot hanging onto the nest and the other stomping the nest, she will compact the material to make a solid sturdy nest bottom.
The bottom and wind side of the nest are usually thicker than the top and leeward side of the nest. This will help regulate the temperature inside the nest. On colder days, the mother hummingbird will wiggle down further into the nest to help keep the baby hummingbirds warm, while on days, cooler air can blow though the thinner sides of the nest, keeping the baby hummingbirds cool. For the same reasons, nests that are built in the spring are deeper than nests built in the warmer summer months.
Mother hummingbirds will usually work on a nest for about four (4) hours per day, making approximately thirty-four (34) trips for materials per hour. The entire nest will take anywhere between five (5) to seven (7) days to complete. All the while there are little eggs growing inside her.
Most hummingbird nests look like a small cup about the size of a walnut shell and the diameter of a penny to about an inch and a half (1 1/2) when done. Some hummingbirds (Hermit Hummingbirds) will build nests that hang from branches and other vegetation. These nests are cone shaped attached to something above to support it.
Sometimes mother hummingbirds won't have a chance to finish a nest before the eggs are ready to be laid. When this happens, the mother hummingbird does the best she can to both finish off the nest and incubate her eggs.
Some hummingbird species have been known to reuse nests if the nest survives the winter without being destroyed. Others do not reuse nest and prefer to rebuild a new one every year. Sometimes mother hummingbirds will build a new nest right on top of an old nest. Some female hummingbirds have been known to build more than one nest at a time, choosing the best one and abandoning the others as time goes on. This happens more often where there are Hummingbird Houses around.
When you find a hummingbird nest, it is best not to touch it. The hummingbirds will not be able to smell your scent, but the predators can. By touching the nest, you can lead a predator right to it. If you find a hummingbird's nest, take a picture, but leave it alone. A hummingbird may want to try to re-use the nest. Not to mention the laws protecting everything hummingbird.This story was updated at 12:27 p.m. EDT.
Exxon Mobil Corp. pleaded guilty in federal court in Denver to killing at least 85 protected waterfowl, hawks and owls in five states over the past five years, the Department of Justice announced today.
The birds died from exposure to natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities at Exxon Mobil drilling and production facilities in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming between 2004 and 2009.
Under the plea agreement reached yesterday with DOJ, the company will pay $600,000, as well as make changes to prevent related deaths in the future. Exxon told the court it has already spent $2.5 million on the effort.
Exxon will pay $400,000 in fines, which will be deposited into the federally administered North American Wetlands Conservation Fund, and $200,000 in community service payments, which will be sent to a nonprofit waterfowl rehabilitation foundation in Colorado and the congressionally chartered National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
During a three-year probationary period, Exxon Mobil has also agreed to implement an environmental compliance plan to prevent future bird deaths at the company's facilities in the five affected states.
"The environmental compliance plan that Exxon Mobil has agreed to in this multi-district plea agreement is an important step in protecting migratory birds in these five states," said John Cruden, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Cruden said Exxon's cooperation in the case provided a useful example to other companies charged with violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
"Exxon Mobil has worked with us and we commend them for that," Cruden said. "The company took steps to minimize risks to the birds when this was brought to their attention."
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.Snowden, Putin Cited As Nobel Peace Candidates Hit Record
Oslo � US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and Russian President Vladimir Putin are among the nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, as the Nobel Institute announced Tuesday a record 278 candidates.
"The number of nominations increases almost every year, which shows a growing interest in the prize," the head of the institute, Geir Lundestad, told AFP.
The Nobel committee convened Tuesday for the first time this year to examine the candidate list and will announce the laureate in Oslo on October 10.
As usual, the committee refused to reveal the identity of any of the nominees, but Lundestad said that 47 of the 278 candidates were organisations.
Even though the list is kept secret for at least 50 years, the sponsors can choose to reveal the name of their nominee.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h31lzdfYsLmEZL1R14flaP_az0Nw?docId=18add304-c504-46c5-bf83-bb8f6393bbce
By Pierre-Henry Deshayes (AFP) � 23 minutes agoOslo � US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and Russian President Vladimir Putin are among the nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, as the Nobel Institute announced Tuesday a record 278 candidates."The number of nominations increases almost every year, which shows a growing interest in the prize," the head of the institute, Geir Lundestad, told AFP.The Nobel committee convened Tuesday for the first time this year to examine the candidate list and will announce the laureate in Oslo on October 10.As usual, the committee refused to reveal the identity of any of the nominees, but Lundestad said that 47 of the 278 candidates were organisations.Even though the list is kept secret for at least 50 years, the sponsors can choose to reveal the name of their nominee.MORE... 1 TweetThe first winter storm of 2014 swept across the northeastern United States on January 1–3, bringing as much as 24 inches (61 centimeters) of snow to the hardest hit areas. The center of the storm was over the North Atlantic Ocean when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image at 10:55 a.m. Eastern Time on January 3. Lines of clouds over the ocean indicate that strong winds were blowing from the north toward the center of the low-pressure system. The winds pushed the clouds away, leaving a clear view of fresh snow across most of the Northeast.
By the afternoon of January 3, snowfall totals ranged between 0.2 inches (0.5 centimeters) along the southern edge of the storm to nearly 24 inches in northern Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service. The storm closed schools, roads, and airports, and more than 2,000 flights were cancelled on both January 2 and 3, according to news reports.
While the clear skies provided a view of the fresh snow from space, they were accompanied by extremely cold temperatures. Clouds radiate heat back to the ground, while clear skies allow heat to escape into space. An Arctic blast is forecast to move across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, with temperatures 20 to 30 degrees below normal, warned the National Weather Service.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.A relatively boring start to the 2014 college bowl season was kickstarted by calamity in the fourth quarter of the inaugural Camellia Bowl. Now, the second edition of the game will look to climb from its spot as the lowest-rated bowl game.
Granted, there was a Camellia Bowl before it made its triumphant return in 2014, but the previous matchups served as postseason playoff games for lower divisions. For three years it was the NAIA Championship game, before becoming a quarterfinals game for the NCAA College Division before it was reclassified as Division II and Division III.
In 2014, Bowling Green blew a 20-7 lead to fall behind 28-27 with a minute left and immediately recaptured the lead with a game-winning 78-yard connection between James Knapke and Roger Lewis that resulted in a 33-28 victory for the Falcons. Similar fireworks between two of the nation's most exciting conferences, the MAC and Sun Belt, should be able to up underwhelming TV ratings from 2014.
Here is everything you need to know to get ready for this year's Camellia Bowl:
Date and time: Sat., Dec. 19, 5:30 p.m. ET
TV channel: ESPN
Location: Montgomery, Ala.
Stadium: Cramton Bowl, 25,000
Last year's score: Bowling Green 33, South Alabama 28
Last year's attendance: 20,256
Last year's TV rating: 0.7
Last year's payout for each school: $100,000
Team with the most all-time appearances: Bowling Green and South Alabama, 1
Team with the most all-time wins: Bowling Green, 1
Appalachian State Mountaineers (10-2, 7-1 in Sun Belt)
It's safe to say that Appalachian State's transition to the FBS is going well. In just their second season at the NCAA's highest level, the Mountaineers recorded 10 wins and are headed to the Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Mountaineers have rolled to the top tier of the Sun Belt by dominating mismatched teams behind one of the country's best rushing offenses. Their spread offense features four different players with at least 385 rushing yards on the year, and all four average at least 5 yards per carry. They are led by feature back Marcus Cox, who has gained over 100 yards per game this season after springing for 1,415 as a sophomore last fall.
Appalachian State isn't just an offensive powerhouse, however. It's held opponents to seven points or fewer four times this season while building the FBS's 13th-ranked scoring defense. Much of that has to do with the level of competition; those four games came against Howard, Old Dominion, Georgia State, and Louisiana-Lafayette. Meanwhile, their two toughest opponents, No. 1 Clemson and Arkansas State, each scored at least 40 points against the Mountaineers in their matchup. That defense will have to prove it belongs in the top 15 with a big performance on December 19th.
Last bowl game: This is Appalachian State's first bowl appearance.
All-time bowl record: 0-0
Head coach's bowl record: This is Scott Satterfield's first bowl appearance.
Ohio Bobcats (8-4, 5-3 in MAC)
Slowly and steadily, Ohio is developing into one of the MAC's toughest teams. This season's 8-4 record - with wins over Northern Illinois and Marshall - marked the Bobcats' seventh-straight season of bowl eligibility. A balanced offensive attack has made Frank Solich's team a constant upset threat on the gridiron.
The Bobcats are led by senior passer Derrius Vick (1,809 passing yards, 64% completion rate in 10 games), but the dual-threat quarterback was taken off the field by an ankle injury and replaced by backup JD Sprague for the team's final two regular season showdowns. Sprague led the team to a victory over Ball State before getting injured as well, turning the reins over to Greg Windham.
Though both Vick and Sprague could return for bowl season, Ohio proved that they can win no matter who is behind center; the Bobcats racked up 230 rushing yards to upset Northern Illinois in their finale. Sophomore running back A.J. Ouellette is the guy they'll turn to - he gained 261 yards on 52 carries while Vick was sidelined.
Last bowl game: 2013 Beef O'Brady's Bowl (37-20 loss to East Carolina)
All-time bowl record: 2-6
Head coach's bowl record: Frank Solich is 4-7 in bowls, going 2-3 at Nebraska and 2-4 with the Bobcats.On Saturday, Tom Perez was voted the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Perez, who has never held or run for national elected office, served as labor secretary in the Obama administration. He was urged to run after establishment figures—and especially former members of the Obama administration—grew concerned that progressive congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota would become the next DNC head. Ellison had garnered the endorsements of a wide range of Democrats, including Representative John Lewis and Senators Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Elizabeth Warren.
Ellison’s identity as a black Muslim and his progressivism—particularly his pledge to get lobbyists and corporate money out of the DNC and instead focus on Bernie-ish small donations to build up the local Democratic establishment—clearly made some in the party uncomfortable. This, despite the fact that Ellison’s record and profile made him an ideal choice to lead a party that wants to run on a platform of diversity and economic equality.
Perez’s backers have pointed to the former labor secretary’s strong progressive record, which is undeniable (although his history with the banking industry, in particular, is concerning). But as my colleague Clio Chang pointed out earlier this week, the argument made by party stalwarts that Perez and Ellison were cut from the same progressive cloth simply didn’t hold water—if that were true, then why the need for Perez to enter the race in the first place?
Much has been made about the left wing’s fixation on the race. Some have grumbled that it has been turned into a rehash of the 2016 primary between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Progressives should be happy with Perez, the argument goes, who was one of the most progressive labor secretaries in history. Some have also argued that this conflict has been manufactured by a progressive wing that has become unhinged in its obsession with the DNC and the national party establishment.Michael Fulmer (Photo: Robin Buckson, Detroit News)
Lakeland, Fla. – There is a fundamental difference between how a manager and general manager view their team.
It is Al Avila’s job to see the long-term picture, this season and beyond. Manager Brad Ausmus is focused only on the here and now. That partly explains why they have a slightly differing vision for top prospect Michael Fulmer.
Avila said on Thursday that they were stretching Fulmer out to be a starter at Triple-A Toledo.
“Right now, it’s in his best interest to be a starter,” Avila said. “The development process is better when you are a starter. You get more chances to throw more of your pitches. It’s best for him to be a starting |
, that his product would take time for the community to embrace and that he did not want to come in and try to be some "big commercialized sponsor that was gonna throw money at events, use up the demographic and move on". Manpacks and Ken wanted to start slow and actually make a difference in the community.
How, you ask? Well..that is where CSN comes in. The Cyber Sports Network would help brand Manpacks for esports. Listen.. we (CSN) already have the female market cornered (Rachel/Seltzer).. why not get the guys on board too!
Before CSN and myself would go any further with it.. I had to test the product! ** Warning, the following description may be unsuitable for gamers under 17 ** I got my hands on my own Manpack about 3 days after they shipped it. The pack includes black athletic socks, a white T-shirt and black "Saxx" boxer briefs. I think the last time I wore boxer briefs, Bill Clinton was caught with his down. No joke. I was a bit apprehensive, but hey.. they were free. I tried the socks on that day. I had an 11 hour day at class and figured there would be no better way to test them. They are, without doubt, the most comfortable and breathable (you older guys or sports guys will know what that means) socks I have ever owned. I own a lot of socks by the way!. I tried the T-shirt next and again on another one of my 11 hour class days. It is an undershirt, but unlike most, it is not 100% cotton. You know how athletic polo shirts made by Nike can stretch a bit and are very breathable. That is this shirt! Manpacks was 2 for 2 so far on having me sold on their product! The boxer briefs were last up. I held my "Saxx' up, fully inspected the size large and then put them on. Instant gratification guys! Now, I would never think to pay more then 10 bucks for a par of boxers.. but that mindset was quickly changed. These boxers lasted a full day of walking, sitting and scratching and are easily the most comfortable boxers I own. I have already put my order in for another pair of 'Saxx'.
So.. there is my story. Honest and Brutal.. and I bet you wont ever hear another organizer, team manager or pro player give you this sort of description or insight into a sponsor. Please, remember, if we want eSports to grow, we have to grow outside of those we already target and that includes the type and size of the sponsors we bring into our little community. I encourage you all, women included, to get your hands on a manpack today!
I just re-read my own spoiler and actually cracked a smile.
As a commentator for both Check Six Gaming and the Cyber Sports Network, Gwin continues to bring sexy back to StarCraft II. Garrett "Gwin" Prechel is a relative newcomer to the esports scene. A self proclamed "Nerd" (with a capital N) Garrett brings the RTS knowledge as a skilled player of both Brood War and Starcraft II. In his spare time, Garrett works as a freelance voice actor and singer for film and TV.We created Manpacks to give you more time to build the next Facebook, level up in Skyrim, land planes on the Hudson...> More time to slay dragons and achieve the goals you aspire to.But before that, we created Manpacks to give us more time to build Manpacks. That's right, as entrepreneurs we understandhow little time there is in a day, andhow annoyingly disruptive errands can beIt began as "wouldn't it be great if underwear, socks, shaving supplies etc were delivered to our door?" We bought some inventory, built a website, and have been customers ever since. Yes, it's very nice.I just re-read my own spoiler and actually cracked a smile. Still Naked!Sullivan Goss Gallery Press Release
CHRIS PETERS’ FIRST THREE A.I.-BASED PAINTINGS TO BE UNVEILED
A ONE NIGHT SHOWING & DISCUSSION FOR ARTISTS, CURATORS & COLLECTORS IS PLANNED
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, MARCH 28TH | 6 - 7:30pm
SANTA BARBARA, CA - On Thursday, March 28th, Sullivan Goss will host a private exhibition and reception where they will unveil three new oil paintings that were imagined by an artist-customized Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN is an A.I. algorithm capable of “learning” and “predicting”). Artist Chris Peters hand-curated and processed a set of 6,000 landscape images from a larger set of 11,000, programmed open-source machine learning software to create a higher-resolution and more sensitive computation of a landscape, and painted his favorite results in oil. He translated the imaginings of his A.I. Muse into a language that human beings have been using for forty-thousand years - painting. Running on just released NVIDIA hardware, he is the first artist to both customize A.I. software to generate landscape compositions and paint them in oil. Peters’ new project suggests a healthy and creative use for A.I. software in a time when A.I. headlines are filled with anxiety and pessimism. This series was completed on February 2, 2019, but this will be the public’s first chance to see the paintings.
The artist will give a brief talk on his innovative project and will answer questions. Following the brief presentation, the paintings will be unveiled and drinks will be served.
To learn more about Chris Peters or his project, please visit: www.tensordream.ai
Sullivan Goss Gallery Press Release
THE EYE BEGINS TO SEE: NEW PAINTINGS BY CHRIS PETERS
“The work is absolutely stunning and profoundly moving....a true heir to the great Tonalist tradition in American art.” - David Cleveland, author A History of American Tonalism: 1880–1920
SANTA BARBARA, CA - For his first solo exhibition with Sullivan Goss, L.A.-based artist Chris Peters will deliver nineteen paintings – the very brightest of which is illuminated by a full moon whose lower half is hidden behind the silhouette of a tree. These paintings imagine a liminal space – the border between where the eye begins to see and where some unseen and perhaps more profound reality ends.
Whistler called these kinds of paintings nocturnes in an attempt to entwine the feelings of Romantic music with his painting. Before that, “moonlights” – as night paintings were once known – were relatively rare. It is probably not a coincidence that their popularity waxed with the popularity of Gothic romance novels, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the vogue among Pictorialist photographers for images that were dark and dreamy. In American art, many of the paintings of the period are now described as Tonalist.
The Gallery has long held an interest in night paintings. In 2001, a very successful exhibition of night paintings whetted the local appetite for these kinds of images. Subsequently, the gallery’s representation of the Estates of Lockwood de Forest, NA (1850-1932) and Leon Dabo, NA (1864-1960) as well as contemporary Tonalists like Nicole Strasburg, Sarah Vedder, and Jon Francis confirmed Sullivan Goss as one of the preeminent destinations for collectors interested in these aesthetics.
So, the night paintings of Chris Peters have precedents in both the history of American Art as well as the gallery’s exhibition program, but these are fresh. They are undeniably contemporary. They are also more indebted to the insights of infrared photography. Finally, they represent a striking turn for an artist trained in clear and crisp Realism.
New research suggests that there are different “chronotypes.” Some people are day people. Others are night people. These new paintings from Chris Peters should certainly appeal to the latter group. A catalog with a brief essay by Jeremy Tessmer and notes from the artist is available for this exhibit.
The printed show catalog is also available:
For additional information about the paintings on this page please contact:
Sullivan Goss Gallery
11 East Anapamu Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
t: 805.730.1460
e: Sullivan Goss Gallery
The Eye Begins to SeeI have a friend that likes to pick up all of the girls in a swinging hug before he leaves. He went through all of the girls and I just figured that he was going to give me a regular hug. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and scooped me into the air like I weighed nothing. Obviously, I was caught off guard and, as a heavy person, was not used to being lifted in the air. When I asked him about it later, he laughed it off, not realizing that he had made me feel more normal and accepted in those ten seconds than most people in my entire life.
Thin privilege is being able to have the ignorance that comes with not being treated differently because of your size.Until Lt. John Pike was caught on camera dousing peaceful UC Davis protesters with pepper spray, Defense Technology’s Amazon offering was languishing review-less. Now over 300 people have weighed with a form of creative protest.
You’ll be the envy of all of your jack-booted thug friends when you deal out some major pain and suffering to people who have the nerve to exercise their right to peaceful protest in Amurca. Be a YouTube hit! Become a meme! With a little luck, you could even become the world-wide poster boy for fascism. D. Hobby
The helpful orange dye tells you who you’ve sprayed already, and who needs a second or third dose. It says no closer than six feet, but I found that 2-3 feet greatly increased the chances of ingestion. I understand that if you can manage to force the protesters to swallow this stuff it makes them cough up blood for hours, a total bonus for those of us who think civil rights are too special for anybody but the privileged to have and enjoy. Technowitch
The Wal-Mart pepper spray incident inspired other reviews:
Finally, I can make my family shut up with a quick (or long) spray of this freedom defending spray. And holiday shopping has never been easier! See a sale you want to get to before anyone else? Just point and spray into the crowds and watch them run away!! Not happy with the price of that new iPad? Just point and spray into the eyes of the hippster Apple store employee! Annoyed waiting in line with the little one to visit Santa? You know what to do!!! Andrew Gilbert
I was pleased to see that this product worked so well! Normally, whenever I have an “irate customer”, I just smile, node my head, and give them whatever the hell they want. Now, with this amazing, one-of-a-kind product, I won’t have to do that anymore! Tsathoggua
Some of the reviewers responded to attorney Megyn Kelly’s comment on Fox News that pepper spray is “a food product essentially.”
I am stunned at how versatile this product is. In a fit of desperation I used it to season my turkey and it came out delicious! Just the right amount of tang and zip. I am aware, however, that it’s usage is not restricted to seasoning and marinating. I plan to use it at our next church retreat, just in case somebody sings “Kumbaya” out of tune. In the kitchen, around the campfire, in the classroom and the quad…I cannot recommend this product more highly. Wry Zone
Now, whenever my students don’t do their homework, I make them sit on the floor and hold up a sign reading “I don’t need to do work” as I walk past them and give ‘em a good old pepper spraying. The school reasoned that it doesn’t count as bodily harm, because after all, it’s just a food derivative. Basically, I’m feeding the kids! At first, I had to make over 20 signs in order to get all the kids, but now, I rarely have one person up there. I’m sure my law-enforcing friends would be proud. LOLamonster
The company may be uncomfortable with the sardonic reviews, but eCop! Police Supply does not appear worried about sales for what it calls, “the world’s most widely used pepper spray in law enforcement and corrections.”
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Photo from DVIDSHUB via Flickr Creative CommonsPTI By
India is committed to taking "hard and difficult" decisions in the long-term interest of the economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said today, while assuring Japanese industry that the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime facing hurdles from states will be in place in an "appropriate type" by 2014.
On a mission to woo Japanese investors, Singh told leading business honchos at the Keidanren, the premier chamber of commerce and industry, that the present bilateral trade of USD 18 billion does no justice to the enormous potential that exists between the two countries.
The Prime Minister faced some searching questions from the Japanese industry which sought improvement in tax regimes, further easing of priority sector lending rules to expand financial services and allowing opening of foreign bank branches in metropolitan cities.
"Our people have tasted the benefits of rapid growth and they will not settle for less. I want to assure you that our government is committed to take hard and difficult decisions in the long term interest of our economy," he said.
A top official of Mitsubishi corporation said Japanese investors faced difficulties with different tax regimes in each Indian state leading to complications and wanted to know the timeline by when GST regime will be implemented.
"India is a federation and there are difficulties to bring states to agree to surrender tax power but I am confident we will overcome the hurdle. We will work and we have been working to persuade more and more states to fall in line but it does require amendment of the Constitution and needs much more energetic efforts than an ordinary piece of legislation," Singh said.
The GST has been facing opposition from several non- Congress states which have accused the Centre of trying to encroach on powers of the states and that such a move would hit their finances.
"So, I cannot say we can deliver tomorrow but if you ask me by 2014 once elections are out of the way, whichever government is there will be a general agreement of appropriate type in place to help propel India's growth story," he said.
The Prime Minister said as a result of a number of steps to revive the Indian economy, Government expects the growth rate in the current fiscal (2013-14) to be much better than in the previous year, hopefully around six per cent or so.
The chairman of Keidanren, Hiromasa Yonekura, said Japanese investors are very keen to promote private-public partnership but were facing hurdles because of the complicated tax regimes in India, drawing an assurance from Singh that his government was determined to overcome these hurdles to enable the country return to the growth path of eight per cent.
On easing norms for Priority Sector Lendings (PSL), the economist Prime Minister said it was a "tough technical question which was the preserve of the Finance Ministry and the RBI" and then went on to add in a lighter vein, "the higher we go, the less you know about lower levels".
The Prime Minister said the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor between Delhi and Mumbai was scheduled for completion as planned in 2017.
The procurement of civil works for Phase-I is in an advanced stage and construction is to begin soon. The engineering service consultants for Phase-ll of the DFC project are already in position, he said, hoping that Japanese companies will participate strongly in both phases.
He said the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) was also making good progress and had moved from the planning to the implementation stage. A number of priority projects for implementation from the first tranche of USD 4.5 billion provided by Japan for the DMIC have been listed.
"We have resolved the issues of priority sector lending treatment to DMIC projects. Restrictions on foreign currency borrowings have been relaxed. I understand a few problems remain relating to long term swap arrangements. We are willing to consider innovative suggestions to resolve these problems," he said, adding Japanese banks are being given licenses to open branches in metropolitan areas.
Japan has also offered financial and technical support for a detailed project report for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Railway Route.
"This is an ambitious project and we will need to take a holistic view, based on our infrastructure needs, commercial viability, overall national priorities and the availability of financial resources," he said.
Referring to the Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor, he said it provided another focus for expanded Japanese industrial cooperation in future.
He said a preliminary study for a comprehensive integrated master plan for this corridor has been completed and the second phase of the project was about to commence.
Noting that the two countries have been engaged in an energy dialogue to address some of the challenges in energy security, including the issue of access to assured, reliable, secure and affordable supply of hydrocarbons, Singh said Japanese investments in India in the areas of solar power generation, clean coal technologies and upgrading of brown coal would be welcomed.
Singh said while it will be easier for foreign banks to adjust to PSL norms, his government would evolve transitional methods to provide a hospitable climate for the Japanese industry and ensure its larger presence in the country.
Describing Japan as a "major player" in the modernisation of Indian industry in the period after economic reforms, he noted that the Maruti-Suzuki partnership has become a household name in India.
Singh, who arrived here yesterday on a three-day visit, said lack of quality infrastructure was the single biggest obstacle to achieving high levels of competitiveness in India.
He said government has targeted an investment of around one trillion USD in infrastructure over the 12th plan period, with half of it coming from the private sector and public-private partnership.
"I hope Japanese business will pick up a large share of the investment opportunities that India offers," he said.CHICAGO — Can you take the heat?
Chicago's hot sauce fans and hot pepper aficionados will get a chance to test their toughness this summer at the inaugural Hot Sauce Festival next month in the Avondale neighborhood.
Want to try the world's hottest pepper? You'll have a chance. Super-hot wings? They'll be there.
They'll even have milk to soothe your burned mouth — especially if you grow too bold and try to eat ghost peppers. Or worse, the dreaded Carolina Reaper.
The festival is scheduled for July 25-26 at Belmont and Elston avenues. Adrian Gutierrez, organizer of the Chicago Hot Sauce Club, said the festival will feature spicy wings, sauces, jams and more, as well as contests and music to entertain those who can't handle anything more intense than a jalapeño.
Chicago Hot Sauce Festival View Full Caption Chicago Hot Sauce Festival
Two of those contests will be for pepper-eating, but they aren't for the faint of heart: Participants will attempt to gobble down the most ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers, the hottest pepper in the world. Ghost peppers have a Scoville rating — which measures the intensity of a pepper's heat — of more than 1 million, while Reapers can have a Scoville rating of more than 2 million. For comparison, a habanero typically has a rating of 100,000-350,000 on the Scoville scale, while a jalapeño rings in at only around 2,500.
Gutierrez said that while he could handle three to four of the peppers, he doesn't expect most people to "get past one bite" of a Carolina Reaper or ghost pepper.
"You take a bite and you're going on the floor," he said. "There will be people there that can't handle the heat."
In fact, Gutierrez expects things to get so hot that the festival will have cooling stations with milk and water. There will also be non-spicy food and drinks from local vendors like Dia De Los Tamales and Chicago Cupcake for those who require something a little tamer.
If you're not up to the challenge of taking on a Carolina Reaper, you can join in on a Major League Eating beef-eating contest or dress up as pepper to try and win the festival's pepper and hot sauce costume contest.
Money raised during the festival will benefit the Friends of Linne, which helps Carl Von Linne School, 3221 N. Sacramento Ave.
The festival will be discussed at a Tuesday meeting with Ald. Deb Mell (33rd). Gutierrez said he expects the meeting to focus on parking, which he doesn't think will be a concern. Festival organizers expect to bring in 5,000-7,000 people.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:Overall view from the south Rim of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado river near Tusayan, Arizona August 10, 2012. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
(Reuters) - New research suggests the Grand Canyon, one of the seven wonders of the world, may have a far more interesting and ancient history than previously thought, a U.S. study said on Thursday.
Instead of being shaped by the Colorado River 5 or 6 million years ago, a new analysis of the minerals in the 280-mile (450-km) gorge suggests it was formed by a much older river likely frequented by the dinosaurs that roamed North America some 70 million years ago.
The research, published in the journal Science, adds a new component to 150 years of wrangling over the exact age of the mile-deep canyon in Arizona, according to University of Colorado Assistant Professor Rebecca Flowers.
A new method of measuring radioactive decay from minerals in the soil suggests the gorge is 70 million years old, Flowers, who worked with Professor Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology one of the project, said in a telephone interview.
The team examined soil samples from both the western and eastern parts of the canyon, and their findings confirmed a similar study published last year based on a study of just one side of the canyon.
It suggests that the canyon would have been carved by a river that existed before dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago and before the existence of the modern Colorado River system, a 1,450-mile-long (2,333-km-long) body of water that flows from Colorado to Mexico.
“At that time, the topography of the landscape in the Western U.S. looked very, very different than today,” she said.
In fact, the elevation of the land in the West was higher and that ancient river would have flowed in the opposite direction of the Colorado River, she said.It might seem like there are perks to exercising on an empty stomach, like burning more fat per workout, but the downsides greatly outweigh the benefits. Here’s why you’re probably better off fueling up before you go for a run or crank out some super sets at the gym.
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Let’s say it’s time for your daily workout. Do you have some food first? Or do you put it off until after you’ve finished your usual regimen? Proponents of exercising while “fasted,” or in a state of hunger, suggest you can speed up your weight loss by doing so. One study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that participants who exercised while fasted burned nearly 20% more fat than those who ate before beforehand. And another study, published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, had similar findings, suggesting aerobic training in a fasted state lowers more body fat percentage in addition to body weight when compared to fed training.
Why the extra fat burn? As sports dietetics specialist Kelly Pritchett, Ph.D., R.D., puts it, your body is switching fuel sources. To perform intense physical actions like long-distance running or lifting weights, your body has to burn glycogen, or your stored up carbohydrates. If your body runs of out glycogen reserves—like it would in a hungry, fasted state—it has to use something else to keep you going. In this case, all that excess fat you’re hoping to get rid of.
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But there’s a catch—well, a few of them. For starters, your body isn’t a fan of being starved, and it likes having fat stores. When you burn fat rapidly, your body begins to adjust your metabolism to compensate for that loss. Basically, it goes into a kind of survival mode and starts to burn fewer calories, says Pritchett. By burning so much fat, your body thinks it needs to store more of it when eat your next meal, completely counteracting those fat burning benefits. And as another study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found, extended periods of fasting can lead to a drop in resting metabolic rates. So there’s no real upsides to foregoing food in this type of scenario.
Pre-fueled exercise may also suppress your appetite more than fasted exercise, according to one study published in the journal Appetite. All in all, participants expended the same amount of energy per day, but those who ate before working out felt less of an urge to eat more later. Considering the fact that weight loss largely comes down to how you eat, not what you do, this can be an important factor for those exercising to lose weight.
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Furthermore, fasted exercise can cause you to shed some muscle in addition to fat under some circumstances. If your body has burned through its glycogen fuel stores, it may also obtain energy by breaking down muscle proteins in addition to those fats. Intense training always breaks down muscle so it can get stronger through protein synthesis, but doing so while fasted harvests more muscle sooner, making it more difficult to recuperate the lost mass.
That said, this only occurs when you increase the intensity of your workout beyond your normal routine. If, say, you were to do a normal workout first thing in the morning, your muscles would probably still have sufficient glycogen stores leftover from your previous meal. And according to one study from the Journal of Applied Physiology, being in a fasted state doesn’t increase or decrease your physical output or exertion during typical, submaximal exercise. Essentially, whether you workout hungry or not, you can do your usual thing at the usual intensity without worrying about muscle loss.
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That can lead to another problem, though. While you could get through a workout fasted, you won’t have the energy to push yourself harder, and thus, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to improve at the same rate were you to eat first. A separate study, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine In Sport, suggests that fasted training significantly underperforms fed training when it comes to maximal exercise, or reaching for new personal bests. Pushing yourself is what leads to increased muscle mass and faster run times, so you want to do it as much as you can. When it’s all said and done, eating before a workout can actually increase your metabolism in the long run.
In short, yes, it’s feasible to work out on an empty stomach and get by just fine. Some people prefer it because they feel lighter, are more alert, and experience increased focus. But beyond personal preference, there’s not many benefits. You’re better off eating a carb-dense meal about an hour before your workout, and following it up with a high-protein, light-carb meal afterward. Plus, not eating puts in you in a crappy mood. Nobody wants to deal with a jerk at the gym. And you’re better off finishing your workouts feeling happy and refreshed, not miserable and ready to kill for food.The name Michael Jordan is synonymous with greatness. His ability to score at will and shut down opposing players on defense was unparalleled. When you factor in 6 NBA championships and a Hall of Fame induction, there are not many athletes who live in the same “air” as Jordan, but the top Judoka in the world Teddy Riner who has an astounding record of 88-0, is closing in fast.
The 6’ 8” Frenchman, who weighs nearly 300 pounds, is just 26 years old but has dominated Judo like no one has ever done before. Riner is the first man to win 8 gold medals at the Judo World Championships, winning every year except one from 2007-2015. The lone exception was 2012 when he won an Olympic gold medal for France. Riner has won 4 gold medals at the European Championships and another at the Mediterranean Games as well. When you’re at the top of your sport as Riner is and face the best competition in the world even the great ones are expected to have an occasional loss, but what Riner is doing is really something special.
To provide an idea of just how good Riner is, see the chart below which compares his win/loss record to some of the other great athletes that compete or have competed in individual sports. Only Cael Sanderson, who is considered the greatest college wrestler to ever live, and Floyd Mayweather Jr., the best pound for pound boxer of our generation are able to match Riner’s win percentage.
Sumo wrestler Hakuho who holds the record for most wins in a year (86) and for the most undefeated tournaments (11) has lost 150 times in his storied career. Serena Williams, the most dominating female tennis player on earth is 15 percent behind Riner. Even Michael Phelps, the man with the most Olympic gold medals in the history of swimming doesn’t always win, but Teddy Riner does.
***Here’s how Riner’s achievements compare to other individual sports superstars***
Athlete Sport Wins Losses Win %
Teddy Riner Judo 88 0 100
Cael Sanderson Wrestling 159 0 100
Floyd Mayweather Boxing 49 0 100
Hakuho Sumo 852 150 85.0
Serena Williams Tennis 737 123 85.7
Michael Phelps Swimming 23 9** 71.9
*win percentage is calculated by his performances in International Competition.
**Non 1st Place finishes)I had a great rematch for the book exchange. I received a total of five books, one of which took a long, strange trip to get to me. The books are:
The Education of a British-Protected Child, by Chinua Achebe, a series of essays by a man who grew up in Nigeria; Maps in a Mirror, a collection of short fiction by Orson Scott Card; Soccer in a Football World, by David Wangerin, a book about soccer in America; The Gourmet's Guide to Cooking with Liquors and Spirits, by Dwayne Ridgaway (self-explanatory) The Arms of Krupp, by William Manchester, about the Krupp family of Germany.
All in all, a great selection. My wonderful rematcher was awesome enough to stay on top of a book that got lost in the shuffle.A clear head and trust in his instincts were crucial factors in Rising Pune Supergiant opener Rahul Tripathi scoring a barrage of boundaries against one of the strongest attacks in the tournament, on an Eden Gardens surface that most of his team-mates struggled on.
Tripathi smashed 78 of his 93 runs in boundaries - at one stage it was 50 out of 53 - and was only dismissed in the penultimate over of the chase, when Rising Pune were six runs away from their target of 156.
"If I had made some plans that wouldn't have worked because these are good bowlers, they are a good bowling side," Tripathi told iplt20.com. "So I just kept it simple to watch the ball and hit the ball and just go with my gut feeling. Keeping my mind blank … that was important and that helped me today. I played as the ball was coming so I played according to the merit of the ball.
"I feel good. I was getting good starts so I wanted to carry on that start. It's good that we won the match, that is more important. I would have loved to finish the match, that's one thing. But it's okay, if we win the match it's okay I miss the century."
Tripathi has impressed with his crisp strokeplay while opening in the IPL and is fifth on the run-scorers' list behind David Warner, Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa and Shikhar Dhawan.
He's also given Rising Pune rapid starts by scoring freely against fast bowlers, especially by targeting the off side, and revelled on a re-laid pacer-friendly Eden Gardens pitch on Wednesday. While he has scored briskly against the spinners too, his 224 runs against pace at a strike rate of 159 shade his 128 runs against spinners at a strike rate of 149. He said sharing the dressing room with international players had given him a lot of confidence.
"It's helping me a lot, it's a dream experience for me. Opening with Ajinkya bhai, even if he says simple things like, 'you are batting well,' you get a belief that somebody like Ajinkya Rahane is telling you that you are hitting the ball well with good intent," Tripathi said. "Even off the field, Faf [du Plessis] is there, Ben [Stokes] is there, even the coaches, our team is having so much fun. Playing with MS [Dhoni] bhai … he's a legend. Two times I've been not out luckily while batting with him."
Against Kolkata Knight Riders, Tripathi showed his love for the leg side too. Of his seven sixes, six were smashed on the leg side off Umesh Yadav, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Kuldeep Yadav. While he pulled and hooked the quick bowlers, he also made reading Kuldeep's wristspin look easy by hammering him for three consecutive sixes in the 13th over. Kuldeep had troubled Dhoni and Manoj Tiwary with his wrong'uns in their previous match in Pune, but Tripathi smacked 29 runs off the 10 balls he faced from the wristspinner on Wednesday.
Tripathi now has more runs this IPL season than his international team-mates Steven Smith and Stokes, and has given his team solid starts even as Rahane averages just over 20 at a strike rate of 120 in 11 innings. Tripathi's 251 runs off 144 balls is also the best Powerplay aggregate this season, ahead of Warner's 238 off 160 balls.
However, he did not hesitate to admit that batting in front of big crowds in the IPL got him nervous sometimes. "I'm not that much used to playing in front of such crowds so I got late to react both times," he said, about getting run out twice this season.
Tripathi's innings ensured Rising Pune went third in the league, over-taking Sunrisers Hyderabad with their sixth win in seven games. Both teams have played 11 games and Rising Pune have 14 points, while Sunrisers have 13.Some of the District’s unclaimed remains are in mass, unmarked graves at Coleman Cemetery in Alexandria, placed there by contract-holder W.H. Bacon Funeral Services. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Coleman Cemetery is a sloping spit of land wedged against a cluster of million-dollar mansions in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County. Three acres wide, it’s the sort of graveyard people glance at as they whiz past, then likely never think of again. But this place bears a distinction: Hundreds of Washington’s poorest residents are buried here. And you’d never know it.
On a recent Monday, a man who tends to this cemetery sidestepped its headstones. He arrived at a plot of earth smaller than a racquetball court. Three trash cans and a shed overlooked a mass of tangled grass.
“These are where the graves are from D.C.,” said Ron Reaves, 73, his eyes cast down at the sodden earth. “If you walk through here, you’ll step in places like, ‘Oh, look, this is a grave. And this is a grave.’ People are buried all around here. People who don’t have enough money.”
This is the story of what happens to the District’s unclaimed dead — those who die so alone, so destitute that no one comes forward to pay for a funeral, leaving the job to the government. No tombstones bear their names. Their identities are not publicized. Invisible in life, they are also invisible in death.
It isn’t supposed to be this way.
Coleman Cemetery caretaker Ronald Reaves, 73, of Stafford, Va., stands near the spot where he says the cremains of unclaimed bodies from the District are buried. (Brittany Greeson/The Washington Post)
In 2007, the city signed a contract with W.H. Bacon Funeral Services to dispose of the city’s unclaimed remains. One of W.H. Bacon’s duties, according to an annually renewed contract obtained by The Washington Post, is to erect “a permanent marker at the burial site or mausoleum bearing the decedent’s name and the... case number.”
It’s the same situation at the plot for unclaimed remains at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Baltimore, where W.H. Bacon started laying the remains of District residents last year, as the Web site Vice first reported. No markers. No tombstones.
District officials say they are investigating whether W.H. Bacon has complied with its contract. “We would like to wait until our whole investigation has completed” before commenting more, said Beverly Fields, spokeswoman for the District’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the agency tasked with disposing of unclaimed remains.
The agency declined to divulge the identities attached to the remains that W.H. Bacon has buried, citing “relevant District laws and regulations.” But Fields said the agency makes every effort to contact relatives and directs inquiring families to W.H. Bacon Funeral Home.
Wendell Bacon, a funeral home manager, defended the parlor’s work. “The thing you should be asking is why people don’t claim their loved ones,” he said. “Some people have the money. That’s the story.”
He added: “I do the [contract] to the T.”
Anonymity crosses eras
In the District, there’s nothing new about leaving the poor in unmarked graves. Those who filled the city’s first known potter’s field, established in 1806 at what is today near the intersection of Seventh and M streets NW, lived at a place called the Old Poorhouse.
W.H. Bacon Funeral Home, on 14th Street in Columbia Heights, handles the District’s unclaimed. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Others — the disease-ravaged, the unwanted — vanished into unmarked, mass graves across the city.
That the anonymity of that time endures in this age of fast information came as a surprise to Anne Brockett, a cemetery historian for the District’s Historic Preservation Office.
“It’s not like back in the day, when you weren’t sure who they were,” she said. |
Jeanne Miller, San Francisco Examiner
“Brilliant young director Steven Spielberg has taken the premise of Peter Benchley’s best-selling but rather pedestrian novel Jaws—a summer resort community terrorized by the presence of a rogue Great White Shark—and streamlined it into a new classic of cinematic horror and high adventure. The movie version of Jaws is one of the most exciting and satisfying thrillers ever made.” — Gary Arnold, The Washington Post
“Jaws is a thriller of surprise rather than suspense. You feel like a rat, being given shock treatment, who has not yet figured out the pattern.” — Molly Haskell, The Village Voice
“The real hero of the film is young director Steven Spielberg. No review of Jaws should tell you too much of what happens, but every review of Jaws should tell you how masterfully Spielberg manipulates the audience. Wisely he relies on our imagination. For a long time we don’t see the whole shark, just the results. Or we are the shark, hovering beneath the swimmers, watching.” — Dominique Paul Noth, The Milwaukee Journal
“Jaws is not only a pre-sold smash, but a superbly crafted motion picture. Benchley’s lumbering, trashy but undeniably exciting novel has been cut to its narrative bone, leaving a tale of horror and adventure so gripping that one quickly becomes grateful to Spielberg and his cast for leavening it with regular doses of humor.” — John Hartl, The Seattle Times
“Approaching the horror film genre, Jaws is essentially a suspense and adventure film that blends an attractive and competent cast with the sure-handed direction of Spielberg.” — John Anders, The Dallas Morning News
“There’s a pretty fair novel called Jaws that someone should turn into a movie some day. The current movie of the same name bears little relationship to the book, and is just another horror-action picture in which personal revelation plays no part. It is merely three madmen against a huge shark and gives no feeling that these people have any existence apart from the movie.” — Emerson Batdorff, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer
“In spite of some rather gruesome scenes, Jaws is a superior piece of entertainment.” — Larry Stallings, Daytona Beach Journal
“Jaws is a movie whose every shock is a devastating surprise. It is elaborate, technically intricate, and wonderfully crafted. Contains classic sequences of suspense…The final battle is literally explosive.” — Time
“[W]hat this movie is about, and where it succeeds best, is the primordial level of fear. The characters, for the most part, and the nonfish elements in the story, are comparatively weak and not believable…. The three men in the tub who go hunting the shark are played to varying levels of competence by Roy Scheider (Gene Hackman’s partner in The French Connection) as the police chief, Richard (Duddy Kravitz), Dreyfuss as the young fish expert, and Robert Shaw (the conned con man in The Sting) as the grizzled, Ahab-style shark hunter. Because these actors have delivered strong performances in many other films, I’m inclined to fault the casting and dialog for their varying degrees of believability.” — Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
“Shock piles upon shock until the viewer is half-dead from fright, and it’s all so skillfully directed by 27-year-old Steven Spielberg, edited by Verna Fields, scored by John Williams and photographed by Bill Butler, that you can’t escape its tension and power even if you want to.” — Rex Reed, New York Daily News
“Jaws provides us with chills enough for the hottest of summers and hydrophobia for life.” — Judith Crist, New York Magazine
“The moment the shark appears, displaying the most destructive set of dentures ever, [the movie] has a lot of bite. From its beginning at the nightmarish beach party to the later daylight terror, Jaws is a movie that will draw oohs and aahs and perhaps retire bathing suits.” — James Meade, The San Diego Union
“If you think about Jaws for more than 45 seconds you will recognize it as nonsense, but it’s the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun if you like to have the wits scared out of you at irregular intervals.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“Spielberg ranks with [William] Friedkin as a foremost commercial practitioner of a gritty, punchy, visual equivalent of best-seller prose.” — Tom Allen, The Village Voice
“The technical credits, from Bill Butler’s photography to John Williams’ music, with a theme that recalls Bernard Herrmann’s classic score for Psycho, all add up to movie magic of a high order.” — George Anderson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
THE ORIGINAL ENGAGEMENTS:
Listed below are the theaters in the United States and Canada that opened Jaws on June 20th, 1975. These were the only theaters, with a few exceptions, that showed the movie during its first few weeks of release. (A few additional bookings and some non-traditional rotational bookings in coastal resort regions opened the movie in between the June 20th first wave and the July 25th second wave.) Contrary to numerous historical accounts, the number of theaters in which Jaws opened was not an industry record.
The duration of the engagements, measured in weeks, has been included in parenthesis after most of the entries.
During its sixth week, the release of Jaws was expanded by about 200 bookings, with additional bookings added weekly throughout the summer and into autumn and winter. By the end of the movie’s lengthy run it had played more than 2,000 engagements (plus hundreds more internationally). The film’s subsequent-wave, international and re-release bookings have not been included in the list below.
ALABAMA
Birmingham — Cobb’s Village East Twin (26 weeks)
Decatur — United Amusement’s Gateway Twin (14)
Huntsville — Martin’s Westbury Cinerama (15)
Mobile — Giddens & Rester’s Airport Twin (22)
Montgomery — Martin’s Martin Twin (15)
ALASKA
No theaters in Alaska played Jaws during Release Wave #1
ALBERTA
Calgary — 17th Avenue Drive-In (13)
Calgary — Odeon’s Grand Twin (23)
Edmonton — Odeon’s Rialto Twin (27)
Edmonton — Sky-Vue Drive-In (16)
Lethbridge — Famous Players’ Paramount (8)
Red Deer — Famous Players’ Paramount Twin (8)
ARIZONA
Phoenix — United Artists’ Chris-Town Mall 6 (36)
Scottsdale — Nace’s Round-Up Drive-In (22)
Tucson — Mann’s Park Mall 4 (42)
ARKANSAS
Fort Smith — American Multi-Cinema’s Phoenix Village Twin (15)
North Little Rock — General Cinema Corporation’s McCain Mall Cinema I & II (16)
BRITISH COLUMBIA
New Westminster — Odeon’s Odeon (15)
Prince George — Odeon’s Princess (9)
Surrey — Odeon’s Surrey Drive-In (16)
Vancouver — Odeon’s Vogue (18)
Victoria — Odeon’s Odeon Twin (15)
West Vancouver — Odeon’s Odeon Twin (13)
CALIFORNIA
Anaheim — Vinstrand’s Brookhurst (20)
Bakersfield — American Multi-Cinema’s Stockdale 6 (#1: 22)
Bakersfield — American Multi-Cinema’s Stockdale 6 (#2: 12)
Buena Park — Pacific’s Buena Park Drive-In (16)
Burlingame — Syufy’s Hyatt Twin (27)
Carlsbad — Sanborn’s Cinema Plaza 4 (18)
City of Industry — Pacific’s Vineland Drive-In (13)
Concord — Syufy’s Solano Drive-In (15)
Costa Mesa — Edwards’ Cinema (17)
Culver City — Pacific’s Studio Drive-In (10)
Daly City — United Artists’ Serra (26)
Fresno — Lippert’s Country Squire (15)
Gardena — Pacific’s Vermont Drive-In (10)
Highland — Pacific’s Baseline Drive-In (13)
Isla Vista — Metropolitan’s Magic Lantern Twin (#1: 17)
Isla Vista — Metropolitan’s Magic Lantern Twin (#2: 14)
La Habra — American Multi-Cinema’s Fashion Square 4 (27)
La Mesa — Mann’s Alvarado Drive-In (27)
Lakewood — Pacific’s Lakewood Center 4 (19)
Long Beach — Pacific’s Los Altos 3-Screen Drive-In (10)
Los Angeles (Canoga Park) — Century’s Holiday (19)
Los Angeles (Century City) — Plitt’s Century Plaza Twin (17)
Los Angeles (Hollywood) — Pacific’s Pix (19)
Los Angeles (Panorama City) — Lippert’s Americana 6 (#1: 19)
Los Angeles (Panorama City) — Lippert’s Americana 6 (#2: 19)
Los Angeles (Van Nuys) — Pacific’s Sepulveda Drive-In (13)
Mill Valley — Cinerama’s Sequoia Twin (19)
Monterey — Kindair’s Steinbeck (15)
Oakland — Cinerama’s Piedmont (26)
Oxnard — Mann’s Esplanade Triplex (19)
Palm Springs — Metropolitan’s Plaza (15)
Paramount — Pacific’s Rosecrans Drive-In (10)
Pasadena — Mann’s Hastings Triplex (19)
Pleasant Hill — Syufy’s Century 25 (27)
Redondo Beach — General Cinema Corporation’s South Bay Cinema I-II-III-IV (27)
Redwood City — Syufy’s Redwood 4-Screen Drive-In (15)
Riverside — United Artists’ Tyler Mall Cinema 4 (19)
Sacramento — Syufy’s Century 24 (27)
Sacramento — Syufy’s Sacramento 5-Screen Drive-In (20)
San Diego — American Multi-Cinema’s Fashion Valley 4 (#1: 27)
San Diego — American Multi-Cinema’s Fashion Valley 4 (#2: 27)
San Francisco — United Artists’ Coliseum (26)
San Jose — Syufy’s Century 24 Twin (38)
San Leandro — Plaza Twin (27)
South San Francisco — Syufy’s Spruce 2-Screen Drive-In (15)
Stockton — General Cinema Corporation’s Sherwood Plaza Cinema I & II (20)
Union City — Syufy’s Union City 3-Screen Drive-In (21)
Ventura — Pacific’s 101 3-Screen Drive-In (10)
West Covina — Sanborn’s Wescove Twin (27)
COLORADO
Boulder — United Artists’ Regency (17)
Colorado Springs — Commonwealth’s Rustic Hills North Twin (27)
Denver — Cooper-Highland’s Cooper (27)
Fort Collins — Commonwealth’s Campus West (16)
CONNECTICUT
Danbury — Brandt’s Cine (9)
Darien — United Artists’ Darien Playhouse (14)
Greenwich — Trans-Lux’s Plaza (9)
Groton — United Artists’ Groton (14)
Hamden — Whitney (13)
Manchester — United Artists’ Theatres East Triplex (19)
Milford — General Cinema Corporation’s Milford Cinema I & II (16)
Newington — General Cinema Corporation’s Newington Cinema I & II (16)
Trumbull — United Artists’ Trumbull (10)
Waterbury — General Cinema Corporation’s Naugatuck Valley Mall Cinema I-II-III (16)
West Hartford — United Artists’ The Movies at Westfarms Triplex (20)
Westport — Brandt’s Post (9)
DELAWARE
Rehoboth Beach — Midway Enterprises’ Midway Palace Twin
Wilmington — Brandt’s Edgemoor (15)
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Washington — General Cinema Corporation’s Jenifer Cinema I & II (18)
FLORIDA
Altamonte Springs — General Cinema Corporation’s Altamonte Mall Cinema I & II (19)
Bradenton — CinemaNational’s DeSoto Square Mall 4 (14)
Clearwater — ABC Florida State’s Capitol (14)
Coral Gables — Wometco’s Miracle (21)
Daytona Beach — General Cinema Corporation’s Bellair Plaza Cinema I & II (20)
Deerfield Beach — South Florida’s Gold Coast Drive-In (15)
Fort Lauderdale — Gulf States’ Village Triplex
Fort Myers — ABC Florida State’s Arcade (13)
Fort Walton Beach — Gulf States’ Brooks Plaza Triplex (13)
Gainesville — Eastern Federal’s Royal Park 4 (15)
Hollywood — Wometco’s Plaza Twin (16)
Jacksonville — ABC Florida State’s Regency Twin (20)
Lakeland — General Cinema Corporation’s Imperial Mall Cinema I & II (17)
Lauderhill — General Cinema Corporation’s Lauderhill (15)
Merritt Island — General Cinema Corporation’s Merritt Cinema I & II (15)
North Miami Beach — General Cinema Corporation’s 170th Street (15)
North Palm Beach — Budco’s Twin City (13)
Orlando — ABC Florida State’s Plaza Twin (19)
Panama City — Martin’s Capri (13)
Pensacola — Giddens & Rester’s Cordova Twin (16)
St. Petersburg — ABC Florida State’s Plaza Twin (19)
Sarasota — ABC Florida State’s Plaza Twin (13)
Tallahassee — Eastern Federal’s Miracle Twin (13)
Tampa — ABC Florida State’s Hillsboro Twin (18)
Tampa — General Cinema Corporation’s University Square Mall Cinema I-II-III-IV (18)
West Palm Beach — General Cinema Corporation’s Cinema 70 (17)
[On to Page 2]Injunction bans 15 students, including 7 elected officers of students’ union, from occupational protest on campus after sit-in over cutting of places
A London university has won an injunction against 15 of its own students – seven of whom are elected representatives of the students’ union – banning them from occupational protest on campus indefinitely.
The students from University of the Arts London (UAL) began their sit-in by occupying the reception area of Central Saint Martins in King’s Cross on 19 March.
After negotiations fell through, 15 representatives of OccupyUAL, who are protesting against plans to axe 580 foundation art and design places for new students, were summoned to appear before a judge at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday.
Among those named in the injunction was Shelly Asquith, the president of the UAL students’ union. She said: “It goes against our fundamental human right to protest.
“It also undermines the role of the students’ union because so many of the elected officers, including next year’s campaigns officer, are named on that injunction.”
The university, she said, has shown “utter contempt” for its own students and their views.
The move by UAL to seek legal action is the latest in what many see as a worrying trend to clampdown on student protest and freedom of speech on UK campuses.
In 2011, Birmingham University obtained an injunction which criminalised all occupation-style protests on its 250-acre campus for 12 months.
Two years ago, the University of Sussex followed suit after students occupied a campus building over plans to outsource 235 members of staff
MP John McDonnell spoke out at the time against what he saw as a wave of intimidating crackdowns against student protesters. He said: “It’s outrageous that students exercising their traditional democratic right to protest have been persecuted in this way.”
To protest UAL’s decision and show solidarity with their peers, more than 100 students gathered outside the Royal Courts on Tuesday, causing gridlock for central London drivers by marching to UAL’s Holborn offices and creating a roadblock, before marching back to Central Saint Martins.
The NUS joined the voices condemning the university’s actions. President Toni Pearce said: “NUS stands in solidarity with those who have protested peacefully in opposition to cuts.”
Before the hearing, she had called for UAL to reconsider what she called its “alarming and unacceptable use of legal action against activists”.
One of those named in the injunction is Elliott Dean, 19, who had never been involved in activism before and told the Guardian how “scary” it had been to receive the letter.
He said: “I didn’t expect to have an injunction taken out with my name on it.
“Even my tutors have been saying that it’s just part of the art school experience. Art schools and activism go hand in hand.”
But a UAL spokesperson told the Guardian that officers from the students’ union weren’t specifically targeted. He said: “We simply named individuals we knew to be in the space for legal purposes.”
Nigel Carrington, vice-chancellor at UAL, said they had “tried for nearly four weeks without success” to negotiate with the students. “Legal action was our last resort,” he added. He was adamant, however that the university remains “committed” to freedom of speech and peaceful protest.
Despite having to move out of their occupation, OccupyUAL will continue their campaign. A meeting between students and staff affected by redundancies will be held tomorrow to decide the next step.
Asquith said: “The university wants to shut us up but it won’t be successful.”Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Britain's homes will be invaded by giant spiders in the coming weeks.
That's the view of experts, who say rising temperatures during summer have led to the arachnids growing bigger than ever.
The mild summer has meant the arthropods have thrived.
And with the temperature set to fall, experts from Sydney University have warned the house spiders will be heading indoors in the coming weeks to find a mate.
Look: YOUR most terrifying photos of giant spiders
If you want to identify your eight-legged guest, check out our guide to the 10 most common UK house spiders.
Professor Adam Hart, of the University of Gloucestershire, agreed with the prediction.
"This year has been seemingly a good one for the invertebrates which spiders feed on, and it's quite mild out there," he said.
(Image: Rex)
The climate has allowed the numbers of insects spiders commonly prey on to increase, while remaining warm enough for them flourish.
Both sexes stay in their webs until autumn when males become nomadic and go in search of females.
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But Professor Hart said people have nothing to fear as the big creepy crawlies will offer a free pest control service.
"They often feed on the most common species, preventing a few species from becoming dominant," he said.
"We want to encourage people to respect and learn more about their little house guests."
(Image: Getty / Rex)
In Teeside, spider sightings have already begun to surge, with wildlife photographers and arachnophobes alike keen to display their eight-legged friends.
Meanwhile, more than 100 deadly spiders were discovered at a house for sale in Ireland last week.
Venomous black widows, funnel webs, tarantulas and even scorpions were discovered at the abandoned property in County Carlow.
It is believed they were left by the previous owner, who is currently unknown.
It is estimated up to 6.1% of the world population is affected by arachnophobia.
Earlier this month, a prank video involving a dog terrorising unsuspecting members of the public while dressed as a giant spider became a viral hit, attracting an incredible 90 million YouTube views in a fortnight.
poll loading Does the thought of sharing your home with giant spiders fill you with dread? 7000+ VOTES SO FAR YES NO
Have you seen an enormous spider in your house? If you took a photo of the creepy-crawly, we'd love to see it - the bigger, the better! See how spiders have taken over readers' homes here.
Upload your pictures via the form below. We can't use every picture we receive, but we'll publish the best on Mirror Online.
Is the form displaying properly? Click here to open it in a new window.Marina Voinova, 24, was searching for the address of her house on Yandex Maps, a service that unlike Google Maps doesn't automatically blur recognisable faces.
But when an image of her home in Perm, Western Russian loaded, she was horrified to see her partner of five years Sasha, with his arms around a mystery brunette.
He can then be seen kissing the slender woman, who has not been named, as they walk down the road.
Miss Voinova told how she has been left devastated by the infidelity of the "love of her life" and has since called of her engagement after proving that he was having an affair.
The office worker told Life News, a Russian news organisation : "First I noticed a familiar silhouette [and] I thought 'how could someone look so similar to my Sasha?'
“I looked more carefully, zoomed in saw it was indeed him and indeed her. I realised that he was lying and cheating on me all this time."
Using the site to look at a picture of one of her neighbourhood’s buildings, she was able to recognise her partner from a sling he was wearing when he broke his arm.
Describing the discovery as "fate", she went home and confronted her fiancé, who immediately confessed to his affair.
"When Sasha came home, I immediately called him to computer and asked him to find that address in the map,” she said.
“When the image loaded, Sasha's face changed in colour. I looked in his eyes, waiting for explanations."
He admitted he had made a mistake, that he did not love the other woman and begged forgiveness. But a furious Miss Voinova then called of their wedding.
She added: "At first I regretted searching for that address on internet, but eventually realised that it was silly to blame the Web for my boyfriend's unfaithfulness.”
Her fiancée, who has only been identified by his first name, has not commented.
A spokesman for the map service said any person who has a problem with their face appearing on the site, can request to have the image removed on “legitimate” grounds.
In 2009 a woman began divorce proceedings after spotting her husband’s car parked outside another woman’s house on the internet giant’s Street View service.Harry How/Getty Images
The last two weeks have been ugly all around for the Oakland Raiders, no doubt. Being outscored the past two weeks 80-30 with most of those 30 points coming against prevent defenses is very discouraging for the offense. Also discouraging is the way that Chuck Bresnahan's defense has played over the last two weeks.
The Raiders are currently the ninth seed in the AFC behind the Broncos in the division and behind the Jets, Titans and Bengals in the wild-card race.
Everybody is calling for a number of dramatic things ranging from playing Terrelle Pryor to firing Hue Jackson and releasing Carson Palmer. Those three scenarios I just listed are all tied for the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Play Pryor? Fire Jackson? Release Palmer? Do you people want to hand Tim Tebow the division title? Do you want the Raiders to regress back to the days of the mid-2000s?
Pryor is young and inexperienced. Tell me how he will be better than Palmer. With the team at 7-6 how can those people be so pessimistic with two of the next three games against the Chiefs and Chargers? If you haven't been watching, the Lions have lost three of their last five while the Chiefs have fired Todd Haley and the Raiders have won three in a row over San Diego.
Hue Jackson is the reason that the Raiders offense has had life the past two seasons. He brought Darren McFadden to the MVP level when he isn't on the shelf. Jackson has made a true receiver out of Darrius Heyward-Bey. Jackson has brought trickery into the Raiders offense.
It also doesn't help that Denarius Moore and Jacoby Ford are injured as well as McFadden
If anyone should be fired it should be Chuck Bresnahan.
Carson Palmer has gone from sitting on a couch to leading this team in the playoff race and these people are going to condemn the trade because he has had trouble with a new offense that he is learning without a training camp or preseason. I vote Palmer as the Raiders starter from here forward and thank Jason Campbell for being a class act and respectable QB in his two years here.
The Raiders' remaining schedule has them against a Lions team that has struggled lately followed by winnable division games at Kansas City (and interim coach Romeo Crennel) and then the Chargers (with lame duck coach Norv Turner).
The Raiders own the tie-breaker over the sixth seed Jets and are just one game back with three to go. Although I was hoping for a division title a few weeks ago, I will settle for any playoff spot after nine years of being mathematically eliminated no later than early December.WINDIES TOUR OF PAKISTAN, 2018
Windies to tour Pakistan for three T20Is
Cricbuzz Staff • Last updated on Sun, 12 Nov, 2017, 12:55 AM
All three matches - on March 29, 31 and April 1 - will be played in Lahore. © AFP
Windies are confirmed to play a three-match T20I series in Lahore in March next year, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Najam Sethi announced at a press conference on Saturday (November 11).
All three matches - on March 29, 31 and April 1 - will be played in Lahore.
The tour - which was supposed to happen in November this year - had to be rescheduled to next year due to 'unforeseen circumstances'. "There were talks to play the series in November, but due to unforeseen weather, we didn't take the risk," Sethi said in Lahore.
Sethi announced that both cricket boards - PCB and CWI - have mutually agreed upon playing T20Is against each other for the next five years in Pakistan and the USA. The reciprocal series in USA in 2018 will be a tri-series, with the third participant yet to be finalised.
"Cricket West Indies (CWI) and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have signed an agreement to play a series of T20Is, each year for the next five years in Pakistan and in the United States, subject to availability of dates. WICB will send its full-strength national team in 2018 and will play three T20Is [on] March 29, 31 and April 1.
"So I am hopeful that this ends the whole speculation around cricket in Pakistan. This is not a one-off series, we have tied up with the Windies for a period of five years. These bilateral [series] will be a part of the FTP, since we've made this agreement involving the ICC," he added.
After numerous deliberations with the International Cricket Council (ICC), PCB have successfully managed to organize two international events in the last couple of months which saw World XI and Sri Lanka touring Lahore for the T20I games. On both occasions, PCB offered watertight security in and around the stadium - in Lahore - which reassured fans all around the world. The PSL final last year proved to be a pivotal element in helping Pakistan host international games after all the uncertainty that engulfed post the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus outside the Gaddafi stadium in 2009.
© Cricbuzz
TAGSPresident Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
I’m trying hard to keep an open mind about President Trump, but it closed just a little further yesterday after his flippant comments about expulsion of employees at U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia. In response to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s outrageous demand to reduce U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people, Trump said, “I want to thank him [Putin] because we’re trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll.”
That response made me wonder whether our president thinks seriously about defending and advancing American national interests before he speaks. It most certainly is not in our interest to reduce our staff at our embassy and consulates in Russia by 755 people.
First and foremost, our ability to obtain information about Russia will be drastically constrained by this reduction. There are representatives of dozens of U.S. government agencies and departments, not just the State Department, in Russia. All of them now will be less able to inform their agencies back home about Russia.
We will have fewer people gathering data about Russia’s military modernization programs — both nuclear and conventional. We will have fewer people acquiring information about Russian foreign policy decision-making. We will have fewer people writing cables about economic trends in Russia. Our national security team in Washington, including Trump, will be less informed about Russia as a result of this staff reduction. That may be good for Putin. That’s bad for the United States.
Second, we also will have less capacity to conduct diplomacy, either the formal kind between the State Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or those informal relationships that develop between American and Russian soldiers, economists or astronauts that help to nurture ties between our two governments. Trump claims he wants better ties with Russia, but that’s harder to do with a skeletal team in Moscow.
The embassy also supports the verification of treaties, such as the New START Treaty and other Russian international obligations. How can it be in the national interest to have less capacity for these activities? That’s good for Putin. That’s not good for the United States.
Finally, we will have fewer resources to engage Russian society. The embassy staff that runs exchange programs will be cut. Those working in our public diplomacy shop will have fewer people. Diplomats will have fewer meetings with civil society leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, religious leaders and human rights activists. That’s good for Putin. That’s not good for the United States.
The loss of our Russian employees will be especially devastating. Some of our Russian national experts in nuclear physics, economics, politics and military affairs have worked for decades at our embassy. They have invaluable experience, expertise and contacts. Reducing their number serves Putin’s interests, not ours. (It will also be nearly impossible for them to find new jobs in Russia.)
So when Trump praises Putin for these reductions, what country’s interests is he advancing?
Trump also sounds weak when making such conciliatory statements toward Putin. The Russian president – whom Trump admires as a “strong leader” — did not praise President Barack Obama for kicking out 35 Russian diplomats in response to Russia’s interference in our 2016 presidential elections. Russian leaders, including even Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Twitter, now openly mock Trump’s incompetence regarding foreign policy, yet he does nothing to push back. That’s bad for our Russia policy and damaging to the United States’ international reputation more generally.
Trump can correct his mistake. He can respond to Putin by negotiating a smaller reduction. He can respond by some act of retaliation such as closing down a Russian consulate (save Putin some money!). Or at a minimum, he can make a statement in solidarity with those serving him and our country in Russia. In such a statement, he could correct the shocking factual error he made today when he said that Putin “let go” our employees. (Our diplomats don’t work for Putin, and they won’t be fired, just reassigned.) Or if a statement is too onerous, how about a tweet? Here’s an example for you, Mr. President:
The State and inter-agency community is thinking about our colleagues in Moscow and Consulates as they prepare for difficult weeks ahead. — John Heffern (@AmbHeffern) August 10, 2017
What was most upsetting about Trump’s comments was his complete lack of empathy, support or respect for his fellow American public servants. Every American working at our embassy and consulates took an oath to serve our great country. They endure harassment – tires slashed, apartments broken into, helicopters swooping down on their cars, and even sometimes beatings and guns to their head – to serve our country. Many serve away from their families. That’s life in the Foreign Service, life in the Marines, life in the Commerce Department. They are dedicated American patriots who deserve to be defended by their leader, the president of the United States. Yesterday, they were not.AMMAN: Syrian regime and allied forces launched a fresh offensive in the country’s remote southern desert on Monday, just east of an internationally brokered ceasefire zone that went into effect one day earlier, rebel military sources on the ground told Syria Direct.
Backed by Russian and regime airstrikes, pro-government forces overran “a number of strategic points and hills” in eastern Suwayda province, said Fares al-Mujannad, spokesman for a Free Syrian Army-affiliated militia that controls territory along the frontline with pro-Assad forces. The area under attack forms the western-most edge of the Syrian Badia, a swathe of mostly empty desert in southern Syria largely held by rebel forces.
“This is the most violent military campaign the regime has launched yet on the Badia,” al-Mujannad said.
Syrian state media outlet SANA reported that forces loyal to the Syrian government “re-established full control over strategic villages, towns, hills, and points” on Monday afternoon.
Pro-regime fighters in eastern Suwayda on Monday. Photo courtesy of Syrian Arab Army News.
The advance comes just one day after a truce brokered by Russia, the US and Jordan went into effect, aimed at easing tensions between opposition and pro-regime factions amassed in southwestern Syria.
Suwayda is one of three provinces—including Quneitra and neighboring Daraa province—covered in the deal, announced at the G20 summit in Hamburg.
Although Monday’s fighting is taking place outside the confines of the internationally brokered ceasefire zone, US-backed rebel forces accuse the Syrian military and its allies of using the agreement as an opportunity to “regroup” troops and continue recent advances in the country’s east.
“We are concerned that the regime will make gains in the Badia,” one rebel commander, who withheld his name told Syria Direct. “The ceasefire will help them do that.”There aren’t a lot of shows on television today that have won more popular and critical acclaim than Netflix’s “House of Cards”. Available to all Netflix subscribers, the political drama focuses on the exploits of power-hungry congressman Frank Underwood as he cunningly manipulates his way to ever greater amounts of influence within the American political system. Frank is willing to do almost anything to increase his power, a fact that makes every episode quite enthralling.
The show’s second season was released in February of 2014, but today I want to examine a statement Frank made during the first season regarding a former subordinate, a man who once was a part of his congressional staff and had left public service for an extremely lucrative career as a lobbyist:
Such a waste of time, he chose money over power. In this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I can not respect someone that doesn’t see the difference.
Frank’s words here appear on the surface to work as a pretty strong indictment against the notion that money is in any way more significant or worthwhile than power. In my perusal of many discussions online relating to the show, I have seen Frank Underwood (along with quotes like the one above) used to substantiate claims that money really isn’t everything, that it is overrated and unsubstantial when compared to less tangible things like love or, in this case, power.
Are they correct, though? Does Frank Underwood’s story validate the notion of money over power? It would were it not for a simple truth:
Money Is Power
The choice Frank talks about is usually not nearly as stark as he made it out to be. Power often doesn’t come absent money, and this is a big reason why your typical congressman is quite well off. Your average US Senator is worth just under $3 million, and that’s just account for assets that they are required to disclose publicly. When you start talking about the more powerful, well known and influential members of congress (ex: Pelosi, Issa, Cantor, etc), you begin talking about much larger sums of money than that average.
Money is, more often than not, the main gateway to power: it is the wealthy that get a leg up in the race for elected positions or in the race for influential political appointments (e.g., the appointment of Hank Paulson as Sec. of Treasury, among other similar appointments). Political fundraisers are some of the most powerful people in this country. They use their money and the vast connections they’ve obtained to raise money for political candidates, who in turn often depend on them. Some have gone as far as to say that these people are basically puppet-masters, pulling strings in Congress and ruining the democratic process because their cash is giving them too much influence. This view is not entirely without merit—these people can often control the political narrative with the money they spend funding political campaigns and producing political advertisements, nevermind the business and investment interests they can leverage in their bid to encourage elected officials to do what they like.
Names like Warren Buffett, Koch (both brothers), Sheldon Anderson, and many others who are much less well known (Steyer, Singer, Schlosstein, Norcross, etc), are really some of the most powerful men in the USA, more so than all but a handful of men or women in Washington. These are people whose wealth and fundraising prowess give them control over much of the political narrative. They can almost totally lock down politics in their local stomping grounds (state or municipal elections and appointments, for example) and they can essentially buy influence in the federal legislature. Congressmen grovel to these people — there are hedge fund managers out there who have these men and women lining up outside of their offices just to get a word in edgewise.
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In the developing world, the relationship between money and power is even more obvious thanks to lower transparency (more unchecked corruption, nepotism, etc), greater inequality, and other crucial factors. Consider the Philippines, one of the largest nations in South Asia, where political power is almost entirely held up by a handful of wealthy families.
Or consider Thailand, where the control wealthy political dynasties wield is even stronger. It’s bad enough that the Prime Minister’s seat in that nation has essentially been passed around in a single family for the better part of a decade now. Why have they been able to hold onto political power? They’re obscenely rich, that’s why.
I could go on, as these narratives play out in a lot of other developing countries where a cunning individual with just a few million dollars can essentially buy his way to the top.
For all of its outward promotion of the idea that power is more worthwhile than money, House of Cards |
When you’re going through television negotiations, you can’t give that out publicly, it’s a private, confidential negotiation. I can’t respond to negativity or even anything positive being said, that’s not good business.
"It’s very difficult for me to sit back and hear these negative things being said, but all I can do is say to myself, ‘I know what’s going on, I know what’s going to happen, and when it comes out everyone else will know as well.’ You can’t let yourself be brought down by those negative conversations."
Leaving Spike TV has been "hard on both of us", says the TNA head honcho. But with TNA's TV deal with Spike running out, Carter had a very ambitious plan for the future of her company and that included more TV time - something, it seems, Spike wasn't willing to provide.
"Any time there’s change, you get outside your comfort zone and I think that’s where TNA needs to be - outside its comfort zone," she says confidently. "We needed to make changes and that’s what Kevin Kay at Spike and I talked about at the beginning of the year; I did not want status quo, I wanted change.
"When you see where we’re going today [with Destination America], we’ve already announced repeats and different versions of our show, that’s what we needed and that’s what I would not settle for less than in these negotiations."
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Since our interview, sure enough, TNA has announced not one, but two new shows to accompany its flagship on its new home: Impact Wrestling Unlocked, featuring Mike Tenay, and retrospective show TNA Wrestling's Greatest Matches. It's certainly a glowing sign of confidence in TNA - and Carter.
But many fans have been quick to point out they'd never heard of Destination America, whereas Spike is fairly well known. But again, Carter is confident about the new TV deal.
She says, "Destination America isn’t as well known, but Discovery is as well known or better well known, not only in the United States but globally. That’s the reason we did the negotiations and the deal with them. This is bigger than just Destination America, it has global implications. We’re going to help grow Destination America domestically, that’s a huge priority for Discovery, and when that happens it’s going to have such a big upside for us on every level."
Ask the TNA President if the new TV deal is less financially lucrative than the deal with Spike, however, and you won't get a clear answer.
Carter replies: "It’s not an apple-to-apples deal. It’s not one two-hour show played once a week, now we have a two-hour show that’s played multiple times, we have multiple shows that are going to be announced, it’s a completely different type of deal that has much more upside than what we had before."
Impact begins its run on Destination America on January 7 with a live show before moving into its new timeslot of Fridays at 9pm from January 16.
And fans can expect a brand new look and feel to the show, including a new logo, when it returns.
Quizzed about the changes, the boss says, "Our first show, which is live, will be similar to what we’ve done in the past. There’ll be a few new bells and whistles but it’ll be similar because there’s only so much you can do live because you don’t have the post-production time to dive into unique, different production aspects.
"But if you give us a few weeks, I think everyone will start to see a transition of very new and very exciting ways to watch Impact. I don’t want to say too much, I’d rather it just unveil itself. I’m definitely excited about some of the changes coming up."
While TNA's US television presence remains a work in progress, the company has gone from strength-to-strength on Challenge TV in Britain. The Sky channel airs Impact Wrestling on Sundays and has now produced two series of UK exclusive show, British Boot Camp.
"Challenge has been fantastic," enthuses Carter. "Sky and Challenge have been incredible partners, we have really grown our brand over there on a level that’s unparalleled worldwide. To have that kind of success and ratings that we’ve had for British Boot Camp, I think it’s a testament to their support for us."
The company will be back on our shores next month for its annual Maximum Impact tour with the stars of Boot Camp, including winner Mark Andrews, joining the main roster.
(Image: TNA Wrestling)
"These are such special shows for us. The ratings for British Boot Camp 2 have been so high that I thought it would be fun to have a big party [on the tour] and let people come in, get autographs and pictures with them. The fact we’re filming TV in every city, it’s going to be a huge tour for us."
Key to any wrestling promotion is the talent and that brings us to the other sticking point for fans of TNA this year - the loss of household names such as Sting and Hulk Hogan, as well as homegrown stars Chris Sabin, Christopher Daniels and more.
"Every year we let talent go, every year we let a big name go - that’s part of it," assures Carter. "We only have one television show that’s two hours, we don’t have 12 hours of television, we have to turn our roster and that means every year you have to make really difficult decisions. When you care about these people like I do, they are incredibly difficult decisions to make. But because of social media and things like that, they’re played out so publicly where two, three or five years ago that didn’t happen. It’s nothing different."
I ask if she saw Sting's WWE debut at the Survivor Series pay-per-view in November. "I did not see it," she says.
But the topic of swapping talent with WWE spurs an interesting reaction. TNA has been often been criticised for taking in 'WWE castoffs', but Carter feels the shoe is now on the other foot. "For so many years, I’ve caught so much negative flack, people saying that all we do is hire WWE people. The truth of the matter is, if you look at the WWE roster of late, they’re full of TNA talent even if that means a Sting, Hulk Hogan or a Rob Van Dam, Ric Flair. That’s a passé complaint.
"When you only have two leagues there’s only so many talent that you can find that are on a worldwide level. I think the tide has turned and WWE is taking our talent of late, not the reverse of that. It’s just the way it’s been."
(Image: © TNA)
Has there been one talent loss that's been harder than the others, I ask? "I really care about all these guys that are here. I have a very close relationship with Sting and Hulk Hogan and miss working with them on a professional level very much, I will always be their biggest supporters and hopefully always be able to keep a personal relationship with them."
But Carter's eyes are firmly on the future and she's confident that past stars could one day return.
She explains: "For somebody to dominate television for such a long period of time, they need to go away to come back and be fresh. If you look at this year, the return of Matt Hardy, Low Ki, Homicide and so many others, I think it’s good for the product to keep it fresh. They came back as themselves and now we want to put a spin on where they’re going.
"Sometimes you have to have a break to make it fresh and new again, recreate who you are. It’s tough in any business to be the same character for a long period of time, day in, day out.
"Just like Devon coming back this year, he was away for a while and he came back in a huge way with some of the greatest tag team matches we’ve had, he’s been a big part of our success this year.
"I never want to say goodbye when somebody leaves because goodbye would be that they’re never coming back. It’s more due to the fact that we have this one show that these things happen."
One of TNA's strongest suits is, and has always been, its women's division. Where most fans seem exasperated with WWE's short, uninspired Divas matches, the TNA Knockouts - led by veteran Gail Kim - are ensured plenty of screentime.
(Image: TNA Wrestling)
Carter says the division is very personal to her: "I’m proud of the focus and time they’ve gotten. I love the fact you can see a Knockouts match in our main event, that they can steal the show at a pay per view, that our matches can go longer than the men’s heavyweight matches on Impact. Our girls are just that good.
"Being a female head of a wrestling company, it’s very important to me that they’re seen in the most positive light possible. I think our roster is full of the most talented girls, but not only that, they get along, they’re fantastic part of our team. It’s exciting to see them grow personally and professionally, we’ve got babies backstage, some are getting married, some have had hard times. We’re a close family, the girls in particular, and it means a lot to me that group continue to be the very best at what they do."
The Knockouts division was born in a blaze of glory on the back of a feud between Kim, a multi-time champion, and the towering Awesome Kong - a rare specimen in the world of women's wrestling that helped set the Knockouts apart from the WWE's Divas. She hasn't been seen in a TNA ring for four years (there was a brief spell as Kharma in WWE) but her unique presence is still missed. "I always say never say never, but I don’t even know if Kong’s wrestling anymore," Carter reveals. "I know there have been people we’ve gone to that we wanted to talk about bringing them back, but they’re not wrestling anymore. That’s part of my reality as well."
Newcomer Havok - also towering and, frankly, frightening - has drawn some comparisons to Kong as another mould-breaker. But for the most part, the Knockouts division today features sexy, athletic girls.
Carter says, "I don’t think they all have to have a gimmick, I think gimmicks can be fake. I think just to be a beautiful, kick-ass girl or a beautiful, mean bitch girl, that’s your gimmick, that’s real, that’s life - you don’t have to be a secretary or play some kind of fake character to be different and unique, you’ve got to kick ass in the ring. That’s what you have to do."
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But the TNA President has high standards for the division and feels her current crop of girls are her best ever - and many of them are an example of TNA's revolving door policy.
"The female talent, there’s not a lot of female talent that’s on the level of these girls. Angelina Love was gone for several years and came back and I think she came back better than ever. Madison Rayne was gone for a year and she came back in the best shape of her life after having a baby.
"There’s only so many women in the world that can compete on this level, and if they can’t compete on the level, it’s not worth having them on the roster. They don’t do the others any favours if they’re not on par with what the Knockouts division has been expected of.
"We have to cycle our girls in and out, until someone can come in like a Taryn Terrell, I’ll say for Taryn to come in and have the kind of matches she’s had with Gail Kim, for somebody that’s newer in female wrestling it doesn’t get much better. She competed blow-to-blow with Gail Kim and held her own and did amazing, that’s what we’re looking for.
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"I would rather refresh characters, but you have to keep the quality of the girls’ wrestling at a certain level or they don’t fit in the Knockouts brand at all."
One thing you can't take away from Carter is her passion for her talent - something that certainly comes across when talking about the Knockouts. It seems a vast difference to WWE Chairman's Vince McMahon's recent comments that his current roster of "millennials" 'aren't as ambitious' as the likes of John Cena, the face of the company.
Carter hits back: "I can’t even comprehend that statement. It doesn’t sit with our group.
"My own roster’s completely different than that. I don’t have a complaint about anybody on my roster.
"The young guys are just as hungry … the young guys from 10 years ago are now the Bobby Roodes, Samoa Joes, James Storms. My main eventers, who were brand new young talent from 10 to 12 years ago, I’m proud of how far they’ve come.
"This young group of talent we have right now, they’re the hardest working, most positive team players around."
Impact Wrestling airs Sunday nights at 9pm on Challenge in the UK. Impact Wrestling launches on Destination America on January 7 at 9pm in the US.
MAXIMUM IMPACT 7 Tour tickets are available via www.facebook.com/tnawrestlinguk and www.gigsandtours.com.
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Mirror TV Facebook PromotionDrone footage captured the dramatic rescue of a big-wave surfer in Nazare, Portugal, on February 28.Brazilian professional surfer Pedro “Scooby” Vianna can be seen falling off his board during a storm in Nazare, riding a wave said to have been 70 feet high, according to reports.Vianna’s friend, Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca, can be seen riding on a jet ski to rescue him before the next wave rolled in. Vianna grabbed hold of a rear tow board latched onto the jet ski, and they sped away in an attempt to outrun the next wave.Chianca then lost control in the choppy water, and the jet ski capsized near some rocks before another big wave set in right behind them, trapping both men in the water.Veteran big-wave surfer Everaldo “Pato” Teixeira then got on yet another jet ski and rescued Vianna and Chianca. Neither suffered any serious injury.Pedro Miranda, who operates a media agency called Maquina Voadora, captured the footage. Credit: Maquina Voadora via StoryfulI still remember when I first came to Goa: as a teenager in 1976. A girlfriend and I splashed out on a room at the Fort Aguada Beach Resort, then the only good hotel in the state and marvelled at how much of an adventure it seemed. There was only one Indian Airlines flight from Bombay to Goa. The airport was a shack and the drive to the hotel involved getting on to a ferry to cross a river and part of the route consisted of untarred kachcha roads.
The Aguada was then seen as a great folly. It had opened in 1974 (I think) as the first Taj resort. The then boss of the Taj group, Ajit Kerkar, was a Goan who had bumped into the Chief Minister of Goa on a plane. The Chief Minister had urged him to open a hotel in his state, saying that he believed that Goa had huge potential for tourism.
Kerkar agreed to visit Goa and spent several days driving around the state looking for a suitable location. Eventually he settled on a site next to a medieval fort (the Fort Aguada) which was near a prison (Aguada jail – it still exists). The Tatas would not invest in a faraway hotel located in a part of India that nobody visited so Kerkar set up a new company (Indian Resort Hotels), found other investors to join the Taj as co-owners and built the hotel anyway.
The restoration of the villas at The Aguada has preserved their 1980s air of comfort
It is fashionable now to say that it was an instant success but, in reality, it took the Aguada a full decade to turn a profit. Room rates were relatively low (which is how my girlfriend and I could afford it though we were both still at university) and airline connectivity was pathetic.
But the Taj stuck with its Goa dream. In 1980, with the Aguada still to turn a profit, it opened a second hotel, the Taj Holiday Village, next door. This was less fancy than the Aguada – the original plans called for no air-conditioning and no room service – and even cheaper.
Slowly, bit by bit, Goa began to turn around. The other hotel chains arrived: ITC managed Cidade de Goa and the Oberois managed the Bogmalo Resort. Flights increased. Bridges were built, eliminating the need for a ferry. Foreign tourists discovered the state.
By 1982, Goa’s fame had spread, and when India was due to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1983, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi decreed that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers would go for a retreat to Goa. Except that there was no hotel secure enough or good enough to host heads of governments. So the Taj was given a year to build a hotel-within-a-hotel.
The Taj chose to build several self-contained villas on the cliff overlooking the main property and the complex – called The Hermitage – was finally ready only a week before the Prime Ministers arrived. Mrs. Gandhi declared herself satisfied. So did Margaret Thatcher. And India’s honour was saved.
The Taj then opened the property to the public, making the Aguada the only hotel complex in India to have an all-villa option. Inevitably, the Hermitage became the preferred choice of millionaires over the New Year, when the Godrejs, the Pillais (among the original investors in Indian Resort Hotels), the Ambanis, the Mallyas and even Captain Satish Sharma, would each take over a Hermitage villa for the Christmas-Goa fortnight.
Lobster masala at the Taj Fort Aguada
The late 1980s and the 1990s were the heyday of the Aguada complex. Goa was glamorous and the Taj, having lost money on its resorts for years, suddenly began to rake it in. After all, it had created Goa as a tourist destination.
I went to Goa for New Year nearly every year for much of that period (though I could only afford the cheaper Holiday Village). There was something magical and special about the celebrations that spread out to the beaches; about the food cooked by such great chefs as Urbano Rego and Cyrus Todiwala; about the drives to shacks on the beaches; and the parties at pop-up restaurants where the likes of Remo Fernandes would perform.
Eventually, of course, other hotels opened, the jet-set moved away (i.e. more and more Indians began travelling abroad) and Goa went from being a glamorous destination to becoming the sort of place that appeared to exist only to service tourists. My guess is that the turning point was the decision of the then Civil Aviation minister, Madhavrao Scindia, in 1992/1993 to allow charter flights full of foreign tourists to land at Goa airport.
As tourists flooded into Goa, new hotels came up, entire villages were colonised to cater to Russian visitors (one estimate is that over a thousand charter flights full of Russians land in Goa every year). The streets around the hotels began to resemble such down-market Thai resort towns as Pattaya, filled with shops selling trinkets, T-shirts and tourist tat. The restaurants stopped serving real Goan food and offered pizzas and Paneer Makhani. And the slightly Portuguese ambience that had once made Goa seem different from the rest of India slowly vanished. But Goa (and India) benefitted from the huge foreign exchange earnings.
Last year, the Taj decided that the Aguada was due for a refurbishment. The fancy new hotels had made the original pioneer look tired. The group took a special interest in the Hermitage Villas, which had lost their air of exclusivity.
And so after a decade or more, I finally went back to the Aguada complex, scene of my teenage romances and my one-time regular haunt, lured by the idea of a revived Hermitage. The first thing I noticed was that the Fort Aguada now looks better than the Holiday Village – for years, the opposite was true. The rustic charms of the Village have faded and a hideous new building for the Caravela restaurant has altered the Village’s character.
The Aguada, however, has been spruced up, the food is good and service is excellent. The Hermitage Villas have not been greatly transformed. The Taj has chosen not to make them look like fancy 21st Century villas and the restoration has preserved their 1980s air of comfort.
Their chief selling point remains location. Perched on a cliff, they offer stunning views of the sea, the beach and acres and acres of forest. All of them have large gardens and it is hard to beat the experience of sitting in the gazebo at one of the villa gardens, eating Goan sausages for breakfast and looking out at what may well be the best view of any hotel in India. Hermitage guests need never go to the main Aguada building. The Taj will bring every service you may require to your villa: spa treatments, hair styling, garden barbecues, etc. The service is exemplary, attentive without being intrusive.
The view from Thalassa, Goa’s most famous stand-alone restaurant
It has become fashionable to regard Goa as a gourmet paradise, full of wonderful little restaurants. Some of those I went to were good enough, though many were not little. At Thalassa, Goa’s most famous stand-alone restaurant, at least 150 (if not more) guests sat down for Sunday lunch and many took selfies against the view of the sea, thrilled that they were at a destination restaurant. The owner, a charming lady from Corfu called Mariketty (with a name like that, you expect her to be from Cochin not Corfu), seemed unfazed by the crowd and played the welcoming hostess.
Ceviche, a popular seafood dish, is served at Antares
Next door, at Antares (also 150 covers!) the Australian chef Sarah Todd (you may have seen her on TV; she shot to fame on Masterchef Australia) served surprisingly ambitious food (ceviche, mushroom rillettes on papad, beef skewers etc.) to an admiring audience while Pankaj Gandhi, (who I remember from Delhi’s China Garden) managed the room with an eye for detail.
Chef Sarah Todd of Masterchef Australia fame serves surprisingly ambitious food at Antares, Goa
Totally different from these vast restaurants was Bomras, a small South East Asian place down the road from Aguada complex, run by a very nice Burmese expat called Bowmra Jap. The food here was the best I had in Goa: pork curry with tamarind, smoked tea leaf salad, astonishingly good suckling pig and a tomato salad that is so famous that it even appears on Ritu Dalma’s Delhi menu as “Bomras Tomato Salad”.
Was this the Goa I remembered? No, not really.
Today’s Goa is a full-on tourist destination, high on crowds, low on charm. But then I guess you could say that about every single holiday spot in India where unregulated development has wreaked havoc.
But the spirit of Goa – laidback, semi-inept and unhurried – is intact. The day I arrived, the journey from the airport to the hotel took nearly two hours, just as it had in the days of the ferry. They were building a new elevated road near Panjim and the jams were phenomenal. The next day, I gathered, the same journey took three to four hours and at least 200 people missed their flights, stuck in jams on their way to the airport. The following day, a crane being used for the construction collapsed and the main road had to be shut. More jams, more delays etc.
Street markets in Goa that sell trinkets, T-shirts and tourist tat ( Shutterstock )
On the day I left the Chief Minister announced that construction of the elevated road would be halted till the end of the tourist season. They simply couldn’t figure out how to build a road and manage traffic at the same time.
Sadly nobody is doing anything about the airport, an overcrowded hellhole, badly designed and shamefully managed by two central government bodies, the Airport Authority and the CISF, with no concern for passengers’ comfort, time or convenience.
Goa may boom but the last memory visitors will have is of the Black Hole of Dabolim as the airport should be renamed. In its own way, it is a metaphor for tourism in India. The private sector created Goa as a destination. And the government and the public sector are doing their bit to damage it.
From HT Brunch, December 17, 2017
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First Published: Dec 16, 2017 21:05 ISTWelcome to hurtmeplenty.space - on demand quake live servers creation and match making
On Demand Quake Live duel servers
Match making
This is a service to create a server on demand, or find a good match with just one click. At the moment service is in beta, and supports only duels. Which means that it most likely will conduct some useful work, but also will occasionally fail. This service needs cookies to operate properly. By using this service you agree to that cookies. It also will ask you to sign in via steam, to identify your stats and bind servers to you.Useful in case if you don't want to setup a quake live server yourself and don't need it permanently. Click on demand in the top menu. Click create server. Then send a provided link to your friend. Click on link - steam launcher will kick you into the game.
Match making is about finding a good fair game for you. It is uses qlstats.net to find out your rating(glicko). Then it matches you with someone with the same glicko who is also waiting in the queue. Same glicko means +- 300 points. Which is quite a big gap. In case if service will gain popularity it will be possible to reduce the gap. It also pushes statistics back to qlstats.net
Process is quite straightforward - click start match on matchmake page. Then click on the link.
Troubleshooting/Contact
In case if you encounter troubles - check service statistics page - it can be that no free servers left. We are planning to add more servers in the future. In case if you experience any other issues, or find a bug - please mail me directly at yuriy.netesov@gmail.comShock video shows a car exploding into flames after a Border Patrol agent shoots a taser into the vehicle, killing the driver as agents back away and refuse to help.Footage of the incident, which took place in March 2012, has just come to light. The family of the victim, Alex Martin, is suing the federal government, claiming that the Border Patrol agent’s weapon was responsible for igniting the fire.
The clip shows agents approaching the vehicle before one of them smashes the passenger window with a flashlight. He then shoots a taser gun at the driver which immediately causes the car to erupt in flames. The agents are thrown back as a result of the blast before returning to their vehicles and quickly moving away from the scene.In the ideal Sony world everyone would use their PS3 as the central "Entertainment / Multimedia" unit. This concept got us to start thinking a little... are people really using their console as the central hub for movies, pictures, music etc?
PS3Center.net is conducting a survey on the general usage of PlayStation 3's as Media Centers. If you do use your PlayStation 3 as an all-around multimedia center in your environment, please answer the following questions:
- When transfering music, pictures, videos etc, do you use a USB key or do you actually network your PS3 to a Media Server and use software such as TVersity to transfer/stream multimedia content to your console?
- Which method is more annoying? USB Key or going through the entire Network configuration?
Please post your comments below in the "Comment" area. If you are not a member, please register for free and begin to gain points to win the RED PS3.
Every member that participates will be awarded an additional 500 points!BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar
Sunday, June 21st, 2015 12:24PM CDT
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And another addition to yesterday's gallery showcasing all the Hasbro products on display at BotCon 2015 sees the Legends class Groove repurposing in the Combiner Wars line into Wreck-Gar! Check it out in robot mode below, and click on any of the images to revisit the full Generations Combiner Wars gallery.
Search Got Transformers News? Let us know here!
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701498)
Posted by
So far all I'm seeing are tons of photos from Botcon!(not that that's a bad thing mind), but are there no YouTube videos from it available yet? Posted by Stuartmaximus on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:33pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701499)
Posted by
Va'al wrote: And another addition to
And another addition to yesterday's gallery showcasing all the Hasbro products on display at BotCon 2015 sees the Legends class Groove repurposing in the Combiner Wars line into Wreck-Gar! Check it out in robot mode below, and click on any of the images to revisit the full Generations Combiner Wars gallery.
Groove'll probably also be repurposed into technobot Afterburner too! Groove'll probably also be repurposed into technobot Afterburner too! Posted by Stuartmaximus on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:36pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701500)
Posted by
Sorry Hasbro, I'm calling you out on this one.
This could have been the perfect chance to give us a Bulletbike or Override homage, but instead you make a crappy version of a toy/figure/character when there was already a pretty much perfect Wreck-Gar out there. Posted by Mkall on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:38pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701501)
Posted by
Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures will be? Any chance we can get G1 style guns for existing and future CW/TW figures other than Takara Devastator? Which seekers look better displayed with other masterpiece scale figures, the new Jetfire mold seekers? Should I hold out for Hasbro voyager class dinobots, or invest in the new third party voyager/classics scale dino combiners from Toyworld (Corelock, etc.)?
* Voyager Devastator/Constructicons
* Voyager Scourge
* Voyager or Leader Galvatron
* Voyager Sharkticon
* Voyager Cyclonus
* Voyager Megatron
* Voyager or Leader Shockwave Posted by AdultCollector on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:39pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701503)
Posted by
Mkall wrote: Sorry Hasbro, I'm calling you out on this one.
This could have been the perfect chance to give us a Bulletbike or Override homage, but instead you make a crappy version of a toy/figure/character that was pretty much a perfect Wreck-Gar.
TakaraTomy will be releasing Legends Groove as Adventure Override, but we don't know the colors yet. TakaraTomy will be releasing Legends Groove as Adventure Override, but we don't know the colors yet. Posted by JelZe GoldRabbit on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:41pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701505)
Posted by
Stuartmaximus wrote: So far all I'm seeing are tons of photos from Botcon!(not that that's a bad thing mind), but are there no YouTube videos from it available yet?
Soon... Soon... Posted by LOST Cybertronian on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:44pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701506)
Posted by
AdultCollector wrote: Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures will be?
What scale?
Well I'm assuming that they'll be anything from CW Devastator upwards! to Generations Metroplex! at least I'm hoping that Fort Max is at least Gen Plex sized What scale?Well I'm assuming that they'll be anything from CW Devastator upwards! to Generations Metroplex! at least I'm hoping that Fort Max is at least Gen Plex sized Posted by Stuartmaximus on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:45pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701507)
Posted by
AdultCollector wrote: Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures will be? Any chance we can get G1 style guns for existing and future CW/TW figures other than Takara Devastator? Which are better for a new collector who loves G1, the new Jetfire mold seekers? Should I hold out for Voyager dinobots, or invest in the new third party voyager/classics scale dino combiners from Toyworld (Corelock, etc.)?
* Voyager Devastator/Constructicons
* Voyager Scourge
* Voyager or Leader Galvatron
* Voyager Sharkticon
* Voyager Cyclonus
* Voyager Megatron
* Voyager or Leader Shockwave
I'm not disappointed at all because we already got great molds of those figures,so we don't really need new molds for those characters but iys most unlikely we will get new guns for devastator so u should go the takara route for that and probably for titan wars most of the figures won't be titan class due to many reasons though,and for the dinobots u probably shouldn't just wait ti get dinobots it will happen eventually I'm not disappointed at all because we already got great molds of those figures,so we don't really need new molds for those characters but iys most unlikely we will get new guns for devastator so u should go the takara route for that and probably for titan wars most of the figures won't be titan class due to many reasons though,and for the dinobots u probably shouldn't just wait ti get dinobots it will happen eventually Posted by Starsaber468 on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:47pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701509)
Posted by
Stuartmaximus wrote: AdultCollector wrote: Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures will be?
What scale?
Well I'm assuming that they'll be anything from CW Devastator upwards! to Generations Metroplex! at least I'm hoping that Fort Max is at least Gen Plex sized What scale?Well I'm assuming that they'll be anything from CW Devastator upwards! to Generations Metroplex! at least I'm hoping that Fort Max is at least Gen Plex sized
I am pretty sure that most of titan wars figures wouldn't be titan class (i am presicting this statement could be wrong) but the reason i say that it because if most of them were titan class we wouldn't have a real spot for them in our collection plus the cost would be an issue :/ I am pretty sure that most of titan wars figures wouldn't be titan class (i am presicting this statement could be wrong) but the reason i say that it because if most of them were titan class we wouldn't have a real spot for them in our collection plus the cost would be an issue :/ Posted by Starsaber468 on June 21st, 2015 @ 12:50pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701514)
Posted by
AdultCollector wrote: Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures will be? Any chance we can get G1 style guns for existing and future CW/TW figures other than Takara Devastator? Which seekers look better displayed with other masterpiece scale figures, the new Jetfire mold seekers? Should I hold out for Hasbro voyager class dinobots, or invest in the new third party voyager/classics scale dino combiners from Toyworld (Corelock, etc.)?
* Voyager Devastator/Constructicons
* Voyager Scourge
* Voyager or Leader Galvatron
* Voyager Sharkticon
* Voyager Cyclonus
* Voyager Megatron
* Voyager or Leader Shockwave
SDCC, thats what they did last year. they hinted at Combiners at botcon then waited till SDCC for the big reveal on CW SDCC, thats what they did last year. they hinted at Combiners at botcon then waited till SDCC for the big reveal on CW Posted by Randomhero on June 21st, 2015 @ 1:00pm CDT
Re: BotCon 2015 Coverage - Transformers Combiner Wars Gallery Addendum: Wreck-Gar (1701515)
Posted by
Starsaber468 wrote: Stuartmaximus wrote: AdultCollector wrote: Anyone else bummed we didn't see any ____? How long until we find out what scale Titan Wars figures |
is God’s dependence on the world. Panentheism traditionally affirms it; all forms of classical Christian theism deny it. Creation ex nihilo is the crucial doctrine that protects Christian theism from making God essentially dependent on the world.
Why is it important to deny God’s dependence on the world? Traditionally Christian theologians have said “to protect the transcendence of God.” Fine. But why? The bedrock reason is, as I have stated and argued here before, that “whatever is of nature cannot be of grace.” Christianity is not a philosophy; it is a message of grace. If God’s creation and redemption of the world is not free, then it is not of grace. Only that which is freely done is truly gracious. That’s a bedrock principle of theology. When someone disputes it, I frankly don’t know what they mean by “grace.”
Notice that in Acts 17, during his speech in Athens, Paul not only quotes the Greek poet but also asserts that “God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (vs. 24, 25) That has to be kept in balance with “in whom we live and move and have our being.”
So, the problem with traditional, classical panentheism, as expressed in the philosophies of Hegel and Whitehead (and their many followers), is that it seriously blurs the line between God and the world with the result that God’s creation and redemption of the world are not free and gracious acts but necessities for God. In saving the world God is somehow saving himself. And concepts like “create” and “save” don’t even mean the same in traditional, classical panentheism as in classical theism (broadly defined).
Having said all that, I must admit that the term “panentheism” is undergoing change in contemporary theology. Like all theological concepts, over time it is being stretched to cover much more than it meant under the influences of Hegel and Whitehead (et al.).
A relatively recent study of panentheism illustrates this: In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World edited by Philip Clayton (we studied together under Pannenberg in the 1980s) and Arthur Peacocke (Eerdmans, 2004). Especially helpful is the chapter “Three Varieties of Panentheism” by Niels Henrik Gregersen (19-35).
I won’t go into the details here, now. I have submitted an article about this change in the meaning of panentheism to a theological journal. If it is published I will alert my blog readers to it.
Essentially, what is happening, is that some Christian theologians are adopting the term “panentheism” and adapting it to a more classical theistic view of the God-world relationship. Gregersen talks about “Christian panentheism” by which he means a view in which God’s experience is contributed at least partly by the world and what happens in it while God is himself not essentially dependent on the world. In other words, God freely chooses to include the world in his life. A good example is Juergen Moltmann who explicitly labels his theology panentheistic in several of his writings (“trinitarian panentheism,” “eschatological panentheism”). Many other relatively conservative Christian theologians, including some evangelicals, are calling their theologies panentheistic, but they don’t mean in the Krause, Hegel or Whitehead sense. They seem to mean only that the God-world relationship is ontologically real, not merely external to God. God freely (he could have done otherwise) creates the world and experiences it such that he is not the same with the world as he was or would be without it. And yet he does not literally “need” it to be who and what he is.
The analogy of parenthood comes to mind. In this panentheism, God is like a parent who freely chooses to have a child but, once the child is born or adopted, the child is part of his or her life. The parent is not the same as before. And yet, should the child die, the parent would still be the person he or she was even if changed. (This is only an analogy, of course, so please don’t pick it to death because it’s not perfect.)
My concern is whether this is stretching “panentheism” too far. It seems to me to lose all shape, so to speak, unless it is kept closely tied to the rejection of creation ex nihilo and affirmation of the idea of God’s essential dependence on at least some world. I fear that, like many theological concepts, panentheism is losing meaning. In light of this broadening of its meaning to cover new ideas not traditionally meant by it, I suspect the candidate for the position teaching theology who was rejected by the evangelical president may have been treated unfairly. He may have only meant what Gregersen means by “Christian panentheism” which is compatible with creation ex nihilo.
I personally do not consider any theology that affirms creation ex nihilo panentheistic. That doesn’t mean affirming it makes everything correct; a person might affirm creation ex nihilo and be profoundly wrong about something else in his or her doctrine of God. But, it seems to me that creation ex nihilo is minimally necessary for a robust biblically and theologically sound doctrine of God. Traditionally, classically, it is one major factor dividing Christian theism from panentheism (or even pantheism).$ 24.95
“The smutty Shakespeare game you need for your next smarty-pants party.”
—Washington Post
To be profane, or not to be? Bards Dispense Profanity is 100 mock-serious questions for our time and 375 answers copied word-for-word from the works of William Shakespeare. You be the judge of which answers are best. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely playas.
— Contains 20 of our favorite prompt cards from our acclaimed Dick: A Card Game Based on the Novel by Herman Melville, plus 80 all-new prompts.
— Answer cards come from all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays.
Mostly these nineteen:
The Tempest
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Measure for Measure
Much Ado About Nothing
Love’s Labour’s Lost
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Merchant of Venice
The Taming of the Shrew
All’s Well that Ends Well
Twelfth Night
Henry IV, Part 2
Richard III
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet
King Lear
Othello
Cymbeline
Antony and Cleopatra
With a few cards each from: As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar, The Winter’s Tale, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.
— Each answer card cites the play, act, and scene (in case your dad doubts that Shakespeare really has Hamlet allude to “the incestuous pleasure of his bed”).
— Just a touch of help with early modern English: unobtrustive glosses on about 10% of the cards define archaic words with non-intuitive meanings.
— For 4 or more players. Not for kids.
Free U.S. shipping!
And by the way: Bards Dispense Profanity is not Cards Against Humanity. Not even a little bit.As he sits in a noisy coffee shop in San Diego, Anthony Tarantino is shuffling through a stack of baseball cards and selecting a few for show-and-tell.
Courtesy of Anthony Tarantino
One is a 1962 Topps of Duke Snider wearing the interlocking “LA” of the Dodgers on his blue cap -- but with a blue-ink speech bubble drawn from his mouth and the words “I am a Met” (which he was in 1963).
On a 1954 Topps, Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto has a blue-pen mustache scribbled onto his lip and a scratch that’s eliminated most of the “zzuto” in Rizzuto.
Tarantino also has a 1940 Goose Goslin with half his head missing, a 1952 Eddie Stanky with his eyes and mouth erased (replaced by cartoonish features) and a 1957 card of journeyman outfielder Lou Skizas that’s ripped into three pieces and still has remnants of the tape that held it together.
“And here’s my favorite,” he says, holding out a 1968 Mickey Mantle. The Mick is in his left-handed stance and peering through hand-drawn glasses while sporting a full blue-ink beard and smoking a pipe.
“All he’s missing is a smoking jacket,” says Tarantino, laughing.
Courtesy of Anthony Tarantino
Give him your tired, your poor and your huddled masses of torn, folded, defaced, water-damaged, burned and faded baseball cards, because Tarantino -- a lifelong baseball fan and collector -- has found treasure in everyone else’s trash cards. He’s one of a minority in the hobby who is interested in collecting poor-condition cards that have limited or diminished cash value but are rich in character.
Since 2008, he has been posting stories about his finds on his blog, Poor Old Baseball Cards.
“When condition doesn’t matter,” reads the message on the front page of the site. “This blog is dedicated to all those baseball cards that have been put through the wringer. It’s not always about that perfect Gem-Mint 10 … Is it?”
Cards with 'character'
Tarantino isn’t alone in his quest for the worst cards, sometimes called “beaters.” There are other blogs that celebrate the trashed. One, called Things Done to Cards, celebrates “all the different things that can be done to cards, good and bad.”
Lyman Hardeman of Austin, Texas, the editor of Old Cardboard magazine, has a few in his collection but doesn’t specialize in them and has met just a few collectors who do.
Courtesy of Anthony Tarantino
“They make interesting cards,” he says. “There’s not a lot of collectors that collect those, but most collectors have a few in their stack somewhere.”
Mark Macrae, a well-known collector and dealer in Castro Valley, Calif., says he’s met many who seek out poor cards, mostly for the nostalgic value.
“They have character,” he says. “It’s not exactly what you’d call investment character, but it’s something you can have fun with.”
Specialty collections like Tarantino’s, he says, are done for passion rather than investment, similar to the barber he knew in Arizona who collected cards of players with facial hair.
Like everyone else, Tarantino, a page designer at the San Diego Union-Tribune, started out collecting new cards and has many thousands. As he got older, he became intrigued by vintage cards because of their history -- but couldn’t afford to spend wads of cash on high-grade items.
Now, among his approximately 1,000 prized poor cards, he has ancient ones of Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Johnny Evers and Dan Brouthers that not only didn’t cost several paychecks but have quirks -- like the pinhole right above Cobb’s head that shows it was once someone’s prize on a wall. The Evers, once owned by a man in Mississippi, has water damage from Hurricane Katrina.
Courtesy of Anthony Tarantino
His 1952 Topps rookie card of Willie Mays has two creases across the face; a 1920 card of Ruth as a Yankees pitcher is missing three corners.
To Tarantino, the cards not only tell stories of the players but also of the owners.
“Why would somebody draw a mustache on Phil Rizzuto?” he asks.
Now every card he seeks must be in poor condition.
“I have this quest in my head to get the worst baseball card in the world,” he says. “I’m just looking for the card I can never find.”
So far, that label goes to his 1909 T206 card of Red Sox infielder Heinie Wagner, acquired on eBay for 1 cent. It’s brittle, torn, faded and creased. He loves it.
“It’s absolutely horrendous,” Tarantino says.Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana might very well have deflated his game day footballs if he knew it would help.
"I wish I'd known (it could make a difference) because I couldn't throw a wet ball to save my life," Montana told Trib Total Media last Friday. "Heck, I would've thought about (deflating the ball), sure."
Montana, like many other quarterbacks who are in a similar, analytical situation at the moment have it pretty good. Regardless of whether or not he ever doctored a football, he's well beyond the point of a formal investigation that could alter his legacy forever.
While we're not accusing the legend, it's so simple for a player to throw up his hands and say: "What? That could alter a football? Well, I never..."
Tom Brady, currently facing a four-game suspension for his role in the use of underinflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game, was probably not the first NFL player to let the air out. And back before the NFL was big enough to merit a giant magnifying lens over every portion of the game, there were probably many more creative solutions to get the right feel.
That's why Montana seems to be sticking up for the Patriots QB, who will undoubtedly join him in Canton one day in the not-too-distant future.
Montana called the rule "dumb" and suggested everyone should just move on.
"It is one of those things that is a rule, right?" he said. "It might be a dumb rule, but it doesn't matter. He didn't deflate them himself, but you can pick up the ball and can tell if it is underinflated, overinflated or what you like. Everybody is afraid to say it, but if the guy did it, so what. Just pay up and move on. It's no big deal."
The latest Around The NFL Podcast discusses the latest news including Cam Newton's massive extension and the return of Adrian Peterson. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.There is a lot of buzz and excitement around Atlanta United, one of two new expansion clubs playing in Major League Soccer (MLS) this season. However, along with United taking its first steps into the professional realm, something is happening at grassroots level that is uniting Atlanta.
Station Soccer is the world’s first soccer field built inside a train station. Unveiled in October 2016, the station is a project by Soccer in the Streets supported by the Atlanta United Foundation, MARTA (the city’s principal public transport operator), GreenFields and Musco Lighting.
The brainchild of Sanjay Patel, a board member with the organisation, Station Soccer is much more than a football pitch embedded in the Five Points Marta station in downtown Atlanta.
“It’s integration on a youth and adult level,” said Patel speaking with* FIFA.com*. “We’re able to do social impact soccer. Something where adults can play here. Where it’s normally pay-to-play and a business enterprise, this is a social impact enterprise and youth can play for free like they would anywhere in the world, and now they have a transit hub to use to get home and play other teams away.”
Social impact
Everything Soccer in the Streets does is centred around the belief that soccer has the ability to transform people on a social level and bring community into their lives. For example, Life Works, a project supported by FIFA and its Football for Hope funding, is a Soccer in the Streets program that targets underserved youth who are in need of opportunities to become self-sufficient and develop skills that will lead to future employment. Through year round soccer programming, combined with off-the-field training sessions focused on employability, Life Works helps develop the next generation of leaders.
“We built this facility here first of all with a soccer-centric view to life on it, and I think the biggest change we’ve seen which was unexpected was a social impact that it’s having of being a green space in an urban area on the communities around it,” said Soccer in the Streets Executive Director Phil Hill.
Patel and Hill said they have been approached by various non-soccer parties, including music groups, film projects, health and fitness programs. The station at Five Points is located in a central area of the city, encompassing many of the downtown communities and westside communities where families live.
“The story now changes to green spaces stations to not necessarily just soccer stations,” said Hill. “This facility acts as a hub for bringing the kids in for games, for tournaments and for training sessions. That plays more into the model of expanding this beyond one station to another nine stations.”
Communities coming together
For Hill and Patel, the vision beyond Five Points station to ten MARTA stations is all about giving people easier access and opportunities to play football, but also one based upon bringing communities together.
“You could have a latino community coming down here to play with an African-American community to play with a refugee community that’s come in from Clarkston over on the east side,” said Hill. “It’s really just a mash-up of soccer and life. It’s sort of taken on a life of its own since we opened just this one.”
The social impact of Station Soccer has been clear since day one of its launch.
“Every time you come here, something different happens,” said Patel. “On the day of the launch, I came back in the evening and a girl ran up to the gate and she was wearing an Atlanta United Foundation shirt and she’s shouting to someone behind her, who happened to be her mother, saying, ‘This is where it happened’.
“The girl had been here during the day, and I went over to talk to her and her mother, and her mother said this girl came home that day from being here, and she will not stop talking about how she wants to be a professional soccer player, and has brought me here to show me where she had the best day of her life.”
This is part of FIFA.com's ongoing series highlighting NGOs that are part of Football for Hope, FIFA’s global initiative to help improve the lives of young people through football.
Photos courtesy of Dave Williamson/Soccer in the Streets[This should probably not be the first thing you read about Blanchard’s theories. I will consistently use “type one” to refer to so-called homosexual transsexuals and “type two” to refer to so-called autogynephile transsexuals, and it is the absence of neutral terms for these distinctions that have driven me to this problem. As always, a caveat that Blanchard’s theories are controversial and that there’s a replication crisis which limits the accuracy of any psychological research.]
So this is a super-fun request post. (Back me on Patreon and get a chance at a request post yourself!)
Monica sent me her thoughts on the type one/type two division. She argues that the division is in fact caused by age at transition, noting that age at transition is not precisely the same thing as when one became gender dysphoric. Later transition causes your brain to be exposed more to your birth sex hormones and you to experience more gender socialization for your assigned gender; we would expect more masculine behavior from this population. Sexual fantasies often don’t develop until adolescence and continue to develop in adulthood; earlier transitioners may have weaker or nonexistent sexual fantasies related to their gender. Orientation change is commonly noted as an effect of hormones; perhaps earlier transitioners are more likely to experience this effect, thus becoming exclusively androphiliac.
Children who were assigned male and who behave femininely may be more likely to transition early. Monica mentions that accepting parents may be more likely to allow their children to behave in a feminine fashion and to transition, and that early transition lends itself to selective memories on the parts of both families and trans people which exaggerate how feminine a child was. I’d add that more feminine assigned-male children may be more likely to be allowed to transition, while more masculine children take longer to transition because they have to get past more gatekeepers.
However, my own anecdotes suggest this is not the case. I personally know many type-twos who transitioned at nineteen or twenty; on r/asktransgender one may find type-twos who have come to a transgender identity as young as fourteen. By Blanchard, this really shouldn’t happen at all. In fact, given the number of trans women in Silicon Valley who come out in their twenties, the proposition that most type-twos transition in their forties or fifties would imply that (contrary to popular belief) there are in fact no cisgender male programmers at all.
Therefore I predict (with a fairly high degree of confidence) that Millennials will be far less likely to transition at midlife than previous generations.
It makes sense that this would be the case. Before relatively recently, there were two kinds of trans narratives. First, there were narratives that embodied cisgender anxieties far more than transgender realities: trans women were depicted as predatory and wanting to lure men into sex, or as pathetic mockeries of women, or surprisingly often both at the same time. (Trans men, of course, did not exist at all.) Second, and far less common, there were narratives from actual trans people sanitized for cisgender people’s consumption. You always knew you were a man deep down, you played with trucks as a child, you have definitely never been attracted to a man, your gender plays no role in your sexuality, and if you ever wore a dress it was by coercion and you threw it out and it is definitely not in the back of your closet waiting for Drag Night.
So whether people transitioned depended a lot on luck: it was hard to get any sort of idea about what trans lives were actually like unless you happened to meet a trans person. It was all too easy to have the idea that your gender dysphoria didn’t really count if you liked wearing eyeliner sometimes and had no deep-down sense of being male.
The trans and gay communities have been linked since inversion was a twinkle in Krafft-Ebing’s eye: thus, trans people who were part of the gay or lesbian community pre-transition generally encountered other trans people young and transitioned earlier. Trans people assigned male at birth who were not part of the LGBT community blundered around in a fog of shame and quiet misery unless they happened to stumble across a crossdresser group or something, and thus transitioned later. Trans people assigned female at birth who were not part of the LGBT community had… as far as I can tell completely nothing, and thus rarely transitioned.
Nowadays, we have Twitter and blogs and Imogen Binnie’s Nevada: narratives written by trans people, about trans people, for trans people. And these resources are accessible like never before. If some sixteen-year-old– hesitant, terrified, palms sweating– enters “am I transgender” into google, they will stumble across an article like this one (first result for me in incognito mode search). It’s not perfect, god no, but look at what’s on the list of signs the author was a trans woman: hating girly things, longing to be pregnant, crossdressing (!), repulsion at the idea of trans people, hating cameras, a bizarre fondness for the song “Lola”. And that means that that kid will not think “oh, I hated boys’ toys at a kid, I can’t possibly be trans”, will sort themselves out sooner, and will be able to transition.
In conclusion, I suspect the early transitioner/late transitioner thing is a mere artifact of transphobia and not a real division, and that trans people of the present generation will transition far earlier regardless of type.
AdvertisementsSamsung today announced an updated version of the Gear VR, the company’s mobile virtual reality headset. It features a new touchpad, USB Type-C compatibility, and a slightly wider field of view. The revamped Gear VR will still cost $99, and it goes on sale August 19th, with preorders opening up tomorrow.
Like with past iterations of the device, there aren’t any major changes to this version of the Gear VR. The new Gear VR is being announced alongside Samsung’s newest phone — the Galaxy Note 7 — which uses the same 518ppi Super AMOLED screen that was found in the Note 5, and the same processor found in the S7 and S7 Edge. That means Gear VR customers will have to wait until the next generation of Samsung phones for a bump in resolution and processing power.
But the Gear VR is still the best mobile virtual reality solution, and the new version is definitely different, both inside and out. The most important change to the new Gear VR is that it’s USB-C compatible, and that the connection to the phone is modular. Out of the box, the headset will work with the new Note 7, which uses a USB Type-C connection. But Samsung is also including a Micro USB connector with the new Gear VR, making it backward compatible with the Galaxy Note 5 as well as all S7 and S6 phones.
This doesn't come in the form of a clumsy adaptor; instead, the connectors themselves can be swapped out. You just flip a switch to "unlock" one from the headset, pull it out, and then snap in the other one. Samsung argued that part of the reason for using Micro USB ports in the the S7 and S7 Edge was to keep them compatible with the Gear VR, so while this is a small move, it shows that the company is now more ready to embrace USB-C.
A USB-C port has also replaced the Micro USB port found on the bottom of the headset. In the past, this port was used to keep your phone charged during extended usage, but Samsung says the new USB-C port can transfer data as well. This opens up opportunities for things like accessories, gamepads, and maybe even motion controllers, and potentially eliminates the need to rely on tenuous (and sometimes slow) Bluetooth connections. This could make a huge impact on the Gear VR experience, but it's hard exactly how significant the change will be until we find out what developers will use it for.
The new Gear VR seems better equipped for accessories
The new Gear VR also ditches the mostly all-white look for a dark blueish-black finish. The inside of the headset is painted like this, too, which Samsung says is in direct response to customers who said the white interior of the old Gear VR reflected light and ruined the immersion. The padding that lines the headset is thicker and softer, which makes it a bit more comfortable to wear and should help block out more light.
Tightening up the immersion is good, because there is a bit more to see — this time around, the Gear VR has a 101-degree field of view, as opposed to 96 degrees on the previous version. None of these changes felt like they added up to a massive difference in the few minutes I got to spend with the new headset, but they’re all small steps in the right direction.
There are a few other physical changes. The touch-sensitive directional pad on the side of the headset, which you use to play games and navigate the Gear VR’s menu system, has once again been flattened out. (Samsung had moved to a grooved trackpad in the most recent versions of the Gear VR.) The company also added a dedicated button that brings you right back to the main Gear VR menu — the new button is found right above the touchpad and next to the "back" button.
Overall, the new Gear VR is a tighter, more polished version of the vision that Samsung laid out with its original headset in 2014. It’s almost a no-brainer purchase at $99, as long as you own a phone that's compatible with the headset. (And if you’re patient enough, Samsung — as well as mobile carriers — loves to run deals on its phones where the headset is packaged for free.) It doesn’t represent a huge leap in what the Gear VR can do, but it’s a nice upgrade that should pay dividends as the company releases newer, faster, and higher-resolution phones in the future.GE seeks arbitration over Lungmen payments
14 December 2015
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General Electric (GE) has formally started arbitration action against Taiwan Power Company (Taipower). The US company is seeking to resolve a payment dispute related to work carried out during construction of the Lungmen nuclear power plant.
Lungmen (Image: Taipower)
In an 11 December statement, Taipower said GE filed for arbitration against it with the Hong Kong branch of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Court of Arbitration in September.
GE has requested payment for work completed under the contract to provide the two reactors at Lungmen, but Taipower has yet to determine the exact amount of the payment due, Taipower vice president Chai Fu-feng was reported as saying by the Taipei Times.
"Taipower would not refuse the payment, but it is withholding payment because evaluation and timing of the payment issues are yet to be resolved," Chai was quoted as saying.
An earlier negotiation process between the two companies failed to reach a resolution.
Taipower said a hearing on the case cannot be held until arbitrators have been chosen for each side and a third party selected to preside over the hearing. It did not disclosure the amount of the payment GE has requested.
Construction work began on the two 1350 MWe Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) at Lungmen - Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant - in 1999, with the first originally scheduled to enter commercial operation in 2006 and the second in 2007. However, the project has been beset with political, legal and regulatory delays.
Taipower's initial plan had been to secure one main contractor for engineering, procurement and construction of the units, but this failed and instead it awarded separate contracts to GE for the nuclear reactors, Mitsubishi for the turbines and various other contractors for the remainder. In 2011 Taipower was criticised by the national regulator, the Atomic Energy Council, for its management of the difficult arrangement.
When the two reactors were about one-third complete, a new cabinet cancelled the project and triggered a year-long delay that eventually ended with a government resolution in favour of construction. This hiatus, plus project management and engineering problems, pushed up the projected cost.
In April 2014, the government announced that unit 1 of the Lungmen nuclear power plant would be mothballed once pre-operational safety checks are completed. These checks were eventually completed in July this year. Construction of unit 2, meanwhile, was suspended immediately. A referendum to decide the plant's fate is not expected for up to another three years.
The government has said that, until the referendum is held, no more money will be invested in the plant's construction. Almost NT$300 billion (over $9 billion) has already been spent building the plant.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
Related topicsThe leak revealed the negotiating positions of all 12 countries, including Australia, on copyright, patents and other intellectual property issues, with a heavy focus on enforcement measures against internet piracy. The owners of Dallas Buyers Club are also fighting orders to pay iiNet's legal costs. But Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb told Fairfax Media on Friday that the agreement aimed to create a "more seamless trading and investment environment", not create new civil or criminal penalties for people who illegally download movies. "Australia only supports those provisions that are consistent with our existing regime. For example, we won't support any provisions that would require the introduction of new civil remedies or criminal penalties in Australia," he said. He said those who said otherwise were merely trying to scare people and sabotage the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
"This was an area where opponents of freer trade were misrepresenting our position in a bid to frighten people and undermine the negotiations." Australian negotiators are in Washington as Trans-Pacific Partnership talks draw to a close. Although the TPP includes a chapter on intellectual property and internet service provider liability, Mr Robb and one of the negotiators said it wouldn't alter Australia's existing copyright laws. The minister believes these laws are strong enough to tackle copyright infringement. For example, this month the producers of Hollywood blockbuster Dallas Buyers Club won a Federal Court case to force internet service providers, including iiNet, to reveal the names and addresses of 4726 customers who allegedly shared pirated copies of the film. This will allow the movie's producer, Voltage Pictures, to send a letter to each of the alleged copyright infringers, paving the way for internet users to pay damages rather than face criminal prosecution.
Mr Robb said the TPP was separate to the Dallas Buyers Club case and would not interfere with that ruling or existing laws. The TPP will also relax restrictions about data storage for companies such as cloud-based providers. A company would no longer be forced to store information in a particular country under the change. But Australia has been pushing for protections for sensitive data such as medical records. Read BusinessDay's full coverage of the Transpacific Partnership on Saturday in print at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and online at smh.com.au, theage.com.au, brisbanetimes.com.au, canberratimes.com.au and watoday.com.au. Follow us on Twitter @BusinessDay
Latest media and marketing news and analysisThe idea of providing an unconditional basic income to every citizen “used to be regarded as the fantasy of a handful of lunatics,” Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght observe in a new book on the subject.
But support for the measure is growing with a rising number of economists and politicians seeing merit in the scheme as a way of dealing with anticipated massive job losses through technological displacement and existing evils of precarious work and income inequality.
Echoing the thinking of basic income advocates, former US president Barack Obama earlier this year called for “a reorganisation of the social compact. That requires that we change our mindset about the link between work, income and the value of people...” However, the concept has been plagued with doubts about practicality and cost to the public purse. A basic income scheme might work in theory, sceptics say, but would it work in practice?
Van Parijs and Vanderborght seek to address those doubts in Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (Harvard University Press).
A basic income builds on the abolition of slavery by giving people the real freedom to turn down unattractive or degrading work
As well as exploring how you could fund the scheme - which would replace existing unemployment benefit with a living income that people would be free to top-up through engagement in the jobs market - the duo highlight obstacles that liberal proponents might prefer to ignore. These include applying border controls on both capital and citizenship. “The sustainability of (genuine) domestic redistribution imposes firm limits on hospitality,” they write.
In January, Finland became the first European country to introduce the scheme under a pilot project, which will track the progress of 2,000 unemployed Finns over two years.
But Van Parijs and Vanderborght believe EU member states should be more ambitious, and they boldly advocate the introduction of a “Eurodividend” - an income that would be paid to every citizen in the EU (or initially at least the Eurozone) at a level based on the average cost of living in each state. One might think the EU has enough on its hands without embarking on such an ambitious project but Van Parijs - this week’s ‘Unthinkable’ guest - suggests a Eurodividend could be the key to the EU’s survival.
What would be the benefit of an EU-wide basic income?
Philippe Van Parijs: “A Eurodividend would perform four functions. It would provide the euro with a macroeconomic stabiliser that would buffer asymmetric shocks and trends. It would provide the Schengen area with a demographic stabiliser that will reduce the tensions arising from intra-EU migration.
“It would provide our national welfare states with a common floor that would help them preserve their generosity and diversity. And it would make more tangible to the ‘stay-at-homes’ that the EU is looking after their material interests too, not only those of the ‘movers’.”
To introduce such a scheme would one need to harmonise tax rates, and especially corporation tax?
“The sustainability of any redistributive system that goes beyond mere insurance requires the appropriate taxation of those people who appropriate a growing share of our countries’ primary income: the owners of capital, of intellectual property rights and of highly lucrative skills. Increasing transnational mobility, both real and virtual, makes it more difficult to tax their incomes at a fair level.
“A systematic international sharing of fiscal information will help. So will the adoption by the EU of a common definition of the tax base of the corporation tax, the imposition of a minimum rate and, even more, the Europeanisation of at least part of the corporation tax.”
Would a Eurodividend - or indeed any basic income scheme - also require controls on immigration?
“Whether adopted at the national, sub-national or supra-national level, no redistributive scheme that goes significantly beyond insurance can survive with fully open external borders that allow any newcomer to enjoy straight away the full benefit of the scheme. This holds for an unconditional basic income, but also for means-tested social assistance and for in-work benefits.”
What’s the biggest obstacle to the introduction of a global basic income scheme? Is it globalisation itself?
“Globalisation, understood as the increasing transnational mobility of capital, goods, services and people, constitutes a major challenge to any generous and genuine national redistributive scheme, for three reasons.
“As mentioned earlier, it makes such a scheme more vulnerable to the selective immigration of potential net beneficiaries. In addition, it makes it more vulnerable to the selective emigration of net contributors. And it increases the cultural heterogeneity of the population, thereby weakening the spontaneous solidarity of the more advantaged with the less advantaged, while also weakening the capacity of the less advantaged to mobilise together in order to fight for their interests.
“The first two aspects of the challenge could be addressed by organising the scheme on a scale higher than the national one - at the European or world level - though at the cost of further increasing heterogeneity, and thereby worsening the third aspect of the challenge. There is no simple solution to this dilemma. But there is also no other strategy that trying to progress at each level whenever there is an opportunity. And progress at a more decentralised level will help progress at a more centralised one, and conversely.”
You place the struggle for universal basic income in the context of previous fights for universal suffrage and against slavery. Do you think future generations will look back and wonder why we left people imprisoned by work for so long?
“Yes I do. A basic income builds on the abolition of slavery by adding to the formal freedom to turn down unattractive or degrading work the real freedom to do so. It is also analogous to universal suffrage in giving everyone a modicum of economic power - bargaining power, not just purchasing power - just as universal suffrage gave everyone a modicum of political power.
“In a past that is |
have independent value for just a few more days before taking the inevitable backseat to Britton. Manager Buck Showalter all but confirmed that sentiment by saying the Orioles will ease back their prized ninth inning arm, but he should regain the role by the weekend in my opinion, barring setbacks. Fire Britton up confidently and drop Brach and look for a few of the names in the Immediate Wavier Pickups listed at the end to fill that hole.
American League Central
RSJ Rating Team Current Closer Handcuff Immediate Waiver Pickup Confident CWS David Robertson Tommy Kahnle Comfortable KC Kelvin Herrera Joakim Soria Joakim Soria Confident MIN Brandon Kintzler Taylor Rogers Confident DET Justin Wilson Alex Wilson Unstable CLE Andrew Miller Cody Allen
Wonderful news. Both Andrew Miller and Cody Allen each earned a save this past week. Thanks for the clarity Terry Francona. Regardless this situation still seems highly volatile. In one outing we saw Allen play backup to Miller, who easily shut the door in the ninth inning on eight pitches to earn a save on Saturday. Then, the next night, a rested Miller was nowhere to be seen and Allen stopped the hemorrhaging, earning a one out save in what was once an 11-2 ballgame at the start of the ninth inning. It seems likely that, as of now, Miller is the favorite to earn saves out of the Indians bullpen, but that is based purely on Francon’s statements a few weeks ago when he announced the change. Both are obviously perfectly capable of fulfilling the ninth inning duties and I still hold that Francona wants to play the matchup game. Right now having both would be the best case scenario. If you have either, hold tight and hope for a break in the situation as these are two of the better relievers in the game.
American League West
RSJ Rating Team Current Closer Handcuff Immediate Waiver Pickup Unstable LAA Bud Norris Cam Bedrosian Bud Norris, Cam Bedrosian Confident SEA Edwin Diaz James Pazos Unknown TEX Matt Bush Jose Leclerc Matt Bush, Jose Leclerc, Keon Kela Unstable OAK Santiago Casilla Sean Doolittle Santiago Casilla, Sean Doolittle Confident HOU Ken Giles Will Harris
After two months of solid performance, including the takeover of Sam Dyson‘s closer job, Matt Bush hit a wall. And not just a little one either. Something more substantial like the great wall of China. On May 30, Bush was 6/7 in saves with a 0.96 ERA. Since then, Bush is 4/8 in save opportunities with an 8.03 ERA and a 2.27 WHIP. WOOOOOOOOF. Manager Jeff Bannister declared a closer by committee approach, immediately signaling to me a changing of the guards with Keone Kela leading the way. What bad timing for Kela as the Rangers placed him on the disabled list two days later, clearing the way for Jose Leclerc to earn save opportunities. And by earn I mean blow them, which is exactly what Leclerc did in his first appearance after the committee announcement. Bush has pitched twice since, going 2 scoreless and once pitching in a high-leverage situation in a tied game in the ninth inning against the formidable Boston Red Sox. In my opinion Bush should hold onto that job in Texas, but if he trips up after the All Star break when Kela returns, Kela immediately becomes a very intriguing option. With Bud Norris back from the disabled list it seems as though he will lead the way for saves in the Angels bullpen. Normally I would bash Mike Scioscia here for leaning towards the veteran but Norris has been downright filthy this year and Cam Bedrosian has suffered a few bumps and bruises since his return, blowing a save with two outs in the ninth last Wednesday. Sure, Bedrosian could have the job by the end of the year and should not relinquish it until roughly 2027. But for now, Norris is pitching too well for Scioscia to make the change.
National League East
RSJ Rating Team Current Closer Handcuff Immediate Waiver Pickup Unknown WSH Matt Albers Enny Romero Matt Albers, Enny Romero Comfortable PHI Hector Neris Pat Neshek Hector Neris, Pat Neshek Comfortable ATL Jim Johnson Arodys Vizcaino Arodys Vizcaino Comfortable MIA A.J. Ramos David Phelps Confident NYM Addison Reed Jerry Blevins
I am a Hector Neris supporter. Even when the Pat Neshek train began rolling I was the first person there putting up roadblocks and staging robberies. This is partly due to his performance over the last two seasons (2.78 ERA and 1.11 WHIP across 116.2IP) and partly due to the situation and setup of the Phillies bullpen. Is Neshek a formidable foe for Neris? Absolutely. But is Neris 28 and blossoming and Neshek 36 and someone who could fetch a decent haul at the trade deadline for a reliever-needy team? You betcha. And that is exactly why I stated Neris would not only have a long leash but would probably keep that job the rest of the year. The Phillies are not contenders and have next to no reason to hold onto Neshek. Unless…..well its the Phillies, enough said. So if you have Neshek try and trade him (maybe target the team with Neris and shake him down) and if you need saves try and buy Neris on the real cheap.
National League Central
RSJ Rating Team Current Closer Handcuff Immediate Waiver Pickup Confident CHC Wade Davis Carl Edwards Jr. Confident CIN Rasiel Iglesias Michael Lorenzen Confident MIL Corey Knebel Jacob Barnes Unstable STL Seung-Hwan Oh Trevor Rosenthal Trevor Rosenthal Confident PIT Felipe Rivero Juan Nicasio
It happened. My heart may have broke just a tad, but it is still (barely) ticking. But I really cannot blame the Cardinals as Seung-Hwan Oh has been a shell of his 2016 self this year. Now it is not all doom and gloom, so let’s go over the facts. Did Mike Matheney announce a closer change? No. That’s kinda good! Did Oh pitch the eight inning in his very next appearance after blowing his third save? Yes. Shucks, it’s all over (insert sad face). But there may be a happy ending here. Would-be-closer Trevor Rosenthal pitched the ninth inning of that same game and (expectedly) imploded, giving up one run on two hits and two walks. This horrific performance actually earned him a hold as Matt Bowman cleaned up his mess and he earned the save. Oh has since pitched on clean inning this past Tuesday, so do not forget that Matheney. Honestly, I think Oh gets the job back after a few more high leverage appearances. He has the arsenal and makeup to be dominant (just look at his advanced metrics from last year). I am holding the course and praying for a clean week this week from Oh, or else I’ll be forced to show everyone my “Oh face”.
National League West
RSJ Rating Team Current Closer Handcuff Immediate Waiver Pickup Confident LAD Kenley Jansen Pedro Baez Unstable SF Sam Dyson Hunter Strickland Sam Dyson, Hunter Strickland Comfortable SD Brandon Maurer Brad Hand Brandon Maurer, Brad Hand Comfortable ARI Fernando Rodney Archie Bradley Archie Bradley Confident COL Greg Holland Jake McGee
I zigged while everyone else zagged. I banked on a Sam Dyson implosion, which was a sure thing early on this year. But wouldn’t you know Dyson is 2/2 in save opportunities with the Giants since the Giants placed Mark Melancon on the 10 day disabled list. How predictable with that 9.00 ERA, 2.21 WHIP and 0.00% save conversion percentage (0/4 with the Rangers if you can believe that). Dyson probably bought himself about a week’s worth of freebies, so if you own him you should be ecstatic. Hunter Strickland still makes a good speculative, short-term add if he is the best available pickup option in your league. I am unsure of the severity of Melancon’s injury or if the Giants want to protect their big offseason investment (or could they even trade him!?!?), so Dyson has decent potential and solid value…as of today.
Ranking of the Immediate Waiver Pickups
Matt Bush (TEX, 55% Yahoo ownership) Brandon Maurer (SD, 64% Yahoo ownership) Bud Norris (LAA, 64% Yahoo ownership) Hector Neris (PHI, 42% Yahoo ownership) Santiago Casilla (OAK, 59% Yahoo ownership) Sean Doolittle (OAK, 18% Yahoo ownership) Cam Bedrosian (LAA, 45% Yahoo ownership) Matt Albers (WSH, 17% Yahoo ownership) Sam Dyson (SF, 45% Yahoo ownership) Trevor Rosenthal (STL, 27% Yahoo ownership) Keone Kela (TEX, 11% Yahoo ownership) Enny Romero (WSH, 5% Yahoo ownership) Archie Bradley (ARI, 33% Yahoo ownership) Arodys Vizcaino (ATL, 17% Yahoo ownership) Brad Hand (SD, 19% Yahoo ownership) Jose Leclerc (TEX, 5% Yahoo ownership) Hunter Strickland (SF, 5% Yahoo ownership) Joakim Soria (KC, 6% Yahoo ownership) Pat Neshek (PHI, 23% Yahoo ownership)
And that’s a wrap for the Closer Depth Chart Week 14. Be sure to scour the waiver wire for all these relievers and check back every Wednesday for the latest updates regarding the closer jobs around the league. Until we meet again, keep your eyes open and your nose to the ground.
To contact me with any questions or general fantasy baseball discussion, please email me at redsocker45@gmail.com or tweet me @AJGamballer.The city of Biloxi got serious flak last night when it announced on its Twitter account that city offices would be closed Monday in “observance of Great Americans Day.”
Non-emergency municipal offices in Biloxi will be closed on Monday in observance of Great Americans Day.
— City of Biloxi (@CityofBiloxi) January 13, 2017
Great Americans Day, according to the Sun Herald, recognizes a joint celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthdays.
More than a few took umbrage and questioned this curious holiday that on its face seems like a slap in the face to King. The person behind the Twitter account seemed indignant when questioned by offended Americans.
While some are wrapped up in a holiday we did not name, please consider the big news coming out of Biloxi today: https://t.co/TIMgJPi1jt
—City of Biloxi (@CityofBiloxi) January 14, 2017
Two hours later, the post had been amended to add that Great Americans Day was a state-named holiday and to include a link to its MLK events.
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The Sun Herald reports that Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel said the declaration of the holiday didn’t originate with the city, and he described the initial tweet as “innocuous.”
“We did not decide to start calling it Great Americans Day,” he told the Sun Herald. “However, whenever the state did years ago, that’s how it’s listed in the city’s code of ordinances.”
He added, “It is very frustrating, very frustrating for Mayor [Andrew “FoFo”] Gilich, for the city leaders, to be labeled as racist, when this is something we did not originate. We’ve got a long history of diversity and welcoming people to our community.”
Speaking of FoFo, after black Twitter got ahold of this indignity, he tweeted at about 9:30 p.m. that he was going with MLK Day. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s called ‘Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day,’” he wrote.
Biloxi, according to the census of 2000, is a city of about 50,000. It is about 71 percent white and 19 percent black. In 1959, Biloxi was the site of what is now described as Mississippi’s worst racial riot (and that’s saying a lot) when a black physician and his friends tried to integrate its beaches in what is now known as the Biloxi Wade-Ins. Ten people died during the riot. The Wade-Ins ended in 1963 after the murder of Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, who supported the measures to open up the city’s beaches. The public waterfronts were not fully integrated until 1968.
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FoFo’s tweet remains as of Saturday morning. The others have since been taken down.
Read more at the Sun Herald.When you’re up to your neck dealing with new overtime rules, more regulation for reporting workplace-related injuries and illnesses, and minimum wage increase, it can be difficult to innovate. How many of the key HR trends for 2016 (the gig economy, improving employee experience, more data and analytics) did you get the chance to work on? As a result, we asked a range of experts to tell us the HR trends for 2017 that they think will realistically affect businesses.
Here industry experts from the business and technology world tell us what they think will be the top HR trends for 2017.
Matt Alder, Recruitment Advisor and Host of The Recruiting Future podcast
Predictive analytics in the hiring process
2017 will see:
A growing focus on digital transformation as companies continue to rapidly evolve as their markets are disrupted. The focus is both on how HR transforms itself and how it supports the digital transformation of the wider business in terms of recruitment, organizational design, people development, engagement and retention.
The continuing growth and development of people analytics and the continuing reinvention of assessment in recruiting with further moves towards predictive analytics for hiring.
More clarity round the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in HR that goes behind the surface level marketing spin we saw in 2016.
Follow @mattalder
Jeremy Ames, CEO @HiveTechHR
HR will either invite or incite the Bots
To be clear, the “trend” is the increase of bots in the world of HR. I’m referring specifically at this point to chatbots, which will transition from a 2016 buzz phrase to more of a reality in 2017. Don’t worry, we’re not at robots yet (in HR, anyway). In fact, real artificial intelligence constitutes a larger percentage of the workforce than us, so you should still be proud to be a human being. However, some interesting technologies are going to become available in 2017, some of which were demonstrated at HR technology conferences this Fall.
As they become more widely available, HR Departments are either going to welcome them as a way to take away some administrative burden, or shun them.
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Steve Browne, Executive Director of HR at LaRosa’s Pizzeria
Better use of data for specific HR challenges
In 2017, HR will have to move past knowing that we need to use data and analytics, to seeing how to effectively utilize them. We tend to use data as a driver when it actually lags. We need to ask the right questions in what we’re doing and then use data to either prove our approach is working or it isn’t. We need to use data effectively and not just get on the Big Data bandwagon as a catchphrase. These are business metrics and not just HR metrics.
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Adriano Corso, Head and Solution Designer at Inbound Talent
The rise of recruitment marketing
We’ve been through a huge shift in recruitment in the last couple of years, mostly due to the rise of social media, automation, AI and gamification. Companies have now started to understand how important it is to have a different approach in their talent attraction strategy. I believe that there will be three main aspects that will influence significantly the HR world in 2017, all of which are connected to each other.
1.The first one is employer branding and EVP (employee value proposition). Having a strong brand has an influence on people’s decision to work for a certain company. Data shows that salary is not a key factor for changing jobs anymore.
2. The second trend is definitely the rise of recruitment marketing as an official discipline, despite widespread skepticism among leaders. Recruitment marketing is not about automating everything and reducing the workforce. But it is about increasing the effectiveness of the standard recruitment approach using consumer-marketing strategies, tactics, and approaches to more effectively “market” organizations and employment opportunities to potential candidates. The inbound process in sales or in marketing is the way to increase brand awareness, engage, and generate conversion by giving high-value contents: feeding the audience with what they are looking for, without being only brand driven. The main goal is to provide the best customer experience. Customer experience and the candidate one are not much different, yet there is a huge gap between the marketing and recruitment departments. A company that is able to adapt these techniques in their recruitment efforts and reduce the gap between the two departments will provide a better candidate experience, empower their employer brand, and reduce recruiting costs and time.
3. The third trend I see is using gamification aspects as a way to engage passive candidates. As part of talent attraction marketing, gamification could significantly help not only to reduce the time of screening but also providing an innovative candidate experience.
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Norbert Erts, Cofounder at CakeHR
Changing structures of HR departments
Among many other trends and predictions for 2017 (AI, sensors, robotics becoming mainstream and as the other extreme – humanizing work-life), I’d like to mention the structure of organizations. Although the top-down hierarchical management system is still widely used, many organizations are instead opting for a network of teams. At Spotify, for example, the smallest grouping unit (they have approximately 30 squads which include around 250 people) behaves like a lean startup in its own right.
Traditionally, jobs were organized by role – HR people worked with HR people; IT people with IT. But in a “new workplace” people have more-defined jobs and they moving from project to project, instead of always working in a specific team.
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Greg Savage, Recruitment and Leadership Consultant
Recruiting gets social
My top HR trends for 2017 are:
A refocus on candidate experience through the hiring process
Continued skills shortages
Evolving candidate behaviors away from job boards and more via social and recommendation
The importance of employer brand (because of the item above)
(because of the item above) Video in the recruitment process
AI in screening
Automated marketing, big data and predictive analytics
Follow @greg_savage
Kamil Wojewoda, Co-Founder at Calamari
Talent management
Talent management is still is one of the hottest areas of HR and in 2017, it is going to grow even more. Modern companies are focused on hiring talented people and keeping them happy by providing an environment that is motivating and focuses on self-improvement. Modern HR already has ditched conventional 360-degree reviews, in favor of more efficient day-to-day management and communication.
Automation will rule 2017
Technology allows HR to automate processes and eliminate many of the administrative processes that hurt HR professionals for years. Automation should be a focus for HR solution providers. Innovative bots provide a layer of humanity in technology, meaning that talking with the HR system could become almost like talking with your colleague from the HR department.
Follow @kamil_wojewoda
Matt Straz, CEO and Founder of Namely
Integrated HR systems
One of the biggest trends I see for 2017 is the rise of integrated HR systems. Today’s HR administrators are data-driven, technology-natives looking for HR software that not only handles administrative tasks, but allows them to make a strategic impact on their organization. Right now, the average mid-size company uses nine different HR applications to get the data they need. More often than not, they want to find best-of-breed applications à la carte and integrate them to create the HR technology stack best suited for their company. The problem is that syncing data between multiple systems was almost impossible.
To meet this new standard, vendors are evolving their technologies. Historically, vendors built closed platforms, hoping companies would use them for all their HR needs. In the past few months, more and more HR technology vendors, including Namely, have announced open APIs and new partners. Namely, for example, recently announced our enhanced API and partner ecosystem which grew 6X in the last year. As more vendors follow suit, HR teams will finally have access to everything they need to succeed.
Follow @mattstraz
What are your top HR trends for 2017?
These are what our experts think will be the top HR trends for 2017, but we’d love to hear what you think. Drop us a line in the comments below or let me know on Twitter what you think will make an impact.
If you’re ready to invest in some HR software to make this happen, we have some resources to help:Largest Cleantech Industry is…Carbon Credits at $63 Billion
July 30th, 2008 by Sarah Lozanova
Emerging out of thin air, it has already surpassed solar and wind as the largest cleantech industry. Carbon credits were worth a staggering $63 billion in 2007 and $59 billion in the first half of 2008 alone.
Europe has dominating the carbon market since its creation less than five years ago. EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) was responsible for 70% of the trading in the first half of this year, totaling $47 billion. This dollar amount is likely to increase as the cost of carbon credits soars and with the inclusion of aviation emissions in 2012.
Obviously an industry of this amount of rapid growth opens many business opportunities. Companies are needed to provide verified emissions offsets, energy efficiency audits, greenhouse gas emission audits, and to design carbon software. This industry has gained considerable interest from venture capitalists.
Carbonetworks of Victoria, British Columbia provides software to evaluate carbon footprints and reduction options for businesses, governments, project developers, and consultants. They are located in one of the few areas in North America with a carbon tax. They recently announced the first close of a $5 million Series A round from NGEN Partners.
CarbonFlow of San Francisco is developing software to lower the time and cost of creating carbon credits. They raised $2.9 million in the first round of funding from OVP Venture Partners, Meridian Energy, and Clean Pacific Ventures. CarbonFlow partnered with Det Norske Veritas of Norway for developing and marketing their system.
The infrastructure isn’t fully in place to support such a large industry and business opportunities are plentiful. If the U.S. and China create large-scale carbon trading systems, the sky is the limit for growth in the carbon trading industry.
Although it is great to see action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, carbon credits can be a way for an organization to throw money at a problem instead of taking action to reduce their own carbon footprint of their operations. The effectiveness of carbon markets has been questioned, yet this industry doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Both McCain and Obama support a cap and trade system for the U.S.
Related Posts on Clean Technology:contributed by Gregory Neven, IBM Zürich, September 2008
Also available as PDF.
This document is intended as a quick introduction to anonymous credentials for a technically, but not cryptographically trained audience. We avoid all mathematical and cryptographic detail here; rather, we try to sketch a black-box API that captures the main functionalities and security features of anonymous credentials, allowing the reader to quickly gain an intuition into what anonymous credentials can and cannot do.
1. Communication model
In the typical “wine-shop” use case, the User is the customer, the Verifier is the merchant, and the Issuer is the government, or any other instance that is trusted to issue age certificates. The User engages in an Issue protocol with an Issuer to obtain a valid credential on a certain set of attributes. The credential is valid under the Issuer’s public key pk, of which only the Issuer knows the corresponding secret key sk. In its simplest form, the Issue protocol is a two-round interaction where the User submits a request containing her attributes, and the Issuer certifies the fact that the User has the claimed attributes by returning the credential; more generally, the credentials can be generated through a multi-round interaction.The User convinces a verifier that she has a certain set of attributes by engaging in a Show protocol. Again, this can be a simple two-round protocol or a more complex interaction.
2. Anonymous credentials and selective showing of attributes
Intuitively, an anonymous credential can be thought of as a digital signature by the Issuer on a list of attribute-value pairs, e.g. the list
(fname=”Alice”, lname=”Anderson”, bdate=”1977/05/10”, nation=”DE”).
The most straightforward way for the User to convince a Verifier of her list of attributes would be to simply transmit her credential to the Verifier. This approach has a number of disadvantages, most notably
that the User has to reveal all of her attributes so that the Verifier can check the signature;
that the Verifier can reuse the credential to impersonate Alice wrt other Verifiers.
With anonymous credentials, the User never transmits the credential itself, but rather uses it to convince the Verifier that her attributes satisfy certain properties – without leaking anything about the credential other than the shown properties. This has the obvious advantage that the Verifier can no longer reuse the credential to impersonate Alice. Another advantage is that anonymous credentials allow the User to reveal a selected subset of her attributes. In the example above, Alice could for example reveal her first name and last name, but keep her birth date hidden. Stronger even, apart from showing the exact value of an attribute, the User can even convince the Verifier that some complex predicate over the attributes holds. In particular, she can demonstrate any predicate consisting of the following operations:
Integer arithmetic: att+c, att+att, att•c : sum of attributes and/or constants, product of attributes with constants
Comparative: exp1 = exp2, exp1 < exp2, exp1 > exp2, exp1 ≤ exp2, exp1 ≥ exp2 : compare arithmetic expressions over attributes/constants
Logical: pred1 AND pred2, pred1 OR pred2
Note that revealing a subset of attributes comes down to the special of showing that the predicate att1 = val1 AND att2 = val2 AND … holds. In the example above, Alice could show that she’s an overage national of an EU country by showing that he has a credential satisfying bdate ≤ today – 18y AND ( nation=”DE” OR nation=”FR” OR … ). The Show protocol does not leak any information other than the truth of the statement. So in the example above, not only does Alice’s name remain hidden from the Verifier, but so do her exact birth date and nationality; the only information leaked is that her birth date is more than 18 years ago, and that her nationality is one of the EU countries. The Show protocol also allows to prove statements about multiple credentials. For example, when Alice’s passport and credit card are anonymous credentials issued by her government and her bank, respectively, then she can show to a Verifier that she has a valid passport certifying that she is over 18 years of age and a valid credit card issued to the same name: pass.bdate ≤ today – 18y AND pass.fname = ccard.fname AND pass.lname = ccard.lname.
3. Verifiable encryption
There are situations where multiple parties are involved in the same transaction, and each of these parties need different information from the User. For example, in the wine shop use case, the merchant needs to know whether Alice is overage, and the shipping company needs to know her address. The merchant should not learn her address, but wants to be sure that she gives her real address to the shipping company, and not that of an underage friend. Another example is that the merchant may require Alice to submit her real identity to a trusted third party (TTP), so that in case of dispute or fraud the TTP can be contacted to reveal Alice’s identity. The merchant wants to be sure that Alice submitted her real identity to the TTP, and not some bogus identity. The TTP in this case plays the role of an identity escrow agent. More generally, there are situations where the Verifier wants to be sure that the User submitted a certain piece of personal data to an External Recipient, but the content of these data should remain hidden from the Verifier. A “low-tech” solution to this problem is to have the User send this data directly to the External Recipient, who either returns a receipt to the User that the User can show to the Verifier, or who contacts the Verifier directly to acknowledge that it received the correct data. This situation is depicted in the upper picture below.
A more “high-tech” setting is depicted in the lower picture. Here, the User sends the required data to the Verifier, but encrypted under the public key of the External Recipient. When she uses a verifiable encryption scheme, the User can prove predicates about the content of the encrypted data of the same form as those in the Show protocol to the Verifier, to assure the Verifier that the ciphertext C actually contains the correct data. (Without such a proof, the User could easily encrypt bogus data, since the Verifier does not know the decryption key skER anyway.) The External Recipient does not need to be online at the time of the transaction; rather, the Verifier can forward the ciphertext only when it is actually needed, e.g. when the item is being shipped, or when a dispute actually occurs.
4. Limited spending
4.1 One-time spending
Because of the anonymity of anonymous credentials, a Verifier cannot tell whether two successful logins were initiated by the same user or by different users. This is good for privacy, but becomes a problem in situations where one wants to place a bound on the number of times that a single credential can be used. We first sketch a simple solution for the special case where a credential can only be used (or “spent”) once, and then present a more advanced solution that works for arbitrary bounds.
When a credential is only to be used once (a so-called “one-time credential”), the issuer includes an additional attribute credentialID in the credential that is set to a random value. To log into the system, the User has to reveal the value of credentialID to the Verifier. The Verifier simply maintains the list of credentialID s that it has seen, and denies access when the revealed credentialID already occurs in the list.
This solution works fine as long as there is only a single Verifier, or as long as all Verifiers have access to a common database that keeps track of spent credentialID s. It is impossible to prevent a User from overspending a one-time credential by using it at multiple Verifiers that are not in constant communication with each other, but there are ways to detect such behavior after the fact. Namely, as part of the showing protocol, the Verifier can choose a random challenge chall, which the User has to respond to with a value resp that computed as a function of chall and some attribute that uniquely identifies the User, e.g. name, together with a proof that resp was correctly computed. The protocol is such that a single challenge-response pair (chall, resp) does not reveal anything about name, but name is easily computable from two pairs (chall, resp) and (chall’, resp’) whenever chall ≠ chall’ (which happens with overwhelming probability if the challenges are long enough). By storing triples of the form ( credentialID, chall, resp) for each login, Verifiers can later on compare their lists to detect overspent credentials and reveal the identity of fraudulent users.
4.2 Multi-time spending
The above technique is easily extended to allow spending up to n times as follows: include n different random attributes credentialID1,…, credentialIDn in the credential, and let the User reveal one of them each time she logs in. This quickly becomes inefficient however, as the number of attributes in the credential grows linearly with the spending bound. Also, the Issuer has to fix a single bound once and for all; it would be nice if different Verifiers could impose their own bounds on-the-fly.
A more powerful approach is the following. As an extra attribute, each credential includes a random hash key HK for a keyed hash function H. The hash function is such that it allows the User to prove statements of the form
H HK (somestring) = somevalue
as part of the showing protocol, whereby the hash input and output are revealed, but HK remains hidden. When the User logs in for the i-th time, she reveals H HK (i) and proves that the value was correctly computed from HK as included in her credential. The Verifier checks that 1 ≤ i ≤ n and that the hash value does not yet occur in its database.
Since the hash function takes any bit string as input, different web sites can easily impose their own spending limits by collecting hash values of the form
H HK (websiteID, i )
from users. The system is also easily extended to interactive challenge-response protocols that allow after-the-fact detection of abuse.
5. Cryptographic pseudonyms
In some situations it may desirable to create permanent pseudonymous user accounts. This could be for efficiency reasons, because the user does not want to re-prove that it satisfies all access requirements at each login, or for functionality reasons, for example to store the user’s preferences or a list of previous transactions across several sessions. The actions that a user performs under the same pseudonym thereby unavoidably become linkable, but otherwise no new information should be leaked to the server. In particular, it should be impossible to link different pseudonyms of the same user together, whether it be at the same server or across different servers.
So far, the requirements can be satisfied simply by letting each user set up a random username-password pair. The problem with this solution is that the user can set up an account, prove that she satisfies some requirements, and then sell her password to users who do not satisfy these requirements. Since there is no connection between the user and the pseudonym, the user has no incentive not to share her credentials with others.
Anonymous credentials provide a better solution. Namely, each of the user’s credentials contains a master secret as a special attribute. Each user has her own master secret, and the same master secret is present in all of a user’s credentials. The issuing of credentials is done in a special way so that the same master secret must be used in all of the user’s credentials, without revealing its value to the issuer however. The idea is that the master secret is the one secret that the user holds very dearly, as it is essentially the cornerstone of her entire electronic identity.
The user’s “pseudonym” is not a self-chosen name or a random bit string, but rather a special cryptographic token that is non-deterministically derived from the master secret. (Meaning, you can generate many different pseudonyms from the same master secret.) The corresponding “password” is the master secret itself. Rather than simply sending the master secret to the server to log in, the user proves in a cryptographic way that she knows the master secret underlying her pseudonym, but without revealing its value.
The cryptographic pseudonyms thus derived have the property that (1) no one can tell whether two pseudonyms were derived from the same master secret or not, and (2) it is impossible to successfully log in under a pseudonym without knowing the underlying master secret.
If the user now wants to share her account at a server with other users, then she has to give away her master secret, which immediately gives access to all other servers where she ever registered. It is hoped that this all-or-nothing situation (either you share nothing, or you share your entire identity) forms enough of a disincentive to prevent users from sharing their credentials.SHARE
By of the
Would you like a little cheese brine to go with your rock salt on the city's roadways this winter?
The city's Department of Public Works will go ahead this winter with a pilot program to determine whether cheese brine — a liquid waste product left over from cheesemaking — can be added to rock salt and applied directly to the street.
There is one downside: The city says cheese brine has a distinctive odor.
A report prepared by the city's Department of Public Works notes that Milwaukee, like most cities, relies on rock salt as its primary de-icer on roads. Rock salt, according to the report, is plentiful, inexpensive and very effective.
But some concerns have been raised that the use of rock salt has a long-term impact on roads and the environment. In the winter of 2008, for instance, nearly 100,000 tons of rock salt was spread on the city's 1,418 miles of roads.
Last year, only 44,339 tons of rock salt was used.
Tiny Polk County, in the northwest part of the state, has been using cheese brine since 2009. According to the city report, Polk County saved approximately $40,000 in the first year by using cheese brine as a pre-wet agent to salt or a combination of salt/sand.
Milwaukee has experimented before with alternatives or supplements to rock salt. Since 2005, crews have used salt brine as an anti-icing agent on bridge decks. And from 1999 to 2001, the city tried a molasses-type product as a de-icer.
That didn't work out so well. City residents complained that the product smelled. Worse, people were tracking the stuff — which got stuck on the bottom of their shoes — into their homes.
In December 2009, city crews tried using beet juice and sprayed it onto rock salt. That didn't work out so well, either. The beet juice/salt mix turned into something resembling oatmeal in city trucks.
To launch the pilot program, the city will first have to find a mozzarella or provolone cheese brine supplier in the Milwaukee area. According to the report, the closest cheese plants to Milwaukee are in Richfield, West Bend and Bristol.
Next the city will have to find a way to get the brine from factory to a holding tank. Cost of the pilot program: $6,500.
For now, rock salt continues to be the superstar of de-icing. According to Russ Alger, director of the Institute of Snow Research at Michigan Technological University: "When you look at all the options, a lot of time road salt turns out to be pretty good. So we keep coming back to road salt. Cost-wise, efficiency |
page, and fire up “iTest2 Recorder Sidebar” in Firefox. A menu will pop up on the left side of the screen, that looks like this: So what we want to do is click the Watir tab on that, then start interacting with the website. As you click around, enter form fields, etc, it records what you do and spits out Ruby code. Really cool. So go ahead and click into the search box, and type in that location you used when we were exploring the site earlier. Then click “Search”. Now, click on the “10-Day” link in the blue menu bar. Your iTest Panel should now have this code in it: Now, right click in that box, select “Copy All”, and fire up your text editor and paste that code into there. You can close up iTest now. Next, we’re going to get the appropriate require’s into your code so we can run this initial script. At the top of your ruby file, add these lines: [cc lang=”ruby”] require ‘rubygems’ require ‘watir’ Watir::Browser.default = “firefox” [/cc] All we’re doing there is getting the right gems loaded up, then making sure that when Watir starts running, it uses Firefox by default. Your code should now look like this: [cc lang=”ruby”] require ‘rubygems’ require ‘watir’ #start the browser up Watir::Browser.default = “firefox” browser = Watir::Browser.start “http://www.weather.com/” browser.text_field(:id, “whatwhereForm2”).set(“san diego, ca”) browser.button(:src,”http://i.imwx.com/web/common/searchbutton.gif”).click browser.link(:text, “10-Day”).click [/cc] Save that file out as weather.rb, then drop down into the command line/terminal and navigate to where you saved the file and run it by entering: [cc lang=”ruby”] ruby weather.rb [/cc] If everything was setup correctly, you should see Firefox pop up, visit weather.com, type in your location, then click the 10-Day link. Sweet!
Scraping the Forecast with Nokogiri and XPath
So now that we’re on the right page, we need to get that specific forecast for one week from today. In Firefox, right click the “Showers” forecast in the table row for 7 days from today (in this case, it’s April 11th) and click “Inspect XPath”. You should see this: Copy the “.//*[@id=’tenDay’]/div[8]/div/div[2]/div/p” code out and paste it into your weather.rb file. So now we’re going to load the current page into Nokogiri, and using the.xpath method, parse out this row of the table and get the text within that <p> tag. Just under your “require ‘watir'” line, you need to add this: [cc lang=”ruby”] require ‘nokogiri’ [/cc] Next, after the current last line of your script (the line that gets us onto the 10-Day forecase page), you’re going to add this: [cc lang=”ruby”] page_html = Nokogiri::HTML.parse(browser.html) puts page_html.xpath(“.//*[@id=’tenDay’]/div[8]/div/div[2]/div/p”).inner_text [/cc] What the hell is that? Well, the first line is instantiating the variable “page_html” and setting it to the result from parsing the current page (accessible via browser.html) with Nokogiri. The current page for Watir is always stored in browser.html, fyi. What this is basically doing is getting it locked and loaded in Nokogiri so you can parse out the relevant information from the DOM that you want. The next line is printing to the screen (that’s what “puts” does, it’s like “echo” in PHP) the inner_text of whatever is located at the XPath location that we copied from FireXPath earlier. Let me break that down a bit. I’m not going into what XPath is here, but it’s basically a quick way to traverse the DOM. What this XPath says is “go through the whole page, find any element with the id of ‘tenDay’, find the 8th div inside of that, find the first div inside of that, the 2nd div inside of that, the first div inside of that, then the first p inside of that”. If we left out the.inner_text call, this would spit out all of the html code inside of that <p> tag. But by adding.inner_text, you are telling Nokogiri to ignore all of the HTML in that <p> tag and just print out whatever text is located in there, which in this case is “Showers”. So that’s basically it. Your final code should look like this: [cc lang=”ruby”] require ‘rubygems’ require ‘watir’ require ‘nokogiri’ #start the browser up Watir::Browser.default = “firefox” browser = Watir::Browser.start “http://www.weather.com/” browser.text_field(:id, “whatwhereForm2”).set(“san diego, ca”) browser.button(:src,”http://i.imwx.com/web/common/searchbutton.gif”).click browser.link(:text, “10-Day”).click #pass in current page’s html to nokogiri for parsing page_html = Nokogiri::HTML.parse(browser.html) puts page_html.xpath(“.//*[@id=’tenDay’]/div[8]/div/div[2]/div/p”).inner_text [/cc] Run that with “ruby weather.rb” again, and it should run and stop on the 10-Day forecast page. Check your terminal, and it should print out “Showers”. Boom. You just botted Weather.com.
Where To Go From Here?
Ok, so I’ll admit it, that was a really simple and White Hat bot. But, there is A LOT of potential with what I just wrote up if you take some time to plan out some good targets. So start tweaking this code and try botting some other sites. Once you’re comfortable, start thinking about how you can expand your efforts. I want to write some more guides like this for different efforts, but I probably won’t ever write anything very Black Hat just because that’s a job for you to figure out anyways :-). There are a few other useful topics revolving around these concepts though that I will write about soon, so stay tuned. Good luck, DOne of the biggest burning questions going into Once Upon a Time’s Frozen-themed season opener is whether Elsa (Georgina Haig) will say one of her most cherished and well-known lines from the Disney film. (You can go ahead and turn the song on now.)
The producers have already said they won’t attempt a musical episode, but that still leaves the door open for Elsa to eventually say the line on the series. “There are nods to it, but we haven’t yet scripted actually having her say ‘Let it go,'” executive producer Adam Horowitz tells EW.
Still, there will be plenty of Frozen shout outs throughout the first half of season, including the introduction of Kristoff’s reindeer Sven, actually getting to meet some of Hans’ 12 brothers that were mentioned in the film and seeing a version of Elsa’s snow monster in Storybrooke.
“We’re trying to walk the line between what feels appropriate for our show or inappropriate,” Horowitz continues. “What we want to do is make loving nods to the movie and things that are iconic, but we don’t want to do it in a way where we’re making Elsa say catchphrases for the sake of it. We want it to feel organic to the show and also want gives fans of Frozen payoffs to the thing that they love most. Our hope is that if you watch, you’ll see that there are nods to many things from the movie as well.”
For her part, Haig is really excited for one particular nod to the film. “I would love to build a snowman,” she says. “That might also be hinted on at some point.” However, word is we won’t actually see Olaf.
Once Upon a Time returns Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. on ABC.Opening up its first week as the No. 1 team in the nation since November 2012, Stanford’s women’s volleyball team continued its challenging pre-conference schedule in the Stanford Invitational this past weekend, perhaps now with an even bigger target on its back.
But the Cardinal (7-0) continued their stretch of dominance to open the season, winning all three matches they played in just over a 24-hour stretch in the tourney, and getting off to the team’s best start since the 2010 season when they went 14 matches before losing to UCLA. All of this happened despite season-opening matches that paired Stanford up with some of the best competition in the country, something even that head coach John Dunning admitted took a toll, saying, “We were pretty tired after giving up a lot for the first two weeks.”
No. 20 Duke, the Cardinal’s fourth ranked opponent of their first five matches, was first on the docket on Friday night, and Stanford avoided a letdown, taking the match in four sets, 25-11, 27-25, 23-25, 25-15.
Penn (6-3) was up next on Saturday morning, and the Cardinal took care of the Quakers quickly in three sets in their first of two games that day, 25-17, 25-23, 25-22. Saturday night, Stanford welcomed Bay Area neighbor Santa Clara (8-2) to Maples, in a match that was never close, as the Cardinal earned the sweep, 25-14, 25-15, 25-11.
Stanford’s middle blockers continued their dominant play in the tournament, with big impacts coming from both a familiar face, and one that has emerged as a key player in the rotation early in the season. Junior Inky Ajanaku tallied 36 kills on a.517 hitting percentage over the three matches, also tallying 15 blocks. She led the team on Friday night against Duke with a career-high 21 kills, hitting.576 over the four sets.
Redshirt freshman Merete Lutz has been an early-season surprise, but not if you ask Dunning. The 6-foot-8 Houston native hit.651 over the three matches this weekend, tallying 29 kills on just 43 attempts, also collecting eight blocks.
“It’s been a long time coming, obviously, waiting all last year,” Lutz said. “But it’s so much fun, the team’s really excited for this year and it’s great to be out there finally, especially with everyone clicking.”
Dunning said this was all part of the plan, as the team is now seeing the impact the redshirt freshman can have on a match.
“Merete was ready to play last year,” he said. “She has some obvious advantages, and she takes advantage of them. Over the last year, she’s gotten a lot stronger, which was the idea behind red-shirting her.”
Consistently having a big presence at the middle of its attack, as well as its defense, has paid big dividends for Stanford early in the season, and is likely to be a key to the team’s success throughout this season, so long as they’re set up well.
“Our team is realizing that if we work really hard on ball control and if we work really hard on serving, then we have an opportunity to get to two hitters that can do some damage. And when that happens, then the other hitters have a much better shot,” Dunning said. “[Our other players] will have openings because the other teams have to worry about our middles.”
Senior opposite hitter Morgan Boukather has also stepped into a big role in the teams first few matches, filling in the vacated spot on the outside of Rachel Williams ‘14. She’s playing career volleyball early in the season, and seems to be setting career highs in each match. Boukather is averaging 2.65 kills per set on a.309 hitting percentage early on, also tallying 0.91 blocks per set on defense.
Over the weekend, she played against Duke and Santa Clara, with some rest on Saturday morning against Penn, combining for 18 kills on 25 attempts and 10 blocks over the two matches. Boukather said that the consistent playing time this season has allowed her to find her groove early on.
“The more experience you get, the more confident you get,” she said. “And you see the same situations over and over again, so you know how to deal with them. [The early success] is just experience and I’m just going for it, it’s my last year.”
“She’s experienced, but very motivated because she played behind Rachel last year,” Dunning said. “Morgan was ready for the opportunity that was going to be available for her or someone else, and she has jumped up and grabbed it.
“It’s really been a neat thing for our team because we can split the other team’s blockers apart.”
Up next for the Cardinal is the USD Invitational in San Diego, where the team will take on the hosts, as wells as Eastern Washington and Cal State Northridge. It’s a final tune-up before the team opens up conference play the following weekend with the Big Spike at Maples Pavilion.
Boukather said this Stanford team is built for a long run, and while the No. 1 ranking might put a target on its back, the players are more than ready for what’s ahead.
“It’s just a different team, we have a different personality. We have a lot of the same people, but there’s just a different aura,” she said. “We’re still really motivated, but this year, I think we’re more experienced and we’re able to come back. We learned from our mistakes last year and we just have to be able to go for it.”
Contact Jordan Wallach at jwallach ‘at’ stanford.edu.[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.]
ROSWELL, GA (January 19, 2017) – Tripwire Interactive today officially released the first, post-launch free content pack dubbed Tropical Bash, to their popular sci-fi horror FPS game, KILLING FLOOR 2, which is currently available for PC via Steam as well as the PlayStation®4 and PlayStation®4 Pro computer entertainment systems. Following the successful launch of KILLING FLOOR 2 in November, Tripwire is excited to launch their first free update of the New Year. Known for their commitment to supporting their titles post-launch with continued content, Tripwire gives players a first taste of what’s to come with today’s Tropical Bash release. The Tropical Bash Content Pack introduces an all-new island getaway where players will encounter a brand-new type of monstrous Zed, while avoiding the perils of the deadly jungle. The brand-new Gorefiend Zed, an even more dangerous brother to the Gorefast Zed, brings additional challenges for new and veteran players with its dual blades and powerful attacks. Players will have to dodge and weave the Gorefiend’s attacks through a brand-new map, Zed Landing, which will take them to a tropical lush island. This island is also home to an active volcano, which may pose a greater danger than the Zeds that lurks in its dark jungles. The last major addition comes in the form of the Bone Crusher, a devastating makeshift mace and shield for the Berserker perk. Available now with the release of the Tropical Bash Content Pack, players will be able to further explore the horrific world of KILLING FLOOR 2 with brand new features including those listed below. A full detailed list of all content additions, bug fixes and tuning can be found on the Official KILLING FLOOR 2 Game Group on Steam. The brand-new Tropical Bash Content Pack for KILLING FLOOR 2 includes the following: New Map – Zed Landing, a lush tropical island with an active volcano and dynamic volcano effects
New Weapon – Hammer the point home to Zeds using the Bone Crusher, a devastating makeshift mace and shield for the Berserker perk
New Zed – The deadly, dual-bladed Gorefiend adds yet another threat for players to overcome
Dual Perk Weapons – Weapons can now belong to more than one perk, greatly increasing the weapon choices available for each perk
New Emotes – New emote animations that can be triggered during gameplay. All players receive one for free, with additional emotes gained from unlocking Emote Crates To celebrate today’s update, KILLING FLOOR 2 will be on sale on the following sites: Steam – 33% off starting Thursday, January 19th at 10:00AM PST through Monday, January 23rd at 10:00AM PST
– 33% off starting Thursday, January 19th at 10:00AM PST through Monday, January 23rd at 10:00AM PST PlayStation Store (North America) - 33% off starting Thursday, January 19th at 8:00AM PST through Monday, January 23rd at 8:00AM PST Tripwire Interactive is committed to listening and engaging with their fans for feedback and encourages players to post their feedback in the Official KILLING FLOOR 2 Forums and be sure to join the Official KILLING FLOOR 2 Game Group on Steam. In KILLING FLOOR 2, players descend into continental Europe where the outbreak caused by Horzine Biotech’s failed experiment has quickly spread and gained unstoppable momentum, essentially paralyzing the European Union— Just one month after the events in the original KILLING FLOOR, the specimen clones are everywhere and civilization is in disarray; communications have failed, governments have collapsed, and military forces have been systematically eradicated. The people of Europe know survival and self-preservation too well and lucky survivors have gone into hiding. Not all have given up hope though... A group of civilians and mercenaries have banded together to combat the outbreak and established privately funded operation bases across Europe. Upon tracking specimen clone outbreaks, players will descend into zed-laden hot zones and exterminate them. KILLING FLOOR 2 is developed by Tripwire Interactive and is published by Deep Silver and Iceberg Interactive for the PlayStation®4 Pro, PlayStation®4, and PC. This title has been rated M by the ESRB, PEGI 18, USK 18. Stay up-to-date with the latest KILLING FLOOR 2 news and information on the official website: www.killingfloor2.com. You can also keep track of Tripwire Interactive at any of these online channels: www.tripwireinteractive.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tripwireinteractive, Twitter at https://twitter.com/TripwireInt and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/tripwireinteractive. About Tripwire Interactive Gamers want games that grab their attention and will keep them coming back for more. Tripwire has been producing those types of games since the first Red Orchestra mod that won the "Make Something Unreal" competition in 2004. Since then Tripwire has won numerous Multiplayer and FPS Game of the Year awards from top editorial sites and millions have played a Red Orchestra or Killing Floor game, with an average play time of over 40 hours, per player, per game! Tripwire has published select 3rd party titles (The Ball, Zeno Clash, Dwarfs?!), supported each title with free extra content and taken their brand of winning gaming to console, to continuously expand that base. Tripwire will continue to offer new and exciting gaming experiences both to their millions of fans and to new gamers alike - the next being Killing Floor 2 for PC and PS4 in 2016, Rising Storm 2:Vietnam for PC and Killing Floor: Incursion for Oculus Touch in 2017. To find out why millions of gamers spend so much time playing Tripwire games and getting involved with Tripwire's special events for existing games, visit the website at www.tripwireinteractive.com for all the latest news direct from the studio. Killing Floor©2009-2017 Tripwire Interactive. Killing Floor®is a registered trademark of Tripwire Interactive in the USA and other countries. “PlayStation” is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.This summer marks the 26th anniversary of Iran’s massacre against political prisoners in 1988. The shock and terror inflicted on the Iranian nation when tens of thousands of prisoners were executed in a matter of months went unnoticed in the international sphere, and unresolved in the Iranian psyche. The legacy of this event has resulted in the survival of a despotic regime, and the stunted growth of a nation.
A Decade of Blood
Public execution of dissidents in Iran
In order to understand the effect of the 1988 massacre, it is necessary to situate it in the historical context of 1980’s Iran. A decade which had started out with the highest of aspirations following the 1979 revolution, turned into a nightmare of horror and tragedy. The war with Iraq which started in 1980 also was used by the Mullahs to suppress criticism and justify their expansion of power. Khomeini entered Iran with religious sanctity that was unparalleled, his betrayal of the peoples trusts has instilled a cynicism towards politics in Iranians that continues to this day.
The massacre itself has never been formally investigated, and remains shrouded in mystery. Some estimates place the number of killed as high as 30,000. To date, the most damning evidence has come from within the ruling clergy itself, from Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri who lost his status as Khomeini’s successor by denouncing the massacre.
Khomeini’s fatwa for mass executions of Iranian political prisoners in 1988
The orders for the systematic execution of dissidents came from Khomeini himself, in the form of a fatwa (religious edict) and was meant to purge the country of any opposition, notably the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) who represented the largest threat to ruling clerics. Along with the PMOI many leftist activists were also executed, for refusing to renounce their beliefs. A large number of the prisoners who were executed had already been sentenced to serve a number of years for their crimes. Their executions occurred with little regard for due process or judicial oversight.
“My brother was killed on 28 August. In late November the authorities called us… they said that both my brothers had been executed but they didn’t give any documents. They didn’t say why they killed them, where they had been buried, why there had been a re-trial, their last words, nothing,” Jafar Behkish told Amnesty International.
For a complete legal analysis of the massacre and evidence of crimes against humanity see this Report by Geoffrey Robertson
According to testimony given to United Nations human rights rapporteurs Kamal Afkhami Ardekani, who formerly worked at Evin prison: “They would line up prisoners in a 14-by-five-metre hall in the central office building and then ask simply one question, ‘What is your political affiliation?’ Those who said the Mojahedin would be hanged from cranes in position in the car park behind the building.”
The body of an executed prisoner is seen in a mass grave.
Amnesty International has noted that 25 years after the massacre, the regime continues to suppress any information about the killings, arresting family members who dare to speak out or visit mass graves at the Khavaran cemetery.
The Effects of Trauma
Much has been written about the horrors of the massacre and what occurred, and there exist numerous eyewitness accounts. That which is not often discussed is the affect the massacre had on the nation as a whole.
First and foremost the shock of such a brutal and systematic massacre left the country paralyzed with horror. Unable to comprehend the extent of the tragedy, many denied that it had even taken place. Others were left in a state of shock, unable to demand an investigation, or properly mourn and move on.The US presidential election race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is in its final week, with polls indicating a small lead for Clinton.
But polling also shows a story that's equally important, of a country divided down demographic lines. A country where men and whites tend to back the Republican, while women and ethnic minorities flock to the Democrat's candidate.
Just as the UK's Brexit referendum saw major divides among age, economic and educational backgrounds, the US election also looks likely to throw up similar divisions based on where, how and to whom a person was born.
Race will be as big an issue as ever
In 2012, 56 per cent of white people backed Romney - but Obama won the support of nine out of 10 nonwhite voters - and 19 out of 20 black people.
Despite the obvious attraction of voting for America's first black president in 2008 and 2012, ethnic minorities still look set to support the Democrat candidate this time round.
Just 17 per cent of Hispanics and three per cent of black people back Trump, according to recent polling.Researchers who ask for pertinent records from the US Air Force about UFOs are provided with a 'Fact Sheet' which states that since the closure of Project Blue Book in 1974, the USAF has no interest in, and does not study, the subject. The USAF information pack refers inquirers to various non-governmental UFO research organizations which are closely monitored, and, at times, directed by various US intelligence and military agencies. (1)
The men from the Ministry
In Britain, Air Staff 2 (a), a desk in the Ministry of Defence, manned by junior civil servants such as Nick Pope, J. Palmer, Owen Hartop, Kerry Philpott, and Ralph Noyes, respond to public inquiries. The knowledge of these individuals is limited and their responses consequently sometimes inaccurate. Contrary to claims made by Air Staff 2 (a) that they are privy to all UFO reports, there is a component within the MOD which deals with more serious aspects of this subject. On October 23 1989, in the course of one of my investigations, I contacted this particular MOD section. After the preliminary conversation I was asked if I was prepared to sell my investigation report to them; and later in the course of the conversation, when I suggested sharing information, citing the national security aspects, I was asked if I was prepared to sign a security agreement concerning this issue. I was further asked to prepare a proposal and submit it to them. When I inquired about some landing reports, I was asked to specify the date of the particular cases I had in mind. Although this is a component of the MOD, it is not situated in Whitehall. Neither is it Defence Intelligence 55 (DI55), though sources within DI55 have been helpful in other investigations of mine.
Though several individuals in the UK who have witnessed serious UFO cases have been visited by government officials, the MOD has repeatedly denied the existence of such officials. Sometimes in uniform but mostly in civilian clothes, these officials have approached witnesses asking them not to discuss what they have seen with the public or the media. UFO folklore has termed them the Men in Black (MIB).
The section in charge of such investigations is Aerospace Intelligence within the MOD.
The MOD, and Air Staff 2(a) in particular, have been the chief focus of the search for British information on UFOs. But examination of the MOD's old files shows the absence of any Royal Navy reports. There is also a component within the Admiralty in charge of UFO cases reported at sea, about which researchers have little knowledge. I have also dealt with this component, though I do not know its name.
How the Department of Defense treats UFOs
Due to its size the US Department of Defence (DoD)does not have a single unit to handle UFO reports. Apart from the many departments known to UFO researchers run from the Pentagon, there is another component about which no public information is available. In the course of studying a serious UFO case from the former Soviet Union, I was advised by the National Reconnaissance Office(NRO) staff in the Pentagon to contact Pentagon House. (2)
Located outside the Pentagon, Pentagon House showed immense interest and I was asked to provide them with the raw material I had.
All the official records made public under the UFO title are unevaluated reports gathered through various human intelligence means. These reports always quote the term UFO, as it has been relayed to them by sources. Mostly these sources are civilians, unaware of the current official terminology used by the US government. The US military uses two main terms in compiling and studying the UFO subject: Uncorrelated Targets (UCT), for earth-bound unidentified objects, and Uncorrelated Event Reports (UER) for space related events. I wrote to North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, about their terminology. They replied:
'Historically, the term UFO was used by the Air Force starting in 1947 and ending in 1974 with the shelving of the "Blue Book" project. We all know what the term UFO means, we just don't use it.....The specific term "UFO" is not used by this command even though you could say that this term would equate to UTR [unknown track report], either an uncorrelated event or an unknown track, since an unidentified flying object could be considered either.'(3)
Further, I was told, 'Uncorrelated Events Reports (UERs), which are space related events on the United States Space Command (USSPACECOM) side of the house, are always classified SECRET.' (4)
Uncorrelated Targets are categorised as:
Significant UCTs, Nonsignificant UCTs, Critical UCTs, and
False UCTs. (5)
Copies of any serious UCT event are sent to the Missions Systems Integration Board (MSIB). MSIB is composed of all NORAD and US Space Command directorates and senior level representatives from Naval Space Command, Army Space Command and Air Force Space Command. (6)
The regulations governing the UFO topic is USR 55-12, Space Surveillance Network (SSN) of June 1 1992, classified by multiple sources.
'This regulation provides policy and guidance for operations of the worldwide Space Surveillance Network (SSN). It applies to Headquarters US Space Command; the component commands, Headquarters Air Force Space Command; the Naval Space Command, and Army Space Command; the Space Surveillance Centre (SSC), the Alternative Space Surveillance Centre (ASSC); and the SSN sensors except RAF Fyling dales. RAF Fyling dales follows guidance specified in SR55-122/88771/1/GE(s), Joint USAF/RAF Operations Manual (JOM) Ballistic Missiles Early Warning System (BMEWS) Site III, RAF, England.' (7)
In conjunction with this regulation exists US Space Command Regulation 55-20, Warning Verification of Hostile Space Events, dated 31 January 1990, classified secret.
'This regulation establishes procedures to provide timely and accurate status reporting, warning and verification of hostile space events to National Command Authorities (NCA), collateral agencies, space system owners and operators, and defense forces from Headquarters, US Space Command, Space Defense Operations Center (SPADOC).'
Although the US Space Command is the Office of Primary Responsibility (OPR) '...for records relating to Uncorreletated Targets....the evaluations [of reports are] made by the Command Director and the Air Defense Operations Center of Cheyenne Mountain Air Station on the Unknown Track data'. (8)
The Air Defense Operations Center (ADOC) is a NORAD entity. (9)
All Unknown Track Reports (UTRs) are recorded on NORAD's Form 61, and kept for five years. Data from these files, in summary form, is sent to all relevant government agencies on a need-to-know basis. (10)
Obtaining such records is a legal impossibility because while 'the Aerospace Analysis Directorate [of US Space Command] does perform analysis on NORAD Unknown Track Reports....they perform their analysis under the auspices of their NORAD role, utilising a dedicated NORAD data base' - and NORAD is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. (11)
Unknowns
During the period January to August 1996 NORAD reported 23 Unknowns, some after scrambling interceptor fighters. For example, between January 2 and February 12 there were three scramble attempts, for three events. In two separate instances two F15s were scrambled and the subjects could not be identified. Similarly, on February 10 two F16s were scrambled but failed to identify the object. (12)
NORAD commented, 'Normally 80% of NORAD unknowns are identified. The remaining 20% continues to be called un-known and no further action is taken.' (13)
Another category of reports come from USAF personnel. These reports might be generated by using the International Urgency Signal, PAN, or by ground relay of airborne reports or post-landing reports using FLASH procedure, and are governed by Communication Instructions Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings(CIRVIS). These reports are maintained in places such as Tyndall Air Force Base (1st Air force), Elmendorf Air Force Base (11th Air force) and NORAD's Canadian headquarters in Ontario, Canada. These reports are compiled in accordance with the Air Force Manual, where it states:
'Report the following specific sightings:
Hostile or unidentified aircraft which appears directed against the United States, Canada, or their forces.
Missiles
Unidentified Flying Objects
Hostile Flying Objects
Hostile or Unidentified military surface missiles or sub-marines.' (14)
As to any specific terms adopted by NORAD in the course of pilot/radar control communication exchange for UFOs, the answer is 'Unknown Track'. (15)
I asked NORAD if the recovery of downed UFOs was within their jurisdiction - if so which particular teams, or components deal with it? If not, which other particular teams or components, and from which command has such authority? The answer was:'We do not deal with down unknowns, which you refer to as UFOs. Normally, local law enforcement officials and/or security personnel from the nearest military installation get involved with downed aircraft etc. until positive identification is made. Then the vehicle is turned over to its primary agency and/or organisation.'
In contrast to the MOD's repeated assertion that UFOs are not considered a threat to national security, for the US Government 'all unknown tracks are considered a possible threat until proven otherwise.' (16)
NORAD informed me that although there are no British forces assigned to NORAD facilities, 'the British Ministry of Defence does interface and cooperate with NORAD and the United State Space Command(USSPACECOM), on military space systems as they provide support to the warfighter.' (17)
Although 'there are no NORAD facilities outside the Continental United States (CONUS) and Canada....NORAD does receive classified data from England.' (18)
FootnotesHTML5 is favorite for developer and designers as it offers number of features such as modern browser support, structure specific tags, visual elements like rounded corners are now built in, drag and drop interactive, new video, audio and canvas elements, as well as the integration of scalable vector graphics (SVG), and animations. Despite of being popular for number of users, it’s bit arduous and time consuming task to learn HTML5, probably that’s the reason there are myriad of HTML5 tools are available over internet which not only help users to learn new techniques but also help them to generate creative and innovative results for their web applications.
In this article I have gathered 10 Best HTML5 Tools that will help you to generate innovative designs, animations, effects and many more for your web applications. I hope you will find these tools useful and will give a try to learn new things.
1. HTML5 Maker
HTML5 Maker Online Editor supports all popular text filters for creating animated, interactive content using HTML, HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. You can create amazing animation that supports transitions and easing and of course the timeline will give you a full control of your animation.
2. Mockups
Moqups is a nifty HTML5 App used to create wireframes, mockups or UI concepts, prototypes depending on how you like to call them. They’ve tried to make things simple and fairly intuitive so you can unleash your creativity without any obstacles. Moqups is built on open standards, striving to provide the best experience within the browser, without compromise.
3. HTML5 Please
HTML5 Please is an interactive compatibility chart of HTML5/CSS3 features to find out “in which browsers they are supported (or not)“. Using a smart search bar, it makes it possible to filter the results with browser or device support, type (HTML5 or CSS3 elements/properties) and more.
4. Animatron
Animatron is an online, simple tool that lets you create stunning HTML5 animations and interactive content right in your browser. It lets you collaborate with other users, import artwork, create custom shapes, draw directly within the tool, and much more. Use the intuitive Animatron Editor to design and publish movies, banners, and infographics that play everywhere, from desktop browsers to mobile devices.
5. Sprite Box
Spritebox is a WYSIWYG tool to help web designers quickly and easily create CSS classes and IDs from a single sprite image. It is based on the principle of using the background-position property to align areas of a sprite image into block elements of a web page. It was made using a combination of JQuery, CSS3 and HTML5, and is totally free to use.
6. Initializr
Initializr is an HTML5 templates generator to help you getting started with a new project based on HTML5 Boilerplate. It generates for you a clean customizable template with just what you need to start!
7. HTML5 Test
The HTML5 test score is an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. Even though the specification isn’t finalized yet, all major browser manufacturers are making sure their browser is ready for the future.
8. HTML5 Reset
HTML5 Reset is a simple set of best practices to get web projects off on the right foot. HTML5 Reset is a set of files (HTML, CSS, etc) designed to help users and saves time when for their new projects.
9. Literally Canvas
Literally Canvas is an extensible, open source (BSD-licensed), HTML5 drawing widget. It depends on jQuery. You can draw, erase, set the color with the eyedropper, undo, redo, pan, and zoom. A semi-stable API allows you to add your own tools. It works great on mobile devices. It’s easy to get a data URL for upload to a site like Imgur or load/save a user’s drawing.
10. Stitches
Stitches is an HTML5 sprite sheet generator. Simple drag and drop image files into the space below and click “Generate” to create a sprite sheet and stylesheet. Stitches |
, and I’m sticking to it.If a medicine can hold a belief, the credo of naloxone is this: Addicts are human. They deserve to live.
This belief is also the founding principle of Prevention Point, a multi-service health organization centered in Kensington, and it’s lived experience for Elvis Rosado.
Rosado is Prevention Point’s outreach and education coordinator, and in the year or so since naloxone—better known by its brand name Narcan—became widely available, he’s used the drug about two dozen times. He pauses, counting the OD’s in his mind. “Maybe two dozen,” he says.
Prevention Point staff, who performed 236 overdose reversals last year alone, has taken up a street health initiative that crosses the city. In 20 minutes, they’ll teach you how to save someone’s life with Narcan. Rosado himself has trained about 2,000 people in the last 18 months.
He once revived someone on one corner while bystanders were tapping him on the shoulder, pointing across the street to another addict that had just hit the ground. “I wish I could clone myself,” Rosado says.
Rosado and Prevention Point are doing the next best thing. Prevention Point staff, who performed 236 overdose reversals last year alone, has taken up a street health initiative that crosses the city. In 20 minutes, they’ll teach you how to save someone’s life with Narcan. Rosado himself has trained about 2,000 people in the last 18 months. On any given night, he’s in a living room, training parents, husbands or wives, or in a fire hall, training paramedics.
On the day I visited Rosado, he was leading a half dozen Drexel University med students in an ongoing project to train shop owners, used car dealers, bartenders—anyone— up and down Kensington Avenue how to stop death with Narcan.
Stopping death has been at the core of Prevention Point from its beginning as an underground clean needle exchange in the peak of the AIDS crisis. They got legal under a 1992 emergency order from Mayor Ed Rendell, and played a major role in reducing the intravenous HIV infection rate from 42 percent or higher to just 5.4 percent. Prevention Point has since created a sprawl of programs that treat addiction and its harms from multiple fronts. Two years ago, that sprawl condensed into a new location on Kensington Avenue. The organization now lives in a mammoth, brownstone church that rises hard against the El.
On a rainy, late-March morning, people fill the waiting room couches. They line up for the coffee urn, sign in for a health screening or a pack of clean needles. They check in with case managers, collect mail, or just get warm on the couches and watch a soap opera. Jokes are shouted over the din.
In the clinic space, Rosado’s team of Drexel med students are assembling Narcan kits across a desk and examination table. Meanwhile, Rosado is somewhere in Prevention Points’ labyrinth, collecting Spanish language instructions to enclose in the kits.
“Elvis is humble, but he’s pretty much the Narcan trainer for Eastern Pennsylvania,” says Rohit Mukherjee. Mukherjee is a medical student at Drexel University who has been working at Prevention Point for a year.
“When I grow up, I want to be Elvis,” says another med student.
Mukherjee confirms, “Life goal: Be Elvis.”
The man himself appears in the door, Spanish instructions in hand. He’s donned a yellow safety vest. It obscures the Punisher logo of his black T-shirt. Rosado is broad-shouldered. He shaves his head and wears a ring with a dragon’s skull. He’s in the class of men that can shoo drug dealers from a corner, an act I witnessed and unwittingly participated in earlier that day.
His toughness, however, plays a minor role to his warmth. He and a few of the students hug, laughing just to see each other.
The purer the heroin, the more direct the source, says the DEA and Department of Justice. By this shorthand, Philadelphia or somewhere nearby is likely the heroin entry point for the Boston to D.C. megalopolis. The authorities imagine arrival by port, where a tiny percentage of what comes in gets inspected. The supply then shoots up and down I-95, the East Coast artery. It flows from off-ramps into neighborhoods. Kensington ranks high among the markets.
You don’t need to see the handoff for evidence. Addicts fix in broad daylight. They overdose in the public library.
The librarians at the McPherson Square branch at Kensington and Indiana, a classical building on a green rise off of the avenue, have found people slumped over in the bathroom stalls.
For this reason, it’s the first stop of the day for Elvis and his team.
The Drexel students load a dozen blue pouches bearing the words Opioid Overdose Rescue Kit onto the librarians’ desk. Mukherjee quizzes the librarians on how to administer Narcan. We’re in the kids section, surrounded by the likes of Curious George and Flat Stanley. One of the librarians, a serene woman with long grey hair, smiles as she aces every question. “We’ll be all right,” she says.
We follow Rosado out between McPherson’s columns. From the marble steps he picks up a needle with a pair of tongs and drops it into a small, red medical waste bin tucked under his arm. Within a block, he has five more. You get an eye for them, distinguishing the plastic barrels from the straws and busted pens. You spot them half-submerged in a puddle of brown water at the curb cutaway.
Philadelphia or somewhere nearby is likely the heroin entry point for the Boston to D.C. megalopolis. The authorities imagine arrival by port, where a tiny percentage of what comes in gets inspected. The supply then shoots up and down I-95, the East Coast artery. It flows from off-ramps into neighborhoods. Kensington ranks high among the markets.
Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Elvis Rosado grew up here. He ran wild, playing handball and hopping the trains on American Street. He first got high at 11 years old. At 18, he survived a heroin OD. “What does an overdose feel like?” I ask him.
“You don’t feel anything,” he tells me. The fingers turn pale, and that paleness spreads. By the time it reaches your face, you’re down. You’ve stopped breathing.
At 21, Rosado was homeless. He shot up in abandoned buildings. He ate pills, snorted coke and sucked tubes of pure codeine syrup. When he kicked it all a few years later, he did it on the floor of a prison cell.
Rosado got a transfer to a treatment center, and after demonstrating good behavior the director offered him a day pass, Rosado’s first whiff of freedom in years. He turned it down. The treatment center was in the heart of the old neighborhood. The graveyard where he used to sleep was a few blocks away.
“I told him: My nightmare is on other side of that door,” Rosado remembers. “If you let me out, I said, I won’t make it back.”
That day happened to be his birthday, his first sober one in thirteen years.
After the library, Rosado’s team is back on the avenue underneath the El. We step from the curb into a living room devoid of daylight. Two dozen men fill couches and chairs and stand shoulder-to-shoulder along cream-colored stucco walls. Their conversations in clipped, Caribbean Spanish drop to a hush. Somewhere, there’s a gas leak.
This is not a store, and apparently I have a quizzical look on my face. “It’s a recovery house,” Rosado tells me.
My mind shoots to the Air Bridge scandal, in which addicts from Puerto Rico were shipped to phony rehabs that had sold their families a bill of goods. I can’t say that this was such a place. But certainly these men are facing tough odds.
On the other side of the door in a strange country, heroin beckons. It can creep in deadly pure and laced with fentanyl, a painkiller many orders of magnitude more potent than morphine. Worse yet, when an addict is in recovery, tolerance drops and the probability of overdosing increases. Some of these men may not make it home.
They lean in, ready for the training.
Rosado nods to Hiral Lathia, one of the students, and she takes the lead. You have to clear the mouth of food, candies, whatever. Get the person’s lungs going. Give mouth-to-mouth “rescue” breaths—one every five seconds—and then assemble the Narcan device.
This is tricky. Narcan comes in a little glass vial and the syringe barrel is only slightly larger. Take the caps off of each and screw the vial into the barrel. Someone is dying before you. Nervous fingers could easily drop the whole affair, cracking the vial on the sidewalk or a bathroom’s tile floor. Stay calm. Screw the “atomizer” on the head of the syringe barrel and spray half of the dose in one nostril, and half of the dose in the other.
Step-by-step, the training takes about half an hour. Lathia runs everything through a young man with rectangular glasses. He translates to the men. They nod at each point. They examine the Narcan vial, the syringe barrel and the atomizer as the pieces make a circuit around the couches. They give the face-shield, a prophylactic mouthpiece to protect from blood and saliva, an appreciative frown.
With his back against the door, Elvis Rosado pipes up in Spanish to underscore a few vital points:
Always call 911. No one should be afraid of the law in responding to an OD. They’re covered by El Buen Samaritano, the Good Samaritan Law.
Every pharmacy in Pennsylvania has a standing order for Narcan, and while a few mom-and-pops might not have heard, Walgreens and CVS are a good bet.
Also, when someone OD’s on fentanyl, go right to the Narcan spray. How can you tell if it’s fentanyl? From the back of the room, a lanky kid with a top-knot calls out, “There’s no nod. They just drop. The lips are blue.” And the jaws lock up, Rosado explains. You need the Narcan to relax the body.
Finally, a large dose of Narcan can knock the addict into withdrawal, waking them to shakes, nausea and muscle spasms. But the opiate outlasts the Narcan. If the addict fixes to get rid of the withdrawal, they’ll get a double dose when the Narcan wears off, possibly sending them back into OD.
The training is done. Hypothetical Narcan administered with heavy sighs. The men lean back into their couches and chairs, nodding and conversing once more.
Rosado ducks out and joins Mukherjee and another student who are wrapping up a training a few storefronts down. Mukherjee passes out fliers for Vigilantidote. Vigilantidote is a new SMS texting group for Philadelphians carrying naloxone. It aims to build network of trained overdose responders to support the city’s emergency services.
“You could save someone’s life!” exclaims an employee behind the counter. “That’s somebody’s son or daughter. Or mother!” she says.
“Definitely,” the owner says, reading the sheet. He’s a contractor and for reasons that will be immediately obvious, has asked that I keep his business out of the story. He spots Rosado and a smile hitches up one side of his face. “Didn’t you work at Kensington hospital?” the contractor says.
After Rosado got sober and free, he volunteered at Prevention Point, got a bachelors, went to grad school and worked across the city in education and recovery. “Yeah, I had an office there for a while,” Rosado says.
“I think I kicked in your door!” the contractor says.
“Was it you that stole my CD player?” Rosado says.
“I don’t know. We were looking for pills. Used to eat whatever from the closets and go off walking into walls,” the owner says.
“All those CDs,” Rosado says, shaking his head. The students and I are wide-eyed. But this kind of serendipity is not strange for Rosado. “Man,” he laughs, “those CDs!”
Rosado got a transfer to a treatment center, and after demonstrating good behavior the director offered him a day pass. He turned it down. “I told him: my nightmare is on other side of that door,” Rosado remembers. “If you let me out, I said, I won’t make it back.” That day happened to be his birthday, his first sober one in thirteen years.
The contractor leans against the wall. “I got sober in 2011,” he says. He and Rosado don’t know each other, not really, but the contractor can spot a fellow traveler. After a beat, he chucks his chin at Rosado and asks, “You?”
“I’m 25 years. Last February,” Rosado says.
“I never thought I’d get off these streets,” says the contractor. “I thought I die out there.”
Rosado nods and rocks on his feet. “A lot of us did.”
We leave. Most of the students have class. I head for the El, walking with Rosado a little more. There’s a t-shirt shop up the way that expressed interest. Rosado stoops to pick a syringe from the seam of a sidewalk.
“I know that’s right,” says a woman. She’s catching a smoke outside the red door of a bar that offers fine food and cold beer. “Them fucking needles is everywhere. God bless you.”
Rosado clicks the tongs in the manner of a cartoon crab and moves on. We pass a toddler struggling to free himself from a stroller. You can imagine a needle piercing the canvas lip of his shoe.
At the Somerset El stop, Rosado and I part ways. Up on the platform, it occurs to me that the needles along Kensington Avenue likely come from Prevention Point. They’ve kept thousands alive. Better to have needles in the gutter than human bodies.
Just before train arrives, I spot Rosado across the street. He’s walking, scanning the sidewalk, cleaning up.
Header photo by Thomas Fox Parry'The Silk Road: Past, Present, Future' travels east to west along this ancient trade route, exploring how traditional culture, arts, and trade have developed in the 21st century.
(CNN) History often remembers them as fearsome, war-loving lesbians, who killed baby boys and cut off their own breasts to better fire a bow and arrow.
But just who were the Amazons, these legendary horsewomen-archers depicted across ancient Greece, Egypt, and China?
"Excavations of Eurasian graves have uncovered battle-scarred female skeletons dressed in tunics and trousers, and buried with quivers full of arrows, battle-axes, spears, and horse gear," she told CNN.
"So we know that genuine warrior women really existed at the time and places reported by the ancient Greeks and other cultures."
These fierce nomadic women -- usually depicted fighting courageously and dying heroically -- were immortalized in ancient works of art, and even adorned centuries-old perfume jars and jewelry boxes.
Amazon "Barbies" have also been found in girls' graves from the time.
But along with the barbarian images, were tales of great compassion, friendship, and love between Amazons and men.
"Amazons enjoyed lives very different from Greek women, who were confined indoors doing domestic chores," explained Mayor.
"The radical idea of powerful, independent women living in exotic lands evoked ambivalent emotions in the Greeks: awe, fear, respect, and desire."
Below, Mayor unravels the truth from five enduring Amazon myths:
1.) They cut off one breast to shoot better
Modern day warrior woman: Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games."
This fake "fact" has stuck like superglue for more than 2,500 years. It first surfaced in 490 BC when a patriotic Greek historian attempted to force a Greek meaning on the foreign word "Amazon." Because "mazon" sounded something like the Greek word for "breast" and "a" meant "without," he claimed the name meant that the Amazons cut off one breast so they could draw a bow.
Not only was his dodgy idea rejected by other Greeks of his day, but no ancient artist ever bought the notion -- all Amazons in Greek and Roman art are double-breasted. And as any fan of "The Hunger Games" knows, breasts do not hinder female archers.
2.) They were man-haters
Amazons as a tribe of man-hating, domineering women, who enslaved men and mutilated baby boys? Another persistent myth. It arose because Greek men oppressed their own women. By their logic, if women were strong and independent, then the men must be weaklings forced into submission.
But another Greek name for Amazons translates as "the equals of men." And Greek poets called the warrior women "man-lovers." In fact, there were as many love stories about Amazons as there were war tales.
3.) They gave up motherhood to be warriors
Must Amazons sacrifice motherhood? This notion is undermined by the Greeks describing the warlike Amazons as working mothers too busy to breastfeed, so they nourished their babies with mares' milk.
Too busy to breastfeed, they nourished their babies with mares' milk Adrienne Mayor, historian and author
The "no Amazon mothers" fallacy is further disproved by the graves of nomadic horsewomen-archers whose real lives inspired Greek Amazon stories 2,500 years ago -- next to the skeletons of female warriors buried with their weapons, archaeologists discovered infants and children.
4.) Only ancient Greeks told tales about Amazons
Disney brings the legend to life in animated film, "Mulan."
Modern scholars tend to assume that Amazons were a purely Greek invention, a fantasy exclusive to the Greeks. But the same warrior women of the vast steppes of Central Asia also influenced other cultures who came into contact with Scythian nomads.
Exciting tales and historical accounts of Amazon-like warrior women exist in the ancient literature of Egypt, Persia, Caucasia, Central Asia, India, and even China. Even the legendary Chinese girl-warrior Mulan turns out to have steppe nomad origins.
5.) They were a fantasy invented by the Greeks
According to the Greeks, Amazons were barbarian archers on horseback who roamed a vast territory known as Scythia, stretching from the Black Sea to Mongolia. Recent archaeological discoveries of more than 300 ancient graves of Eurasian warrior women prove that Amazons were not merely figments of the Greek imagination.
As Greeks began to trade with Scythians of the Black Sea and beyond, storytellers and artists in Greece added more realistic details about nomad weapons, dress, and lifestyle to their tales and images of Amazons.Broken wing? Nevermore!
A wounded raven underwent a rare feather transplant — in which she received feathers from another bird — to help her fly again.
The poor bird was found injured and sick in a parking lot near Richmond, Virginia, by a Blue Cross worker, who rushed her to a wildlife center in March, Barcroft Media reports.
“It was having a hard time flying — so I fed it hard-boiled eggs and other healthy foods to try to lure it into a crate,” said Maureen Bergin, who rescued the bird.
Workers at the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Richmond inserted bamboo shoots into the raven’s right wing and attached the other end to six donor feathers in September.
The plucky little squawker, who doesn’t have a name, is gaining strength, wildlife workers said.All hell was to break loose - or maybe not - in the restive Iraqi city of Falluja on Friday.
Valentine's Day was the ''or else'' deadline set by the Baghdad government for the jihadist militants in control of the western city to lay down their arms or face a ground assault by Iraqi forces, who have been massing around the provincial centre for weeks.
As it was before, Falluja is again at the heart of unrest in the new Iraq. But just because most other outbursts of violence in the country are reduced to ''in-brief''' treatment in the Western media, it would be a mistake to presume all is well.
The latest count by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq puts the country-wide death toll from attacks last year at 7818 civilians and 1050 of the security forces - a total of 8868, which makes it the bloodiest year in Iraq since 2008.
That 2008 marker is important. That was when the body count fell after George W. Bush ''surged'' thousands more US troops into Iraq, which coincided with a decision by the Sunni tribes to fight with the Americans against al-Qaeda aligned militants.Vice President Joe Biden lectured Donald Trump for his outrageous statements on the campaign trail, particularly about women.
“It matters what people say, it matters what your leaders say. It matters. Words matter,” the gaffe-prone Vice President insisted.
Biden urged Americans to hold all politicians accountable for their controversial statements, even if they were liberal Democrats.
“He should be held accountable by voting no,” Biden said.
Biden made the remarks in an interview with mic.com about his campaign against sexual assault. He asserted that political leaders who mistreated women needed to pay for their behavior.
“That sends a message to tens of thousands of young men and women who think that it’s appropriate to do that, to say that,” a visibly outraged Biden continued.
Biden was not pressed on his own remarks or behavior that has been criticized as sexist or inappropriate, but he asserted that politicians of both parties should be held accountable.
“It matters what people say. It matters what they do. Their conduct matters,” he said.The owner of a popular Kansas City barbeque restaurant, LC's Barbeque, was robbed and beaten outside of his home in KCMO.
A neighbor who tried to help was also shot by the robbers.
It happened Saturday morning near 99th and Hickman Mills in Kansas City.
. @kcpolice are investigating after a man is beaten and robbed outside his home. His neighbor is shot. @41ActionNews pic.twitter.com/Vaj2onf9ql — LisaBenson (@lisabensonkshb) December 24, 2016
According to family, L.C. Richardson was leaving his home about 9 a.m. Christmas Eve morning when two gunmen pulled into his driveway and tried to rob him.
The suspects beat Richardson with a gun as his truck's panic alarm alerted neighbors to the commotion. A neighbor heard the alarm and tried to help.
The robbers opened fire on the neighbor, leaving the victim in critical condition.
Both Richardson and his neighbor were taken to the hospital.
The suspects fled the scene before police arrived. Police have described the suspects as two back men in an older white van.
If you have any information about this case, please call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS.
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Two days after we did a story about Snapdeal sending a bar of Vim bar soap to a man instead of the Samsung phone he ordered, Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy was in for a surprise. The soap company decided to send him a Samsung Core duos phone with a letter that read:
"The pictures you posted online show that our brand was used in this incident. Vim is one of our iconic brands with some great consumer franchise. We felt bad about it, not to mention what you went through. Here is a small gesture from our side to cheer you up."
This is indeed one of the sweetest gestures by corporate India.
Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy had the worst experience with Snapdeal when he had ordered for the same phone in the Diwali bumper sale. Snapdeal ruined his Diwali by sending him a soap bar and half a brick. However, a week later, Snapdeal confirmed to Firstpost that they are refunding the entire amount to Krishnamurthy and are investigating the case.
In another post, Krishnamurthy said that he had a word with Snapdeal, and the e-commerce company told him that the courier service is at fault and they are trying to get their service in place.
Snapdeal, are you watching?
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.You could forgive mathematicians for being drawn to the monster group, an algebraic object so enormous and mysterious that it took them nearly a decade to prove it exists. Now, 30 years later, string theorists — physicists studying how all fundamental forces and particles might be explained by tiny strings vibrating in hidden dimensions — are looking to connect the monster to their physical questions. What is it about this collection of more than 1053 elements that excites both mathematicians and physicists? The study of algebraic groups like the monster helps make sense of the mathematical structures of symmetries, and hidden symmetries offer clues for building new physical theories. Group theory in many ways epitomizes mathematical abstraction, yet it underlies some of our most familiar mathematical experiences. Let’s explore the basics of symmetries and the algebra that illuminates their structure.
We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a square.
This line cuts the square into two equal parts, each of which is the mirror image of the other. This familiar example is called line symmetry. But there are other kinds of symmetry that have nothing to do with mirrors.
For example, the square also has rotational symmetry.
Here we see the process of rotating a square counterclockwise about its center point (the intersection of its diagonals). After it rotates 90 degrees (one quarter turn), it looks the same as before. It is this transformation of an object so that the result is indistinguishable from the original that defines a symmetry. The above rotation is one symmetry of the square, and our example of line symmetry can be thought of as another.
Let’s take a moment to define a few terms. We will call the original object the “pre-image” and the transformed object the “image,” and we will use the term “mapping” to refer to the process of transforming one object (a point, a segment, a square, etc.) into another. A symmetry requires that the transformation not alter the size or shape of the object. A transformation that meets this requirement is known as an “isometry,” or a rigid motion, and the fundamental isometries are reflection over a line, rotation about a point, and translation along a vector.
Now we can continue our analysis of the symmetries of a square. We know that one symmetry is “line reflection over the vertical line through the center”; another is “rotation about the center counterclockwise by 90 degrees.” Are there others? What are they, and how many are there? As is often the case in mathematics, planning ahead and good notation will make our analysis much easier.
First, suppose I told you that we had transformed the square via a symmetry and this was the result.
Which symmetry was applied? Was the square rotated? Was it reflected? Of course it’s impossible to tell, precisely because of the criteria for a symmetry. To help us identify specific symmetries, let’s start by labeling the vertices of the original square.
Further, let’s agree that whenever we picture the original square, we will always imagine it to be labeled like this: The top left corner is A, the top right is B, the bottom right is C, and the bottom left is D.
Now when we transform the square, we can watch where the labels go. For example, after reflection through the vertical line through the center, the image of the square looks like this:
Relative to the original labeling, A is now in the B position and B is now in the A position. Similarly, C and D have exchanged positions. Taking the original labeling as ABCD, we denote the new labeling resulting from this transformation as BADC. This communicates that, under this transformation, A is mapped to B, B is mapped to A, C is mapped to D, and D is mapped to C. We can visualize how the notation works in the following way:
We will always take the starting position to be ABCD, so the relative position in the list describes where each original vertex is mapped under the transformation. As another example, our rotation by 90 degrees counterclockwise would be denoted DABC, as A is mapped to D, B is mapped to A, and so on.
Technically, this only describes what happens to the corners under a transformation, but as it turns out, this is enough to describe what happens to the entire square. That’s because symmetries are isometries, which preserve the size and shape of the object. An isometry can’t flatten out a corner, or vertex, as that would change the object’s shape. This means the corners A, B, C and D all have to get mapped to corners. Similarly, the properties of isometries guarantee that line segments get mapped to line segments. And so, once we know where the corners of the square go, the sides come along for the ride. In other words, the image of a side of the square is determined by the image of the vertices that are its endpoints.
This means we can completely specify a symmetry of the square by some arrangement of the four letters A, B, C and D. This is remarkable in and of itself, but it also immediately implies an upper bound on the number of symmetries of the square: There are no more symmetries of the square than there are arrangements of those four letters. How many such arrangements are there?
Think about creating an arrangement of these letters. You can start with any of the four, but once you choose a letter to start with, you have only three choices for the second. Once you choose a second letter, you’ll have only two choices for the third, and finally there will be only one option for the fourth letter. An elementary counting argument tells us there are then
4 × 3 × 2 × 1 (= 4!) = 24
possible arrangements of the letters A, B, C and D. Thus, there are at most 24 symmetries of the square.
In fact, the square has far fewer than 24 symmetries, and one more simple argument will show us why. Let’s return to our original diagram. Suppose we know that a symmetry of the square maps A to B. Where can C go?
The answer is that C can only be mapped to D. A and C are endpoints of a diagonal of the square. Since isometries don’t alter size, the distance between A and C must be the same before and after the mapping. If A is mapped to B, there is only one point on the square that is a diagonal’s length away from where A is now, namely D. That is where C must go.
This greatly reduces the number of possible symmetries of a square. Suppose we construct a symmetry; how many possibilities are there for where point A ends up? Since vertices must go to vertices, there are only four possibilities for the image of A. And once we’ve chosen a destination for A, there is only one possibility for the destination of C: the vertex diagonal to the image of A. This leaves only two choices for B, and a similar argument shows there will be only one choice for D.
Ultimately, in determining a symmetry of the square, there are really only two things to decide: where A goes (four choices) and where B goes (two choices). That means there are only 4 × 2 = 8 possible symmetries of the square. Here’s a complete list, using our notation:
Now, we aren’t guaranteed that all eight possibilities are actual symmetries of the square. But it’s a small list, so we can check them and verify that, indeed, they all correspond to legitimate symmetries: the four on the left are rotations (by 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees), and the four on the right are reflections (two by vertical and horizontal lines, two by diagonal lines).
So these eight transformations are all symmetries, and since we’ve established that a square has at most eight symmetries, apparently we’ve found them all. But can this really be all of them?
One concern arises when we notice a natural way to combine symmetries: We can simply apply them in succession (an operation on transformations called “composition”). Since applying a symmetry to the square gives us the same square again, you could apply another symmetry, which would produce the same square yet again. This means that if you apply multiple symmetries in succession, the composition of those symmetries is itself a symmetry of the square! We could potentially generate new symmetries of the square through various combinations of the above eight.
But something interesting happens when we try that. Suppose we rotate the square by 90 degrees counterclockwise and then reflect it over the vertical line through the center. What happens to the vertices? The rotation takes A to D, and then the reflection takes it to C, so ultimately A goes to C. B rotates to A, then gets reflected back to B, so B is mapped to B. C gets rotated to B then reflected to A, and D gets rotated to C, then reflected back to D. In our adopted notation, the composition of these two transformations can be described as
But this symmetry is already on our list! Rotation by 90 degrees counterclockwise followed by reflection over the vertical line through the center is actually reflection about the diagonal line BD. As it turns out, every combination of the eight symmetries above is itself one of the eight symmetries above.
Now we’ve exposed the underlying algebraic structure inherent in this set of symmetries. When we combine two symmetries through composition, we get another symmetry, in much the same way that we combine two numbers through addition to get another number. There is an identity symmetry (rotation by 0 degrees) that acts just as the number zero acts in our number system. And every symmetry can be undone, just as adding 3 can be undone by adding –3: For example, rotating the square by 90 degrees can be undone by rotating the square by another 270 degrees.
These are the essential algebraic properties of groups, and they endow groups, like the set of symmetries of the square, with a structure and a regularity akin to those of our familiar number systems. Yet groups of symmetries also exhibit their own complex and subtle characteristics. For example, our group of symmetries of the square contains only eight elements, a stark contrast to our infinite number systems. And while we can combine symmetries in a manner similar to the way we add numbers, the order in which we combine them makes a difference: 3 + 4 = 4 + 3, but reflection followed by rotation is not necessarily the same as rotation followed by reflection.
We’ve gotten a glimpse of the algebraic structure underlying the simple symmetries of the square. What will mathematicians and string theorists find lurking in the depths of the monster?
Download the “Counting Symmetries” PDF worksheet and watch the following video about how symmetries shape nature’s laws.
This article was reprinted on Wired.com.When our understanding of cause-and-effect is contradicted by what we actually see, sometimes our understanding overrules our perception.
Research published online in Psychological Science on June 26 found people’s causal expectations influenced their perception of the ordering of events in time.
“It appears that when people hold strong convictions about the relationships between objects or events, then inference takes precedence over perception,” Christos Bechlivanidis of the University College London, the lead author of the study, told PsyPost.
The study of 229 participants, co-authored by David A. Lagnado, found the temporal content of perception is strongly biased by our understanding of causality. Bechlivanidis and Lagnado discovered people perceptually reorganized events in time so that the presumed cause preceded the effect — even after witnessing the effect precede the cause.
“We usually assume that we see the objective temporal order in which events take place especially when we directly witness those events,” Bechlivanidis explained.
“However, apart from the information that is delivered through our senses, there is another way to constrain the possible orderings of events, by relying on the way events are related with each other. Since causes happen before their effects, certain orderings must be impossible or at least highly improbable. Surely, the glass must have collided with the floor before shattering to pieces. You must have flicked the switch before the room was illuminated.”
“Nevertheless, one would assume that we rely on our senses first and foremost and use such causal knowledge when no sensory input is available, i.e. when we’re not looking, when we’re absent or distracted,” Bechlivanidis continued. “Our two experiments provide evidence against this view.”
For their study, Bechlivanidis and Lagnado created a software-based game that contained various 2-D objects that could be activated by the user. The objects each behaved in predefined ways, which the user had to figure out through trial and error. They learned, for instance, that the collision of a green square caused a red rectangle to transform into a star.
Once the user learned how the various objects interacted, they watched one of two recorded video clips of the game. One clip violated the expected causal order of events, while the other did not. Those who watched the former clip tended to perceive events in the wrong temporal order.
“Despite having clearly witnessed the events happening at a very close distance to each other, our participants reported an order that matched not what they saw but what they thought it would be normal to see, i.e. they reported the presumed cause occurring before its associated effect,” Bechlivanidis said.
The researcher explained the study had three important implications.
“On the one hand, our results can be seen as further evidence pointing to the fact that what we call perception is heavily influenced by knowledge and inference; as a number of researchers have shown in the past, it appears that our sensory input goes through the editor’s room on its way to consciousness,” Bechlivanidis told PsyPost.
“Secondly, as philosopher Rick Grush has argued, what we experience at any given instant is not a single objective happening, a snapshot of the external world, but rather a collection |
just the shock of the new. But she certainly has the chance to be a pioneer, and it's an excellent opportunity for Japan to become more globally aware."
Miyamoto argues that any shift still favours Caucasian or Eurasian lineage in an overwhelmingly homogenous country, where multi-racial children make up just two percent of those born annually.
"In Japan there are hardly any black models or TV personalities," she said. "Most celebrities are like Rola or Becky. Hopefully I can help create a Japan where anyone can make things happen."
Should Miyamoto win the Miss Universe finals later this year, she would spend a year living in splendour at New York's Trump Towers -- and her influence over issues close to her heart, which also include gender identity disorder, would be greatly enhanced.
But despite her noble intentions, Miyamoto has no plans to run for political office just yet.
"I'd like to use my position to become a leader," she smiled. "I'm like a sponge -- always absorbing new things. But I haven't thought too deeply about politics yet. It's still a bit early to think about becoming Prime Minister!"He is, as Smash Hits used to say, "Back! Back!! Back!!!". José Mourinho will have to go some to top his first arrival at Stamford Bridge. But whether or not he comes up with a soundbite to rival the endlessly quoted assertion that he was "a special one" when he first arrived, Mourinho mark II will be older, wiser and a touch greyer than the Champions League winner who swept into Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2004. Yet he retains more than enough of that cocksure confidence to ignore the first rule of every romance turned sour: never go back.
When Roman Abramovich, now £1bn and 10 years into a lavish experiment that has changed English football forever, ruthlessly sacked Roberto Di Matteo last November many wondered where he could possibly turn next. Having expensively acquired and then sacked just about every type of manager going – from the World Cup winner to the European coaching aristocrat, from the much loved former player to the brightest young thing on the continent – his answer has been to start again at the top of the list.
Given the Russian's silence, we are never likely to know what has passed between him and Mourinho by way of rapprochement. But it seems fair to assume there has been an admission on both sides that they mishandled the events that led to the departure of the Portuguese in 2007.
It feels as though they need one another, which may temper the excesses of both – at least for a while. Mourinho wants to feel loved after his bruising sojourn at Real Madrid and Abramovich not only needs to slake his thirst for success but has also perhaps betrayed a similar need.
Though it is impossible to second guess the inscrutable Chelsea owner, he surely has no wish to recreate the rival powerbases vying for control within one club that marked the final days of the Mourinho's tenure.
Yet Mourinho must also give some ground. While he has been allowed to bring in his most trusted lieutenants in Rui Faria, Silvino Louro and José Morais, it is telling that the first team coach Steve Holland, the goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon and the fitness coach Chris Jones – a core that has now survived several of the rapid managerial changes at the club – will also remain in place.
Mourinho will also have to find a way of working with Michael Emenalo, the man who has risen to become Abramovich's eyes and ears at the coaching ground.
He will find a very different club to the one he left. It has a much longer honours list but has also been robbed of some of the exuberance brought on by that first flush of Abramovich's money and the belief he imbued in a group of then largely ungarlanded players.
Some of the faces will be familiar, many will have changed. In the former camp, it will be intriguing to see how he handles the politics surrounding his one-time rock-solid spine of Peter Cech, John Terry and Frank Lampard.
André Villas-Boas was brought in to begin the job of refreshing the team that José built (even if some of the key recruits were Claudio Ranieri's) but soon departed ignominiously. Di Matteo returned to the core to land the European Cup and in his brief tenure Rafael Benítez once again tentatively began the task of renewal.
Cech may start to feel the widely praised Thibaut Courtois, parked on loan at Atlético Madrid, breathing down his neck. The once impregnable Terry is regularly afflicted by injury, while Lampard has earned a new contract through sheer force of will but is no longer a regular choice.
Among the new faces, the immediate challenge must be to blend a group of players, expensively acquired for a manager who then spurned Abramovich's advances, to his will.
Juan Mata, Eden Hazard, Oscar – the "three musketeers" bought to match Abramovich's yearning for a style to match Barcelona's – might as well have come with a gift tag saying "To Pep, Love Roman". Nor does the record signing Fernando Torres fit the Mourinho template.
The idea that Mourinho's Chelsea's teams bullied their way to success has always been a misnomer – his 2004-05 and 2005-06 title winning sides attacked with speed and precision and plundered hatfuls of goals – but it is true to say they typically valued muscularlity over flair.
It would not be a huge surprise if one of Mourinho's priorities was a ball-winning midfielder and a muscular striker. He will have noted that, for all its expense and talent, Chelsea's overworked squad looked more than a little uneven and threadbare by the end of the season. Another pressing decision will be over the future of the entire team of loanees farmed out around Europe – with Courtois, Josh McEachran and Romelu Lukaku near the top of the list.
The bizarre reign of Benítez may have been destabilising in many ways – not least for the bond between supporters, board and owner – but in the final analysis it will be judged a qualified success by Abramovich and the Spaniard. Unlike Benítez, Mourinho will have no problem securing the backing of the Chelsea faithful.The odds on Mourinho making it to the end of his four-year contract must be long. But with bookmakers paying out on the once unlikely prospect of him returning to Stamford Bridge at all, nothing can be ruled out.
Yet the smart money must be on a rollercoaster ride that takes in significant silverware before spectacularly derailing with serious collateral damage.
The professed aims of stability, youth development and profitability appear almost as far away as ever. But it is a deal most Chelsea fans are only too happy to sign up for.CHICAGO (CBS) — Shinola, which has built a strong reputation for its line of American-made products, most notably watches, opened its first Chicago store on Thursday.
The opening of Shinola’s Chicago store, at 1619 N. Damen in Bucktown, marks the Detroit-based brand’s fifth brick-and-mortar location, which offers its full suite of products as well as many other quality American-made products.
The company also makes bicycles, journals, shoe polish, pet accessories and leather goods
Shinola’s connection to Chicago began early in its development when it partnered with the Horween Leather Company, also located in Bucktown.
Beginning in 1905, Horween is one of the country’s oldest tanneries and Chicago’s last existing tannery. This fifth-generation family owned business has been providing the vegetable-tanned leather for the production of Shinola’s watch straps and leather goods since the company launched in 2011.
Shinola Chicago will also serve as a gathering place in the community. Shinola is located near The 606 trail and park and plans to support the bikeable and walkable communities of Chicago.After the death of Trajan on 8th August 117, Hadrian drafted from Syria a ‘carefully worded’ letter to the Senate in Rome in which he reported his accession and requested divine honours for his adoptive father. He also apologised for having assumed the imperial title only on the acclamation of the army, on the ground that the empire could not be without an emperor.
The response Hadrian received by late September while still in Antioch was favourable. The Senate approved the deification (divanos honores) of the optimus princept and granted other honours that went beyond Hadrian’s request.
This request he obtained by a unanimous vote; indeed, the senate voluntarily voted Trajan many more honours than Hadrian had requested. HA Had. 6.1
The new emperor was offered a Triumph (cum triumphum) to mark Trajan’s victories in the East but declined the offer. Instead, Hadrian authorised one for his deceased adoptive father who would be represented as an effigy carried in a triumphal chariot.
When the senate offered him the triumph which was to have been Trajan’s, he [Hadrian] refused it for himself, and caused the effigy of the dead Emperor to be carried in a triumphal chariot, in order that the best of emperors might not lose even after death the honour of a triumph. HA Had. 6.3
Trajan’s triumph and the official ceremony of his apotheosis would have to wait until after the return of Hadrian to the capital (9 July AD 118). Yet Trajan was already a god. As referred on a papyrus dated to shortly after September AD 117 (P.Giss. 3) and previously mentioned here, the consecration of the deceased Emperor was already celebrated at Heptakomia in Egypt. The papyrus seems to be an official draft for the celebration of Hadrian’s accession and contains part of a dramatic performance between Apollo and the responding voice of the people. The god Apollo praises Trajan who has just become divine and declares (translation of J.P. Alexander, 1938): «Having just mounted aloft with Trajan’s in my chariot of white horses, I come to you, oh people, I, Phoebus [Apollo] by no means an unknown god, to proclaim the new ruler Hadrian, who all things serve on account of his virtue and the genius of his divine father». The recording of Trajan’s deification would later appear on a reverse aureus of Hadrian with the legend Divo Traiano.
The Senate also immediately offered Hadrian the title of Pater Patriae (father of the fatherland) which he refused. Like many of his predecessors, Hadrian waited a decent interval before accepting the title in AD 128.
Also he refused for the present the title of Father of his Country, offered to him at the time of his accession and again later on, giving as his reason the fact that Augustus had not won it until late in life. HA Had. 6.4
Meanwhile, Plotina (Trajan’s widow) was carrying her husband’s ashes from Seleucia Pieria to Rome in a golden urn. If the journey took at most a month, as reckoned by W. Kierdorf, Plotina would have arrived in Rome by the time Hadrian received the Senate’s reply to his letter. Did Plotina immediately deposit the ashes inside the pedestal of Trajan’s column?
Several ancient sources tell us that Trajan’s ashes were interred under the column in his Forum. It has therefore long been believed that Trajan’s Column was Trajan’s final resting place.
The bones of Trajan were deposited in his Column, and the Parthian Games, as they were called, continued for a number of years. Dio 69.2.3
The ashes of his burnt body were transferred to Rome and buried in the Forum of Trajan under his Column, and an effigy that was put on top, was carried into the city on a chariot, just as is done with triumphators ; the senate and the army opened the procession. Epitome de Caesaribus 13.11
The burial of Trajan’s remains inside his Column was a very unusual choice and contrary to Roman practice since the Column stood within the pomerium (the boundary of the city proper), where burial was normally forbidden. Trajan had not made arrangements for his funeral at the time of his death so perhaps the Senate permitted it by special decree, a distinction which none of his predecessors had had. Or perhaps, as proposed by Amanda Claridge, it was one of the additional honours the Senate granted which Hadrian had not asked for in his letter. The fact that Trajan was buried underneath his column has been a matter of scholarly debate. Amanda Claridge has argued that the chamber of Trajan’s column was too small to be an imperial burial. She believes that “Trajan’s tomb must have been a separate installation located in full view on the outside of the Column”.
—
As for Trajan’s triumph and his funeral procession, when did they actually take place? Did they happen at the same time or were they two separate ceremonies? A posthumous triumph had no precedent in Rome. Modern scholarship seems to defer on many grounds. W. Kierdorf believes the ceremony of the consecration was combined with the posthumous triumph which took place in autumn AD 117, before Hadrian’s return to Rome. W. den Boer, however, argues that triumph and consecration were separated both for political and religious reasons and that the ceremonies had to wait after Hadrian’s return in the Summer of 118. Amanda Claridge raises the possibility that Trajan’s posthumous triumph was in fact “something else” since an effigy could not perform the ceremonial duties which included a sacrifice to Jupiter performed by the living triumphator.
In any case, the posthumous triumph was commemorated on a very rare aureus bearing on the obverse the head of Trajan with the legend Divo Traiano Parth(ico) Aug(usto) Patri and on the reverse a four-horse chariot driven by the deceased Emperor who holds a laurel-branch and a sceptre, with the legend Triumphus Parthicus.
Sources & references:
Birley, Anthony R. (1997). Hadrian. The restless emperor (p. 99-100)
Historia Augusta, The Life of Hadrian (link)
Cassius Dio 69.2.3 ( link )
Den Boer, W. 1975, ‘Trajan’s deification and Hadrian’s succession’, Ancient Society 6, 203–12.
Amanda Claridge, ed. Thorsten Opper, “Hadrian’s Succession and the Monuments of Trajan” in Hadrian: Art, Politics, and Economy (London: The British Museum, 2013).
W. Kierdorf, Apotheose und postumer Triumph Trajans, Tyche 1, 1986.Saudi Arabia appears to be trying to take the confrontation with Hezbollah to a whole new level by calling for an international coalition against the Lebanese movement.
In a tweet Oct. 8, Saudi Minister of State for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan wrote, “The solution is to form a strict international coalition to confront [Hezbollah] and those who work with it in order to achieve regional peace and security.”
This comment received a quick response from Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, just hours later during a speech to commemorate Hezbollah commander Ali al-Asheq and Hezbollah member Mohammad Nasreddine, both of whom were killed recently in clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria.
“Regional peace and security can be achieved when Saudi Arabia stops backing Wahhabi groups,” Nasrallah said. “Saudi Arabia is preventing security and peace in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and Pakistan.”
Just days after the Saudi minister of state called for an international coalition against Hezbollah, US officials took a similar stance.
During an Oct. 10 press conference, US counterterrorism coordinator Nathan Sales criticized the European Union, which distinguishes between Hezbollah’s “political wing” and its “military wing.” Sales described this as a false distinction and said that the European stance curtails the efforts of other governments against Hezbollah, emphasizing at the same time that “the United States will need allies in this fight.”
Sales also announced a $7 million reward for any information leading to the capture of Talal Hamieh, whom Washington says leads Hezbollah’s “international terrorism branch.” He also announced a $5 million reward on Fouad Shukr, another senior member of Hezbollah.
Hamieh is reportedly the head of Hezbollah’s foreign operations and is said to have carried out secret internal and external missions for the Lebanese movement. Shukr, meanwhile, is described as a senior Hezbollah operative and is accused by Washington of playing a central role in the attacks on the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983, which killed 241 US servicemen.
According to Emile Nakhleh, who served as the director of the political Islam strategic analysis program at the CIA, Washington’s interests, however, do not lie in joining with Riyadh to mount such an escalatory campaign against Hezbollah.
In an interview with Al-Monitor conducted via email, Nakhleh warned, “The Saudi escalation does not reflect a coherent long-term strategy, either toward Lebanon or toward Iran.” He added, "[Therefore] the United States should be careful not to get involved in another Saudi adventure in the region similar to the bloody war in Yemen.”
But even if Saudi Arabia’s plans for Hezbollah do have US backing, the formation of an international front against the Lebanese movement faces numerous challenging obstacles. One of them lies in the fact that the clear and present danger for European countries, for instance, comes not from Hezbollah but from groups such as IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, whose ideology stems from Wahhabism, the Islamic doctrine practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Countries such as France, Britain and Germany have all fallen victim to the terrorism of these groups, and European officials have even gone as far as to openly accuse Saudi Arabia of financing extremism by spreading Wahhabism.
In December 2015, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned, “Wahhabi mosques all over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia” and “many Islamists who are a threat to public safety come from these communities in Germany.”
More recently, prominent think tanks in European countries have also rung the alarm bells regarding the danger posed by Wahhabism.
In a report released in July, the Henry Jackson Society, a British foreign policy think tank, accused Saudi Arabia of being the most prominent funder of extremism in Britain, claiming that Saudi Arabia funded institutions and preachers that played a role in the radicalization of many Britons who joined the ranks of terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.
“Many people in Europe understand that almost all of the recent terror attacks plaguing the continent emanate not from Hezbollah or other Shiite groups, but from largely Saudi-financed and inspired Sunni extremists such as IS and al-Qaeda,” Charles Shoebridge, a British security analyst and former UK counterterrorism intelligence officer, told Al-Monitor.
He added, “In most cases, European foreign policy chiefs aren’t as receptive to this pro-Israel, pro-Saudi, anti-Iran line as their US counterparts.”
Another factor that impedes the formation of an international anti-Hezbollah alliance is the presence of UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.
European countries such as France, Italy and Spain all have a sizable troop presence in UNIFIL, with Italy itself contributing 1,070 troops. Indonesia, meanwhile, which is the world’s largest Muslim nation, contributes 1,295 troops, making it the largest troop contributor to UNIFIL. The fact that these countries operate in the pro-Hezbollah environment of southern Lebanon makes it all the more unlikely they would get on board with any plans to form a multinational front against Hezbollah.
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Beirut-based journalist Nicholas Blanford, the author of a book on Hezbollah titled “Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel,” said, “Force protection is a major issue for the countries contributing troops to UNIFIL. There is a potential for backlash against these troops if their countries were to join an international anti-Hezbollah alliance.”
In the meantime, the domestic situation in Lebanon still appears under control despite the Saudi-American escalation against Hezbollah. The parliamentary bloc of the Lebanese Future Movement, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, issued a statement Oct. 10 condemning Nasrallah’s response to Riyadh.
But besides this statement, there is no indication of rising tensions between Saudi Arabia’s allies in Lebanon and Hezbollah, at least not for the time being. Hezbollah has not responded to the Future Movement's statement, while Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is also the leader of the Future Movement, has refrained from making any escalatory comments against Hezbollah.
Both sides also continue to be represented in a national unity government led by Hariri and the priority for now appears to be the ongoing functioning of this government, especially as it prepares for Lebanon’s upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled to be held in May 2018.Traditional lawyers may not like it, but venture capitalists are pouring money into one of the last industries to resist commoditization on the Web. Google Ventures today announced it is part of a group that infused $18.5 million into Rocket Lawyer, which bills itself as the "fastest growing online legal service."
Founder Charley Moore told me the firm has 70,000 users a day and has doubled revenue for four years straight to more than $10 million this year.Rocket Lawyer provides online legal forms, from wills to Delaware certificates of incorporation, that non-lawyers can fill out and store and share on the Web. For $19.95 a month, consumers can also have their documents reviewed by a real lawyer and even get legal advice at no additional cost.
The multibillion-legal industry would seem to be a natural for disintermediation, or in layman's terms, breaking up into higher-volume, lower-margin parts. Online competitor LegalZoom, about which IPO chatter swirls, claims 1 million customers and has executives from Berkshire Hathaway, Intel and Polaris Ventures on its board. Rocket Lawyer raised $7 million in June from Investor Growth Capital, put former LinkedIn Chief Executive Dan Nye in charge as president, and its directors include David Drummond, Google's top lawyer.
Moore was careful to differentiate his company from LegalZoom, which has tangled with lawyers and bar officials in several states who accuse it of practicing law without a license. (A trap that people who provide legal documents can find hard to escape.) Rocket Lawyer is also affiliated with real lawyers who can provide advice in a pinch. Federal issues are handled nationwide, while somebody with a question about, say, New York contract law would be hitched up with a lawyer licensed in that state. (NOTE: LegalZoom offers similar legal services, for a fee.)
"Rocket Lawyer gives consumers technology to do things themselves with no human intervention at all," said Moore. "When they do need help, and they do, they can consult with a lawyer."
The model is similar to those pre-paid legal services that have generated controversy over the years, but with Google technology in the background. Documents are stored, Google Docs fashion, on Rocket Lawyer's servers and can be edited and passed around before the consumer prints them out to be filed at the nearest courthouse.
Google, Moore said, is interested in anything that "changes the world in a big way." It doesn't hurt that legal documents are one of the most searched-for categories on the web. Moore declined to say what value the latest round puts on his company but you can bet more will be pushing into this market once the pioneers work out a modus vivendi with offline lawyers and their bar association enforcers, who are still resisting the Internet invasion of some of their highest-volume, most lucrative busineses.
LegalZoom has drawn attention of Silicon Valley VCs as well. It raised $66 million in its latest round, announced last month, from firms including Kleiner Perkins and Institutional Venture Partners.LOS ANGELES -- Reaction to the ouster of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein from the company he co-founded, The Weinstein Co., amid accusations of decades of sexual harassment:
"The disgraceful news about Harvey Weinstein has appalled those of us whose work he championed, and those whose good and worthy causes he supported. The intrepid women who raised their voices to expose this abuse are our heroes." -- Actress Meryl Steep in a statement in which she also clarified that she was not aware of the allegations against him prior to recent reports.
"Whilst there is no doubt that Harvey Weinstein has helped and championed my film career for the past 20 years, I was completely unaware of these offences which are, of course, horrifying, and I offer my sympathy to those who have suffered, and wholehearted support to those who have spoken out." -- Actress Judi Dench in a statement.
"My heart goes out to all of the women affected by these gross actions. And I want to thank them for their bravery to come forward." -- Actress Jennifer Lawrence in a statement.
"I'm sitting here, deeply upset, acknowledging to myself that, yes, for many years, I have been aware of the vague rumours that Harvey Weinstein had a pattern of behaving inappropriately around women. Harvey has always been decent to me, but now that the rumours are being substantiated, I feel angry and darkly sad." -- Actress Glenn Close in a statement to The New York Times.
"Yes. Im sick of the media demanding only women speak up. What about the men? Perhaps many are afraid to look at their own behaviour....." -- Actress Jessica Chastain on Twitter.
"He financed the first 14 years of my career - and now I know while I was profiting, others were in terrible pain. It makes me feel ashamed." -- Filmmaker Kevin Smith on Twitter.
"There is no excuse for monsters like Harvey Weinstein. It's up to all of us, men and women, to speak up against sexual harassment and abuse." -- Director Paul Feig on Twitter.
"I wish Harvey all the best. I hope he gets the help he needs. He's got a family. It costs you, you know? But, it's right to call it out and we're right as my industry to call it out and I hope that these revelations start to change another executive's mind when he thinks 'I'm gonna do something like this. It ain't gonna fly."' -- Actor Mark Ruffalo in an interview.
"H Weinstein -yikes! Disgusting and creepy. So is 'leader of the free world' btw." -- Actor Michael Keaton on Twitter.
"The 'old dinosaur' explanation doesn't cut it. DECADES of using power to intimidate women for sexual gain is reprehensible and inexcusable." -- Actress Emmy Rossum on Twitter.
"Easy to think Weinstein company took swift action but this has actually been the slowest action because they always always knew." -- Actress and writer Lena Dunham on Twitter.
"Women speak out about sexual harassment + Harvey Weinstein gets fired. This is the best + most inspiring news story I have seen in a while." -- Actress Heather Graham on Twitter.
"What Harvey Weinstein did was abhorrent. He admits he did it. Why should anyone be silent in their disgust and support for his victims?" -- Director Judd Apatow on Twitter.
"Heed the mantra and never forget: Women. Have. Nothing. To. Gain. And. Everything. To Lose. By. Coming. forward." -- Actress, writer and director Amber Tamblyn on Twitter.
"I expect the Hollywood elite will remain largely silent about Weinstein. Me, I give zero (expletive) about any repercussions for condemning him." -- Director, screenwriter and producer Scott Derrickson on Twitter.
"We condemn "grab them by the (expletive)" and we condone this..." Model and actress Brooklyn Decker on Twitter.
"Yup yup yup yup. Every day. Even from 'good guys' who brag about hiring female directors or producing POC narratives. YUP EVEN THEM" and "Yup yup yup. All the time. And if u address it seriously, u get:'relax it was a joke.' The thing is, jokes are supposed to be, like, funny." -- Actress Constance Wu on Twitter.
"1. Coming forward about sexual abuse and coercion is scary and women have nothing to be gained personally by doing so." and "2. But through their bravery we move forward as a culture, and I thank them. Stand with @AshleyJudd @rosemcgowan and others." -- Actress Julianne Moore on Twitter.
"If there is a way to cure yourself of being a predator than I hope harvey learns what it is & shares it with the world. It's an epidemic." -- Actress Patricia Arquette on Twitter.
"In this society, most women have a Harvey Weinstein in their life. There is always a minefield you navigate when you're a woman and go through the system of Hollywood. Sometimes you are lucky enough to have champions or people who aren't interested in taking advantage of you, and sometimes you do not. I know my way around an Oscar-winning lady or two, and whenever he would come up in conversation, there was always this 'ick' or 'ugh' type of reaction. All of the women I spoke to would say that. All of them. I wondered what was up with that." -- Screenwriter, director and producer Ryan Murphy at The New Yorker Festival.NBC10
A western Pennsylvania shopping mall is increasing security after hundreds of fighting teens forced it to close early last week.
The Monroeville Mall says it'll increase the number of officers on patrol Fridays and Saturdays from one to four.
The mall's owner, Tennessee-based CBL & Associates Properties Inc., will foot the bill.Monroeville Police Chief K. Douglas Cole called the fight an isolated incident and says the mall area has seen a drop in crime.
He says large groups of teens began showing up around 5 p.m. Friday and swelled to as many as 1,000 people.
Employees say stores closed early after fights were reported around 8 p.m.
At least two people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Cole reported minor damage to the mall, including to kiosks.
Copyright Associated PressFor the first few months of 2017, sports fans were offered a unique opportunity: the chance to own a piece of the Gotham Ballers, a New York-based pro basketball team in the 16-team Champions Basketball League that was set to start its first season in July. The team’s roster is made up of recently retired NBA players like Shawn Marion, Al Harrington, and Kenyon Martin. Basketball fans who wanted to own a piece of the Ballers were able to invest in the team via a Start Engine page, a Kickstarter-like service that sells actual shares in startups rather than just soliciting patronage. Potential investors were greeted by the kind of pitch video you might expect to see shown to a captive audience in a Hilton conference room:
Production quality aside, the rest of the Start Engine page, along with information available on the Gotham Ballers and Champions Basketball League home pages, painted an enticing picture. Investors were promised a roster full of former NBA players, a home arena at the Nassau Coliseum, a broadcast deal with ESPN, a front office staffed by legends like Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe, and a 14-game season against teams comprised of other former NBA players. There was even a list of Kickstarter-style perks: Twenty shares got you the ability to use the owners-only door at games; 715 shares got you four invites to a special owners-only party at Walt Frazier’s restaurant; around 3,500 shares got you VIP tickets to the league’s $1,000,000 tournament in Vegas.
Shares were sold for $7.00 apiece—this put the team’s valuation at about $80 million, according to the team’s own calculations:
The pitch was apparently pretty convincing, as the Ballers managed to raise $609,959.00 from 1,679 investors before the investment window closed in March. Since then, however, investors haven’t gotten much for their money.
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The Gotham Ballers’ homepage and Start Engine page still feature a league timeline showing that the league’s inaugural season was supposed to begin this July:
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As July got closer, there was little communication from the Ballers to their investors about the start of the season. Finally, on June 26, the Ballers informed their investors via conference call that the season would begin on July 19. Still, some investors took to the Start Engine page’s comments section to voice their concerns about the lack of communication and the fact that tickets were not yet on sale. Each worried comment was replied to by Lisa Dinndorf, the head of communications for the Champions Basketball League:
On June 15, I received an email from Carl George, the CEO of Champions Basketball League, to which he attached a PDF laying out the 2017 Champions Basketball League schedule. The schedule showed a league of 12 teams (down from the 16 promised on the Start Engine page), divided into Eastern and Western conferences, playing nine weeks worth of games:
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At this point, only rosters for the Ballers and teams in Boston and Los Angeles had been released (the L.A. team is currently soliciting investors on its own Start Engine page), and there was still no information available about how to buy tickets to games. On July 12, I followed up with George and asked why there were no tickets for sale even though the season was set to start a week later.
Later that day George emailed me to say that the opening game had been pushed back to August 2, and that the league had been reduced from 12 teams to 10. The email also said there would “likely be a concert featuring Nicki Minaj singing” after the first game. (George seems to have an affinity for celebrity endorsements. In April, Snoop Dogg was unveiled as the league’s celebrity commissioner and owner of the L.A. Superstars.) When asked why the date had been pushed back, George replied:
Tom, yes we are working on a concert that will follow for 6-8 songs and that has stretched us here into others schedules, we think it will be worthwhile but may have to do it as of game 2. I will keep you posted.
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The email George sent me on July 12 included another PDF that laid out the updated league schedule and indicated that the opening game between the Ballers and Los Angeles Superstars on August 2 would be played at the Nassau Coliseum. On July 27, I reached out to Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, the group that now operates the Nassau Coliseum, to see if the arena would indeed be hosting the opening game. I was told that the arena wasn’t scheduled to host any event on August 2.
Also on July 27, I reached out to George to ask him why tickets for the first game had not yet gone on sale, and received no response. On August 3, I reached out to a Gotham Ballers investor to see if there had been any further communication from the team regarding the start of the season, and was informed that the opening game had been pushed back once again, this time to August 23. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment told me that no event with the league had been confirmed for August 23.
One investor told me that he had grown so fed up with the league’s lack of progress and communication that he asked to sell back his shares. He sent me a screenshot of an email from Dinndorf, in which she told him that he would not be able to sell his shares until one year from the date of purchase, “which is the standard requirement of RegCF investing - it is not our rule, it is an SEC rule.” she wrote.
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I first spoke to Carl George on May 23, because I was concerned that the reality of owning a piece of the Gotham Ballers did not match up with what was being pitched on the team’s Start Engine page. A lot of what was being promised seemed too good to be true, such as this list of “key facts” that stated the team had a broadcast deal with ESPN:
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Although “broadcast deal with ESPN” might be technically accurate, I learned that none of the team’s games would be on TV. A source familiar with the situation told me that the Champions Basketball League has (or had) a small barter agreement in place with ESPN to stream a handful of match ups on ESPN 3, the network’s online streaming service. This distinction wasn’t made on the Start Engine page, which still features this promotional image:
I was told the agreement between ESPN and the league does not involve the network paying any sort of rights fee to the league.
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There was also a promise that the team had secured a home arena at the Nassau Coliseum and would be holding some special events at the Barclays Center:
Back in May, a source familiar with the situation told me that the Ballers had rented the practice arena at the Barclays Center for a scrimmage in August 2016, and expressed interest in playing their season at the Nassau Coliseum, but that no official agreement had ever been signed.
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I also had questions about the Gotham Ballers’ roster, which features former NBA stars like Kenyon Martin, Shawn Marion, and Al Harrington. On May 18, I spoke to Shawn Marion’s assistant, who told me that Marion’s status with the Ballers was still “up in the air,” and that no official agreement had been reached yet. “I hope it doesn’t happen,” the assistant added. “Who wants to pay see a bunch of old guys play basketball?”
“Who wants to pay see a bunch of old guys play basketball?”
That same day, a spokesman from ASM Sports, the agency that represents Kenyon Martin, told me that Martin was not involved with the Gotham Ballers. When asked to clarify if Martin ever was on the team, the spokesman declined to comment. On May 23 I was able to get in touch with another player on the Ballers’ roster, Tyshawn Taylor, whose publicist had originally told me he was not involved with the team. By email, Taylor told me that he was indeed planning on playing for the team when the season started. (Additionally, many of the players listed on the Ballers’ and Superstars’ rosters, including Martin and Harrington, have been playing in Ice Cube’s Big3 tournament.)
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I shared my concerns with George during our May 23 conversation, and he did his best to assuage them. He told me that the league was, at the time, in negotiations with the Nassau Coliseum to play seven home games in the arena throughout the summer, the first being on July 19. He added that he expected all of the league’s games to be streamed on ESPN 3.
As for the rosters, George told me that the league had signed agreements with 130 players, including Martin, Marion, Taylor, and Harrington. The agreements classified the players as independent contractors, and George informed me that they would be paid on a per-appearance basis. This meant that the players who had signed agreements were not contractually bound to participate in any number of games, though George told me he expected each player to give their team 80 days per year.
When I raised the issue of whether it was |
in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, called in his State of the State address for more money to go into a rainy-day fund rather than into renewed spending — over the loud objections of some Democratic legislators who want to restore more of what had been trimmed in recent years.
“For a decade, budget instability was the order of the day,” Mr. Brown said. “A lethal combination of national recessions, improvident tax cuts and too much spending created a financial sinkhole that defied every effort to climb out.”
Darrell Steinberg, the Senate president pro tem and a fellow Democrat, shot back, saying that while putting some money into the rainy-day fund was laudable, the governor’s plan shortchanged crucial needs. “We must invest in the people of California, especially those living in the economic margins,” he said. “I’ve proposed and remain committed to a balanced framework of ‘a third, a third, a third,’ where we divide the surplus into reserves, repayment and reinvestment.”
Jostling among Republicans over how to spend the surpluses is also underway in Michigan, where Gov. Rick Snyder, a conservative Republican, announced a $791 million budget surplus and called for additional spending on education and infrastructure, as well as tax cuts. In response, the Republican-dominated Senate Finance Committee approved a bill that put specific numbers on the governor’s proposal, cutting the state’s income tax from 4.25 percent to 3.9 percent by 2017.I’m a water sign (Pisces with a Cancer rising and Leo moon) and therefore I’m prone to live the credo of love. That means if there’s no love present, neither am I. This isn’t necessarily even specifically related to romantic relationships. You hear all the time the phrase, “Where’s the love?” If there’s no love to be found, be it for a neighbor, a flowerbed, a job, a general way of looking at life, or even just for the self — I’m out.
It’s not that I’m trying to be a fickle pain in the tuckus who is chasing a glitter-dipped unicorn ridden by Cupid wearing Justin Bieber’s hair. It’s simply that love in its very essence happens to be my operating system and I readily and warmly acknowledge this fact. This, I thought, was a fairly universal trait amongst Humans.
Not so much.
Now, let it be said that Human Beings are built out of Love. The very Spiritual Physics that hold our souls together, the “glue”, the particle matter of the ethers called Our Essence, is made of Love. Not the love that we perceive here on this spinning electromagnet called Earth — a love that is often defined by a wash of chemicals that causes all sorts of amazing physical sensations (which can have one HECK of a nasty withdrawal we call “heartbreak”). I’m referring to a Love that supersedes all precedent for adhesion and acceptance. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me back up.
Here’s the deal in Cliff-Notes format because I doubt anyone has the time to sit here and read a War and Peace style expose of the layered dynamics of Spiritual Physics as applied to Love. Even if you had the time, I’d never put even an enemy in such a droll position. So here we go with the cliffy-note version:
Eons ago, Darkness learned that the Chemistry of Love is the most powerful force in the Universe. It realized that in order to gain any foothold in any environment where Love existed, such as our lovely third dimension, It needed to convince anyone who would be designed out of the ingredients of Love that the Love was not real. I mean, c’mon — if I’m carrying a pistol and I’ve been taught that the bullets in my pocket are instead Reese’s Pieces, then that gun is going to be good for nothing but a pencil holder.
So here goes Darkness, convincing every Human Being on the planet that their base design — Love — is not only a myth, but isn’t real anyway. There are many ways in which Darkness has achieved this most fascinating dupe. First and foremost, let’s put some focus on the “Sin” myth that many religions love to beat to death. This modality states that Human Beings are indeed not full of Love, but full of Sin. What’s weird about this statement is that not only is it NOT true, but it’s not even grammatically accurate. “Sin” is a Roman Archery Term. It means to “miss the mark”. So Human Beings are full of Missing The Mark? Sure, I can buy that for a dollar (to quote the original Robo Cop.) But even if we’re full of missing the mark (or Maker’s Mark, depending on who you are), that still doesn’t mention what we’re full OF. It just mentions what we’re prone to doing. So not only has Darkness scored points on getting an entire species to buy into the thought process that we’re not only missing something — but we’re doing so in a way that’s not even grammatically possible. That takes a LOT of generational spiritual mutation. Yet thousands of Human generations later — here we are, hearts and identities all stitched together from leftover ideologies like a demented Frankenstein quilt, believing we were nothing more than scrap patchwork to begin with.
It’s sad.
For those that figured out along the way that being a sin-filled loser was probably not what God had in mind when God created the endlessly creative species called Humanity (in God’s own Impression, nonetheless) — Darkness cooked up Plan B. Plan B is a fascinating cocktail made of pain and disappointment called “Bitterness”. This elixir is especially acidic and will burn like crazy when poured directly on an open wound, particularly one centered in the heart. So folks will lead out in hopeful connection with another and if they experience disappointment in life — whether it be through romance, work, or simply friendship — here comes this dump truck full of toxic Bitterness to be poured all over the gaping open wound of the heart. When Bitterness hits the spirit, it burns into the nature of what we’re made of, causing Spiritual Scar Tissue that toughens the supple surface of our soul. Once toughened, the soul loses some of its sensitivity until the scar tissue sloughs off over time. Time heals, right? Well yes, except for the kicker: Darkness placed within the Elixir of Bitterness an addictive agent that causes the healing soul to crave the burn. Within the Bitterness is an emotional narcotic, an addiction to the pain. As we heal, we begin to crave the burn. So we make sure to order up another dump truck full of the Elixir of Bitterness and scald our soul all over again. This addictive property within the Elixir of Bitterness is one of the reasons that kicking bitterness is more difficult than many physical addictions. It requires a great deal of behavior modification and redirection from the withdrawal symptoms caused by the soul decontaminating as it heals past the damaged tissue. Bitterness is a tough addiction to break but it’s very possible. It just takes a little awareness and a little work.
For those that get a handle on their addiction to Bitterness, realizing along the way that being twisted up by pain like a raging pretzel is likely not the most effective way to muddle though life — Darkness has concocted Plan C: The Illusion of Separation. This puppy is a thorn in the side of most people who have pretty much decided that though they may have a few things to work on, they’re not a patchwork sin quilt, and they’ve also gotten over their bitter period after choking on enough Alanis Morisette to cure anybody. The Illusion of Separation is a toughie to identify because it’s hard to know what’s real or what’s not real when you’re in The Dream. This entire reality is what we dream up day after day. It’s the end result of my dream overlapping with your dream overlapping with his and her dream — if there ever was a quilt, it would be the quilt of dreams that rolls out in this incarnation. We call this quilt of dreams “Reality” — which does not actually exist. “Reality” is simply the agreed upon section of the quilt, or dream, that we decide is the “safe base” in the middle of this endless cycle of creation. Confused? That’s what Darkness is counting on in order to really enact Plan C, or the Illusion of Separation. Plan C gets a little wonky, sort of like trying to decipher a 1099 Tax form as opposed to the insty W-2’s, so Plan C gets two whole paragraphs.
The Illusion of Separation works because we are unclear on what being connected to Source, or God, actually feels like. We’re unclear because we’ve been taught that the bullets in our pocket are Reese’s Pieces. (And no, I’m not trying to equivocate God with gun violence. It’s the most absurdly obvious comparison I can currently muster.) We’re unclear because we’ve been taught an absurd idea of God — some judgy weirdo that lords over everybody like a frat house hazing committee, disqualifying each person on technicalities because they’re not cool enough to get into heaven. That’s not God. That’s a Human personification of God enacted by the a collective part of The Dream that is still trying to get picked for the kickball team, so they’d better create a god that’s petty enough NOT to pick people. That way, when their version of god picks THEM according to their interpretation of “the rules”, they can feel special — just like the dude who gets into Theta Cappa WhoCares after eating a goat turd. Now that’s an accomplishment. (And it looks like Plan C is going to get three paragraphs.)
The Illusion of Separation hinges on the fact that Darkness has worked hard to disrupt our connection with Source, or God. Though it’s outside of Darkness’ ability to ACTUALLY disrupt our connection to Source, or God — or as it’s known, LOVE — it can certainly distract us by pointing us in the direction of our own insecurities long enough to keep us wandering the hallways of our own discontent like some poor mental patient pinging against the asylum walls looking for the bathroom while the Rob Zombie lights flicker overhead. The Dream has created a “reality” where we’ve forgotten that connection to Source / God / Love is instantaneous. That connection is part of our Fabric of Love, our very Being, our very Spiritual Make-up. It is ignited by the thrill of laughter. It resides in the excitement of a phone call placed by a loved one. It is in the heart-stopping beauty of the light emblazoning a sunrise, or the glowing explosion of clouds burning at sunset. It’s the whisper of peace in the moonlight, the rolling giggle of a child’s abandon, or the touch of a friend. It’s the look in the eyes of someone who truly understands us, even for one moment. It’s the lulling song of the ocean waves that puts us to sleep on the beach. It’s the sound of rain on the roof that reminds us how small and how safe we are at the same time. It’s the massage to the ears as the wind whisks through pine trees and the bodily explosion as we connect with the one that we love enough to build our life with. It is the warmth that grows in our stomach when we give something to someone else and expect nothing in return. It is the smile from a stranger, the compassion given in a moment we don’t expect it, the bloom of a flower, the encouragement in an email. Our connection to LOVE, to God, to Source — is omnipresent. It never ceases. It never wanes. It is in our breathe, our words, our actions. IT IS US.
Yet we are convinced it doesn’t exist. Absolutely convinced. We can’t even identify God / Source. Simply because we have chosen the lesson of separation through the Illusion of the Dream.
There are those who are seeing past this Illusion. Darkness’ dreaded and effective Plan C is coming to a crashing halt. 2014 is the Year of Illumination. This year holds all the spiritual ingredients for each one of use to be known for not only exactly who we are — good, bad, indifferent or ugly — but for each one of us to KNOW our connection to Source / God / Love is REAL. The time for Illusion has passed. The 20th Century was Illusion’s last big heyday. Though Illusion will still be present, and certainly people will still require and even crave its difficult karmic lessons, more and more people everyday are waking from The Dream and realizing that indeed — this life is not the tail that wags the dog, but it is EXACTLY what we make it.
And how thrilling is that?
This means that LOVE finally has its place in the conscious part of our patchwork dream quilt. Finally. It’s somewhat ridiculous to think about — because it would be like saying, “Finally, AIR has a place in our understanding of what keeps us alive!” (No one said Humanity was quick on the draw.) Love — the Spiritual Ingredient not the sensation — is not a choice. It’s a key part of our Design. Just like a chemical building block, an amino acid in a gene sequence, Love is the energetic signature that holds the Human Spirit together. It’s the Spiritual DNA on which everything else we are is built upon — physically, emotionally, intellectually, and of course — spiritually. Love is not optional in our survival, just as air is not optional. Just as water is not optional. We may not like the taste of the tap water but if it’s all we have, then we better dang well drink it, or we’re dead. In the same way, we may not like the idea that we are reliant on Love to live. But without it — we die.
This scenario has been played out with small children in a gruesome way. A phenomenon called Failure to Thrive occurs when a child is not touched and is repeatedly ignored. If never touched, the child will quite literally — die. If that’s not proof enough for anyone that Love is a key component in our design which directly affects our survival, then The Dream has been replaced with The Illusion. And that’s its own living Karmic Hell.
Many who are still addicted to the Illusion of Separation feel the need to categorize the nature of Love in order to control it. Again, this goes back to a last ditch attempt by Darkness to keep Plan C rolling as long as It can until The Year of Illumination kicks it to the curb. We see this futile exercise in controlling Love demonstrated by those who attempt to decide who can get married and who can’t. These folks attempt to dictate that there is some sort of “difference” in heterosexual love and homosexual love. The marriage equality issue is blowing up headlines across the USA as state after state acknowledges the utter ridiculousness in attempting to administrate Love. They may as well administrate who is qualified enough to breathe air. Is there heterosexual air and homosexual air? I’d like to see who gets appointed to THAT congressional hot-air committee.
Love is not a choice. Who we love is not a choice. What we do about how we feel about someone is most definitely a choice, especially if the love we feel for someone isn’t reciprocated. If we keep hanging in there after we’ve been politely informed that our feelings are not shared, then we become a stalker, and that’s not about love, but about control and desperation. Again, Darkness enacts Plan C in the “name of love”.
Love is our Design. It’s our soul food. It’s our base Spiritual Protein in our Celestial DNA. We can’t even choose NOT to love. It’s simply what we do. Because it’s what we are. We just THINK we’re something else. We agonize in loneliness because we have bought into the Illusion that Love can only be felt through the association with a partner. Surely, Humanity is not designed to be alone. Otherwise, our soul would not have the need for a community-based physical experience where we are born into a body that is grown INSIDE OF SOMEONE ELSE. If our design did not include others, we would simply be an autonomous soul floating individually out in space, learning all there is to learn from the burp of endless Pulsars. Most all of us desire partnership. That, too, is our spiritual design as well as a biological imperative that makes sure that the species continues to propagate.
However, the “agonizing in loneliness” part isn’t necessary, though we all do it at one time or another. It’s how we try on the Illusion of Separation to see if it’s going to work for us. We desperately miss that “connection” with another person and we mistake that for LOVE. Indeed, that connection can BE love. It can also be connection with Self and with Source (through creativity, through helping others, through work, through friendship). Okay, sure, that doesn’t keep a person warm at night — initially. But with a little tweaking of the lense through which we view our life, we begin to see that there is GREAT connection and a feeling of completion in simply being in Peace with our Design.
This is what Buddhists call Nirvana and what Christians call being Filled With The Holy Spirit.
When we agonize in loneliness, we are convinced that we will never have partnership. What causes us agony is not being “lonely” — which is an enormous inconvenience and many times a real and unpleasant chemical reaction in the brain if one is going through a “break up”. The agony of the spirit comes from our buying into the Illusion that we will NEVER have connection. We literally create a future based upon our worst fears, a prison of perceptions, and we live in it. We base this prison off of our past experiences which involve having no one around in a romantic capacity. And instead of shifting our lense and our focus to the rest of our existence, which is ultimately connected in every way — we fixate on the one portion of the painting that is missing the color that is our favorite.
Certainly, nearly every Human Being craves a romantic partner. Again, that’s part of our Design. Some people are blessed with partnership at a young age that lasts until their last breath. Others rack up a lifetime of experiences until that “right person” comes along. Yet how we handle the time in between finding this “just right” individual is up to us. We may agonize through the time under the guise of “never”, or we may enjoy every connection we have with Creation in our unlimited connection to LOVE until this person arrives. How we choose to experience our life is completely up to us.
Love is our Fabric of Being. We don’t need to learn to love. We need to unlearn how to ignore what we are. It’s been ingrained in the Human Species for thousands of years, this disassociation from the Self. Yet we are thawing out, our extremities tingling with sensation once again as our Consciousness and our Collective Spirit thaw from a deep and long winter — which never actually existed.
You are not a choice. You are. Love is not a choice. It is. Be what you are. That’s the way it is.Premier Date: October 14, 2012
A battlefield trench built with sharp 90-degree corners can help stop a shock wave and save a soldier’s life.
plausible
This myth supposedly arose from the German army’s careful construction of its trenches during World War I. Adam and Jamie started by building small-scale trenches filled with water and colored oil to help visualize wave movement. Three trenches were built: one straight, one with two sharp corners, and one with two soft (curvy) corners. A motorized mechanism generated waves at one end of each trench and the amplitude of the waves was measured at the opposite end. The amplitude for the straight trench was 0.75 inches (19 mm), for the sharp cornered trench it was 0.125 inches (3 mm), and for the soft-cornered trench it was 0.25 inches (6 mm), lending credibility to the premise.
For full scale testing, three 50 foot (15 m) trenches were dug in the same shapes and lined with plywood to ensure straight edges (the soft corners were not lined). A 25 lbs (11 kg) charge of TNT was used for each explosion and force sensors were placed at 10 foot (3 m) increments from the charge. The following table summarizes the findings.
Trench Shape Pressure at 20 ft Pressure at 30 ft Pressure at 40 ft Pressure at 50 ft Open-air (control) 39 psi (269 kPa) 12 psi (83 kPa) 7 psi (48 kPa) 5 psi (34 kPa) Straight 397 psi (2737 kPa) 65 psi (448 kPa) 38 psi (262 kPa) 21 psi (145 kPa) Sharp corners 60 psi (414 kPa) 19 psi (131 kPa) 12 psi (83 kPa) 7 psi (48 kPa) Soft corners 76 psi (524 kPa) 21 psi (145 kPa) 13 psi (90 kPa) 8 psi (55 kPa)
Because the intensity of the blast was lower with sharp corners than with soft corners or no corners, the myth was deemed plausible.OK group...let's see a show of hands...
How many people believe that the current way Linux markets itself is sufficient? That would be the combination of apathy, inertia and a smattering of guerrilla marketing.
Good, Good....yeah, that's a majority all right. Thanks for taking your hand out of the Cheeto's bag long enough to be inconvenienced. You might want to wipe it against your t-shirt before you begin your flaming response.
Which is unlikely. If you are reading this blog or any publication that might post this blog, you more than likely don't fit into this group
Now, how many of you think that we need to get the word out to the everyday computer user and let them know they have a choice in the way they operate their computers?
Oops...Well, that was expected as well. Now you know what it's like to be a Ron Paul Supporter.
So...one more question then we'll wrap this up.
How many of you feel comfortable that Linux has a firm hold on the penguin as an unofficial trademark of Linux?
My goodness. There is a veritable sea of hands in the air. That's a good thing. Well, at least we agree on something.
Now let me show you how a consensus of opinion is as reliable as an unbooted Windows server. Not to mention those that hold said opinion.
Many of you in the first group I queried can take pride in this. Congratulations to everyone who made this possible.
Excuse the poor photograph. This billboard picture was taken on IH 35 in Austin from the upper deck in a car doing 70 mph. Stopping on the upper deck for any reason is almost certain catastrophe. It's good enough however to make the point.
Microsoft has now successfully claimed the penguin as their "symbol". Yep, I see it coming..."What's the big deal helios? So they use a flock of penguins to advertise." If those words come out of your mouth, I would make certain they weren't heard too loudly. Ask yourself this. Why penguins? How many tens of thousands of other animals could they have chosen?
Why penguins? It's obvious if you just spend a few minutes thinking about it.
These billboards are going up all over the United States. I've called Microsoft numerous times Friday to get a statement but they've yet to respond.
By the way, the rest of the text from that sign reads "Life Without Walls".
That is funny in itself. Microsoft trying to equate itself with freedom. They better hope people continue to ignore their EULA.
So...let's keep on handing out cd's, holding our Lindependence events, flooding You Tube with Cube videos ad nauseum and anything else we can think of that reaches hundreds of people in a months time. Microsoft is reaching millions a day.
And their doing it with your penguin.
Guerrilla marketing...now that's effective. Instead of getting the community organized into some sort of legitimate promotional entity, and Heaven knows we've tried... we've screwed around and let Microsoft take the one thing we thought they could never touch. Don't forget...Linus chose the penguin himself as our mascot/symbol.
Congratulations to all who made this possible.
All-Righty ThenFighting for Everyday Americans, and Everyday Uranium-Dealing Kazakhs by Mark Steyn • Apr 24, 2015 at 10:15 am https://www.steynonline.com/6931/fighting-for-everyday-americans-and-everyday It turns out that, while we were all worrying about the mullahs' nuclear program, the Clintons' nuclear program was going gangbusters. Kazakhquiddick dominated the conversation on my weekly chat with Hugh Hewitt: HUGH HEWITT: I'm looking at an extraordinary article – Cash Flowed To Clinton Foundation As Russians Press For Control Of Uranium Company. It's by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire from today's New York Times. It's almost unfathomable that Hillary Clinton would consider running for president after this article comes out, but what say you, Mark Steyn? MARK STEYN: Yes, I agree. And I like Elizabeth Warren, and I want her to run. And when I say 'like', don't get me wrong - I think she would be a disastrous president for this country, and she would want to turn it into a socialist basket case. But she believes in something, and she wants to do something. And Hillary Clinton is an entirely hollow creation. She is basically just an empty vessel in which the dodgiest characters on the planet pour money in return for favors. And I regret to say her daughter is becoming much the same kind of thing, too. Her daughter's joined the family on stage with this Kazakh oligarch and all the rest of it. In fairness to Bill Clinton, he likes chasing nymphettes - he's the only Clinton with a human characteristic... HH: Now I don't want to overstate the complexity, but in a nutshell, Russia has cornered the world uranium market. MS: Right. HH: They have done so through acquiring huge uranium resources in Canada and the United State subject to review by the State Department was given, and Bill Clinton pocketed a half million along the way, and the foundation picked up two and a half million bucks from interested parties... I think I've mentioned before that, for a while, the US Department of Labor used to call up my assistant once a year and demand to know whether we "worked with uranium". And once in a while they'd insist on speaking to me personally and I'd say, "Hmm. Let me have a think on that. Did we use any uranium in my Christmas disco single? No, wait, that was bongos..." And, when they'd gone away, I used occasionally to wonder how many American businesses the vast federal bureaucracy had to harass before they got a positive response to that question. But it turns out that, if the Department of Labor were to call up the Clinton Foundation, which Hill's impressionable rubes seem to think is something to do with reducing diarrhea outbreaks in Africa, and ask them, "Do you work with uranium?", the answer is yes. On the radio, I made one of my very rare interruptions of Hugh - because the big cynical American lawyer guy was for once sweetly naïve enough to think that there is an actual thing called the "Clinton Foundation" that does "foundation"-type work: HH: I'm going to ask after the break, Mark Steyn, Lindsey Graham, whether or not Senate hearings are in order, because I want to know if Iran has given money to the Clinton Foundation. Honestly, at this point… MS: Well wait, but just a minute, Hugh, there is no 'Clinton Foundation'... The only purpose of this foundation is to enable this family to lead the lifestyle of a head of state after it has ceased to be head of state. They spent $70 million dollars on travel at the Clinton Foundation. By comparison, the entire Royal Family, to fly between their various realms - the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, that's a lot of air miles - the entire Royal Family in one year spent $7 million dollars. So in other words, the Clintons have ten times the airplane costs of the Royal Family, who are heads of state of dozens of bits of real estate around the world. The Clinton Foundation is a hollow shell foundation playing the usual shell game with U.S. taxation. There's no need for a Clinton Foundation except for them to rake in money from Kazakhs and Ukrainians and Iranians and Saudis and everybody else... HH: Well, let me ask you. There are two questions. Which is more transparent – the Windsor or the Clinton family? And which is less tacky – the Windsors or the Clintons? MS: Well, one can make arguments about the last point, but the House of Windsor is certainly, the House of Windsor is certainly more transparent. You can go to I think it's Royalty.gov.uk, and the Lord Chamberlain who runs the Queen's Household posts every itemized bit of travel. So if you were to ask the Queen, if you happened to be meeting the Queen and you happened to say why did Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Gloucester, spend $700 dollars getting from Calgary to Bermuda in 2009, she'll give you a straight answer. Whereas if you ask a similar question to Hillary Rodham Clinton, she'll say 'Oh, well, these are just more distractions from the right-wing Koch-funded media, and I'm just here to talk to everyday Americans as long as they've undergone a background check and have been pre-screened so that it's safe for me to pretend to interact with them...' HH: I'm stunned. You are actually saying the House of Windsor is more transparent than the House of Clinton? MS: Yes, because the one advantage of a real monarchy, Hugh, is that it comes in-built with a certain amount of chippiness. So for example… HH: (laughing) MS: …when the Duke of Cambridge and his lovely bride were in Canada a couple of years ago, and the Canadian press was going 'why do we have to pay for these pampered, disgusting royal deadbeats? what's it costing us to have to grovel in form in front of them?'... and a master-corporal with the Royal Canadian Air Force revealed that she'd splashed out, she'd gone to the mall, and bought a $128 dollar comforter set for the Duchess of Cambridge's bed. And she said it was such a bargain at, you know, whatever branch of Wal-Mart she got it at, it was such a bargain that she bought one for herself. So you can know that the Duchess of Cambridge is sleeping on a $128 dollar comforter set from Wal-Mart, but you can't, but the Clinton Foundation, which is just a kind of big octopus sucking in through its various arms and legs money from all over the planet, if you ask Hillary about that, then she just sails by as if she's Cleopatra. It was a pale blue-and-white comforter from the mall in Trenton, Ontario. And you'd never get Chelsea Clinton to sleep on that. If this sleazy uranium'n'jailbait operation is returned to the White House, the republic is over. You can find the full interview with Hugh here. ~I'll be back on the radio next week for more interviews re Climate Change: The Facts. That's the new book featuring me and some of the world's most eminent scientists on the state of the climate debate - and it's currently Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade, and also Number One on the Environmental Policy Hot 100. On the other hand, serial litigant Michael E Mann's new book is nipping at our heels at Big Hit Sound #511,770. © 2019 Mark Steyn Enterprises (US) Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of Mark Steyn Enterprises. If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club and you take issue with this article, then have at it in our comments section. receive the latest by email: subscribe to steynonline's free weekly mailing list enOriginally Posted by Brent Yamamoto Originally Posted by
This is a specialty item that really must be differentiated from a milled OEM slide.
I think a long slide that's compatible with a gen 3 G20/21 frame.
This next part may be fantasy, so guys who know more about G20/21s please correct me...
Build the slide to handle 10mm, but cut the hole to handle a 45 barrel. Offer threaded barrels in both 45 as well as a 45-10mm conversion barrel. I'm sure different extractors would be required but one slide that would work with two barrels I think would be good from both a customer and a manufacturing perspective.
Would make an interesting PDW...
Personally I wouldn't be interested in a 20/21 length slide. But a long slide would interest me.UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The University announced today (April 20) that it has suspended Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity's recognition on the University Park campus for no less than a two-year period following multiple violations by the fraternity of Penn State’s restrictions on alcohol use during its Parents Weekend on April 1.
Sigma Alpha Mu’s violations include excessive drinking, involving hard liquor, with no third-party server; open access to alcohol with no monitoring; and permitting guests other than fraternity members, their parents and family to attend. The violations were first detailed in an “Open Letter to Penn State’s Greek Community” from Penn State President Eric Barron on April 10.
The University granted an exception to its moratorium on Greek-life socials involving alcohol, allowing fraternities and sororities to hold Parents Weekend activities, with express limitations on size of the gatherings, type of alcohol served, and length of time a Parents Weekend social could be held. In addition, the criteria for a Parents Weekend event mandated a third-party licensed vendor to serve alcohol to individuals of legal age, and no additional groups or people beyond those hosting the event and their families could attend.
“Sigma Alpha Mu knowingly violated every rule that was imposed,” said Damon Sims, Penn State vice president for Student Affairs. “This behavior is not consistent with our University values and is in direct opposition to the changes required if we are to have a healthy, successful and sustainable Greek-letter system at Penn State.”
Sims and others in Penn State Student Affairs have met with Sigma Alpha Mu leadership and its adviser to discuss the issues. The fraternity president acknowledged the violations of the new rules and expectations. In addition, a review of the circumstances also has involved a conversation with the fraternity’s national leadership.
“In a gesture of trust, we believed that Parents Weekend would be the appropriate way to pilot new regulations and gain cooperation from the Greek-letter community,” Sims said. “Unfortunately, this fraternity egregiously took advantage of its trial opportunity, despite our clear expectations and the well-publicized consequences for violations.
“We remain hopeful that our Greek-letter community, including undergraduate members, their parents and alumni, understand the University’s wholehearted commitment to these new expectations, and our determination to help our fraternities and sororities avoid outcomes that threaten their continued success. Only by earnestly working together will we achieve the results the entire Penn State community should expect.”The city's new ordinances effectively ban bikini baristas, but attorneys for the plantiffs say fighting the law is not about coffee or bikinis. "It's about women's rights and the U.S. Constitution. The City of Everett violated these women's rights across the board," said one attorney.
A group of bikini baristas filed a lawsuit Monday against the city of Everett, alleging that two recently passed ordinances banning bikinis and bare skin — including bare shoulders, bare midriffs and bare buttocks — on restaurant employees, violate their constitutional rights to free expression and the right to privacy.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claims that the ordinances, which were passed unanimously by the City Council last month, deny bikini-stand employees the ability to communicate and express themselves through their choice of swimwear, infringe on their right to privacy and deny them due process.
“This is not about the bikini,” said attorney Schuyler Lifschultz, “It’s about women’s rights and the U.S. Constitution. The City of Everett violated these women’s rights across the board.”
The suit asks the federal court to declare unconstitutional the ordinances which went into effect on Sept. 5.
Spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke said the city would not be commenting on the lawsuit at this time.
The plaintiffs, including seven baristas and an owner of a chain of bikini coffee stands, argue in the suit that their right to privacy would be violated if officers were to inspect them to ensure that they were following the rules.
“The Ordinances, on their face violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; are unconstitutionally vague, as applied and in violation of the due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ordinances also deprive the Baristas of their Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and discriminate against women,” lawyers for the baristas said in a statement released Monday.
“The city knows only women work as bikini baristas, and intentionally targeted women through the ordinances,” said Derek Newman, one of the attorneys for the baristas.
Barista Natalie Bjerk says, “This is about women’s rights. The city council should not tell me what I can and cannot wear when I go to work, it’s a violation of my First Amendment rights.”
The plaintiffs claim that wearing minimal clothing allows them to show their tattoos, scars and other physical features that prompt conversations with customers about life experiences and personal choices that would not otherwise occur. They also claim that wearing bikinis allows them to “express messages of freedom, empowerment, openness, acceptance, approachability, vulnerability and individuality” that they would not otherwise be able to convey.
“These ordinances set back women’s rights by 50 years,” plaintiff Leah Humphrey said in a statement released Monday.
Some employees also have said they’re concerned that they’ll make less in tips — or lose their jobs entirely — with the new dress code.
The Everett City Council unanimously enacted two ordinances Aug. 16 dictating a dress code banning bare midriffs, exposed shoulders, shorts or bikinis in quick-serve food and beverage businesses. The ordinance requires that owners ensure that employees cover “minimum body areas” while on duty. That includes the breasts, torso and the top 3 inches of legs below the buttocks, according to the ordinance.
The city has said it will provide picture diagrams to help illustrate the new requirements, but essentially employees will be required to wear at least shorts and a tank top. Owners found violating the new dress code will be required to obtain a probationary license. With two additional violations, |
year.
KISS was approached to perform at the Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Adelaide way back in 1994, but talks fell over.
The band - which comprises original members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons with new guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer - later opened its Alive 35 world tour at the Melbourne Grand Prix in 2008.
In recent years, former State treasurer Kevin Foley is known to have also pushed for KISS - which has just released a new album called Monster - to play at Clipsal.
The rockers won't be the only high-octane entertainment on offer at the Clipsal.
US rally car driver and YouTube sensation Ken Block will thrill Adelaide motorsport fans.
The Monster World Rally Team driver was today unveiled as a special guest for all four days of next year's race.
He will perform on track in his Monster Ford Fiesta in his first visit to Adelaide.
Block started his rally career in 2005 and achieved global fame with his online videos going viral – including vision of his record-setting jump for TV series Stunt Junkies and his Gymkhana videos.
He has also appeared in hit TV show Top Gear.
Mr Weatherill said that this year's Clipsal 500 had created a total boost to the South Australian economy of $55.5 million, with new expenditure of more than $34 million.
Originally published as KISS and Crue to rock Clipsal crowdsIn Horlivka, the seizure of the police station on Monday unfolded in an unruly manner, with dozens of townsmen hurling rocks and using chair legs to smash windows while onlookers cheered, witnesses said. It was hardly a military operation — at least before the lieutenant colonel took charge.
“This protest was spontaneous,” a man who offered only his first name, Aleksandr, said in an interview later. “Look around. Nobody is paid and nobody is Russian.” All the same, he let his sympathies be known. “It’s not the Russian Army that is an occupier, but the Ukrainian Army.”
In New York, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, drew parallels between the actions in the east of Ukraine and in Crimea. The uniforms and weapons of the pro-Russian militants, she said, resembled those of the Russian soldiers deployed on the Crimean Peninsula.
Ms. Power, speaking on Sunday, offered another argument for a Russian hand in the latest unrest: The towns and cities where separatists have descended are strategically situated on highways separating the eastern provinces from Kiev, the capital. That, she said, indicated a plan of some sort.
All the same, an emphasis on a Russian military role discounts the genuine discontent among a portion of the population in eastern Ukraine. And some of the political and business elites of the Donets Basin, an industrial and coal-producing region in the east that is the base of support of the former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, felt that they had much to lose after he was deposed in February.
“What we are seeing is a resurgence of the corrupt leadership of the Yanukovych government, with backing from Russia,” said Viktor I. Butko, chief editor of Zlagada, a weekly newspaper in Slovyansk whose offices were raided by pro-Russian militants on Sunday. Those who barged in, he said, included local people but also Russian military men. Rather than shut down the newspaper, it turned out that they wanted to find a way onto the roof for one of their snipers.
“A Green Man was in my office yesterday,” Mr. Butko said. “He stood right here. He was a Russian and a Russian officer and I am certain of it. I lived 66 years in this town, and I know: These men were not from my town.”
“What’s scary here is the possibility of a third world war. That’s what’s scary,” he added. “Russia doesn’t care about the opinion of the West. If it did, I would not have had a Russian paratrooper in my office yesterday.”“The security and popular forces have held captive an Israeli colonel,” a commander of Iraq’s popular mobilization forces said on Thursday.
“The Zionist officer is ranked colonel and had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group’s terrorist operations,” he added.
Noting that he was arrested along with a number of ISIL terrorists, the commander said, “The Israeli colonel’s name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade of the Zionist regime’s army with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434.”
He said that the relevant bodies are now interrogating the Israeli colonel to understand the reasons behind his fighting alongside the ISIL forces and the presence of other Zionist officers among ISIL terrorists.
The Iraqi security forces said the captured colonel has already made shocking confessions.
Several ISIL militants arrested in the last one year had already confessed that Israeli agents from Mossad and other Israeli espionage and intelligence bodies were present in the first wave of ISIL attacks on Iraq and capture of Mosul in Summer 2014, but no ranking Israeli agent had been arrested.
Political and military experts told FNA that the capture of the Israeli colonel will leave a grave impact on Iraq’s war strategy, including partnership with Israeli allies.
In a relevant development in July, Iraqi volunteer forces announced that they had shot down a drone that was spying on the Arab country’s security forces in the city of Fallujah, Western Iraq.
Iraq’s popular forces reported that they had brought down a hostile surveillance aircraft over the Southeastern Fallujah in Anbar Province.
They said that the wreckage of the ISIL’s spy drone carried ‘Israel-Made’ labels.
This was not the first Israeli-made drone downed in Iraq.
In August an Israeli Hermes drone was shot down in the vicinity of Baghdad Airport.German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks with Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt, center, and British Prime Minister David Cameron at a European Council meeting Friday at E.U. headquarters in Brussels. John Thys/AFP/Getty Images
European leaders said Friday that distrust of the United States over its reported spying on its allies could weaken the international "fight against terrorism," after new leaks revealed that Washington has routinely monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders.
Allegations of spying overshadowed proceedings at a European Union summit in Brussels — a meeting that was supposed to focus on Europe's growing refugee crisis.
"(European leaders) stressed that intelligence gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism," said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council. "This applies to relations between European countries as well as to relations with the USA."
"A lack of trust could prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering," he said.
After summit talks Thursday that lasted past midnight, Van Rompuy announced that France and Germany were seeking bilateral talks with the U.S. by the year's end to resolve the dispute over electronic spying by "secret services."
"What is at stake is preserving our relations with the United States," French President Francois Hollande told reporters at his own early-morning news conference. "They should not be changed because of what has happened. But trust has to be restored and reinforced."
German officials will travel to the U.S. "shortly" to discuss spying allegations, including whether Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone was monitored by the National Security Agency, German government spokesman Georg Streiter said Friday.
"It's become clear that for the future, something must change — and significantly," Merkel said. "We will put all efforts into forging a joint understanding by the end of the year for the cooperation of the (intelligence) agencies between Germany and the U.S. and France — and the U.S. to create a framework for the cooperation."
The current consternation from European leaders regarding the U.S. spying program stems from ongoing leaks of security documents obtained by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
The administration of President Barack Obama believes Snowden has also obtained sensitive material about secret cooperation between the U.S. and allied and nonallied nations, prompting the U.S. to alert foreign intelligence services, The Washington Post reported.
Some of the documents detail data collection programs against countries such as Iran, Russia and China, the U.S. government said, according to the report.Last month, I interviewed for my dream job: to be a first-round NFL quarterback. I went to the most prestigious recruiting convention and was among the most qualified candidates. I felt really good about my résumé: I come from a great program that has produced successful quarterbacks—three Michigan State Spartans started in the NFL last season, and two went to the playoffs (Kirk Cousins and Brian Hoyer).
I’ve been fortunate to have played on great teams, and have proven that I’m a winner. My record is 5-2 against top 10 opponents. I’ve played in a pro-style offense. I can scan the whole field. I’ve dealt with protections and know how to change protections. I can take snaps under center and do a five or seven foot drop, and I’m confident in my arm strength.
Of course, it seemed everyone wanted to talk about one thing: Connor Cook wasn’t a captain in college.
I didn’t go to the Senior Bowl (that was something my agent and I decided, and I don’t have any regrets) so this was my first opportunity to sit face-to-face with NFL decision-makers. The 15-minute formal interviews were an opportunity for them to get to know me on a personal level, but also to show them how smart I am drawing up plays on the board. Beyond my on-field performance, I really pride myself on being a student of the game.
The captain question did come up. Some coaches said, ‘Hey, we know you’ve been asked about this a million times, we don’t care, let’s just talk ball.’ We got right to the easel, where they would ask me to draw plays up or diagnose different coverages on film. But for other coaches, it was the first thing they asked. I understood why they wanted to know. It is a big deal. I gave them an answer that I feel is truthful: I just didn’t get the votes. Being a captain is a title, but nobody needs a title to lead. Not being a captain never hindered my ability to lead, and it never made me doubt myself. It did, however, make me want to work harder and be the best quarterback I can be.
• BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AT THE NFL COMBINE: Jenny Vrentas goes behind-the-scenes as the Dolphins grill an NFL-hopeful QB
I felt like most teams really understood that, and I think they’ve moved past it. With that out of the way, I proved why I should be one of the first quarterbacks taken on April 28.
Connor Cook was 5-2 against Top 10 opponents at Michigan State. AP Photo/Al Goldis
The combine was a great experience for me, but I’d lie if I said I didn’t have a few butterflies. Imagine walking into a room of 11 or 12 chairs, and then one chair in the center. That chair was for me. It’s a bit nerve-wracking because all eyes are on you. And the men sitting in those chairs are guys you’ve grown up watching on TV. When I arrived to the Dolphins’ interview, I couldn’t help but notice Dan Marino: I mean, when you grow up watching football, you think of great quarterbacks that ever played the game—Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana and Dan Marino. In the Cowboys, there’s Jason Garrett and Jerry Jones, both icons in Dallas. Once I got talking, though, the nerves settled and when we got to finally talk football that’s when I felt most comfortable.
As for the drills, I actually felt great about how I performed. I did everything but the bench press. At the combine you throw to receivers you’ve never thrown to before, but I thought those guys did a heck of a job. I was 19-of-21 on throwing, and trust me, I remember every one of those throws. I know I sailed high on an out route, and underthrew a dig route. I thought I threw the out routes to my left well, and two out of the three out routes to my right on time.
Preparing for the combine, you are told pretty much what to expect, so nothing really surprised me. I know you are woken up early, and I know they make you take a drug test right away. I know there are pretty intensive medical exams. I know that the days are long and that the timing of the formal interviews at night is sometimes unpredictable. I was surprised by some of the psychological tests, just how long they were. I figured it might take 15-20 minutes, but one was 350 questions! It definitely tests your mental stamina.
From the moment our season ended in the playoffs against Alabama, my life has been a combination of anticipation and excitement. My dream job is within reach, but until the draft, I just have to wait, unsure of where I’ll be picked, unsure of what type of offense I’ll play in, unsure of what city I’ll move to. It’s the first time in my life that I don’t know how things will turn out, so the best way to handle it is just to control what I can. I’m out here in San Diego working with George Whitfield—a coach I actually have been working with since 2013—but football has become my sole focus. There’s no seven-page paper to worry about or exam on the horizon. I wake up every morning around 7 and begin working out by 8. There’s a throwing session, a speed workout, a lifting session, maybe an hour of down time (I usually take a nap), then film study, another workout and before you know it, the sun has vanished. I’m always in bed around 10 or 10:30 and to be honest, there are a few nights I’m out by 8:30 p.m.
• HOW FREE AGENCY MIGHT IMPACT THE NFL DRAFT: Robert Klemko looks at the effect free agent signings could have on the first 10 draft picks
I’ve noticed my body change, too, especially since working with a nutritionist. She’s instructed me to stay away from fatty foods and fried foods, and to limit carbs. No In-and-Out, unfortunately, and no snacking before bed. Instead of ordering a burger at a restaurant, it’s usually salad and a steak. Another thing: I’ve consumed more protein shakes in the last month and a half than I did during my four years of college. Some of the fat from my face has melted away. I weighed in at 217 during the combine; usually I’m 225.
Footwork has been something I’ve always worked on, but this year it has been more intensive than the past three summers. At first, George and I just did basic drills that didn’t incorporate a whole lot of chaos stuff. Now, the workouts are longer and the drills are specific to things I’m working on; George often throws tennis balls or beanbags at me while I work on throwing over objects such as brooms. Besides pinpoint accuracy, the big thing is perfecting my movement in the pocket. I am refining the way I drop back and move around and still find a guy down field running a route; I still have to be able to hit him right in the numbers. I’m looking forward to my Pro Day on Wednesday. I think there might be some people questioning my velocity, so I’ll have to throw a couple heaters and deep balls to show them I have the arm strength to do so. I’m looking forward to showing that I’m in shape, and can do a whole 55-70-throw routine and be tired, and that I can be pinpoint accurate the entire time. The big interview may be behind me, and now it’s time just to wait. Honestly, that might be even harder.Video/Editing: Justin Gunson
Photos: Chris Wellhausen
Words: AH
With the announcers booming, the riders cheering, and the crowd chanting over and again, Torstein Horgmo hopped onto the sled for one more ride to the top. Despite having fallen hard on his two previous attempts (yet both times managing to rise to his feet and ride away), there was never a doubt in regards to what was about to go down. As the cameras began to converge, Tor leans down, gives one last click to the bindings, and prepares to drop—but then yields. Hands folded and head bent low, it was time for the injured Norwegian to focus.
Friday night at Winter X Games 15 debuted new events, refreshed competition, and one very special NBD into the Aspen/Snowmass night. Beginning with the first-ever Best Method event, riders took to the Big Air jump to pay their homage to Brushie, Terje, Jamie Lynn, and more by showcasing the loftiest Grassers in their arsenal. Jack Mitrani went as far as to hyper one-piece the contest, harking to the days of hardboot ankle-tweakage with a class only J-Town could afford. Not to be outdone, Chas Guldemond pulled the ultimate ‘Text Voting Is BS’ wardrobe malfunction, kicking out his strongest between-the-bindings tweaker while somehow misplacing his shirt (and chest hair, for that matter). But the kids with the truest grab-style? None other than 2002 Olympic Gold Medalist Ross Powers and 2010 Bronze Medalist Scotty Lago. The comeback of ages, Ross was boning out nose methods like never before, giving the crowds a much-appreciated incognito darkhorse to cheer for throughout. But in the end, Scott Robert kicked ’em out harder, held ’em longer, and tweaked ’em stonger than the rest, resulting in respect from the field and cheers from the crowd en route to his first X Games Best Method Gold Medal.
The lights dimmed, the sounds grew, and it became obvious to the engaged crows that the stage was finally set—prime-time snowboarding was about to begin. X Games Big Air has long been a standout event of the annual gathering, with names such as Halldór, Torstein, Travis, and many more earning the recent titles. But the times, well, they have been a-changing. With the Big Air competitors sharing an average age of 19.6, it was clear the torch was ready to be passed—if odds-favorite Torstein Horgmo could finally be beat. Coming off a spectacular showing in Slopestyle Prelims where he posted a 97 (the highest Slope score in X Games history, in fact), all eyes were on Sebastién Toutant going into the night’s ender session. The 18-year old Quebecoise has been showing signs of greatness since he first stepped on the international stage at 13, and after coming back from a leg injury that sidelined him for most of last season, has been set on finding his way to the top. One of the first riders to land a back double ten a few years ago, his flawless and almost casual (and actually “double corked”…) 10s, 12s, and Cab 12s are something to see, and would earn the young Canadian a Silver Medal in X Games Big Air. As Seb would later say, “Big Air is pushing progession so much. Right now, all the tricks in Big Air are making their way to Slopestyle. All of those double cork variations are going to be here on Sunday, and it’s great to see. I’m stoked, for sure!”
Keeping things young, 17-year Sage Kotsenburg rounded out the Big Air podium, gaining a bit of satisfaction for his questionable snubbing in the Slopestyle Prelims earlier that day. The Park City kid was ecstatic with his place: “Being up with Tor and Seb is great! They’ve been killing it all year, and it’s sick to be up with them.”
So there he was. Torstein’s head was leaned slightly forward, contemplating what was about to come. As the rounds of “Triple Cork, Triple Cork” rocked the slopes, he looked up, fixed his gear, and began to slid down the runway—and then came the drop. As a collective inhale silenced the masses, all watched, unblinking, as 1, 2, and 3 times around Tor would go. The Triple Cork, as so many had hope to see, had finally been brought to X!! Or wait … was it? The “Media” rushed to claim it immediately, but we’re not so sure—and even Tor himself disagrees. “No, it’s not. I wanted to come around fakie, but had to put down a little hand drag. It was probably the stupidest move I’ve ever done in my whole life. [Laughs] These guys [Seb and Sage] looked like they had a better time doing their tricks than me!” Regardless of whether or not “The Triple” has been put down at X, once thing’s for sure: anyone sending three flips over an 85-footer on live TV—while suffering from broken ribs and a possible concussion—is a boss.
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With Superpipe, Slopestyle, Best Method, Real Snow, and Big Air Finals all on the schedule, this year’s X Games at Aspen/Snowmass promises to tear the roof off. Stay up on all Winter X Games 15 coverage atFacebook.com/TWSnow, Twitter.com/TWSnow, and right here at TWSnow.com.
~~~~~~Baxter was banned after traces of cocaine were found in a sample last year Lynne Cameron/EMPICS Sport
Jose Baxter will resume his playing career next week and re-join Everton after serving a season-long drugs ban.
The FA has confirmed Baxter will be able to register with a club from July 1 with his suspension due to end on Friday.
Baxter, 25, will report to Everton next Monday for the start of pre-season training and will work with David Unsworth’s Under-23 squad after being handed a season-long contract by the club.
Kenwright decided to give Baxter a second chance at Everton after reading an interview with him in The Times Tony McArdle/Getty Images
The midfielder was contacted by Everton chairman Bill Kenwright following an interview in The Times in which he discussed his ban after traces of cocaine were found in a sample given following a night out while he was at Sheffield United.
He has been given a second chance by the club he…Hax, informally known as Hax$ or HAX FUCKING MONEY, is a Melee player based in Manhattan. He used to solo main Captain Falcon with the pink costume (commonly known as Captain Fabulous). However, in early 2014, he switched to solo maining Fox, and he was widely regarded as the most technical Fox player when he was still active. In April 2016, he went on a indefinite hiatus due to having a calcified FCU tendon, which was left untreated because no surgeon was willing to remove it. During this hiatus, he began working on the B0XX, a controller designed in a similar vein to the upcoming Smashbox by Hitbox, after having tested the original and finding it unsatisfactory. He has also slowly made a return to competitive Melee as of March 2017, having finally been treated for his hand problems, and will occasionally attend various Melee events showcasing the potential of the B0XX.
Hax is currently ranked 1st on the NYC Metropolitan Area Melee Power Rankings and 38th on the 2018 MPGR.
He joined Even Matchup Gaming on January 29th, 2019.[1]
History [ edit ]
Origin of the name [ edit ]
Hax used to be into competitive Pokémon. In the context of competitive Pokémon, "hax" is lingo for the uncontrollable RNG involved in battles, such as critical hits, that can sometimes undeservedly turn the tide of a match. The high number of angry players who would call "hax" after severe losses due to this prompted Hax to name himself after this term. When switching to competitive Melee, Hax wanted a fourth character in the space given for tags in-game, and decided to add the dollar sign to it, eventually giving birth to "Hax$" or "Hax Money".
2008-2009: Starting Off [ edit ]
Hax began his Melee career as an up-and-coming Captain Falcon main who quickly rose the ranks in his region. At his first major tournament, Pound 3, he placed 9th; he lost to Mew2King in the first round of winners' bracket, then ran through losers' bracket and defeated LoZR, Silent Wolf, and Colbol in losers', then was eliminated by Azen. A year later, at Revival of Melee, Hax once again showed fantastic prowess with his Captain Falcon; he lost to Eggm in winners', but went on another mini-run through losers' bracket, taking out thumbswayup, HBK, and RaynEX. He then lost to Jman 0-2, with both games going down to the last stock, finishing at 13th in singles overall.
Hax's next major was Apex 2009, which was also his biggest breakthrough in the Melee scene to that day. At that tournament, he defeated ChuDat in winners' bracket before losing to Jman, but went on another run through losers', this time taking out big names such as Anther, Scar, and Kage before losing to ChuDat in a rematch, placing 4th overall. At GENESIS, he teamed with Hungrybox, where they were defeated by Armada and Aniolas in the winners' bracket. They rose through the losers' bracket, but only reached 13th place. He reached 7th place in Melee singles, besting many of the most talented players from North America and Europe.
Hax then reached 13th place at Pound 4, the second highest placed Captain Falcon at the tournament (with the highest placed being SilentSpectre, who was considered the strongest Captain Falcon at the time). In Pound 4 doubles, he teamed with Darc and was rather successful, placing 4th. At Apex 2010, Hax once again lost in the first round of winners', this time to I.B from Canada. He then eliminated WarriorKnight, th0rn, Silent Wolf, and finally, ChuDat in a rematch from Apex 2009, before being stopped by Zhu's Falco, placing 9th overall in singles.
After a comparatively low placement of 13th at Revival of Melee 3 and a handful of tournaments where he failed to break the top 8, Hax once again placed within the top 8 at Pound V. There, he continued his trend of losing very early in winners' bracket, this time to Zhu. He then tore through losers' bracket, defeating tect, MacD, Kels, Amsah, and VaNz, before meeting and being defeated by Axe in losers' quarters, finishing 5th overall. He also placed 3rd in teams, teaming with Hungrybox. Hax then placed 9th at GENESIS 2, where he sent HomeMadeWaffles to losers' and eliminated Fuzzyness and Fly Amanita, but was defeated by Taj in winners' and PPMD (then known as Dr. PeePee) in losers'.
2012: Best Falcon in the world [ edit ]
Hax placed in top 8 at Apex 2012. Although he lost to Zhu 1-2 early in winners' bracket, he eliminated SFAT 2-1 and MacD 2-1 in losers' bracket before losing to JAVI 0-2 in losers' top 8. He continued to perform extremely well in tournaments later that year, with a 5th place finish at Zenith 2012 and Revival of Melee 5 and a 6th place finish at MELEE-FC10R Legacy. At the latter tournament, he made it into the final round-robin bracket, where he defeated Kels 3-1 and Darkrain 3-2, with the latter match solidifying his position as the best solo main Captain Falcon in the world. However, he lost to everyone else in the bracket, placing 6th overall.
2013: Turn to the Dark Side (20XX) [ edit ]
Hax placed in top 8 at Apex 2013, defeating JAVI 2-1 in a rematch in winners' bracket, as well as Kage 2-0, before losing to Dr. PeePee 0-2. In losers' bracket, he eliminated Axe 2-0, but then lost to Mango 0-2 for top 8. At EVO 2013, Hax defeated S2J 2-1 in the winners' quarters pool to make it into the semifinals pool. He lost to Dr. PeePee 1-2 in winners' bracket, and then to Ice 0-2 in losers' bracket, placing 9th overall.
At this point in his Melee career, Hax popularized the "20XX" joke, depicting a post-apocalyptic world where everyone played Fox to TAS levels of perfection. He also began claiming that Captain Falcon, as a character, was not strong enough to make him become the top Melee player in the community. Although many doubted that he would switch to Fox at first, he did so regardless, dropping Captain Falcon entirely after The Big House 3, much to the disappointment of many Captain Falcon fans. It seemed for a while that Hax would take his Fox to the top level at his next major after winning No Johns Monthly, defeating VaNz and The Moon in a dominating fashion.
2014: Rise of Fox in a summer of Smash [ edit ]
However, Hax underperformed in Melee singles at Apex 2014, placing 17th. He lost to s0ft in winners' finals of the first round of pools, and made it to losers' quarters in the second round of pools before losing to Ice 1-2. However, he managed to win Melee doubles with Mew2King. They lost to Mango and Lucky 2-3 in winners' semis, but once in losers' bracket, they managed to defeat Shroomed and S2J 2-0, Armada and Ice 3-2, and Hungrybox and Plup 3-1 to make it to grand finals against Mango and Lucky. They won the first and second sets 3-2 and 3-1, respectively.
Hax upset Mango 3-1 in winners' finals at WHOBO MLG, including two Fox ditto victories, but then lost two consecutive 0-3 sets in grand finals to his Falco. At SKTAR 3, Hax defeated players such as ZoSo and Nintendude in winners' bracket before losing to Armada 0-2. In losers' bracket, he eliminated ChuDat 2-0 and Zhu 2-0 before being eliminated by Mew2King 0-2 in losers' quarters, placing 5th overall. Due to Hax's strong placements at WHOBO MLG and SKTAR 3, he qualified for the MLG Anaheim 2014 championship bracket.
In his pool at MLG Anaheim 2014, Hax defeated Leffen 3-2, Colbol 3-1, s0ft 3-0, and Remen 3-0, but lost to PPMD 1-3, Mew2King 1-3, and Axe 1-3. He was seeded in losers' bracket in the championship bracket, where he eliminated S2J 3-2 and PewPewU 3-2 before being eliminated by Leffen 2-3, finishing off at 7th place.
At the largest Melee tournament at the time, EVO 2014, he placed 13th out of a massive number of 970 entrants. In the winners' quarters pool, he unexpectedly lost early to Zanguzen. However, he managed to sweep the losers' quarters pool, eliminating Lovage, Reason, DEHF, Hyprid, and Nintendude, before losing to Plup 0-2 in top 16, ending his run.
At Zenith 2014, Hax placed 2nd in Melee singles, defeating Fly Amanita 2-0 and Wizzrobe 3-1 in winners' bracket, making it to winners' finals against Mew2King. He won the first two games, including a win against Mew2King's Marth on Final Destination, though ended up losing the set 2-3. In losers' finals, he defeated Zhu 3-2. Hax then won the first set of grand finals against Mew2King 3-1, with another win on Final Destination, although he still lost the second set 0-3. Hax also won Melee doubles with Mew2King, defeating Axe and ZeRo in both winners' finals and grand finals.
2014: Post summer of Smash [ edit ]
Hax attended The Big House 4, the 4th largest Melee tournament of all time. In pools, he had a close set with Vro, where Hax won the set 2-1. In top 16, Hax faced off against Mango's Captain Falcon and Marth, losing 1-3, sending him to losers bracket. He then had a close set with Kalamazhu in losers, taking it 3-2 and advancing into top 8. After defeating Kels 3-0, he faced Armada in losers top 8, taking the first game convincingly, but ultimately ended up losing 1-3, placing 5th. In doubles, he teamed with fellow Fox main Leffen. They beat HugS and Lucky 2-0 and DJ Nintendo and The Moon 2-0 as well, before losing to Hungrybox and Plup 2-3. In losers, they defeated SFAT and Axe, and VaNz and MacD, both 3-1. In losers finals, they had a rematch with Hungrybox and Plup, but lost once again, this time 1-3, netting them 3rd.
Hax attended the New York regional tournament series Justice 4. In winners finals, he faced Armada, where he lost 1-3. After beating Zhu 3-0 in losers finals, he faced Armada once again in grand finals. This time, Armada ended up taking it 3-2 in a much closer set. He also teamed with Armada in doubles, getting 1st without dropping a set.
On January 1, 2015, Hax announced that he would be taking an indefinite hiatus from Smash as a result of a hand injury. Due to this injury as well as insomnia, he had to drop out of singles at Apex 2015.
2015: The Return [ edit ]
Hax made his full return to Smash after recovering from his hand surgery at Super Nebulous 3. He lost to Nintendude in winners semis 2-3, getting sent to losers. After beating Wizzrobe 3-1, he lost to Lucky in losers semis 2-3, placing 4th.
2015: The Second Hiatus [ edit ]
Hax has announced another indefinite hiatus. He has been suffering from insomnia, and he has stated that it gets worse whenever he is at a national or a tournament in general. He says that it may have to do with his "20XX" mentality of perfection. He says that he will still be practicing, and going to tournaments such as Apex and EVO, but will not attended as many tournaments until his insomnia is under control. Tafokints made a video detailing Hax's condition, saying that he, as of writing this, is in a cast for his prior injury, but has been making progress, and will be making a return in the near future.
2016: The Second Return [ edit ]
Hax has made a return at NYC Nebulous Prime Locals. He has defeated DJ Nintendo at these events, placing first in the ones he has attended. However, he has said in interview that he is not ready to return in full force just yet. His first huge tournament of 2016 was Shots Fired 2, where he placed 3rd, and used the money he got from the tournament to pay for his last surgery. His next big tournament was Pound 2016, where he went on a rampage through pools, making it to Winner's Ro32. There, he defeated smashers such as SFAT 2-1, Nintendude 3-0, and eventually defeated Mango in Winner's semis 3-2, in a nailbiter set where Mango missed a crucial edgeguard, giving Hax his ticket to Winner's finals against Hungrybox, where he was defeated 3-0. Sent to Loser's finals, Hax was pitted in a rematch against Mango, where again, he was defeated 3-0, ending Hax's run at 3rd place.
2016: The Third Hiatus [ edit ]
After initially making himself eligible for being voted to participate in Smash Summit 2, Hax had to drop out due to another hand injury. Its recurrence has prompted another indefinite hiatus from Smash until he can fully recover.
2017: Third Return and B0XX [ edit ]
Hax posted an update video on January 19th, 2017, further detailing the complications with his hands and finally meeting a doctor that would treat most of the hand problems that arose (the incurable thumb joint arthritis that eventually developed on his left hand now prevents him from using a GameCube controller), as well as his experiences with the Smashbox during his hiatus. While Hax had a relatively painless experience using the Smashbox even before the final hand surgery, he proposed several changes, most of which were shot down due to logistical issues with submitting them. Cactuar then approached Hax and told him about two Rutgers University engineering students, Arhum Siddiqi (also known as WatchingTime) and James Taylor, who were working on a Smashbox-based product called the "Icebox" that would work better for Ice Climbers players' desyncing techniques. A controller design commissioned and approved by Frycook, Hax decided to contact them and contribute to improving the Icebox for use with Fox, slowly implementing the changes he initially submitted to the Smashbox team, and giving the product a new name-- the "B0XX". While no release date has been set, he has stated that the B0XX will be customizable, and additionally slated a return to competitive Melee for February 2017, though he would not attend a tournament until a month later at Smash Summit Spring 2017 as a commentator.
After a few months of attending locals on the B0XX, Hax won his first tournament with it, Nebulous Melee 85, in May 2017. Since he began using the B0XX, he has taken sets from ranked players such as Westballz, KJH, Crush, Fiction, Kage, Captain Smuckers, DJ Nintendo, and Qerb. He has also since made update videos defending his thinking on the legality of the B0XX and is still working on getting it |
’ve got a great graphics card it looks fantastic. We definitely believe PC games are great and if they’re done right and done well by a studio, they’re phenomenal. There’s a lot of debate and discussion. I can’t predict the future, but I’m really happy with how Red Faction: Armageddon looks on PC. It’s beautiful.”
Yeah, we’d love to see it too.Ask anyone from Texas about the things they miss from their home state, and you’ll get an answer that’s usually several minutes long. Among the litany is always Tex-Mex food, ubiquitous breakfast tacos, and quality barbecue, but somewhere in there you’re bound to hear about the kolache. If you’re not familiar, that’s okay: It’s a Texas thing, at least by way of a bunch of old Czech immigrants. And up until now, it’s been all but impossible to consistently find them in Los Angeles.
For those unfamiliar: Kolaches are essentially lightly baked balls of pastry dough often filled (at least in Texas) with savory ingredients like sausage, cheese, eggs, or all three. There are sweet kolaches as well, but for Texas purposes they are most commonly thought of as a savory on-the-go bite, served commonly at doughnut shops, takeaway stands, and even gas stations.
Now they’re coming to Los Angeles thanks to brothers Mark and James Morales, who call themselves Morning Boys. The catering-only outfit has mostly been working the backlot and movie studio circuit, but is starting to branch out with private orders and drop-offs at different spots around town.
For example, you should be able to find Morning Boys kolaches at Hi Lo Liquor in Culver City on Thursdays, and next week they’ll be popping up at Cafe Demitasse in Little Tokyo as well.
The move to jump into kolaches is a prescient one, considering publications like Smithsonian Mag have for years been calling the regional pastry favorite “the next big thing.” Until now, the closest available option was at SK Donuts (though they reportedly stopped selling them last year) and the chain Kolache Factory, which operates one West Coast location in Tustin.
If all goes well, the Morning Boys team will be expanding their coffee shop presence in the coming weeks and months. They’re also actively shopping for a dedicated space on the Eastside or Downtown, and hope to open before the end of the year.I ahve always enjoyed albums which offered up such a fantastic start and used that momentum to keep the listener's attention to the end. "Straight Outta Compton" is one such album which I throughly enjoy due to that fact.
The first FOUR tracks lay down the foundation of this solid album. The first three tracks highlight the strengths of Ice Cube. M.C. Ren and Eazy-E. The forth shows how underrated M.C. Ren is within the world of hip-hop. The rest of the album is certainly not weak at all (well, except for the "Bonus Beats" track off the remastered edition) and serves as a solid structure upon that foundation.
My favorite track on the album is "Quiet On Tha Set" which features M.C. Ren dishing out some fat rhymes against a very sick beat. It's just so good that it deserves to be cranked up. It is an infectious groove. Trust me. Words don't do it justice.
Other highlights: Eazy-E's ode to O.E. (8-Ball), Tha D.O.C. leading off on "Parental Discretion" (prior to having his vocal chords slashed), all of Ice Cube's contributions (especially on "Dopeman") and especially D.J. Yella for keepin' it all funky 'nuff.
I don't claim to be knowledgeable of hip-hop. I do know that this is the album to get for some timeless oldskool music which has stood the test of time. I also higly recommend its followup, "Efil4zaggin", which is even stronger than this. Get both at once. Now.BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE/ GOOGLE STREET VIEW Salah Koubar, 20, has been jailed for seven years for rape
Salah Koubar, 20, threw the South Korean woman over the railings at West Dulwich Station and dragged her into the bushes to carry out his attack. A passer-by later found the woman running along the platform wearing only a T-shirt and knickers in the early hours of the morning. The court heard the victim had hoped to meet a friend on her last night in London before travelling home to South Korea. Koubar met the woman at Freedom Bar in Soho, and promised to take her to another venue called VIP in Westminster.
Instead Koubar tricked the woman into taking a bus leaving central London. The rapist took the woman’s phone away when she realised they were going in the wrong direction and ended up at West Dulwich Station where the attack began. Prosecutor Warwick Tatford described how a passenger catching an early train heard the woman's screams and saw her running along the platform. Mr Tatford said: “The victim grabbed the passenger's arm and tried to use him as a human shield against the defendant. “He described the female as'shaking like a leaf and with tears in her eyes'. “He said she looked like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards - little did he know that's pretty much what had happened. “He said the defendant appeared calm - or 'a bit too calm really'.”
BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE Koubar showed no emotion as he was led to the cells
You repeatedly lied to her and told her she could trust you. At some point you decided that you were going to have sex with her Recorder Timothy Greene
When Koubar realised the witness was about to call the police he jumped on a train seconds before the doors closed. Koubar, who came to the UK via France and was granted asylum in this country, was arrested two days after the attack on July 26. Jailing Koubar for seven years, the judge Mr Recorder Timothy Greene said: “It was terrifying for her to be in a strange city not speaking the language. “You repeatedly lied to her and told her she could trust you. At some point you decided that you were going to have sex with her. “Initially your attitude did not seem to be controlling or sinister. “But then your behaviour became chilling. You took her phone off her, and then you took her bag. “It was clear from the witness box of the effects your crime had on the victim. You took away her sense of security. Her self-image has been battered.”
GETTY STOCK IMAGE A passenger catching an early train heard the woman's screams
Koubar showed no emotion as he was led to the cells. He claimed he had paid the woman £200 for sex, but no intimacy had taken place. Koubar of Densole Close, Beckenham, Kent, later claimed he then snatched her bag to try and get his money back. He also said that the victim had ripped her clothes herself. In an impact statement, the woman said she feared Koubar would kill her during the attack and no longer goes out after dark following the attack. She said: “I trusted him. I had no romantic intention with him at all. “He betrayed my trust. I was really scared when he was doing what he was doing. “I thought he might kill me because of his action and power. “If a member of the public had not come to help me he could have done more.”
GOOGLE STREET VIEW Koubar attacked the woman at West Dulwich train stationWork continues on Slime as we continue to test out new methods of level building and world design!
This week:
Playtest Session
After some casual play testing, we discovered we are moving in the right direction with the feel of Slime. Players enjoy sliding around on the different terrains. Although, there were some questions involving some of the terrains. The material for our sticky terrain was the most confusing for players. It is hard for the player to tell what it is doing to them. A good solution for this would be some sort of particle effect or change to the terrain when they stick to it. Our bouncy terrain continues to be the fan favorite, players seem to enjoy bouncing around everywhere, keeping this in the back of our minds for later is important.
Art
Some beginner work for our character designs and textures have started. Because we are so early in the stages of the game, the polish of the art is not our main concern; but the more art we produce, the better we can imagine world we want to create.
Next week:
First thing Tomorrow morning we have a meeting to discuss progress and what goals we have met/need to meet. The team is excited to get our feet wet with many new environments to work with. We have most of the team thinking of level designs, we see that as one of the repeating problems with moving forward with our game. Many of the goals we have to meet have to do with figuring out how we want to lay out levels and introduce our mechanics to the player.
I hope you are enjoying Slime Interactive’s blog posts so far; and I hope you continue to follow along as the team continues to work towards making an amazing game!
AdvertisementsRhode Island State Police said Thursday that they've arrested a Woonsocket woman who they said fraudulently spent money that was raised on a crowdfunding site for a disease she didn't have.
Alicia Pierini, 35 was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses over $1,500 and access to a computer for fraudulent purposes.
State police said Pierini told friends and family members that she had a brain tumor or brain cancer. Investigators said an acquaintance started a GoFundMe account to help her with medical expenses. Donations totaled about $28,000.
"Ms. Pierini admitted to altering her appearance, by shaving her head, her eyebrows, and other parts of her body to further to go along with the charade,” said Rhode Island State Police Detective Commander Gerry McKinney.
But she never underwent chemotherapy or cancer treatment even after facing charges, according to detectives.
Still, there are no signs Pierini thinks she did anything wrong.
"It's pretty sickening and disheartening that someone would do that,” said McKinney. "Remorse? Remorse, I'm not sure, as well.”
Instead, detectives said they found financial records of lavish vacations and other luxury spending.
"As of this time, she has no money left in her account,” said McKinney.
NBC 10 went to Pierini's home to find out if she feels sorry for the people police said she duped, but no one came to the door.
But after hearing about the story, a neighbor told NBC 10 that Pierni is still telling everyone she does, in fact, have brain cancer.
NBC 10 inquired why a case like this matters, asking police how the situation is different than someone pretending to be homeless and soliciting money on the streets.
“Well, pretending to be homeless, they're actually out there on a street corner,” McKinney said. “Whether you believe it or not, they're standing out there six to seven hours a day.”
It’s a theft, police saID, from the hearts of those just wanting to help.
GoFundMe.com has so far reimbursed about $18,000 of those who donated through the online website.
But there's still about $10,000 from people who mailed in money that has yet to be returned.
"It’s important to remember that our platform is backed by the GoFundMe Guarantee, which means that in the rare case that GoFundMe, law enforcement or a user finds campaigns are misused, donors are fully protected and will get their money back,” GoFundMe.com said in a statement obtained by NBC 10. “In the small handful of cases where misuse occurs, GoFundMe takes action to resolve the issue.
In this case, all GoFundMe donors have been refunded.”
Pierini was arraigned in Providence District Court and released on personal recognizance.
State police released Pierini's photograph, noting that if any additional victims recognize Pierini and want to come forward, they should call the Financial Crimes Unit at 401-444-1201.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
A London hospital is to open the UK’s first maternity clinic specifically designed for rape survivors.
The specialist service has been developed in response to women saying they experienced flashbacks of being assaulted while undergoing routine maternity tests and giving birth.
The clinic at the Royal London Hospital will provide specialist gynaecological exams and mental health support after labour. Antenatal classes have also been tailored to those who have experienced sexual assault, while women who are not yet pregnant can access pre-conception care.
It is a joint initiative from Barts Health NHS Trust and the My Body Back project.
Pavan Amara, a 28-year-old student nurse, founded My Body Back in 2015 after being raped as a teenager herself. It runs support groups in the capital for women who have been raped.
“In our sessions, a lot of women said they wanted a baby, but they couldn’t face people touching them and they were worried they’d experience flashbacks and would feel totally out of control of their body,” says Ms Amara. “A woman who had a baby already - about 15 years after being gang-raped - felt when she gave birth that there were lots of parallels, with lots of people standing around her, and the doctor put his hand into her vagina - that was somebody taking away her right to consent again.”
She adds that words and body positions can be “triggering” for victims of sexual assualt. “A clinician told one woman to ‘relax because it would be over sooner’ and it was hard for her because that’s what her rapist had kept telling her. Certain body positions can also remind women of what happened. And a lot of women felt that after they were pregnant, all that mattered was the baby’s health, and no one was talking to the Mum about what made them feel comfortable. You become just a vagina to give birth but mentally they were dealing with all of this."
A 37-year-old rape survivor, who had a baby two years ago, said: “I was given gas and air while in labour and I started hallucinating, seeing the man who had attacked me in the room. I managed to articulate what was happening to my husband, but he wasn’t equipped to deal with it at all. I was terrified and screaming. I had to explain to every different staff member that I had been attacked. I was also not coping well with strangers touching me and I felt that the staff were blaming me for being oversensitive.”
She adds that it made her slow to bond with her daughter: “I still wonder how this affected her early emotional development. I feel angry that my rapist was allowed to do that to her and there was nothing to protect us from that. For the last year, I have been thinking that I would love another baby but I couldn’t have one because I didn’t want to risk this happening again. I am so over the moon that this clinic is happening. This allows me and my husband to have another child in safety.”
Inderjeet Kaur, a consultant midwife at the Royal London, added: “For women who have been sexually assaulted it is especially important that they feel in control and are offered seamless continuity of care. This will promote confidence and trust so they can be open with their midwife to ensure that their experience will not trigger painful memories, and help nurture a strong lasting bond between mother and baby.”
Face-to-face appointments will be offered from July 29. Woman from outside the hospital’s catchment area can ask to be referred. Ms Amara says that she hopes to set up more clinics all over the country.The rusty patched bumble bee was added to the federal Endangered Species List today, the first native bee to be protected under the law in the continental U.S. Threatened by disease, habitat loss, and pesticides, the rusty patched bumble bee is now listed as "endangered," which will require action to prevent the bee from going extinct.
“Today’s Endangered Species listing is the best—and probably last—hope for the recovery of the rusty patched bumble bee. Bumble bees are dying off, vanishing from our farms, gardens, and parks, where they were once found in great numbers,” said Rebecca Riley, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“We are very pleased to see one of North America’s most imperiled species receive the protection it needs,” said Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, the petitioning organization. “Now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the rusty patched bumble bee as endangered, it stands a chance of surviving the many threats it faces – from the use of neonicotinoid pesticides to diseases.”
The plump bee with a rusty patch marking on its back-section was once common in 28 states across the East and upper Midwest as well as large parts of Canada, but in the last two decades the bee has disappeared from over 90 percent of its historic range.
The endangered species decision for the rusty patched bumble bee comes after years of calls from conservationists and scientists to protect the native bee species. Bumble bees are prodigious pollinators, essential to blueberries, tomatoes, and clover, as well as native flowering plants. The economic value of bumble bee and other native pollinators is estimated at $9 billion per year in the United States, according to the White House.
One of America’s bedrock environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), provides comprehensive protection to both the species and its habitat. The Act has been an essential tool for protecting bald eagles, grizzly bears, and scores of other iconic species. ESA listing for the rusty patched bumble bee will ensure that the federal government takes action to prevent the bee from going extinct.
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation filed a petition to list the rusty patched bumble bee as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act in 2013. Xerces and NRDC filed a lawsuit challenging the FWS’s failure to act on the petition in 2014. Pursuant to a settlement in that suit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to make a listing decision by September 2016. That decision, issued on September 22nd, 2016, proposed the listing finalized today.
Additional Materials
Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants: Status for Rusty Patched Bumble Bee: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/11/2017-00195/endangered-and-threatened-species-rusty-patched-bumble-bee
Bigger Isn’t Better: Bayer Takeover of Monsanto Is Bad for Farmers, Bees https://www.nrdc.org/experts/rebecca-riley/bigger-isnt-better-bayer-takeover-bad-farmers-bees
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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 2 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDCAssistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg claims victory in the state Supreme Court race against incumbent Justice David Prosser on Wednesday at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison. Unofficial results Wednesday showed Kloppenburg with a paper-thin lead over Prosser after a race marked by massive voter turnout. Credit: Mark Hoffman
By of the
Madison — A recount is all but certain in the race for state Supreme Court, which would pose a host of legal questions, raise the political stakes in efforts to recall state senators, ignite a new bout of political fundraising and further fuel Wisconsin's ongoing battle over union bargaining.
On Wednesday, nearly 20 hours after the polls closed, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg claimed victory over Justice David Prosser after an unofficial tally showed her holding the thinnest of leads. According to an unofficial tally by The Associated Press, she was up 204 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast - a margin of 1/100th of a percent.
"Wisconsin voters have spoken, and I am grateful for, and humbled by, their confidence and trust," she said in a statement.
Wisconsin is already a focus of national attention because of the fight over Gov. Scott Walker's collective bargaining measure, and now the state's election system will likely get unprecedented scrutiny under the first statewide recount in more than 20 years.
The future of Walker's union measure also hangs in the balance - the legislation has yet to go into effect because of court challenges, and its fate is ultimately expected to be decided by the Supreme Court.Prosser issued his own statement, which said: "The victor in this election won't be decided today, or even tomorrow, as counties conduct their canvasses which will better reconcile the reported results.... We have survived an epic campaign battle, and we will continue to fight for every vote cast."
Kloppenburg's lead could disappear or grow stronger once official tallies are sent by counties to the Government Accountability Board, which runs state elections.
"I'll stress to the public that those are unofficial results," board director Kevin Kennedy said of figures showing Kloppenburg ahead. "They're very good numbers,... but we have not completed our process."
Kennedy and political observers from both sides said they expected that whoever loses will ask for a recount, and that any recount could wind up in litigation. The last statewide recount was in 1989 over a referendum to change the state Constitution to allow officials to provide income tax credits on property taxes or sales taxes people paid.
The proposal lost by 650 votes in the first official count and by 1,098 in the recount, he said.
But there are no records of statewide recounts for races involving candidates since before 1913, Kennedy said.
There was a statewide recount in the governor's race in 1858, Kennedy said, but he said he did not know if there were any recounts between 1858 and 1913.
Unique situation
The campaigns of Kloppenburg and Prosser have talked to election officials about the process for recounts and what fundraising rules would be in place, Kennedy said.
Brian Nemoir, Prosser's campaign director, said he had been through about 10 recounts in his political career, but none involving a statewide race.
"There's no playbook for this," he said.
With a recount looming, the next step is to make sure "ballot integrity" is protected, Nemoir said.
Nemoir said the campaign was beginning the process of checking with vote counters in each of the state's 72 counties to make sure ballots are protected and no one tampers with them.
He said the campaign would work to make sure there is a reconciliation between the number of votes the media were reporting and what the counties were reporting.
At a news conference in Madison, Kloppenburg said she was "ecstatic" with the results and believed they would hold up when the official returns are certified or after a possible challenge by Prosser. She said it was premature to comment on whether she would challenge the results if they show she lost to Prosser.
The winner of Tuesday's election is to take office Aug. 1 for a 10-year term on the court. If Kloppenburg wins, it will be the second time in three years that an incumbent was defeated.
Michael Gableman beat then-Justice Louis Butler in 2008, but before that it had been 41 years since an incumbent lost a race for a high court seat. Just five Wisconsin Supreme Court justices have been unseated by challengers since the court was created in 1852.
Most votes were counted Tuesday and the early hours of Wednesday, but a few precincts were not tallied until later Wednesday. Kennedy said absentee and military ballots should have been included in all those counts, but in a news conference he stressed that discrepancies in totals are likely to arise.
"There will be changes because this is a very human process," he said.
Once official numbers are in, either candidate - but no one else - can request a recount once the votes officially have been canvassed. If the margin between the candidates is less than 0.5% the state charges nothing to conduct the recount. If the margin is between 0.5% and 2%, the candidate asking for the recount must pay $5 per ward.
The margin currently falls easily within the state's trigger for a recount at no cost.
The government's cost of a recount is likely well over $1 million, with those costs largely borne by counties that have to recount the ballots, said Kennedy.
Candidates can't yet formally request a recount from the Accountability Board because county officials haven't finished putting together their official vote totals. The earliest a recount could begin would be late next week, he said.
Process detailed
Here's how the process would work in the coming days:
By 4 p.m. Wednesday, municipal clerks were to have delivered all their materials to the offices of county clerks around the state.
By 9 a.m. Thursday, county boards of canvassers have to start meeting and making an official report on ward-by-ward vote totals. Those reports will be sent to the Accountability Board.
The Accountability Board technically has until May 15 to certify the results, but Kennedy said a recount could begin by next week.
Once official statewide results are in, the losing candidate has three business days to decide whether to request a recount.
If a recount is requested, the Accountability Board would issue an order that it start simultaneously in counties around the state. Workers would sort through all the voting materials, double-check that they have the proper number of voters in each area, and recount ballots.
Observers could challenge ballots, which would then be set aside for further review.
About 90% of ballots are counted by running a paper document filled out by a voter through an optical scanner, Kennedy said.
Once counties complete their work on a possible recount, the new official totals would be sent to the Accountability Board again.
After any possible recount, the issue could still go to the courts.
In one twist, state law calls for Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson to appoint the state judge who would hear the case if the loser of a recount in a statewide election goes to court over the outcome. Abrahamson and Prosser have clashed on the court. Prosser's private remark calling Abrahamson a "total bitch" was the subject of a recent political ad attacking Prosser.
State law says the trial judge in the case should be a reserve judge if one is available.
"The chief justice picks the reserve judge, which of course would add controversy to what is already controversial," said Janine Geske, a former Supreme Court justice and now a professor at Marquette University Law School.
Once there is a ruling, it may be appealed to the Court of Appeals based in Madison, a court made up of five members: Margaret Vergeront, Brian Blanchard, Gary Sherman, Paul Higginbotham and Paul Lundsten.
None of the five judges on the appeals court endorsed either candidate. Blanchard and Kloppenburg shared the same campaign manager, Melissa Mulliken.
The statute says the appeals process outlined above is the "exclusive judicial remedy" in the case of a recount dispute. It does not explicitly say whether the finding of the Court of Appeals could then be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
But Kennedy of the Accountability Board said he understands the law to mean that a decision by the court of appeals on the race could be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Under Supreme Court rules, Prosser alone would decide whether to hear a case if it came before the high court. If he steps aside, that would leave six justices to hear the case and raises the possibility of a 3-3 split. In that case, the ruling by the appeals court would stand.
Much of the court race has been a proxy fight over Walker, with conservatives saying they needed to preserve the current majority on the court and liberals saying they would have a better chance of overturning the collective bargaining measure with Kloppenburg on the court. The two candidates distanced themselves from that talk, saying they would rule impartially on all cases.
Outside spending was heavy in the race, with a record $3.6 million spent by special interest groups on TV ads, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School.
The public heard less from the candidates themselves because of spending limits. Both candidates received $400,000 in taxpayer money for their campaigns and agreed to largely forego raising private campaign funds.
That public financing system was created in 2009 as a way to minimize instances in which justices have to hear cases involving campaign donors.
But in a recount, Prosser and Kloppenburg would be able to privately raise unlimited sums, according to Kennedy.
No campaign contribution limits would apply. Normally, candidates for Supreme Court who privately fund their campaigns can accept no more than $1,000 from any individual or political action committee.
While the costs of any actual recount will be borne by state and counties, the candidates would need money - and lots of it - to observe the vote counts around the state and do legal work.
Craig Gilbert, Don Walker and Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.View Caption Hide Caption Josh Richardson leads a talented trio of no-name young players rising for the Miami Heat. (Getty Images)
The Heat made a major statement with minor moves over the past week.
By unloading Zoran Dragic, Henry Walker and especially Shabazz Napier, they made room for three developmental projects that excite them. Because those players are gone, it is a near certainty that Josh Richardson, James Ennis and Tyler Johnson will stick.
[Pat Riley’s 5 best trades for the Miami Heat] [Ranking the NBA’s Eastern Conference from 1-15: Who comes out on top in 2015-16?] [Dave George: Miami Heat will always be contending or close to it with Pat Riley in charge]
All three are expected to contribute off the bench this year. Here is their outlook:
Richardson (2nd-round pick, 40th overall, 2015)
The Heat were pleased to land him so late given that they rated him the No. 24 overall prospect in the draft. He excelled in summer league and earned himself a roster spot by doing so. At 6-foot-6, 200 pounds, he likely will pick up minutes at both guard spots, plus he could prove useful at small forward.
Ennis (2nd-round pick, 50th overall, 2013)
Ennis was crushed by his brutal summer league and feared he was in danger of being dropped from the roster. The Heat are optimistic about his athletic ability and defense, and he was solid off the bench as a rookie last year: 10.7 points and six rebounds per 36 minutes over 62 games.
Johnson (undrafted, 2014)
The classic rags-to-riches-to-broken-jaw story. Johnson was thought to be battling Napier for a back-up point guard role this summer before taking a hard shot to the mouth during the Orlando summer league. He is recovering well and expected back for the start of training camp in September. Last year, he averaged 11.3 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists per 36 minutes after his January call-up from the D-League. He also shot 37.5 percent on 48 3-point attempts.White House rejects criminal charges in CIA destruction of torture videos
By John Andrews
11 November 2010
The five-year statute of limitations for criminally prosecuting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials who destroyed videos depicting torture during interrogations expired Monday with no charges being filed. The lapsing of the case followed a nearly three-year-long investigation by a special prosecutor.
Before their destruction, government officials were ordered by courts to preserve all records of so-called “enhanced interrogations.” Both before and after the videos were destroyed, officials lied repeatedly about the recordings’ existence.
Monday’s non-action is the latest by the Obama administration to cover up Bush era war crimes. Previously, Attorney General Eric Holder invoked the “state secrets” privilege to quash a case brought by torture victims against the private contractor hired by the CIA to transport them abroad for torture, and to block a case brought against the National Security Agency for illegal wiretapping.
Holder’s lawyers also successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court order mandating the release of photos, which depict torture and abuse of inmates held at Abu Ghraib and other notorious Bush-era detention facilities. Although Obama pledged to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year of his inauguration, it still holds 240 prisoners, most having languished there for years without charges or trials of any sort.
The destroyed video recordings were made in 2002, while the CIA was interrogating and torturing two alleged high-level al Qaeda figures, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, at a secret Thailand prison. In addition to other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Abu Zubayadah, for example, was water boarded at least 83 times, and deprived of sleep for more than 48 hours.
Aware that human rights abuses were taking place in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks—and in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq—the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act case in 2003 to force disclosure of the government’s secret interrogation programs. The trial court issued an order the following year directing the US government to either turn over or preserve all documents that might respond to the lawsuit, which obviously encompassed the video recordings.
Ninety-two video recordings were removed from a safe in Thailand and destroyed over a three-and-a-half hour period on the morning of November 9, 2005 at the direction of Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., the head of the CIA’s clandestine service.
According to an internal CIA email obtained by the ACLU earlier this year, “Jose raised with [CIA Chief Porter Goss]…and explained that he (Jose) felt it was extremely important to destroy the tapes and that if there was any heat he would take it. (PG [Porter Goss] laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat.) PG, however, agreed with the decision.
“As Jose said, the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain—he said that out of context, they would make us look terrible; it would be ‘devastating’ to us.”
The destruction of the videos followed on the heels of a November 2, 2005 Washington Post report disclosing the CIA interrogation program overseas. Subsequent articles detailed techniques used, and on November 18, ABC News reported for the first time the CIA interrogators used water-boarding—near drowning denounced as torture since the Spanish-American War.
As an additional explanation for the timing of the videos’ destruction, on November 3, 2005, United States District Judge Leonie Brinkema, then presiding over the conspiracy case against alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, asked government lawyers about recordings of interrogations of high level al Qaeda members. On November 14, the government responded that no recordings existed.
The New York Times first reported in December 2007 that the videos had been destroyed. The next month, a special prosecutor, John H. Durham, was appointed by Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey, to investigate potential obstruction of justice offenses. The Obama administration, through Attorney General Holder, took over supervision of Durham’s investigation a year later.
Despite much ballyhoo over the initiation of the investigation, it ended with the following statement, quoted here in its entirety, from Matthew Miller, the director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs:
“In January 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Assistant United States Attorney John Durham to investigate the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations. Since that time, a team of prosecutors and FBI agents led by Mr. Durham has conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. As a result of that investigation, Mr. Durham has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes.”
The New York Times quotes Leon E. Panetta, Obama’s CIA director, as saying that his agency was “pleased with the decision” not to bring charges against agency officers involved in destroying the tapes.
Jose Rodriguez’ well-connected Washington lawyer, Robert Bennett, said the department made “the right decision because of the facts and the law,” calling Rodriguez “a true patriot who only wanted to protect his people and his country.”
Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU Executive Director, denounced the decision not to prosecute as “stunning,” adding, that “there is ample evidence of a cover up regarding the destruction of the tapes. The Bush administration was instructed by a court of law not to destroy evidence of torture, but that’s exactly what it did.”
Romero continued, “The issue is not just the destruction of the tapes but the acts of torture that they depicted, which evidence—including recent statements by former President Bush—shows were authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration. Water boarding is torture and torture is a crime.”
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[19 March 2009]Women in their mid-40s today are almost twice as likely to be childless as their parents' generation, new figures show.
The statistics look at how many children women have had by the age of 46 - when their childbearing days are considered over.
And they reveal one in five women who were born in 1969 are childless today - compared to one in nine women born in 1942.
Graph shows the number of women who remain childless by the age of 46 (blue line) has increased to 18 per cent for those born in 1969, compared to the previous generation of 11 per cent in 1942. The pink line shows how the number of 30-year-olds without children has steadily increased in recent years
Meanwhile two children remains the most common family size for middle-aged women today and the previous generation, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.
However whereas one in 10 women born in 1969 had four or more children, compared with around one in six women born in 1942.
There are no signs this trend is likely to reverse, with those who turned 30 last year typically having slightly fewer children than their parents and grandparents.
The decline of marriage, a rise in career-minded women and greater social acceptance for child-free mothers are some of the possible reasons less than half of |
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The 10-kilowatt-hour (kWh) Powerwall would have been optimized for backup and the 7kWh battery is meant for daily use. Both can be connected to rooftop solar panels or the grid to provide power, either during blackouts or periods of lower energy generation.
Recently, Tesla quietly removed references to its 10kWh lithium-ion wall-mountable batteries from its website.
In reply to a Computerworld inquiry, Tesla said it will now focus its attention on the more popular 7kWh battery for consumers.
Tesla A Tesla Powerwall battery.
"We have seen enormous interest in the Daily Powerwall worldwide," Tesla's reply said. "The Daily Powerwall supports daily use applications like solar self-consumption plus backup power applications, and can offer backup simply by modifying the way it is installed in a home. Due to the interest, we have decided to focus entirely on building and deploying the 7kWh Daily Powerwall at this time."
The Powerwall battery, which is 51.3-in x 34-in x 7.2-in, is scheduled for release this summer by Tesla Energy, a subsidiary of Tesla Motors. Tesla is constructing a massive Gigafactory for building the batteries just outside of Reno, Nev.
Up to nine batteries can be daisy-chaned together, providing up to 63 kWh capacity (with the 7kWh version). The batteries come with a 10-year warranty.
Tesla Energy is also going to offer a commercial-grade battery called the Powerpack. That system will sell in 100kWh modules for $25,000 each. Musk said the Powerpack can scale infinitely, even powering small cities.Weezer had been collecting ill-will for years by 2010. Where most bands beloved for their first few albums typically fade into passive disinterest when their music starts to yield diminishing marginal returns, Weezer somehow courted active malice. This wasn’t just a band failing to reach previous heights; they became one seemingly motivated to see how low they could go, to the extent that it became increasingly difficult to simply toss them into the legacy bin and enjoy greatest hits sets every other time they came to your town. If Rivers Cuomo’s behavior in the ’90s suggests anything, it’s that he sincerely cares how his band is received, although for years he went on making decisions counterintuitive to every notion of feedback he must have heard.
Even if Cuomo wound up numb to the constant criticism, the petition still must have been a guttural blow. That moment — when someone publicly offered the band $10 million to break-up — wasn’t just another dissatisfied listener let down once again; it was one saying you provide the world more pain than pleasure, that you cause hurt to “our brothers and sisters, our friends, our lovers.” Weezer responded tactfully to the blatant troll, with Patrick Wilson quipping on Twitter, “If they can make it 20 [million dollars] we’ll do the ‘deluxe breakup,'” but even still the incident and the subsequent press attention it received must’ve cut deep. That was the Weezer brand sinking to Nickelback levels, but worse because the hate was coming from their own fans. Far less has brought Cuomo far lower.
Yet Cuomo deserves considerable credit for nevertheless persisting in his journey to discern musical right from wrong. Where other rockers would have ignored or bitterly dismissed fans endlessly asking for remakes of their first two albums as “entitled” and “just not getting it,” Cuomo took ownership over the falling out between his band and their audience by making promises to both them and himself to do better. For many, that year’s Hurley was a momentary respite in the decade-long cycle of mediocrity. It was perhaps by most metrics still fairly mediocre, but it was far better than any of their previous three albums, and it showed Cuomo acknowledging his past in the most direct, healthy way he had ever since distancing himself so vehemently from the initially lambasted, then cult-classic, now mainstream classic Pinkerton. Hurley’s boldest moment comes when Cuomo affirms that he’s far from finished despite all the lost faith, painfully knowing that those critics he’s addressing are the one’s buying the CDs.
He didn’t accomplish that on Hurley, but it only took him one additional album to cement the present-day Weezer’s legitimacy as something more than a nostalgia act trying and failing to create anything new that’s worth reminiscing over. Everything Will Be Alright In The End, the White Album, and now (to some extent) Pacific Daydream all exist as crucial pegs in what’s become one of the most-necessary comeback stories in contemporary alt-rock. Cuomo has always rooted for the little guy in his songs, writing anthems either sympathizing with, consoling, or revering the ones least celebrated by the masses. So it was only right those subjects afford Weezer their own opportunity to rise against expectations and complete their hero’s journey. Cuomo, popular rock’s mascot underdog, had to sink to new lows to make it out on top, or as he put it on the lead single for the band’s best album of this century: “I had to go and make a few mistakes so I could find out who I am.“
You have to wonder what would have happened to Weezer, and if they’d have made those same mistakes, had they finished and released their planned, now semi-mythical Songs From The Black Hole as opposed to Cuomo sharing and then subsequently retreating from the vulnerabilities he exposed on Pinkerton back in 1996. Their sophomore album is the key leverage point in the band’s timeline, the one with the greatest potential to have changed everything about the Weezer narrative, both in what came next and how we would have looked back. It’s perhaps the greatest “what if?” in modern music, to the extent that a band now more than two decades into their career and having influenced an entire new generation of artists can be considered “modern.” Weezer, for better or worse, are one of the most important bands of the new millennium — as much for the early highs that begat their esteemed place in emo and alternative history as for the lows that constantly place it into question. What rock looks like both on the radio and in the underground would be enormously different if not for the varying shades the band popularized.
Without Pinkerton’s crucial kink in the story of Weezer, we undoubtedly wouldn’t have the same following discography to parse through, one with highlights greater than we often give the band credit for. Even a good deal of the duds — which, to be sure, are both many and considerable — have aged better than their initial reception would have predicted. Outside of the tunnel of disrespect Weezer were roaring down during the century’s first decade, many of those previous lows can be seen in a more positive light, as the harmlessly well-constructed pop-rock nuggets this band never failed at churning out in a consistently prolific fashion. Yet ultimately Weezer’s legacy will be built on the songs outside of that mid-period hook-heavy canon, resting instead on their barbershop-garage rock early days and their jubilant Beach-Boys-do-hair-metal present.
Cuomo, as the recipient of the most damning criticism for an album that was ultimately wholeheartedly embraced, may as well have dismissed all our fickle reactions to his music and continued on whatever path he damn well pleased. But he cares too much about us caring — it’s always been both his fatal flaw and his greatest strength. So he never gave up on trying to course correct, which is why more than those of any other band, Weezer fans are so invested in their music being good; in still encompassing that heart-booming, fist-pumping, soul-rearing rush they incited when you first heard them. With their latest string of releases, Cuomo has turned the tide and defeated the most obstinate enemy we universally face: ourselves.
It’s a narrative we all hope to believe in, need to believe in. This catalogue is one you can’t help but root for — which is why that petition in 2010 was more than simply a mean-spirited gesture, it was an ignorant one. At their best, Weezer have never been about easy, expected successes (their debut album ends with an eight-minute epic on not getting the girl); they’re about learning lessons from lost battles and patient, hard-earned redemption. A win from Weezer is worth the wait, because it feels like when Weezer’s winning, we’re all winning.
11. Make Believe (2005)
For most, Make Believe can be effectively boiled down to “the one with ‘Beverly Hills,'” or to more discerning Weezer fans, “the one with ‘Perfect Situation.'” But neither description does justice in emphasizing just how miserable — not simply dismissable — the rest of this material is. Songs like “We Are All On Drugs” and “Best Friend” are unfortunately far from forgettable; they’re uninspired sing-song monstrosities that elicit strong second-hand embarrassment, and became the blueprint for the most unforgivable songs on the band’s next few albums. While touted by some as a return to the openly emotional songwriting of Pinkerton, Make Believe’s claustrophobic, stunted perceptions of friendship, forgiveness, and romance make you long for the days of the Green Album’s personal anonymity.
At 45 minutes, it’s the band’s longest studio album, and it confirms that breadth is not an attractive quality on Weezer. The extra runtime gave Weezer the chance to broaden the scope of the album’s filler, stretching their muscles for attempts at watered-down Hot Fuss knock-offs (“This Is Such A Pity”) to Cuomo’s first and worst semi-meta fan-apology (“Pardon Me”). None of it works. While even at their lowest moments, Weezer’s understanding of effective pop-rock structures meant their music always went down easy, Make Believe is an absolute slog to get through. The album has nothing to offer beyond its two first songs, which granted marked the band’s then most commercially successful single and one of their most fan-beloved latter-day tracks, respectively. But the rest is melodramatic jock-rock with third-grade lyricism and a few perfunctory guitar solos thrown in.
The band demoed hundreds of songs during this album’s three-year development period (some of which eventually found a home on the odds-and-ends compilation Death To False Metal), and the fact that these 12 were the ones that eventually made the cut christen the Make Believe-era as the band’s creative bottoming out in a career that at a distance can be seen as one deep, wide valley.
10. Raditude (2009)
Raditude is Cuomo’s mid-life crisis album, finding him pining for younger women with an off-putting enthusiasm, undertaking ill-advised rap collaborations seemingly for the sake of little more than similar monikers, and trying to make a meme out of his album cover while naming the project after outdated slang. He sings of “going out with my homies,” smoking weed, and namechecks Jay-Z, all of which elicit deep, painful cringing, made all the worse by the abysmal bubblegum-metal sonics. For the first time, Cuomo outsourced some of the band’s songwriting to pop pros like Jermaine Dupri and Jacknife Lee, which maybe could have been amenable with their low-hanging rock credentials if the songs ultimately justified their means. Alas, from “I’m Your Daddy”‘s burping-synth DDR bridge to the nails-on-a-chalkboard monotony of “Tripping Down The Freeway,” there’s hardly a single palatable musical decision, with most actively infuriating.
Among the worst offenders, “Love Is The Answer” finds Cuomo moaning world peace dribble over a poorly executed Indian classical music sample. For “In The Mall,” he glorifies his completely undeserving subject matter with rudimentary distorted guitars and a barely there breakdown. “Can’t Stop Partying” is the most appalling of the lot, an attempt at a club-crossover hit with trite lyrics like “Monday to Sunday I hit all the clubs/ And now e’rybody know me when I pull up/ I got the real big posse with me, yeah I’m deep/ And if you lookin’ for me I’m in VIP” that sound completely unnatural coming from the voice of the ’90s most notable D&D-playing singer. The most insidious part might be just how catchy Cuomo makes the damn thing, but that repetition playing in your head ultimately provides more time to properly hear how hollow these songs ring.
As is the case with every Weezer album, there’s always at least one diamond in the rough that makes it ultimately worth sorting through. “If You’re Wondering If I Want You To (I Want You To)”‘s peppy schmaltz might be eye-rolling, but it’s also grin-inducing — and the finger-snapping swing has an infectious energy that takes real resentment to not buckle under the euphoria of. If you’re being especially generous, you can also make cases for “The Girl Got Hot”‘s jagged jumping-jack instrumental making up for its atrocious, demeaning storyline (one of many places where Cuomo aging only seems to have amplified his misogynistic tendencies), or how great of a ringtone the opening riff of “Let It All Hang Out” makes. But at that point, you’re just salvaging insignificant bits off an overcooked, completely unsavory, bro-infested meatloaf of an album.
9. “The Red Album” (2008)
Dungeons & Dragons be damned, “nerd rock” always seemed like a misnomer for what Weezer was doing with their debut, but it became increasingly inapt as the years went on and Cuomo seemingly tried to fit himself into as many different characters as possible and out of his thick-rimmed frames. For the cover of the Red Album he settled on a cowboy hat while rocking an inadvisable mustache, but musically, he attempted a mish-mash of songwriting experiments that almost all fell flat, ultimately underscoring the band’s inherent limitations. Particularly on the songs where the non-Cuomo members take lead, Weezer stumble below vapid camp — they sound like the least essential incarnations of over a dozen musical styles.
Brian Bell’s ugly break-up strummer “Thought I Knew,” for example, plays like a half-baked Third Eye Blind demo with placeholder drum programming, and the grating “Cold Dark World” doubles down on its disturbing stalker-talk by pairing it with Scott Shriner’s insufferable howl. At least Patrick Wilson’s “Automatic,” as dry as it drags along, is adequately listenable, which is more than you can say for Cuomo’s back-to-back snoozers: the mushy, claustrophobically referential “Heart Songs” and the hokey, “boo-yah”-dropping “Everybody Get Dangerous.” The only times the band sounds remotely like themselves is on the album’s two official singles, though each offer conflicting visions of Weezer’s schtick. The otherwise reliably chugging “Troublemaker” suffers from Cuomo’s unconvincing take on aggressive bravado, whereby the thematically similar “Pork And Beans” succeeds on the strength of its self-deprecating sincerity and for being an anti-establishment anthem written in service of a major label, as well as for its very-of-the-moment music video.
Oddly enough, the band sandwiches between the two their most fully realized take on the self-empowerment anthem — and one of their all-time greatest compositions — that completely invalidates either’s need for existence. “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” is a completely unexpected, full-blown rhapsody interpolating the likes of Nirvana, Jeff Buckley, and Beethoven, among others, before finally settling back on that familiar Weezer crunch. It’s the only time the band sounds good imitating other musicians, an ambition they resoundingly fail on across the rest of “The Red Album,” which amounts to a lot of pastiche without any purpose.
8. “The Green Album” (2001)
Five years after Pinkerton, and as that album was officially cementing its resurrected legacy in spite of its initial knockdown, Weezer came back ready to give us everything we said we wanted that we no longer demanded of them. Eventual appreciation for Pinkerton may have been what brought Weezer back at the turn of the century, but you can’t blame Cuomo for refusing to make the same mistake twice. The encyclopedia entry for “be careful what you wish for” may as well be the story of “The Green Album,” which restored the visual and color schema the band made their name on, as well as the harmonically dense sonics and melodic precision, but lacked the heart of both the predecessor it attempted to erase and the one it sought to take the reigns from.
If you weren’t convinced at first glance, the liner notes made extremely clear Weezer’s intentions, quoting Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, “Torniamo all’antico e sarà un progresso,” meaning: “Let us return to old times and that will be progress.” Yet despite copying everything from their debut down to re-recruiting the Cars’ Ric Ocasek to produce, Weezer fell victim to an extreme over-correcting process that ultimately sanded down what made “The Blue Album” spark. Beyond containing almost zero lyrical insight, with Cuomo rarely expressing a sentiment with even the slightest emotional pull, “The Green Album”‘s instrumentation is entirely functional and nothing more. It’s 28 minutes of not a single flourish or innovative idea; just focus group-tested, inoffensive power pop.
Although heavily processed and factory-sealed, there’s no denying the surface-level pleasures “The Green Album” offers. “Don’t Let Go” and “Crab” are both effortless to move to without paying attention, meanwhile “Island In The Sun” makes great photo-montage music to reminisce over. The guitar riffs are easy and fun to play along to when you’re first starting out on the instrument, and every tone and effect proves aurally confectious. Plus “Hash Pipe” will always kick ass. But as a whole, “The Green Album” comes and goes without registering — a half hour you won’t regret but probably won’t really remember either. The real tragedy of “The Green Album” isn’t about the music itself, but the reception — as lifeless as the LP ultimately aged, it was initially greeted with enthusiastic praise from critics, giving Cuomo all the confirmation he needed to pin the final nail in Pinkerton’s coffin.
7. Hurley (2010)
Hurley was Weezer’s first go on an independent label, and their inaugural release outside Geffen. Granted, Weezer have been a commercial rock band since their inception, so the shift to Epitaph didn’t skim off any of the hooky immediacy this band has built their discography adhering to. Weezer are professionals, and they can write a jock-pop jam in their sleep — which on a majority of their albums from this century it felt like they were. The most immediately pleasing shift then on the band’s eighth studio album is the squawking aggression Cuomo brings to the mix. His delivery is atypically vibrant and intent, such as when he shouts longingly for the days “back when Audioslave was still Rage” (“Memories”), or how his “ocular nerve went pop-zoom” upon the sight of a lunchroom crush (“Ruling Me”). He sounds engaged, even when the bulk of his lyricism is still alternating between unrefined platitudes and non-sequiturs.
Beyond the additional vocal grit, Hurley marks a resurged indulgence of Cuomo’s glam metal inclinations. Guitars are thicker, glossier, and more colorful, and the band’s patented power-chord crunch shines boldly where on previous albums it simply faded to monotony. The scale also feels considerably more substantial; Hurley is packed with bombastic choruses and epic instrumentation, as though the band was trying to ride the megaphone pop-punk wave left behind by Green Day’s American Idiot half a decade too late. “Trainwrecks” is an arena-ready anthem inciting aspirations to “cut our critics down to size,” meanwhile the mostly acoustic “Unspoken” begins gentle and fluttering, before growing into a gargantuan rocker.
The only total misstep on the album is the atrocious, ill-conceived “Where’s My Sex?” Beyond the concept simply deflating almost immediately, the song’s belching distortion and monster-truck rally energy are entirely unappealing. But there are quite a few snoozers that don’t offend so blatantly while still completely underwhelm. “Brave New World” doesn’t rise to the occasion of its subject matter, instead plodding along on banal sentiments for far longer than it should, and “Time Flies” sounds like it was recorded in a trashcan during a rainstorm, but even the unsightly audio quality can’t distract from the totally unremarkable schoolyard-jingle that the band somehow deemed worthy of an album-closer. But the net balance is positive, breaking a stubborn downward spiral that the band had seemed permanently caught within. Hurley’s far from a great album, but it’s the most fun Weezer had sounded up to that point, making it an absolute joy to get caught in the mood with.
6. Pacific Daydream (2017)
Deliriously catchy, clunkily quirky, and inadvisably genuine — Pacific Daydream holds the same hallmarks that have defined Weezer throughout their career. The album opens with a wordy stomp-rocker full of overt-innuendo, crests during an overwrought serenade, and ends on a campfire sing-along spouting life lessons. It is, well, a lot to buy into. But like the two albums that came before it, this collection of California-minded beach-pop succeeds in spite of its laughable irreverence — proving a vital, engrossing listen by committing so fully to its conceit and keeping it unwaveringly communal. These 10 tracks are equal parts radiant and rowdy, leaning on Cuomo’s irrefutable songwriting chops while dressing them in Weezer’s most noise-making bells and whistles.
Of course, there are moments of questionable taste — “Feels Like Summer” bites heavily from Maroon 5’s gloss-pop, “Mexican Fender” dampens the wild abandon of the Van Halen songs it tries to emulate — that feel just a bit too much like blatant radio bait. And for what it’s worth, they worked: “Feels Like Summer” hit #1 on alternative radio and is the band’s most successful single since “Pork And Beans.” Good for Weezer, and fine for us too, because once “Feels Like Summer” is out of the way the rest of Pacific Daydream channels far more interesting wells. “Happy Hour” is a wistful life-on-repeat highlight that borrows just the right amount from tropical house for its chorus accents. “Beach Boys” is lyrically soupy, but musically lean and loud in a buoyant display of both tribute and showmanship. “La Mancha Screwjob” feels like summer far more than “Feels Like Summer,” and would make for a much better radio single without making as much of a fuss about it.
The band throw out a wide array of stylistic flourishes from song to song, finding equal space for a snappy jukebox jam (“Weekend Woman”) as they do a drifting, moonlit requiem (“Sweet Mary”), in a way that reflects the most colorful headspace of Cuomo’s career. Largely built on old accumulated song fragments catalogued meticulously on Google Sheets and helmed by Raditude-producer Butch Walker, Pacific Daydream should have been an unfocused, bombastic mess. Often times, it is. But against the odds, they stick the landing — Weezer in 2017 have just figured out how to make their unfocused, bombastic music compulsively listenable.
5. “The White Album” (2016)
Following their long-awaited critical comeback Everything Will Be Alright In The End, “The White Album” initially seemed like it was trying to undo all that hard-fought goodwill within the blink of an eye. First and foremost, aping the naming scheme of one of the 1960s’ most beloved cultural artifacts set the minimum requirement for the album far above any scale Weezer’s capable of clearing. But Weezer plainly weren’t even interested in trying, choosing the shamelessly gaudy “Thank God For Girls” as its lead single. So soon after finally returning to our good graces, Weezer were daring you to keep up the praise, taking creative risks with their tongues in their cheeks and a knowing wink.
Now, I personally find “Thank God For Girls” a capital-J Jam, in part because it so ridiculously-yet-convincingly critiques masculine insecurity through warped gender roles, but also because it’s a massively giddy blast of arena rock nonsense. Yet it proved blatant misdirection for what “The White Album” wound up being, which is a breezy, California summer-inspired medley of consciously carefree pop songs. It’s the Weezer album most directly inspired by band’s heroes the Beach Boys, comprised predominantly of running-into-the-sunset minded barroom sing-alongs (“L.A. Girlz,” “Wind In Our Sail,” “(Girl We Got A) Good Thing,”) and wistfully nostalgic seaside rockers (“Summer Elaine And Drunk Dori,” “Endless Bummer,” “Do You Wanna Get High?”). Every song is delightfully peppy, yet expectedly excessive with regards to Cuomo’s sense of drama, balancing the two moods seamlessly, especially on the thundering album-highlight “Jacked Up.”
Despite Cuomo developing song ideas by using Tinder as “research,” “The White Album” is probably Weezer’s least grotesque collection of romantic material yet. Instead of faux-machismo, he sings earnestly of nurturing tender puppy love and reimagining partnerships gone astray, coming off worn but warm. The only attribute that doesn’t go down easy is the way Cuomo’s stuffs his lyrics with oblique allusions, which on “The White Album” include everything from intro-biology mainstays Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to literary figures Lewis Carroll and Dante all the way to Greek mythology, African deserts, and an absolutely out-of-nowhere shout-out to OK Computer. Yet even those quirks can often prove charming under the right light, and “The White Album”‘s so pleasantly spirited that it convinces you to love it on its own terms, a trick Weezer hadn’t been able to pull off for more than a decade.
4. Maladroit (2002)
Weezer were one of the most prominent big-name bands to embrace the Internet in the latter years of the ’90s and early ones of the ’00s, partially because the Internet was so quick to embrace Weezer. Online fan forums were instrumental in redefining Pinkerton’s legacy to the extent that it would complete its slow-burn, word-of-mouth comeback, and Weezer paid considerate respect to those fan clubs and their founders in turn and often over the years. For Maladroit, the band crossed camps completely to establish a direct line to their fanbase: releasing mp3 demos on their website daily while working in the studio, hosting a submission contest to decide on the album cover, and taking the title from a suggestion on the Weezer message boards. Accordingly, Weezer fans received a direct and special thank you in the album’s liner notes.
Ironically, Maladroit feels like the album the band’s followers agree the least on. To some it’s a forgettable slog of B-side quality singles, and to others it contains many of their all-time strongest tunes. I lean toward on the latter impression, finding the album’s 34 freewheeling minutes to be willfully obtuse (by Weezer standards) in a musically arresting way. “American Gigolo” is a chugging, erratic album opener, and it leads directly into the huge vocal call-and-response “Dope Nose.” Later the delightful, zippy “Keep Fishin” is set adjacent to the glam-metal slasher “Take Control,” before tumbling into the blissfully brash ballad “Death And Destruction.” Maladroit was a loose, volatile left turn from where the pop-minded “Green Album” had signaled the band was heading, but also proved a one-off red herring when the band ultimately followed that initially promised path as expected.
As such, it’s probably the most fascinating record the band ever made — as well as the one that rewards the most repeat listens. The album calls back to Pinkerton’s mellifluous walls of distortion on a number of tracks, such as “Space Rock” and “December,” and with Cuomo’s sweet and scratchy delivery Maladroit echoes a lot of that record’s tonal qualities and vocal approach. But it’s also a more dynamic listen, with the band sounding as good doing ramping, angry rockers (“Slob”) as they do reckless pop-punk (“Possibilities”). And with fluttering synchronous guitars and sparse, expressive lyrics, “Burndt Jamb” still maintains the title of the best Weezer song released since the ’90s.
3. Everything Will Be Alright In The End (2014)
Everything Will Be Alright In The End is Weezer’s most self-aware album, and marks a conscious effort by Cuomo to wrestle with long-strained relationships, both those with the band’s fans and his own personal ones. The album is lyrically divided into three sections: “Belladona,” “The Panopticon Artist,” and “Patriarchia,” which concentrate on Cuomo’s identities as a romantic partner, famous musician, and son, respectively. But musically, each song channels the same influences, those being huge, Queen-esque flourishes, surf-rock tempos, and yearning power-pop. None of that was out of ordinary for the band, yet EWBAITE marked a new career highpoint — one that, while not rivalving either of Weezer’s ’90s classics, stood apart from comparison to any of their previous 2000s missteps.
The album renewed the spirit of Weezer, and gave an indisputable reason for them to continue to exist. It wasn’t simply a break from egregious failures a la Hurley; it was a definitive success, filled with urgent, charming, melodically gripping tunes. “Lonely Girl” blows every cookie-cutter pop-rocker in Weezer’s 21st century catalogue out of the water, and essentially invalidates the need to ever revisit a majority of the Green Album. “Cleopatra” pulls off a number of novel tricks without upsetting Weezer’s comfort zone, sounding refreshingly familiar while subtly pushing the boundaries. “The British Are Coming” is eccentrically dazzling — a watery-eyed history allegory that miraculously avoids its seemingly inevitable fate as a one-punch joke. It’s the most electric track on the album, with cooing melodies, Cuomo’s hurdling falsetto, and an awe-inducing fireworks display of a guitar solo.
The album title, sung emphatically and infectiously by a children’s choir during “Foolish Father”‘s sublime outro, offers a fitting coda to the end of Weezer’s long-drawn out redemption story. Yet the band didn’t stop there, transcending the already immersive album to the next level with “The Futurescope Trilogy” — the trio of terraforming instrumental cuts that conclude the album after “Foolish Father”‘s more traditional big finish. Those seven and a half minutes are thrillingly acrobatic, literally sounding like the breaking of self-imposed shackles. EWBAITW won back Weezer fans, but did it without compromise. It doesn’t sound like “The Blue Album” or Pinkerton, and instead pegged a new sound Weezer fans are going to be wishing all future records embody.
2. “The Blue Album” (1994)
For an album that went platinum in a year, and eventually reached triple platinum status, it’s remarkable just how unassuming Weezer’s self-titled, color-classified debut seems; as though its success was just some freak accident unintended for a laissez-faire assortment of accumulated songs. But make no mistake, “The Blue Album” was a scrupulously considered project. That plain blue backdrop and those straightfaced mugshots were critical elements of establishing a brand, and were laboriously thought-over to the extent that Matt Sharp even had his head photoshopped in from another picture to fit his liking. Everything about “The Blue Album” may initially read as straight and unfussy — including the clear, mellifluous garage rock sound Weezer had then perfected despite having only been a band for two years prior — but it was by no means a casually crafted classic.
The band coordinated every ounce of magic down to the most miniscule of details, from Sharp’s heavily practiced backing falsetto to all the dimly lit doo-wop harmonies. Every piece fits purposefully in place: the thin upstroke chords acting like stepping stones for “Say It Ain’t So”‘s aromatic, unforgettable lead guitar, the waltz between the harmonica and finger-picking at the onset of “In The Garage,” the church organ tone that snaps into the buried-beneath-the-earth Brian May tribute that begins “Holiday.” And for an album that’s full of sing-along, air guitar ready staples, it’s a subversively heart-crushing collection. After Pinkerton’s high-profile crash and burn, Cuomo would spend the next decade and a half only drawing from the “The Blue Album”‘s well, trying to recreate its effervescent sheen on cheerier songs that couldn’t possibly suggest he was wrestling anymore with deep turmoil. So “The Blue Album” stands alone as the only time Cuomo sang of unrelenting social alienation, internalized family trauma, and the nerd definitively losing the girl over music that suggested happy endings and personal breakthroughs.
But for all the downerism, “The Blue Album” is also deceptively charming and funny. Cuomo built a whole song on his resemblance to “Buddy Holly,” wrote an evergreen anthem for surfers that may or may not have a larger metaphor buried somewhere within it, and shouted-out his “Superman skivvies” on a song about a relationship gradually decaying. In the album’s most perfect one-two comedic punch, Cuomo plays a paranoid, ultra-possessive boyfriend on “No One Else,” and then follows it with a song entitled “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here” about the resulting heartbreak that rightfully accompanies being a controlling jackass. Those early Weezer songs were almost always tragic, but the drastic discrepancy between Pinkerton and “The Blue Album”‘s receptions might boil down to how much the public figured Weezer was in on the joke versus actually living it.
An alternate question when discussing Weezer’s mythology than how Songs From The Black Hole would have affected the band’s career is what would have happened if we were introduced to “The Blue Album” Weezer after the Pinkerton one. Would it still hold its place as a definitive album of the ’90s? Or would it instead be cast aside as much of modern Weezer has as uninspired, rote three-chord pop relative to the more discordant, challenging Pinkerton? From that lens, it’s easier to appreciate the rest of Weezer’s catalogue for all its shiny, immediate pleasures. But those moments were never quite as shiny, quite as immediate, or quite as immaculate as on “The Blue Album.” It’ll always hold its place as the definitive masterwork of the form.
1. Pinkerton (1996)
Voted by Rolling Stone readers the third worst album of 1996, Pinkerton’s cultural comeback is nothing short of unprecedented. At first glance, it’s not hard to see what initially turned listeners off from a band they’d previously been sold as humorous, Brian Wilson-loving geeks. From its shallow fetishism of Japanese culture and women to its opaque inspiration in an early 20th century opera, Pinkerton’s presentation was a far cry from the Blue Album’s modest immediacy, as though Cuomo was purposefully trying to bait and switch listeners. Pinkerton was self-produced, and it feels largely self-contained, foregoing the chirpy melodicism and eager-to-please guitar solos with blistering, buzzsaw edges and layers of feedback-stained distortion, encasing the most disaffected, self-destructive songwriting of Cuomo’s entire career. It was Weezer’s In Utero: the heart-bleeding lashing out following their blue breakthrough.
It’s not that Cuomo wasn’t vulnerable on “The Blue Album” — which also dealt heavily with issues of self-doubt and unrequited longing — but Pinkerton exposed a side of him that was rawer far beyond what anyone had expected. The “nerd” was no longer relatable; rather he was unstable, depraved, and depressed. While the root cause may have been an aversion to fame, the album’s most prominent thematic concentration is the sexual frustration Cuomo was babysitting at the time. Pinkerton opens with a song called “Tired Of Sex,” and the working album title at one point was simply “Playboy.” Across the album’s ten tracks, Cuomo sings of maintaining a toxic romance because he doesn’t want to be alone, foregoing committed relationships in their entirety to avoid the pain of their finality, and imagines a young Japanese girl masturbating after falling in love with her via fanmail. It’s an album wrestling with dark, visceral humanities that listeners just weren’t ready to accept from a band they learned to love on the lines: “Woo-ee-ooh, I look just like Buddy Holly/ Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore.”
Cuomo didn’t mince words on how the reception to the album, both the immediate rejection and then subsequent reappraisal, affected him. At one time he called it “a hideous record,” “a hugely painful mistake that happened in front of hundreds of thousands of people and continues to happen on a grander and grander scale and just won’t go away,” and likened the experience to “getting really drunk at a party and spilling your guts in front of everyone and feeling incredibly great and cathartic about it, and then waking up the next morning and realizing what a complete fool you made of yourself.” But while Cuomo was never going to come out of releasing songs as blatantly problematic as “Getchoo” completely unscathed, once they were in the world they became important as reflections of flaws that are widely felt but rarely admitted. But instead of being thoughtfully considered, Cuomo became a scapegoat for addressing his issues too directly. Pinkerton’s story is not one exclusively |
I am privileged, in the sense that I don’t experience much in the way of prejudice in my life? So why would I be leaning on this?
DR: Right. THAT I could see being infuriating. When I worked in an evangelical real-estate office, I remember feeling like Exotic Jewish Dude, and that was weird. But what it’s about, finally, is not feeling caricatured or hamstrung or otherwise dehumanized by your identity. That’s close enough to equality, right?
MB: I AGREE. Oh golly, “dehumanized by your identity,” that is the thing that truly is hard to articulate and is the real reason the Kotaku commenters got so furious at the Easy Videogame Setting guy. The reason it is so irritating that you can’t talk about wealth inequality at TED.
DR: And TED-style libertarian techno-futurism is, finally, intensely dehumanizing, to me. Because the world humans live in is a world of power and influence. That is: of human bias and pettiness and ugliness and smallness and so on. When you lose that context — all of it, all the various kinds of privilege and reflexive privilege-denial — you are not talking about things as they are. You’re talking about “killer apps” or “innovation,” to and for rich people. The future won’t look like that. It won’t care about it. It shouldn’t.
DR: But the idea of a future where there’s a fucking app that gets rid of bad governments and lets us Celebrate Our Preferences via eCommerce… that is not only not real, but also infantilizing, if not quite dehumanizing. Because what are we then? Avatars for Progress?
MB: But in reality the power and influence part is total hogwash because the real story is we’re these little temporary organisms hanging around wondering what the hell is going on.
DR: Well, sure. But we all have bosses. They have bosses.
MB: So the overlay of so-called Power is a fantasy, pathetic actually, crumples after a moment’s reflection.
DR: And if all those bosses are watching TED speeches about creativity in management instead of remembering that their employees actually need health insurance or whatever, then no one is winning. Because everyone’s losing something human in the deal, right?
MB: Yes, bosses. Not to minimize anyone’s suffering; on the contrary.
DR: We lose our dignity; the higher-ups lose their agency, or trade it for surfing on Future Tsunamis. And no one makes eye contact with anyone else, somehow, because we’re fuming over something or other. All the slights we absorb because we are [Fill In Yourself], and for no other reason.
MB: Yes, yes. Everyone is losing when we make these divisions. White, rich, poor, privileged, conservative, progressive. The sadness of the Facebook IPO.
DR: Oh lord, the tragedy of our time.
MB: What isn’t sad about that. Sad little bajillionaires fussing over their bank balances.
DR: And wondering why no one can engage with them. I like that they call them TED “talks,” when only one person speaks.
MB: “Power and influence,” as you say.
DR: A small, elite segment applauds. Everyone else goes about paying down their credit cards.
MB: Pleasant dreams, Mr. Roth, scion of Privilege.
DR: Ah yes. I’ll climb up on this pile of influence and sleep sweetly.
Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.
David Roth writes “The Mercy Rule” column at Vice, co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix,, and is one of the founders of The Classical. He also has his own little website. And he tweets inanities!More coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner: watch Wanda Sykes' speech and see a slideshow of celebs and politicos.
President Barack Obama mocked his own administration and gave playful digs at his critics and Republicans at a black-tie dinner Saturday night attended by a mix of politicians, celebrities and journalists.
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The Republican Party was a favorite target for Obama, speaking at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney couldn't make the dinner, Obama joked, because he was writing his memoir, "How to shoot friends and interrogate people." It was a reference to Cheney's support of harsh interrogation and his accidental shooting of a hunting companion
The president directly addressed Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who was in the audience.
"Michael for the last time, the Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout. Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset, I'm sorry," said Obama, referring to recent economic steps of the White House and the radio personality's public criticism of the GOP party leader.
But Obama targeted his own miscues as well.
"No president in history has ever named three commerce secretaries this quickly," Obama said. The president's two top choices for the position dropped out.
He playfully ribbed his frequent use of a teleprompter and Vice President Joe Biden's knack for speaking off the cuff. And about the Democratic Party, he said his administration has helped in "bringing in fresh, young faces -- like Arlen Specter." The 79-year-old Pennsylvania senator, a former Republican, switched parties last month.
Obama noted that he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had been political rivals, but he assured the audience "these days, we could not be closer."
"In fact the second she got back from Mexico, she pulled me into a hug," the president said, playing off the threat of a spreading swine flu virus that has targeted Mexico the most.
Obama also turned serious and talked of the financially struggling media industry, praising journalists for holding government officials accountable. "A government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts is not an option for the United States of America," he said.
The president wasn't the only one to tell jokes.
Tart-tongued comic Wanda Sykes, the dinner's entertainer, poked fun at Obama giving the Queen of England an iPhone during a recent visit. "What are you going to give the Pope, a Bluetooth," asked Sykes. And she questioned first lady Michelle Obama having patted the queen on the back "like she just slid into home plate -- way to go, queen!"
The $200-per-ticket dinner attracted plenty of VIPs from outside the Beltway.
Among those attending were Eva Longoria Parker, Ashton Kutcher, Christian Slater, Natalie Portman, Sting, Mariska Hargitay, Steven Spielberg and Jon Bon Jovi. Also there was Richard Phillips, who was held hostage by Somali pirates after his cargo ship was attacked.
Proceeds from the dinner will help feed the hungry and fund journalism scholarships. The association will donate more than $23,000 to the charity So Others Might Eat, including money raised by skipping formal dessert for guests.
Those honored at the dinner are several journalists:
-Sandra Sobieraj Westfall of People magazine and David Greene of National Public Radio, the Merriman Smith Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure. Westfall won for her election night reporting. Greene won for digging into candidate Obama's speech that addressed the country's racial divide.
-Michael Abramowitz, formerly of The Washington Post, the Aldo Beckman award for his coverage of the final days of the Bush administration.
-Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of the Seattle Times, the Edgar A. Poe Award for excellence in coverage of news of national or regional significance, for a series exposing the failure of Washington state hospitals and others to handle the rise of the MRSA staph infection.
The White House Correspondents Association was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner.
Watch the whole speech below:My lovely friends Nicole and John had a fairy wedding in the woods. My gift to Nicole was her wedding bodice and corset. The bodice is closely fitted and made of silk duchesse satin lined with taffeta. There are flat steel bones on the darts and spiral bones on the curved back seams.
The rest of the gown, including the wings, was made by Nicole herself, and you can see how much work she put into it with all those pleats. Her gown is based on a historical design from the late bustle period. Not pictured: Fairy lights in her dress! Lights! She looked amazing.
The leather corset and skirt that the officiant, Summer, is wearing is also from my workshop. The corset is Edwardian style, with long lines over the hips and contrasting stitching in purple to match the suede leather bindings. This corset is fully boned with 1/4″ flat steels and is fused to coutil. The skirt is based on an early 1900s 7-gore trumpet skirt, adapted with a high-low hemline to show off her boots.
One of the bridesmaids (that’d be me) wore an Edwardian-inspired gown. This is the classic pouter pigeon silhouette popular circa 1900 – 1910, with that Edwardian S-curve. The skirt is a full bias cut circle skirt, and the skirt and blouse are trimmed with vintage lace.
But wait, I’m not done yet! There was another guest at the wedding in a Tulgey Wood Design: This is Rachel, looking beautiful in a mermaid gown of silk crepe satin.AU Ambidextrous AR15/M4 Magazine Release Description: Now both right and left hand shooters can get faster, easier reloads while keeping the rifle on target. A distinctive design that is the same size and configuration as the factory part; won't snag, resists accidental release and does not interfere with rifle function but allows you to activate the magazine release with the thumb of the non-firing hand. Drop-in installation. 100% designed and manufactured in the USA with a lifetime replacement warranty! Features: 12L14 Solid Billet Steel
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Thoroughly tested and used as an OEM Part by Colt Now both right and left hand shooters can get faster, easier reloads while keeping the rifle on target. A distinctive design that is the same size and configuration as the factory part; won't snag, resists accidental release and does not interfere with rifle function but allows you to activate the magazine release with the thumb of the non-firing hand. Drop-in installation. 100% designed and manufactured in the USA with a lifetime replacement warranty!The role of the resident physician has evolved substantially over the past century. William Stewart Halsted, who is credited with developing the early system of graduate medical education in the United States, required 362 days per year of service from his residents. However, unlike Halsted's trainees, who lived in the hospitals in which they worked, today's first-year residents (interns) must adhere to various work restrictions, including spending no longer than 16 consecutive hours in the hospital.
National regulation of resident duty hours has occurred in response to the recognition that fatigue from extended work hours may result in errors and compromise patient care1 and may also lead to diminishing educational returns. Ultimately, the sensitive balance between patient care and education — given that residents are trainees — remains at the forefront of this discussion.
In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented the first national regulation of work hours, establishing the 80-hour workweek. In 2008, the Institute of Medicine recommended additional limitations on work hours and an increase in direct supervision of residents to improve patient safety. It also suggested that if the ACGME and sponsoring institutions did not make changes, the Joint Commission or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should perhaps step in to regulate residents' hours. U.S. public opinion supported further regulation as well.2
In response to these pressures, the ACGME Duty Hours Task Force implemented the latest Common Program Requirements for Resident Duty Hours and Supervision in July 2011. Before the implementation of these requirements, two large national studies had shown that program directors and residents had mixed feelings about the potential impact of the proposed changes — fearing specifically that increased frequency of handoffs and loss of continuity might have a negative effect on patient care. Furthermore, there was concern that shortened duty hours, particularly for interns, would impair education and leave trainees less prepared for more senior, supervisory roles.3,4 To understand whether these concerns have become a reality during the year after the changes were adopted, we conducted a follow-up national survey of residents.
All 682 sponsoring institutions of ACGME-accredited residency programs in the United States were invited to participate in the survey, which had been approved by the institutional review board at Rhode Island Hospital. For each site, the designated institutional official (DIO) who is responsible for overseeing all ACGME programs at the institution was contacted by e-mail to invite trainees to participate in the survey. A complete list of e-mail addresses for all DIOs was collected from the publicly available ACGME database. We requested responses for agreement or refusal of institutional participation and e-mailed requests three times to encourage maximal participation. Once an institution had agreed, we e-mailed the survey hyperlink to the DIOs, along with an explanation of the survey, for distribution to all their residents between December 2011 and February 2012. Residents were not compelled to participate, and no incentives were offered for participation.
By February 2012, a total of 123 institutions in 41 states had agreed to participate; 33 DIOs had refused, citing survey fatigue as the primary reason. Data were collected over a period of 12 weeks to allow for study approval at each site and to maximize survey return. The resident populations at the participating institutions included 26,581 residents across a broad distribution of specialties. We received 6202 individual responses (23.3% response rate).
Table 1. Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Survey Respondents and Comparative ACGME Data for Resident Physicians in the United States.
The questionnaire focused on the perceived effects of the 2011 regulations on the care of patients and residents' education, quality of life, and supervision. In addition, we collected demographic data on sex, postgraduate year, program size, and specialty (see Table 1). A majority of respondents (77.6%) were in their first 3 postgraduate years and in training programs in internal medicine (21.8%), family medicine (14.9%), or pediatrics (10.8%). Surgical fields (including obstetrics) were well represented, with 1316 respondents (21.2%). Overall, the demographic and specialty distribution of the sample paralleled national numbers published by the ACGME.5
Table 2. Table 2. Perceived Effects of New ACGME Regulations.
To evaluate residents' perspectives, we asked 12 questions requiring positive, neutral, or negative responses. We used the standard error of proportions to calculate two-sided confidence intervals with an alpha level of 0.001. Statistical significance was established for results with no overlap of the 99.9% confidence intervals (see Table 2).
For many questions, residents reported no changes after the implementation of the new ACGME regulations. Although twice as many residents reported receiving better supervision as reported receiving worse supervision (17.9% vs. 8.3%), the availability of supervision was overwhelmingly thought to be unchanged (73.8%). This finding is interesting, given that interns are now required to have “immediately available” supervision, an important policy change necessitating the presence of a senior resident or attending physician within the hospital at all times.
Although 42.8% of residents reported no change in the quality of education, a nearly equal proportion (40.9%) reported worsened education — a far greater number than those who saw improvement (16.3%). Similarly, a majority (51.5%) of residents believed that preparation for more senior roles was worse. These perceptions may reflect the effects of the 16-hour-per-day limitation for first-year trainees and the sense that junior-level responsibilities have been shifted to senior residents (65.5%). Scheduling changes with increased “night float” duties may be reducing residents' exposure to patients, availability for educational conferences, and continuity of care — an effect that is also reflected in a marked increase in transitions of care (72.0%).
Our study of residents last year also showed that half of residents (50.9%) anticipated positive changes in quality of life with the new regulations.3 However, a positive change seems to have been borne out only for interns (61.8%), whereas senior residents' quality of life has suffered (49.7%) and, overall, residents claimed that their work schedules were worse (43.0%). Similarly, 50.1% of residents said that the amount of rest they obtained was unchanged, and 58.9% said the total number hours they worked was unchanged, despite the substantial limitation on interns.
The new ACGME regulations were proposed to improve three areas — patient care, resident education, and resident quality of life — by changing the quality and quantity of hours worked, as well as by increasing supervision at teaching hospitals. Yet our data show that many residents believe that these benefits have not been borne out in practice. Almost half of residents (48.4%) disapprove of the regulations — twice as many as those who approve of them (22.9%).
The survey results suggest several possible explanations for this dissatisfaction. First, residents are working the same number of hours with no change in the amount of rest they receive and with worse schedules than last year, which diminishes their overall quality of life. Second, residents believe that a chief goal of training — preparedness for transitioning from intern to senior resident, then ultimately to attending physician — is being delayed. Third, there has been no ostensible increase in available supervision or in the benefits for safety and education that would accompany this increased attendance. Finally, the frequency of handoffs has increased, reducing continuity of care and thereby negatively affecting the educational and emotional experience associated with a strong doctor–patient relationship.
We firmly believe that most residents support some form of duty-hour regulation and would not choose to revert to the Halstedian model. However, a one-size-fits-all approach may not be adequate or appropriate for all trainees and training programs. Ultimately, the intended and actual effects of the 2011 ACGME duty-hours requirements may not be aligned. Nevertheless, more study will be needed to quantify how safety and quality of care, as well as resident education, are being affected.Chris Moneymaker, the first person to become a poker world champion after rising up through playing online poker.
It wasn't so long ago that the American internet poker community was a thriving, vibrant scene where brilliant young college kids could win millions from their dorm rooms. But two years ago today, the US Justice Department raided the three most popular poker sites — PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker — and summarily shut them down, seizing about 76 bank accounts in 14 countries and five domain names. "It happened, it happened fast and it completely annihilated what was a flourishing industry in the United States," poker agent Brian Balsbaugh told CNBC at the time.
After the raid, the booming online poker scene ground to a halt. Most players either gave up or started playing in live games; a few took on extreme commutes so they could gamble in a country where online poker was still legal. (Poker Refugees is a service that has helped 230 internet poker players expatriate to six safe havens including Costa Rica and Malta.) Some players still have not been fully reimbursed for the money that was in their accounts on the day they tried to log in and saw a notice from the Federal Bureau of Investigation instead of their favorite poker site.
Today marks the two year anniversary of Black Friday. RIP Online Poker in the USA, 4/15/2011. @thejusticedept #FAIL — Brent (@ITRIED2WARNU) April 15, 2013
The legal status of internet poker is murky. Some believe it is now legal due to a Justice Department opinion in December 2011 that appeared to remove obstacles to certain types of internet gambling. That interpretation has yet to be tested in court. For now, the default assumption is that internet poker is illegal under US federal laws. I. Nelson Rose, a professor and lawyer in California who writes about internet gambling, believes online poker is actually not technically illegal.
However, the push for the legalization of online gambling has recently accelerated. Online poker has been legalized at the state level in Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey. There are proposals to legalize internet poker in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, with California gearing up to introduce a bill soon. Texas Congressman Joe Barton has declared his intention to push for federal legislation this year.
"April 15, 2011 was truly a dark day for Internet poker that reverberated throughout the entire poker world," John Pappas, director of the Poker Players Alliance, said in a statement. "But, over the succeeding two years, the poker community has been taking back what was snatched away... To use a poker phrase, there is a full house of activity on the legislative front."
"There is a full house of activity on the legislative front."
There's also been some movement on other fronts. PokerStars has put a toe back in American waters by negotiating to buy an Atlantic City casino. Nevada has started granting licenses to online poker sites. And of course, you can play online poker with Bitcoin.
A few new poker sites have even gotten some traction with US players who are willing to risk attracting the attention of the government again, so it is still possible to find poker games online. However, there are hardly ever more than 2,000 players online at a time, which makes it harder to find enough open games to play for an extended period of time. By comparison, PokerStars, which is still operating outside the US, has more than 110,000 players online concurrently.
Poker forums and news sites are treating today as a day of remembrance and reflection. However, some say poker players themselves are part of the problem. Poker is an individual game, not a team sport, and the PPA has had some trouble recruiting players to help lobby for the cause. The PPA was formed in 2006, after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act made it easier for the government to pursue what it considered to be illegal poker sites. That should have been the first sign that trouble was coming.
Driving to gym and hear 3 lottery commercials but online poker illegal. #backwards — Chris Moneymaker (@CMONEYMAKER) April 12, 2013
Still, most online poker players didn't care about the new law, as long as they could play and get their money out. It wasn't until Black Friday that the majority started paying attention. But even now, many former internet poker players The Verge spoke to are complacent. Once they got their money refunded, they stopped paying attention to the legislative fight, even though many would still like to play if they could.
However, most internet poker players believe the game will make a comeback. Poker needs to be legalized for three reasons, Pappas told The Verge in an interview in September. The first is that it's already happening, but without licensing and regulation. The second is that it's a potential revenue generator for the government. And the third is that it just strikes most people as common sense. "Why shouldn't an adult spend their evening playing a five dollar sit-and-go on an internet poker site with their own money, in their own home, on their own computer?" he said. "It just doesn't seem like a logical prohibition."Image copyright Fine Brothers Entertainment Image caption Rafi and Benny Fine are known online as the Fine Brothers
The makers of one of YouTube's biggest channels have dropped plans to trademark terms for a popular video format - after facing outcry from fans.
The Fine Brothers' "reaction videos" show people responding to online clips.
But a plan to license "react" to other video-makers was met with a digital backlash, costing the brothers hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
They have now apologised and said trademark applications will be rescinded.
"Hello, we're here to apologise," The Fine Brothers, Rafi and Benny, wrote in a blog.
'Pure intentions'
Some of The Fine Brothers' most successful series include Kids React, Teens React and YouTubers React.
Videos in a similar style have been produced by many YouTubers - often with "react" in the title.
Among trademark applications filed by the brothers last year were the terms "Kids React", "Adults React" and the word "react" itself.
The duo responded to criticism that license agreements might be used to "police" online video by saying this was a "valid concern".
"Though we can assert our intentions are pure, there's no way to prove them," they added.
The trademark scheme, which they had named the React World program, has been discontinued, existing trademark applications have been rescinded and past YouTube copyright claims have also been dropped.
"This has been a hard week," the brothers wrote.
What is a reaction video?
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rosie Day reacts to American junk food on her ThoseRosieDays YouTube channel
In reaction videos, people - from children to celebrities - are shown an object or video clip and their response is filmed.
For example: a child in 2015 marvelling at the size of an old style printed encyclopaedia.
Because reactions like these are amusing to people who grew up with printed encyclopaedias, such videos tend to get shared widely on social media.
The list of reaction videos published by The Fine Brothers is enormous - from "Teens react to 90s fashion" to "Elders react to Star Wars: The Force Awakens".
The format has been used by many others, including US chat show host Ellen DeGeneres.
What are trade marks?
Trade marks are the distinctive name or symbol used to identity a product made by a manufacturer or a good distributed by a dealer.
Trade mark law is generally concerned with avoiding consumer confusion regarding the origin or manufacturer of a product.
Image copyright Fine Brothers Entertainment Image caption YouTubers React is one of the Fine Brothers' successful series
Critics celebrate
One YouTuber who had expressed disappointment over the trademark applications was Jon, from Many a True Nerd.
"I'm delighted, but not hugely surprised," he told the BBC after hearing about the U-turn.
"Given the huge subscriber number falls they've seen, sometimes over 10,000 lost subscriber per hour, the risk to their business was too great to ignore."
Jon added, though, that he felt The Fine Brothers would struggle to regain trust among those alienated by the episode.
"I think this movement and its consequences represent that YouTube as a community is quite determined to stay a free and open platform, and that makes me optimistic for the future," he said.
Ryan Morrison, a video gamer turned lawyer, had also been critical of The Fine Brothers' plans.
Previously, he had offered to support video-makers in a legal challenge to The Fine Brothers' trademark application.
"People were scared, and they were right to be," he told the BBC.
"I immediately offered to help, and the outpouring of support and willingness to join in my opposition filing was unlike anything I'd ever seen."For decades, America has anticipated the transformational impact of clean energy technologies. As the federal government and industry made long-term investments to support those technologies, some critics became impatient, claiming a clean energy future would “always be five years away.” Today, the clean energy future has arrived.
In 2013, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released the Revolution Now report, highlighting four transformational technologies: land-based wind power, silicon photovoltaic (PV) solar modules, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and electric vehicles (EVs). That study and its 2014 update showed how dramatic reductions in cost are driving a surge in consumer, industrial, and commercial adoption for these clean energy technologies—as well as yearly progress.
In addition to presenting the continued progress made over the last year in these areas, this year’s update goes further. Two separate sections now cover large, central, utility-scale PV plants and smaller, rooftop, distributed PV systems to highlight how both have achieved significant deployment nationwide, and have done so through different innovations, such as easier access to capital for utility-scale PV and reductions of non-hardware costs and third-party ownership for distributed PV.
Along with these core technologies, this update briefly introduces three additional technologies on the cusp of wider deployment and cost reduction in the coming years: smart building systems, fuel-efficient freight trucks, and vehicle lightweighting.
Today, clean energy technologies are providing real-world solutions—not only do they reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change, but they also drive a domestic energy economy with technologies that are increasingly cost-competitive with existing conventional technologies, even without accounting for the climate benefits. Clean energy manufacturing and installations have also become major opportunities for American workers in the 21st century.
Even though we are seeing the results of the enormous progress these technologies have achieved, there is still more that can be accomplished. DOE’s recent Quadrennial Technology Review identified hundreds of clean energy research and innovation opportunities in our homes, businesses, cars and trucks, and in the power sector, that with sustained investment will provide real-world solutions to our energy challenges.
With the continued progress of the core technologies in this report, and more innovations on the horizon, the clean energy revolution is clearly transforming the way we produce and use energy.WASHINGTON: A U.S. federal appeals court on Thursday unanimously upheld a suspension of President Donald Trump’s order that restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling came in a challenge to Trump’s order filed by the states of Washington and Minnesota. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely determine the case’s final outcome.
Shortly after the ruling, Trump tweeted: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and considering its options.
Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barred entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and imposed a 120-day halt on all refugees, except refugees from Syria who are barred indefinitely.
U.S. District Judge James Robart suspended Trump’s order last Friday.
The ruling from the 9th Circuit, which followed a hearing on the case on Tuesday, does not resolve the lawsuit, but relates instead to whether Trump’s order should be suspended while litigation proceeds.
Two members of the three-judge panel were appointed by former Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush.
The government could ask the entire 9th Circuit court to review the decision “en banc” or appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The three judges said the states had shown that even temporary reinstatement of the ban would cause harm.
In the ruling, they said they acknowledged the competing public interests of national security and free flow of travel but that the U.S. government had not offered “any evidence” of national security concerns to justify banning the seven countries.
They added that the government did not show evidence that any person from the affected countries had perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.
Their ruling also said it was unlikely the White House’s counsel had authority to amend a presidential executive order and that the government did not show how the order could be administered in parts.
Curbing entry to the United States as a national security measure was a central premise of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, originally proposed as a temporary ban on all Muslims. He has voiced frustration at the legal challenge to his order.
U.S. presidents have in the past claimed sweeping powers to fight terrorism, but individuals, states and civil rights groups challenging the ban said his administration had offered no evidence it answered a threat. – ReutersThis is the first short story celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Each short story will be centered on a different Doctor. Presenting the doctors in order of appearance in the franchise. For some reason, all the stories will have only one companion. The extension of each short story will be of 40 pages, more or less.
The Good
Due the general decision of using only one companion on each story, on this tale you have Susan Foreman as the companion of the First Doctor. Which means that thi
This is the first short story celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Each short story will be centered on a different Doctor. Presenting the doctors in order of appearance in the franchise. For some reason, all the stories will have only one companion. The extension of each short story will be of 40 pages, more or less.
The Good
Due the general decision of using only one companion on each story, on this tale you have Susan Foreman as the companion of the First Doctor. Which means that this adventure is before of meeting Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. And with that in account, it's set before of the events of An Unearthly Child. Which to me, it's a wonderful idea.
The story introduced new villains: The Soul Pirates. It's something laudable to create a new kind of menace instead of using yet again popular opponents like the Daleks or the Cybermen.
The Bad
The adventure isn't too interesting or creatively developed. Also, at the end you realize that it's a "forced" story just to justify a "surprising" epilogue.
There too many references to information that since it's the First Doctor, and even more, an adventure even before the beginning of the series, I didn't find necessary to use. You are barely starting to read and you already find info that the Doctor is a Time Lord, that he's from the planet Gallifrey, that he can regenerate and even that he has two hearts. Fifty years later that's basic knowledge of any fan of Doctor Who but back then it was supposed that all those facts were yet to be known. I supposed that in a long novel, I wouldn't mind and I could understand the need to use that even in a First Doctor's adventure. However, since it'd be a short story of only 40 pages, I think that Eoin Colfer, the author, could develop his story without "revealing" those facts.
Right from the beginning of the short story, the First Doctor loses a hand, and he needs to use a temporary hand while waiting that a "new hand" can be made by some kind of alien scientist. That was an intriguing plot and even the meaning of the title of the short story. However, you never feel that that factor is relevant to the development of the story. It could be omitted and the story would resolve just the same.
The Odd
It's a First Doctor's adventure set before of the beginning of the TV series, but the Doctor is shown doing so many physical feats that I found odd since at the beginning those kind of tasks were the role of Ian. I know, he isn't in the story, but I think that the author could develop some tale having the Doctor in a more cerebral role.
There is some humorous moments in the story that I found odd, yet again, since it's set before the beginning of the TV series, where the First Doctor were more serious. Also, the temporary hand resulted to be a female hand, that it could work as a funny situation for the Fourth Doctor, even something amusing to deal with the Sixth Doctor. However, I found odd to employ such teasing element with the First Doctor, specially in a moment that it's supposed to be, even before of the official beginning of the TV series.Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
Nov. 4, 2016, 1:57 PM GMT / Source: TODAY By Scott Stump
When the Chicago Cubs got the final out for their first World Series title in more than a century, they helped Wayne Williams keep a promise to his father that was 36 years in the making.
The die-hard Cubs fan left his North Carolina home on Wednesday morning and drove 650 miles to his father's grave in Greenwood, Indiana. He then sat graveside with a portable radio and a flashlight and listened to night's epic Game 7 win over the Cleveland Indians.
Williams' dad, also named Wayne, died from kidney cancer at 53 in 1980.
"I talked it out with my boys forever,'' Williams, 68, told NBC affiliate WTHR, which accompanied him to the gravesite. "I let them know that I told my dad — we had a pact. When the Cubs — not if, when — the Cubs got into the World Series, we would make sure we listen to the games together."
RELATED: Longtime Cubs fans rejoice in World Series win after a lifetime of waiting
The elder Williams was a Navy veteran who served in World War II and went to boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois, where his son believes he first became a Cubs fan.
In 1969, he endured the heartbreak of a late-season collapse when the Cubs were overtaken by the New York Mets, who went on to win their first World Series title.
For the rest of the elder Wayne's life, the Cubs mostly occupied the role of lovable losers, often finishing near the bottom of the standings. This year marked Chicago's first World Series appearance since 1945 and its first title in 108 years.
"I'll never forget one day he said, start of the season, I forget what year it was, 'This is going to be our year,''' Williams joked. "We're going to be.500.'"
RELATED: Costas: Cubs' curse-busting win is one of the greatest in World Series history
Williams' mother is 91 and lives in Minnesota. He planned to tell her about his trip to see his father.
"She’s very unsentimental, and she’ll say something like, ‘You’re an idiot,''' he told the Raleigh News & Observer.
Along with the radio, Williams brought to Indiana a flag with a 'W' on it, which Cubs fans fly after victories
Once third baseman Kris Bryant scooped up a grounder and threw it to first baseman Anthony Rizzo for the final out, Williams draped the flag on his father's grave — for the sweetest 'W' of them all.
Follow TODAY.com writer Scott Stump on Twitter.If you’re an on-location photographer or filmmaker, then you know how much value a great location can add to the shoot. I like to find and feature supercool locations around the world. Stuff I discover, stuff that others send me, places I’d love to shoot. If the location makes you scratch your chin, laugh aloud or the hair on your arms stands up… it might be a good location to shoot something original. Keep your knees bent and be ready – because these opportunities are ALL over. No matter where you live. You just have to be looking.
Case-in-point, these |
miserable hole in the ground and haven't seen one trace of Cinder or her flunkies."
"They were here when I got here." Guardian replied, eyes narrowing.
"That's probably why." Lance muttered. At Guardian's look he continued. "One look at you and I bet they saw the writing on the wall. Not surprising they booked."
"Treachery is to be expected in these sorts of environments." Mordred folded his arms. "You overplayed our hand so they bailed."
Guardian sighed, looking bone tired. "Fine, fine. As long as they didn't take the White Fang with them we'll just have to track them down later." He smirked mirthlessly. "At least this gives us another reason to resolve this as soon as possible."
"Guardian!" The three of them turned at Adam's shout. Lance, despite himself, actually liked the young terrorist. He was, for a narrow minded bigot, surprisingly adept at seeing the bigger picture. He saw no reason to waste his time fighting every human he saw, like some of his contemporaries, when he could be using them to topple the real agencies of human power. What was the point of killing a few human Huntsmen when with their help you could make Faunus the dominant race on Vytal? "We have a big problem."
"Oh, now what?" Guardian asked wearily.
In Beacon's mess hall, the members of Team RWBY and Shadow squad were dining. They had arrived back from the mission the night before and all gotten some much needed sleep. Well, six of them had. Weiss had gotten up in the middle of the night and left the room for nearly two hours, while Ruby waited up for her to return. That morning they were summoned by Professor Goodwitch to talk to Professor Ozpin, only to find the headmaster was away for some reason. Argos had suggested breakfast and that was that.
The talk of the table had turned to their mission and the ongoing hunt for the remaining members of Phantom squad and Mortis Manus.
"I doubt they are still together." Argos was saying. "If nothing else, Lance working with the White Fang means Mortis needs to be keeping his distance."
"That may be true, but do you really think Lance would let Mortis Manus run around a free man?" Dom replied. The muscular Huntsman kept pausing in between bites of toast to flip up a knife and tinker with its mechanisms. The ones he finished with were tucked away and a new one replaced him. For her part, Ruby did want to get a closer look at the knives' intricate system of charges and detonators, but she other things on her mind at the moment.
"Who says he can keep Mortis in check? That would be a shaky prospect even with Morgan, and without her there's almost no way."
Weiss twitched for the fourth time in as many minutes. Ruby was starting to get worried. The perfectly poised Schnee heiress didn't get jumpy, at least not very often. And while she tried to tell herself otherwise, Ruby couldn't help but notice all of them had happened after Morgan had been mentioned. Weiss had also taken to staring off into space at random. She got this haunted, thousand yard stare on her face when she did.
"Weiss?" There was no reaction. "Weiss?"
This time the heiress jumped and whirled around to face Ruby. "What?" Weiss asked sharply.
Ruby cowered before the intensity of her partner's stare. "I was just, um, wondering if everything's okay?"
"Yes, I'm- everything is fine. Why wouldn't it be?"
"It's just…" Ruby cast around for a reason, fully aware that the entire table was watching them now. "You haven't touched your food."
Weiss looked down surprised at the completely full bowl of oatmeal as if she had no idea it had been there. When she looked up, Ruby got the feeling Weiss was intentionally avoiding meeting her eyes. "I'm just not hungry." The heiress stood suddenly, her face pensive. "I should go; I need to assemble a replacement Myrtenaster." She turned and left without another word.
Ruby watched her go, a dozen different sentences dying on her lips. What could she say, that it was okay, that she was grateful for Weiss' actions? The latter she had already said at least three times on the flight back to Beacon, the former wasn't true.
Back at the table, Will was pointedly staring at Sanguin, who shrugged and shook his head. Will folded his arms and continued to glare. Sanguin met his gaze for a long moment before caving, sighing deeply and getting up from his seat. He reached over into Argos' pocket, pulling out something metallic that Ruby didn't identify before it was put away in his own pocket. Argos protested weakly but was instantly cowed by a sharp glare. Ruby followed the wordless exchange confused.
As Sanguin walked away, Will faced Ruby. "Don't worry, San will get her sorted out. He has his own experience with what she's going through."
"Really?" Ruby wanted Weiss to snap out of it, obviously, but there was a small, unpleasant part of her that dismissed the bloodthirsty warrior of being capable of empathy for someone regretting killing someone. Will just smiled, as if he could see her thoughts printed on her face and nodded.
"Yep." Argos chirped, helping himself to Weiss' oatmeal.
Weiss laid out the last of the parts in front of her. She had retrieved her spare set of sword parts from her room and come to Beacon's weapon maintenance workshop to assemble them. The workshop was completely empty, with a jolt Weiss remembered that classes were in session. She knew the team had permission to be skipping, since they were supposed to be meeting Professor Ozpin right now, but she still worried they might get behind and their grades would suffer. She made a mental note to ask Pyrrha for the notes of the classes they shared, the Spartan being the most diligent at her schoolwork out of her team.
With that worry resolved, Weiss set to work creating a new weapon. It was a fairly simple process, one that she had first done when she twelve. Her tutors had insisted, citing soldiers who could disassemble and reassemble their weapon blindfolded in mere seconds. And those were men and women with the massive support structures of the kingdom behind them, the kind of support a Huntress operating largely alone in the wilds could only dream of having. There weren't all that many steps, you just had to assemble the revolver mechanism, add it to the structure of the hilt, then ensure the Dust flowed properly from its compartments into the blade. She'd need to order some more esoteric varieties of Dust she used, but otherwise she could have a brand new rapier in just under a half hour's work.
As she worked, her familiarity with the process worked against her. Weiss had come here to occupy her mind with the work, but the ingrained actions left her hands operating without much input from her brain.
"Huh."
Weiss' nonexistent breakfast threatened to come up again. She clamped down hard on the memory. It did no good to keep reliving that moment, seeing the look on Morgan's face, the resistance as Myrtenaster pierced flesh. She had already spent last night walking the school's ground until she was too tired to dream, hoping that would prevent a second nightmare.
The door opening broke through her fugue. Sanguin, with his sword slung over his back, entered and headed straight for the supply closet. He pulled out a whetstone and a drying cloth and sat down at the work station next to hers.
Weiss already knew where this was going. He was going to give her some talk about how what she did was necessary and how she had saved Ruby so there was no reason to feel guilty. Well, she already knew all that. It hadn't stopped the nightmare she had last night, or the way her stomach hadn't stopped churning since then. Did he really think some cheap platitudes would make her feel better?
Apparently he didn't. Sanguin didn't say a word to her; he just examined his sword, tsking at the nicks and dents along its length. He placed the whetstone in front of him and began to sharpen his blade, the metal rasping as it slid along the stone. He settled into a rhythm, the sounds of sharpening making a curious music.
Satisfied that he wasn't going to be bothering her with any speeches, Weiss resumed her own work. The two of them worked in silence. The melody of the stone and sword pervaded her brain; she found her hands moving to the same rhythm as Sanguin. Weiss finished the revolver mechanism and had just started to carefully fill the compartments with the appropriate kinds of Dust when Sanguin finally spoke.
"So, did you like your first kill?"
Weiss' hand jerked and ice Dust spilled onto the table. It took some quick movements on her part to keep the half-finished rapier from being trapped in the block of ice that formed. She rounded on him angrily. "Did I like it?"
"Yes." Sanguin was unperturbed at her reaction. He didn't as much as look up from his sharpening as he waited for an answer.
"No. No I did not like it." Weiss said bluntly.
"I did." Sanguin replied. He must have seen her expression out of the corner of his eye because he elaborated. "My first kill, that is. I got a big rush from it, made me feel alive. I liked it so much I went right out and killed someone else. Of course, they were trying to kill me at the same time, so it's not like I had a ton of options at the time."
He stared past her, and for a man remembering allegedly happy memories he looked rather melancholy. He shook his head slightly and returned his attention to his sword. He eyed the edge and, apparently satisfied, put the whetstone away and began to rub down the sword with a cloth and slow methodical movements.
"I'm rambling, aren't I? Anyway, that's how I reacted to my first kill." He raised the blade to eye level again, eyeing it critically. "I wouldn't say that's particularly normal, or anything. The first time Argos killed someone, well, first he finished the mission because despite how he acts he's a professional. But after, he locked himself in a room and got shitfaced on this." San reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver flask. Weiss just stared at it until he thrust it closer and she reluctantly took it.
"Noxian Fire." Sanguin explained as she uncapped the flask and took a tentative sniff. "They call it that because it burns. That's not hyperbole; keep it away from an open flame."
Weiss couldn't say for sure what compelled her to take a sip, but she did. And then immediately spat it back out, hacking and wheezing. That might have been the worst thing she had ever put inside her mouth. Sanguin reached over with his rag and mopped up the salvia and liquor on the table.
"Nasty, right?" He asked. "Argos drank the whole thing, somehow, and came out the next day fine other than a massive hangover. Since then, whenever he's needed to kill someone he pulls that out and drinks to forget. Not the best way to get over guilt, but if it works who am I to judge?"
Weiss just stared at him. Where was he going with this?
"The point is, you have options. You can quit being a Huntress and never have to kill again, learn to like it like I do," Sanguin gestured with the flask. "drink your way through like Argos does, or find a healthy way to deal with it. Sanguin stood. "You're not the type to like it and drinking clearly isn't your thing. So you can quit, no shame in that, this lifestyle isn't for everyone, or try talking to someone about it. Maybe those teammates of yours you're trying to avoid."
He turned and left, waving over his shoulder as he went. As he exited, as if waiting for him to leave, Ruby slipped into the room. She sat down in Sanguin's spot, ignoring the mess he had left behind. She looked pensive and before Weiss could ask what she wanted Ruby grabbed hold of her and pulled her into a hug. Weiss pushed back, but Ruby just tightened her grip and hung on. She didn't say anything, because there wasn't anything she could say. She just held Weiss with all her strength.
Weiss didn't cry, but it was a close run thing. She lost track of time while they sat there embracing. When Ruby finally pulled away, she smiled despite her own watery eyes. Then she spotted the in progress Myrtenaster and her expression lit up. "Oooh, is that your sword? Let me see, I've always wanted to check out the revolver hilt."
Weiss watched her teammate fawn over the weapon and for the first time since yesterday the beginnings of a smile touched her lips.
Team Milk was enjoying a rare bit of leisure time in the manner they usually did, arguing. Or rather, Kevin and Ian were arguing while Michael watched and Luke ignored them.
"It totally was a waste of time." Ian was saying. "We wandered around the woods for a few hours then came back home. What was the point of that?"
"Well for starters," Kevin started ticking off his fingers. "we killed some Grimm. That right there is a good usage of our time as far as I am concerned. Secondly, we got to watch Theron Samia in action. The man's practically a living legend. Thirdly, if we weren't in the field then the other part of our group wouldn't have completed the objective."
"Look, if a team of freshmen were able to get the job done, then they really didn't need us after all now did they." Ian fired back. Luke looked up from where he was laying in the grass. The four of them were in their usual spot, the part of Beacon's lawn that some would say was dangerously close to the massive cliffs. Kevin had been the one to suggest they first hang out here and like most things he ended up getting his way. For all he was the team leader, Michael mused, Kevin was the one who ended up calling the shots. If only because when he wanted something he was willing to argue the point until no one else cared anymore and he claimed victory by forfeiture.
"They had help from that team of foreign students." Luke said. "They certainly couldn't have copped it on their own."
"I don't know," Kevin said. "I've heard things about Team RWBY. They get into a lot of trouble and get back out of it too. I bet they could handle themselves just fine."
"Which means they didn't need us to join them out in the field." Ian pounced on the point.
Michael bemusedly watched him and Kevin continue their debate while Luke tuned out again. For his part, Michael thought the hunting mission had been poorly arranged. Deploying that many teams only for none of them to make contact and two teams that weren't supposed to be in the area did. It didn't fill him with confidence regarding Professor Goodwitch's planning skills. Still, what's done was done, the mission was a success anyway, and it all worked out okay.
"Excuse me." Michael turned towards the smooth, pleasant voice and froze. His teammates were equally stunned. Mortis Manus smiled lightly. "I was wondering if you could do me a quick favor. I've come to speak with the heads of this establishment, but I didn't arrange an appointment. But I suspect they'll come running at the sounds of your screams."
That was all the cue MILK needed. Ian sprang off the grass, sliding his shock batons free as he lunged. Mortis fended off the flurry of attacks by nimbly slapping away Ian's hands and wrists before he could make contact. Despite being completely out matched, Ian kept the mass murderer at bay long enough for Kevin to step in with his sword and Luke with his hammer. Instead of withdrawing from the three on one bout, Mortis charged in himself.
Michael observed from a distance, struggling with his panic. Rushing in now would be a mistake, his teammates were already getting in each other's way somewhat and adding another body would only make that worse. Besides, Michael's whip-sword was hardly a precision tool at the best of times. Instead, he watched closely, getting a feel for their enemy's style and technique. Mortis fought with flowing movements and an emphasis on using his hands over his feet. Instead of outright dodging he would deflect the attack by pressing against a non-dangerous part of the weapon, such as the flat of Kevin's sword.
After one such deflection, Mortis grasped Ian's baton and with a jab into the wrist from his other hand stole the weapon from the loosened grip. He hooked a leg around Ian's ankle and sent him sprawling. Mortis twirled the shock baton and jabbed it into Luke's side, pumping Luke full of electric current. Kevin tried to intervene but Mortis caught him under the chin with a kick. From the ground, Ian had changed his other baton into a pistol and took aim. Mortis threw his pilfered weapon into his head and the shot went wild.
Now. Michael stepped in and sent a scything slash with his bladed whip. Mortis couldn't deflect that like he did the others and was forced to evade. Michael kept him at bay with a flurry of attacks, but he was fully aware that was just a stalling tactic. Thankfully, stalling was working out for him. Kevin was back on his feet and glancing to the left Michael spotted members of Team PNTR approaching quickly. If they could overwhelm Mortis with numbers and start attacking from range, they could take him.
Strange, there was a warm wetness flowing down his legs. He better not have pissed himself, the guys would never let him live it down.
"MICHAEL!" Kevin screamed.
Michael looked down to see a hand touching his stomach. No, not touching, embedded within it. Michael stupidly looked up to see Mortis smiling serenely. "If you're going to look away from your enemy, they'll make you regret it." He explained as if talking about the rules to some sport. He wrenched free the hand that was covered in a pulsing red that wasn't blood.
Michael heard screaming as he fell. It wasn't until he was on the ground that he realized it was him.
"See, that wasn't so hard." The last thing Michael saw before the world went black was Mortis Manus smiling down at him.
AN: So this is the chapter where I learned I can't write PTSD worth half a damn. Oh well, it's only the main focus of the chapter, nothing important. Mortis finally takes to the stage and starts to have some fun. I've been waiting to get him more involved, but it's hard to drop him in because he'd just kill everyone. That and I had a hard time getting his personality down into a coherent shape. Speaking of, I was never really satisfied with his speech to Mordred back in chapter 8, so I went back and redid it. You can check out the new version, I feel it hits closer to the idea I was going for.
Special shout out to Lord Jaric for his consistent reviews and feedback. I can't overstate how much of a motivation boost those have been. Let me know if you find any typos or other errors, I still don't really have a proofreader or anything.A local group called NC NearSpace sent up a balloon with an attached camera and GPS unit this past Saturday and in the process captured a really neat set of photos that you can see at the flickr link I've included here. The balloon traveled over 60 miles downwind and topped out above 60,000 feet, and they captured some really nice photos of fair weather cumulus clouds, some lengthy contrails left behind passing airliners, and two or three shots that include some of the thunderstorms that developed late in the day.
I've included two of those pictures here (our thanks to the folks at NC NearSpace for permission to use them), the first of which led one of our Facebook page visitors to ask why the tops of thunderstorm "anvils" are so flat, something that many of you have probably observed from time to time. The first image is a nice shot from the side of a couple of anvil tops off to the north of the balloon.
Those flat tops are characteristic of thunderstorms that reach what is called the "equilibrium level." Below that altitude, the air parcels in the storm are warmer than surrounding air making them rise due to buoyancy. The equilibrium level (EL) is the height at which the air outside the storm becomes as warm as or warmer than the air in the storm, causing buoyancy to be lost and acting as an invisible "ceiling" of sorts that flattens the storm top because a sizable fraction of the cloud particles spread sideways some at that point instead of continuing upward. This level often, though not always, coincides with the tropopause, the point at which the troposphere transitions to the stratosphere and temperatures begin to either increase or remain steady with increasing height.
On Saturday evening, the EL over eastern NC was coincident with the tropopause according to soundings taken by the Morehead City NWS. On the sounding shown in the second image, obtained from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center site, you can see where the ambient temperature (red line) begins to increase sharply at around 14 km altitude, marking the top of the troposphere. The approximate temperature inside a parcel rising through a storm is indicated by the brown dashed line, and the anvil would form at about the height where those cross, in this case around 47,000 feet above the surface.
It's also worth noting that strong updrafts in some thunderstorms can sometimes "overshoot" the equilibrium level by a short distance, before becoming negatively buoyant and sinking back into the storm. Another one of the photos from the balloon launch Saturday shows this clearly, with a couple of "overshooting tops" extending a little above the anvil cloud in the lower center of the photo that is the third image in the series here. You can occasionally see these overshooting tops from the ground, and they are visible fairly frequently in high-resolution visible satellite imagery as well.After warning that conservatives will face “prosecution under civil-rights statutes” after Obama won re-election and preserved his “totalitarian infrastructure”, WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush now writes that Obama is planning on “fomenting widespread civil unrest” so he can “implement martial law or something resembling it.”
He accuses members of the “tyrannical” Obama administration of “treason” and says that they are using the incident in Benghazi to “scapegoat a few generals in order to protect Obama and his toadies from their crimes, while dramatically compromising the military, a key objective to wielding complete power. It sort of helps when you think of it in terms of how Marxists have subjugated governments in the past.”
But there are almost countless more innocuous examples that, in the aggregate, have served to desensitize us to the truly odious ones. As a result, there was ambiguity among American voters between electing a morally upright man as president, versus a sitting president whose administration practically flaunts its criminality. There is evidence of widespread fraud having taken place in the recent general election – but who is inclined to pursue this, now that the wolves are guarding the henhouse?
The Boy Scouts of America, who have developed moral refinement and honor among young men for more than 100 years, have been demonized because they do not embrace sexual deviance. Human life has become cheap, while a random insect or tree frog can cripple an entire industry and the livelihood of thousands. Those who observe millennia of Judeo-Christian moral doctrine rather than Marxist-imbued apostasy are becoming persona non grata. God Himself, by virtue of what He asks of his creation, has become “evil,” while that which His ancient Enemy promotes has become “virtue.” I could continue this list ad nauseum.
And everything bad is good again …
I’ve said for a long time, fomenting widespread civil unrest has been part of President Obama’s game plan from Day 1. This, I have asserted, he will do in order to implement martial law or something resembling it, at least initially. Once this has been done, like so many government constructions, it becomes an entanglement from which it is damnably difficult, if not impossible, to extricate ourselves.
Financial markets reacted negatively to the outcome of the election, as have thousands of employers now facing the specter of having to comply with Obamacare. Citizens across almost all 50 states have petitioned for secession. Certain malignant devices of the United Nations that will detrimentally impact Americans’ liberties are being eagerly considered by the Obama administration. This sort of thing, as well as the president’s stealth executive orders, can be expected to continue unabated.
Public concern with such pablum as randy middle-aged generals and desperate housewives, rather than what amounts to treason among members of the Executive Branch with regard to Benghazi-gate, makes it clear that this regime’s tactics are working. In fact, I’ll have to admit that the administration is playing this brilliantly: They scapegoat a few generals in order to protect Obama and his toadies from their crimes, while dramatically compromising the military, a key objective to wielding complete power.
It sort of helps when you think of it in terms of how Marxists have subjugated governments in the past.
What better way to coalesce the aforementioned complete power than by enacting so many oppressive policies within a short period of time, and amidst charges of misfeasance and fraud, that Americans who do have a sense of what America represents finally determine they’ve had enough? All the while, the press maintains the deception that Obama is just Joe President trying to do the right thing amidst radical factions reacting to circumstances brought about by George W. Bush in the first place. Thus, Obama’s actions, no matter how tyrannical, will be validated.A slow down in the growth of the money supply could push the price of Bitcoin to record highs next year. The web-based currency—which has been pitched as money of the future—is set to rise in price due to adjustments in the reward structure for mining set to go into effect in July.
As Reuters reports:
"[T]he price of bitcoin could test its 2013 highs of above $1,100 next year and then pick up speed to rise to $4,400 by the end of 2017. That would be due to a number of factors… including an increased acceptance of payments in bitcoin by big companies and authorities, rapidly growing interest and investment in the "blockchain" technology that underpins bitcoin transactions, and also more demand from China as its currency weakens and the economy slows."
In August, Reason TV sat down with New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper to discuss Bitcoin’s rise and how libertarians have kept the dream of the decentralized currency alive.Thomas McMahon looks at the early games of summer signing Mamadou Sakho and gives his first impressions on Liverpool’s French defensive “monster”.
When I first discovered that Liverpool managed to secure the signature of Mamadou Sakho, I breathed a lofty sigh of relief. I had grown frustrated with the amount of times both Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger, despite their intimidating 6’3 frames, would turn into kittens at the sight of a well-built striker. The likes of Kenwyne Jones, Jon Walters, Romelu Lukaku, and Christian Benteke all ran the Liverpool defence ragged last season, dominating the defensive duo in the air and managing to find the back of the net. This caused a bit of a dilemma – after all Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger were both targets for Champions League clubs Manchester City and FC Barcelona; so surely the pair are good enough for 7th placed Liverpool?
An impressive feat from Rodgers in the recently passed summer window is that he addressed the centre back’s lack of balance as opposed to lack of quality. As the previous season ended, he swiftly brought in free-agent Kolo Touré in order to reinforce Liverpool’s flaky back-line with power and determination. Whilst Touré has been a lovable and successful acquisition so far, he is unfortunately 32 years of age. Touré’s performances so far have been fantastic, but will likely be short-lived.
This is why Mamadou Sakho’s signing was paramount. As well-publicised, Sakho captained his previous club Paris Saint-Germain at the tender age of just 17. He has had a wealth of experience internationally and the Champions League, and has received adoration for his actions both on and off the pitch for club and country. As touched-upon in my ‘one man’s club is another man’s treasure’ piece, Sakho was yet another victim of a capital-bloated club overspending in his position. With PSG’s recent purchases including Thiago Silva and Marquinhos for €42 million €32 million respectively, it would always have been difficult for Sakho to compete against such high-profile and high expenditure signings. After Didier Deschamps highlighted the importance of playing regular football to secure a place in the first-team for France, he rightfully opted to secure first-team football at another club.
So how has the Frenchman settled since his £15million switch to Liverpool so far? Not long after his medical, LFC physiotherapist Chris Morgan tweeted that he had to reinforce the strength equipment to cope with Sakho’s sheer power. Kop legend Jamie Carragher admitted on SkySports that he texted captain Steven Gerrard for his thoughts of Sakho’s first week in training – to which Gerrard simply replied ‘he’s a beast’. Rodgers has also heralded the Frenchman as an ‘absolute monster’, as well as referring to him as ‘Killer’ by nickname on the training ground. Needless to say, the bravado sounded promising.
“Sakho is 23 but he is an experienced player, he has senior international caps and looks an absolute monster in training. He is one who is ready for now and that is what we want. “We had a chance to protect the club for maybe the next 10 years and that is what we have done.” – Rodgers on Sakho’s arrival – via LiverpoolFC.com
Had to reinforce the equipment for one of the new signings strength screening today…..#powerhouse #sakho — Chris Morgan (@ChrisMorgan10) September 4, 2013
Intimidating metaphors aside, how has Sakho actually faired on the football pitch? Unfortunately for the Frenchman, he was unexpectedly thrown into first-team against Swansea due to a last-minute Daniel Agger injury – despite Rodgers himself admitting that Sakho lacked match fitness. Even though the unfair circumstances clearly affected the Frenchman’s positioning and decision making, he still managed to show glimpses of his strengths and talents that he can offer. Although Sakho was partially at fault for Jonjo Shelvey’s goal, the Frenchman completed 15/15 clearances, had an impressive 95% pass completion and won 100% of his tackles. While stats do not tell you everything about a defender, they backed up the consensus that the Frenchman showed promise despite a difficult debut.
If the Swansea game wasn’t a baptism of fire, his debut at Anfield certainly was. Lining up as a back 4 with 3 other centre backs, Sakho was crowbarred into the left back position due to another last-minute injury, this time to José Enrique. Liverpool struggled to clear their lines and Sakho struggled to carry the ball forward and build attacks due to the high pressing from Southampton‘s forwards. Sakho was hardly to blame for the 1-0 defeat however, as lining-up with 4 centre backs was a clear tactical error from the management. When Sakho was eventually shuffled to the middle of the defensive line, the consensus among fans was that he looked much more comfortable and impressive in his natural position of centreback. In short, the Frenchman was faced with more difficult circumstances and had another mixed-game.
Poor Sakho then had to change his defensive position once again. After the disaster that was the Southampton fixture, Rodgers opted for a back 3, with the Frenchman figuring alongside Kolo Toure and Martin Skrtel in Daniel Agger’s absence. This time the consensus was generally clear – Sakho’s living up to his promise. The stats against Liverpool’s 3-1 win over Sunderland back his visually impressive display too. 49 passes, 96% pass completion, 8/8 clearances, 3 intercepts, 2 shots blocked, and 4 aerial duels won. Sakho was finally starting to put his heavy stamp onto the central defence.
In Liverpool’s most recent fixture against Crystal Palace, Sakho has started to look like the world class defender we all hoped to see. Each time Sakho made a clearance, it sounded akin to Clubber Lang’s punches in Rocky 3. Despite visually displaying his power and strength at Anfield, Sakho showed numerous times to have the delicacy of touch and clarity of vision to find his teammates regularly – making him a truly exciting prospect. After all, how can you face a defender which is more likely to beat you aerially, have the intelligence and pace to not lose track of you, and almost definitely be stronger than you? The stats are again impressive, making 7/7 clearances while impressively finding a Liverpool shirt 91% of the time.
So while Mamadou Sakho hasn’t endured the easiest start to the Premier League, particularly given his circumstances and last-minute debut, it’s safe to say that the Frenchman has had a strong start to his Liverpool career so far. It’s rare that centre backs have the strength, intelligence, pace and technical ability Rodgers requires to implement his initial philosophy of high-lined and possession based system. Fortunately, it looks like Sakho has these qualities in abundance, and it will be interesting to see if Rodgers reverts back to his original vision by playing a high-lined back 4 when all the players are fit.
Sakho hasn’t been perfect, he’s at times been rash which has lead to goals being conceded, and has not as yet kept a clean sheet for Liverpool. However, his obvious talent and generally strong performances are enough at the moment to justify his position in the first-team. More importantly, at just 23 years of age and with the likes of French-speaking veteran Kolo Touré showing the Frenchman the ropes of the Premier League, the best is arguably yet to come from Mamadou Sakho. Here’s hoping that he continues to make the opposition wince at his presence, and that he can be Liverpool’s stalwart at the back for years to come.
All stats provided by Squawka.Posted on by Travis Athougies
Functional Reactive Programming refers to a declarative way to write eventful program in functional languages like Haskell. While the concepts behind FRP are straightforward to grasp, the actual implementations are not.
Libraries like sodium, reactive-banana, elerea, and yampa share one thing in common: large code bases that are not easily understood by beginners. In this blog post, I will develop a sodium-like FRP implementation for Haskell in under 200 lines. Note that this is possible by eschewing any concerns over performance or memory usage, so this library would probably not be practical to use in any live code.
A brief recap of FRP
FRP libraries usually consist of two primitives: Event and Behavior. An Event refers to values which only occur at certain times, and which are lost after the moment they occur. You can think of an Event a as a list of pairs of times t and values a : [(t, a)]. A Behavior is a continuous value. Here, continuous means that a Behavior has a defined value for any given time (not the mathematical definition!). We can think of a Behavior a as a function from a time t to the value a.
First steps
The first thing we will do is define a monad for all of our FRP computations. Our FRP implementation will also allow us to execute arbitrary IO actions in response to events (much like the execute primitive in Sodium), so we will need a separate monad to represent what happens “in the moment.” Right now, we’ll just make both of these monads aliases for IO.
Also, before we start, the final library we will end up writing is available on GitHub.
In many FRP implementations, Behavior actually isn’t anything more than a step function whose value can only be updated by events. Therefore, we’ll start by defining our Event type. The only really important thing about events is that we be able to subscribe and unsubscibe from them.
First, we define the RegisterEventListener type. Functions of this type can be used to register a function in the Moment monad which will be called whenever a new value (of type a ) of the event is produced. The listener must be registered in the IO monad, and the registration function returns another monadic action of type IO (). This function is used to deregister the listener that has been added.
Event a fills the requirements for both a Monoid and a Functor. For the Monoid instance, mempty is the Event that never fires, and mappend takes two Event a ’s and returns a new Event a that fires whenever either of the first two fires.
Let’s look at each function individually. First, let’s consider the mempty or never functions. Whenever a listener tries to register with this event, the listener is totally ignored and the deregistration function returned does nothing. This means that the listener will never be called (i.e., the event will never fire), which is the behavior we wanted.
The mappend or merge function take two events and returns a new one. When a listener tries to register with the new event, the listener is in fact registered with both events. Thus, the listener will be called whenever either a or b fire, which is the behavior we wanted. The deregistration function deregisters the listener from both a and b.
Now for the Functor instance. The Functor instance for event allows us to apply functions to the value contained inside an event in order to a get a new dependent event. I’ve included a type signature to remind the reader of the type of the fmap function for Event ’s.
In fmap, we translate our listening function to be able to listen to the original event, and then subscribe it to that. Recall that eb has type Event b, so _eventRegisterListener eb has type (b -> Moment ()) -> IO (IO ()). The listener function we’ve been supplied has type a -> Moment (), but listener. f has type b -> Moment(), so we can use it as the new listener for eb.
Getting behaviors to behave
As we said before, although we can think of Behavior s as continuous-time properties, in reality, our FRP implementation will treat them |
ate
That’s right. This was Marshall McLuhan’s point as well. We’ve had what he called an alphabetic civilization for more than 2 millennia. Well over 2 millennia. And we've come to the end of that road. It's over. And it was over in his time, and he kind of sensed that. And that is the electronic media. And it's really with television that it fully came into its own as a dominant medium.
And then digital media, the internet and all of that, that's really further development, further progression. But all of the characteristics we associate with digital media were pretty much there in the 19th century with the telegraph and the telephone.
Sean Illing
I’m trying to connect all of this to politics. The world that TV has built is precisely the world in which someone like Donald Trump can become president. When Postman writes, “We may have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control,” it’s hard not to see how depressingly accurate he was. Is there any doubt politics is now about the artifice of display and not the content of ideas?
Lance Strate
Well, you can go back to Reagan, who was elected a few years before Postman wrote this book, and the shocking event of an actor being elected president. In that case, you can see that there was, like, one foot in the old world and one in the new world. Reagan at least had some prior political experience, but his acting experience is what got him elected.
Postman was trying to make sense of the fact that if you look at what was going on at that time, the early ’80s, all the opinion polls were showing that Reagan had enormous popular appeal. And yet when people were asked about the issues, their views on the issues, they were diametrically opposed to them. And yet they voted for him anyway.
And this is the major disconnect between political issues and ideology. And really even if you look at the word ideology, you'll see that it's a system of ideas, which is what party platforms argue about. That made a lot of sense when print was the dominant medium, but it means nothing today.
Today, it’s all about the power of the image, of entertainment, of spectacle.
Sean Illing
Let’s talk about the medium of TV and why it matters so much. For Postman, there was a clear relationship between a medium and the level of ideas it can sustain or communicate. TV, by virtue of what it is, seems to reduce everything to entertainment.
Lance Strate
Well, I think we can qualify that. I don't think you can say it can only be a form of entertainment. But in his time he wrote about PBS News Hour, which, compared to network news, was more in depth, spent more time on a story. And he actually said, the words were, "Their audience is minuscule."
So let's fast forward to today. And you can have CSPAN. And you can actually watch Congress at work. But how many people are watching?
Sean Illing
Practically no one.
Lance Strate
I think the word minuscule applies even more so in that instance. And why? If you think about television news, and really at the time that Postman wrote this, people were saying, "Well, we only have half an hour, and that's with commercials, to do the news. If we had more time we could go in-depth."
But now we've got three major cable news networks, and where's the depth? It's not there. Why? Because it doesn't look good on television. It doesn’t play well, it’s not entertaining. Television exists to show us compelling images in a dramatic format — that’s it. And this is what we all come to expect the more we watch it.
CNN has all this time on their hands. What do they do? They show us the music of the ’60s. And Anthony Bourdain eating in exotic places. TLC used to be the learning channel and now it’s the Honey Boo Boo channel. You see a similar trajectory with almost every network — it’s always from more to less depth.
This is what we mean when we talk about the bias of the medium. And we mean bias not in the sense of prejudice, but bias as in tendency. The tendency for things to roll down a hill rather than up a hill. And downhill on TV is toward exciting images, dramatic performance, compelling personalities, and triviality.
Sean Illing
Has TV made us dumb? Has it permanently trivialized our politics?
Lance Strate
Well, it short-circuits our ability to think clearly and in depth. It's a constant stream of distractions that interfere with any kind of rational response to the world. I've been thinking about this because Daniel Boorstin wrote a wonderful book called The Image that Amusing Ourselves to Death draws on along with Marshall McLuhan. And I've been thinking about this regarding Trump because Boorstin coined the term “pseudo-events."
He coined this term to describe how Joseph McCarthy was incredibly skillful at manipulating the press. For example, how he would call a press conference in the morning to announce that he would hold a press conference in the afternoon with new revelations about communists and government. And then whether he actually did call the press conference in the afternoon or not didn't matter. The aim was to dominate the newspapers, which, at that time, came out in multiple editions a day.
This was an early example of how the image-based media transformed our politics, and in almost universally unproductive ways.
Sean Illing
One of the more interesting aspects of the book is about how TV has altered our epistemology, how we know things. We respond to images, not words, and that leaves us more open to manipulation.
Lance Strate
Epistemology is how we know the world, how we learn about aspects of our environment. In large part, what we take in from our environment is mediated. I’ve never been Russia. I’ve never met Putin. I have to rely on information I get through the media that is available to me. But their biases also color the way I understand the world.
In an earlier age, someone like Putin would just be a name I read. Now there's a face and a voice and I make a judgment based on how that person looks and sounds. And this is true of nearly everything and everyone these days: We make judgments based on imagery, not the printed word.
I think this means we’re much more emotionally connected to the rest of the world. That can be good in times, but it also means that we’re much more open to being manipulated.
Sean Illing
Can we draw a straight line between TV and post-factuality? Surely it’s no accident that facts have become less important as more and more of reality gets reduced to a TV show.
Lance Strate
Facts are the magic matter of rational discourse. A fact is a statement, it's language. People use the word in different ways, but it really takes a statement to make a fact. And in technical terms, a fact is something that you can check out.
So if I tell you it's raining outside right now, then it's something that you can check out and determine whether it's true or false. And technically a statement of fact can be false. But the point is that you can see that it's false, you can check it out.
Reagan was famous for false facts. Many of them turned out to be things he saw in movies. But they were statements that could be checked out. Where we've gone beyond that is the fact that it doesn't seem to matter anymore when people point out that statements are false, or that whole thing of alternate facts and post-truth. It's like true and false really doesn't matter. And it's sort of interesting how they use the word “believe” now.
I hear people say, "Well, Trump believes this to be true." That belief is the source of truth does signal a reversal of a literate, typographic epistemology in which you make a clearly defined statement that we can go and test in the world, and that's the basis of science, as opposed to an older epistemology, like the oral tradition, where we believe to be true what we sing in our songs, what we've passed on from generations.
But now belief is about feeling, emotion — it’s about the person. It's no longer whether you believe that the world is round or flat, which is a belief that can be checked out. It's now: Do you believe in Trump? Or, do you believe in Hillary Clinton? Or, do you believe in whoever. But that's a different kind of belief. It's all about the person, and how we feel about the person is shaped by TV.
Sean Illing
How do we course-correct? Because there is no going back. For better or worse, the written word will always be secondary. So is it a matter of media literacy or what?
Lance Strate
Well, I think Postman held out great hope for education as a way of addressing these problems. Which also means really emphasizing the enlightenment tradition of rational discourse and just plain literacy and not giving in to the latest and trying to make a school compete with television or the internet. So that is certainly part of the solution.
I think we have to talk and to read. It may well be that the only way we ever get things done is locally, and through personal connections and trying to work that way. I just don't see any top down solution to this. But I think that we can certainly try to improve things. If everyone did that or if enough people did that on a personal level, that's one way that this could be countered.[There is an update to this post here.]
Earlier this year, a blogger going by the name Carson Reeves began reviewing screenplays on a site called ScriptShadow. These aren’t scripts for existing movies, but rather screenplays to upcoming films — ones in production, ones in development, ones in limbo.
A recent Wired magazine article by Scott Brown discusses his intentions:
[Reeves] says he wanted to celebrate the writer, promote talented unknowns (aren’t most screenwriters pretty much unknowns?), and acquaint newbie scribes with the art of the craft. “I’ve had so many emails from writers all over the world thanking me for making Hollywood feel closer and less intimidating,” he says. “It’s particularly appealing to amateur screenwriters who want to know what’s selling. You have to realize that this is information they’ve wanted for years but just didn’t have access to.”
That’s not really the case. Aspiring screenwriters have always had access to this material the same way Reeves apparently got access to it: by working and interning in the industry.
In between answering phones and trying to get their bosses on flights out of Kennedy, bright underpaid aspirants have the opportunity to read almost every script in town. Impromptu networks of assistants pass around their favorite screenplays, in the process picking the next generation of hot writers.
Studios turn a blind eye to this because it helps the industry. You want the smartest people with the best opinions working for you, and you want them to have a good sense of what’s in development all over town. A boss at Disney isn’t going to lose sleep if an intern at CAA reads a draft of that Miley Cyrus comedy. It’s expected. It’s good.
So ScriptShadow should be a good thing, right? More is better.
It’s not. And the reasons become clear pretty quickly.
There’s a big difference between reading a script and reviewing it online for the world to see. Not only are you spoiling plot details, but you’re establishing a baseline judgment for a project that’s often still in its fetal phase.
Brown’s article is alarmingly upbeat on this point:
Scriptshadow is the logical next step in our increasingly impatient attitude toward the delivery of entertainment. We’ve seen the sun set on the medieval Age of Professional Reviews, the rise of the populist recap, and the boom of real-time in-theater Twitter. The precap, however, trumps them all. It’s the kind of access Tinsel-trolls like me have been jonesing for since the ’90s, when Ain’t It Cool News hooked us with preemptive trashings of preview screenings.
And here’s the rub: just like the AICN reviews of screenings made studios much more reluctant to test their films, sites like ScriptShadow are making them clamp down much harder on the heretofore common practice of passing scripts around.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.
Ruining it for writers
Earlier this year, I worked on a rewrite of a potential tent-pole movie in development at Fox. A week into my writing, ScriptShadow posted a review (since removed) of an earlier draft of the same project. It was largely laudatory, but the studio went ballistic. I don’t know what pressure they put on ScriptShadow to get the review taken down, but I was suddenly given extraordinary restrictions on exactly who could read the script. I couldn’t send it to the director, the producers or anyone other than one executive at the studio. These were by far the most restrictive terms of any film I’ve written at any studio.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t X-Men or Avatar. It was one of two dozen movies that could maybe someday get greenlit. Fox legal was willing to go to war over a movie it might not even make.
The more often sites like ScriptShadow poke that hornet’s nest, the bigger the reaction is going to be. The revised terms — I couldn’t even send the draft to my agent — may become the norm. Assistants will get fired for sharing scripts. In the long run, it will be crippling for the industry, and screenwriters will suffer most:
Screenwriters get hired based on the last few things we wrote, and if those are sealed in vaults, we’re screwed. I got my second writing assignment (A Wrinkle in Time) based on the script to my first assignment, a project that was still in active development. If that script had been locked down, I might not have gotten another job.
If I can’t get feedback from trusted readers about the script I’m writing, it won’t be as good. Period.
Pretty soon, blame for one of these “leaks” is going to be aimed back at the actual writer, and how would she defend herself? If I leave my iPhone or laptop unattended for sixty seconds, it would be nothing for someone to send himself one the drafts I’ve emailed to myself as backup.
I don’t want to have to write in a Fox office, on a Fox computer. But that could very easily be the future.
A better tomorrow
Several screenwriter friends have emailed Reeves, asking him to take down reviews of their scripts. Every time, he has. So I believe Reeves when he says he wants to help writers. Here are two ways he can do it:
Review scripts of movies once they’ve come out. Most of the scripts aiming for awards this season have freely-available.pdfs, and Reeves’ own contacts should enable him to get ahold of the ones that aren’t. Shining a spotlight on the scripts and their screenwriters would genuinely help readers see how the words on the page were translated to the screen. Ask writers before posting a review. No doubt some screenwriters benefit from getting their spec scripts mentioned, just as the Black List has helped draw attention to worthy writers. As long as Reeves checks in with the writer first — making sure that a review wouldn’t derail a deal in the works — everyone benefits.
Other sites publish script reviews. The reason I’m singling out ScriptShadow is that its owner genuinely seems to have some sense of responsibility to its readers and the screenwriting community. Hell, it uses Scrippets, so it can’t be all evil.
I’m hoping that by setting the bar higher, ScriptShadow can stop hurting the screenwriters it claims to celebrate.John Smith’s PhD thesis ‘Imperialism and the Globalisation of Production’ available to download, from http://www.mediafire.com/?5r339mnn4zmubq7
John Smith
Imperialism and the Globalisation of Production
Abstract
Far from overcoming the North-South divide, neoliberal globalisation has greatly amplified the exploitative and parasitic—and therefore imperialist—character of relations between Triad nations and the global South.
The severest and therefore most appropriate test of this thesis is to identify neoliberal globalisation’s newest, most transformational feature and ask whether it is leading to the erosion or to the reinforcement of the North-South divide. This, so argues this thesis, is the globalisation of production processes, a qualitatively new stage in the global development of the capital/labour relation, manifested in a ‘global shift’ of industrial production to low-wage nations.
Analysis reveals that the principal force driving this transformation are the efforts of northern-based TNCs to cut costs and increase profits by substituting higher-wage domestic labour with low-wage southern labour, in consequence becoming ever more dependent on the proceeds of this super-exploitation, only a small portion of which appears in financial flow data.
This thesis gives centre stage to the emerging, rapidly growing southern component of the global working class, to the conditions of its social existence, to the manner of its insertion into the global economy, and to patterns and trends in southern wages. Its central argument: the contribution of southern living labour to global wealth is massively understated, including in currently-influential Marxist literature on ‘global capitalism’ and ‘new imperialism’.
This thesis grounds its argument by analysing what GDP and trade data reveals about the globalisation of production; it then asks what this data conceals, developing a critique of the neoclassical assumptions which profoundly vitiate what is universally, and erroneously, regarded as objective raw material.
It concludes that GDP measures not what a nation produces but what it captures; that just as GDP obscures the exploitation of labour by capital, so it obscures the exploitation of southern labour by northern capital.
AdvertisementsPolitical Correctness puts Americans in Grave Danger
If Americans were shocked by the recent terrorist massacre in Orlando committed by Omar Mateen in the name of ISIS and other Islamist jihadis, they should be even more alarmed by the Obama administration’s response, which once again sought to obfuscate the role of Islamist ideology in motivating that terrorist attack -- the largest on U.S. soil since 9/11 In spite of Islamists having established an unparalleled record of terrorism -- some 20,000 assaults globally in the name of Islam since 9/11 – U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and national armed forces have for many years been operating partially blindfolded with one hand tied behind their backs under the heel of the politically correct posture of protecting Islam and Muslims.
The tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its myriad front groups was established in the U.S. long before 9/11. We know this from the successful trial of the Holy Land Foundation in 2008. Uncovered in the discovery treasure-trove for the HLF trial was a 1991 strategy plan of the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow the U.S. Constitution via stealth “civilization jihad" and to "destroy the Western civilization from within," the precondition to establishing a Sharia-ruled Caliphate. The extent of penetration of Muslim influence in the Bush administration can be understood by way of a cursory comparative analysis. The lexicon found in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report, which contained hundreds of instances of the use of words like "Jihad," "Muslim," and "Islam," was basically eliminated by the end of the Bush administration. In 2008 when the FBI published its unclassified Counterterrorism Lexicon, those words are entirely missing. It marked a major step in the post 9/11 world of disconnecting radical Islamist ideology from terrorism and limiting the U.S. in its investigative tools, intelligence collection, law enforcement, and war-fighting capabilities. The process of separating terrorism from its radical Islamist roots took on new momentum in the first year of the Obama administration, simultaneous with the president’s Middle East apology tour in the spring of 2009. According to Philip Haney -- a founder of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, established in response to 9/11 -- DHS superiors brought in by the Obama administration ordered him in November 2009 to scrub and delete hundreds of records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Hamas, from the Treasury Enforcement Communications System database. These records are of course the basis for Immigration Control and Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the Terrorist Screening Center to “connect the dots” and identify individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations who should be denied entry to the U.S., be put on the terrorist watch list, or the no-fly list. When self-described “soldier of Allah” Nidal Hassan killed 13 in the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting spree, many were dumbfounded that the Defense Department recorded and has since maintained this incident as “workplace violence.” What most don’t know is that the DOD bureaucracy had no other choice as it was then in the midst of a politically-correct purge at West Point and the Naval War College of all “vital references to Islamist ideology driving terrorism or conflating terrorism with Islam.” The 2013 Islamist Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a high-risk profile due to six months of travel to a known Islamist terrorist training center in Dagestan-Chechnya area in Islamic Russia. But the FBI suspended its investigation of Tsarnaev in 2011 because of insufficient evidence of terrorist activity, at the same time Bureau leadership was complying with final stages of a mandatory purge of some 900 pages of FBI counterterrorism training manuals that were considered offensive to Muslims. So Tsarnaev could take his time and pick his spot to strike. The December 2, 2015 ISIS-inspired San Bernardino killing spree, committed by the Islamist terrorist couple Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, might also have been prevented. Former DHS official Haney points out that the San Bernardino terror attack might never have happened if Farook’s ties to the terror group Tablighi Jamaat had been known. Unfortunately, those records were among the sixty-seven deleted from the key federal database -- the Treasury Enforcement Communications System -- in the politically-correct purge of 2009. Farook would not have been able to travel to Saudi Arabia because he would have been put on the “no-fly list,” nor would his pending fiancée, Malik, been given a visa, thus fundamentally changing the circumstances that preceded their coordinated attack. Then there was also the neighbor of Farook and Malik, who disclosed that in the weeks before the terrorist couple’s killings, there had been a flurry of activity at their home -- with a multitude of package deliveries and Middle Eastern individuals coming and going at all hours. Yet that neighbor chose not to alert the police for fear of being labeled racist or Islamophobic. There can be no doubt now, in the aftermath of the Orlando massacre, that political correctness puts the United States in grave danger, and it is a wonder that PC has been accepted for as long as it has. After the orchestrated deception of blaming the September 11, 2012 torturous killing of Ambassador Stevens and three others in Benghazi on a video rather than the pre-planned terrorist attack that it was, it was contemptible that the Obama Justice Department would initially attempt a deception replay with regard to the Orlando nightclub massacre -- the worst since 9/11. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s initial censorship of the record of Omar Mateen’s many statements of solidarity with ISIS and the cause of radical Islam was so offensive that Obama tactically reversed course within 24 hours and was forced to release a good portion of Mateen’s transcripts uncensored. However, the strategy that involves the hegemony of political correctness is bound to continue through the balance of the Obama administration. And the black flags will surely keep coming under a Hillary Clinton presidency. Having learned nothing from the spate of Islamist terrorist attacks, Clinton has recently stated she plans to massively increase immigration from the Middle East even without a screening plan, including a 500% increase in Syrian refugees. It may be an irony of history, perhaps a blessing in disguise, that an unconventional presidential candidate has been raised up to break the shackles of political correctness and shock the American people into facing reality. Donald Trump’s candidacy for president raises uncertainties of various kinds in the minds of many voters. But there should be considerable certainty that Mr. Trump won’t be easily snookered on many of the key challenges facing the United States nor will his resolve to win in the cause of patriotism be easily shaken. Scott Powell is senior fellow at Seattle-based Discovery Institute and managing partner at RemingtonRand LLC. Reach him at scottp@discovery.orgHillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE in an interview on Sunday warned the U.S. to "keep an eye" on Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that "he's not done."
Clinton told CNN that the intelligence community has said in its reporting on the Russian interference in the 2016 election that Putin has a grudge against her.
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Putin wants to destabilize democracies in Europe and the U.S. and undermine NATO and the European Union, she said.
"He believes that that will then give Russia a real chance to be dominant, certainly in Europe and certainly along its borders," she said.
"And that the United States, which he views as his primary adversary, will be weakened."
Clinton said she thinks Putin was successful in his efforts during the 2016 election.
"The more we learn about it, the more we understand that highly sophisticated intelligence analysts tried to sow divisiveness within our country," she said.
Putin wants an America that is divided from within, she said.
"He was shrewd in his analysis that I would have been much more willing to stand up and speak out," she said. "I think he made a smart bet from his perspective."
But Clinton added that Putin isn't getting everything he wants because the U.S. has checks and balances and members of Congress who pass sanctions.
"He got some of what he was looking for," she said.
"He hasn't gotten everything. But keep an eye on him, because he's not done."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The large plume of smoke was visible from the capital Praia, on a neighbouring island
A volcano has erupted in the Cape Verde islands, causing hundreds of residents living in the vicinity to be evacuated and a local airport to be closed.
A large plume of smoke was seen rising over the Pico do Fogo volcano, starting on Sunday.
It is the first time the volcano on the island of Fogo has erupted since 1995.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Several hundred residents have left their homes
The Cape Verde government said civil protection workers and military were being sent to Fogo to help. There have been no reports of casualties.
Officials said the signs were that the eruption was bigger than the last one, 19 years ago.
They have warned that the situation is likely to deteriorate.
Some of the displaced families will be housed in accommodation built for those evacuated in 1995.
Other will be offered temporary shelter in "ready-made" homes, the government said.
The area around the volcano is a popular hiking destination for tourists and is also used for agriculture, including wine-making.
The Cape Verde archipelago, which lies off the coast of West Africa, consists of 10 significant volcanic islands, nine of which are inhabited.Melbourne City FC can confirm it has signed Josh Rose ahead of the Hyundai A-League 2016/17 season on a one-year deal.
The 34-year-old defender passed his medical at City Football Academy on Wednesday and joined the A-League group in training on Friday ahead of City’s Round of 16 fixture against the Brisbane Strikers in the Westfield FFA Cup.
Rose joins from the Central Coast Mariners where he won the 2011/12 Premiership and the 2012/13 Championship and won the Club’s Player of the Year award in 2010/11.
The fullback spent time in Romania with Universitatea Craiova between 2006 and 2009 before returning home to Australia, where he has established himself as one of the A-League’s best full backs.
Rose joins new signing ahead of the 2016/17 season Manny Muscat, Bruce Kamau, Daniel Arzani, Ruon Tongyik, Luke Brattan, Fernando Brandan and Tim Cahill as well as Dean Bouzanis, Nick Fitzgerald, Anthony Caceres and Bruno Fornaroli who have re-signed for the upcoming campaign.The Daily Beast reported Thursday that even CNN’s own journalists are questioning the news outlet’s almost entirely conjectural coverage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a story that single-handedly rescued CNN’s ratings last week from a steady decline in viewership.
The Daily Beast piece provides a few glimpses inside CNN, where some express concern over the channel’s increasingly hypothetical coverage:
"Is it really news coverage, when there is no news to report?" an anonymous CNN staffer asked in an email to FTVLive, a television business insiders’ blog. The email seemed representative of the handwringing said to be occurring in various cable newsrooms among journalism traditionalists. FTVLive’s proprietor, TV news veteran Scott Jones, noted that while the NBC Nightly News on Tuesday took two minutes to give “all the new information” on the story, CNN “took all day to give you the same information… CNN's coverage is mainly just a group of talking heads guessing what might have happened to the missing jet."
The piece cites Frank Seson, a former Washington bureau chief for CNN, who highlighted the difference in the network’s approaches to Ukraine and the missing flight, arguing that CNN was covering the Flight 370 story “way too much, especially given this other gigantic story that’s unfolding in Crimea.”
But others at CNN, like Jake Tapper, have defended its exorbitant coverage, arguing that public interest is a legitimate reason to promote one story over another, telling The Daily Beast, “When there’s intense interest in an important story we often focus on it for several days if not weeks.” Calling it “one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history,” Tapper signaled that he will continue to devote coverage to the story so long as he felt there was an audience and that it seemed “worth covering in depth.”
Meanwhile other stations have taken aim at CNN and some of the other stations, including Fox’s Bill O’Reilly who called the coverage “out of control.”
But like the Carnival “Poop Cruise” story and the seemingly non-stop Bridgegate coverage, the overkill approach has worked for CNN over the last few weeks. As one anonymous “industry wag” told The Daily Beast, “Too bad for CNN that there isn’t a missing plane or a natural disaster every day.”Late Tuesday afternoon, acclaimed pop star Taylor Swift sent an emotionally wounded retort to fellow acclaimed pop star Nicki Minaj. Swift was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Video, while Minaj was not. Swift thought Minaj was unfairly directing blame for the snub at her, when Minaj should really be blaming one of the men nominated for said award.
Naturally, since this is 2015, Swift launched her reply on Twitter, where everybody could see it.
@NICKIMINAJ I've done nothing but love & support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot.. — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 21, 2015
It was just the latest development in a long, unfolding saga that ended up involving people with very, very carefully sculpted images behaving like, well, human beings on social media, and learning a lesson all parents should tell their children when tucking them in at night: No matter what it is, never tweet.
Minaj is upset she wasn't nominated for Video of the Year at the VMAs
The MTV Video Music Awards are now primarily known in the public consciousness as a platform for unusually bananas musical performances. (It's where, for instance, Miley Cyrus twerked and launched a million think pieces.) But like music's other big awards — the Grammys — those performances are just there so you'll watch while awards are handed out, and even if the audience doesn't particularly care who wins, the artists very much do.
Minaj's video for "Anaconda," a riotous, gleeful celebration (and satirization) of female sexuality, was by far one of the biggest videos of the year. Essentially everything Swift touches nowadays turns to gold. It made sense to assume they would both be nominated.
Except that Minaj — who did receive three other VMA nominations in lower ballot categories — was passed over, while Swift was nominated for the overstuffed, overhyped "Bad Blood" video, filled with celebrity cameos and a far cry from essentially any other music video she released in the past year:
Here were the five nominees MTV arrived at:
Beyoncé – "7/11″
Ed Sheeran – "Thinking Out Loud"
Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar – "Bad Blood"
Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – "Uptown Funk"
Kendrick Lamar – "Alright"
In terms of sheer artistic impact, this is a pretty weak crop. (Arguably, "Uptown Funk" is the one that's had the most cultural reach, and that's a pretty bland video.) It's hard to see why "Anaconda" doesn't belong on the list, and Minaj felt similarly.
If I was a different "kind" of artist, Anaconda would be nominated for best choreo and vid of the year as well. — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
Ellen did her own anaconda video and did the #choreo lol. Remember her doing that kick. Even mtv did a post on the choreo @MTV remember? — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
U couldn't go on social media w/o seeing ppl doing the cover art, choreo, outfits for Halloween...an impact like that & no VOTY nomination? — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
When the "other" girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination. — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
It's those last two tweets Swift took umbrage at.
Swift felt unfairly maligned; Minaj says the tweet was never about Swift in the first place
Part of the problem with discussing these things on Twitter is that Twitter's very format invites misinterpretation. Limited character counts lend themselves to people getting the wrong idea.
So it's easy to see why Swift assumed Minaj's tweet referred to her — "Bad Blood" is, after all, the video by a woman in that category that broke records and impacted culture. It also prominently features a number of women with "very slim bodies": not just Swift but Selena Gomez, Karlie Kloss, Cara Delevingne, and Jessica Alba, to name a few.
But Minaj frequently discusses the ways that white culture appropriates and homogenizes black culture in the course of making it "popular." She could have just as easily been talking about, say, her longtime target Iggy Azalea, whose "Fancy" was a nominee last year. Her target, under this argument, is the VMAs and MTV as institutions.
For her part, Minaj said Swift wasn't on her mind at all:
Huh? U must not be reading my tweets. Didn't say a word about u. I love u just as much. But u should speak on this. @taylorswift13 — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
She also said she would be on stage to accept her award for video of the year — which, given that she wasn't nominated, could plausibly be read as a promise to imitate Kanye West and go up on stage after an inferior video won.
Oh but trust me. I'll be on that stage to collect my awards for vid of the year. Feeling Myself & Anaconda. — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
Swift's last words on the subject (so far) were to invite Minaj to join her should she win:
@NICKIMINAJ If I win, please come up with me!! You're invited to any stage I'm ever on. — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 21, 2015
Minaj's good point has been lost in coverage of the tweetstorm
The Swift kerfuffle distracts from Minaj's larger point, which is that the artistic achievements of black people — particularly black women — are frequently co-opted and commodified by white culture, which is then celebrated for being edgy or groundbreaking. When you view Minaj's tweets in this context, it seems much more likely that she simply wasn't even thinking about Swift when she wrote her tweets.
But by trying to shift the conversation from racism to sexism, Swift misses Minaj's point as well.
.@taylorswift13 stop using "support all girls" as an excuse to not be critical of racist media that benefits and glorifies you — berenice (@itsbereniced) July 21, 2015
What we're talking about here is something called "intersectionality," which is the idea that everybody carries some form of privilege with them, even if they lack privilege in other areas.
The most obvious example of this usually involves flare-ups between white women and women of color, who all experience society's ingrained sexism as women but don't all experience society's ingrained racism. And because of the former, white women often fail, from the perspective of women of color, to grasp the latter.
I'm so glad u guys get to see how this stuff works. Taylor took her music off spotify and was applauded. We launched Tidal & were dragged. — NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015
This is not to say that Swift is wrong, per se — indeed, both her point and Minaj's are hugely valid. But Swift utterly misses the larger discussion Minaj was trying to kick off.
A day after the original Twitter brouhaha, Minaj followed up with an excerpt from this Guardian article, which she suggested proved her larger point:
The Guardian. Just one of the many eye opening portions of this truth telling article. pic.twitter.com/b |
child’ has to admit how worthless that they are before they get forgiveness. My child did not have to do that. If anything, I had to accept their decision and get over my own disappointment. Suddenly, I realized that I was a better parent than god. God was not only a poor parent, he was a giant douche and that realization started an entire series of crashes in my head. Like a card house falling, my faith disappeared. It was painful but once it was gone, it was gone.There are some common misconceptions about why people are atheists. Let me address those here. I did not become an atheist because I hate god. Not believing in something doesn’t mean that you hate it. I don’t detest flying unicorns or little green men. They simply don’t exist so I don’t believe in them.Christians have not done something so horrible to me that I gave up my faith in disgust. There are good people who are Christians and bad people who are Christians. I admit that I don’t see any indication that the holy spirit has any effect on a person’s compassion but that doesn’t meant hat I resent religious people. And no, I didn’t give up Christianity so that I could have orgies or read porn. Believe it or not, I am a boring person. Most of my interest involves reading and drawing. Sorry, I am just not that exciting. Actually, I am a bit of a nerd.The reason that I lost my faith is ultimately because Christianity makes no sense. It is contradictory and the god of the bible is cruel. There is no evidence for a deity that can’t be explained by science. I just don’t believe it.
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A robbery suspect was hospitalized after being shot by a supermarket security guard in Palmdale who attempted to take the suspect into custody.
The robbery was initially reported as a petty theft Wednesday at Vallarta Supermarket at 440 E. Palmdale Blvd., according to Lt. Brian Dunn of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Palmdale Station.
Dunn said he did not immediately know what the man had attempted to steal but once he was approached by the store’s armed security guard, the suspect pulled a knife on the guard and the incident became an armed robbery.
The security guard pulled out his gun and the suspect refused to back down, according to Dunn, prompting the guard to fire a couple of shots at the suspect, striking him in a leg.
The wounded suspect nevertheless managed to flee from the scene on foot and deputies set up a containment in that area before taking the suspect into custody shortly after, Dunn said. The suspect was taken to the hospital for his injuries, Dunn added.
No one else was hurt in the altercation, according to Dunn.
—City News Service
Robber has a knife! But guard has a gun, so wounded Palmdale suspect nabbed was last modified: by
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Follow us:Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady look on in the first half against the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship game in Denver. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
BOSTON (CBS) – The Patriots may have fallen just short of the Super Bowl this year. But they’re taking home one title this week.
Public Policy Polling released the results of its annual survey leading up to Super Bowl Sunday.
The organization found that for the first time since the poll began, the Dallas Cowboys are not the most hated team in the NFL. Instead, the Patriots have taken over that “honor.”
Read: Public Policy Polling NFL Survey
In the poll, 23 percent of fans said the Patriots are their least favorite team, while 20 percent picked the Cowboys. No other team was in double digits.
When it comes to quarterback Tom Brady, Public Policy Polling describes him as a “lightning rod.”
That’s because Brady was voted as fans’ favorite and least favorite quarterback.
Brady was selected as most favorite quarterback with 23 percent of the vote, topping Peyton Manning at 16 percent, Aaron Rodgers at 13 percent, and Cam Newton at 11 percent.
But New England’s star signal caller racked up even more votes as least favorite quarterback. He was chosen by 29 percent of fans.
Tim Tebow, who is no longer in the league, came in as the second least favorite quarterback at 10 percent. No one else finished in double digits.
Overall, 46 percent of people said they have a favorable opinion of Brady compared to 39 percent with an unfavorable opinion of the quarterback.
Despite the high level of disdain for the Patriots, they were also chosen by 11 percent of those surveyed for most favorite team. That is good for third behind the Green Bay Packers and Carolina Panthers.LONG BEACH, California – In the hour that Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs lets his 9-year-old daughter surf the web every day, her wanderings have been tracked by dozens of sites.
To some degree, it's to be expected. Tracking our online behavior is big business. The revenues involved in the top online tracking companies in the space is over $39 billion, Kovacs says. It's not something that will be slowing any time soon.
But that isn't for a lack of trying. Kovacs unveiled a new Firefox add-on named Collusion on Tuesday at the Technology Entertainment and Design conference (TED), a visualization tool that depicts the number and different types of sites that are tracking your browsing as you surf the web.
"Privacy is not an option," Kovacs said in his presentation. "It shouldn’t be the price we accept for just getting on the internet."
Like some color-coded breakdown of alien DNA, Collusion composes a dot matrix diagram composed of grey dots – sites you've visited or are visiting – connected to red dots: sites that have passed your browser tracking cookies to monitor your site navigation. Some of the cookies are shared by sites, so cross-navigation browsing is determinable. That's valuable data for advertisers, among others.
The end-game idea, Kovacs says, is to eventually launch Collusion on a grand scale, allowing users to opt-in and share their tracking data anonymously to a database, one which will be accessible to researchers and others for study and analysis. The idea is, if we can understand who is tracking us and how, we can find better ways to bypass it.
“The memory of the internet is forever," Kovacs said. "We are being watched. It’s now time for us to watch the watchers."
You can download the browser add-on today at Mozilla's web site.Enter to WIN a Mahogany
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With the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope next week, people are again thinking about its big successor. The very first month that this part of Science 2.0, the communications portal, went live, in January of 2007, we had an update on the James Webb Space Telescope and it was already way behind schedule.In early 2010, when President Obama canceled the Constellation program, America's return to the moon, because it was 'too expensive', the assumption was that he was just playing politics. The Constellation project had the name of President George W. Bush on it while a new project using much of the same technology in development, could have Obama's. Because if it wasn't just politics and was really about lack of a road map for completion and cost, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would have been under the knife. When it was approved in the late 1990s, it was going to cost $1 billion and 9 years to complete. After 9 years, they were not even close to working on the hard parts. Worry had set in among the rest of space science. Budgets are finite and each year that JWST hemorrhages another cost overrun, and smaller projects don't get funded.In late 2010, when I wrote about more delays for JWST, the new completion date was going to be 2014 and the cost was $5 billion and Democrats were going after it the same way they had the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) physics experiment in the early 1990s, and Constellation. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., demanded an outside panel to look into cost controls. She noted that the project managers had a 'joint confidence level' of only 50% but had spun it to be much more promising to get funding. Basically, they were trying to create the aerospace equivalent of "too big to fail".They got more money after assuring the panel it would be ready in late 2015.Artistic credit: Canadian Space AgencyIn 2015, it is another 3 years and $3 billion more away from completion, with the latest estimate being October of 2018. It's still only about 75 percent complete 7 years after missing its original completion date and that has been the easiest 75 percent, a lot of testing system components and creating review processes - they note that the Spacecraft Simulator handbook, Rev B was delivered a month ahead of schedule, for example. That's why I actually didn't disagree with Democrats who wanted to cancel the JWST any more than I disagreed about them canceling the SSC, despite my love of science.Sometimes good things happen when things that don't work get canceled.After the United States stopped listening to bizarre arguments about "leadership" in particle physics and canceled the SSC we had no idea how to build, Europe set about making the achievable Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Next up will perhaps be an International Linear Collider (ILC) with greater luminosity, and proponents of the SSC say it would have covered that luminosity also, but that is simply belief in government-funded magic. 20 years later the SSC probably would not be completed, we still have no idea how to do it, and experimental physics would have been paralyzed waiting. No Higgs Boson discovery, just Congressional hearings every few years.Likewise, canceling the JWST would have led to a Hubble successor that was more achievable. The Hubble can see light from 800 million years after the Big Bang and the JWST will see light from 200-300 million years afterward and in a much broader frequency. It sounds wonderful, but are we better off having no big interim project in the last 25 years, something we knew could be built on time? This thing is going to be 1,000,000 miles away, four times farther away than the moon. The Hubble is only 375 miles away, that was reached with the Space Shuttle when it needed a fix. Sending a manned mission to fix JWST would take another 10 years of planning and it will only last 10 years in the first place. Instead, if something goes wrong, Big Space in America, the kind beyond sending cute robots to Mars, will be dead, the same way Big Physics is dead because of the SSC.After launch, it will last 6 years. Maybe up to 10. Given the rate of completion of JWST that means we had to have started working on its successor 7 years ago.If we had built an interim project rather than an aerospace equivalent of the SSC, that knowledge would have led to an easier completion for JWST. It probably would have meant the JWST was still completed at the same time, but without 20 years of time and money on one thing.I admire ambition, it got us to the moon, but there is a difference between ambition and hubris.Some 'black boxes' in a specification containing future tech is okay, but this was 50 percent black box. In 2010, I said what NASA needs more than a James Webb Space Telescope is an actual James Webb - a guy who was mission-oriented, who had little patience for assuming the future would solve a problem they had now and would have instead created something that was achievable. And Webb's NASA launched 75 missions to space, including landing on the Moon.You can see the progress of JWST on its webcams. Here is hoping that I am not writing this article again in 2018.by Rachel Monroe
This August, a garage in Old Monroe, Missouri burst into flames. There had been more than a dozen similar fires over the past year, a suspiciously high number for a town with a population of 265. When police reviewed security footage, they spotted a white Chevrolet Lumina parked outside the building minutes before it caught fire. They traced the car back to local volunteer firefighter Dustin Grigsby, the 19-year-old son of a fire district captain. Grigsby told police that he set the fires because he “needed a release.”
Every year, something like 100 firefighters are arrested for arson-related crimes. In one year, 1994, South Carolina alone charged 47 firefighter-arsonists, besting their 1993 record of 33 arrests. “It happens more than you think,” former federal agent Daniel Hebert told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Really, it goes on way more than anyone knows. We don’t know about most of them.”
One of the earliest recorded cases of firefighter arson took place in Shelford, an English village a few miles south of Cambridge. In 1828, a Shelford farmer’s haystack caught fire; then, six months later, Mr. Stacey’s haulm-stack burst into flames. Spectators lined up along Trumpington Road to watch local laborers work the hand-operated pump; water was brought in buckets from a nearby pond. In those days, fire trucks were owned and operated by insurance companies, which had a strong incentive to put the fire out and thus minimize insurance payouts. The fires were “the diabolical act of an incendiary,” the local paper guessed.
Over the next several years, barns, straw stacks, gig-houses, cart sheds, stables, and storerooms in Shelford caught on fire. In 1833, police finally arrested 33-year-old John Stallan, a part-time firefighter, who immediately tried to pin the fires on his wife. (According to a local historian, Mrs. Stallan was four feet tall and “rather deformed.”) During his trial, Stallan at first claimed that he was no more guilty of the crimes than “our blessed Saviour who perished for the wickedness of man” but later confessed to setting 11 fires. He was hanged for his crimes.
What else, other than extreme altruism, could inspire someone to run toward a burning building, instead of away from it? “Denoon would say there were only two completely self-justifying occupations in the contemporary world that he had personally run into:” Norman Rush wrote in Mating. “One was fighting the Christian fascists of South Africa and the other was being a fireman, because you can never have the slightest doubt that you’re doing something totally socially valuable by pulling people out of burning buildings. Medicine he excluded because people got rich doing it, and anybody who lived a life of service to the church — say in a ghetto or medical mission — also got excluded because ultimately their work was acquisitive and inwardly intended to increase the temporal power of their particular denomination. He said firemen were the only people he knew with no self-doubt and that they went into their vocation knowing they had a thirty percent likelihood of ending up with a damaged spinal column.” No wonder everyone loves firefighters: they are people of no doubt who inspire no doubt.
The firefighter-arsonist, needless to say, fucks up that whole dynamic. He’s a deviant, a sneak. Common belief holds that an arsonist enlists with the fire department because he (and it’s almost always a he) has some sort of insatiable lust for flames. Douglas Ford, an Ohio firefighter who burned down his own fire station, admitted to setting his first fire at 15. He was motivated by “the plain just… excitement of seeing the fire, realizing it’s dangerous, but the excitement of the flame itself,” he said after his arrest.
If the problem were that pyromaniacs were infiltrating our fire departments, that would be one thing. We would just need some way to identify them and weed them out — or, better yet, stop them from signing on in the first place, perhaps with some sort of complicated personality test — then the problem would be solved.
But the truth is much more complicated than that. Most firefighter-arsonists have never even considered setting fires before they joined up. The idea comes later, after a few months or years of service. In other words, it’s not the evil arsonists who are ruining our fire departments; it’s our fire departments that are igniting something destructive in our firefighters.
John Stallan, the Shelford incendiary, admitted to the police that he started fires for financial reasons: whenever he helped put a fire out, he earned about half as much in one night as he made in a normal week. But most firefighter-arsonists aren’t motivated by money as much as, well, boredom — that, and a desire to prove themselves.
Seventy percent of firefighters in the U.S. are volunteers — it’s generally only cities that can afford to pay their firefighters — and many of them serve in small towns, suburbs, and rural areas.
Rural small-town firefighting is, on balance, boring. There are very few damaged spinal columns, or even damaged spinal column-risking situations. You sweep out the station and weld a water tank onto the new truck; you run fire drills at the elementary school and apply for Homeland Security grants. There are weekends of dull Hazmat training for disasters that will never happen to you. You eat cookies during business meetings and develop a comfortable belly. There is a reason those sexy firefighter calendars feature professional, city firefighters and not their rural, volunteer counterparts.
On June 26, 1999, the Sequoyah Volunteer Fire Department was requested to report to a fire in a vacant house near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee. It had been two months since they’d received a call, and the firefighters were ready to go. But by the time they’d finally put out the flames, one firefighter was dead on scene. He had been in the attic, spreading gasoline to make the fire bigger, when he got trapped. Six of his fellow volunteers pled guilty to helping set the fire that killed him.
The average firefighter-arsonist is a young white male of above-average intelligence, no criminal record, and “poor occupational adjustment.” It is unclear how significantly this profile differs from, say, the average firefighter who does not commit arson. He works for a fire service that doesn’t get many calls, which may be why he’s eager to prove himself. He tends to start with small grass or Dumpster fires, and then progress to abandoned houses or garages. It’s rare that a firefighter-arsonist will opt for inhabited buildings, or locations where people are likely to be hurt.
Firefighter-arsonists often work in teams, egging each other on. “Before the fire, we were just sitting around bored,” said Robert Vasquez, who admitted to committing arson in Prince George’s County, near D.C., in 1990. “We were talking about how the Chief yells at us for the things we do wrong and everybody was saying ‘Let’s wait for the next fire to come out and maybe we can do good on it’… And then the words, ‘Set a fire’ came up.”
For many years, most anyone who set fires for non-murderous or -financial reasons was, by definition, a pyromaniac. In 1951, Lewis and Yarnell published the first major, large-scale study on firesetters. Their overall conclusion, written in a tone of dripping, not-particularly-academic disdain, was that arsonists were fundamentally weak people who set fires to make themselves feel powerful: “A craving to be the center of the stage and the recipient of public acclaim, even for once, is within the soul of every person — the smaller the man, the more he secretly wishes such type of recognition.” Firefighter-arsonists got an extra dose of contempt; they were “little men with grandiose social ambitions whose natural equipment dooms them to insignificance.” This characterization jibed nicely with Freud’s idea that the arsonist has childish fantasies of peeing on a fire to extinguish it — the drama of the fireman writ small and pathetic.
But even if pyromania is a real psychological problem — and in recent years, that’s been up for debate — it doesn’t help to explain why a significant number of firefighter arsonists are not “little men” or pathetic losers who want to wreak havoc on a society that’s rejected them, but rather overachievers, team players, firefighter-of-the-year types. The kind of guys who post firefighter memes to Facebook all day. “When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work. Firemen never die, they just burn forever in the hearts of the people whose lives they saved,” Trent Bonner, his department’s top responder, posted on Facebook in 2011. A few days earlier, he’d helped put out a fire that he’d set himself.
They set fires to bone up on their training, or to preemptively eliminate hazardous buildings; they are, in the words of fire scholar Matt Hinds-Aldrich, “occupationally overzealous.” “We found that a lot of these young men didn’t have an awful lot in their lives to distinguish them except for their association with the fire service,” said Ken Cabe, who studied firefighter arsonists for the South Carolina State Forestry Commission. “They were highly motivated, they were highly trained and maybe the alarm didn’t go off often enough for them.”
In other words, a firefighter who sets fires may not be some entirely separate and deviant kind of person, but rather a good guy who goes to extremes. And firefighting, with its long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme danger, inspires extremes. “The great emphasis placed upon one’s commitment to the fire service may create the very conditions whereby young members, in particular, take it just that one step too far,” wrote Hinds-Aldrich, assistant professor of fire science at Anna Maria College. “Paradoxically, his devotion, dedication, and dependability may have been part and parcel of the problem.” The firefighter-arsonist, he is us.
The other day, just after dinner, the tones went off: A series of high, whining notes, perfectly pitched to invoke alarm. Most of the time it’s nothing, or nothing much: someone’s nervous about smoke they thought they saw on the horizon, or the high school football team needs supervision to set a giant M on fire before the homecoming game. This time, though, dispatch announced a 1050 — a car rollover in the ranchlands nine miles west of town.
On the way to the fire station, a mile east of my house, I could feel the adrenaline start to move within me, as if the machine of my body was shifting into a higher gear. Before this, it had been a waste of a day, errands and emails, who even remembers? And now here I was, speeding to the fire station, a woman on a mission.
A block from my house, I saw our fire captain heading in the other direction, toward the accident, in his command vehicle, followed a minute later by one of the big engines. As I pulled up to the station, a third truck left the garage, lights flashing, and took off down Highland Street. By the time I trotted into the garage to pull on my bunker gear, the only other person still at the station was Ed, our chaplain. Three trucks was plenty, our chief radioed to us. We could head on home.
Back at my house, I walked around, flicking light switches on and off. I had the kind of hectic feeling that can only be dispelled by hard exercise or hard drinking. Nine miles west, I imagined, my fellow firefighters were switching on the jaws of life to slice apart a car. They were breaking through the windshield, popping off doors, helping EMTs lift out unconscious bodies. Where I was, though, the moonless night was quiet.
I remember the feeling I had right then, and it wasn’t anything noble or civic-minded. I felt cheated. And I couldn’t wait for the next one to happen.
Previously:
• House Ghosts
• The Killer Crush
Rachel Monroe is a writer living in Marfa, Texas. Photo by Kristin Nador.Kevin Smith. Darren Aronofsky. Soon-to-be Black Panther director Ryan Coogler. For decades now, the biggest deals to come out of the Sundance Film Festival weren't necessarily the biggest deals going in.
Smith's Clerks wasn't exactly primed for the art-house indie crowd when it dropped at the fest in 1994 (but Harvey Weinstein bought it for Miramax anyway). Aronofsky’s Pi got some buzz in 1998, but the big movies that year were the poetry flick Slam, Ally Sheey’s lesbian drama High Art, and the Australian comedy The Castle. Coogler won the Grand Jury Prize for Fruitvale (later retitled Fruitvale Station) in 2013, but at the start of the fest, all people could talk about was Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s writing/directing debut Don Jon (then called Don Jon's Addiction) and Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight.
Many of the movies on the perennial most-anticipated lists do end up being hits at the festival, but the true break-outs play the long game, gathering buzz throughout the week while the most-hyped films run on their fumes. Often, their directors and stars become prominent players years later. Take, for example, 2012's fest: at the time, it was considered to be an underwhelming year, but it also produced Selma director Ava DuVernay's breakthrough Middle of Nowhere and the future Oscar nominee Beasts of the Southern Wild. (Also, fun fact: Aronofsky’s next movie will star another one-time festival surprise named Jennifer Lawrence, who first came to prominence in 2010 Sundance pick Winter's Bone.)
That’s why this year’s festival is so promising—there’s hardly a huge name director or wildly famous celebrity's credibility project in the bunch. In previous years, splashy selections like Linklater's Boyhood have made it harder for movies like Frank (from now Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson) to surface. And while the good films usually do get found, they're always better when they're surprises instead of foregone conclusions.
"Sundance is a discovery festival," says Sundance's director of programming Trevor Groth. "I always prefer people coming in with no expectations and just seeing where the festival takes them and discovering something they never expected."
That’s not to say there aren’t important people and films coming to Sundance. Smith is back with Yoga Hosers. Spike Lee has a Michael Jackson documentary in the show. And perennial Sundance fave Elisabeth Moss stars in The Free World. Same with Kristen Stewart and Michelle Williams in Certain Women. But that leaves plenty of room for people to see weirder fare—genre movies, horror flicks, off-kilter documentaries.
For one, there’s The Blackout Experiments, about the underworld surrounding a psychosexual horror "experience." There’s also Swiss Army Man, a twist on the desert-island trope that Groth is very excited for audiences to see. Two compelling details: it's about a guy who befriends a corpse, and it's directed by The Daniels, who made the bizarre viral video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s "Turn Down for What." There’s also the sci-fi/conspiracy theory/WTF flick Antibirth, starring *Orange Is the New Black'*s Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny. The mermaids-who-work-at-a-nightclub drama The Lure? Seems legit. So does Sleight, which finds a young high schooler using his love of magic to get into the drug game. And that’s just off the top of my head. (There are a few more weird gems in the gallery above.)
"It is a very eclectic slate," says Sundance’s director John Cooper. "It kind of parallels the fact that there are so many choices for audiences now out there. You look at television world and it’s not at all homogenous. It’s OK for movies to have niches in a way."
This year, that not-homogenous line-up also includes a lot of documentaries, like All These Sleepless Nights, that blur the lines between reportage and narrative film. It also means audiences might be drawn to check out things that aren’t even films, like the huge influx of virtual reality experiences filling the New Frontier section of the festival in 2016.
But really, it’s impossible to know what anyone should see. The true break-outs won’t be known until the end of next week, if not the end of next year. The next Aronofsky or Coogler or DuVernay is likely on their way to Park City right now, but we don’t know who they are. The future of film is opaque and strange, my friends. And that’s just the way we like it.The Volkswagen Golf Mk3 is a small family car, the third generation of the Volkswagen Golf and the successor to the Volkswagen Golf Mk2. It was launched in mainland Europe in August 1991,[2] in the United Kingdom in February 1992,[3] and in North America in the spring of 1994. The delay in North America was due to Volkswagen's decision to supply U.S. and Canadian dealerships with Mk3 Golfs (and A3 Jettas) from the VW plant in Puebla, Mexico. Quality control problems led Volkswagen of America to reject Golfs and Jettas from Mexico; shortly thereafter labor unrest at the plant delayed production there even further. The third-generation Golf and Jetta first appeared in North America as 1993 models in the San Diego, California area and in Canada, then in the autumn in the rest of North America as 1994 models. The Mk3 Cabrio replaced the Volkswagen Cabriolet, which continued the original Golf until 1993, although the original Golf, sold as Rabbit in the United States and Canada ceased sales in 1984. The Mk3 Cabrio continued until the 2002 model year, when Volkswagen replaced it with a convertible version of the Volkswagen New Beetle. Like the previous two generations, it was supposed to be built at the TAS factory in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but when the car was released, the Yugoslav War broke out, leading to the destruction of the factory, and the bankruptcy of TAS in 1995, which meant it was the only Golf before the Mk4 not to be built in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Mk3 was sold in Japan alongside the Polo, where both vehicles were in compliance with Japanese Government dimension regulations that encouraged sales. A 1993 UK advert featured the Bluebells song Young At Heart which resulted in a 4-week spell at Number 1 thanks to the popularity of it.
Models [ edit ]
Volkswagen Golf Variant
Variant [ edit ]
For the first time, an estate was produced, being launched in early 1994 and bringing it into line with key competitors such as the Ford Escort and Vauxhall/Opel Astra which had long been available as estates. The GT variants included a 2.8LVR6 engine, and a convertible launched as the Cabrio (Typ 1E).
Cabriolet [ edit ]
The Volkswagen Golf Mk3 Cabrio (or Typ 1E) was introduced in 1994 for the 1995 model year, replacing the previous MK1 Rabbit based Cabriolet. It was facelifted in 1998 (mid 1999 for non-euro markets) with the front, rear, and steering wheel styling from the Golf Mk4 while still maintaining the body from the Mk3 Cabrio. These Cabrios are often referred to as the Mk3.5 Cabrios. The Volkswagen Golf Cabrio was discontinued in 2002 with a special edition called "Last Edition".
Volkswagen Golf Mk3 Cabrio
Volkswagen Golf Mk3.5 (Mk4) Cabrio
A59
The Golf A59 prototype in the Volkswagen Museum
Although a failed project, this should have been the highest performance, 4WD model with a 275HP turbocharged 1998cc engine, carbon fiber and kevlar shell, and a full roll cage. It was supposed to be able to win the World Rally championship in 1994. The prototype can be seen at the Volkswagen museum.
Features [ edit ]
1995–1996 Volkswagen Golf CL 3-door hatchback (Australia)
1993 Volkswagen Golf 5-door hatchback
A 16-valve version of the third-generation Golf GTI was introduced in 1993. The engine was enlarged to 2.0 L, with power now reaching 150 PS (110 kW/148 hp). While less powered than the VR6, it was still relatively popular with driving enthusiasts in Europe, because it offered similar power without the thirst or tax burden of a 6 cylinder. As with previous versions the Golf Driver acted as the official GTI-look-alike in the United Kingdom.[4] Similar to the continental market Golf GT it looked sporting but was fitted with a single-point injected 1.8 L engine.
Volkswagen Cabrio
The Golf Mk3 was also the predecessor of the "diesel craze" that swept through Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Volkswagen introduced the direct-injection system with the 90 PS (66 kW; 89 hp) Golf TDI in 1993.
From its launch, all versions of the Golf came with fuel injection, to meet EEC requirements that all new cars sold in member countries from January 1993 must come with fuel injection or a catalytic converter. Non-catalyzed models were also built for those markets where there was no interest in them; power outputs were the same as for the catalyzed models.[5] An all-new 1.4 petrol engine was the entry-level model in the MK2 Golf range.
Also offered was a naturally aspirated version of the 1.9 L diesel engine, the SDI, offering 47 kW (64 PS; 63 hp).
Airbags were first offered on the Golf in 1992, and from 1996 anti-lock brakes were standard across the range.
The Golf Mk3 was also available in "Ecomatic" form. It was powered with a diesel engine and a clutchless manual transmission. The vehicle would freewheel by opening of the clutch as soon as the accelerator is released, and the engine was switched off after a further 1.5 seconds of inactivity, whether by stopping or coasting. Restarting the engine simply required depressing the accelerator pedal.[6] VW had previously pioneered similar technology in the VW Polo "Formel E" in the 1980s.
Volkswagen Golf Mk3 GL interior
Battery pack under the hood of the electric Golf CitySTROMer.
There was also a limited production run of around 250 "CitySTROMer" vehicles, mainly sold to the German market, which were fully electric vehicles, incorporating six lead-acid batteries in the engine bay, and a further 10 underneath the luggage area. It had a range of approximately 50 km. The vehicle could be filled with a small amount of diesel to provide heat for the cabin.[7][8]
As had happened with the Mk1 and Mk2, the Mk3 remained available in US for a year after it was discontinued in Europe (1998). The Mk3 continued to be produced for the 1999 model year where it was sold in North and South America. These 1999 Mk3 cars were the last produced in the world and sold alongside the Mk4 in showrooms.
Awards
Mk3 special editions [ edit ]
20th Anniversary GTI
Volkswagen produced a limited quantity of 1000 special-edition 3 and 5-door GTI Anniversary models, celebrating 20 years of the GTI model. This had the usual GTI specification but came equipped with special chequered Recaro front sport seats and matching rear seats bearing the GTI logo, red seat belts front and rear, half-chromed and leather golf ball gear knob, red stitched leather steering wheel and handbrake gaiter. The release knob on the hand brake was also red and silver instrument dials. Floor mats also had red piping along their edges. The red theme continued externally with a red striping on the bumpers and red brake calipers. The wheels were 16" x 7" split rim BBS RS 722 alloys, visually similar to the 15" that were found on VR6 model. Also featured were brushed stainless-steel rear twin tailpipes on the exhaust and smoked front fog and indicator lamps to match the rear lamps. 3 optional extras were made available; electric sunroof, air conditioning and metallic black paintwork. Insurance was based on the standard GTI which made this version a very desirable model. The edition was sold in only 6 colour schemes and the 1000 number figures that were produced was as follows; 600 8 valve models, 150 16 valve models and 250 TDI models. The diesel model was only produced for the European market and was not sold in the UK. Unfortunately many of the models fell into the UK company car and lease market prior to the second-hand market and its believed only a few hundred still survive. However, another factor in the rarity of Mark 3 Golfs, unlike the excellent build quality of the Mark 2, at least in the UK, is the very low quality steel sourced by VW on some occasions, and used across the range, from entry model to VR6. According to independent mechanics and parts specialists, and MOT testers, the floorpan, both door sills, and rear hatch can suffer severe rot and disintegration, and anybody planning to buy one is advised to check for rot, and holes and patches to the floorpan.
Otmar Alt
The Gold Otmar |
. They also have something else in common – all of them are dropouts. None of them obtained a university degree.
We have all heard the scary statistics about the risks of entrepreneurship – about 95% of businesses fail within the first 5 years. For venture-backed startups the success rate hovers around 7%.
Despite the stats and the odds of success – more people are venturing into entrepreneurship – more than 500000 small businesses are started each month in the United States. With the democratization of the Internet and Globalization, more people are starting to strike it on their own because of the upside potential.
Today almost anyone can be self-employed. Companies such as Etsy,Ebay,Amazon,etc. make it is easier for anyone to start and run a business. Many individuals are ditching their corporate jobs and degrees to venture on their own.
In 1996 Thomas J Stanley and William Danko published a book- The Millionaire Next Door. An interesting finding from the book was that close to 70% of self-made millionaires were either self-employed or Entrepreneurs.
The traditional path of going to college, getting a degree and gaining steady employment – does not correlate to financial & business success.
We have discussed the two sides of the coin. We learnt about the benefits of Higher Education for the individual i.e. Higher Income Potential; and the benefits for the society is a lower crime rate, stability and progress.
We also discussed the disadvantages of Higher Education – increased unemployment among millennials, underemployment, ballooning education costs and the mismatch between success vs education.
My personal opinion about Higher Education.
Is it mandatory?
My answer is that it totally depends on the individual. If someone has the mettle to be an Entrepreneur – it is best not to get deep into student debts & obtain a graduate degree.For such individuals it is in their best interest to become self-employed. In this case, higher education is not necessary.
If someone is risk-averse, wants a stable career over the course of his/her lifetime – then it is imperative to obtain a college/university degree & follow the traditional path.
Before making the decisions – today’s youth must take a step back to learn more about their motivations & strengths. Based on that they can make the best personal decision whether to pursue Higher Education or not.
Feel free to share if you found the article insightful!!This medium sized set features the MetalBeard Robo-Pirate dueling with the Micro Manager evil robot. Both of these figures have some great features and provide excellent playability as you will see below.
You can see my Bricksafe page for the full set of photos used in this review.
This set is now available for sale via Amazon, eBay, LEGO Shop, or check the country specific links on the set's details page. Note that Rebrickable earns a small commission on any purchases made via these links, and we appreciate it when you do :)
Box Contents
The box is square at 28cm x 28cm x 6cm. Inside we have: Instruction Booklet
3 x plastic bags For once there are no stickers! The bags are numbered 1 to 3, with #1 creating the evil robot and three minifigs; #2 creates MetalBeard's torso and legs; and #3 adds his arms. I didn't really see the point of separating the arms though, there was plenty of room inside bag #2 for the rest of the parts.
New Parts
There are 397 parts in this set, a lot of which are small in size providing some rich levels of detail on the two fighters. There is one new part - the unusual plate used to mount MetalBeard's head. It is a 2x2 plate with an extra bit attached to the side. It has some patterend markings on the front of it, to match the robotic theme. I'm not sure how reusable this part is going to be!
There are also a lot of parts appearing for the first time in new colors:
Minifigs
There are three minifigs in this set, but I honestly don't see the point. The two awesome robo-dudes grab all the attention and there's little for the tiny minifigs to do. In any case, we have Frank the Foreman, one of the many Robo SWAT figures to come, and Skeletron who comes with some new Light Bluish Gray parts.
Every single LEGO Movie has minifigures (with all but one having at least three), so I guess the designers had some obligation to include these? Or maybe my general dislike of minifigures is still showing ;)
Build
Of the three LEGO Movie sets reviewed so far, this was definitely the most fun to build. I'll split this into two sections.
Evil Black Cube Robot Thing (aka Micro Manager)
The build starts with the evil robot body, then adds the legs and tentacles. The robot makes some nice use of SNOT techniques to get plenty of details on the sides of the cube. I particularly like the deployable side-guns... even though they are of the flick powered variety.
It actually has what seems to be a cockpit inside. None of the imagery shows it being used, but any of the minifigs fit in there quite nicely. Although, I'm pretty sure these robots are supposed to be fully autonomous so they don't need drivers. The wheel on top lets you open the lid to access the cockpit.
The legs are built with plenty of hinge plates and bricks, giving them quite a lot of freedom of movement. The "snap-in-place" features of the hinges makes it quite easy to position the legs in any stable configuration.
The arms are made from cylinder hinges which give them a tentacle look. The four spiky grippers on the end of each arm give them a great sinister feel, especially with the use of the red and black colour scheme.
MetalBeard
The story on the LEGO.com site is that MetalBeard has lost his body parts while fighting Lord Business, and so built his cyborg body with scraps from his pirate ship. Sure, I can believe that.
The build starts with his body, which has quite an assortment of gadgetry connected to it such as: a treasure chest containing the remnants of his original body (ewww); his disembodied head; and some cool silver chains. The body connects to his hips, giving him the ability to rotate 360 degrees.
Being a pirate, he couldn't just create himself a normal body. No - his left leg is a peg leg, complete with anchor, steering wheel and barrel attachments. The right leg is much beefier, with a massive foot to help keep him stabilised. The hips are made out of the rotation joints (48172, 47455, 48171) which provide two axes of movement.
His arms are even cooler :) Both arms are connected by the big 10mm ball and socket joints which make them very strong and very flexible. His left arm is basically two giant canons and a ship's steering wheel. The canons actually fire 1x1 round bricks via the pull-back spring loaded action, and spare bricks are stored on the wheel. His right arm contains 4 awesome looking fingers/thumb... and a shark. Because, well shark's are cool :)
It just so happens, MetalBeard is now about the same size as the Hero Factory models... so he gets to use one of their awesome swords too. It is attached to his back but also fits in his hand (a bit loosely though).
I did have some grievances with him though. I take a lot of photos during these reviews, and so try out lots of different poses. A lot of the time, MetalBeard would just keep falling over and it was a bit frustrating getting him stable. Also, each time I moved him his head would tend to fall off. Everything else is quite strongly attached via clips/hinges/etc, but the head is only attached via a single weak stud.
Summary
This is definitely a set you will want to show off. MetalBeard is a very cool figure. The cube robot by itself would be great, but is completely overshadowed by MetalBeard. I'm pretty sure the three minifigures are still around here somewhere... With these sets, the LEGO designers have had free reign to create something a bit outlandish - eg not having to build a perfect replica of some real vehicle. As a result, this is one of the best looking models I've seen in a while, and I think it's sure to be a favourite. Plus, they are both very playable and for the most part will not fall apart on you. Once you finally realise that MetalBeard's legs can be stretched apart to give him better balance, some more interesting poses present themselves... Check out the rest of the photos at my Bricksafe page. Thanks to adhdferret for finding the teaser trailer video featuring MetalBeard below.
The following video can be found on the LEGO product page for this set:A Palestinian prisoner is greeted by a relative after his release at the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Photo: Eyad Baba Associated Press
This feels bitter sweet. While it is indeed precious whenever political prisoners are released from captivity, because of the framework of the prisoner exchange negotiations between Hamas and Israel, the second phase of Palestinian prisoners released Sunday night in exchange for Galid Shalit’s October release were Israel’s choice this time around. Unsurprisingly, many of the prisoners released had very little time left to serve, thankfully some were children, and according to Ethan Bronner, all were categorized as light security prisoners.
Israel chose to release the prisoners at night. Jubilant crowds gathered in anticipation and celebrations followed, complete with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests from Israel’s military forces overseeing the Occupation of Palestine.
Guy Azriel and Enas Muthaffar, CNN
Thousands of Palestinians celebrated the release Sunday night of 550 inmates from Israeli prisons……The revelry in the Mukataa compound in Ramallah — the long-timehome to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — ran late into the night. Tayeb Abdel Rahim, general-secretary in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office, was among those officials greeting the line of freed prisoners, as they all paid their respects at Arafat’s grave. …………………… At least 20 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were injured in the Sunday evening skirmishes at the Beitunia crossing, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials. Samer Abu Ali, spokesman for the Palestinian medical relief services in Ramallah, told CNN that many of the Palestinians suffered injuries from inhaling tear gas and from rubber bullets fired by the Israeli security forces at the families and friends of the soon-to-be-released prisoners. Palestinian independent lawmaker and political activist Mustafa Barghouti, who was at the scene of the clashes, told CNN that he had been sprayed with foul-smelling water used to disperse crowds and had been overcome by tear gas. An Israeli military spokesman said some 400 Palestinians were engaged in an “illegal riot” at the crossing point and were throwing rocks and burning tires. The spokesman said soldiers were using riot control methods to disperse the crowds.
Ethan Bronner, NYT
This second phase involved what the Israelis call light security prisoners. None had been convicted of killing or wounding anyone, and none were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. About half of the prisoners were serving four years or less, and a third of them two years or less, often for offenses like throwing stones or incendiary bombs or possessing weapons. About 10 percent had sentences of 10 years or more, mostly for throwing or planting bombs or attempted murder. Ten percent are younger than 18; three of the prisoners are 14 years old. ……… “This is not a serious part of the exchange,” Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian minister of detainees for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said in a telephone interview. “Many of those being released were due to get out within months anyway, and there are women left behind and prisoners who have been there a long time. If Israel had wanted to make a real good-will gesture, the list would have been totally different.” ……. In Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas, Salah al-Baradweel, said Israel seemed to be punishing Gaza by freeing so few prisoners from there: 41 of the 550.
Jihan Abdalla and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters
Nearly all of the prisoners passed through a crossing into the West Bank and were greeted by thousands of Palestinians who danced and cheered in the city of Ramallah……..”My feelings of joy are mixed with sorrow because we left behind beloved brothers, we hope all of them will be freed,” said Samer Aweidat, who was released after serving four years of a six-year sentence for weapons possession and being a member of a miltant group. Israel’s Supreme Court opened the way for Sunday’s release to go ahead by turning down a petition Friday from Israelis opposed to freeing the prisoners, whose terms ranged from a few months to 18 years. …………. Hani Habib, a political analyst in Gaza, said that Israel, given the opportunity to pick which prisoners would be freed in the second stage, chose inmates from Fatah rather than Hamas. “Israel was interested in turning the victory that has been achieved into a Palestinian discomfort and a Palestinian division with its discrimination,” he said. Hamas said it would petition Egypt to pressure Israel into freeing all the Palestinian women in its jails, something it had wanted to happen in Sunday’s release.
Congratulations to Palestine and especially all the reunited families enjoying the presence of loved ones today, especially the children.
A shout out to Israel’s Supreme Court for turning down a petition Friday from Israelis seeking to renege on Israel’s obligation to release the second group of Palestinians prisoners from Israeli jails.
A huge shout out to Hamas for holding strong and brokering this deal. While it isn’t everything we hope for, there are families across Palestine united and fathers and brothers and sisters and mothers in the arms of their long-missed relations because of your determined sumud.
And finally, thank you Egypt and the Arab Spring for your part in making this happen, this was a long time coming.A challenge facing information security is our inability to effectively train new analysts. The majority of security knowledge is tacit. We have plenty of practitioners who are good at catching bad guys, but most of them can’t articulate how they do it. I believe that overcoming this issue requires a focus on fundamental thought processes underlying security investigations, which is the foundation of my doctoral research.
Every major thought-based profession has a core construct through which everything is framed. For doctors, it’s the patient case. From this stems the diagnostic process, testing frameworks, and treatment plans. For lawyers, it’s the legal case. From this stems the discovery exercise, the trial, and sentencing. These core constructs are defined as an entities whose whole is greater than the sum of their parts. Each one is a story all its own.
In information security, our core construct is the investigation case. Everything we do is based on determining if malicious activity has happened, and to what extent. I don’t think many would argue this point, but surprisingly, there is very little formal writing out there about the investigation process itself. Many texts gloss over it and merely consider in the sum of its parts, a basic container for related evidence.
I propose that the investigation is so much more.
The Investigation Method
The investigation is at the heart of information security. It is a living, beating thing through which all of our actions are motivated and framed. It is our lens. To understand the investigation you must understand how humans think.
Perception is not reality. What we perceive as reality and what actually exists are two separate things separated by our ability to interpret sensory input and using higher order reasoning. The process of getting from an initial perception to an accurate depiction of reality is the basis for learning and cognition. Learning comes from questioning. Straight from the womb, humans learn by questioning their environment, themselves, and their limits. By asking questions and employing various techniques to find answers we learn to move, walk, talk, and think. These techniques range from simple experimentation to complex reasoning, and can be motivated by primal needs like food and water, or higher order needs like achievement or respect. Our biases are always present. There are countless barriers that limit our ability to get from perception to reality. The most dangerous of these is our own mindset and the biases that are inherent to it. Humans are opinionated, and the same questions that drive us toward the pursuit of reality also drive opinions. When those opinions are educated and conscious they are hypotheses, and when none of those conditions are met they are guesses, and more subject to limiting bias.
If you consider this knowledge of human psychology, it begins to paint a picture of an investigation. Instead of trying to create a framework that dictates how investigations should be done, I wanted to take an approach the uncovers how you approach investigations as a form of learning. After all, that’s basically what an investigation is. It’s all about bridging the gap between perception and reality by learning facts. This yields the following definition and method.
“An investigation is the systematic inquiry and examination of evidence and observations in an effort to gain an accurate perception of whether an incident has occurred, and to what extent.”
If this looks familiar to you, that’s because it’s not too different from the scientific method. In a similar manner, the scientific manner wasn’t thought up as some way that scientific discovery should be done; it is an identification how most scientific discovery is done based on how humans learn. Even if scientists don’t intentionally set out to use the scientific method, their subconscious mind is doing it. The scientific method is responsible for the vast majority of scientific discovery. The investigation method is similarly responsible for the discovery of network intruders.
The investigation method contains five parts. I’ll briefly cover them here, although each one is worthy of its own article which will come later.
Observation
Every investigation begins with some observation that arouses suspicion. This is often machine generated in the form of an IDS alert, but could also be human driven in the form of an observation made while hunting. It doesn’t have to be an internal observation, and may come from a third-party notification. The tactics of the investigation are often shaped by the source of the initial observation, but the general process remains the same.
An observation is usually based on some form of initial evidence.
An observation can come from anywhere, but should be supportable. Even hunches or gut feelings are supportable when framed appropriately.
The first goal of the investigation is usually to validate or invalidate the initial observation as the premise of the investigation. If that observation isn’t valid, the investigation may not need to progress.
Question
An investigation consists of a series of questions for which the analyst must seek answers. Based on the initial observation, the overarching questions will likely be some version of “Did a breach occur?” or “Is this malicious?” To answer those questions, more questions must be asked. Answers to one question will usually generate more questions. At any given point, an analyst should be able to articulate what question they’re trying to answer.
The ability to define good questions increases with experience because expert analysts have a larger pool of heuristics (rules) to draw from.
Most questions are centered around uncovering relationships, because ultimately it’s the relationships between devices and users that define an attack or breach.
Newer analysts will frequently begin answer seeking activities without clearly identifying the question they are attempting to answer. This can lead to wasted effort, but usually diminishes with experience.
Hypothesis
You’re usually already slanted towards a specific answer from the moment you define your question, even if you don’t realize it. Your opinion forms based on your mindset, and is shaped by the entirety of your experience, both personal and professional. This is also where bias lives in the investigation process. The ability to articulate a hypothesis is an ideal way to expose bias so that your assumptions can be challenged if necessary. It also provides a clear path to additional questions that can validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Collectively, this leads to better, stronger conclusions.
Most hypothesis generation is passive and occurs subconsciously. A trick to making this an active process is to form an “I believe” statement for a hypothesis in response to each question. I believe ______ because _______.
Ideally a hypothesis is an educated guess. If you cannot complete the last half of the because statement, your assumptions may be from a place of bias, inexperience, or an inability to articulate well.
Every question should provide opportunity for a hypothesis, even if it’s a null hypothesis stating that a scenario isn’t probable.
Answer
The area of investigation most analysts are familiar with is answer seeking. It involves familiar tasks like retrieving, manipulating, and reviewing data. Any time you analytically review data or perform research it’s because you’re seeking an answer to your questions, usually to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Traditionally, newer analysts usually learn answer seeking before anything else which explains why the learning curve is so steep. They are trying to find answers for questions they don’t fully understand.
The goal of every answer isn’t to solve the investigation, it’s often to provide an opportunity for more questions. The answers you find will only be as good as the question they’re trying to resolve.
While it may seem logical to seek answers that prove a hypothesis, seeking to disprove a hypothesis is usually a much faster route to better questions.
Some questions won’t be answerable due to a lack of visibility or not enough data retention. Inability to answer a question is notable, because it might have impact on the investigation later. An unanswered question does not equal an invalid hypothesis.
Conclusion
The conclusion of an investigation is its terminal point. The investigation can terminate as a false positive alert, an acceptable risk, a simple malware infection, or a large breach requiring coordinated incident response. When a terminal disposition has been made, the investigation will contain a series of questions, hypotheses, and answers that uncover a (hopefully) accurate representation of events as they have occurred.
The strength of conclusions should always be accurately depicted by using estimative language. Certainties should be cited as such and backed up with evidence. Analytic opinions should be weighted based on their estimated certitude and available evidence.
If the steps that led you to a conclusion are considered carefully and documented well throughout the process, it should ease the burden of citing supporting information when documenting conclusions.
Framing an Investigation
Let’s look at example of what an investigation looks like through the lens of the investigation method. In this case, our fictional analyst has received an alert from an intrusion detection system.
Initial Observation: IDS Alert – User account was added to a domain admin group
This alert represents activity that might be legitimate, but could be malicious if it was unauthorized. The first question that generally follows an alert of this nature is whether it is malicious or normal activity.
Question 1: Does this alert represent malicious activity?
If the analyst were in a small organization they might be aware of any changes like this that should be occurring. Our analyst works in a very large enterprise, so it’s entirely possible that someone made this change for a legitimate reason without the analyst knowing. Because of this, the analyst believes its legitimate activity.
Hypothesis 1: I believe this is legitimate activity because this is something that happens frequently within the organization.
To answer the initial question, the analyst must prove or disprove the hypothesis. To do this, more questions must be asked. There are a number of routes the analyst could go here, but one many analysts would pursue relates to follow-up actions taken by the user account.
Question 2: What actions did the user account take after being added to the admin group?
Based on the earlier hypothesis that this is normal behavior, it’s likely the hypothesis to Q2 will be similar.
Hypothesis 2: I believe the account participated in legitimate admin activity because it supports hypothesis 1.
Seeking an answer to Q2 should be fairly easily with adequate visibility into your system and network logs. The analyst is able to search through logs fed into his SIEM and determine that the user account in question logged into a workstation, opened Outlook, and mounted several C-level executives mailboxes from the Exchange mail server.
Answer 2: The user account logged into a workstation, opened Outlook, and mounted several C-level executives mailboxes from the Exchange mail server.
The answer to Q2 appears to disprove our hypothesis 2, which in turn disproves hypothesis 1. The activity exhibited by the user account is definitely malicious, and answers our first question.
Answer 1: The actions taken by the user account after being added to the domain admin group are malicious in nature due to unauthorized access to multiple sensitive mailboxes.
At this point, the analyst is confident a breach has occurred, and the investigation can continue with that in mind. This should bring up more questions as the investigation evolves, including:
Was the user account an existing user account whose credentials were compromised?
Are there any indicators of compromise on the workstation normally used by the user who owns this account?
How did the potential attacker gain enough access to be able to promote the compromised account into an admin group?
How did the user account gain access to the workstation used to mount the Exchange mailboxes?
Is there any malware installed on the workstation the mailboxes were mounted from?
Were any other accounts accessed from the system belonging to the owner of the compromised account?
As you can see, what I’ve articulated here is only a fraction of what could be a much larger investigation. The key takeaway is that it provides a very structured, easy to follow timeline of the investigation and how it progressed. This makes it much easier to review the investigation process from beginning to end, and to use this investigation as a teaching tool for novice analysts.
As a Universal Method
The investigation method is a universal construct within information security. While the industry often glamorizes unique subspecialties like hunting and malware analysis, they all fit within the same scope of activities. The method still applies.
For example, consider threat hunting. It follows the same process to bridge the gap from perception to reality. The only difference is that the initial observation is usually human-driven. Instead of receiving an IDS alert or an external notification, the analyst asks broad questions based on their library of experience-derived heuristics. The goal of this questioning is for the answers to generate more questions, or lead to the discovery of evidence that represents malicious activity.
This isn’t to say that subspecialties don’t require unique skill sets. They most certainly do. A hunter is usually someone more experienced because they have a larger library of investigative heuristics to work from, which allows them to be more effective at coming up with questions that can drive the discovery of interesting observations. A novice analyst wouldn’t have nearly as many heuristics to rely on, and their efforts would be less fruitful.
The characteristics of a good analyst will vary based on specialization, but the method is universal.
Why It Matters
The investigation method isn’t provided as a framework. The truth is that this is the method you likely already use to investigate security events, even if you aren’t aware of it. That awareness is key, because it gives practitioners a language to express their knowledge. From this comes more insightful analysis, more clearly identified methods that lead to conclusions, and an ability to teach novice analysts how investigations can be performed through the lens of an expert.
If you walk into a hundred SOCs you will find a hundred ways of documenting investigations. There is no standard, and worse yet, most end up adopting whatever format their tooling provides. What happens is that ticketing systems and wikis end up defining how analysts perform investigations. This is tragic.
If you walk into those same hundreds SOC’s, you’ll also typically only find one way of teaching people how investigations should be done — through on the job observation. While observation-based training is a key component of any training program, an education that is founded entirely on observation is sure to fail. I wouldn’t want a surgeon who skipped medical school and went straight to residency to be operating on me. Sure, they might be able to get the job done, but they’ll be missing the fundamentals that make them flexible and prepared for the inevitable unknown.
This is one significant reason why defenders are so badly outpaced by attackers in information security. Our profession hasn’t gone through its cognitive revolution where we seek to understand how we approach the investigation and it’s components. If we want to get there, understanding human thought and the methods that form the investigation are key. This article seeks to shed light in some of those areas, and certainly the articles to follow will as well.
I’d encourage you to consider the method shown here and think through it as you perform your investigations. What questions are you asking? How are your hypotheses swaying your analysis? How strong are your conclusions? How do you express how you approach investigations? These are all useful questions and are pivotal in your own understanding of the craft, as well as those who will come after you.RAFFLE RESULTS
You can find the third party raffle site list of winners here: https://www.randompicker.com/Project...y=122887x81168
At the bottom of the page is a search function you can use to see if your character was included in the raffle.
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Recording of the live raffle drawing: http://www.twitch.tv/norova/c/5378362
Juevento: 280,000 platinum pieces
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Byel: DawnFire, Morning Star of Light
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Destrotek: 7-Piece Mystic Koada`Dal Mithril Set
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HOWDY, PROJECT 1999ers!
October 25th starting at 8AM CDT
WELGRIM'S OFFICIAL EXTRA LIFE PROJECT 1999 ITEM RAFFLE
Have you put in your hard time in the world of Norrath but just never had an opportunity to get your hands on some super rare and expensive pixels?
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If you answered "YES!" to any of these questions, this raffle is for you!
PRIZE TIERS
CASH PRIZE
One of the prizes is a lump sum payout of all the platinum donated to the raffle by various people.
10,000 PLATINUM PIECES (Doraf)
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Oh, yeah. This too.
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Once more, a HUGE THANKS to the server's senior staff, especially Derubael, for allowing me to do this!
Also, my $15,000 pledge was to do a shoey. Enjoy! http://www.twitch.tv/norova/c/5374131 ----------------------------You can still donate to my campaign, so if you feel moved to do so, PLEASE don't hesitate! But the Project 1999 item raffle is CLOSED!On Saturday,I will be participating in Extra Life by livestreaming a marathon 24-hour gaming session to raise money for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Extra Life brings a worldwide community of gamers together to benefit a wonderful cause while having fun and making a positive impact on local communities. Please join me on Twitch.tv as I go from wide-awake to zombie-mode while trying to raise money for the children. Even if you don't have any cash to spare for a donation I could really use your company! I will be giving away various prizes, running a few raffles and doing my best to stay awake and keep my sanity. Throughout the 24 hours I will be playing some Project 1999, Trove Heroes of the Storm and more!----------I have somethingspecial in store for Project 1999 (well, for Blue anyway; sorry Red <3). After much planning, patience and paperwork, and SO MANY thanks to the compassionate senior staff of the server (<3uDeru)... as part of my Extra Life day of games I will be conducting an Extra Life donation-based raffle for some very valuable items on the Project 1999 Blue (PvE) server!----------Prizes will be added to the overall prize pool as milestones are reached for my Extra Life 2014 goal. Tier 1 is unlocked at the start of the raffle. Tier 2 unlocks at $1,250. Tier 3 unlocks at $2,500. See the following page for a live view of the current prize tier status:Please, oh please, can we make this happen??------------------------------Again, here are all of the relevant links:--------------------India: After successfully launching the payload of 20 satellites, Google subsidiary, Terra Bella is negotiating with ISRO to launch more of their satellites. Among various other satellites that were launched by ISRO this week, a 110 kg SkySat Gen2-1 belonging to Terra Bella and 12 of Planet Lab’s Dove Satellites, each weighing 4.7 kg, were placed in orbit by Wednesday’s PSLV-C34 mission.
SkySat Gen2-1 is a small earth imaging satellite capable of capturing sub-metre resolution images and high definition video. The Planet Labs Dove Satellites (FLock-2P) are also earth imaging satellites. Both the companies have plans for a series of launches and ISRO is in touch with them, ISRO chairman, A.S. Kiran Kumar said.
Referring to the 34 Indian satellites in orbit — spanning communication, earth observation, navigation and Space science — Kumar hinted that the number may be increased to 70 to meet various demands in the next five years. He was addressing a media gathering at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Shar, Sriharikota in SPSR Nellore district.
Reacting to a question on earth observation satellites shrinking in size globally unlike ISRO’s Cartosat, he said ISRO also has been reducing the size of its earth observation satellites. But it cannot take the approach adopted by private companies.
Responding to a question on proposals for a third launch pad to increase launch frequency, Mr Kiran Kumar said there is an urgent need for another assembly facility to make optimum use of the existing two launch pads. He said the South East Asian Satellite built by India is likely to be launched be-tween December 2016 and March 2017 but Pakistan is no longer a part of it.
With respect to reported plans of ISRO to establish its own space station, the ISRO chairman said it depended on the long-term plan of ISRO, the funding received from government and other aspects.President Trump says he has created 600,000 jobs so far. It's a false statement.
"We've created over 600,000 jobs already over a very short period of time and it's going to really start catching on now," Trump said Tuesday at the White House, flanked by his top advisers and the CEOs who are members of his Business Advisory Council.
He repeated the statement later at a press conference: "Already we've created more than almost [sic] 600,000 jobs."
Official government data does not back up that claim.
According to CNNMoney's Trump Jobs Tracker, 317,000 jobs have been created since Trump took office. The president is trying to take credit for nearly double that number |
AD COHEN: Back at Georgia Tech, researchers Wendy Rogers and Charles Kemp couldn't agree more. They're testing robots where they think they'll be needed most, with the older generation.
CHARLIE KEMP: Instead of you having to worry about what time it is and, "Should I be taking medicine," imagine if the robot were just to come up to you and say, "Here. You just need to take this."
MAN: Thank you, that's quite impressive.
WENDY ROGERS (Georgia Institute of Technology) : Could you imagine having a robot like this in your home, and, if so, what kind of tasks would you want it to do for you?
WOMAN: Oh, like the Jetsons ; I want it to vacuum and answer the phone, answer the door and do all the futuristic stuff.
WOMAN:...come and clean my house anytime it wants. Love it, teach it to iron. And, in fact, he's much better looking than I thought he'd be.
I have a friend who is looking for a dancing partner? Seriously. Can he come to a party?
SHERRY TURKLE: My problem with sociable robots is that we begin to think about the sociable and lose track of the robots. We're setting ourselves up for disappointment, because these robots will disappoint us if we are looking for human connection. Do we want to make them in such a way that we're going to love them because they will be pretending to love us?
CHAD COHEN: David fears, if we don't humanize robots by bringing them into the human family, we face a frightening future.
Think Terminator—a world in which killer robots turn on their creators and set out to destroy us.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (As the Terminator/ The Terminator /Film Clip) : Hasta la vista, baby!
CHAD COHEN: Do you think robots will take over the world?
PHILIP K. DICK ROBOT: Jeez, dude. You all got the big questions cooking today. But you're my friend, and I'll remember my friends, and I will be good to you. So don't worry. Even if I evolve into Terminator, I will still be nice to you. I will keep you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for old time's sake.
CHAD COHEN: I'm comforted, I'm very comforted now. I'm going to be part of his people zoo.
In the future, will people fall in love with robots?
Seems like a lot of songwriters already have...
ROBOT LOVE
Victor Lams
THE GIRL AND THE ROBOT
Rí¶yksopp
We found at least 44 songs about people in love with robots...
I'M IN LOVE WITH A ROBOT GIRL
ANDROID LOVE
I FELL IN LOVE WITH AN ANDROID
HOT LIKE A ROBOT
AMOR ROBOT
ROBOT DREAM
I FELL IN LOVE WITH A ROBOT
MY ROBOT ENVY
FELL IN LOVE WITH A ROBOT MAID
GIRLS LOVE ROBOTS
YUMMY ROBOT
MY BOYFRIEND'S IN LOVE WITH A ROBOT
EVERYBODY NEEDS A ROBOT
ROBOT IN LOVE
BETTY BIZARRE ROBOT LOVE
ROBOT HIGH SCHOOL
THE ROBOT SONG
I'M IN LOVE WITH THE TERMINATOR
I ROBOT LOVER
I LOVE YOU, ROBOT
ROBOT ROMANCE
ROBOT GIRLFRIEND
LOVE ROBOT
WE DIG GIANT ROBOTS
THE GIRL AND THE ROBOT
ROBOT SEX
DIRTY ROBOT
SEXY ROBOT
ROBOT LOVE (x4)
Next big thing: an album in the works?
Maybe not.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.
We don't know how to stop these natural disasters. Thanks to technology, we're getting better at seeing them coming, but some approaching disasters aren't visible from the sky. Catastrophic earthquakes, capable of wiping out entire cities, are driven by forces deep underground. If only we could peer beneath the surface and see what's coming.
Correspondent Kirk Wolfinger takes us to some tectonic hot spots, where researchers are inventing new tools to try and detect killer quakes before they strike.
KIRK WOLFINGER (Correspondent) : This is what Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, looked like, on January 11, 2010.
MAN'S VOICE: Go, go, go!
WOMAN'S VOICE: The world is coming to an end!
KIRK WOLFINGER: And this was the same city, 24 hours later.
JEAN ROBERT JOSEPH ( Haitian Earthquake Survivor): Everybody was calling, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"
KIRK WOLFINGER: The city was flattened by a massive earthquake, measuring 7.0. More than 230,000 people died. A quarter of a million buildings were reduced to rubble.
THOMAS JORDAN: The Haiti earthquake of January 12th is the fifth largest killing earthquake in history.
KIRK WOLFINGER: But it was not unexpected.
ERIC CALAIS: There was a police station there. Can't see anything, and that's because there's nothing left.
KIRK WOLFINGER: But almost two years before the quake, geophysicist Eric Calais saw this coming. Along with his colleagues at the Haitian Bureau of Mines, they actually forecast this earthquake with amazing accuracy.
DIEUSEUL ANGLADE (Haiti Bureau of Mines and Energy) : With the University of Purdue, we calculated the magnitude of the, of the earthquake, and we have found 7.2. And we, we knew that this earthquake will be very, very catastrophic.
KIRK WOLFINGER: They did it by measuring Earth's movements along the Enriquillo fault zone. The Enriquillo fault, a giant crack in the Earth's surface, runs the entire length of Haiti.
If you could peer underground, you'd see a complex jumble of jagged fissures where pieces of the Earth's crust rub up against each other. The two sides of the fault drift in opposite directions.
Eric's team set out to measure the speed of the two moving plates. In 2003, they placed six steel pins in key locations on both sides of the fault.
ERIC CALAIS: It's a piece of metal, stainless steel, that we sealed in the...at the top of this building.
KIRK WOLFINGER: On top of each pin, Eric attached a G.P.S. antenna, linked to a satellite 12,500 miles up.
The global positioning system can detect even the tiniest movements of the pins, showing Eric that the two sides of the fault are moving about a quarter of an inch away from each other, every year.
It doesn't sound like much, but it makes a big difference, because the two sides don't slide smoothly. Friction keeps the rocks locked together and tension builds up.
ERIC CALAIS: What we saw was a fault being loaded just like a rubber band.
KIRK WOLFINGER: Eventually, the rubber band snaps. The result is an earthquake.
But how powerful would the earthquake be? Eric did a simple calculation: the speed of the two plates, a quarter inch, or seven millimeters, per year, times the number of years since the last, known, big earthquake: 250.
ERIC CALAIS: Seven times 250 is about 1.8 meters, so there's 1.8 meters of motion that could be released.
KIRK WOLFINGER: In 2008, Eric forecast an earthquake of magnitude 7.2. It was tragically accurate. All that was lacking was a timeframe.
ERIC CALAIS: It's not that we were afraid to put a date on it, it's that as a scientist, we can't.
KIRK WOLFINGER: The timing of some natural disasters is predictable. For example, a hurricane's path can be seen and measured. Its time of landfall can usually be predicted to within an hour. But earthquake scientists are at a huge disadvantage. The powerful forces they study are hidden from view, deep underground.
ERIC CALAIS: The core of the problem is at depth. Fifteen kilometers, roughly speaking, that's the place where we would like to be making our measurements. I would give up my G.P.S. instruments and my surface measurements, if only I could have measurement of the forces inside the earth.
KIRK WOLFINGER: And that's what they're trying to do at another earthquake hotspot, thousands of miles away.
Having witnessed the devastation in Haiti, I've come to a place with some geological similarities; a place where the risk of a major quake is just as great if not greater. In California, Ernie Majer and his team are placing instruments deep inside the Earth, where the seismic forces that cause earthquakes are born.
ERNEST MAJER (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) : And we have a seismic source, and then we have a seismic receiver, and...
KIRK WOLFINGER: Source and receiver?
ERNIE MAJER: A source and a receiver.
KIRK WOLFINGER: The tubes are placed in holes dug deep into the rock: 3,000 feet deep. Now, why 3,000 feet?
ERNIE MAJER: Well, that's as deep as we could get.
KIRK WOLFINGER: Imagine trying to see 3,000 feet, a half a mile, underground. That's nine of the towers behind me, stacked one on top of the other, drilled into solid rock.
ERNIE MAJER: So, all right, hear that little, "Pop, pop, pop, pop?" So, that vibration goes out through the Earth, and this oscilloscope, here,...
KIRK WOLFINGER: Oh, yeah.
ERNIE MAJER:...is, is measuring the signal.
KIRK WOLFINGER: In 2005 and 2006, while measuring stress along California's San Andreas Fault, Ernie's team got a reading that caught them by surprise. The audio pulses suddenly began to speed up. This happened just before a magnitude 3 earthquake.
ERNIE MAJER: The change started about 10 hours beforehand.
KIRK WOLFINGER: This could be something people have sought for centuries: an earthquake warning sign, a way to predict when an earthquake is about to happen.
So, have you been able to be consistent with this?
ERNIE MAJER: We hope to replicate this over the next year or so. We might be on the path for prediction. We don't know that yet.
ERIC CALAIS: Earthquake prediction, to some extent, is the Holy Grail of the whole field.
KIRK WOLFINGER: And nowhere are they searching harder for the Holy Grail than here, in California.
It's riddled with active geological faults, the most infamous being the San Andreas, which runs the length of the state and is one of the most studied faults in the world.
Tom Jordan coordinates 600 scientists to produce an incredibly detailed, comprehensive earthquake forecast for California that maps out which communities are most at risk.
THOMAS JORDAN: It uses the historical information, it uses our mapping of faults, our understanding of the physics of earthquakes, to estimate how frequently earthquakes will occur in California, where they're going to occur, how big they're going to be, and something about, you know, the probabilities in a given time period.
KIRK WOLFINGER: The result of all that research is this animated computer simulation. It shows in graphic and terrifying detail, how tremors would spread from a rupture on the San Andreas Fault, and move across Southern California.
THOMAS JORDAN: The earthquake has just begun down here, in the southern end of the fault. And it's propagating up the fault at about 6,000 miles per hour.
Notice how it turns and goes into the Los Angeles region. This is an area that's filled with very soft sediments, and it conducts the energy very well.
KIRK WOLFINGER: The simulation shows which neighborhoods are most at risk.
I'm standing here, in the Hollywood Hills, just above the city of Los Angeles. In that simulated earthquake there would be a shockwave that would go right by where I'm standing, and it would shake for about 20 seconds. That would be bad, but because I am on bedrock, I'm probably okay.
THOMAS JORDAN: About 80 seconds after the event began, the strong shaking begins in Los Angeles.
KIRK WOLFINGER: Below the hills, the flatlands will be hit hardest. This whole area sits on sediment, and there will be an aftershake that lasts for several minutes. And that's where the damage will come. And, as you can see, there is a lot here to be damaged.
The 30-year forecast gives a 94 percent probability of California being hit by a quake as big as the one that hit Port-au-Prince.
THOMAS JORDAN: We just have to be prepared for that inevitability.
KIRK WOLFINGER: And it is inevitable, it's not...
THOMAS JORDAN: It is inevitable. It is going to happen. Now, when it happens, we cannot say.
KIRK WOLFINGER: We're still looking for the Holy Grail: predicting the exact timing of an earthquake. But our ability to forecast their size and location is already good and getting better.
Armed with these long-term forecasts, people in earthquake-prone areas can take steps to prepare for the inevitable, the next big one.
THOMAS JORDAN: Are you going to take your chances and hope you luck out, or do you invest for the worst? We're playing a statistical game. It's a gambler's game, and, frankly, nature has the odds.
Got a laptop computer?
...and an internet connection?
Want to help scientists measure and report earthquakes around the world?
Well, then join the "Quake-Catcher Network!"
It uses the built-in motion sensor in your laptop...
...along with lots of others.
Together they can sense and report earthquakes as small as 2.6 on the Richter scale.
All over the world.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We all know it's dangerous to drive and do other stuff at the same time. Well, cars of the future might fix that. Correspondent Ziya Tong ran down some folks designing robotic cars that could make driving a whole lot safer because we won't be behind the wheel.
ZIYA TONG: Driving today is a nightmare. From texting drivers to horrific traffic jams, the car, once our biggest convenience, is creating some of our biggest problems.
CHRIS BORRONI-BIRD: Today, you see gridlock in a lot of major cities, around the world. In Asia and Europe, traffic is moving at about five to 10 miles an hour, and people are stressed out.
ZIYA TONG: But what if you could redesign a car in a way that could do away with all that stress and gridlock? Auto engineers have come up with an idea, embodied in this, a revolutionary new vehicle, called the EN-V.
When I typically picture a car, I think of, like, four wheels and a steering wheel, but what I'm looking at right now looks like it's more out of a videogame.
CHRIS BORRONI-BIRD: That's right. These vehicles are not cars in the traditional sense of the word.
ZIYA TONG: First of all, to get in you pop the hood.
Let's go for a cruise.
You won't need to gas up ever again, because these high-tech vehicles are electric powered and can be charged in an ordinary outlet—no tailpipe and no toxic fumes.
They're powered by two motors, one in each wheel. Top speed? About 25 miles per hour. They weigh less than 1,000 pounds, a quarter of your average car. And when it comes to maneuverability, these tiny two-seaters can turn on a dime.
But there's one feature that makes these vehicles truly unique.
So right now, you're just in auto-drive mode, is that right?
PRI (GENERAL MOTORS) Yes.
ZIYA TONG: With the help of G.P.S., wireless and sensing technology, The EN-V can be driven hands-free, along a pre-programmed route. The idea is, you just get in, tell the car where you want to go, and it will take you there.
They can even drive on their own, no human required.
That is incredible. That looks like a ghost car, though, in the way it's driving itself, right? It's actually a bit spooky.
Spooky or not it can also do this:...
Oh, you're going to crash.
...stop by itself, when something is in its path.
CHRIS BORRONI-BIRD: These vehicles know each other's location and direction of movement and speed of movement.
ZIYA TONG: That's because sensors, equipped with vision and ultrasonic technology, give them the ability to sense objects around them. And a wireless network enables them to "talk" with one another, just like computers communicate through the Internet. But instead of sending emails, they share their position and velocity.
So right now, because this vehicle talked to the other vehicle, the other EN-V, it saw us coming and it stopped?
PRI: That's correct, yes.
ZIYA TONG: That's great. So this would prevent accidents?
PRI: This would prevent accidents.
ZIYA TONG: And, in theory, if cars never hit each other, they don't need to be designed like cars.
DANIEL DARANCOU (General Motors) : You eliminate the airbags. You eliminate a huge plate of metal between you and the road. We do have seatbelts in there for that inadvertent bump, or, let's say, you fall asleep, so you don't fall out of the seat.
ZIYA TONG: For its debut, three design teams from around the world were invited to create their vision of the car of the future.
DANIEL DARANCOU: The vehicle that was designed in Europe—you know they have all the runways in Milano and Paris—that vehicle is called the Fashionista. It has a very expensive aura to it.
ZIYA TONG: The blue bubble I rode in was designed in Australia. It's called Cute and Friendly.
And the black one that looks a bit like Darth Vader was designed in California.
DANIEL DARANCOU: That one we call the Techno-Geek.
ZIYA TONG: Not only can Fashionista, Cute and Friendly and Techno-Geek drive themselves they can also pick you up.
CHRIS BORRONI-BIRD: The car of the future, like EN-V, you call the vehicle, and it will come to you. I just press this button and it will come and pick me up.
Because walking to a car is so 20th-century.
ZIYA TONG: This is so much cooler than valet; I love it.
Chris hopes these cars will dominate cities of the future and make gridlock a thing of the past.
CHRIS BORRONI-BIRD: What I would like to see, by the year 2030, is that people would still have that freedom of movement that an automobile gives them today, but these vehicles would be communicating with each other and sensing each other, and traffic would flow a lot more smoothly, and people would be able to relax in the vehicle. But what really gets me excited is the fact that this vehicle could really provide accessibility to people who currently don't have accessibility to an automobile. I'm thinking of people who are old, people who are very young and people who are disabled.
ZIYA TONG: When will the EN-Vs be road-worthy? It's hard to say. There are many technical hurdles still to overcome. In fact this poor little EN-V ran out of steam right in the middle of our drive.
And cars like this aren't equipped to drive on the highway alongside unpredictable humans.
To be safe, the EN-Vs will need roadways of their own, where cars, not people, are in control.
Until then, cars like these will remain the stuff of automakers' dreams and designers' fantasies.
Cars?
Weren't we all supposed to have jetpacks by now?
They're not that easy to make...
But some brave souls kept at it...
And now there are some jetpacks out there that really fly!
The cost?
About $300,000.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.
Already, we've got plenty—smart phones, computers, tablets—and, at the rate we're going, we're sure to get more. But all these wonders of technology rely on a tricky commodity: electricity.
And the truth is, the system that powers all this stuff is on its last legs.
ROBOT VOICE: Recharge battery.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Recently, I met up with some people who are racing to re-invent the electrical lifeblood of our technological age, so that our visions for the future won't be left in the dark.
I'm about to get a bird's-eye view, of the most interconnected machine on Earth: made up of more than 5,000 power plants, 200,000 miles of transmission lines, delivering electricity to millions of American homes, a 20th century marvel of engineering: our electric grid.
So, I'm looking at the network of transmission lines. They just go far and wide.
ERIC LIGHTNER (United States Department of Energy) : Yes, they do. The electrical grid is basically an interstate for electricity, and it goes all over the whole country.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The grid got its start during the Depression, when the federal government brought electricity to the heartland. But this century-old marvel of engineering is ill-equipped to handle the demands of an energy -hungry society.
Not only is it dirty, about half of our electricity comes from coal-burning power plants that emit greenhouse gases. More than half of our energy is lost in the way we produce, transmit and use it.
According to Eric Lightner, director of the Federal Smart Grid Task Force, the best way to make our grid more efficient and tackle climate change is with a smart grid.
Smart grid? That means right now it's a dumb grid?
ERIC LIGHTNER: Well, it's not as smart as it could be. Let's just say that.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: An underachieving grid.
ERIC LIGHTNER: Yeah. There you go: an underachieving grid.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: There's no better place to see how the grid works and why it needs some smarts, than here. Think air traffic control, but instead of coordinating 747s, these dispatchers monitor the flow of a dynamic and dangerous force that travels close to the speed of light.
Electricity starts its journey to us from huge power plants, like this, where, first, coal is burned to heat water.
Whoa!
The water turns to steam, which spins a turbine that turns a generator that forces tiny particles called electrons through a wire. That's electricity.
No matter how you generate that flow of electrons, the amount has to be just right. That's because too few electrons can cause a blackout, and too many can fry your electronics.
ERIC LIGHTNER: As demand increases or decreases, a power plant has to either go up or down to meet that demand.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And you're monitoring this in real time?
ERIC LIGHTNER: In real time. It's a very delicate balancing act.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: These dispatchers are desperately trying to maintain that delicate balance.
GRID OPERATOR ONE: Something just happened.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: For instance, in this drill, a generator has suddenly gone offline.
GRID OPERATOR TWO: We just lost a large unit in the west.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: These grid operators have only a few minutes to solve the problem, and they're forced to do it the old fashioned way, by getting on the phone with power plants in search of more electrons. If they can't find them, they turn to power plants like this one.
It's called a "peaker" plant, because it's only used during power peaks, about a hundred hours a year. The rest of the time plants like this are sitting around on standby, a wasteful and expensive way to produce energy. In fact, about 25 percent of the cost of producing electricity is spent keeping these plants on hold.
But dispatchers don't have much of a choice.
GRID OPERATOR Frequency's back to normal.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And here's where a smart grid could make a real difference, starting with those old-fashioned power lines.
At the Electric Power Research Institute they're working on giving them some smarts.
ANDREW PHILLIPS (Electric Power Research Institute) : We're going to install sensor 460 on the closest line.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: This little sensor may not look high-tech but it has the ability to analyze the condition of a power line.
RESEARCHER (Electric Power Research Institute) : Going hot on four.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: For instance, when too many electrons flow through a power line, it gets so hot it starts to sag. Not only that...
ANDREW PHILLIPS: When a line sags it gets closer to the ground, and, therefore, it gets closer to trees. And the electricity going down the line will now go down the tree.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The result? A blackout, like the one in 2003 that shut down power to millions of people, in eight states and parts of Canada.
VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN ( The Economist ) : What caused the blackout in 2003? You can put it simply and say there were some mischievous trees that decided to knock down some power lines, and at some level that's true. But the deeper reason is that the grid operators at the utilities didn't have the technical capacity to tell them what was happening on their own power lines.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Smart sensors like this, can analyze the condition of a power line and send that information wirelessly to grid operators, before the lights go out.
But to make our grid truly efficient, it must undergo an even larger transformation.
VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: Imagine if the Internet were to merge somehow with the dumb electricity grid we have. That's the kind of embedded intelligence a smart grid should have.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Intelligence that starts at the power plant and travels all the way to your home. Here's how the grid of the future will work. Your electric company is going to swap your old meter with a smart meter, equipped with wireless communication. All your appliances will be also be smart, they'll be able to communicate with your meter, which in turn will be in constant contact with the grid. This two-way communication between your electric company and your home will enable the grid to actually ask you for help, when it's running low on electrons.
Let's say you're running your clothes dryer and your meter gets a signal that the grid needs power. It can turn down the heat, freeing up some electrons for use elsewhere.
ERIC LIGHTNER: All that happens is your dryer will turn off the heat for 30 seconds; the drum will continue to spin. You will never even know that that event took place.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The same thing will happen with your air conditioner, dishwasher, even your water heater. And when millions of homes, with tens of millions of smart appliances do the same, dispatchers will have a whole new way to prevent blackouts and get more mileage out of the electricity we generate.
There's no doubt that transforming the most interconnected machine on Earth into one of the smartest is a colossal task, but if we want to tackle global climate change and keep the lights on for generations to come, it's a challenge we'll have to face.
VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: Some people think that because the smart grid is such a huge project it can't get done, but let's remember, energy is the biggest industry on Earth, by far. And we can't live without it.
La Rete Intelligente (The Smart Grid)
The earliest and largest example of a smart grid is in Italy
Where 85% of homes have smart meters,
the highest percentage in the world.
The system can remotely turn power on and off,
read usage information,
and detect service outages.
It is truly the Next Thing Big.
La Fine (The End)
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Pretty much every plant and animal alive today is the result of eons of natural cross-breeding.
We are, of course, the products of our parents and grandparents and all our ancestors.
This orange takes it a step further. It's the result of farmers intentionally cross-breeding different types of oranges to get bigger, juicier, tastier fruit. What they're doing is manipulating genes, D.N.A., the instructions for all living things.
But what if you could go even further and actually write genetic code from scratch? In this episode's profile, we meet one scientist who's trying to do just that: custom design totally new forms of life that, one day, might save the world.
Jay Keasling was raised to work the earth, but instead, this tough Nebraska farm boy might just save the world. And before you think talk like that's just a bunch of manure, well, Jay can tell you all about manure.
JAY KEASLING: We had 200 pigs, and with 200 pigs, there's a lot of manure. And this was really hard work, scooping pig manure.
MAX KEASLING (Jay Keasling's Father) : It was no fun at all. Nobody enjoyed it.
JAY KEASLING: And that was probably the worst job. I like to say I spent the first 18 years of my life with the smell of pig manure on my hands.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Today, Jay's got plants, not pigs, and the manure isn't on his hands so much as it's on his mind. Jay Keasling is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology, who's doing amazing things with the waste from bacteria.
He's doing it here, at the Bay Area's Joint BioEnergy Institute, or as everyone around here calls it, "j-bay," though they swear there's no pun intended.
BLAKE SIMMONS (Joint BioEnergy Institute) : You could say the acronym a lot of different ways, but we happen to call it j-bay.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Hmmm. No matter what you think about the nickname, JBEI starts with Jay. Jay is the hard working C.E.O. who pays attention to every detail, from lab work...
JAY KEASLING: What's going on right now?
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:...to the method for hanging wall posters.
JAY KEASLING: What you should do is make sure they have two clips and two wires for each poster.
And who says I don't micro-manage?
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Actually, Jay is a microbe manager. His first major victory was engineering e coli—a bacterium found in everyone's gut—to produce a drug that will help to cure malaria. Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, or, a child in Africa every 45 seconds. It's a terrible drain on a nation's productivity. And it can be cured by a drug called artemisinin, which comes from a plant that can be difficult to grow, so it can be very expensive to produce.
JAY KEASLING: And the price was too high for people to afford.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay saw the perfect opportunity: to engineer bacteria to squirt out artemisinin.
JAY KEASLING: I view microbes as little chemical factories. We're doing the same thing inside the cell, it's just billions of times smaller.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And here's how Jay and his team set out to build a microbial factory for the anti-malarial drug: they wrote new genetic code; then machines assembled it from the four basic chemical ingredients of D.N.A.; they took those synthesized genes and mixed them with genes from yeast and other bacteria, to re-engineer the insides of e coli. And it worked. With custom-made microbes, the life-saving anti-malarial drug can be produced so efficiently, a dose will cost pennies instead of dollars.
JAY KEASLING: We could save on the order of 500,000 lives a year.
BLAKE SIMMONS: It really set Jay apart from the rest of the field, in using synthetic biology as a way to tackle some of the biggest problems that are out there.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay got a $43 million grant from the Gates Foundation, and started a company to find ways to take his innovations from the microbe to the market.
JAY KEASLING: It was clearly one of the most exciting periods of my life.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay had matched his renowned imagination with his prodigious work ethic. Even late at night, he problem-solves during his workout.
And with two young sons, Jay is determined to take on other challenges facing our planet.
For his next mission, he's reaching back to the roots of his ambition and optimism, back where it all started: on the farm.
JAY KEASLING: My work now relates much more to the farm than it ever has.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Life in Harvard, Nebraska, as in many small farm towns today, is challenging. Jay remembers his childhood fondly, though it was challenging, too.
JAY KEASLING: It was actually a great place to grow up. My father was very quiet, extremely hard working.
From my mother, I think I got a lot of determination, strong will, focus. I think that's been really important for me.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay's mother died when he was only 11 years old.
JAY KEASLING: I remember it clearly. She had had cancer, breast cancer, was cured of it, or it was in remission, at least, coming home from her last doctor's appointment. Corn was very tall, so it's hard to see cars coming. She crossed from stopping at a stop sign, was hit by another car, and that car was driven by her first cousin. Both of them died, so...pretty tragic for our family.
MAX KEASLING: It was a tough time of our life. It really was. We just survived and got along. You know, you adjust, and do what you have to do.
Jay was old enough that he really knew, you know? He was 11 years old. Him and his mother were really close, and...as we all were. But it was tough on Jay.
JAY KEASLING: I had to work even harder. There was very little time for fun and games. And that's actually okay; that's served me pretty well, I think, because right now, there's pretty much no amount of work that seems insurmountable for me.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And work hard, he did. Jay became class valedictorian. The small town couldn't hold his ambition, but he was driven to leave by another reason, one that he kept secret.
JAY KEASLING: Being gay in small-town Nebraska is difficult. People who were, if there were any, were certainly not out, and so you had no examples at all.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Throughout college, in Lincoln, while getting his Ph.D. at Michigan, Jay never told his family he was gay. He didn't come out until he arrived at Berkeley.
JAY KEASLING: My father was fine with it.
MAX KEASLING: I just accepted it. He's my son, you know?
JAY KEASLING: It shouldn't matter what ethnicity, what sexual preference you are, anything. It's all about the work.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Now, the mixture of Jay's famous drive and tolerance has led him to design a highly unusual team, reflecting those qualities. There, working side by side, are engineers, biologists, chemists, all working around the clock, under the same roof.
AINDRILA MUKHOPADHYAY (Joint BioEnergy Institute) : My background is chemistry.
ERIC STEEN (Joint BioEnergy Institute) : I'm actually a graduate student in the department of bioengineering.
PAMELA PERALTA-YAHYA (Joint BioEnergy Institute) : He hires people that are strong in their field and expects them to take ownership of the project and get it done.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay has assembled a multidisciplinary team, every bit as driven as he is, to work on his next big vision. Their mission: solving the world's energy crisis by manipulating bacteria to produce biofuels that will replace oil.
JAY KEASLING: Petroleum's running out. And it's going to run out even faster, the more the population starts to drive and more economies grow.
This is bio-diesel that's being secreted by e coli.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Jay and his team have already engineered the D.N.A. of e coli to produce bio-diesel from switchgrass. See those little bubbles right there? That's actually fuel, straight from bacteria, ready for a car.
JAY KEASLING: And that could just be siphoned off and put into a tank.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: They've demonstrated the concept of turning sugar from switchgrass into biofuel, and the next step is figuring out how to make the process practical on an enormous scale, one big enough to save the world. And by planting all the switchgrass to make this new biofuel, it might just save places like Harvard, Nebraska, and the farm that's been in Jay's family for five generations.
JAY KEASLING: Someday, these fields will be planted in switchgrass. And these bales |
. So it feels to the initial 10 or so like a very long slog explaining everything many, many times. But we have to be mindful that people come along all the time who have no idea why we're changing or what the plan looks like. So we need some very diplomatic people helping the process along. And of course all of those people looking at the license and the process expose bugs in it, which we have then worked out over time.
Having worked through this move for several years now, what are some of the lessons learned?
Steve Coast: I chose CC-BY-SA for the right community and open reasons but I was not and am not a lawyer. You have to choose a license up front so people know that their contributions will not be closed off. On the other hand if the data had been dual licensed to the OSM Foundation or me personally then we could have switched the license much more quickly. The lesson, I think, is to have multiple options. You don't know which direction things will go in three, four or five years down the line. For all the time and pain this change is costing us, it's extremely healthy and a maturing thing to do. It's been a forcing function on the structure of the foundation that supports the project and has made us build working groups, and have a functioning board and finance structures. On average it's probably been a good thing.
The other lesson is to just be insanely open, and realize there will always been conspiracy theorists whom you will never convince. All our meetings were and are open. We have open minutes. But there are some who will refuse to use a telephone or want you to use technology X to hold your meeting or have it at time Y. You simply can't satisfy everyone. You have to make some choices while trying your best to accommodate demands. Don't get pulled down the rathole of trying to make everyone happy all of the time. You can shift the meeting once a month, or try the occasional new thing, but you have to make progress no matter what.
Looking back, I wish that I'd traveled more to spread the message and talk to more people in person. But that's extremely hard and expensive to do.
Hopefully other projects can start based on the years we have put in to this and license with the ODbL or perhaps dual-license with CC-BY-SA. With luck they will never have to know how much work it took to get here.
This interview was condensed and edited
Related:With all of the advancements made in artificial intelligence and machine learning today, there seems to be an influx of tools and solutions that are starting to leverage cognitive capabilities. But do these tools and solutions actually reflect the true meaning of AI?
According to Jonas Nwuke, platform manager for IBM Watson, AI (or cognitive computing) is “intended to help people make better decisions. The system learns at scale, gets better through experience, and interacts with humans in a more natural way.”
The problem in today’s software development industry is that because AI is such a big umbrella term, it often gets misused or overused, according to Todd Anglin, chief evangelist at Progress. “In some ways it is going to get overused just by its very nature. It stands for a lot of things, but as a result a lot of times it gets used somewhat inappropriately,” he said.
(Related: Microsoft devotes 5,000 workers to AI, joins industry partnership)
For instance, AI is a great marketing term and developers will often just slap it onto their solutions to make them stand out, even if they really aren’t using true AI capabilities, Anglin explained. “The average user of an app will assume since it has AI in it, it has to be smart, and it has to be great,” he said.
In other cases, developers will use the term to convey that the application is trying to do something for the user. For example, Anglin said Tesla uses the term “self-driving cars” for its vehicles because it is easier for the larger community to understand, but in reality the vehicles aren’t completely self-driving because they need a human to babysit the wheel in case something goes haywire.
And then there are developers who just don’t understand the true meaning of artificial intelligence. AI’s recent successes has made it significantly easier for developers to download a package from the Web and train it on a single data set such as image recognition, visual processing, or natural-language processing. But that is not the meaning of AI, according to Massimiliano Versace, CEO of Neurala, a company whose mission is “to make software smarter.”
“Artificial intelligence is really taking the brain, and trying to emulate it in software,” he said. “The brain is more than just recognizing an object. It is thinking. It is perceiving. It is action. It is emotion.”
According to Versace, there are three main ingredients that are necessary for true intelligence: the brain, the body, and the mind. The brain consists of the algorithms or mathematics behind the software, working with incoming data. The body is the hardware the intelligence lives in. And the mind is the computing power that runs the algorithms.
Today, all three ingredients are converging, making it easier and cost-efficient for the field to take off, Versace explained.
“AI is in a very good path right now. The challenge is creating an application that goes beyond just image recognition,” he said.
Anglin believes simple image recognition, object detection, and challenge-and-response systems do use some level of AI, but developers need to be a bit more judicious on how they label it in their applications. Instead, developers should focus on the underlying concepts like machine learning or deep learning. “We have to spend more time looking at those things and how they are being leveraged or used in software.” he said. “When we talk about AI, what are we really saying?”
Gartner researchers Tom Austin, Alexander Linden, and Martin Reynolds recently released a report on how the industry should define and use smart machine terms effectively. According to the report, people should use descriptive terms that differentiate artificial intelligence from human intelligence, and ignore marketing terms like “AI” or “cognitive capabilities.” Instead, Gartner believes the use of the term “smart machines” is a more appropriate and least objectionable term.
“Assigning human attributes to technology distorts our understanding of what that technology can truly accomplish,” according to Gartner’s research. “Smart machine technologies adapt their behavior based on experience, are not totally dependent on instructions from people (they learn on their own), and are able to come up with unanticipated results.”
The digital brains behind AI
Artificial Intelligence is a feature developers and businesses are striving to include in their services and solutions; but those businesses and developers are going to have to leverage digital brains that are already in place, according to Progress’ Anglin.
He explained that, as more people start using machine learning and AI-based systems, those systems will get smarter and smarter, in turn making them better and encouraging more people to choose them.
According to Anglin, the major digital brains in the space are:
Facebook: Facebook has an AI research department that is dedicated to advancing machine learning and developing intelligent machines. Recently the company open-sourced its AI hardware design, codenamed Big Sur, which handles AI computing at a large scale. It also announced new algorithms such as DeepMask, a segmentation framework; DeepText, the company’s deep learning-based text understanding engine; SharpMask, a segment refinement model; and MultiPathNet, an object detection solution. In addition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to unveil his personal AI assistant to the world very soon.
Google: Google recently open-sourced its TensorFlow library for machine learning. According to Anglin, TensorFlow is a little bit more complex than other cognitive services, but it wraps up a lot of scientific programming and packages it in a way that the average application developer can leverage and embed in their applications.
IBM Watson: IBM Watson is a cognitive system that is designed to understand data, reason, and learn at scale. It provides cognitive APIs that leverage natural language processing and machine learning—among other things—to analyze data, learn from data, and derive insights. “There is value to be gained from systems that go beyond general abstractions and reason in specialized ways,” said IBM’s Nwuke.
Microsoft: Microsoft provides cognitive services that allow developers to build Android, iOS and Windows apps using powerful intelligence algorithms. The services include APIs for vision, speech, language and knowledge.
“We will have our hands full of very effective digital brains from these major players, and people choosing to go out on their own will have a hard time really competing,” said Anglin.
However, Versace said Neurala is already building its own digital brain and is ahead of the game, despite being a smaller company. “We have a long history of building the building blocks of an artificial brain down to an individual neuron and up to big systems of hundreds of millions or even billions of neurons connected with synapses,” he said.
The company recently released the Neurala Brains for Bots SDK, allowing companies to integrate deep learning into their applications. According to Versace, the SDK is something the major players haven’t been able to provide as of yet.
The technology currently targets drones, enabling them to learn, recognize, find and follow objects. But Versace explained it can be applied to computers, phones and other machines. “We are not going to build a vertical. We are going to build a platform and let people build a vertical,” he said.
Should we fear artificial intelligence?
There is a fear that artificial intelligence will not only replace our jobs in the future, but that the machines will also get so smart they will take over and end civilization “Some people attach a stigma to artificial intelligence, they think the technology somehow challenges or endangers the world as we know it,” said IBM’s Nwuke. But he believes the future of artificial intelligence just means machines will be able to bring more value to businesses, professionals and consumers.
“The technology offers a level of collaboration between man and machine that augments and expands human efforts,” he said.
Society creates that stigma because of the way AI is sometimes portrayed, according to Progress’ Anglin. Movies have this classic AI villain that takes over, but that notion is a little bit overblown, according to him. The problem is that most of society doesn’t have enough of understanding of the technology.
“It is less feared in engineering circles with developers because there is a slightly more hands-on understanding of the technology,” said Anglin. “It is less magic and more machine.”
Anglin doesn’t doubt that there is a potential for AI to be abused or used for harm in the future, but that is a possibility with any tool and technology, he explained. “I would say, broadly speaking, it is not the artificial intelligence that will get us there. It is humans that will get us there,” he said.
After all, people will be making and teaching the machines, and they have to be responsible for this technology. It is a developer’s job to make sure they put the right safeguards in place and educate people on the benefits of the technology, Anglin explained.
“There are many fantasies about AI that people perpetuate, beginning with the assumption that we can build an artificial intelligence,” said Gartner’s Austin. “We can’t. If too many senior executives buy into anthropomorphic assumptions about conversational interfaces—for example, they are indistinguishable from people [or] they can learn by observing everything they need to know to replace all the people in your call center—then too many projects will fail and be shut down.”
The next step
Today, while AI is most commonly cited for image recognition, natural language processing and voice recognition, this is just the very beginning of what we think of as learning, according to Anglin.
“Our current AI state is that of a toddler,” he said. “It can understand what it sees, what it hears, and then tell you what it is seeing.” This is just the early stage for AI, but for businesses to really gain value from it, the next step will be the ability to make more connections and reasoning about the connections between objects, he explained.
“We are progressing down a path from going from a toddler to a slightly more capable learning machine,” said Anglin.
Neurala’s Versace wants to see the industry go beyond what people think of AI. “AI means being able to have a piece of software that is functionally indistinguishable from a human,” he said. “There is an infinite amount of applications AI can be applied to.”
With the explosion of platforms and sensors, Versace said AI is now more important than ever. “Every job where there is a human looking at a screen, we can get rid of the human and process their job with AI so they can go do other things,” he said.
From here, developers and data scientists will have to look at how we understand the concept between objects, and go beyond just the very basics of picking out an object and understanding everything in a picture.
“This is a moment in time where we all need to collectively lift our heads as a software developer community and say, ‘Alright what are the major patterns that we could start applying to user software and apply it differently?’” said Anglin “We will see a lot of that happen over the next two to three years where people really hit the pause button, think about the next era of software they are going to create, and figure out what those scenarios look like.”
IBM’s Nwuke already sees it happening with the company’s customers. “Developers have started commercializing their ideas across retail, health, banking, sports and more. We’re inspired by what this community has created, and together, we’re building a future where cognitive technologies will positively impact every facet of our lives, both at work and at home,” he said.
In the short term, Ilya Tabakh, founder of Edge Up Sports, predicted we will see better voice recognition, better understanding of body posture, the ability to understand the emotional state of a user, and more technologies that improve our lives.
The point of it all is to solve a pain point for users, according to Anglin. “Developers have to be mindful and not rush a technology into an app or in front of a user if it does not in fact actually make the user’s life better,” he said. “How do we really apply this intelligently, not just apply it in a haphazard kind of way?” zSpeaking to ALA’s Privacy and Youth Conference from London via Skype, Cory Doctorow offered attendees a thought-provoking assessment of the privacy landscape for young people today. His “radical proposition” that libraries become islands of networked privacy best practices — places where young people are educated and empowered to take charge of their digital lives — provided provocative fodder for conference participants’ discussions. Do libraries have a role to play in educating youth about the privacy violations they face at our own institutions? In their own homes? Should we be teaching kids to jailbreak? How can we document the problems and inefficacy of internet filtering technologies, which so often stifle young people’s intellectual freedom and compromise their privacy?
We’re pleased to share Cory Doctorow’s talk in its entirety, along with his Q&A session with our audience, below. The 22-minute presentation is first, followed by 30 minutes of questions and discussion.
ALA Privacy Conference: Interview with Cory Doctorow from 20K Films on Vimeo.Every election, Republicans routinely violate election law and get away with it, because the Republicans on the FEC refuse to vote against fellow Republicans. When FEC rulings come exclusively against Democrats, Republicans then claim that it proves Democrats are the corrupt party. Hopefully that may be coming to an end.
It’s about time. I make a point of reviewing FEC filings on a routine basis just to see who is giving what to who. The one thing I’ve learned over the past year is this: When the FEC is asked for an opinion, it will always rule on the side of the Citizens United folks. I have yet to see them give the time of day to voters’ concerns.
CREW feels the same way, evidently. Yesterday they filed suit against the FEC, alleging a practice of summarily dismissing complaints without explanation for the basis of the dismissal. Generally, the dismissals occur because of a deadlock between the three Democrats and the three Republicans on the commission. At least, that’s the case unless it’s a request for an advance opinion of some new and ugly practice by Republican consultants like Alex Castellanos or Carl Forti’s Black Rock Group.)
From the press release:
“The gridlock at the FEC makes the Senate look high-functioning in comparison,” said Ms. Sloan. “The FEC is clearly a broken agency. Instead of ensuring fair elections in which all players follow the rules, too often commissioners refuse to act, and then, refuse to even explain why they failed to act. This leaves Americans in the dark, with no legal remedy. Even worse, candidates can freely break campaign finance laws to gain an edge in a federal election without any fear of repercussions.”
The lawsuit itself (PDF) is quite specific, and addresses a complaint filed by CREW with respect to Rep. Duncan Deport-American-Citizens Hunter’s exploratory bid for a run at the Presidency in 2008.
From the lawsuit:
On March 14, 2007, CREW and Melanie Sloan filed a complaint with the FEC against Peace Through Strength Political Action Committee (“PTS PAC”) and its treasurer, Meredith Kelley, for violations of the FECA. The complaint alleged:
(1) PTS PAC, the political action committee of Rep. Duncan Hunter who was then a candidate for president of the United States, had knowingly received 11 contributions exceeding the FECA’s individual contribution limit for “testing the waters” activities in violation of 2 U.S.C. § 441a(f); (FEC report)
(2) PTS PAC had failed to register as a candidate committee in violation of 2 U.S.C. § 433(a);
(3) PTS PAC had made an excessive in-kind contribution in violation of 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(2)(A) and 11 C.F.R. § 110.2(b)(1); and (4) to the extent PTS PAC had failed to report disbursements for certain television advertisements it had violated 11 C.F.R. §§ 104.3(b) and 104.9(a).
What he did:
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, a California congressman, has used his political action committee to run New Hampshire television ads introducing himself to voters — in what some specialists say could be a violation of campaign finance laws.
In the ads, Hunter walks beside a huge wire fence and calls for it to be extended along hundreds of miles of the US border with Mexico. He then asks for viewers to "join with me, Duncan Hunter, at Peace Through Strength. Let’s make sure Homeland Security builds the border fence." (Boston.com)
Why it’s a big deal:
Hunter claimed his ads were nothing more than "issue ads". Yet the web address at the end of the ad pointed to a Hunter for President website. He used the PAC as a front for a Presidential bid so he could collect the higher PAC limit of $5,000, rather than the $2,300 allowed for individual candidates without identifying the PAC as a committee organized for his Presidential bid. That put him at an unfair advantage over other candidates who were in compliance with the laws.
Remarkably, the FEC’s response, received July 23, 2010 to CREW’s complaint was this:
According to Mr. Shonkwiler, the FEC found reason to believe Peace Through Strength Political Action Committee, Treasurer Meredith G. Kelley, Duncan Hunter, Hunter for President, Inc. and Treasurer Bruce Young violated specified provisions of the FECA and FEC regulations. Mr. Shonkwiler further advised that on June 29, 2010, the FEC determined to take no further action and closed the file in this matter.
Amazing. Yes, the FEC says, we did find that there was a violation of campaign finance laws, but we’re not going to take any action. Instead we’ll just close the file and pretend it never happened… [emphasis original]A variadic function is designed to accept a variable number of arguments. In JavaScript, you can make a variadic function by gathering parameters. For example:
const abccc = ( a, b,... c ) => { console. log ( a ); console. log ( b ); console. log ( c ); }; abccc ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ) 1 2 [ 3, 4, 5 ]
This can be useful when writing certain kinds of destructuring algorithms. For example, we might want to have a function that builds some kind of team record. It accepts a coach, a captain, and an arbitrary number of players. Easy in ECMAScript 2015:
function team ( coach, captain,... players ) { console. log ( ` ${ captain } (captain)` ); for ( let player of players ) { console. log ( player ); } console. log ( `squad coached by ${ coach } ` ); } team ( 'Luis Enrique', 'Xavi Hernández', 'Marc-André ter Stegen', 'Martín Montoya', 'Gerard Piqué' ) //=> Xavi Hern á ndez ( captain ) Marc - Andr é ter Stegen Mart í n Montoya Gerard Piqu é squad coached by Luis Enrique
But we can’t go the other way around:
function team2 (... players, captain, coach ) { console. log ( ` ${ captain } (captain)` ); for ( let player of players ) { console. log ( player ); } console. log ( `squad coached by ${ coach } ` ); } //=> Unexpected token
ECMAScript 2015 only permits gathering parameters from the end of the parameter list. Not the beginning. What to do?
a history lesson
In “Ye Olde Days,” JavaScript could not gather parameters, and we had to either do backflips with arguments and.slice, or we wrote ourselves a variadic decorator that could gather arguments into the last declared parameter. Here it is in all of its ECMAScript-5 glory:
var __slice = Array. prototype. slice ; function rightVariadic ( fn ) { if ( fn. length < 1 ) return fn ; return function () { var ordinaryArgs = ( 1 <= arguments. length? __slice. call ( arguments, 0, fn. length - 1 ) : []), restOfTheArgsList = __slice. call ( arguments, fn. length - 1 ), args = ( fn. length <= arguments. length? ordinaryArgs. concat ([ restOfTheArgsList ]) : []); return fn. apply ( this, args ); } }; var firstAndButFirst = rightVariadic ( function test ( first, butFirst ) { return [ first, butFirst ] }); firstAndButFirst ( 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ) //=> ["why",["hello","there","little","droid"]]
We don’t need rightVariadic any more, because instead of:
var firstAndButFirst = rightVariadic ( function test ( first, butFirst ) { return [ first, butFirst ] });
We now simply write:
const firstAndButFirst = ( first,... butFirst ) => [ first, butFirst ];
This is a right-variadic function, meaning that it has one or more fixed arguments, and the rest are gathered into the rightmost argument.
overcoming limitations
It’s nice to have progress. But as noted above, we can’t write:
const butLastAndLast = (... butLast, last ) => [ butLast, last ];
That’s a left-variadic function. All left-variadic functions have one or more fixed arguments, and the rest are gathered into the leftmost argument. JavaScript doesn’t do this. But if we wanted to write left-variadic functions, could we make ourselves a leftVariadic decorator to turn a function with one or more arguments into a left-variadic function?
We sure can, by using the techniques from rightVariadic. Mind you, we can take advantage of modern JavaScript to simplify the code:
const leftVariadic = ( fn ) => { if ( fn. length < 1 ) { return fn ; } else { return function (... args ) { const gathered = args. slice ( 0, args. length - fn. length + 1 ), spread = args. slice ( args. length - fn. length + 1 ); return fn. apply ( this, [ gathered ]. concat ( spread ) ); } } }; const butLastAndLast = leftVariadic (( butLast, last ) => [ butLast, last ]); butLastAndLast ( 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ) //=> [["why","hello","there","little"],"droid"]
Our leftVariadic function is a decorator that turns any function into a function that gathers parameters from the left, instead of from the right.
left-variadic destructuring
Gathering arguments for functions is one of the ways JavaScript can destructure arrays. Another way is when assigning variables, like this:
const [ first,... butFirst ] = [ 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ]; first //=> 'why' butFirst //=> ["hello","there","little","droid"]
As with parameters, we can’t gather values from the left when destructuring an array:
const [... butLast, last ] = [ 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ]; //=> Unexpected token
We could use leftVariadic the hard way:
const [ butLast, last ] = leftVariadic (( butLast, last ) => [ butLast, last ])(...[ 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ]); butLast //=> ['why', 'hello', 'there', 'little'] last //=> 'droid'
But we can write our own left-gathering function utility using the same principles without all the tedium:
const leftGather = ( outputArrayLength ) => { return function ( inputArray ) { const gathered = inputArray. slice ( 0, inputArray. length - outputArrayLength + 1 ), spread = inputArray. slice ( inputArray. length - outputArrayLength + 1 ); return [ gathered ]. concat ( spread ); } }; const [ butLast, last ] = leftGather ( 2 )([ 'why', 'hello', 'there', 'little', 'droid' ]); butLast //=> ['why', 'hello', 'there', 'little'] last //=> 'droid'
With leftGather, we have to supply the length of the array we wish to use as the result, and it gathers excess arguments into it from the left, just like leftVariadic gathers excess parameters for a function.
summary
ECMAScript 2015 makes it easy to gather parameters or array elements from the right. If we want to gather them from the left, we can roll our own left-variadic decorator for functions, or left-gatherer for destructuring arrays.
This post was extracted from a draft of the book, JavaScript Allongé, The “Six” Edition. The extracts so far:Bank admits it does not have resources to cover loss of 896 bitcoin worth £365,000 stolen in raid
A bitcoin bank has been forced to close after hackers stole 896 bitcoin, worth £365,000, in an attack on Sunday.
The company shut its website and posted a statement on Tuesday morning detailing the loss.
“On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet,” the statement read. “As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.”
Not all of the company’s assets were stolen. In line with best practices for running a bitcoin financial service, Flexcoin held some bitcoins in “cold storage”, keeping them on devices not connected to the internet. Those bitcoins are safe, but only users who explicitly requested their bitcoins be held in cold storage (and paid a 0.5% fee) benefit.
“Users who put their coins into cold storage will be contacted by Flexcoin and asked to verify their identity,” the statement continues. “Once identified, cold storage coins will be transferred out free of charge. Cold storage coins were held offline and not within reach of the attacker. Flexcoin will attempt to work with law enforcement to trace the source of the hack.”
Flexcoin attempted to impose a more conventional banking system over the top of the bitcoin network, enabling instant free transfers between Flexcoin customers while still allowing them to spend money in the wider bitcoin community.
Just six days ago, the company was boasting that it was unscathed by the closure of MtGox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange:
flexcoin (@flexcoin) We hold zero coins in other companies, exchanges etc. While the MtGox closure is unfortunate, we at Flexcoin have not lost anything.
Flexcoin’s closure reinforces the problem the bitcoin community has with security.
The same day the company came clean about its losses, a second bitcoin firm, Poloniex, also admitted that 12.3% of its reserves had been stolen by hackers. Poloniex is a bitcoin exchange, and the company has committed to operating at a fractional reserve until it can replenish the losses itself.
“I sincerely apologize for this,” Poloniex’s owner wrote in a statement, “and I am very grateful to the many people who have already expressed their support and belief in my character. I take full responsibility; I will be donating some of my own money, and I will not be taking profit before the debt is paid.”
Flexcoin’s closure follows that of MtGox’s, blamed on hackers stealing 750,000 bitcoins by exploiting a bug known as “transaction malleability”. Several other bitcoin businesses, both high- and low-profile, have gone under. Services including Bitcoinica, Inputs.io and MyBitcoin have all been hacked, each losing thousands of bitcoins.
• Why the bitcoin community is fighting to fix its security problemDear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
A Palestinian terrorist shot two Israelis, killing one and moderately wounding the second, on Friday afternoon near the West Bank settlement of Dolev, some six kilometers west of Ramallah.
The shooting victims, residents of Lod, were in the area to bathe in a local spring.
The fatality was identified as 25-year-old Danny Gonen. He was buried in the Lod Cemetery Saturday night.Israel Radio reported on Saturday that Hamas’s military wing claimed responsibility for the shooting, citing a statement released by a terrorist cell named for Hamas operatives Marwan al-Kuasma and Amar Abu Aisha – who kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens last year.A security source told The Jerusalem Post, however, that the claim has not been confirmed.“Until we have someone in custody, we cannot know with certainty,” the security source said, when asked whether Hamas was behind the attack, which occurred just a few days after the IDF announced gestures to the Palestinians to ease movement and access in honor of the Ramadan holiday, including the first-ever shuttle buses from West Bank cities to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.“This is a terrorist attack. It could be characteristic of Hamas, or it could be a lone attacker. One doesn’t need very much to carry out such a terrorist attack,” he added.The IDF carried out searches in the West Bank, and the Shin Bet is trying to track down the gunman through intelligence leads.“We are questioning everyone who was at the spring, and trying to track down the terrorists with intelligence,” an IDF officer said.Israeli civilians are supposed to coordinate visits to the spring with the army, but it appears as if the two were not aware of that procedure, he said.“We shouldn’t let the relative calm that exists [in spite of continued attempts to execute terrorist attacks] mislead us.There are continuous attempts to hurt us and we will continue to fight against such attempts with all the means at our disposal,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.According to a senior IDF source, the two young men were on their way to the spring, but decided to turn around after a friend from nearby Dolev told them a group of Palestinians was there.As they approached Parsa junction, a Palestinian standing at the side of the road waved for them to pull over and asked whether the “spring had water in it,” according to the IDF source.In the middle of their discussion, the man produced a handgun and opened fire, striking both Israeli men with 9-milliliter rounds.The moderately wounded man called his friend from Dolev for help and both attempted to resuscitate the critically wounded man, the IDF source said.Magen David Adom paramedics reported finding Gonen lying on the ground unconscious, not breathing, and with no pulse. “We immediately began providing lifesaving medical care and attempted resuscitation,” MDA said.The IDF dispatched a helicopter to the scene, which airlifted Gonen to Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer.President Reuven Rivlin called on the Arab leadership, including those in the Israeli-Arab community, to condemn the attack. He sent his condolences to Gonen’s family and his wishes for a speedy recovery to the second unidentified victim.United States State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. We condemn any violence against civilians, they’re completely unacceptable.”United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov also condemned the attack.“On this second day of Ramadan and at the start of the Shabbat, I call on all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice.”Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor blasted Mladenov’s statement as “despicable,” saying only one side acted violently and adding that, in contrast, Israel was taking steps to help the Palestinians.Prosor blamed the Palestinian Authority for “encouraging incitement and undermining the stability in the area.” He called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the “cold-blooded” attack, which he said was just one of a series of violent incidents executed by Palestinians in the West Bank.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>Detroit Red Wings General Manager Ken Holland spoke on the contract negotiations between the team and restricted free agent Andreas Athanasiou earlier this week.
Talking to Fox Sports Detroit ahead of the Red Wings' preseason game Monday, Holland said "I want him in the lineup.
"He's an important player for us not only today but going forward," he added.
Athanasiou is weighing the possibility of going to the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) in Russia this season.
Detroit reportedly offered the 23-year-old forward a two-year, $3.8 million contract during the offseason, but there were reports that the KHL was offering more.
"I can't negotiate against the KHL, it's a different league," Holland added.
"Andreas is evaluating the pros and cons of all the offers," Athanasiou's agent Darren Ferris told Ansar Khan of MLive. "Andreas loves Detroit and especially the Detroit fans but he has to really consider the seriou soffers from the KHL he has before him."
Athanasiou has not been with the Red Wings throughout training camp and the preseason, and the team opens the regular season on Thursday, Oct. 5.
"If Andreas decides that the KHL is the way he wants to go then that's the decision he has to make, and I don't think that there's anything that I can do or anyone can do if that's the decision he wants to make," Holland said.
Last season, he had 18 goals and 29 points in 64 games despite averaging only 13:28 on ice per game. His average time on ice was one of the lowest for players who regularly played with the Red Wings.A member of the Prince George’s County police comforts a mourner on Brooke Jane Drive in Clinton, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Three girls under 10 were found dead in a house Friday morning in Maryland when the mother of one of the children arrived home and came upon the horrific scene.
Prince George’s County police said late Friday that they had arrested a 24-year-old man in the case.
They identified him as Antonio Williams of the 6400 block of Brooke Jane Drive in Clinton, Md. That is in the same block as the home in which the children were found. Police said additional details would be provided Saturday.
Detectives were working to determine the relationships of the children, and said they thought that the violence was “specific” to the house in Clinton and that the community at large was not at risk.
After the mother and others called 911 about 7:30 a.m., police arrived at the home in the 6400 block of Brooke Jane Drive and met family members who reported that three juveniles were inside with trauma to the body.
Prince George’s County police are investigating the deaths of three juveniles found by a relative on the morning of Aug. 18 at a home in the 6400 block of Brooke Jane Drive. (WUSA)
A fourth child, a 2-year-old, was inside, alive and unharmed, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case.
Assistant Police Chief Hector Velez said the entire community is mourning the “three beautiful young children.”
“We all feel this loss,” Velez said. “We want to assure the community that the Prince George’s County Police Department will work tirelessly to find the person or persons responsible for these children’s deaths.”
It’s unclear who was caring for the children, who was in the house, and how long the girls had been dead.
Police were also working to determine where all of the children lived and how many people lived at the home.
“We have a lot of questions ourselves,” Deputy Chief Sammy Patel said.
Police would not identify the girls or give their ages as of late Friday, saying they were still working to notify family members.
Homicide prosecutors also were on the scene Friday morning, pledging to “leave no stone unturned,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said.
“We woke up this morning, as hard as it is, to yet another nightmare,” Alsobrooks said. “We are absolutely heartbroken.”
Authorities launched a massive investigation, with police tape stretching across several blocks of the quiet neighborhood of single-family homes.
Counselors were also on hand for investigators and other first responders — many of whom have children of their own — working at |
is in accordance with other studies that showed poor compensation after energy overconsumption in general (58, 59).
In conclusion, an excessive increase in dietary fat (from 0.6 to 15.5 g/100g) did not have a main effect on food intake by weight; however, it led to a 60% higher energy intake. The addition of salt increased pleasantness and food and energy intakes independent of fat concentration. Therefore, salt promotes passive overconsumption of dietary fat. Individuals with sensitive fat taste are able to adjust for fat intake, although this effect seems to be overruled by the increase in pleasantness due to the addition of salt.
Acknowledgments
DPB and RSJK designed the research; DPB and AC conducted the research; DPB analyzed data and wrote the main part of the manuscript; AC, LPN, and RSJK provided expert input and were involved in drafting of the manuscript; and RSJK had primary responsibility for final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
References
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Physiol Behav 2005 ; 86 : 32 – 45. 44 Rolls BJ Castellanos VH Halford JC Kilara A Panyam D Pelkman CL Smith GP Thorwart ML Volume of food consumed affects satiety in men. Am J Clin Nutr 1998 ; 67 : 1170 – 7. 45 Bell EA Thorwart ML Rolls BJ Effects of energy content and volume on sensory-specific satiety. FASEB J 1998 ; 12 ( 4 ): A347. ): 46 Green SM Blundell JE Effect of fat- and sucrose-containing foods on the size of eating episodes and energy intake in lean dietary restrained and unrestrained females: Potential for causing overconsumption. Eur J Clin Nutr 1996 ; 50 : 625 – 35. 47 Green SM Burley VJ Blundell JE Effect of fat-containing and sucrose-containing foods on the size of eating episodes and energy-intake in lean males—potential for causing overconsumption. Eur J Clin Nutr 1994 ; 48 : 547 – 55. 48 Lawton CL Burley VJ Wales JK Blundell JE Dietary-fat and appetite control in obese subjects—weak effects on satiation and satiety. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 1993 ; 17 : 409 – 16. 49 Mattes RD Oral thresholds and suprathreshold intensity ratings for free fatty acids on 3 tongue sites in humans: implications for transduction mechanisms. Chem Senses 2009 ; 34 : 415 – 23. 50 Mattes RD Oral fatty acid signaling and intestinal lipid processing: support and supposition. Physiol Behav 2011 ; 105 : 27 – 35. 51 Stewart JE Feinle-Bisset C Keast RSJ Fatty acid detection during food consumption and digestion: associations with ingestive behavior and obesity. Prog Lipid Res 2011 ; 50 : 225 – 33. 52 Martínez-Ruiz NR Lopez-Diaz JA Wall-Medrano A Jimenez-Castro JA Angulo O Oral fat perception is related with body mass index, preference and consumption of high-fat foods. Physiol Behav 2014 ; 129 : 36 – 42. 53 de Lauzon B Romon M Deschamps V Lafay L Borys JM Karlsson J Ducimetiere P Charles MA Grp FS The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-r18 is able to distinguish among different eating patterns in a general population. J Nutr 2004 ; 134 : 2372 – 80. 54 Viskaal-van Dongen M de Graaf C Siebelink E Kok FJ Hidden fat facilitates passive overconsumption. J Nutr 2009 ; 139 : 394 – 9. 55 Brown LM Clegg DJ Central effects of estradiol in the regulation of food intake, body weight, and adiposity. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol 2010 ; 122 : 65 – 73. 56 Cooper JA Factors affecting circulating levels of peptide YY in humans: a comprehensive review. Nutr Res Rev 2014 ; 27 : 186 – 97. 57 Bell EA Castellanos VH Pelkman CL Thorwart ML Rolls BJ Energy density of foods affects energy intake in normal-weight women. Am J Clin Nutr 1998 ; 67 : 412 – 20. 58 Jebb SA Siervo M Fruhbeck G Goldberg GR Murgatroyd PR Prentice AM Variability of appetite control mechanisms in response to 9 weeks of progressive overfeeding in humans. Int J Obes (Lond) 2006 ; 30 : 1160 – 2. 59 Caputo FA Mattes RD Human dietary responses to covert manipulations of energy, fat, and carbohydrate in a midday meal. Am J Clin Nutr 1992 ; 56 : 36 – 43.
Abbreviations
CCK cholecystokinin
HF high-fat
HS high-salt
LF low-fat
LS low-salt
PYY peptide YY
© 2016 American Society for NutritionAbout 400 killed in past six weeks of fighting in Libya's Benghazi -medics
BENGHAZI, Libya, Nov 29 (Reuters) - About 400 people have been killed in six weeks of heavy fighting between Libyan pro-government forces and Islamist groups in Libya's second-largest city Benghazi, medical staff said on Saturday.
Backed by forces led by a former general, the newly formed government army launched in mid-October an offensive against Islamists in Benghazi, expelling them from the airport area and from several camps the army had lost during the summer.
In the past three weeks the fighting has centred around Benghazi's commercial port where pro-government forces say Islamists are holed up. The port has had to close, disrupting food supplies in the eastern city.
"The death toll has risen to 400," a source at a Benghazi hospital said, declining to be identified for security reasons. Medics at other hospitals in the city confirmed the estimated death toll.
The fighting in Benghazi is part of wider turmoil in the North African country. Two governments, each with their own parliament and army chief of staff are vying for legitimacy, three years after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.
In August, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni and his cabinet were forced to leave Tripoli for the east of Libya when group called Libya Dawn seized the capital.
The new rulers set up their own government and parliament, but these have not been recognised by the United Nations and world powers.
The situation has been complicated by the Benghazi fighting where former general Khalifa Haftar has merged his force with the army under a mandate from the elected parliament, which is allied to Thinni and also operates out of the east.
Haftar's spokesman Mohamed El Hejazi said his forces had surrounded the Islamists in the port area. "All types of weapons including aircraft supporting the infantry are being used to deal with them," he said.
Western powers and Libya's neighbours fear the conflict is dragging the major oil producer towards civil war.Powerhouse centre Konrad Hurrell has today recommitted to the Vodafone Warriors after signing a new contract to the end of the 2018 NRL season.
The 23-year-old, who’s in just his fifth season in rugby league, quickly won a reputation as one of the game’s most destructive ball runners.
In each of his first three NRL campaigns he has consistently featured among the club’s leading try-scorers with 37 tries in just 57 appearances.
While he’s sidelined with a knee injury for this weekend’s third-round clash against the Parramatta Eels at Mount Smart Stadium (5.00pm kick-off), Hurrell’s ecstatic about his deal.
“I’m so happy to be staying with the Vodafone Warriors,” said Hurrell.
“They brought me into rugby league and I’m so pleased I made the change. I’m having fun playing the game, trying to become a better player and being with the boys.
“This is the only club I want to be with. I love it here.”
Vodafone Warriors head coach Andrew McFadden said retaining Hurrell was another critical step in building the club’s NRL squad.
“Konrad has a huge role to play for us,” he said.
“We saw how much he developed his game last year and there’s still a lot of improvement in him. Koni has made a real impact in the NRL and we know there’s a lot more to come.”
Managed by Richard White and Amon Ta'Akimoeaka from Inventus Sports Management, Hurrell was scouted by the Vodafone Warriors from rugby union in 2010 when he was playing for Auckland Grammar School’s First XV.
He was an instant success in his one and only season in the NYC, scoring 22 tries in 21 games including a double in the Vodafone Junior Warriors’ grand final win in 2011.
In his debut season he finished with 12 tries in 17 appearances, 11 of them in a seven-game streak including a hat-trick against Gold Coast. In 2013 he scored 13 tries in 20 games and 12 in 19 last year.
KONRAD HURRELL
Date of Birth: August 05, 1991
Birthplace: Tofoa, Tonga
Junior Club: Mount Albert Lions
Position: Centre
Height: 183cm
Weight: 105kg
Other Teams: Vodafone Junior Warriors (NYC), Vodafone Warriors (NSW Cup), Auckland Vulcans (NSW Cup)
Rep Honours: 3 Tests for Tonga 2013, World Cup 2013
Club Number: 172
NRL Debut: Vodafone Warriors v Manly, Eden Park, March 04, 2012 (Round 1)
NRL Career: 57 appearances, 2012-2015
NRL Points: 148 (37 tries)
NYC Debut: Vodafone Junior Warriors v Sydney Roosters, Mount Smart Stadium, April 19, 2011 (Round 5)
NYC Career: 21 appearances, 2011
NYC Points: 88 (22 tries)
Secondary School: Auckland Grammar School and Tonga High SchoolHere are the top medical innovation stories making headlines this week!
EU reports decline in cancer mortality rates
Good news: cancer mortality rates are on the decline, and are estimated to continue declining in the coming year, according to a report published last week in Annals of Oncology. The data revealed that overall cancer death rates have fallen ten percent in men and seven percent in women since 2007.
Failed quadruple limb transplant: What went wrong?
Last Friday, doctors in Turkey pushed the boundaries of modern medicine when they attempted to perform a quadruple limb transplantation in a 27 year-old man, who had previously lost his extremities after being electrocuted. The procedure was not successful and the patient died on Monday. Dr. Ali Lotfizadeh explores the recent advances and continuing challenges in limb transplantation.
Hepatitis C research: Fighting the 'Silent Epidemic'
A study released last week reported that Hepatitis C, the'silent epidemic,' now kills more people in the US every year than HIV. Approximately 3.2 million Americans are currently infected with the Hepatitis C virus, and most have no idea. With numbers like this, Hep C cannot be ignored, and scientists are working earnestly to develop treatments and vaccines for this deadly virus.
Researchers isolate egg-producing stem cells from adult ovaries
For the first time, researchers have isolated egg-producing stem cells from the ovaries of reproductive age women and shown these cells can produce what appear to be normal egg cells, paving the way for a possible revolution in fertility.
Flu News
The flu season may have gotten off to a late start this year, but that didn’t stop influenza from popping up in the headlines. In particular, reports that a type of avain flu is now spreading in fruit bats and that a universal flu vaccine may be on the horizon kept people talking about influenza.Bank Underground is a blog written by staff at the Bank of England. Our goal is to bring more of our thinking into the public domain and to showcase our analytical and research output. We hope to contribute to the wider debate on areas that are relevant to the Bank’s work.
In 2015, the Bank’s Strategic Plan called for a new publication giving insight into topical issues from a staff perspective rather than that of the MPC, FPC or PRA board. And so Bank Underground was born, with its name chosen by an internal vote from a shortlist compiled from ideas nominated by staff.
On Bank Underground, authors write in an individual capacity and there is no “house view”. Since our analysis feeds into the policy-making process, you can expect to find some posts here that broadly accord with the Bank’s official views or provide further underpinning for them. But as there are diverse views held by those who work here, you can expect to read posts which differ from the Bank’s official position, external consensus and even other contributors to the blog.
We aim to publish two or three posts a week and our content seeks to span the whole range of the Bank’s analytical work- regulation, financial stability, monetary policy, macroeconomics, supervision, banknotes, markets, resolution and more besides.
Different posts will employ different styles and tools- techy statistical analysis, dipping into the Bank’s archives, wonkish theoretical pieces, imagining future challenges, model simulations, big data and anything else we can think of. But whatever we write about, we aim to do it in a readable, engaging and accessible way.
The views and opinions expressed and material contained on this blog do not constitute financial or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as such, nor do they in any way represent the official views or policies of the Bank of England or the Prudential Regulation Authority. You should seek your own professional advice on any financial or professional matter. Neither the Bank of England or the Prudential Regulation Authority will be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business or loss of profits) arising in contract, tort or otherwise from any reliance you place on the views or opinions expressed on this blog.
If you want to get in touch, please email us at bankunderground@bankofengland.co.uk.This post is simply a beginning attempt to draw out from crowd data how big each club’s active fanbase is.
The idea is to eliminate games where it isn’t a home team from one city state and an away team from another state. The reasoning for this is obvious - Collingwood get big crowds, but they’re helped by the ease with which many of their opponents’s fans can get to games. By contrast, Sydney or Port Adelaide can’t rely on the proximity of their opponents’ fanbases to get attendances most of the time.
Here, then, is a chart isolating just games played at a genuine home ground (ie, not in Launceston or Wellington) against teams from elsewhere in the country:
(larger image)
Home city games
Collingwood still show up as having the biggest home crowd pull at the MCG, but once we remove blockbuster derbies against Essendon, Carlton, etc, the gap shrinks. Adelaide trump other Victorian powerhouses when it comes to crowd pull, and this measure also makes it apparent that the home fanbases of the Crows plus West Coast, Essendon, Hawthorn, Carlton and Fremantle are all pretty close. It’s worth remembering that West Coast and Essendon, and to a lesser extent Fremantle and Carlton, face capacity issues from their home grounds.
Geelong, likewise, show as a low drawcard but their games at Kardinia Park are constantly sold out.
Down the other end of the spectrum, we can see St Kilda maintaining a sort of “largest minnow” status that may owe more to recent success than an actual larger fanbase. Melbourne and the Bulldogs have outdrawn North Melbourne in Victoria when the opponents aren’t from down the road. All three clubs have been victims of unfavourable scheduling so this probably doesn’t split them. What’s interesting is that the Demons, strugglers through this entire period, still get larger crowds than North and the Dogs, perhaps showing a larger fanbase or perhaps a stadium effect between Etihad and the MCG.
Away games
Interstate away crowds should tell us something about the drawing power of clubs in the rest of the country, indicating something about how much national appeal a team has.
Collingwood and Hawthorn appear to have the biggest non-Victorian drawing power, followed by Carlton, Essendon and Geelong within 2,000 per game. Collingwood’s claim to be the most popular team nationally may not be supported by facts - both the other two traditional Victorian powerhouses and the two current strongest Victorian teams are very close to them in crowd pull outside Victoria.
North Melbourne seems to draw about the same crowds outside Melbourne as Melbourne and the Bulldogs. There are two possibilities here. One is that none of those clubs draw any fans outside of Melbourne. More likely, all three clubs are drawing a similar limited number locally and via travel.
If the latter is the case, the comparison with lower Victorian crowds suggests North’s support base is more nationally-distributed than Melbourne or the Bulldogs. This makes some intuitive sense. First, North are known to have an outsized Western Australian support base due to old WAFL transfers. They also had sustained success during the 1990s, the first period of nationally-televised national competition, with high profile players such as Wayne Carey. They’ve probably attracted kids from other cities as converts in the 1990s who are now fans, moreso than Melbourne and the Dogs have done. Finally, perhaps their flirtations with Canberra, Sydney and Gold Coast relocations have left them some lingering support.
Finally, let’s talk about Sydney and Brisbane:
Sydney and Brisbane are of course supported heavily in Victoria as this chart shows. They’ve got the highest Victorian crowds of any interstate team, they have thousands of Melbourne members, and they have the most AFL members of any interstate club.
This is obviously mostly due to old South Melbourne and Fitzroy support, but is probably also partly a sign of Sydney and Brisbane transplants to Melbourne adopting their home city’s team when they didn’t previously have one.
However, we can also see a “clubs don’t play away games in their own city” effect in operation outside of Victoria. Sydney and Brisbane show as getting bigger away crowds in non-Victorian Australia but this reads as an artefact of what cities are being counted:
Adelaide and Perth teams only play away games in the other city, whereas Sydney and Brisbane play in both cities against those high-drawing teams (GWS and Gold Coast are also getting a boost from proportionately more trips west).
Similarly, Sydney and Brisbane (and GWS and Gold Coast)only play one low-drawing expansion side as a non-derby game.
These two factors make the “away drawing power” measure outside Victoria for Sydney and Brisbane a little meaningless if compared to Adelaide or Perth teams.
-SThe federal government and big companies want limitless new powers to spy on you.
And they plan to get them via legislation called CISPA — the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523).
CISPA would give Big Brother new powers to read, watch and listen to everything we do on the Internet. The folks behind CISPA claim that national security interests make this surveillance necessary, but the bill's language is so vague and overreaching that it opens the door for rampant abuse of our online rights:
CISPA would allow companies and the government to bypass privacy protections and spy on your email traffic, comb through your text messages, filter your online content and even block access to popular websites.
CISPA would permit companies to give the government your Facebook data, Twitter history and cellphone contacts. It would also allow the government to search your email using the vaguest of justifications — and without any real legal oversight.
CISPA contains sweeping language that could be used as a blunt weapon to silence whistleblower websites like WikiLeaks and the news organizations that publish their revelations.
CISPA would create an environment in which we refrain from speaking freely online for fear that the National Security Agency — the same agency that has conducted "warrantless wiretapping" online for years — could come knocking.
CISPA could lead all too easily to governmental and corporate attacks on our right to speak freely online. And while there is a real need to protect vital national interests from cyber attacks, we can’t do it at the expense of our freedoms.
The House plans to bring HR 3523 to a vote in the coming weeks. Take action right now. Tell your member of Congress to vote no on CISPA and stop this bill in its tracks.Tropical Storm Bertha forms out in the Atlantic and is heading straight for the Caribbean
Tropical Storm Bertha has formed, becoming the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
The U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami said the tropical storm's maximum sustained winds Thursday night were near 45 mph (75 kph).
The storm is centered about 275 miles (445 kilometers) southeast of Barbados and about 385 miles (620 kilometers) southeast of St. Lucia, and is moving northwest at 20 mph (31 kph).
Scroll down for video
The newly named Tropical Storm Bertha was forecast to move through the Lesser Antilles and pass close to Puerto Rico
This season has gotten off to a slow start, in many ways. Hurricane Arthur was just a few days ahead of the normal timing for the season's first named system, though the season's first hurricane doesn't typically arrive until early August.
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Next Can you guess the location by the Lego scene? Ingenious... Single mom, 24, wins lottery and plans to spend $66million... Share this article Share This season was the first since 2004 without a tropical storm forming in May or June. The long-range forecast still calls for a mild season. In part, that’s based on the formation of an El Nino in the tropical Pacific. During El Nino, the warming of surface waters result in upper-air winds from the west that can snuff out potential Atlantic hurricanes. Tropical Storm Bertha has formed, becoming the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season
As afar as Bertha is concerned, a tropical storm warning has been issued for Barbados and Dominica. A tropical storm watch has been issued for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Bertha was expected to pass near Barbados on Friday afternoon and travel through the central Lesser Antilles on Friday evening.
The hurricane center said little change is expected in the storm's strength over the next couple of days.
The meteorological service of Barbados has issued a Tropical Storm Warning for Barbados and Dominica.by Brett Stevens on April 19, 2017
Democracy is based on the idea that all people are equal, or able to utilize equal “reason” in making choices, and therefore that a mass vote will result in a sensible choice. Let us see how that is working out through the filter of literacy, which tells us how much people are able to read and assess versus simply repeating what they see on their television screens.
The Literacy Project Foundation offers us some statistics on how much our voters can read and understand:
Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children
50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level
45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level
Someone should mention that the political issues we discuss in our elections begin at a high school level, and require more to understand. This means that half of our voters have no idea what they are doing simply by lacking the ability, and this does not take into account the many more awash in apathy or fanaticism.
If all 45 million functional illiterates vote, they would have a majority bigger than the dubious vote count upon which Hillary Clinton bases her claim that she won the popular vote in the last election. If we had a normal election and even a major portion of this group voted, then whatever came to mind would claim the election.
Where do they get their opinions? If they cannot read, there are only a few sources: television, radio and entertainment such as movies and music. These verbal only and mostly-verbal voters are thus limited to hearing opinions from others, and then repeating those as if they were their own.
For those who read The Bell Curve, it is worth pointing out that very few people reach the 120 IQ point threshold necessary to go through a college education (this is more important than whether they actually have a college education, since with the ability for it they can educate themselves, as many have in America since our earliest days).
Onward we go…
3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read
20% of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage
50% of the unemployed between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate
Between 46 and 51% of American adults have an income well below the poverty level because of their inability to read
We have created an underclass that pays no taxes, cannot read, and yet can vote and receives the benefits of our extensive social welfare system. Naturally they will vote for what they think benefits them, which is more free government money and less accountability.
Even more, they are voting to spend Other People’s Money on these subsidies.
We can view illiteracy as a proxy for intelligence. Most people are incapable of voting. Of those who are capable, most are selfish, distracted, apathetic, fanatical or otherwise not focused on the issue. And because of their greater numbers, these groups drown out anyone else.
Is it any surprise that our democracy fails time after time in such an obsessive way?
Tags: democracy, illiteracy, welfare
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Borussia Monchengladbach say they will resist any approach from Bayern Munich to purchase midfielder Granit Xhaka this summer.
Xhaka, 22, was linked with a move to Bayern earlier this year and Gladbach have moved to dismiss fresh speculation after the Bundesliga champions sold Bastian Schweinsteiger to Manchester United.
Gladbach sporting director Max Eberl told Bild that there is no way the Switzerland international will be allowed to leave the club who finished third in the Bundesliga last season.
Granit Xhaka scored twice in 30 Bundesliga appearances for Gladbach last season.
"Granit will under no circumstances switch to Bayern this summer," Eberl said in Bild. "The only ones who will maybe leave us are Peniel Mlapa and Amin Younes. Granit is staying with us no matter what."
Xhaka signed a new contract with Gladbach in February that, according to Bild, includes a €30 million buyout clause.
Xhaka also played down talk of a move on Tuesday, telling Sport Bild: "I've never had any contact with Bayern. I feel really comfortable [at Gladbach] -- that counts."
Meanwhile, Younes, a Germany under-21 international, is expected to leave Gladbach to sign a three-year deal with Dutch side Ajax, according to Voetbal International.The Guy Behind The Qwikster Twitter Account Realizes What He Has, Wants A Mountain Of Cash
Last night, Jason went to bed a normal man, with a normal Twitter account (albeit one with a weed-smoking Elmo as the avatar), and a few dozen followers.
This morning, Jason woke up to an inbox full of messages, thousands of new followers, and wants to sell his account for many thousands of dollars.
As we chronicled last night, Netflix made a rather fundamental mistake in launching their new spin-off brand, Qwikster: they didn’t make sure they had the name locked down on all of the big social networks before making the announcement. As Jason’s luck had it, he had long owned the @Qwikster handle. He’s willing to part with it — he just wants to make sure he’ll “be making bank” first.
After over a month of silence, Jason’s @Qwikster account sprang back to life just a few hours ago and, likely to Netflix’s horror, has been more active today than it ever was before. Jason keeps touching on the idea of selling the account between poetic bursts like “I’m about to go play soccer n I got stug by a fucken bee” and “I just got scared I went into the shower turned on the water n then stuff started falling I was lik omg wtf lol”:
Jason seems to have rallied the, erm, expert counsel of his friend Gabriel (@SoccerIsLifegc7) who says they’re “not talkin til the offers get in 6 figures”.
Someone should probably tell Jason that selling Twitter handles is strictly against Twitter’s Terms Of Service, and attempts to do so can quickly result in the banhammer being dropped. Then Qwikster gets their name, |
councils. Through such horizontal flow of collective power common agreements and legal frameworks could be drawn to regulate and control the usage of commons.
Similar is the proposal made by Murray Bookchin. Also influenced by the ancient Athenian experience, he proposes the establishment of municipal face-to-face assemblies, connected together in democratic confederations, making the state apparatus obsolete. According to Bookchin, in such case “the control of the economy is not in the hands of the state, but under the custudy of "confederal councils", and thus, neither collectivized nor privatized, it is common.”
Such a "nestedness" does not necessarily translate into hierarchy, as suggested by Elinor Ostrom and David Harvey. At least if certain requirements are being met. This is the case in many of the practical examples of direct democracy around the world, in which the role of the delegates is of vital importance, though often neglected. Their subordination to the assemblies (as main source of power) has to be asserted through various mechanisms, such as: short term mandates, rotation, and choosing by lot. All of these mechanisms have been tested in different times and contexts and have proven to be effective antidote to oligarchization of the political system.
Through such networking and self-instituting, the establishment and direct control of commons can be done by the many communities that depend on them. Another element that could supplement the proposals described above, is the so called "solidarity economy". Different collective entities in various forms are rapidly spreading across Europe and other crisis-striken areas (like South America), that are allowing communities to directly manage their economic activities in their favour.
A merging of the commons and the solidarity economy will allow society to collectively draw the set of rules by which to regulate the usage of commons, while solidarity economic entities, such as cooperatives and collectives, will deal with commons's direct management. These entities are being managed direct democratically by the people working in them, who will be rewarded in a dignified manner for their services by the attended communities. On the other hand, the public deliberative institutions should have mechanisms for supervision and control over the solidarity economic entities, responsible for the management of commons, in order to prevent them from enclosing them.
An example of such a merging has occured in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, where the water management is organized in the form of consumer cooperatives. It has been functioning for more than 20 years, and continues to enjoy the reputation as one of the best-managed utilities in Latin America. The water system is being governed by a General Delegate Assembly, elected by the users. The assembly appoints senior management, over whom the users have veto rights, thus perpetuating stability. This model has drastically reduced corruption, making the water system working for the consumers.
The emergence of such a merger between the commons and the co-operative production of value, as Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis suggests, integrate externalities, practice economic democracy, produce commons for the common good, and socialize its knowledge. The circulation of the commons would be combined with the process of co-operative accumulation, on behalf of the commons and its contributors. In such a model the logic of free contribution and universal use for everyone would co-exist with a direct-democratic networking and co-operative mode of physical production, based on reciprocity.
Conclusion
The need for recreating the commons is an urgent one. With global instability still on the horizon and deepening, the question of how we will share our common world is the thin line separating, on the one side, the dichotomous world of market barbarity and bureaucratic heteronomy, and on the other, a possible world, based on collective and individual autonomy. As Hannah Arendt suggests:
“The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak. What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them. The weirdness of this situation resembles a spiritualistic séance where a number of people gathered around a table might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely unrelated to each other by anything tangible.”
The paradigm of the commons, as part of the wider project of direct democracy, could play the role of the trick that manages to vanish the table, separating us, but simultaneously creating strong human relationships, based on solidarity and participation. And for this to happen, social movements and communities have to reclaim, through the establishment of networks and the strengthening of already existing ones, the public space and the commons, and creating real possibilities of instituting in practice new forms of social organization beyond state and markets.
Notes
Deirdre N. McCloskey. The Bourgeois Virtues, The University of Chicago Press, 2006. p. 465Daniel Bryan, left, argues with the Miz, center, on last Tuesday night’s episode of “Talking Smack” on WWE Network. The Miz’s on-screen and real-life wife Maryse Ouellet listens in. (Screenshot/Youtube)
WWE star Daniel Bryan confirmed on Wednesday night to ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman that the intense verbal spat he got into with the Miz last week was indeed not entirely scripted and that the two nearly came to very real blows over the words exchanged.
[Forget wrestling’s usual fiction, this Miz-Daniel Bryan argument could be the real deal]
Bryan, who plays Smackdown’s general manager and Miz’s boss on TV, said the two planned to needle each other on “Talking Smack,” the live talk show that airs after “Smackdown” on the WWE Network every Tuesday, but the pair failed to specify to each other the points they planned to make ahead of time.
“Miz and I have known each other for a long time and we really know, like, how to get at each other’s nerves,” Bryan explained. “So, I brought up the idea that I thought he wrestled like a coward, and he knows I don’t like the way he wrestles. … And then he called me out on something that’s very personal to me.”
The Miz, whose real name is Mike Mizanin, started talking about Bryan’s concussion history, which WWE medical staff deemed risky enough to prohibit Bryan from wrestling with WWE ever again.
The Miz called Bryan a coward for deciding to stick with a non-action role in WWE opposed to leaving and going to wrestle for a smaller, independent promotion instead.
“He knows that that’s really pushing on a nerve,” Bryan said. “And calling me a coward for not [going to the independents] … which I sometimes think of myself as a coward for not doing … it’s tough.”
Bryan added: “Part of me just wanted to punch him in the face.”
Instead, Bryan walked off the set, at which point Bryan says the Miz went back into character to “cut an impassioned promo about how long he’s worked.”
“I will say this about the Miz: Even though I don’t like his wrestling style, he is a very hard worker,” Bryan said. “I have a huge amount of respect for him and I want him to do well.”
[WWE star Finn Balor finally wins championship belt, then immediately has to give it up]
Bryan added, however, WWE’s scriptwriters might split the two up, at least when it comes to doing more spots on live TV.
“I think they’re gonna kind of keep us away from each other for a little bit because they know how intense that can be between the two of us,” Bryan explained, citing their live TV work as the reason.
“That’s when one person starts touching a nerve and then the other person starts touching a nerve and pretty soon we’re having a fistfight on live television,” he said.Amanda Scott (R) and Christina Corvin (L) kiss after getting married outside of the Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds office in Charlotte, North Carolina on Oct. 13, 2014. Photo by Davis Turner for Reuters.
Missouri’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a St. Louis circuit judge ruled on Wednesday.
The decision comes a day after a federal judge ruled that neighboring Kansas also was violating the constitution by refusing to allow same-sex marriages. And it adds momentum to sweeping changes taking place across the country that allow same-sex couples to marry in more than 30 states.
“Marriage equality is now the law of the land in the state of Missouri,” said Winston Calvert, the city attorney for St. Louis, who challenged the state’s same-sex marriage ban. “This decision finally enforces that constitutional guarantee of equality for gay and lesbian couples.”
In his ruling, St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison said that “the freedom to marry is a fundamental right and liberty deeply rooted in the history of the United States.” He found that the state ban on same-sex marriage was not tied to a “legitimate government interest.”
Missouri officials were attempting to uphold the state ban on same-sex marriages after the city of St. Louis issued marriage licenses in June to four same-sex couples.
(Reporting By Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Mo.; Editing by Sandra Maler)When Anitha Bangera’s parents filed a ‘missing person’ complaint with the police in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, the cops on duty dismissed it as a case of ‘love jihad’. But nobody had a clue if she’d vanished with a lover of another faith. Protests by villagers forced the police to intensify their search for Bangera. She was found dead, and her killer turned out to be Mohan Kumar, a 49-year-old government school teacher who has since admitted to stalking and luring 20 other women for sex.
As sexual serial killers go, what marks Kumar out is his use of cyanide-laced pills couched as contraceptives to do his victims in, almost all of them women of lower-middle-class families. He would promise to marry them, and most left home for him dressed in wedding finery, sneaking away with jewellery and cash.
Police lethargy and lack of communication gave Kumar plenty of leeway. The women remained ‘missing’ in their records though many were found dead in the toilets of bus stands in other towns and cities within days of the missing complaints being lodged. Local cops passed these off as destitute deaths. Even if froth was found on the deceased’s mouth, a sign of poisoning, they put it down as suicide by an impoverished depressive. They made no effort to match the details of those reported missing with those found dead. This suited Kumar well.
It was only after the Bangera case was handed over to the Corps of Detectives, a premier investigating agency, that police investigators joined the dots through a pattern of phone calls. The killer, they found, would use one victim’s cellphone to call another, and had left a trail of calls. The detectives looked up the missing person files, examined the details of bodies found in bus stand toilets, and put all the clues together to crack the cases of 20 missing women.
Kumar was finally arrested in the autumn of 2009, and the only woman who survived has been a key witness for the prosecution. On 28 December 2013, he was sentenced to death for three murders—even while 17 other cases are at various stages of trial.
Anitha Bangera’s mother is distraught. “How can I be satisfied with the verdict if my daughter will not come back?” asks Kusuma Mulya in Tulu, a language spoken in coastal Karnataka around Mangalore. “We had set aside nine paun (8 gm) of gold and Rs 5,000 in cash for her wedding. We had to borrow money for this and are still repaying the debt. We had to marry off another daughter and my son in the interim,” she says. The gold Anitha took with her would be worth Rs 2.7 lakh at today’s prices.
The family’s village Barimaru is 40 km from Mangalore off the Bangalore highway in the Western Ghats; the roads are barely motorable. They have a small agricultural patch here. It was in June 2009 that Anitha left home with the gold, money and an expensive cellphone gifted by her brother Madhav. Kusuma was at work that day in their field. The others were away from home.
The 22-year-old’s disappearance shocked everyone in the village. When a police complaint was lodged, the policemen said she had likely been lured into a relationship by someone bent on converting her to Islam, the so-called ‘love jihad’ that Muslim men are alleged to be waging by right-wing propagandists who spy an evil design in this.
“The police asked us to keep our mouths shut,” says Anitha’s father, Duggappa Mulya, “They were not willing to listen, despite no one having seen Anitha talking to any person of [another] community.” That is how the case would have been treated had it not been for the pressure mounted by villagers, a local swamiji and Madhav over three months, demanding that she be traced.
“The pressure forced us to investigate,” admits a police officer who does not want to be named. The Bantwal Police examined Anitha’s call records and found she had made several calls. Examining these, they zeroed in on one person called Sridhar, a resident of Coorg, as a suspect.
Madhav, who was closely following the police leads, got wind of this from a constable, landed up at Sridhar’s house in Coorg with six fellow villagers to thrash him. When the police were called in, it was found that Sridhar’s sister Kaveri had also gone missing a couple of months earlier—along with his phone.
Kaveri, who worked in Kasargod, had vanished in February 2009 and her body was found in a toilet at Mysore bus stand that very month. Though her family had filed a complaint, they did not know that she had already been found dead. It was her phone, its SIM card registered in Sridhar’s name, that Mohan used to speak with Anitha, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance by then.
Intrigued, the police revised their suspicion and floated the theory of these women being possible victims of human trafficking. The call records they had examined led to calls terminating and originating from Darlakatte, a Mangalore suburb. “We were wondering if a prostitution racket was operating without our knowledge,” says an inspector. It no longer looked like a case of a single person’s disappearance and the story started drawing media attention.
After Anitha’s death, Kumar threw away Kaveri’s phone and gifted Anitha’s handset to his nephew. As luck would have it, the 16-year-old started using this phone after a month with his own SIM card. The police traced the user, who claimed it was a gift from his uncle Mohan Kumar. When Kumar was questioned about this, he did not have a convincing explanation of how he came to possess the phone. A search of his residence yielded a plastic bag filled with jewellery, seals and letterheads in his name (and the aliases he used to pursue women with, the police later learnt). To impress his targets, he had been trying to pass himself off as an executive of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company, Malnad Area Development Board and other government departments.
It was under the subsequent police interrogation that Kumar admitted his crimes and revealed what he’d done to Anitha and Kaveri. He had killed them by having them swallow cyanide-laced pills. Later, he confessed to luring and killing other women too.
Anitha’s parents did not get to see her body. She had been educated till Class VII and her parents were searching for a suitably boy for her to wed. They have no idea of how she fell for Kumar, nor any idea of whom she spoke with on the phone. They did not even want to go to court to see their daughter’s killer. “We saw his smirk on TV whenever he was brought to court,” says the father, “But we were not witnesses, nor did the police ask us to come to court. Our only regret is that we could not see Anitha one last time.”
When he was arrested, Mohan Kumar, alias Anand, was 49 years old. He had been married thrice. Having divorced his first wife in the early 90s, he was living with his second wife Manjula and third wife Sridevi in different towns, spending a few days with each. Manjula has two daughters, and Sridevi, two sons. Neither of the wives knew they were both married to the same man. And neither knew what he was up to, except that he was a government teacher on a transferable job. This is why they didn’t ask him too many questions about his frequent absences. Once they found out he was in jail, he forbid his wives from coming to see him. His reason: “Other men were eyeing them.”
Kumar’s mother Tukru has blamed an uncle called Govind Master, a tailor, for her son’s crimes. The allegation upset the uncle so much that he went to Kanathur temple in Kasargod, across the Kerala border, to ask the presiding deity for justice. This temple is famous for accepting written complaints on behalf of people who find their image tarnished by someone, and the pandits there like to issue summons calling upon the offender to come and explain. Tukru has not responded to the temple’s summons, says a family friend.
After Kumar’s arrest, the police claimed that 18 missing women cases had been solved as a result of his confessions. In all the cases, his modus operandi was similar. He would choose his victims by observing their routine, ascertaining their workplace and checking their social status. He targetted women who looked past marriageable age.
“How these women fell for him, don’t ask me,” says a policeman. “But, they always seemed to fall for his idea that they should be dressed in bridal finery to meet his parents, who he said would accept very little dowry. Without confiding in any family member, these women would walk away with the gold and cash their parents kept aside for their marriage, travel with him to other cities to visit temples, and have an illicit relationship [with him].”
The police say Kumar would advise them contraception to avoid pregnancy, since they were not yet married, and hand them a cyanide pill at a bus stand just before boarding a bus for an onward journey. “It works best while travelling as we are not doing anything naughty,” he reportedly told them, suggesting that they gulp it down with water from a faucet in the bus stand washroom. Death would be almost instant.
‘Brought dead’ to hospitals, the victims’ post-mortem reports indicated poison consumption, and since no one was around to claim the bodies, they were disposed of by the authorities in accordance with civic norms. This left Kumar free to get on his way, pawn the victim’s gold with a gold-loan company, and spend the cash in pursuit of other potential victims.
Another victim was Shanta Kumari, a 32-year-old who was found dead on a road outside the famous Kollur Mookambike temple. The youngest of a family of six siblings, Shanta had a job as an attendant at a Mangalore college. On 9 November 2006, she walked out of her modest home dressed in special clothes after telling those at home she was going to attend a function in college. When she did not return that night, her family called up her college, whose watchman said there had been no campus function; he also informed them that Shanta had taken half a day’s leave that day. Some days later, her elder brother Raju read a news report of a woman found dead on Kollur’s main road. “The newspaper report said the woman had died after an attack of fits, and that the police had claimed she was an AIDS victim,” says Raju, “She was buried in the town cemetery.”
Raju and his relatives visited Kollur and identified—to their dismay—Shanta’s ear-rings, blouse and wristwatch. They forced the administration to exhume her body, but the gravediggers refused to cooperate as she had been declared an AIDS victim. “We got the body exhumed, and after a protest by our community, a second post-mortem was done in a Mangalore hospital,” says Raju, “By then it was not clear how she died. She had taken 20 paun gold and some cash. We went around the town’s lodges with her photo. An auto driver said he had dropped my sister and a middle-aged man at a lodge. The lodge people refused to confirm their stay, and the police did not enquire any further.”
On his arrest three years later, Kumar admitted to having taken Shanta to Kollur and killed her. He claimed he had talked to her at the bus stop and even visited her college and introduced himself as an official of the state education department. “She fell for his fake credentials and his demeanour, and probably believed that life had taken a turn for the better, but she was not ready to show her family the man she had decided to spend her life with, lest they disapprove,” says a policeman on the investigation.
Shanta was religious and would visit temples on special occasions. This worked to Kumar’s plan, since he had always made it a point to use temple visits as a way to gain his victims’ confidence. “It really bothered us no end to think how a woman who’d leave home every day at 8.15 am to take a bus to her workplace and return around the same time every evening just disappeared one day dressed in all her finery,” says Lohith R, Shanta’s nephew, “She had taken jewels and money too.”
Both nephew and uncle are now determined to bring Kumar to justice: “She is victim No 16 in police records. But she is our loved one. We want the death penalty for Mohan in this case, too. Her soul will not rest in peace till this case finds closure.”
Sujatha, 28, disappeared from Bajpe near Mangalore airport after she borrowed jewellery from her neighbour for a special occasion, as she said. Once this case came to light, the court refused the jewellery’s original owner permission to take custody of the gold, despite the plea that they had an upcoming family wedding. “The accused pledged this jewellery with a finance company,” explains the neighbour’s lawyer HV Naik, “The company representatives and their records detail the loan given to Mohan on pledging these pieces of jewellery. They are part of the evidence and a crucial link to the chain of events in which Sujatha was lured and killed by the accused. Till the case is settled, the material evidence will be in the custody of the court.”
Another woman that Kumar admitted the murder of was Vinutha, a 28-year-old. She used to travel regularly from her village Bhaktakodi to the taluka headquarters Puttur for meetings with officials in pursuit of a house for her family under the government’s Ashraya Scheme. The police say Kumar met her on one of his visits to the taluka office, observed her routine and struck up a conversation with her. They became friendly, and soon, like the others, Vinutha was on her way to marry him without telling anyone.
An earlier victim was 22-year-old Nelyadi Vanitha, who was a member of a women’s self-help group in Uppinangadi town. She left home on 27 May 2004, never to return. Though her family lodged a complaint, the police could not trace her. When her body was found at Hassan bus stand a few days later, the local police assumed her to be a destitute woman and buried her without an investigation.
The others met fates no different. On 23 January 2008, Sharada Gowda, 28, left home as usual to take a bus to Udupi, where she worked at a private firm. She was found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days later. The local police concluded that this ‘unknown’ person had committed suicide in depression. They did not circulate her picture to other districts. When Leelavathy, a 30-year-old resident of Vamana Padavu in Bantwal taluka went missing on 9 August 2005, the local police did not bother to probe it. Instead, they insisted she had run away to join Naxalites, whose presence in the region had been noted for some time. “What went against her was the fact that she was a Left activist,” says Bheemappa Shenoy, a villager in Bantwal.
“In the early 2000s, she had invited and hosted Gaddar from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to her village. This poet is known to inspire people by singing revolutionary ballads, and is identified as being in charge of the Naxal cultural wing. This event alerted the intelligence wing of the state police, who later generated a report that Leelavathy, a known Naxal sympathiser, was missing and presumed to have joined a group of Naxals,” says Shenoy.
She was also found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days after she went missing; she was never properly identified.
Sunanda Poojary, who rolled bidis for a living, was another victim. She left home on 11 February 2008, and was found dead at Mysore bus stand a few days later. The police saw nothing odd about two women found dead in the same place within a fortnight of each other. Again, they thought her destitute and pinned her death on pesticide.
Shashikala of Balepuni was found dead at Bangalore bus stand on 14 August 2005. A member of a self-help group, she had taken a loan of Rs 90,000 right before she went missing. Filing their complaint, her family said that she was wearing a 50-gm gold chain (this was never found).
Exactly a year after Shashikala, 32-year-old Kamala was found dead at another bus stand. On 25 September 2009, Yashoda was discovered lifeless at Hassan bus stand, but on a bench, not in the washroom; she was perhaps one of Kumar’s last victims.
Meenakshi, a 25-year-old of Alike, is still missing. Arathi, 22, went missing in January 2006, as did Baby Naik, a 25 year-old who lived in Udupi district. These women are yet to be traced, but since Kumar has confessed to poisoning them, they are presumed dead.
At one point in the process of identifying the missing women listed in the police register, Kumar claimed he was losing his memory and that he couldn’t recall where he last left them. “It was so many years back,” he told the police, though he did remember other sordid details—such as their ‘intimate parts’—of each victim.
Kumar chose his victims with care. He went for women who looked well dressed and ‘easily impressionable’. “I always targetted women who would put their head down and walk. Though such women pretend to mind their business, they are easy to strike a conversation with,” Kumar is said to have boasted to an interrogator when asked how he chose victims who never told their families or friends of their relationship with him.
Mohan Kumar has had chargesheets of 20 cases against him being looked into by a Mangalore fast-track court. Late last year, announcing verdicts on three of these, the murders of Anitha, Leelavathy and Sunanda, the judge awarded him capital punishment and made a mention of how he showed no remorse for his deeds. The judgment was passed after an in-camera trial, with three witnesses—a woman who survived the cyanide poisoning, Ishwar Bhat, a priest whom Kumar had asked to perform a ritual to cleanse him of guilt, and Abdul Salam, an agent from whom Kumar procured his stash of cyanide.
During the trial, the prosecution relied on 49 witnesses to establish the chain of evidence on how Kumar had lured Anitha to Hassan, stayed at room No 23 in Sanman Lodge, later checked out alone, and pledged her jewellery with branches of two gold loan firms. His long absences from his job also went against Kumar, as he could not prove he was at work around the time his victims were killed. The state’s department of education had served him a suspension notice for being absent without authorised leave. As a government school teacher, Kumar taught children mathematics, social science and English. At one time, he had written to the district administration for permission to teach undertrials in jail English.
Kumar, who served as his own lawyer at his trial, countered the claim that he killed his victims with cyanide arguing that no post-mortem report made any mention of this particular poison.
The police had a magisterial confession from Abdul Salam, a chemical dealer who testified he’d sold Kumar cyanide powder several times, thinking he was a jeweller and needed it for professional use. Salam was arrested too—for selling cyanide without a valid licence—and though he turned hostile as a witness later, his testimony on selling it to Kumar was upheld by the court as evidence.
The woman of Bantwal who survived was also a prime witness who offered clinching evidence. Kumar had lured her to a Madikeri lodge, but she had only licked the capsule and not swallowed it. She collapsed immediately in the washroom of Madikeri. Commotion ensued, and Kumar made a quick exit assuming she’d been found dead by onlookers. She recovered after five days in hospital, and returned home with the help of some money that her nurses gave her. She did not tell anyone about Kumar and her ordeal—and got married within months.
The police stumbled on her as a key link in the chain while studying the call records of one of the cellphones used by Kumar. “She had to be gently persuaded to become a witness,” says a policeman, “We promised her that her husband’s family would not know anything. She agreed to an in-camera hearing and was our star witness.”
The other witness that the prosecution relied on was Ishwar Bhat, a priest whose help Kumar had sought at Annapoorneshwari temple near Mangalore. Once Anitha Bangera’s case hit the media, Kumar had asked Bhat to perform a ritual that would relieve him of the sin of murdering a woman. At first, Bhat took him lightly, but when Kumar persisted, he performed a special aarthi to get rid of him, as he testified. It was later that Bhat saw photos of Kumar splashed across newspapers, and that’s how he decided to inform the police of the killer’s request.
Kumar had once been arrested in 2003. This was in Dharmasthala after passersby heard the screams of a woman he was trying to throw into the fast-flowing Netravathi river below. On that occasion, he was beaten up before being handed over to police. However, he was acquitted in that case on lack of evidence.
That was perhaps the beginning of his sense of impunity as he embarked on his career as a serial killer.
In his 91-page judgment condemning the accused to the gallows, BK Naik, the judge of the fast-track court, had this to say: ‘As [Mohan] has been denying [charges] without rebuttal, the sufficient evidence proves that he committed the acts intentionally.’
The police say Kumar had even mapped the fertility cycles of his victims. “Even if one of them had refused to take the pill, they would have survived,” says a police officer, “But as none wanted an unwanted pregnancy, they paid the price.”By Lee Carter
BBC News, Toronto
The market price for a seal pelt has plummeted in recent years
Canada's annual seal hunt has ended with only a quarter of the quota of seals being caught.
The quota had been set at 273,000, but fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador, eastern Canada, took some 70,000 seals.
They blame plummeting prices for seal pelts and an impending European Union ban on seal products, which is expected to come into effect in October.
Some local fishermen are wondering if this could be the beginning of the end for the centuries-old practice.
Uphill battle
Many hunters from fishing communities in eastern Canada, did not even bother taking their boats out for this year's seal hunt.
The market price for a seal pelt is about $12, a steep decline from a peak of $100 a pelt a few years ago.
The depressed value of the Russian Rouble and the subsequent erosion of one of Canada's largest markets for seal products, is partially to blame for the decline in numbers.
China is another major customer, also reeling from the global recession.
But it is clear that the prospect of a EU ban on seal products and growing international disdain for the hunt is becoming a major factor in its near collapse.
The European Parliament passed the ban in May, but it still needs the backing of EU governments. That is expected to be a formality.
Canadian fisheries officials admit that they have an uphill battle in what has become an emotional international debate.
Animal rights groups have successfully campaigned for decades against the seal hunt.
The annual kill has been a source of critical seasonal income for fishing communities already hit hard by dwindling fish stocks.Great footballers don’t just appear from nowhere, as if by magic. The best players in the world—whether it’s Leo Messi, Gareth Bale, Neymar or Cristiano Ronaldo—learned the finer points of football at a professional soccer academy.
A select number of those sporting schools, affiliated with both superclubs and lesser lights, have shown themselves to be above the rest in their ability to produce top-level talent. Here are the world’s 10 best soccer academies—and what sets them apart.
10. RSC Anderlecht Youth Academy
In just the last few years, the Belgian club’s academy has produced some standout performers, including Vincent Kompany, Romelu Lukaku and Adnan Januzaj. According to team resources, the program’s goal is to mold players capable of playing at a Champions League level by age 18-21 through rigorous technical, tactical, and mental training from as early an age as possible. Until age 14, teams play a 3-4-3, transitioning to a possession-based 4-3-3 in older groups.
9. Dinamo Zagreb Academy
The academy, also known as Hitrec-Kacijan, has risen to prominence in concert with the resurgence of the Croatian national team. Luka Modric, Niko Kranjcar, and Dejan Lovren all came through the ranks to forge successful careers in the Barclays Premier League. The program operates on a budget of €1m a year, which, when compared to their competitors, make the results particularly impressive. It emphasizes “situational conditions” and small-sided drills over formations and systems.
8. President Laudo Natel Athletes Formation Center
Brazilian club Sao Paulo’s 220,000 square meter compound, built on a hillside outside the city in 2005, features eight playing fields, two pools, and lodging and health services for over 100 players. Ten different national teams fought to use the beautiful facilities, where Lucas Moura and Oscar learned their trade, as a home base for the 2014 World Cup. Kaka also came through the Sao Paul youth ranks, albeit before the new facility’s completion.
7. The Manchester United Academy
Additions made in 2013, including a medical center and sports science department, to the club’s Carrington training center brought its total cost to over £60 million. The academy has its own building within a complex that is regarded as the most secretive and secure in Europe. A youth program that once trained Sir Bobby Charlton is most famous for its “Class of ’92,” the group led by David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes that went on to claim the Treble.
6. Santos F.C. Reserves & Academy
The house that Pelé built has produced a few gems since, including Diego, Robinho and Neymar. Located inside the Estadio Urbano Caldeira, where the first team plays its matches, the youth complex features full living facilities for 270 trainees. The club prioritizes education and has built an adjacent study center to that effect, and also provides full health care coverage for youth teamers.
5. Southampton F.C. Academy
Executive director of football Les Reed has overseen a revolution at the South Coast club, one firmly rooted in the academy system. A new 30 million pound facility, opened last year, will augment a setup that has already produced the likes of Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott and Adam Lallana. The program prides itself on its extensive scouting network, aided in no small part by the famed “black box” theater onsite, which is also used for training and match analysis.
4. The Bayern Munich Junior Team
Created in 1902, the Bayern Junior Team once featured Franz Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier in the same defensive unit. Since it was remodeled in 1995 with the mission of helping “FCB to keep a global position in club football in the next millennium,” the academy has switched to a universal 4-3-3 system and overseen the development of Bayern stars and 2014 World Cup winners Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Thomas Muller.
3. Academia Sporting
Sporting Clube de Portugal’s youth facility, a 250,000-square-meter complex just outside Lisbon, was once home to the likes of Nani and Cristiano Ronaldo. The complex features state-of-the-art training and recovery amenities to be sure, but the program, where Portuguese legend Luis Figo also got his start, has also received awards for its attention to trainees’ academic and ethical training.
2. La Masia
Barcelona’s La Masia is on even the most casual soccer fan’s radar these days, and with good reason. The program is united under a singular philosophy: the ‘Total Football’ derivative of tiki-taka, a pass and move possession game predicated on supreme technical skill. In 2010, the academy achieved the unprecedented feat of having trained all three Ballon d’Or finalists: Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, and Xavi.
1. AFC Ajax Youth Academy
The Amsterdam giants have been champions of Europe four times, due in large part to a legendary academy setup. Both ‘Total Football’ and its greatest practitioner, Johan Cruyff, were molded in the Ajax academy. Many of the core tenets of that philosophy remain today, with all age groups playing a fast, interchanging 4-3-3 system with an emphasis on ‘TIPS’: Technique, Insight, Personality and Speed.by
Powerful hurricanes and disasters can actually increase economic activity, we are told. The point |
a fork or a split between the bulk of the KOffice developers and KWord developer Thomas Zander.
What's been widely publicized already is the plan for the Calligra side of the split. The new suite will contain the existing KOffice applications, mostly rebranded from the originals. KWord now becomes Words, KSpread becomes Tables, KPresenter becomes Stage, and so on. Calligra will roll up eight applications into one suite, with more promised as the project gains more contributors.
The development will also move to Git from Subversion, and will continue to be hosted on KDE Project infrastructure. Though the new name and detailed plan was announced on December 6th, the split has actually been a long time in coming. Cyrille Berger Skott announced the intent to split the KOffice community on October 23rd. As the post indicates, this was after "months of discussion." Some of the discussion has happened on the public mailing lists, and other discussions have taken place off the devel list through KDE's Community Working Group (CWG).
Causes for the split
One thing lacking in the official KDE post about the split is a rationale for the move. There's a terse section in the announcement about "Calligra and the past," but it provides very little insight into the split:
Nearly everyone in the KOffice community has joined together to make this move. Leaving the past behind us, we are excited at this opportunity to make our software more innovative and widely-used. At the same time that the Calligra project is created, we will move from Subversion to Git, making it an even better platform for innovation in the free office space.
Aaron Seigo's post on the matter was a bit more substantive, explaining that KOffice experienced an internal fork:
The fork itself came about through unresolved differences between a member of the KOffice team and the rest of the members over how to manage both long term targets and day-to-day development. This eventually resulted in people coming to the conclusion that those differences were not only unresolved but also unresolvable. To call a one person schism a fork may seem a bit overly dramatic, but that's certainly how it felt to those involved and was not a triviality. Coming to a fork, the rest of the KOffice team took the opportunity of change to rethink various aspects, including the name.
What's not been said here is who isn't joining together for the move. That would be Zander, a former Nokia employee (Zander says he resigned a while ago), who is the KWord maintainer and co-maintainer for the KOffice libraries.
Reading through the koffice-devel list, a lot of fingers are pointed at Zander, while he points to Nokia's involvement in KOffice. A discussion in July over a post made by Zander to the KOffice.org front page demonstrates a fair amount of tension between Zander and other KOffice developers. The source of contention, in this case, stems from a posting by Zander about some ideas for the direction of KWord development. This typically would not raise eyebrows in a FOSS project, but Zander originally chose to use the front page of the KOffice.org site, apparently without much agreement on the ideas or the placement of the post.
The placement of the posting, however, was not the only bone of contention. Asked via email about the split, Zander says that he was running into differences of opinion with Nokia-sponsored developers who have been trying to add features that mirror Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for Maemo/MeeGo use:
As you probably know, Nokia has been working with some KOffice members for about 18 months to create an MSOffice documents reader to run on Maemo/Meego. For this goal Nokia demands a lot of features to be added that Word/Powerpoint have. There are some 10 people working full time to add those features. As the maintainer of KWord and a co-maintainer of the koffice-libraries this work was becoming a problem for the goals of releasing an end-user-ready version. More regressions than I could fix in my spare time and requests to those full-time authors to write new unit tests and to take care not to break unit tests etc. were ignored. I saw 4 years of work that went into KWord2.x going in a direction that was not going to let me release a version an actual user could edit with for a long long time.
In the end, Zander says that other KOffice developers said "MeeGo had a deadline and they had to deliver or else," with a request to help them out. Zander says he declined, and that prompted the request to split KOffice which he agreed to. "I am not opposed to that; the goals of the two teams [are] just too different."
Zander claims that Nokia is responsible for the split, saying "lets call this whole thing what it is, a fork off of KOffice focusing on getting it ready to render MSOffice documents properly and getting it working for Meego using the ways of working that Nokia uses for such projects."
Berger Skott disagreed that the blame lies with Nokia, and said in email that KOffice work is relatively balanced between paid and unpaid developers:
Between Beta 4 and RC1, there have 229 commits, by 25 authors, 14 are paid developers, to the exception of one who is paid by the NLNet, the other are paid directly or indirectly by Nokia, six of them started as koffice volunteers developers, one comes from KDE, they made a total of 105 commits. The other 11 developers are volunteers, they did 120 commits (the four remaining commits were made by the internationalization script). As you can see this is rather balanced.
In a post on his blog, Berger Skott agrees that the goals and vision for the two projects are different. In IRC, he said that "we believe that the person who does the work is the one who [gets] to decide, all developers are treated equally and contribution is accepted, whether from community or paid developers, while Thomas is favorable to a stricter control on the code." He added that "community issues between him [Zander] and other members started a long time ago." Indeed, Zander had been asked to leave the KOffice project once prior, and came back in February 2008 with a promise to avoid non-technical discussions. Strictly speaking, that didn't happen.
It's unclear how many developers will continue to work on the non-Calligra suite, but Zander did ask for volunteers to continue KOffice and says "I have received various people's blessings and know I am not alone in this endeavor, and that does make me feel pretty good about this."
Zander says that Krita and Kexi will be removed from the current KOffice tree, as they are "too big to be without a maintainer," but that development will continue on the rest:
The other apps share the majority of their logic in the libraries and they will continue to be developed on; now with an even stronger focus on getting end-user-ready. So if users were annoyed that it took [so] long to get KWord in a decent shape; the biggest hurdle has not been taken away and we should move towards a better version much faster.
Moving forward with Calligra
Regardless of who and how, the Calligra team is energized now and might be in a position to put the suite on the map. Seigo noted in his post that the Calligra team is charged up and now has the challenge of tapping the momentum and "building a healthy, dynamic community with real leadership around it and a coherent vision under it."
The community building is taking place on the calligra-devel list. There's currently discussion about whether to elect maintainers and how to handle problems with individuals or conflicts if or when they arise in the future. Nothing has been decided yet, however.
On the technical side, much has been made of the Nokia/MeeGo influence on Calligra already and possible use for mobile devices. Berger Skott writes that Calligra is not mobile oriented:
Lets be clear, it is not true. Calligra is focused on developing technologies related to office and creativity applications, on top of those technologies, the Calligra project is delivering a set of desktop applications and mobile applications (and maybe tablet, in the future). All of it is [built] over the KDE technologies, using the Qt toolkit, which makes it potentially available to an incredible range of devices and operating system: Linux, Windows (desktop and mobile), Mac OSX, Symbian, Meego, Haiku (and maybe Android, iPhone, WebOS...), using a desktop computer, a laptop, a mobile phone, a tablet, your TV... And all with an user interface that is most suitable for your form factor.
But he adds that Qt and KDE availability is not enough to make Calligra work on those platforms, and that the majority of the volunteers are targeting the Linux desktop, with Nokia supporting MeeGo and mobile phones.
Despite the fuss over the launch of Calligra, there is still one KOffice release to come. The KOffice 2.3 release is being prepared now, with the first release candidate out as of December 9th. The final release does not have a set date, but will be released when all release blockers are fixed. The first Calligra release will be 2.4, and the schedule and feature plan for that haven't been set yet.
Now that the Calligra team is finding its footing, one hopes that it (and whatever rises from the other half of the KOffice fork) will be successful in providing a competitive productivity suite. The harsh truth is that KOffice as a whole has not been terribly successful as of yet. The FOSS community could use another office suite that can hold its own against Microsoft Office, maybe this restructuring will provide the foundation for Calligra to meet that need.Last year I received a phone call from Mike, a retired Orange County firefighter. He asked me about my experiences with virtual reality and if this technology might help a 23 yr old quadriplegic named Henry. Without hesitation, I said ‘YES!’ If VR could excite me and all my friends, how much more might it thrill someone basically stuck in bed all day long. I agreed to meet Henry through a Skype video chat, Mike would bring his S6 and hope for decent wifi to facilitate the call. I was a bit nervous as I had never talked to someone paralysed, and was not sure what to say. It turned out Henry had a relaxed demeanor and was easy to chat with. He has a sarcastic sense of humor and a mischevious grin and not one negative thing to say, as a matter of fact, he spoke about being grateful that he could talk, as his roommates had long lost that ability. I could hear breathing machines through my headphones and I was imagining if it was me trapped in that bed.
After awhile I thought to ask a few tech questions, I was not sure about using an Oculus Rift DK2 or Samsung VR Gear as both can require use of your hands. I found out Henry had a busted laptop, little experience with hands-free technology and his portable breathing machine had not worked in ages. He has little support but for a few dedicated people like his Mother and Mike, who visit regularly. I decided that for the time being it would be less complicated to go with a Note 4 and Samsungs mobile headset. He would need some assistance to ‘swipe’ but not having to deal with USB & HDMI cords, headphones and a big PC, I figured this was the best way to go. Raising the funds was surprisingly easy, I just asked a few friends to help and within a couple of days Henrys Note 4 and VR Gear had arrived. I must say I was getting excited to hear back from him, by now we had talked several times and there was something about his positive outlook on life that had a huge impact on me
Finally I get an email with a link to YouTube. My firefighter friend took some video of Henrys first time with virtual reality. As you can see, his reaction was awesome. I was elated but not surprised. I just knew that VR has massive potential to help others. It was a super emotional experience for me and my family as all of us knew how cool VR was and we just knew it was going to impact Henry in profound ways. In Henrys own words ‘VR has changed my life!’ I think that says it all.
A year has passed, Henry is a wizard on the Note 4, using a stylus clenched between his teeth he’s like a woodpecker on that phone! When we message through Facebook, I at times struggle to keep up! Henry has become much more than some guy we got VR Gear for, he is a friend. And the funny thing is, I set out to help Henry but in the end, I think it was Henry who helped me…If you’re a small business owner, IT problems are something you probably want to put your dead down and ignore. But you know they’ll just keep resurfacing and those problems will keep getting bigger and bigger. Soon, they’ll even become costly – from mild operational interruptions to full blow shutdowns. Computer issues are bad. But, they can be avoided with the right plan in place implemented by the right computer consultant.
We asked Tom Grundig, Founder of Grundig IT consultants in Walnut Creek (learn more) his thoughts on how small business owners should go about making the sometime difficult decision of which firm to work with.
Industry Expertise
One factor to consider is whether the firm has expertise in your industry. This is especially important if your industry has specialized software. But even if it doesn’t, many standard applications have nuances and special features that you likely want your IT consultant to tweak or customize to get the most out of the application.
IT Services Provides
Today, even small business have large technology needs. At a minimum, you want someone who is willing to get into the trenches and fix those pesky desktop and workstation issues. Those minor annoyances are often the ones causing your employees the biggest headaches. Slow computers are often cited as the #1 frustration among employees. And that frustration easily turns into lost profits as your employees waste time each day waiting for things to happen.
Another area of major concern is security. Protecting workstations and servers from viruses and outside intruders is a critical function of any IT department, whether internal or outsourced. Lost data can cause business disruption or lost customers who become furious at their information being leaked.
Along the lines of security is having a proper data backup and recovery solution in place. Here’s a tip from Tom, make sure that you have a system that can not only backup, but can RESTORE. Often times people put backup solutions in place but they don’t learn of restore issues until it’s too late.
A more modern edition to the repertoire of today’s computer consulting firm is cloud computing. Today, we’re storing data online and using online apps instead of downloading software that can quickly become outdated. There’s a huge benefit to cloud computing but it’s also an area where many companies waste money on unnecessary services. And, even if an app is available online, it doesn’t change the fact that you and your team still have to be trained on how to use it properly.
Fixed Costs
There are several different options when it comes to paying IT consultants. The typical hourly rate is still a common method. But many firms have transitioned to become Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
MSPs offer similar services to traditional consultants, but they package those services in a way that both encourages them to provide excellent maintenance and fix problems before they happen, and offer a fixed and known expense to the business.
So instead of paying an hourly fee that could go on and on, clients of MSPs pay a flat monthly fee that usually includes maintaining servers and workstations in top order, and fixing any problems that might arise.
If you want to learn more tips on using an IT consultant, read Grundig IT’s blog. Or stop by and talk with Tom yourself. Contact information is provided below.At the end of August I wrote a short post about an important reform that modified the rules for software adoption within the Italian public administration.
This morning a new law (commonly known as "Agenda digitale italiana") has been approved and it adds a further amendment to Article 68 of the Codice dell'amministrazione digitale. Now Italian public administrations could select between six options (and not five, as it was in the previous version):
develop a solution internally
reuse a solution developed internally or by another public administration
adopt an free/open source solution
use a cloud computing service
obtain a proprietary license of use
a combination of the above.
Now cloud computing is a new feature. And it takes priority over the proprietary solution.
By the way, also the rest of the article is quite different and more detailed. Paragraph 1bis and 1ter has been added. Paragraph 1bis describes the principles governing the comparative analysis that every public administration has to do before choosing one of these 6 options. And paragraph 1ter has modified the most interesting part of the previous version of Article 68. Now it says:
In the event that the comparative analysis of technical and economic aspects, according to the criteria described in paragraph 1-bis, demonstrates the impossibility to adopt an already available solution [option B], or a free/open source solution [option C] (adapted to the needs to be met) the acquisition of proprietary software products is allowed.
Originally posted on Simone Aliprandi's personal blog. Reposted under Creative Commons.An American environment group with strong links to the US government is privately opposing proposals by leading British environmental scientists for some of the exiled inhabitants of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean to be allowed to return home.
The islanders were ejected by Britain 40 years ago to make way for the giant US base at the Diego Garcia atoll. Last year, the British government announced the creation of the world's largest marine protected area round most of the Chagos islands – with the likely exception of Diego Garcia.
Chagossian exiles denounced the move as an attempt to pre-empt their hopes of a return – a charge the British government denies.
Evidently stung, some scientists who have researched the often pristine environment around the 55 Chagos islands say Britain should establish a research base that could employ up to 100 Chagossians and house their families. They made public their compromise plans, drawn up with groups representing the Chagossians, at a public meeting on the future of the Chagos islands held yesterday at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
However, email correspondence seen by the Guardian in the run-up to the conference reveals bitter divisions over the plan. Some members of the Chagos Environment Network (CEN), a group of environmental organisations formed three years ago to lobby for the creation of the protected area, are vehemently opposed to any Chagossian return.
Members of the CEN include British environmental NGOs such as the RSPB and the Marine Conservation Society, along with the Chagos Conservation Trust – a little known group long dominated by former British diplomats and soldiers – and the Pew Charitable Trusts, an influential US philanthropic organisation. The Pew Trusts organised and helped pay for one of the last acts of President George W Bush – declaring the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean a national monument, despite protests from local island leaders.
Dr Mark Spalding, a Cambridge University researcher who also works for the Nature Conservancy, said in the email correspondence that some members of CEN have "endorsed the concept of limited numbers of Chagossians living in the northern atolls to work on conservation and scientific monitoring", including "allowing settlement of families".
David Snoxell, a former British high commissioner in Mauritius and an active member of the Chagos Conservation Trust, said the plan for a Chagossian-staffed base "offers an imaginative way out of the current logjam".
But both Alistair Gammell, who recently left the RSPB to represent Pew in the UK, and Jay Nelson, director of Pew's Global Ocean Legacy project, reacted angrily. Gammell said "CEN has reached no such conclusion." Nelson said: "I know for a fact not all groups would agree."
Some of the scientists behind the compromise plan for Chagos believe they face an alliance between environmental hardliners and the military to keep the Chagossians far from their homeland – and to sideline them from the debate about the islands' future.
In the emails, Spalding said: "I have found it difficult to swallow that some of the conservation community have chosen to gloss over the impact of the military base." Snoxell complained that the CEN frequently "fails in [its] public relations material to mention the Chagossians".
The row between the environment groups was not mentioned at the London meeting, at which the scientists met some 150 angry UK-based Chagossian exiles. Most of the 5,000 or so exiles live in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they were left by British naval warships between 1968 and 1972.
Britain asserts sovereignty over the Chagos islands, coral reefs and ocean – an area around the size of France, which it calls the British Indian Ocean Territories. The government says the creation of the marine protected area is "without prejudice" to future court rulings on the rights of the Chagossians. But Wikileaks recently published diplomatic correspondence in which a British official said it "put paid" to any future resettlement.
At the London meeting, Philippe Sands, a lawyer representing the Mauritius government in a legal action to reclaim the islands from Britain, accused environmental groups such as Pew of "aiding and abetting an illegal act" by the British government.Ladies, it is finally here! This Microblading Waterproof Eyebrow Pen is our favorite beauty item this year! It is perfect for making your eyebrows look natural, yet put together. This Eyebrow Tattoo Pen has 4 individual microblading tips that glide along your own eyebrows and appear as tiny hairs! Perfection! Not to mention so fun and gratifying to use! This pen has the following advantages: 1. Super easy to use and save your time. 2. Gives you the look of microbladed brows for less and save your money. 3. Waterproof Trust us, this one is a keeper! It comes in 3 shades. #1 - Chestnut - (dark brown) #2 - Brown - (light brown, slightly red) #3 - Dark Grey - (closest to black) ❤ STORAGE 1. For a pen version of a liquid eyebrow, ensure you always keep the lid on when you're not using it. 2. Just make sure you hear the CLICK when closing the cap! 3. When NOT in use, Keep the cap TIGHT and store it UPRIGHT to PREVENT DRYING! When in use, upside down and let the tip receive liquid. Washes off with Soap and Water.
$ 7 99 $16.99 53% Off Microblading Waterproof Eyebrow PenNovak Djokovic wasn’t very happy about the fact that someone in the Rogers Cup crowd Saturday was having a little too much fun.
The No. 1 tennis player beat France’s Jeremy Chardy easily to advance to the final, but Djokovic apparently had to overcome a strong marijuana smell to do it.
“Someone is smoking weed, I can smell it, and I’m getting dizzy,” Djokovic told the umpire, per The Telegraph. “Somebody is getting high. Can you smell it? The whole place smells of it.”
Djokovic said he hoped the culprit wouldn’t return to Montreal’s Uniprix Stadium on Sunday for the final.
“Oh my god,” Djokovic said. “You can’t believe how bad it was. Whoever it is, he’s pretty high, and I hope he doesn’t come back tomorrow. Because it’s a pretty bad smell. I didn’t enjoy it.”
Djokovic also joked he felt he “was playing better as (he) was inhaling,” and perhaps that was true, as the Serb lost Sunday’s Rogers Cup final to Andy Murray.
Thumbnail photo via Eric Bolte/USA TODAY Sports Images
Thumbnail photo via Aug 16, 2015; Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Novak Djokovic of Serbia hits the ball against Andy Murray of Great Britain (not pictured) during the Rogers Cup tennis tournament final at Uniprix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports(Newser) – Pro-marijuana activists in a German university town sowed the seeds of protest in June and are now watching their results bloom. Unfortunately for the cops in Gottingen, this is not a metaphor. As Der Spiegel explains, some pro-pot elves calling themselves "A Few Autonomous Flower Children" went all over the city last month planting marijuana seeds—as in, several pounds of seeds—to protest what they see as the "demonization" of cannabis even as alcohol and tobacco get away scot-free.
Now, the plants are sprouting up everywhere, and website GJ is publishing photos as they do, encouraging readers to "enjoy with deep relaxation the majestic beauty of this magnificent plant!" It's in German, but the photos speak for themselves, showing the plants in parks, city planters, and, best of all, in front of the city police station. Police and parks workers are even using the site as a guide on where to go rip up the plants. For the record, the activists swear their plants are low in THC, the active ingredient in pot. (Read more Gottingen stories.)The Jets added another veteran safety to help a unit that struggled at times last season. A source confirmed that the Jets agreed to a one-year, $1.4 million deal with Yeremiah Bell. Bell's deal includes a $200K signing bonus and $1.1 million base salary that is fully guaranteed, according to a source. He will earn $1.3 million in full guarantees. ProFootballTalk.com first reported the signing.
Bell, 34, was released last month by the Dolphins to free up salary cap space. He played eight seasons in Miami and was a regular starter for the past four years. Bell will join Eric Smith and LaRon Landry, who was also signed this offseason, as the top three safeties on the Jets' roster.
General manager Mike Tannenbaum said when the team signed Landry that the goal was get him ready for Week One of the regular season. Landry has dealt with an Achilles injury that has caused him to miss significant time in the past two seasons.
"This is a challenge for us," Tannenbaum said in March after the team signed Landry. "But with that said, we feel really good about LaRon. We feel really good about our medical department. We're going to work as a partnership to get him ready for opening day. Barring something unforeseen, we think he'll be ready to go."
NOTES:
The Daily News has learned that first-round pick Quinton Coples' four-year deal (with a fifth-year team option) is worth a fully guaranteed $8.8 million dollars that includes a $4.8 million signing bonus.
A league spokesperson told the News that the NFL will review the court record of Kenrick Ellis' case to determine there will be any discipline doled out. Ellis' malicious wounding case stemming from a 2010 incident in college was resolved on Thursday when he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge. A judge is expected to make it official on Monday, according to a source.
A Jets' source told the News on Thursday that Ellis, who isn't aw U.S. citizen, isn't expected to be deported. The team was given assurances long ago that Ellis was going to plea to a lesser charge.
http://twitter.com/TheJetStreamForeign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened on Friday that Israel will renounce past agreements, including the Oslo Accords, with the Palestinians if they continue their unilateral pursuit of statehood recognition from the United Nations in September.
Lieberman's statement came during a meeting in Jerusalem with European foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton.
"The unilateral move at the UN is the end of the Oslo Accords and would be a violation of all agreements that we have signed until now," Lieberman said. "Israel would not be obligated to the agreements that it has signed with the Palestinians over the past 18 years."
Lieberman added that there is zero chance that negotiations with the Palestinians will resume, due to the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"Abbas does not want an agreement, but rather confrontation with Israel," Lieberman said. "This is his personal interest, even though it is contrary to Palestinian interests and many in the Palestinian Authority oppose him."
Lieberman said that Israel is ready to renew negotiations and that the ball is in the court of the Palestinians.
Ashton said that in light of the events of the Arab Spring and in the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech "it is more urgent than ever to engage in meaningful negotiations and move the peace process forward."
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She said that a "clear reference framework" is needed to allow Israel and the Palestinians to return to peace talks.
Ashton will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.In the battle against weeds, tillage is one of the strongest weapons at the disposal of organic or ecologically based farmers. But, depending on when it is used, tillage can also be a strong driver of nitrogen losses that contribute to groundwater pollution, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
"We know that organic farming relies a good deal on tillage to manage weeds and to incorporate manure and cover crops into soils, and our research shows that this practice can pose environmental tradeoffs," said Denise Finney, postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Jason Kaye, associate professor of soil biogeochemistry. "Although it helps to reduce the use of chemicals, tillage -- especially fall tillage -- is an important driver of nitrogen dynamics and has potential environmental implications."
In a study that spanned five years, Finney and her colleagues conducted intensive nitrogen monitoring in four different cropping systems designed to allow comparisons of soil nitrogen levels over time and under different organic management practices. Their results appear in an online preprint and will be published in the December 2015 issue of Ecological Applications, and may help growers make decisions that will reduce their nitrogen losses.
"Nitrogen is complicated," said Finney. "It's affected by variables we can't control, like temperature and moisture, and by management decisions that we make. Though we know a good deal about the impacts of these different variables on nitrogen availability and potential losses singularly, we wanted to understand how they interact in the field, particularly looking at organically managed systems."
The researchers carried out their field-based experiment by implementing four cropping systems designed to replicate typical Pennsylvania organic feed and forage production systems. They differed from each other in terms of the cash crops and cover crops -- unharvested crops planted to provide benefits such as improved soil quality and weed control -- that were grown, the sequence in which they were grown, the timing and intensity of tillage operations and manure inputs.
The researchers planted the first system with a sequence of cover crops during the first growing season and this system was conventionally tilled between each planting. For the next two years, they kept this system in a minimally tilled alfalfa cash crop.
The second cropping system received a manure application and then a summer planting of sudangrass -- a cover crop -- that was tilled and followed by a fall fallow period. Like the first system, this one also was in minimally tilled alfalfa for the next two years.
In the third cropping system, a cereal rye/hairy vetch cover crop sown the previous fall grew through the summer before being tilled. This system used a late summer tilled fallow to control the perennial weed, Canada thistle. In the fall, the researchers sowed rye, which over wintered and the researchers harvested it the following summer. This system then received a manure application before being planted in no-till corn.
The fourth cropping system used a sequence of minimally tilled cover crops -- including buckwheat, rye and hairy vetch -- before the researchers planted corn that was managed with conventional tillage. This system also received manure before corn production.
The variations between the four cropping systems allowed the researchers to observe how different management practices interact with climate variables to influence two key pieces of the nitrogen cycle: the amount of plant-available, or inorganic, nitrogen present in the soil throughout the growing season, and the amount of nitrate present in soil water below the plant-root zone. Inorganic nitrogen is the form of nitrogen that plants can absorb through their roots, and includes both ammonium and nitrate. While ammonium does not move readily through soils, nitrate does. Under certain conditions, nitrate may leach below the root zone and into the water table, where it acts as a pollutant.
The researchers collected soil samples from the test fields every two weeks from March to November during each year of the study and analyzed them for inorganic nitrogen levels. They also used water-collecting devices during the first year of the study to sample water from below the root zone, measuring its nitrate content to gauge potential nitrate losses from the cropping systems.
To analyze the vast amount of data collected over the course of the study -- including 2,300 soil samples, as well as daily air temperature, precipitation, and soil temperature measurements -- the researchers turned to a statistical method not typically used in agricultural research -- machine learning -- to determine how these numerous and complex variables interacted to affect soil nitrogen.
Their results indicate that tillage was the most important driver of potential nitrogen loss across the four cropping systems, especially in late summer and early fall. When fall tillage was followed by a period of fallow, as is often the case in Pennsylvania, these late-season bursts of nitrogen were not captured by plant uptake and were vulnerable to leaching, said Finney, a point that has important implications for growers.
"We need to make sure we're making decisions about the timing of tillage operations with consideration to not only our weed management goals but also our nitrogen management goals. We know tillage is going to release nitrogen, so let's make sure we're following it with some means of recapturing that nitrogen," she said, adding that spring tillage can be beneficial to release nitrogen required to grow cash crops. Planting winter cover crops is a good strategy to capture nitrogen that may be released with fall tillage.
While nutrient-management responsibilities ultimately rest with farmers, Finney feels there's also room for policy to play a role.
"I think it's interesting that, to my knowledge, our federal organic policies don't discuss tillage, but what we are seeing clearly here is that tillage has potential environmental implications," she said.Square Enix to co-host Deus Ex-style human augmentation conference The one-day event will also help promote Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided pushes the theme of human augmentation and the rights of those who choose mechanical upgrades. In a case of life imitating art, publisher Square Enis is partnering with CNN's new brand studio Courageous to host the first ever Human By Design conference in New York City on August 3.
The one-day conference will brings a variety of experts to three panel discussions related to the intersection of technology and humanity. The panels include:
Is Augmentation a human right? - This panel will address how augmentation can be accessible to everyone on the planet.
Selective vs. Therapeutic - Panelists will discuss who should have the final say on augmentation procedures, doctor or individuals.
The Future of the Far, Far Next - Discussion will center on what medical advances will enable 10 years from now
The conference will end with the presentation of a Code of Ethics on Human Augmentation, drafted by the Human by Design Board comprised of conference speakers. "The Code is meant to engage a deeper conversation around the issues of human augmentation, while reflecting the specific views of the authors, in an effort to help shape the future of the industry," according to the conference web site.
“Human by Design goes beyond bringing to life the key themes of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," said Jon Grant, senior product marketing manager at Square Enix. "This conference is a special opportunity for a video game to take pause from the limitless world we play in, and to drive the conversation around what is really happening in the space of human augmentation. Our hope is that the gaming world tunes into the conference and is inspired to get involved as well.”
The conference will also be streamed live on the Deus Ex Twitch channel, as well as CNN's proprietary Launchpad social channel.Poor Folk Bows Bow building for poor people and apartment dwellers Brought to you by: SAM HARPER
I have two goals with this build along. First, I want to show how to make a cheap bow with the bare necessities. Second, I want to make the build along idiot proof. Wish me luck!
When I say, "bare necessities," I suppose you may be thinking in terms of stone tools or something, but let's not get too crazy. These are the tools I first got when I started making bows. It's a little more tiresome than using power tools, but you can still make a bow.
Instead of giving a grocery list of tools and supplies you need right up front, I'm just going to introduce stuff as we go. The first thing I'm going to introduce is wood.
Choosing your wood
The reason I used red oak in my first bows is because (1) it's pretty cheap, (2) you can find it just about anywhere, and (3) it makes a decent bow. I went to Home Depot and found some red oak that was the perfect size. The little sticky lable on it says it's a 1x2x6. In reality, it's 3/4 inch thick, 1.5 inches wide, and 6 feet long.
You may find yourself sorting through 50 boards to find the perfect one, but it's all worth it. There's a few things you need to look for. First, you need to make sure you have a piece with thin early growth and thick late growth. The early growth is pourous and quite weak. If you have too much of that, the bow will be more likely the break. The late growth is more dense.
Looky here at the ends of these two pieces of red oak:
The one on the left is good. The one on the right is bad. Another way you can tell is that the one on the left will be heavier than the one on the right because it's more dense. You want nice thick late growth rings, not a bunch of thin ones.
The next thing you should look for is a stick of wood with really straight grain. You have to look at the side of the board |
later, something more improbable: his friend.
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Metal detector. Door. Enclosure. Door. Walkway. Door. Guard. Hand scanner. And then the final door, opening into a communal visiting room filled with plastic chairs and the reek of microwaved popcorn. He carries a printout with his son’s name and ID number: NUNEZ, ESTEBAN ARMANDO AE1200.
The son will emerge from a side door in his prison scrubs and leather boots, at 25 already taller and broader than his father. Always, they greet with an embrace. They will play intense games of Scrabble, and discuss the family and the latest tech gadgets waiting in the world outside.
In a year and a half, the father will bring his son home.
“2:16 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008
“We’re about to die! One of my friends might die right now! You need to send an ambulance as quick as possible.”
This is Evan Henderson, yelling into a cellphone. In the background of the 911 recording, someone can be heard screaming, “Please!”
“Please hurry,” Henderson says. “I’m stabbed in the back right now. My friend is stabbed in the chest right now. Please hurry.”
The 20-year-old San Diego State University student struggles to give the dispatcher the location: 55th Street near Fraternity Row, between the Aztec Recreation Center and Peterson Gym.
Three of his buddies are bleeding. Keith Robertson, 22, has been stabbed in the left shoulder. Brandon Scheerer, 24, has a fractured eye socket and a torn eyelid.
Luis Santos, 22, has collapsed in the bushes outside the rec center. He cannot speak. His friends huddle around him and press their hands against a knife wound in his chest.
A call for help
Close Expand document
“The person that stabbed you, where is he at?” the dispatcher asks.
“I don’t know where he’s at,” Henderson says. In the background, someone says, “He’s f— dying!”
“Do you know the people that stabbed you?”
“No, I have no f— idea who they were. They’re random. Random people.”
Scheerer tries desperately to flag down a car. One drives past, then another. In the background, he can be heard yelling, “Stop! Stop!”
“Was anything taken from you, Evan?” the dispatcher asks.
“My boy’s dying, my boy’s dying!”
“Was anything taken from you?”
“Nothing,” Henderson says. “I’ve got blood all over me. I’m really worried about blood loss. And my homey’s about to die.”
In the background, one of Santos’ friends can be heard begging him to live.
“Stay awake, Luis! Stay awake!”
The maroon Chevrolet Cobalt raced north through the dark on Interstate 5, out of San Diego County and through Orange and Los Angeles counties. It climbed the Tejon Pass high into the Tehachapis, descended into the San Joaquin Valley and kept going.
The young men inside took turns driving. They pounded power drinks or slept off their hangovers, slumped against one another in the crowded compact. Lil Wayne blared from the stereo.
Esteban Nuñez, right, applauds before his father, Fabian Nuñez, is sworn in as Assembly speaker in February 2004. (Rich Pedrocelli / Associated Press )
There was Esteban Nuñez, 19, the product of Sacramento suburbs and private schools. Three years earlier, in a public television show that profiled his father’s rise, the Nuñezes had been portrayed as the epitome of Latin warmth: Spanish-language karaoke, dancing, big family meals. Esteban had looked as sweetly awkward as any teenager in the shadow of an important dad.
Lately, he had been affecting a ghetto-gangster mien. On his muscular right shoulder, he wore a tattoo of a hazardous-material sign — the emblem of the Hazard Crew, a posse of buddies whose violent glories, real or imagined, he extolled in rap lyrics.
He liked to post online photos of himself with alcohol and knives. In one image, he cheerfully aimed a knife at a cat; in another, he seemed about to impale a frog.
Now, in his pocket, he carried the knife he had used in the fight.
Crammed into the car with him for the 500-mile drive to Sacramento were friends he had assembled for a weekend trip to San Diego. There was 19-year-old Rafael Garcia, small and meek-looking, a judge’s son from Sacramento, another private-school kid who rapped and wore a Hazard Crew tattoo. “Little G,” people called him.
Ryan Jett had two felonies on his record when he accompanied Esteban Nuñez and other friends to San Diego in October 2008. (Ryan Jett)
There was Leshanor Thomas, 19, a former high school basketball standout and a classmate of Nuñez at Cal State Los Angeles. He drove much of the way — the car was his — steering with his one good hand. The other was swollen from the fight.
There was Ryan Jett, 24, who had been taking business classes at Sacramento State. He had a buzz cut, sharp-boned features and two felonies on his record. Seven months earlier, police had found him with a stolen sawed-off shotgun; four months after that, with bullets and brass knuckles.
He was worried about a third strike. Before getting into the car, he had stuffed his bloody clothes into a bag and washed his knife.
They rolled along the western edge of the Central Valley and headed north through the last of the night and into the morning.
When the phone rang that morning at their home in Concord, a San Francisco suburb, Fred and Kathy Santos were just awakening to their weekend. They had met as undergraduates at Oregon State University and been married for 28 years. He was a tech troubleshooter at an online car-auction company. She oversaw maintenance at a UC Berkeley math building.
They were empty nesters. Their 23-year-old daughter, Brigida, bookish and reserved, had just graduated from college and was working in Los Angeles. Luis was attending a junior college in San Diego.
Luis looked like his sister’s twin but was her opposite in most ways. He was flamboyantly social, a kid who “always came off a plane knowing the life story of the person he sat next to,” his mother would say.
Just a year apart and with similar features, Brigida and Luis Santos were opposites in most other ways. (Santos family)
He was a collector of friends, who would rather be anywhere than alone, except maybe in a classroom. He liked beer pong, Bob Marley and the HBO series “Entourage.” He did a Mr. Bean impression and had memorized the punchlines in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”
He was the kind of student that teachers called smart but unfocused. After high school he applied to cooking school, dropped the idea, tried a two-year college in Woodland Hills, dropped out and finally decided to follow a childhood buddy to San Diego, where the party atmosphere suited him.
He was taking business classes at Mesa College and living on supermarket-deli sandwiches he bought with gift cards from his mother. He wore high-top sneakers everywhere and refused to show his legs, which were as skinny as the rest of him, though he lifted weights and guzzled whey-protein shakes.
He had olive skin, close-cropped hair and a struggling goatee. Girls told him they loved the long lashes curling over his hazel eyes. He didn’t have a girlfriend. “He’s like, ‘Girlfriends are expensive,’ ” his sister recalled. “I think he knew girls wouldn’t take him seriously if he didn’t have his life together. He didn’t seem in any hurry.”
His parents expected him home in Concord for Thanksgiving in a few weeks. He still had an upstairs bedroom covered with race-car pennants and football posters.
The phone rang. It was Luis’ childhood friend Navid Sabahi. He sounded scared. He’d heard there was a fight. Someone had been stabbed. He thought it might be Luis.
Fred Santos, is a reserved, cerebral man who prides himself on his unflappability, and now he went to work searching the Internet for the phone numbers of San Diego hospitals. He called the ERs. He called the San Diego police. They had arranged for Concord officers to drive to the Santos home and deliver the news in person.
Before they could, Fred reached a San Diego sergeant, who told him his son had been killed.
Are you sure it was Luis?
Yes.
How?
His wallet was on him.
Maybe he dropped his wallet.
It is a positive ID. His friends were with him, the sergeant said.
He added, “They were jumped.”
Luis Santos had been hanging out with Scheerer on the steps in front of Cox Arena, a basketball and concert venue near Fraternity Row at San Diego State.
Santos and Scheerer had been partying in the area; both had been drinking hard. By Scheerer’s account, the trouble began when a group of four young men appeared on 55th Street in front of the arena and began taunting them.
Top: Luis Santos and Brandon Scheerer had been hanging out on the steps of what was then the Cox Arena, along 55th Street near San Diego State’s Fraternity Row. The complex is now called the Viejas Arena. (Los Angeles Times) Above: Surveillance video captures Luis Santos and Brandon Scheerer walking on 55th Street at 2:12 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2008, minutes before Evan Henderson called 911. (Los Angeles Times)
They looked like they were from out of town; they did not have the flip-flops-and-board-shorts look of San Diego college kids.
“They made a beeline for us,” Scheerer would recall. “They said, ‘What do you have? We have knives.’ They threw up their hands like they wanted to fight.”
Scheerer said the strangers pursued them, blocking their path. He heard someone say, “Why don’t you fight? This is how Sac-town does it.”
Scheerer, stouter and two years older than Santos, tried to shield his friend from the group as they walked away. He thought of him as a skinny kid brother who wouldn’t be much good in a fight.
After a while, the strangers seemed to grow bored and drifted down the street. On his cellphone, Santos tried to get through to his buddy Keith Robertson, who was with two other friends at the trolley station on campus.
Santos dialed Robertson at 2:10 a.m., 2:11 a.m. and 2:12 a.m., and got through on the third try. Santos sounded scared. We’re about to be attacked. Come quick!
The friends came running and met Santos running the opposite way. One of the last things he said was: “They’ve got knives.”
There were security cameras outside the arena, the gym and a police station on 55th Street, but the brawl unfolded in the cameras’ blind spots. The blurry video did not reveal when the knives came out or who stabbed whom.
What is certain is that one of the knives pierced the cartilage between Santos’ fifth and sixth ribs, sliced his left lung and cut the left ventricle of his heart. Within seconds, one group was heading toward a waiting car, while the other was in the street, cut and bleeding.
A
t 5:29 p.m. that day, a surveillance camera captured Nuñez, Jett and Garcia at a 7-Eleven near Nuñez’s Sacramento apartment. Jett left the store with an empty Big Gulp cup. He carried it back to the car with $1.30 worth of gasoline from the Union 76 station next door.
News of the stabbing had been online since that morning, and they were determined to sever their ties to the crime. They drove a little ways and parked near Interstate 5 along the Sacramento River. They got out and climbed down to the water. It is a broad river, the banks thick with foliage, its shores sometimes populated by transients.
Jett carried the clothes he and Nuñez had worn in the fight. He dumped them in a pile, doused them with gas and set them ablaze. He said he watched Nuñez throw the knives in the river.
The clothes burned; the knives sank; the friends would keep quiet. What could link them to a stabbing 500 miles away?
Detectives made the connection within hours.
A young woman had approached them at the crime scene, hoping to help. Her cellphone held text messages from a friend named John Murray. He’d had to leave town fast, he wrote to her, because his buddies had been in a stabbing.
Reluctantly, Murray, 19, told detectives what he knew. He admitted that he’d partied with the Nuñez group that night, then drank himself to sleep, missed the fight and joined the group for the hasty car ride north. He had been at the river during the destruction of the evidence, and said he’d overheard Nuñez and Jett agree not to speak of this again. It would be a secret among friends.
Another tip came from Brianna Perez, 19, a cousin of Nuñez’s friend Rafael Garcia. The Nuñez group had stopped by her apartment near Fraternity Row before the stabbing. They had backpacks full of beer and a large bottle of Captain Morgan rum.
They were angry that they had been rebuffed when they tried to get into a frat party earlier, she said. They were cursing the frat boys. Some of them used knives to open their beer cans. She remembered some of them talking about burning down the frat house, about finding a fight.
“They were going to show them how they did it in Sac-town,” she would say. When they left her apartment, she worried that they were looking for “drama.”
"They were going to look for a fight"
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On Oct. 8, 2008, four days after the killing, a team of plainclothes San Diego detectives strode up a broad stone walkway toward a house on American River Drive in one of Sacramento’s nicest neighborhoods.
The man who answered the door was one of the capital’s most recognizable faces. Fabian Nuñez was at the tag end of a storied legislative career. That year, he’d surrendered the role of Assembly speaker, a job he had secured as a 37-year-old freshman legislator and held for four years. With the confidence of a lifelong scrapper, he had become the most powerful speaker in California’s term-limits era.
He had married his college sweetheart, divorced her, then remarried her. Along the way, they had a daughter and two sons. Many expected him to run for state treasurer or mayor of Los Angeles.
Nine months earlier, as national co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, he had introduced Clinton to a crowd of thousands at Cox Arena, yards from where Santos was killed.
Today, homicide detectives greeted him with a warrant. They wanted to search the house and take his son’s DNA.
The elder Nuñez said he had already spoken to a lawyer. “I was aware something had taken place down in San Diego, but I didn’t know you guys were coming here,” he said, according to a police report.
He led detectives to his son, who was at Sacramento City College, and waited outside the police station while evidence technicians did their work.
The younger Nuñez peeled off his shirt to be photographed. They looked for cuts or bruises from the fight, and found none. Tattooed across his muscular back, in spiky Spanish script, were words that translated as “Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees.” It was a phrase from Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary his father liked to tell him stories about.
A detective tried to get him to talk.
“I can give you the number of my lawyer,” he said.
Detectives had better luck with Leshanor Thomas, Nuñez’s former college roommate. He sat in a 10-by-10-foot interrogation room and acknowledged that he had participated in the deadly brawl, and that he and his friends had fled the scene.
“You don’t know what other people have told us,” a San Diego detective told him, “so it’s kind of like your best interest to tell the truth.”
The detectives thought he was holding back. One said, “This is huge.”
“I know that,” Thomas said.
“Huge.”
“I know it’s huge,” Thomas said. “I thought they was my friends but then I, like, just, somebody has to take the fall for it, and I’m not gonna be it.”
“This is murder,” the detective said. “Some kid lost his life.”
“Yeah. I know that,” Thomas said. “And some parents don’t have a son.”
In October 2007, then-L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger field questions during a news conference. Villaraigosa would write a letter to San Diego County Superior Court on behalf of Nuñez’s son. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The detectives asked if he was scared.
“To be honest, my safety, just me knowing what happened and me being pulled in is putting my safety at risk,” he said.
He said that Jett had initiated the fight, rushing across 55th Street to confront the other group, and Nuñez followed, then Garcia, then himself. He’d thought it was just a fistfight and had seen none of his friends with weapons, he said, though he wouldn’t be surprised if Nuñez had carried a knife that night.
“I do remember from when I stayed with Esteban, he always had some type of new knife,” he said. “Some type of new little handy-dandy knife, whatever.”
A detective asked whether any of his friends had bragged about the stabbing.
“It would have to be Esteban,” he replied. “Esteban said, ‘Yeah, I got one of them.’ ”
He recalled something else Nuñez had said.
“Hopefully, my dad could take care of this.”
Did Thomas know who the dad was? He said he did not.
“Big,” the first detective said.
“How big?” Thomas asked.
“Big.”
The other detective clarified: “Capitol big.”
Thomas said, “Dang.”
For Fred Santos, the days after his son’s death were a blur. He wouldn’t remember where his meals came from or how he got from one place to another. He couldn’t name the day of the week.
“That’s not something you prepare yourself for — your kid being murdered out of the blue,” he would say. “My body and brain couldn’t deal with it.” To cope, he gave himself projects: Find a funeral home. Buy a cemetery plot. Choose a casket. Pick passages of Scripture.
Brandon Scheerer, left, Keith Robertson, Jason Fiori and Evan Henderson attend a vigil for Luis Santos shortly after the attack. (Santos family)
Hundreds of people gathered for the service. Many wore high-top sneakers, because they all remembered Luis wearing his. Fred sang an Eric Clapton song, “Tears in Heaven,” about losing a child, and put his own high-tops in his son’s casket.
Luis’ sister, Brigida, remembered how he would appear in her bedroom as a little boy, afraid of the dark, begging to sleep on her floor. And the way he voiced action-movie explosions when he drove, pretending to blow up the traffic. And the time he tried to jump across the duck pond near their house, showing off for friends, and came up smeared with algae.
His parents learned something surprising about their son, something he had told his sister and friends but had never told them: He didn’t expect to live into his 30s.
It was possible that this anxiety stemmed from a protracted illness that forced him to miss fourth grade. He had an enlarged colon and was on a feeding tube for six months. Knowing that the smell of food tormented him, his parents ate their meals in the car.
His mother remembered it as a magical period of nearly unbroken time with her son. She read him library books about volcanoes and stars, and they took field trips. And then he got better and refused forever after to tell his parents when he had a stomachache. He seemed to dread nothing more than a return to the hospital. Maybe it helped explain his freewheeling approach to life.
He would call his parents all the time, just to chat. His mother looked at the phone bill and noticed that their last conversation had been 18 minutes long. She wondered how many families had that kind of luck.
Around the time of the funeral, San Diego police called to say they knew who had killed Luis. They were building a case. All of October passed, and all of November.
After her son left for college, Kathy Santos left Luis’ bedroom as he had kept it in high school, adorned with race-car pennants and football posters. (Santos family)
Fred and Kathy returned to work. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me,” he told co-workers. “I’m fragile, but I’m OK. If you see me crying, that’s OK.” Grief struck most vividly as he drove home from work. That had been when he and Luis would talk on the phone, about the Giants and the Raiders and the Golden State Warriors.
Fred couldn’t follow sports any more. He stopped watching his favorite TV dramas like “CSI” and other crime procedurals. So many involved parents burying children.
His wife gathered her co-workers at UC Berkeley and told them to let her grieve privately. “Please don’t show me any sympathy,” she said. “Please don’t ask me any questions.” She distanced herself from friends in the break room. It hurt when they talked about their families.
She kept returning to her son’s upstairs bedroom. She had kept it unchanged while he was away at college, and she did not intend to alter it now. She picked up his cologne, Acqua Di Gio, a birthday present from her, with which he had splashed himself liberally. She sprayed it into the empty room.
In the conference room of the district attorney’s office in downtown San Diego, the prosecutor listened as a team of detectives walked through the case, witness by witness.
Jill DiCarlo was a career prosecutor, a cop’s wife with a relentless work ethic. She would be able to navigate what everyone knew would be a media-saturated case. Now, she had to decide whether there was enough evidence to charge the suspects. After the presentation, she thanked the detectives and took the binders of evidence back to her office.
Studying the witness statements, she found one from a young man — a stranger to Santos — who had been hanging out on the steps of Cox Arena just before the attack. The witness said an inebriated Santos had claimed he was in a gang and carried a Glock 40 for protection, but it had just seemed like “drunk talk.”
Another young man on the steps said Santos spoke of having been beaten up in Tijuana, and boasted that since then he had carried a “thang.” He’d gestured toward his waistband.
Esteban Nuñez and Rafael Garcia, foreground, attend a court hearing in San Diego in March 2009 on charges stemming from the death of Luis Santos. (Denis Poroy / Associated Press)
No weapon had been found on Santos, and none of his friends recalled ever seeing him with a gun. There was no suggestion he’d been looking for a fight that night.
But Nuñez seemed to relish confrontation, the prosecutor thought.
On his seized laptop, in a trove of his rap lyrics, he touted the Hazard Crew, or THC, as family. He espoused the importance of loyalty, and promised violent death to those who disrespected his crew:
“we all family ya c if u f— wid my boys ill go on a killing spree.”
He wrote paeans to stealing and evading the law, painting himself as an outlaw who humiliated enemies, menaced them with a “shotty” — a shotgun — and killed them gruesomely with knives.
“never played or betrayed, always quick to grab the blade.”
Considering the circumstances of Santos’ death, some of the lyrics struck the prosecutor as eerily prescient.
“ill deliver that knife throu ur liver let u bleed to death while ya shiver.... My crew will swarm u like some locus.... I alredy explained how I stress ill make a mess when opening ur chest.”
DiCarlo would learn that the Sacramento Police Department did not regard THC as a gang worthy of the name. “A wannabe gang,” she thought. But it seemed to loom large in Nuñez’s identity.
“thc is a community of unity... I cnt b touched call it immunity... It ain’t nothing to me but a sport... I aint scared of court... but my lawyer is my last resort... dnt get caught no police report.”
To her mind, the lyrics helped explain what had happened the night of the stabbing. Banned from the frat party, Nuñez’s crew had been disrespected and humiliated, and they wanted payback.
Studying Nuñez’s text messages, she got a glimpse of his mind as police were closing in. Four days after the stabbing, he had sent one to Garcia: “Gangster rap made us do it lol.”
Around the same time, Nuñez sent repeated messages to Leshanor Thomas, telling him not to talk: “just dnt say ne thing u have the right to an attorney to be present so that’s all u gotta tel cops.”
She studied the transcript of Thomas’ interrogation, and was struck by something he had recalled Nuñez saying: “Hopefully, my dad could take care of this.”
At least once before, facing trouble from the law, Nuñez had sought refuge under his father’s wing.
Late one night in March 2008, seven months before the stabbing, a patrolman at Cal State Los Angeles stopped Nuñez in his mother’s white BMW near campus. There had been reports of computers stolen from the dorms, and the officer had seen three men climb into the car carrying large bags. Looking into the back seat, he saw a bag containing what looked like electronic equipment.
“What’s inside the bag?” he asked Nuñez.
"Do you know who my dad is?"
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According to the police report, Nuñez said it was a stereo that a friend had given him to throw away. The officer asked more questions. Nuñez grew argumentative and invoked his family connections: “Do you know who my dad is? He is Fabian Nuñez. He’s an assemblyman in Sacramento. I am going to call my dad.”
Nuñez called his father and handed the cellphone to the officer.
The report does not record what the Assembly speaker said. Nuñez says he told the officer, “If my son did something wrong, he should pay for it.”
The case was classified as “suspended due to lack of solvability factors.”
Three months later, as they cleaned out Nuñez’s vacated dorm room during the summer break, a Cal State L.A. crew found an empty box for a Mossberg shotgun, according to a police report.
It was against the law to bring a shotgun to school, but police could not prove that he had.
Now, studying everything detectives had learned about the San Diego State stabbing, DiCarlo tried to understand the dynamics at play among the attackers. Nuñez seemed to be the glue, the one who brought them all together.
In the chaos of the fight, no one could positively identify who had stabbed whom, and the surveillance footage did not help. But DiCarlo was confident the law was on her side. She did not need to prove who did the stabbing. All four men in Nuñez’s group had acted together in encouraging the attack, as she saw it, and all would be considered principals under the aider-and-abettor law.
“In a group fight, it’s almost impossible to ascertain who did it,” she says. “That’s why the law treats them exactly the same.”
The charge would be murder.
On Dec. 2, 2008, police arrested Nuñez and Jett in Sacramento and put them in the back seat of a squad car hoping to secretly record an incriminating exchange. The tactic failed.
“Pretty sure this is wired,” Jett said.
The two men talked about the price of gas, the pretty girls at 24 Hour Fitness, a teriyaki restaurant and how much they dreaded the 500-mile drive to San Diego, where they would be arraigned.
“Tell me why I was watching ‘Law & Order’ before I left?” Nuñez said.
“I don’t watch shows like that,” Jett replied.
“I do, so I can beat the system,” Nuñez said, and laughed.
The weight of the elder Nuñez’s influence was felt almost immediately, as letters inundated San Diego County Superior Court pleading for a reduction in his son’s $2-million bail.
Among the authors was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a longtime friend of Nuñez and past beneficiary of his political influence. In the Legislature, Nuñez had fought to give the mayor something he prized: greater control of city schools.
Now, the mayor wrote that he had known the son for more than 10 years.
“In my heart, I know Esteban Nuñez as a young man of good and upright character,” the mayor wrote on official letterhead, as though speaking for the nation’s second-largest city itself.
"A young man of good and upright character"
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State Assemblyman Kevin de León, who had known the Nuñez family for decades, used his legislative stationery to describe the accused as “considerate, gentle and well-mannered.”
Another letter came, on official stationery, from Assembly Republican Leader Michael Villines, describing the Nuñezes as a “loving and close” family.
Another came, on union stationery, from Maria Elena Durazo, head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, describing the younger Nuñez as “warm and gracious.”
A judge cut Nuñez’s bail to $1 million, and after eight days in lockup he was home with his parents. Garcia, the son of a judge, also posted bail. Like Nuñez, he was now represented by a top-notch private defense attorney. Thomas and Jett, who couldn’t raise bail, got public defenders and stayed behind bars.
As the months passed, prosecutors tightened their focus on winning convictions against the two defendants they believed had wielded knives: Nuñez and Jett. Thomas and Garcia struck deals that would ultimately get them probation; in exchange, they would have to take the stand against their friends.
Garcia’s story was damning: He said that Nuñez had taunted the unarmed Santos group, and had rushed into the fight with his knife drawn.
He said that after the stabbing, Nuñez had bragged, “I got one of ’em,” and that Nuñez, having stuffed his clothes into a bag, had said: “We’re just gonna go to the river right quick and burn it.”
“We don’t have to worry,” he recalled Nuñez saying. “How would they find us? There’s no way they could connect it to us.”
F
red and Kathy Santos were vaguely familiar with the Nuñez name; the assemblyman had been in the news for years. But they knew little else about him.
Top: Esteban Nuñez, left, Ryan Jett, Rafael Garcia and Leshanor Thomas are arraigned in San Diego County Superior Court in December 2008 on charges of killing Luis Santos. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Above: Brigida, Kathy, Luis and Fred Santos pose for an undated family photo. ( Santos family)
Back in Macau, where Fred spent his first 18 years, it was easy to spot the Tai-Pans. They were the men in the back seats of the long, chauffeured cars that drove slowly over the island’s narrow cobblestone streets, heading to favorite restaurants.
They seemed mostly benign, these men. But few doubted what would happen if they were ever confronted with the law. The law, not the Big Men, would give.
Fred had learned the cadences of American English by watching “The Bob Newhart Show” on an aunt’s black-and-white TV. His father was a bank clerk. His family spent its savings — and relied on gifts from friends — to send him to the United States for college. He was the first in his family to attend.
He wondered how the case against his son’s attackers might unfold in Macau. He thought he knew. Someone connected to his extended family — probably a friend — would try to find and kill the culprits. Maybe he would be told the details; maybe not.
In America, you forswore vengeance and put your trust in the justice system.
The Nuñez family had money and vast connections. But on his family’s side was the work of experienced detectives, a tough-minded prosecutor and the rule of law. Surely no amount of money or influence could trump all of that.
Contact | Follow @LATChrisGoffard on Twitter
Design and production by Lily Mihalik.
About the series
This series is based on police reports, transcripts of sworn testimony and other court documents, and interviews with Luis Santos’ parents and sister; Esteban Nuñez and his father, Fabian; Santos’ companions on the night of the deadly fight at San Diego State University; prosecutors, detectives and defense lawyers; and Ryan Jett, who is serving a 16-year prison term in connection with Santos’ death.
The descriptions of Mule Creek State Prison are based on the reporter’s visit to the prison and his interviews with Fabian Nuñez. The description of the defendants’ ride on Interstate 5 after the fight is based on the interview with Jett and accounts given by two men who were in the car: John Murray in court testimony and Leshanor Thomas under police questioning.
Excerpts from the 911 call, Thomas’ interview with detectives and Jett’s conversation with Esteban Nuñez in a police car after the pair had been arrested are drawn from transcripts in the criminal case file in San Diego County Superior Court.Andry Rajoelina has tapped into frustration with the government
A key opposition leader in Madagascar has called for more protests against the president, a day after security forces killed 28 of his supporters.
Andry Rajoelina, who was dismissed last week from his post as mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, spoke as he visited injured supporters in hospital.
He is locked in a power struggle with President Marc Ravalomanana, who he says should step down.
There have been repeated protests against the firing of the ex-mayor.
Demonstrators had been marching towards President Ravalomanana's compound on Saturday when police opened fire, killing 28 and injuring more than 200.
We cannot stop - the struggle continues
Andry Rajoelina
Former Antananarivo mayor
In pictures: Madagascar violence Madagascar's'militant mayor'
Earlier, during a rally attended by 20,000 people, the former mayor's supporters had declared him head of a "transition higher authority".
Mr Rajoelina, a 34-year-old former DJ, has successfully tapped into widespread frustration with the government.
"I tell the people that their lives, their blood was lost," he said on Sunday. "(But) we cannot stop. The struggle continues,"
"The people need change," he said. "What is Ravalomanana's answer? Shots."
There was an uneasy calm on the streets of the capital Sunday as heavily armed security forces patrolled, correspondents said.
Prime Minister Charles Rabemananjara announced that a night-time curfew already in force in the capital would be extended for a week, AFP news agency reported.
The sacked mayor accuses President Marc Ravalomanana of misspending public money and being a dictator.
President Ravalomanana, 59 and also a former mayor of Antananarivo, has blamed the opposition leader for the violence and called for a return to calm.
Dozens of people were killed in unrest in January after anti-government protests turned into rioting and looting.
Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, has become a destination for tourists as well as foreign companies, searching for oil, gold, cobalt, nickel and uranium.We're already pretty much in love with OLED displays, but besides stunning picture quality and low power consumption, when they were first introduced it was promised that one day OLED panels could be actually printed. And that day has finally come.
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Konica Minolta has created the first printhead that can be used for electronics manufacturing applications thanks to its incredibly small inkjets that can create drops a mere picoliter in size.
It's just an inch and a half wide, but the company has managed to cram 128 nozzles across its width. The printhead will also be coupled to a system that can position and control the nozzles with pinpoint accuracy, which is pretty vital when you're laying down pixels.
The new technology isn't some far-off concept stuck in Konica's research labs either. Samples will be shipped to manufacturers as early as the spring, meaning that in a few years you could easily print off a new display for your phone in-between copies of that quarterly report. [Konica Minolta via OLED-Display via SlashGear]Michael Levin runs BusinessGhost.com, a provider of ghostwritten business books.
When North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager pulled over Walter Scott last week for a broken third taillight, the confrontation ended, after a brief foot chase, with Slager shooting and killing Scott. That could have been Doug Glanville. He knows exactly how terrifying an unwanted police encounter could be—and how unnecessary such “microaggressions” truly are.
After all, he’d once shoveled his driveway.
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Last winter, Glanville was shoveling snow at his house in Hartford, Connecticut, when a white cop pulled up across the street.
The officer apparently didn’t recognize Glanville—a 44-year-old African-American engineering graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, former star centerfielder for the Cubs and Phillies, New York Times contributor and ESPN commentator.
“Trying to make a few extra bucks shoveling people’s driveways around here?” Glanville recalls the cop asking, by way of greeting. The officer may have thought that the man shoveling the snow was in violation of laws on the books in the Hartford area that prohibit individuals from going door-to-door offering services or products. But in Glanville’s case, there was an |
comprise the 'Internet of things', which will need new technology to survive without batteries, using energy scavenged from ambient heat and vibration. Connectivity is equally key: billions of free-roaming devices trying to communicate with one another and the cloud will need huge amounts of bandwidth, which they can get if researchers can tap the once-unreachable terahertz band lying deep in the infrared spectrum. And security is crucial — the report calls for research into new ways to build in safeguards against cyberattack and data theft.
These priorities and others will give researchers plenty to work on in coming years. At least some industry insiders, including Shekhar Borkar, head of Intel's advanced microprocessor research, are optimists. Yes, he says, Moore's law is coming to an end in a literal sense, because the exponential growth in transistor count cannot continue. But from the consumer perspective, “Moore's law simply states that user value doubles every two years”. And in that form, the law will continue as long as the industry can keep stuffing its devices with new functionality.
The ideas are out there, says Borkar. “Our job is to engineer them.”The Prophet Joseph Smith on the Principle of Revelation:
"Salvation cannot come without revelation, it is in vain for anyone to minister without it." 8 August 1839
"Where there is a prophet, a priest or a righteous man unto whom God gives His Oracles, there is the Kingdom of God; and where the Oracles of God are not, there the Kingdom of God is not." 22 January 1843
"Jesus in his teaching says upon this rock I will build My church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. What rock? Revelation." 22 January 1843
"A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world-- as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power, than many men who are on the earth. Hence, it needs Revelation to assist us and give us knowledge of the things of God." 10 April 1844
"We must have revelations then, and we can see that the doctrine of revelation as far transcends the doctrine of no revelation as knowledge is above ignorance; for one truth revealed from heaven is worth all the sectarian notions in existence." 10 March 1844Lal Krishna Advani’s isolation mirrors the retreat of Indian politics. But then that is what the autumn of the patriarch is like in the Hindu varnashrama dharma – he spends a lifetime building a house only to find that when the edifice is ready, he is out of it. Not for him the courtyard, he stays put on the threshold.
Day after day, and days stretch to years, he remains there in the hope that someone from inside will call out to him – if not the son, then the daughter-in-law; if not the grand-daughter, then the grandson. When that doesn’t happen, he himself starts crying out in a hoarse voice. On occasion he even steps inside, but finding the house empty, returns to his threshold spot. Every now and then he threatens to renounce the world and go to Haridwar, but doesn’t budge an inch from the threshold.
In the last three years whenever Advani ji has been seen in public, he has had the demeanour of a man consumed with guilt, who wants to speak out but won’t on account of some unknown fear. Before the television cameras he has been plain evasive. Watch all the videos of the last three years and you will know what I mean. He seems to have lost his voice. It is as though he has been locked up by someone in a glass tank, with the steadily rising water drowning out his screams for help. The camera glides past him for he is absent even when he is present.
Advani is like that jaded shirt that has been permanently hung out to dry, weathering the barbs of rain, the shriveling heat of the sun and collecting dirt. One day it falls to the ground patchy with dust and slush. The shirt knows that the one who washes has other shirts too – new ones at that.
I wonder, does Advani cry when he is alone? Does his body heave with sobs? Does he scream, call out for somebody when the walls of the room seem to be closing in on him? Does he pace around in his room every now and then or, hearing the footfalls of fear, does he quietly go back to his chair? Does anyone call out to dada apart from his daughter? Does any chief minister, central minister or ordinary politician pay him a visit?
These days every minister is quick to tweet photographs of his/her stately progress from the bath to the food-bite; he/she even tweets pictures of birthday bashes of politicians from other parties. These ministers have the whole world on their timeline, but not Advani. It’s an open secret. The message is clear – meet Advani at your own peril; to meet Advani now is to become him.
When he wakes up to the loneliness of isolation every morning, what is the image that swims before his eyes – the present or the past? Does he immerse himself in newspapers all day or stare unseeingly at news channels? Does he wait for the telephone to ring?
But who would want to meet Advani – he doesn’t chant Modi’s name and, more importantly, there is nobody chanting his name. More to the point, why does he not chant Modi’s name if that is what it takes to remain relevant? If his stance signals a personal protest or rebellion, then why doesn’t he place it on record?
Prior to the 2014 general elections Advani had created a blog. Even now he can put it to good use. There’s so much happening in the world, he can safely write about that. Like so many others he can take to the lecture circuit. He would have much to say on the subjects of leadership and organisation. If nothing else, his government residence must be studded with flowers, plants and trees – he must have surely forged a bond with them by now to write about them. He can definitely write film reviews. Had he done that, he would have been an Advani other than the Advani he is. The question is – why is he not?
There was a time when Advani had had a hall constructed in his residence for holding press conferences. How confident and assured he must have been about his relevance in the scheme of things then. Does he feel tempted to step into the hall at least once a day, reliving the animated buzz of cameras and questions? I am told some sounds burrow into walls and echo through the ages. Is that hall there still?
Advani is ensconced in his isolation like a man without a past. The new narrative that the BJP seems to be exploring is one in which Advani is conspicuous by his absence not only in its present but also in its past. It’s as though he was never there. He doesn’t look to be in Delhi as much as in the Andaman, where the sea waves relentlessly crash against the walls of the Cellular Jail and there is no land in sight for miles. Is it possible that he is keeping a diary – a diary of Delhi’s Andaman?
Think about it – the Congress may have suffered the loss of power, but it is Advani whose name and existence has suffered a total erasure. Sonia Gandhi continues to have a presence in Indian politics. Witness the fact that as soon as the NDA presidential nominee’s name is decided, the prime minister calls up the president of the party he wants to deliver India from. I wonder if he telephoned Advani ji as well. While India is still not Congress-free, today’s BJP has succeeded in becoming Advani-free. The party is willing to accommodate politicians from the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, but not its founder, Lal Krishna Advani.
Has anybody come across any tweet from the prime minister about having had a conversation with Advani about the NDA presidential nominee? Will Ram Nath Kovind pay a visit to the Margdarshak Mandal (Council of Elders supposed to show the way to the party) – a council which has neither any elder nor a way?
The BJP’s founder is leading a life of displacement. He is not to be found anywhere in his party’s narrative of culture or nationalism. I have no liking for those who sympathise with Advani but I don’t care for those who make fun of him either. Advani embodies our collective fate. We are all fated to become Advani in our lives one day – displaced from power, institutions and society. What I want to do is study his silence in a context where those claiming to be sanyasis, or renouncers, are becoming relevant in Indian politics, but Advani, who is staying clear of renunciation, is becoming irrelevant. Advani is unfolding like an event right before our eyes; to read it as a mishap or tragedy is to miss the point.
Those who had suggested that the opposition should nominate Advani as their presidential nominee are insulting his disciplined existence. Besides, they seem to be blithely unaware of the fact that the opposition is in the same boat as Advani. By making this suggestion, Advani sympathisers are being as insensitive towards him as his own people.
Advani is guilty on one count: he has flouted the fundamental condition of being alive, which is to speak. If he is not speaking up even though he continues to be in politics, then he is betraying politics even as politics is betraying him. What he should be doing is screaming his lungs out or sobbing so hard that his voice bursts forth from its confinement.
If his silence does not contain a note of rebellion, then he should clarify that too. He can say, I am happy, I don’t fear anybody. My silence does not indicate a fear of anybody.
Advani’s silence is the most dramatic screenplay of our times – it’s a screenplay in search of a climax. Picture the scene: in the thick Delhi fog, an old man with a ramrod straight bearing is walking down Rajpath. In a while the tapping sound of a walking stick can be heard. He is coming closer. As his old speeches on cultural nationalism echo all around, a convoy of tanks speeds past him. The tanks have secured the discourse on nationalism and culture has done the same with the cow. The patriarch’s stance conveys his diffidence. He starts speaking haltingly and then raises the pitch of his voice. Then he starts sobbing. But his voice is drowned out by the tanks’ rumble. So long is the convoy that he lapses into silence again.
The film camera swerves from the tanks to capture the old man in a close-up. But that is the founder of BJP, Advani! What is he doing on Rajpath and that too with Guru Dutt’s shawl draped around his shoulders? Look, he has opened his arms wide and is looking towards Raisina Hill as if making the actor’s classic refrain his own – ‘yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai’ (what does it matter even if the world were to be within my grasp?).
At a distance, the president’s entourage, flanked by red-liveried cavalrymen, is seen to be moving towards parliament.
Gradually, another figure comes into the frame. It’s Deepak Chopra, charioteer of Advani’s rath and an incomparable companion of Advani’s loneliness. Chopra is looking towards Advani. In his hand is a diary containing the names of those who once used to queue up for appointments with Advani. The same names are meeting somebone else these days. From the direction of Raisina Hill a reporter comes running. Deepak ji, why are you with Advani ji and not with the rest of them in parliament, he asks.
The camera is fixed on Deepak’s face. His lips are drawn in a half grimace. The unfathomable dark depths of his eyes reflect the image of a broken chair – the power that is not – as well as some old photo frames showing Advani meeting important leaders. Eyes partly closed, a smile playing on his lips, his hands are clasped in the traditional form of greeting. Every frame has Deepak Chopra in it.
The reporter has got the answer he wanted. He now asks a second question. Will Advani ji speak up now? Is he isolated? Does he cry? Has he been silent all day? Does he get any visitors? Why is the founder of the party enduring his displacement so? Is all of this a Congress conspiracy? Deepak Chopra remains silent.
The director says ‘cut’ but does not call for pack-up. He tells his team to wait and see which way the old man turns from Rajpath or if he remains rooted to the spot for eons. The assistant director asks, sir, are we shooting with sound or without? The director replies, if I had wanted sound, I would have been in parliament where the new president is being duly welcomed to the sound of brand new slogans. I have come here to shoot the deafening silence – to capture the fear etched on Advani ji’s face this very moment. That fear itself is his silence.
Suddenly a page from Advani’s blog enters the camera frame in a close-up shot, with the words ‘A Man of Words and Action’ written on it. Sir, will this be the title of the film, asks the assistant director. No, replies the director. The film will be titled, ‘A Man of No words and No Action’.
Ravish Kumar is an anchor with NDTV India.
Translated from the Hindi original by Chitra Padmanabhan.February 19, 2016 - Come to the 12th Annual Pink & Black Ball! It is one for the History Books!
Join the Gender + Equality Center and the OU community for a night of great music, dancing, and fun! Make the night one for the History Books!
The Pink & Black Ball is an alcohol-free semi-formal benefit to raise funds for the Gender + Equality Center. The money raised through ticket sales is used to fund programs and events to educate students about a variety of campus and community issues including breast health, healthy relationships, LGBTQ Ally programs, salary negotiation, and gender-based violence prevention.
Date: Friday, February 19th, 2016
Time: 8 p.m. midnight
Place: Molly Shi Boren Ballroom, Oklahoma Memorial Union
Cost: $15 in advance (see the link for tickets above,) or $20 at the door. All proceeds go to the Gender + Equality Center's programs. And of course, youll want to buy a raffle ticket or eight ($1 each, or eight for $5). Raffle prizes include a Bob Stoops signed OU football, personal training sessions at Huston Huffman, restaurant gift certificates, and a spa day.
The Ball will feature a live band for the first hour of the night, with a DJ providing club tunes for the remainder of the evening. Refreshments will include a potatotini bar, heavy hors d oeuvres, cheese and crackers, and our ever-popular chocolate fountain.
Remember the evening with a keepsake photo from the photo booth after dancing the night away!
Semi-Formal Attire Encouraged
The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity Institution (www.ou.edu/eoo). For information or accommodations on the basis of disability, please contact the Gender + Equality Center at (405)-325-4929.Senior wide receiver Yedidiah Louis began his collegiate career as a walk-on at Sam Houston State University.
He was redshirted in 2013. The following year, he would be a standout at SHSU as he led the Bearkats with 71 receptions. In 2015, he would begin to gain attention throughout the Southland Conference, as his 994 receiving years held the top spot in the conference. 2016 would prove even more successful as Louis was named to the first team All-Southland Conference team after being named the SLC Offensive Player of the Year.
With his statistics seeming to improve every week, and the accolades continuing to pile up, Louis would turn his attention to making history in 2017. He entered the season with the all-time Southland Conference career receptions record within grabbing distance. Before SHSU’s game Saturday against Nicholls State, Southeastern Louisiana’s Simmie Yarborough held the top spot with 229 catches.
With 27 seconds left to play in the first half, senior quarterback Jeremiah Briscoe surveyed the field and connected with Louis for his third catch of the game and number 230 of his impressive collegiate career. The 10-yard completion not only gave the Bearkats a first down that would lead to a touchdown on the next play, but also gave Louis sole position atop the list of career receptions by an SLC receiver.
“It was just like any other play,” Louis said. “What was on my mind was just to catch the ball and do what I could do.”
Standing at just 5-feet-8-inches and 180 pounds, Louis carries himself with the humility and composure of a true leader. The admiration and compliments he receives from his teammates and coaches are endless.
“When we got here, we heard some good things about this little kid,” head coach K.C. Keeler said. “Then you get him out on the field and this kid is special.”
Keeler always speaks highly of his receiving core that he repeatedly mentions is the best in the country with their excellent speed and great hands.
“We have three of the best receivers in the country,” Keeler said. “And Yedi is the leader of that group. This kid is one of the best I’ve ever coached.”
That receiving core is complimented by the strong right arm of Briscoe. On a team filled with record-holders and award winners, Louis has the opportunity to be a key weapon for a special kind of high-octane offense.
“Yedi is special,” Briscoe said. “He sees everything the same way I do. Rarely will Yedi and I have miscommunication.”
With his name now standing alone in the record books, Louis still has the rest of his senior year ahead of him to build on his already spectacular numbers. He became the seventh 1,000-yard receiver in school history with a stunning performance against Chattanooga in last year’s playoffs to cap off a season where he led the Southland in receptions (76), receiving yards (1,152) and receiving touchdowns (14).
His consistency on the field has helped the Bearkats to a perfect 3-0 start in 2017, and Louis puts this SHSU team on a high pedigree.
“As long as we go out there and execute, we believe we can’t be stopped,” Louis said.The disgraceful state of the health system for America's military veterans has finally been exposed. In our Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, America’s honored veterans suffer or even die due to shamefully long waits before receiving important medical care. Based on an internal audit ordered by the White House, the Associated Press reported that more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for their appointments 90 days after requesting them. Bureaucrats apparently covered up the facts, and some staff even falsified records to earn personal bonuses.
Americans should recognize the importance of these new revelations. These scandals serve to vividly remind everyone of the very personal consequences of allowing the government to fully control healthcare. But this should not have been a surprise. While such waits are otherwise unheard of in the healthcare system of the United States, they in fact typify the very systems held up as models for US reforms by supporters of ObamaCare. Even though the facts have been thoroughly documented by governments running nationalized health systems and in the most renowned scientific and medical journals, it is puzzling that the shocking waits for care in those systems—whether for specialist appointments, heart surgery, stroke treatment, diagnostic scans, or cancer care—go virtually unreported by the mainstream US media.
Image credit: Barbara Kelley Barbara Kelley
While Americans are shocked about the revelations about the VA hospitals, the failure of government-run healthcare has already been proven all over the globe. Last year, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), the paradigm of government-controlled healthcare, turned 65 years old and officially entered senior citizenship. As opposed to the celebration that might have been expected, headlines in the British press documented scandalous patient care, shameful waiting lists, catastrophic hospital practices, and financial debacles.
Access to medical care has been so poor for so long in the NHS that the government was compelled to issue England’s 2010 “NHS Constitution” in which it was declared that no patient should wait beyond 18 weeks for treatment—four months—after a referral from a general practitioner. While NHS England officially states that the laughably long leash of 18 weeks to initiate treatment is being met, as of February 2014 more than 50,000 patients had waited more than those 18 weeks after GP referral for treatment to begin. In Scotland, as reported in May 2014, more than 10% of patients were still waiting more than 18 weeks for their treatment to begin–4 months after being referred for treatment by their doctors.
Even more shocking is the recent decree from the Comptroller and Auditor General of England’s Department of Health: “NHS England introduced zero tolerance of any patient waiting more than 52 weeks (for treatment after doctor referral), for which trusts face a mandatory fine of £5,000 for each patient doing so.” Yes, waiting more than one full year for treatment is apparently a possibility in the NHS.
Despite the UK government’s repeated laws and decrees, more patients than ever before are now on waiting lists, and the NHS is failing to deliver on its most basic promises to the taxpayers. In April 2014, hospital waiting lists soared to their highest point since 2006, with 2,993,108 patients in England on waiting lists for treatment. Figures for last July showed that 508,555 people in London alone were waiting for operations or other treatment to begin—the highest total for at least five years. Almost 60,000 more patients were waiting for treatment at the capital’s 34 NHS hospitals than one year previous.
In October 2013, the median wait time in England’s NHS for hospital inpatients—patients sick enough to require hospital admission—was a staggering 9 weeks to begin treatment, a full 2 months after doctor diagnosis and referral. For outpatients, median waits were also markedly higher in October 2013 than a year earlier. Paul Smith, a senior research analyst at the Nuffield Trust health think tank, said to the Guardian "this is hardly surprising. Waiting times are a good barometer of the general health of the NHS.”
In its characteristic mode to allow itself significant latitude to meet its own targets, the NHS years ago cynically set a goal specifically for cancer patients. They specified that 85% of patients should wait no more than a maximum of 62 days to begin their first definitive treatment following an urgent referral for suspected cancer from their GP. Yet, in Quarter 4 of 2012-13, according to NHS England’s National Statistics, 19.4% of lung cancer patients, 22.2% of colon cancer patients, and 17.4% of urological cancer patients were not treated within two months after “urgent” referral. The Welsh government also reported their NHS is still failing to treat 8 to 13% of the most urgent cancer cases within 62 days. Indeed, in the newest data from Cancer NHS England released just days ago, for those referred for “urgent” treatment after being diagnosed with suspected cancer, that low expectation target time was breached by assessing all cancer patients. More than 15% of patients waited more than 62 days—two full months—to begin their first definitive treatment following an urgent referral for suspected cancer from their GP. Perhaps it should be no surprise that the UK has far worse cancer survival rates than the US.
Foreshadowing what we now know about our own VA system, the BBC uncovered scandalous news last year: many patients initially assessed as needing surgery were subsequently re-categorized by the hospital so that they could be removed from waiting lists to hide the already unconscionable delays. Royal College of Surgeons President Norman Williams, calling this “outrageous,” publicly charged that hospitals are cutting their waiting lists by artificially raising thresholds. Meanwhile, England’s National Audit Office reported in January 2014 that records of waiting times are riddled with inconsistencies and errors, raising significant doubts about published data for the NHS's performance on their 18-week target. According to the recent 2014 British House of Commons report, nearly one-third of NHS patients had no recorded wait times whatsoever, and another 26% were frankly inaccurate.
Adding to those indefensible facts is a long list of scandals in NHS hospitals that were epitomized in 2013 by the Staffordshire Trust debacle, where between 400 and 1,200 neglected and abused patients died in squalid and degrading circumstances. Although virtually unreported by US media, the 2013 Francis report, consisting of more than one million pages and 64,000 documents, and costing British taxpayers about $20 million, caused widespread outrage among the British. While forcing the resignation of the NHS chief, the report officially called out the insidious, negative culture in the NHS, characterized by a tolerance of unacceptably poor standards and patient neglect, a preoccupation with cost-cutting, targets and processes, all the while losing sight of its fundamental responsibility to provide safe patient care. The parallels to America’s VA system are undeniable.
The paradox is that America has been doubling down on government authority over healthcare with the Affordable Care Act, just as more and more European governments, including Denmark, England, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, have been forced by public outcry to address the unconscionable waits for care by introducing new laws. But it is even more essential for American voters to realize, and for our government leaders to acknowledge, what other countries are beginning to recognize all over the world. These governments have started to understand that the cure for their failed nationalized health systems is a shift to privatization. And citizens under government-dominated health systems are increasingly circumventing their own systems, pursuing private healthcare to solve the uniformly poor access to care and limited choices.
Let’s consider Sweden, often heralded as the paradigm of a successful welfare state. The facts tell a very different story. Having failed its citizens in healthcare access, the Swedish government has aggressively introduced private market forces into healthcare to improve access, quality, and choices. Although once entirely public, over a quarter of Swedish primary care clinics are now run by the private sector. Sweden’s municipality governments have increased spending on private care contracts by 50% in the past decade. Private nursing facilities now receive substantial public funding to care for patients. Widespread private sector competition has also been introduced into pharmacies to tear down the pre-2009 monopoly over all prescription and non-prescription drugs. Since the Swedish government sold over half of its pharmacies to private firms in 2009, 20 private firms entered the market and over 300 new pharmacies opened, not only improving accessibility but providing the first pharmacies ever to many small towns.
Moreover, despite the fact that an average Swedish family already pays nearly $20,000 annually in taxes toward healthcare according to Swedish economist Per Bylund, about 12% of working adults bought private insurance in 2013, a number that has increased by 67% over the last five years. Half a million Swedes now use private insurance, up from 100,000 a decade ago, even though they are already “guaranteed” public healthcare.
In England, the overwhelming majority of financially successful people now avoid the NHS, the system still naively cited as the model for US health reform by many. About six million Brits now buy private health insurance, including almost two-thirds of those earning more than $78,700. More than 50,000 Brits travel out of the country per year and spend $250 million to receive medical care due to lack of access. According to The Telegraph, the number of people paying for their own private care is up 20 percent since the previous year, with about 250,000 now choosing to pay for private treatment out-of-pocket each year—even though they are already paying for their NHS insurance.
In the wake of the current VA scandal, President Obama now has the opportunity to reach a grand consensus on healthcare reform, despite the sharp divisions on the issue in the nation. Just like every country with nationalized health systems, the truth is becoming obvious for all Americans who bother to look. Whether you are a veteran with VA care, a poor person under Medicaid, a senior relying on Medicare, or a member of the middle class under ObamaCare, being insured is not the same as having access to medical care. He gave hope when his administration recently backed off from the ObamaCare plan to reduce affordable private coverage options inside Medicare, options that all Medicare beneficiaries enjoyed before the law.
Allowing our veterans to use private care with government funding was a more direct action to improve choices and timely access to medical care by expanding private care choice. The next step for the President is to do the same for the most vulnerable, the low income Americans and their families. Rather than expanding traditional Medicaid at a cost of nearly a trillion dollars over the decade, our elected officials should consider something far bolder: add a premium support option for beneficiaries, offering financial assistance instead of traditional Medicaid insurance for people to choose among private plans.
But there is an even more fundamental point that should be appreciated. Frankly, none of the key goals for health reform in America—reducing healthcare spending, expanding access to affordable coverage, preserving personal choice and portability of coverage, promoting competition in insurance markets, and maintaining the excellence of medical care and innovation—require the government to directly provide insurance or healthcare itself. Let’s hope President Obama and the polarized Congress have the courage to truly lead with creativity, by seizing the opportunity to facilitate access to America’s private healthcare. Perhaps a genuine consensus can be achieved after all.Even Hollywood stars have a hard time escaping the wrath of the Transportation Security Administration. This time “Austin Powers” actor Verne Troyer was the latest to endure a humiliating TSA pat-down.
The barely two-and-a-half-feet-tall “Mini-Me” actor was attempting to board a flight out of Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend when he became the subject of a TSA search. Luckily his manager, Ray Hughes, was on hand, and was able to snap photographic evidence that has since surfaced to the web and gone viral.
“Another day another flight,” Troyer tweeted from his official Twitter account on Sunday afternoon from LAX.
The accompanying photo of Troyer complying with a hands-on TSA search while atop a motorized wheelchair was enough to land image of the actor towards the top of Reddit and other web forums.
"That's just what happens when you go through TSA," Hughes told Huffington Post. “He's a little guy. There's not much they can hide there."
On his part, Troyer offered an explanation of his own over Twitter.
"I think he was cking [sic] to see if I wiped this morning," he wrote in a follow-up tweet.
Troyer has been hardly the only Hollywood actor to be stopped by the TSA. Last year, Star Wars actor Peter Mayhew was held up at Denver International Airport in Colorado while trying to board with a cane designed to look like a lightsaber prop straight out of the film series.
“Giant man need giant cane… small cane snap like toothpick… besides… my light saber cane is just too cool… I would miss it…”the 7’3” actor tweeted at the time.Council Members Unanimously Reject Texas Town’s Anti-Trans Bill
It was standing room only in the chambers of the Rockwall City Council on Monday evening.
Supporters and opponents showed up to watch the Texas city council deliberate on an ordinance proposed by Mayor Jim Pruitt, one that would force trans people to use the bathroom that matches with the sex they were assigned at birth, not their gender identity. “I just think that it's insanity not to have those protections in place," Pruitt told Dallas TV station WFAA last week.
Unfortunately for the mayor, he couldn’t find anyone on the town’s city council who agreed with him. The ordinance died in debate, after not a single one of the five council members stood up to support it.
The proposed legislation would have been nearly identical to a bill passed in Oxford, Alabama last week, fining transgender people $500 for using the bathroom that most closely corresponds with their gender identity. Council members told Pruitt during the Monday deliberations that such legislation is “unenforceable,” as Houston TV station, KHOU, reports.
Pruitt put forward the bill following Target’s recent decision to allow all staff and customers at stores nationwide to use the restrooms that best correspond with their gender identity.
“We stand for equality and equity, and strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed in our stores and workplaces every day,” the company stated in an April 19 press release. “We believe that everyone — every team member, every guest, and every community — deserves to be protected from discrimination, and treated equally.”
“I don’t know why we’re having this conversation,” Pruitt told the council, according to the Dallas Morning News. “We are because someone decided to make a policy to allow men unfettered access to women’s bathrooms."
But Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Lewis argued that if Pruitt doesn’t agree with the company’s statement, the solution is simple: Don’t go there. Others have the exact same option, he said. “If Target wants to have this policy, I have the choice of not shopping at Target,” Lewis told the Morning News.
The bill was vocally opposed by the local Hilton Hotel, which warned that passing an ordinance targeting trans bathroom use would be bad for the town’s local economy. Rockwall — with a population of just over 37,000 — is located outside of Dallas. “Our business will suffer,” Hilton general manager James Montgomery told KHOU. “This will negatively affect travel and tourism to our area.”
After the passage of House Bill 2, a controversial North Carolina law similar to the one Rockwall rejected, more than 160 businesses have come out to condemn the Tar Heel State. Companies like PayPal and Deutsche Bank nixed planned expansions in the state, causing millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Montgomery warned that if Rockwall were to pass its own anti-trans legislation, Hilton might be forced to follow suit and leave the town. As KHOU reported, "the hotel employs 175 workers and pays $750,000 in property taxes."
Kenda Culpepper, the Rockwall County District Attorney, didn’t offer her support for the legislation, but according to KHOU, she attended the meeting to provide information about the alleged ramifications of Target’s policy. “This is about sex predators that will use this issue... as an excuse to get into the bathroom to possibly assault children," Culpepper said.
“Rockwall County is not immune to sexual offenses,” she continued, “and yes, it happens in bathrooms.” Culpepper also happens to be the mayor’s wife.
Culpepper’s fear isn’t trans people. She believes that Target’s inclusive bathrooms will be exploited by sexual predators, but there’s no evidence of that being the case. In the more than 200 localities across the country that allow trans people equal bathroom access, there are no reported incidents of someone pretending to be transgender to enter the bathroom of the opposite sex and harm other restroom users.
Lacking a council member to second the ordinance, the legislation quickly died. Pruitt has claimed that he won’t try to pass an amended version.
In a press release, Equality Texas, the statewide LGBT nonprofit, celebrated the defeat of the Rockwall measure. “Discrimination has no place, anywhere in Texas,” the group said. “Small town Texas values were on fine display and Rockwall shows what Texas is really all about: local communities.”Who makes more money, on average, a doctor or a lawyer? A product manager or a tax manager?
And which fields are still hiring like mad?
Those are the questions that job-hunting site Glassdoor set out to answer when it created its latest list of the 25 best-paying jobs in high demand.
No 25: Sales Engineer
Average Base Salary: $90,899
Number of Job Openings: 5,508
A sales engineer is the technical resource for the sales force that helps them make sure bids and contracts meet the customers' technical specifications.
No. 24: Business Development Manager
Average Base Salary: $95,139
Number of Job Openings: 11,037
A business development manager is a sales role that typically involves both sales and marketing.
No. 23: Software Engineer
Average Base Salary: $96,392
Number of Job Openings: 99,055
A software engineer is a software programmer. Every company needs them, from the tech companies building software to sell to others, to the enterprises building apps for internal use.
No 22: Human Resources Manager
Average Base Salary: $96,406
Number of Job Openings: 7,220
The HR manager is in charge of things like hiring, benefits, and training.
No. 21: UX Designer
Average Base Salary: $96,855
Number of Job Openings: 2,010
UX designers, or user-experience designers, are the ones who make sure the product looks and feels good and functions in a way that is easy for people to use.
No. 20: Database Administrator
Average Base Salary: $97,258
Number of Job Openings: 9,041
A company's database is among the most important bits of software it owns, keeping track of customers, transactions, and inventory. A database administrator runs it.
No. 19: Marketing Manager
Average Base Salary: $100,229
Number of Job Openings: 14,179
A marketing manager plans, directs, and coordinates the marketing of the organization's products and/or services.
No. 18: Computer Hardware Engineer
Average Base Salary: $101,154
Number of Job Openings: 1,264
A computer hardware engineer designs computers and all sorts of other electronic devices.
No. 17: QA Manager
Average Base Salary: $101,330
Number of Job Openings: 1,689
A QA or "quality assurance" manager performs tests to make sure a product, service, or software performs like it should.
No. 16: Security Engineer
Average Base Salary: $102,749
Number of Job Openings: 2,060
A security engineer designs, deploys, and monitors systems that secures a company's network, software, and other assets.
No. 15: Data Scientist
Average Base Salary: $105,395
Number of Job Openings: 3,433
A data scientist is a super-hot field right now. This person helps a company find insights out of heaps of data.
No. 14: Supply Chain Manager
Average Base Salary: $106,632
Number of |
playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Activists who've fled Raqqa have been talking to BBC Newsnight
Political activists in northern Syria have been forced to flee after attempting to defy the growing power of al-Qaeda in the region.
A citizens' protest movement has been challenging the jihadist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an affiliate of al-Qaeda, after its fighters attacked churches in the city of Raqqa.
But activists who have fled to Turkey told BBC Newsnight that many had been arrested, beaten or kidnapped by ISIS in retaliation.
Raqqa, a city currently sheltering nearly a million people, is now under the full control of the group.
One of the activists, photographer Mezar Matar, said: "I saw many people who had signs of lashes on their bodies after being released from an ISIS prison."
They are the new dictators, just like Bashar al-Assad but dressed in black Mezar Matar, Activist who fled Raqqa
He said his brother, Muhammed Nour, had disappeared after filming a battle in Raqqa between ISIS and a brigade loyal to the Western-backed Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
He believed Muhammed had been kidnapped by the jihadists.
Another activist, who asked not to be named for her own safety, said she and her sister, also involved in the protest movement, had fled after being fired at by ISIS gunmen.
"Seven or eight men with explosive belts surrounded my sister. Some said: 'Knife her.' Some said: 'Shoot her.' They tore down her banner that said 'Christians and Muslims are one', and told her she was an infidel," the activist said.
The protests started in September after jihadists raised their black flag over a church in Raqqa and turned it into their headquarters.
Image caption The black flag was flown from Raqqa's Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs
"Two carloads of armed fighters went onto the roof of the church. They broke the bell with hammers, and threw one of the crosses down into the street. They tried to break it, but it was iron," the activist said.
Activists filmed protesters carrying the cross through the streets shouting "Shame! Shame!" and calling for Muslim-Christian unity.
'New dictators'
Earlier this year, Raqqa became the first provincial capital in Syria to fall fully under rebel control.
Image caption A statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad was toppled after Raqqa's capture
But after only two months when control was shared by SMC-aligned and jihadist fighters, it was taken over in May by ISIS.
They marked the moment by publically executing three men they said were Alawites, members of the same heterodox Shia sect as President Bashar al-Assad.
Now Raqqa, its population swollen by displaced families, may be the largest city in the world ever to be controlled by al-Qaeda.
Mr Matar said: "They banned the sale of alcohol, they tried to close cafes where boys and girls sit together, they banned street theatre, cinema, bright colours, and forced women to wear Islamic dress.
"They are the new dictators, just like Bashar al-Assad, but dressed in black. Only the colour has changed."
Image caption Raqqa in northern Syria may be the largest city in the world to be controlled by al-Qaeda
Smaller but better funded than other rebel groups, ISIS has historically been made up of foreign jihadists from Arab countries - particularly Iraq, but also Libya, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia - Russia's north Caucasus, and Europe.
But activists from Raqqa said it was now attracting more and more Syrian recruits.
In the last few months, ISIS has made significant advances, largely at the expense of the FSA, and controls a wide swathe of northern Syria close to the Turkish border.
See more from Tim Whewell on Newsnight on Wednesday 13 November 2013 at 2230 on BBC Two, and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.New Russian Armata tank is driven during the Victory Parade marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, in Red Square, Moscow, Russia, Saturday, May 9, 2015. Ivan Sekretarev/AP On May 9, Russia unveiled its new third-generation Armata tank during its Victory Day parade in Moscow.
The Kremlin hopes the Armata will revolutionize Russia's ground-based military capabilities. The Armata features considerable upgrades in armor, engine, and armaments compared to previous Russian and Soviet tank models.
But the tank has one major downside: The Armata is vastly over-budget. It's just too expensive to ever become the workhorse of the Russian armored corps.
Moscow will have trouble procuring as many of the tanks as it had previously envisioned — especially with the current economic troubles that Russia is facing thanks to US and EU sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.
According to an Oxford Analytica brief by Harvard scholar Dmitry Gorenburg, which he shared on his blog Russian Military Reform, the cost of the Armata is 2.45 times higher than had been projected in the State Armaments Program for 2020, the military reform package the Kremlin devleoped in 2010.
"As a result, the Defense Ministry is expecting to reduce the number of Armata tanks it will procure, focusing instead on continuing to modernise existing T-72 tanks in the medium term," the brief notes. "According to Russian media reports, Uralvagonzavod [the company responsible for manufacturing the Armata] has agreed to lower some Armata costs, but the program will still be expensive."
This economic reality undercuts the overall deployment of the Armata, an enormous vehicle that believed to be reistant to nearly all NATO anti-tank weapons.
Sergei Kaprov/TASS News Service/ US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office
Gorenburg estimates that there will be a maximum of 330 Armata tanks in service by 2020, a fraction of the 2,300 the State Armament Program had projected. And that also assumes production of the tank proceeds seamlessly and that no serious flaws are found as the current stock of Armatas undergo field testing which could last until 2018.
Even at lesser production than planned, the Kremlin still promotes the Armata as Russia's tank of the future.
The Armata will feature a 1,500 horsepower turbo-charged disel engine, an unmanned turret, a separate armored capsule for its crew that will improve soldier survivability, and a host of sensors and radar for defense.
Additionally, one of the most important pieces of technology added to the Armata is the Afganit active protection complex, a system that uses Doppler radar to detect incoming projectiles such as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles. Once detected, the system launches an interceptor rocket that destroys the incoming projectile.Protecting Nazi rhetoric in the United States is not about the first amendment.
There’s a lot of people, perhaps asleep and believing strongly they’re taking a principled stance, that believe deeply that somehow allowing Nazi rhetoric in the United States is an issue of protecting the First Amendment. This is a lie, and our country needs to face the truth. That includes the ACLU.
Fred Chong Rutherford Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 12, 2017
Isaiah Bradley, the First Captain America, battling Nazis in “Truth: Red, White & Black”
I’m watching the news, just like a lot of you, about the Nazi rally in Charlottesville that turned deadly, when an American Nazi got into his car and plowed it into a crowd of people there. The people he hurt were there to condemn the violent rhetoric of American Nazis.
And afterwards, all day today? I saw it, already, the people talking about, “You have to protect the free speech rights of Nazis to protect all free speech in America.”
And it hit me.
Nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about on this issue.
Nobody knows the details. And somehow, weirdly, I do, because I know the case that became the ground zero source of this dumb meme we live with today, that protecting Nazi speech is about protecting all speech.
The case that most people know, or think they know, about this idea of a principled defense of Nazi speech is “National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977).” On the surface, we all know the story. The basic through-line, one that even the ACLU will sometimes allude to, is that the government (in this case, the people of Skokie, Illinois) have no right to restrict any political speech. Thus, to protect the political speech of everyone, the ACLU took a principled stance, fought this case on First Amendment grounds, then won a victory for the First Amendment and the freedom of all Americans, irregardless of belief. This idea has become so much of a part of so many people’s frameworks on freedom that the details of “Nationalist Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977)” have been lost to most people who vaguely understand this case. It’s become almost a truism, especially on the Internet, that we have to tolerate racist, white supremacist rhetoric, because otherwise we would lose our right to free speech.
You’ve heard the argument. Someone says something racist. Someone else says, “I condemn the speech, but I defend the right of anyone to say it.” That’s the echo of the aforementioned Skokie case, echoing into the present.
But I’m telling you, as a point of truth, that “National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977)” had nothing to do with the First Amendment in the end. It wasn’t even decided on First Amendment grounds. Here, read the decision yourself. Have you ever read it? Most people haven’t.
Now, here’s a caveat. 20 years ago, I was considering a career as a lawyer. As a day job, I went into software because, hey, the Internet was exploding. But at my first day job, I worked in a law firm as a paralegal on the Exxon Valdez case. And I’d use their resources to read about cases, including “National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977).” Because at the time, I thought it was interesting, and wanted to be a lawyer. By the time I stopped working at that law firm, I didn’t want to be an attorney. But I had read a lot before I left.
So, I’m willing to concede that maybe, in all of that research and continued reading from time to time over the last twenty years, I’ve missed some cases or case law that has come from “Skokie (1977).” If you can cite the cases, please correct me if I’m wrong. But I remember, over twenty years ago, being astonished that this case that held such a place in our popular culture was essentially irrelevant from the perspective of the Supreme Court. In all this time, I’ve yet to find sources that can show how THAT Supreme Court decision directly impacted, or was used as precedent, in other cases. I’m not an attorney, again, so maybe they do exist. If you know of some case law developed from that decision, leave a comment. But remember, I’m not talking about a Newsweek article, or your opinion, or an ACLU flyer mentioning this while asking for donations, or even what you think you know.
What I mean is case law. What case law has been founded on Skokie (1977), especially in regards to the First Amendment? That’s, arguably, a pretty good litmus test for how important a case is when it gets to the Supreme Court. How much future law does it impact?
You would think a documentary, a text, something would cover the affect of that decision, given how important a lot of us think it must be. Most stories I’ve found cover the creation of a Holocaust museum in Skokie as if that was some sort of ‘blessing’ from the decision in it.
And I’m going to pause here. Before you go any further, please ask yourself, “How was Skokie (1977) decided?” Hold onto that answer. Because we’re going to get to the real decision, and perhaps you’ll see how your perception versus the reality is skewed.
Because no one, as far as I’ve been able to find, has ever really covered the EFFECT of Skokie (1977), either in terms of popular culture or case law, since then. There was a TV movie called “Skokie” from 1981 that arguably laid the groundwork for that limited pop culture understanding so many people vaguely have. But that’s really it. For a case that holds such a grip on a part of our popular imagination, seriously, in the 40 years since it was decided, no one has done a follow-up media piece of any substantial nature about it except for a TV movie that took a lot of artistic license with the case.
I was taught about this case, very briefly, as a teenager. A lot of people are. It’s that idea I mentioned at the top, that essentially, part of doing the right thing was defending the rights of people you despised, and that the case was a victory for free speech. But, if you look closely at the decision, most of the objections were mostly procedural. In other words, it wasn’t decided on a question of speech, Skokie (1977) was decided on an issue of due process.
This is the relevant passage that even a non-lawyer can understand.
“… if a State seeks to impose a restraint on First Amendment rights, it must provide strict procedural safeguards, including immediate appellate review… Absent such review, the State must instead allow a stay.”
The Supreme Court didn’t say, “a State cannot impose a restraint.” The Supreme Court said, IF a State wants to impose a restraint, you have to follow due process. Since Illinois didn’t follow process, Illinois had to hold a hearing to determine whether the Nazi rhetoric constituted “fighting words,” citing Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).
So, what are Fighting Words?
Fighting Words is a concept from a case, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). In that case, a Jehova’s Witness, Chaplinsky, was distributing pamphlets. People in the town got upset. The town Marshall, Bowering, tried to stop him. Chaplinsky then allegedly said to Bowering, “You are a God damned racketeer” and “a damned Fascist and the whole government of Rochester are Fascists or agents of Fascists.”
Chaplinsky was charged under a town ordinance that said you couldn’t call someone offensive names.
This was the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire.
“It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. “Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.”
In simpler words, the Supreme Court found in 1942 that ‘Fighting Words’ would allow a community to restrict the free speech rights of a citizen. Because Chaplinsky had threatened people, it was reasonable for those same people (in this case the local government) to ‘restrict’ his free speech rights. Because he used fighting words.
So, in 1942, the Supreme Court says, “You can’t use fighting words and be expected to have unrestricted right to speech.” It was a unanimous decision. There was no direct citation of the 10th Amendment in the opinion, but, arguably the ability to restrict ‘fighting words’ speech on common sense grounds is one of those rights that’s still kept by the states and the people.
So, in Skokie (1977), the decision that the Supreme Court came to directly cited Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) and said, “Illinois, you need to decide whether Nazi speech constitutes fighting words.”
So, when the Illinois Supreme Court had a hearing, they determined that the rhetoric of the American Nazi party didn’t constitute “fighting words.” Therefore, there was no grounds to stop the march. After their victory, the Nazi’s didn’t march on Skokie, they instead marched in Chicago, which was likely their original goal in the first place.
Now, let’s pause for a second. Did you notice how quickly we skipped over something important. Let me repeat this for emphasis.
In 1977, the Illinois Supreme Court decided that the rhetoric of American Nazis didn’t constitute Fighting Words. What were they saying then? Very similar to what’s being said now. The American Nazis said that Jews are lesser people. The American Nazis said that black people aren’t human. The American Nazis said that the white race was under attack. So much vicious, vile, contemptible rhetoric from the American Nazis that tells you, in plain terms, “These are the people we will hurt, murder, and enslave if we have political power.” In even simpler terms, American Nazi political rhetoric is a never-ending death threat to everyone who’s not “of the white race.”
To the white people in the Illinois Supreme Court in 1977, I could see how that kind of speech would seem removed from them. I wish I could ask Timothy Caughman whether he thinks that the speech of Nazis constitutes fighting words. He was murdered this year by an American Nazi on the streets of New York by a sword, on March 20, 2017. The rhetoric of his murderer was the rhetoric of Nazis. And, feeling unrestrained, an American Nazi fulfilled the promise of his rhetoric, and murdered a man in the streets of New York because of the color of his skin.
I think a lot of people look at Skokie (1977), especially us lefty types, from a place of tolerant reverence. I’ve heard people explain to me that the case was about protecting free speech rights. I’ve had people, who’ve never read the case, or understand the nuances, tell me over and over again that it was about Free speech.
BUT THAT’S NOT HOW THE CASE WAS DECIDED. It wasn’t decided on First Amendment grounds. It was decided on procedural grounds, and the procedure in question ALLOWS A LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO RESTRICT SPEECH. But the only way that Nazi speech can be restricted is if the speech constitutes fighting words. If you’re white, it probably doesn’t sound like fighting words. If you aren’t? The speech of Nazis sound like death threats, which are fighting words. The myth of Skokie (1977) has overtaken what actually happened, and the details involved.
And what happened was, the Supreme Court said, “Illinois, if you’re going to restrict speech, follow procedure, you must have a hearing.” And in the hearing, the judge decided that Nazi rhetoric wasn’t ‘fighting words’ in 1977.
And if you look closely, at cases like Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) that actually DID have far reaching impacts on our rights, a clear pattern emerges over the 20th century …
1. Minority religious and ethnic speech rights are typically persecuted (like Chaplinksy himself)
2. White nationalist speech rights are protected (like in Skokie)
3. If courts do protect speech, it’s typically speech directed AT the government (or its agents) that’s protected.
And number 3, by the way, is what the First Amendment was written for, to prevent the Federal Government from declaring its critics to be seditionists and simply jailing them.
As I’m typing this, a state of emergency now exists in Charlottesville, and riot police have allegedly suspended the Nazi rally there. The reason? In case you forgot, it’s because a white nationalist used a car to murder a person who was condemning the racist speech of Nazis.
Does driving a car over someone constitute fighting words? Is it murder?
That’s a stupid question. It really is.
Let go of the idea that restricting Nazi speech is a slippery slope. Look at it. See it. Learn about how things really work. See white nationalist speech for what it is, as a death threat to everyone around you that’s not white.
And ask yourself, “what have I really been protecting all of these years when I defend the speech of racists on first amendment grounds?”
The answer is sitting in a jail cell for killing someone with his car.There aren’t a lot of companies out there making smartphones in the clamshell form factor. Samsung does release a couple of Android-powered flip phones every year in select markets. It has been working on a new flagship flip phone for the past few months.
It’s going to be called the SM-W2018 when it’s released and now that live images of this handset have leaked online, you may find yourself with the desire of owning one.
Previous reports have suggested that the SM-W2018 is going to have flagship-level specifications. It’s expected to feature two 4.2-inch Full HD display with a Snapdragon 835 processor, 6GB RAM and 64GB storage. It may also feature a 12-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front camera as well as a 2,300mAh battery.
The leaked live images show just how great the two displays are going to look. Moreover, the build quality itself appears to have a very premium look and feel.
We heard last month that the SM-W2018 has entered testing. We also spotted a firmware for the device, W2018ZCU0AQI9. There haven’t been more reports about this handset since.
Samsung’s flip phones are normally released in China so it’s possible that the SM-W2018 may not make its way out of the People’s Republic as well. Samsung hasn’t confirmed when it’s going to launch the SM-W2018. Some reports claim that it’s going to cost over $2,000 in the country.Mr. Farenthold is currently the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, and in addition to Ms. Greene, two of his former press secretaries have come forward in recent days to describe a workplace culture that was more like a college fraternity house than a congressional office.
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Both said Mr. Farenthold had an explosive temper, berated them repeatedly, made sexually explicit jokes and engaged in casual sexual banter that set a tone followed by his underlings.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters that he had spoken twice with Mr. Farenthold on Wednesday, and praised the congressman for agreeing to step aside.
“I think he’s making the right decision to retire,” Mr. Ryan said. “There are new stories that are very disconcerting.”
But Mr. Farenthold’s decision to finish out his term, rather than resign immediately, drew a sharp rebuke from Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, who called the aides’ accusations “shocking” and “unacceptable.” Ms. Pelosi also reiterated her call for Representative Ruben Kihuen, Democrat of Nevada, to resign after The Nevada Independent reported that a second woman accused him of unwanted sexual advances.
Mr. Farenthold’s announcement is only the latest. Last week, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, left amid claims he sexually harassed his aides. Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, was pushed out by Mr. Ryan after an aide complained that he had offered to pay $5 million to carry his child as a surrogate. And Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, will quit over accusations of forcibly kissing one woman and of groping others during photo opportunities.
Before them, Representative Tim Murphy, Republican of Pennsylvania, resigned after his mistress said he had pressured her to have an abortion, and Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, announced his retirement after lewd photos of him appeared on the internet.
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Mr. Farenthold, alone among them, appeared to be a survivor. He insisted he had done nothing wrong, and promised to repay the $84,000 to the Treasury. Mr. Ryan had pointedly not called for his resignation, noting that the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics had investigated the allegations against him, and declined to forward them to the Ethics Committee.
But as accusations against him piled up, it appeared untenable for him to continue.
“Congress must work harder to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” said Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “There is still more work to be done.”
In her claim against him, the former communications director, Ms. Greene, complained that Mr. Farenthold had told another of his aides that he was having ‘‘sexual fantasies” about her. She also complained that the congressman routinely drank to excess — so much so that aides who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on “redhead patrol” to keep him out of trouble.
The former press secretaries to Mr. Farenthold — Elizabeth Peace and Michael Rekola — came forward this week with their own accounts. In an interview with The New York Times, Ms. Peace said women would discuss which male lobbyists had texted them pictures of their genitals, and both men and women would talk about strip clubs and whether certain Fox News anchors had breast implants.
In a lengthy interview with CNN.com published on Wednesday night, Mr. Rekola said Mr. Farenthold was so abusive that he wound up seeking medical treatment for a stomach ailment, as well as psychological counseling.
Mr. Farenthold, first elected in 2010, has long had a whiff of notoriety about him. During his first campaign, he was photographed wearing duck-print pajamas and standing next to a scantily clad woman. In 2014, the same year that Ms. Greene sued him, he announced that he was giving up an internet domain name — one that described a sexually explicit act — that he had held since 1999, when he was in the business of buying such names on speculation.
In the video released Thursday, Mr. Farenthold, who turned 56 this week, said that he and his family discussed his political future over the Thanksgiving break, and that all agreed he should “run for another term because there is still work to be done.” He said he expected a tough primary challenge but was looking forward to the campaign.
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“I welcomed it, so I could address some of the concerns and discuss ways I hope we could make America better for everyone,” he said, adding, “I did not create the broken system we’re working in, and I want to change it.”
But the “renewed focus” on his personal conduct made him reconsider, he said.
“I understand fully that this has become a political distraction and that I would be forced to engage in a monthlong campaign for personal vindication,” Mr. Farenthold added, concluding, “That’s not why I came to Congress. Quite simply my constituents deserve better.”It has been months since unemployment insurance was cut off for millions of job-seekers.
Since then, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have reached a bipartisan deal to extend this critical lifeline. It's time for Republicans in the House to stop stonewalling and do the same!
We need to band together now and tell House Republicans to stop saying "No." Families striving toward the American Dream are hurting. This has to end now.
Join our call for the immediate restoration of unemployment insurance by adding your voice right away.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal
Sen. Chris Coons
Sen. Joe Donnelly
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp
Sen. Tim Kaine
Sen. Joe Manchin
Sen. Bob Menendez
Sen. Mark Pryor
Sen. Tom Udall
Sen. John Walsh
Sen. Mark Warner
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney
Rep. Raul Ruiz
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema
Alison Lundergan Grimes, Candidate for Senate
Natalie Tennant, Candidate for Senate
Sean Eldridge, Candidate for CongressSACRAMENTO, Calif. — Iman Shumpert said he will join the Knicks for Sunday’s practice on a limited basis when the club returns from its West Coast trip, but is not ready to be cleared for contact — the final step to his long-awaited return.
Shumpert declined to pick a target date because he said it hinges on how his knee responds to his first contact scrimmage. And Shumpert said Raymond Felton’s pinkie fracture will not speed up the process as he inches closer to his season debut following surgery last spring to repair a torn ACL.
“It’s not going to change anything,’’ Shumpert told The Post. “Felton has nothing to do with my knee. My knee is my knee.’’
Friday is exactly eight months since he tore his ACL in Miami in Game 1 of the playoffs. The Knicks set a six-to-eight month timetable for his return.
Shumpert has said he and his flattop should return in January, but he won’t beat Amar’e Stoudemire, expected back Jan. 1 vs. Portland and who will scrimmage with the Knicks for the first time Sunday.
“I’m starting to do conditioning and non-contact stuff with the team,’’ Shumpert said. “I’m going to start a little bit more with them when we get back. Then it’s up to the trainers.’’
Shumpert practiced on a limited basis with the Knicks’ D-League team, Erie, when it was in town last week. The key, once Shumpert is cleared for contact, is to watch for swelling around the knee. Shumpert is the lone young Knick building block after a First Team All-Rookie campaign. Mike Woodson said on Christmas he is “desperately’’ awaiting Shumpert’s return.
* J.R. Smith, whose initials were spelled out on The Post’s backpage as “J.ust R.idiculous’’ after his 20-foot buzzerbeater Wednesday in Phoenix, is amidst his career year, partly because he has defended frenetically. To go along with his second buzzer-beater this month off an inbounds with one second left, Smith had five steals in Phoenix and has hustled more this season than in his first eight combined.
“I’m trying to get the hand on the ball more than anything and get loose balls,’’ said Smith, who also committed a flagrant foul in upending Goran Dragic on a fastbreak. Smith said he could play some point guard in Felton’s absence.
“If that’s what the game calls for,’’ Smith said. “When Melo [Carmelo Anthony comes back, I’ll be more playmaker. I’m up for the challenge.’’
* The Knicks have listed Anthony, who is second among forwards in the most recent All-Star voting, as questionable for Friday night’s game against the Kings after he missed Wednesday’s game with a hyperextended left knee.
Anthony injured his knee on Christmas Day in Los Angeles when Marcus Camby fell on it. Woodson said Anthony wouldn’t undergo further tests, indicating the injury wasn’t serious, but gave no time frame for his return.
Anthony could be saving himself for Jan. 1 and Stoudemire’s season debut. It was the fifth game the MVP candidate has missed this season and the Knicks are 3-2 in those gamesIn August 2004, Toyota Motor Corporation chairman Fujio Cho was asked to give a presentation at the annual automobile industry conference organized by the University of Michigan’s Center for Automotive Research. The Japanese automaker still considered Michigan hostile territory back then. The company had a modest research-and-development facility not far from the university in Ann Arbor and had just opened a new design studio there, but Toyota was so concerned about the backlash from its seemingly unstoppable march into the market space once dominated by Detroit’s Big Three that it kept its name and logo off the buildings. For the past decade, Toyota’s share of the U.S. car market had increased year after year, while the share controlled by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler steadily declined. That was the reason for the low profile in a state that was home to thousands of unemployed auto workers. It was also the reason why Cho had been asked to deliver the keynote address.
There was lukewarm applause as he took the stage. The auditorium was filled with executives from all the world’s major automakers, but the crowd was dominated by suits from the three home teams. Cho began with a detailed slide presentation showing how Toyota was exceeding each of its strategic goals in every market around the world. It was impressive stuff, and many of the American automobile executives in the auditorium were scowling jealously by the time he was finished. Then Cho stopped, looked up from his notes, and declared that the time had come for Toyota to rethink its strategy.
“Any company not willing to take the risk of reinventing itself is doomed,” he said.
For Toyota, the time to do that was now, while it was at the top of its game.
“The world today is changing much too fast,” Cho warned as he began detailing the steps Toyota was taking to reevaluate and refine its core business strategy. “Our industry has never been more competitive.”
There was dead silence in the room when Cho finished his remarks. Nobody seemed to know what to make of them. Half the executives there were smugly confident they could keep Toyota at bay, despite its impressive gains. As one GM executive told me over coffee that afternoon, GM would stay number one because, well, it was GM. The other half were dismayed by Cho’s declaration. They were working overtime trying to match what Toyota was already doing, and here was Toyota’s boss talking about how worried he was about the future and vowing to make his company work that much harder to figure out how to confront the challenges that lay ahead.
What Cho was calling for that day in Michigan was red teaming. Red teaming forces you to think differently about your business and consider alternative points of view. Red teaming makes critical and contrarian thinking part of your company’s planning process and gives you a set of tools and techniques that can be used to stress-test your strategy. Although he did not know it by that name, he was advocating the same sort of rigorous, self-critical analysis that red teaming provides. And red teaming is exactly what Toyota did. Instead of taking its success for granted, instead of waiting for its competitors to catch up, Toyota figured out how to do what it was already doing well even better. The next five years would see Toyota catapult to the top of the global automobile industry. It would stumble along the way, but it would take an unflinching look at the reasons for those missteps and move decisively to correct them. GM would also stumble, but it would respond only with more excuses as Toyota gobbled up its market share, snatched its crown, and became the largest automaker in the world. That is what can happen when you bring red team thinking into your organization—and when you do not.
Companies like Toyota realize they will never have all the answers. That is why they continue to ask questions, the same sort of questions red teams are designed to answer. Done right, red teaming can pay huge dividends to any organization, not just by testing its plans and assumptions and making sure they are sound, but also by making everyone who learns about it more aware of potential problems, pitfalls, and opportunities. The process of red teaming makes managers better planners and deeper thinkers. In the companies where I have been a consultant, red teaming discussions do not end in the conference room but continue outside in the hallway and at the next staff meeting. Red teaming rapidly becomes part of a company’s lexicon, and the phrase “Let’s take a minute and red team this” becomes a common refrain.
You do not have to be in charge to benefit from red teaming. Yet if you are in charge, let me be clear about one thing: If you are just looking for validation of your existing strategies and plans, red teaming is not for you. But remember that the best companies and the most effective leaders know there is always room for improvement. If your red team fails to find it, then it is not doing its job. So only use red teaming when you are willing to make changes—changes that will make your organization more competitive and more successful. If you are happy with where you are and do not want to change, then don’t red team. Just sit back and wait for one of your competitors to do it for you.
Adapted from RED TEAMING: HOW YOUR BUSINESS CAN CONQUER THE COMPETITION BY CHALLENGING EVERYTHING Copyright © 2017 by Bryce Hoffman. Published by Crown Business, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.San Antonio police searching for 3 suspects who opened fire in meat market robbery
San Antonio police are searching for three suspects they say opened fire inside a Northwest Side meat market during a robbery Monday afternoon, December 28, 2015. San Antonio police are searching for three suspects they say opened fire inside a Northwest Side meat market during a robbery Monday afternoon, December 28, 2015. Photo: Mark D. Wilson/San Antonio Express-News Photo: Mark D. Wilson/San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close San Antonio police searching for 3 suspects who opened fire in meat market robbery 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — Police are searching for three suspects they say opened fire inside of a Northwest Side meat market during a robbery Monday afternoon.
Officers were called to La Michoacana Meat Market in the 6000 block of La Cima around 1:30 p.m. after receiving reports of the robbery.
RELATED: Police: Four men who robbed a Northeast Side hotel in November still on the run
San Antonio police spokesman Douglas Greene said at least one of the suspects is believed to have fired his weapon inside the store, though no hits were reported. Greene said officers believe the suspects fired at the ceiling before taking off in a truck.
About 25 to 35 people were inside the store when the shooting took place, none of whom were injured.
There is a heavy police presence in the area, and officers are working to track down those responsible.
mdwilson@express-news.net
Twitter: @MDWilsonSAPhoto
Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt at cheese-steak diplomacy appeared to backfire on Tuesday when he stopped at both Pat’s and Geno’s, rival sandwich establishments, during a campaign swing through Philadelphia.
His crime? Asking for American cheese.
Connoisseurs of Philadelphia cheese steaks were aghast that the Republican presidential candidate from Wisconsin would opt against Cheez Whiz, the local condiment of choice, as |
possible that v-sync just isn't working correctly, which seems to be a reasonably common occurrence in PC games that feature limited or no options with regards to refresh rate.
It's with the PS3, Wii U and Xbox 360 games that we see significant differences. Unlike the Rayman games, 1080p resolution is dropped in favour of a native 720p presentation that gives the game a softer appearance compared to the current generation and PC releases. The form of anti-aliasing is more difficult to pin down here, but we wouldn't be surprised to see super-sampling of some description utilised, bearing in mind that we know that the UbiArt engine is more than capable of sustaining 1080p60 on last-gen platforms. We're a little surprised that Ubisoft elected to use this technique instead of the native 1080p approach found in Rayman Legends that worked so well.
Outside of the impact the reduction in overall image quality has on the presentation, there's actually very little to separate each version of Child of Light from one another from a technical point of view. The same core artwork appears to be in use in all versions of Child Of Light, with the upscale to 1080p and odd AA blur issues responsible for a loss of fine detail on the 360, PS3, and Wii U consoles.
PS4, Xbox One and PC owners get a 1080p presentation seemingly derived from a 1440p native resolution. Pixel counting puts this somewhere around 2304x1440 or 2112x1440, resulting in a crisp, clean look that perfectly suits the watercolour artwork. Alternative some kind of multi-sampling may be in effect. Child of Light renders in 720p on the 360, PS3, and Wii U with a form of sample-based anti-aliasing. The upscale to 1080p leads to softer looking image compared to the PS4 and Xbox One versions. Curiously, the AA also adds an extra layer of blurriness to some elements. Weighing in at around 2GB on all platforms, the same core assets appear to be used across all versions of Child of Light, although the artwork looks much softer on the 360, PS3, and Wii U due to the framebuffer being upscaled to 1080p, either by the console or your display. Child of Light features a different gamma set-up on the 360 and Xbox One, where details in dark areas are crushed on both formats. Meanwhile, bright highlights appear more overblown on the Xbox One. Child of Light features the same fluid simulation found in Rayman Legends. Characters cause ripples and waves to appear as they interact with the body of water.
For the most part the same high standards are also in place on the Xbox One release, but there are moments where the engine falters, resulting in brief drops in smoothness and some mild - but noticeable - stuttering. The relative rarity of these inconsistencies mean they have no adverse impact on gameplay throughout most of the experience - at worse we looking at drops down to around the 52fps mark, but usually the impact on performance is much smaller and often goes by undetected when immersed in exploring the beautiful watercolour world on offer.
That said, seeing frame-rate drops in a 2D title is rather disappointing and not something we'd expect to see on modern hardware with plenty of pixel-pushing power behind it. Assuming the super-sampling theory is correct, we do wonder whether sticking with native 1080p may have been a preferable solution overall on Xbox One.
The last-generation versions put in a slightly more stable performance compared to the Xbox One where frame-rates are concerned, although all three platforms narrowly miss out on a solid 60fps update by one or two frames from time to time. Due to the small nature of these drops the impact on gameplay is non-existent, and for the most part they go by undetected.
"Child of Light hands in a solid 60fps experience on PS4, with minor drops on Xbox One. The 720p last-gen versions actually run marginally smoother."
Frame-rate tests for Child Of Light reveal a solid 60fps update on the PS4, whereas there are some occasional dips in smoothness on the Xbox One resulting in some mild judder.
Alternative analysis:From the August 23 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
Transcript (via Nexis):
BECK: See, I had this crazy belief that this was a Judeo-Christian nation that doesn't discriminate. If you want to build a mosque, I have no problem with you building a mosque -- unless we can't track the money down and you have been tied to Shariah law and terrorist organizations. It's tough to tell by the words and actions of our president now. What are we as a nation?
Here he is at the inauguration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: We're a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: That's never been said before. I don't think that's ever been said before by the president of the United States in that order. He needlessly throws his hat into the ring to defend the Ground Zero mosque. He hosts Ramadan dinners, which a president can do.
But then you just add all of this stuff up, his wife goes against the advice of the advisor, jets to Spain for vacation. What does she do there? She hits up the Alhambra Palace Mosque. Fine, it's a tourist attraction. But is there anything more to this? Are they sending messages?
I don't know. I don't know. I never had to look for messages before -- until we heard fundamental transformation and we all sat there like bumps on a log, thinking, well, I don't know what that means. It doesn't matter.
It matters! It matters!
It is tough to tell by the actions of our leaders.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
President Trump gives Chief of Staff Reince Priebus “until July 4th to clean up White House.” Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway “is caught mocking Trump staffers.” Trump tells U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May he won’t go to Britain “until the British public supports him coming.”
What do all of these stories have in common? They’re completely unsourced. No names. No real people. Just claims that come from, in order, “two administration officials and three outside advisers familiar with the matter,” an anonymous tweeter who set up a dummy Twitter account, and “a Downing Street adviser.”
None of the latest stories have anyone on the record making the accusations. Instead, the “news” sites that posted the stories — Politico, the Daily Mail and the Guardian — simply make the surprising claims and cite anonymous sources. The subjects of the anonymous slurs have no recourse whatsoever, no right to face their accusers, no way to fight back. The accusation streams out onto the internet, where it lives forever — whether it’s true or not.
And the Trump haters will literally run anything they claim to get their hands on.
Case in point: The White House staff stories. We’ve been seeing these almost since the day Mr. Trump took office. Ms. Conway was out, Steve Bannon was out, Sean Spicer was about to be fired, Mr. Priebus has lost all of his clout and has to sit in the broom closet during Oval Office meetings. (I made that last one up.)
None of these stories have been true. Not one. Google “White House shake up” and you get 40,200 stories — every one of them false. Has there been a shake-up? No.
“News” sites just write around that glaring contradiction, as Politico did in its June 11 report.
“While Trump has set deadlines for staff changes before, only to let them pass without pulling the trigger, the president is under more scrutiny than ever regarding the sprawling Russia investigation, which is intensifying the pressure on his White House team.
“Days after his return from his first foreign trip late last month, Trump berated Priebus in the Oval Office in front of his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie for the dysfunction in the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversation,” Politico wrote.
Well, “multiple sources familiar with the conversation.” How can you argue with that? It’s gotta be true!
The writer even attributed direct quotes to Trump.
“”I’m giving you until July 4,’ Trump said, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. ‘I don’t want them to come into this mess. If I’m going to clean house, they will come in as fresh blood.’”
The Conway story in the Daily Mail was even more egregious.
“Kellyanne Conway has been caught at a glitzy Washington DC party allegedly dishing the dirt on her fellow Team Trump colleagues. The 50-year-old was outed on a dedicated Twitter account, @KellyanneLeaks, in real time as she went after Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, legislative affairs director Marc Short, and others during a party on Thursday night.
“’Kellyanne was at an embassy party last night, leaking sensitive Priebus and Trump White House conversations to @washingtonpost reporters,’ the first tweet read.”
But wait. This violates all kinds of hitherto adhered to rules. While reporters sometimes use unnamed sources (this reporter has), they must, of course, know who they’re talking to. And, also a requirement, they must work hard to find a second source to corroborate. In the old days, if they couldn’t, they didn’t go with the story (See “All the President’s Men”).
Yet in this case, the paper simply went with an anonymous tweeter who claimed to have overheard Conway at a party. While the Twitter feed included a photo of Conway — the tweeter was, then, at the “embassy party” — what Ms. Conway said is anybody’s guess.
While Ms. Conway on Monday denied the story, it’s too late: It’s already out there and being repeated. The handle @kellyanneleaks now has thousands of followers and the tweets have been retweeted thousands of times.
The who-what-when-where-why construction of news stories is also an artifact of a different, more reliable news era. Take this excerpt from The Guardian story:
“Donald Trump has told Theresa May in a phone call he does not want to go ahead with a state visit to Britain until the British public supports him coming. The US president said he did not want to come if there were large-scale protests and his remarks in effect put the visit on hold for some time. The call was made in recent weeks, according to a Downing Street adviser who was in the room. The statement surprised May, according to those present.
“The conversation in part explains why there has been little public discussion about a visit,” the Guardian wrote.
The call was made “in recent weeks”? Why didn’t the reporter try to nail that down?
This story wasn’t true, either. “Her Majesty extended an invitation to the president,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. “He’s accepted that invitation. And we look forward to scheduling that trip.”
Eh, it doesn’t matter. The story spread like wildfire and will now be repeated by anyone and everyone as if it’s fact.
It isn’t. But that no longer counts.
And that should terrify you.
• Joseph Curl has covered politics for 25 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent at The Washington Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter via @josephcurl.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.When you think “frogs' legs,” there's one word that comes to mind immediately for most people – the French.
But a team of archaeologists near Stonehenge have made a head-scratching discovery that may give you pause next time you think about using the old cliché about the French and their penchant for amphibian limbs.
The Mesolithic British ate them first – thousands of years before the French, in fact, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
After discovering burnt animal bones at the Blick Mead dig site in Wiltshire in April, a team of archaeologists led by David Jacques sent the remains for testing at the Natural History Museum.
The results were surprising. It turned out what they had dug up were toad bones, and their former owner had been cooked and eaten by whoever lived at the site, between 7,596 and 6,250 B.C.
“We were completely taken aback. [The inhabitants] were eating everything that moved, but we weren't expecting frogs' legs as a starter,” said Jacques, a senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham.
“They would have definitely eaten the leg because it would have been quite big and juicy,” he added, calling them “the Mesolithic equivalent of fast food.”
Back in March, The Local reported another unexpected feature of amphibian gastronomy. Contrary to what most visitors to elegant Paris brasseries might think, the vast majority of ‘cuisses de grenouilles,' originate in the swamps of Indonesia.
And a dead Mediterranean tree frog – with all its limbs intact – shocked one diner in northern France in February by peeking out from behind lettuce leaves in her salad at a local restaurant.
Here is the culprit, appearing “on the menu,” so to speak. (Click on the photo to read the full story.)
Don't miss a story about France - Join us on Facebook and TwitterGentlemen of the Congress:
Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave significance for us. I shall not undertake to retail or even to summarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the Executive Departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view.
I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our action must move straight towards definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won?
From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent; who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature not the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten.
But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise--deeply and indignantly impatient--but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms.
I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss peace--when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world--we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice--justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.
You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula "No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities." Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray, and the people of every other country their agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson, and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies.
But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until that has been done can Right be set up as arbiter and peace-maker among the nations. But when that has been done--as, God willing, it assuredly will be--we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the victors.
Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peoples than their own--over the great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia--which must be relinquished.
Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were involved for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts or parties.
And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation.
The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for the very life and existence of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own--from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is threatening the existence or the independence or the peaceful enterprise of the German Empire.
The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a situation, inevitable because of distrust, would in the very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would assuredly set in.
The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be righted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and wrong, is the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they would live. It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world only because the German people were not suffered under their tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes this war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those tides.
All these things have been true from the very beginning of this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs towards an ordered and stable government of free men might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poison has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often.
From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude towards the settlement that must come when it is over. When I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled not only to free pathways upon the sea but also to assured and unmolested access to those pathways I was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which need our countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the world and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the expedient.
What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success and we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.
One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany but not with her allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government. We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other way. The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others.
The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of our whole force and energy.
It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies; and also necessary, I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the entrance and departure of all persons into and from the United States.
Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every willful violation of the presidential proclamations relating to alien enemies promulgated under section 4067 of the Revised Statutes and providing appropriate punishments; and women as well as men should be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the detention camps and it would be the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar institutions where they could be made to work as other criminals do.
Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go further in authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches of industry it still runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they must themselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain on all sides.
It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use of the water power of the country and also the consideration of the systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural resources of the country as are still under the control of the federal government should be immediately resumed and affirmatively and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.
The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of cooperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session.
And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided.
Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present Congress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficient coordination and operation of the railway and other transportation systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call the attention of the Congress upon another occasion.
If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war.
We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States. Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty.
It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired.
I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy.It could be months before regulators decide if they’ll allow Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, but critics of the deal are already sounding cautiously optimistic it’ll either be killed or heavily conditioned.
Comcast* officials say it’s way too early to start reading the tea leaves, with a spokeswoman noting that it’s “standard for the DOJ and FCC to do a thorough review of significant transactions, and we’ve always expected that.”
At the very least, federal regulators have taken out the magnifying glass. For the moment, government officials aren’t even talking yet about what conditions could be imposed on Comcast to allay concerns about the merger, according to several people close to the investigation.
“It’s a very serious review,” Gene Kimmelman, president of public interest group Public Knowledge, said in an interview. Kimmelman worked at the Justice Department’s antitrust division in 2011 when it killed AT&T’s $39 billion dream of owning T-Mobile.
1. Many, Many Complaints
Consumers rarely like cable or phone company mergers, mostly because they worry their bills will go up and the customer service will go down. The FCC has already gotten 81,000 comments, mostly from consumers.
Comcast, in particular, has a long history of customer service woes, which is why it won, for a second time this year, Consumerist’s dreaded “Golden Poo” award. Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable rank at the bottom of customer satisfaction surveys, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Comcast notes that hundreds of supportive lawmakers, local officials and nonprofits have asked regulators to approve the deal.
But corporate opponents are also weighing in. At least 19 parties have asked regulators to kill the acquisition, including Dish Networks, Netflix, Frontier Communications and Internet backbone provider Cogent Communications. Even a Miami-Dade refrigeration supply business owner who has spent nine years trying unsuccessfully to get Comcast to pay for roof damage he says was caused by one of their contractors, has asked regulators to deny it.
By contrast, the other big merger currently under review — AT&T’s $48 billion deal to buy DirecTV — attracted just five petitions to squash the merger, mostly from consumer groups.
2. Conditions? What Conditions?
Regulators usually impose conditions, or restrictions, on the company making a large acquisition — partly to make sure it plays fairly with competitors.
Comcast has already made some voluntary commitments to get the deal approved, but regulators are taking a closer look at industry complaints the cable giant hasn’t abided by conditions imposed on its acquisition of NBCUniversal three years ago.
For example, Bloomberg LP, which owns a cable network, filed a complaint against Comcast for failing to place its channel near other news channels, particularly Comcast-owned competitor CNBC. Comcast lost the suit after the FCC sided with Bloomberg.
Two years ago, the FCC fined Comcast $800,000 for not making it easy enough for customers to discover the $49.95 stand-alone Internet service the company had agreed to offer as a condition of its deal to acquire NBCUniversal in 2011.
In both cases, Comcast denied violating any merger conditions.
3. National or Local?
Comcast has repeatedly said that buying Time Warner Cable won’t decrease competition since the two companies don’t overlap in any markets, meaning a consumer will have no less choice if the merger goes through.
That’s true when you think about competition from a local perspective, but when it comes to broadband, antitrust officials may be looking at things more nationally, according to several people close to the deal.
The combined company would control at least 40 percent of the consumer market for broadband speeds of 25 Mbps or above, according to some estimates.
Comcast supporters argue the government has previously defined the broadband market on a local level. But the Feds famously reversed course in market definitions three years ago, when they declared the wireless market national (not local) and torpedoed AT&T’s bid to buy T-Mobile.
Some senior FCC officials always viewed the Comcast-TWC deal as more of a deal about Internet access. That’s why FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s recent speech about how the residential broadband market isn’t very competitive was seen as a bad thing for Comcast.
4. Some Call It Extortion
Companies and interest groups almost always use a big merger review as an opportunity to seek something from the company on the hot seat, whether it’s the promise of short-term rate freezes, discounted PCs for low-income kids or more favorable terms on a contract.
If they can’t get the company to cough up something voluntarily, they’ll ask the FCC to make their requests a condition on the deal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Consequently, Comcast |
supported Ukraine domestic forces and nationalist elements to stage a successful and deadly coup against then pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the outcome was supposed to be a nation that is a undisputed US ally and persistent threat, distraction and non-NATO opponent to bordering Russia. Instead, it now appears that it has been Ukraine which was, as the NYT writes, the secret behind the success of North Korea’s ballistic missile program.
Specifically, in a blockbuster report this morning, the NYT alleges that North Korea has been making black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory citing “expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.”
The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
According to the report, analysts who studied photographs of Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. “The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.”
Since the alleged engines have been linked to only a few former Soviet sites, government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.
However, after the 2014 coup which ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, the state-owned factory, known as Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet.
“The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.“
In other words, it is America’s latest Eastern European “ally” that is behind what is rapidly emerging as a potential nuclear threat that can blanket as much as half of the continental US.
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Elleman told the NYT in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”
Bolstering his conclusion, he added, was a finding by United Nations investigators that North Korea tried six years ago to steal missile secrets from the Ukrainian complex. Two North Koreans were caught, and a U.N. report said the information they tried to steal was focused on advanced “missile systems, liquid-propellant engines, spacecraft and missile fuel supply systems.” Investigators now believe that, amid the chaos of post-revolutionary Ukraine, Pyongyang tried again.
Considering Ukraine is a close US ally – just ask John McCain – maybe a phone call to current Ukraine president, oligarch billionaire Poroshenko, should suffice?
To be sure, the factory itself would never admit this stunning allegation: last month, Yuzhmash denied reports that the factory complex was struggling for survival and selling its technologies abroad, in particular to China. Its website says the company does not, has not and will not participate in “the transfer of potentially dangerous technologies outside Ukraine.”
Making matters worse of the US “allies” in Ukraine, American investigators do not believe that denial, though they say there is no evidence that the government of President Petro O. Poroshenko, who recently visited the White House, had any knowledge or control over what was happening inside the complex.
The obvious implication here is that – if accurate – Ukraine had been working with North Korea for years, well into the administration of Barack Obama, the same president under whom the Ukraine coup was greenlight, which would also suggest that the current North Korean crisis is explicitly a consequence of Obama’s foreign policies.
Which is why we read the following amusing disclaime in the NYT: “How the Russian-designed engines, called the RD-250, got to North Korea is still a mystery.”
Furthermore, Elleman told the NYT that the fact that the powerful engines did get to North Korea, despite a raft of United Nations sanctions, suggests a broad intelligence failure involving the many nations that monitor Pyongyang. Failure or perhaps just US intel closing its eyes to what Ukraine may be doing through the back door.
The NYT writes that “it is unclear who is responsible for selling the rockets and the design knowledge, and intelligence officials have differing theories about the details. But Mr. Elleman makes a strong circumstantial case that would implicate the deteriorating factory complex and its underemployed engineers. “I feel for those guys,” said Mr. Elleman, who visited the factory repeatedly a decade ago while working on federal projects to curb weapon threats. “They don’t want to do bad things.”
One can only imagine what Elleman would “feel for those guys” if the factory turned out to be Russian, or Chinese.
Describing North Korea’s long history of smuggling rocket technology over the decades – mostly from the former USSR – the NYT writes that eventually, the North turned to an alternative font of engine secrets — the Yuzhmash plant in Ukraine, as well as its design bureau, Yuzhnoye. The team’s engines were potentially easier to copy because they were designed not for cramped submarines but roomier land-based missiles. That simplified the engineering.
Economically, the plant and design bureau faced new headwinds after Russia in early 2014 invaded and annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine. Relations between the two nations turned icy, and Moscow withdrew plans to have Yuzhmash make new versions of the SS-18 missile. In July 2014, a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that such economic upset could put Ukrainian missile and atomic experts “out of work and could expose their crucial know-how to rogue regimes and proliferators.”
It was right: The first clues that a Ukrainian engine had fallen into North Korean hands came in September when Mr. Kim supervised a ground test of a new rocket engine that analysts called the biggest and most powerful to date. Norbert Brügge, a German analyst, reported that photos of the engine firing revealed strong similarities between it and the RD-250, a Yuzhmash model.
Alarms rang louder after a second ground firing of the North’s new engine, in March, and its powering of the flight in May of a new intermediate-range missile, the Hwasong-12. It broke the North’s record for missile distance. Its high trajectory, if leveled out, translated into about 2,800 miles, or far enough to fly beyond the American military base at Guam. On June 1, Mr. Elleman struck an apprehensive note. He argued that the potent engine clearly hailed from “a different manufacturer than all the other engines that we’ve seen.” Mr. Elleman said the North’s diversification into a new line of missile engines was important because it undermined the West’s assumptions about the nation’s missile prowess: “We could be in for surprises.” That is exactly what happened. The first of the North’s two tests in July of a new missile, the Hwasong-14, went a distance sufficient to threaten Alaska, surprising the intelligence community. The second went far enough to reach the West Coast, and perhaps Denver or Chicago.
If the NYT report is accurate, perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the logic behind ongoing US support of Ukraine: as a reminder, two weeks ago the WSJ reported that Pentagon and State Department officials have devised plans to hit Russia where it hurts the most, and supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry, and are now seeking White House approval at a time when ties between Moscow and Washington are as bad as during any point under the Obama administration. In light of the news that Ukraine may be responsible for weaponizing potentially the biggest nuclear threat to the US, perhaps it might not be a bad idea to “delay” or maybe even discontinue this deadly support for Ukraine, even if it means an outpouring of fury from neo-cons like John McCain.
* * *
Finally, in light of the above, perhaps it is time to re-address the following article from March 2015: “Clinton Foundation’s Deep Financial Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch Revealed” which based on a WSJ report, showed that more than any other nation, it was Ukraine donors that were the most generous, especially the Victor Pinchuk foundation: “Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.”
As the WSJ reported at the time:
In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a wing of the foundation that coordinates charitable projects and funding for them but doesn’t handle the money. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals “to modernize Ukraine,” according to the Clinton Foundation. Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament. The Pinchuk foundation said its donations were intended to help to make Ukraine “a successful, free, modern country based on European values.” It said that if Mr. Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department about Ukraine, “this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing.”
Source: www.zerohedge.com
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.Plans can always change but several top WWE NXT Superstars are in the current "Terry Taylor class" at the WWE Performance Center, which is the class that grooms talents who are being considered right now for "somewhat imminent" sports on WWE's main roster.
According to The Wrestling Observer, Superstars who are in the current class are TM-61, Hideo Itami, Kassius Ohno, Elias Samson, Tye Dillinger, Alexander Wolfe, Andrade "Cien" Almas, NXT Tag Team Champions Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa and NXT Champion Shinsuke Nakamura.
See Also Current WWE NXT Superstar To Be Featured In a Top Match at WrestleMania 33?
The next group under the current class, which aren't considered to be somewhat imminent but are the ones who will be moved up to the next class when top talents are called up, are The Authors of Pain, Roderick Strong, Dan Matha, Blake, Murphy, The Revival, Riddick Moss, Tino Sabbatelli, Aleister Black (Tommy End), Killian Dain (Big Damo) and Oney Lorcan.
Regarding a call-up for Bobby Roode, his deal is different and he doesn't train at the WWE Performance Center. The Observer adds that the same may go for Samoa Joe, Eric Young and Austin Aries, which means they wouldn't be in the classes.
Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Subscribe to The Wrestling Observer by clicking here. Each issue has coverage and analysis of all the major news, plus history pieces. New subscribers can also receive free classic issues.Exclusive: Official Washington’s anti-Russian “group think” is now so dominant that no one with career aspirations dares challenge it, a victory for “obscure” government bureaucrats, like Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
By Jonathan Marshall
History isn’t just made by impersonal forces and “great men” or “great women.” Sometimes relatively obscure men and women acting in key bureaucratic posts make a real difference.
Thus, the international crisis in Syria traces back in part to the decision of President Barack Obama’s first ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, to reject peaceful rapprochement with the Damascus regime in favor of “ radically redesign[ing] his mission ” to promote anti-government protests that triggered the civil war in 2011.
In much the same way, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland did her best to foment the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch against the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, “while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for ‘democracy,’” as journalist Robert Parry wrote last July.
Nuland, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and wife of neoconservative luminary Robert Kagan, helped achieve in Ukraine the kind of “regime change” that her husband had long promoted in the Middle East through the Project for a New American Century.
Nuland now has a new counterpart in the Department of Defense who bears close watching for signs of whether the Obama administration will keep escalating military confrontation with Russia over Eastern Europe, or look for opportunities to find common ground and ease tensions.
On Dec. 14, Dr. Michael Carpenter started work at the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, with added responsibilities for the Western Balkans and Conventional Arms Control. He replaced Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down in October.
Farkas was a firebrand who accused Russia of “shredding international law and conventions that have held firm for decades.” In a call to arms straight out of the early Cold War, she wrote recently, “Russia’s challenge is so fundamental to the international system, to democracy and free market capitalism that we cannot allow the Kremlin’s policy to succeed in Syria or elsewhere.”
In a remarkable display of “projection”, ascribing to others one’s own motives and actions, she declared that “Russia has invaded neighboring countries, occupied their territory, and funded NGOs and political parties not only in its periphery but also in NATO countries.” Its goal, she asserted, was nothing less than “breaking NATO, the European Union and transatlantic unity.”
Farkas declared that the United States must continue its military buildup to deter Russia; provide “lethal assistance” to countries on Russia’s periphery, including Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; and step up economic sanctions “to pressure Russia... so that U.S. national security interests and objectives prevail.”
With people like that helping to shape official policy over the past three years, it’s no wonder U.S.-Russia relations have hit such a low point. Might her replacement, Michael Carpenter, take a less confrontational approach?
Carpenter moved to the Pentagon from the office of Vice President Joe Biden, where he was special adviser for Europe and Eurasia. Previously he ran the Russia desk at the National Security Council and spent several years in the Foreign Service.
Carpenter has kept a low public profile, with few publications or speeches to his name. One of his few quasi-public appearances was this April at a symposium on “Baltic Defense & Security After Ukraine: New Challenges, New Threats,” sponsored by The Jamestown Foundation.
His prepared remarks were off the record, but they were greeted warmly, “you’ve hit it right on the head”, by discussant Kurt Volker, former NATO ambassador under President George W. Bush and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. McCain has demanded that the United States arm Ukraine to fight Russia and he helped inflame the Ukraine crisis by meeting with the anti-Semitic leader of the country’s right-wing nationalist party for photo-ops in 2013.
During a short Q&A session at the symposium, captured on video, Carpenter declared that “Russia has completely shredded the NATO-Russian Founding Act,” a choice of words strikingly reminiscent of Farkas’s denunciation of Russia for “shredding international law.” He accused Russia of “pursuing a neo-imperial revanchist policy” in Eastern Europe, inflammatory words that Sen. McCain lifted for an op-ed column in the Washington Post a couple of months later. Carpenter also indicated that he would personally favor permanent NATO bases in the Baltic states if such an escalation would not fragment the alliance.
The fact that Carpenter chose to make one of his few appearances at the The Jamestown Foundation is itself highly telling. According to IPS Right Web, which tracks conservative think tanks, the foundation’s president, Glen Howard, “is the former executive director of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a largely neoconservative-led campaign aimed at undermining Russia by bolstering U.S. support for militant nationalist and Islamist movements in the North Caucasus.” Howard has also been a consultant to the Pentagon and to “major oil companies operating in Central Asia and the Middle East.”
The foundation was formed in 1984 by “a leading Cold Warrior close to the Reagan administration,” with the blessing of CIA Director William Casey, to provide extra funding for Soviet bloc defectors to supplement meager stipends offered by the CIA. Its board members today include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and previous board members included Dick Cheney and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a prominent neoconservative activist.
All this matters hugely for several reasons. Increased confrontation with Russia, particularly along its highly sensitive Western border, will continue to poison relationships with Moscow that are crucial for achieving U.S. interests ranging from Afghanistan to Iran to Syria. Ratcheting up a new Cold War will divert tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending at the expense of domestic priorities.
Most important, the action-reaction cycle between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe is dramatically increasing chances for an unwanted, unneeded and disastrous war involving the world’s great nuclear powers. Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network, noted in a recent commentary for the Arms Control Association:
“Despite protestations by both sides that the exercises are aimed at no particular adversary, it is clear that each side is exercising with the most likely war plans of the other in mind. The Russian military is preparing for a confrontation with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a confrontation with Russia. This does not mean either side has the political intent to start a war, but it does mean that both believe a war is no longer unthinkable....
“Too few appear to recognize that the current cocktail of incidents, mistrust, changed military posture, and nuclear signaling is creating the conditions in which a single event or combination of events could result in a NATO-Russian war, even if neither side intends it.”
In such a way, the actions of relatively minor figures in history if their provocations are not reined in can lead the world to cataclysm.Tajik women walk at the Firdavsi street, Dushanbe, Tajikistan on August 6, 2012. Last month, the Tajik government passed a law that aims to discourage women from wearing the hijab. File photo by Igor Kovalenko/EPA
Sept. 3 (UPI) -- The government of Tajikistan, where 90 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, passed a law last week that discourages religious clothing, furthering a crackdown on religion by secular leaders.
Although the new law doesn't specifically mention the hijab or other articles of Islamic dress, it urges Tajiks to "stick to traditional and national clothes" and suggests that women wear their hair uncovered.
Tajikistan's Minister of Culture, Shamsiddin Orumbekzoda, told Radio Free Europe that urging women not to wear a hijab is about safety.
"It's really dangerous,"he said. "Everyone looks at them with concern, worried that they could be hiding something under their hijab."
But not everyone agrees with the law, including human rights activist Oinikol Bobonazarova, who said it is an affront against women's rights.
"I have to decide for myself what to wear," she said. "No one has the right to tell me, 'you have to wear this.'"
According to the Times of India, the law doesn't impose any penalties or fines at the moment, but some worry that this could be introduced at a later time.
However, there are already restrictions in place for wearers of the hijab. In Tajikistan, women wearing the religious garment are prohibited from entering government buildings. And in August, officials in the capital city of Dushanbe ordered 8,000 women wearing the hijab to wear it in the Tajik stye.
Over the past few years, the Tajikistan government has increased its control on religious expression. According to a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of State, the government passed a law that limits when and where hijabs can be worn, and also imposed restrictions on religious gatherings.
"The law regulates private celebrations and funeral services, including weddings and Mavludi Payghambar (the Prophet Muhammad's birthday)," the report stated. "The law limits the number of guests, eliminates engagement parties, and controls ceremonial gift presentations and other rituals."
In a 2016 report, Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said religious laws are part of a larger effort to silence political opposition.
"Tajikistan is in the midst of the worst political and religious crackdown since the end of the country's civil war, with hundreds of people landing behind bars for no other reason than their peaceful political work," he said.About
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A Puyallup mother investigating her son’s unexpected death has sued the Auburn funeral home that buried him, claiming workers there added insult to injury by botching his embalming.
Paula Harmes was looking for answers in July 2013 when she arranged to have her son Jacob Steinle’s body exhumed for a second autopsy. What she found were decomposed remains housed in a leaking casket, and fewer clues as to why the 34-year-old died.
Speaking Tuesday, Harmes said her investigators found what he was looking for despite the embalming failure – proof that her son died by homicide.
“There’s no other reason for my son to die,” Harmes said. “Thirty-four-year-olds don’t just die for no reason.”
“I just wanted to know I had something to say to my grandchildren,” she continued. “To say, I just didn’t leave this to say undetermined.”
Steinle was found dead in his Bellevue apartment on Feb. 14, 2012, four days after he was punched in the face during a scuffle outside a Bellevue Square-area bar. Steinle left behind two children, and, in death, plenty of questions.
An investigation by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office failed to determine what caused Steinle’s death, according to court records. Toxicology tests showed drugs weren’t to blame either.
In a separate wrongful death action, attorneys for Steinle’s estate claim he suffered a brain injury and seizure stemming from that punch. No criminal charges have been in the incident outside Munchbar, a Lincoln Square club that closed in 2012 after a deadly shooting there.
When it came time to inter Steinle, his family turned to Klontz Family Funeral Home. Writing the court, Harmes’ attorney Jason D. Anderson said his client paid more than $3,000 for the funeral service, which was to include embalming before Steinle was buried at Mountain View Cemetery.
Harmes had hoped to prove the cause of her son’s death with a second, private autopsy in July 2013. Harmes hired Dr. Werner Spitz, one of the world’s leading forensic pathologists, to examine her son.
Spitz arrived in Seattle on July 15, 2013, to find the Steinle’s casket waiting for him, Anderson said in court papers. Troublingly, it was leaking.
According to the lawsuit, Spitz quickly determined he couldn’t conduct a complete autopsy because Steinle hadn’t been embalmed properly.
Spitz did discover Steinle’s nose had been broken, a fact Harmes contends was missed during the initial autopsy. Spitz concluded head trauma sustained during the altercation resulted caused a deadly seizure.
In decayed state, Steinle’s body couldn’t be moved to a new casket or held out for a later funeral, as his family had planned. It had to be reburied immediately.
Standing by her son as he was buried a second time, Harmes noted tar-like globs strewn near the grave site, Anderson said in court papers. She believed at the time that they were simply earth kicked loose during the burial. She learned later that they were bits of her son.
Harmes “was horrified beyond words and could hardly begin to express the horror, shock, sadness, sorrow and pain of having been among her son’s strewn about remains,” the attorney said in court papers.
Gary Klontz, operator of Klontz Family Funeral Home, was not available for comment Monday. Klontz previously told KOMO News he was aware of the lawsuit and planned to respond to the allegations in court.
Speaking Monday, Anderson said his client hopes her lawsuit will protect others who may never know if their loved ones were handled properly after death.
“For her, this is about doing the right thing and about honoring Jacob’s memory,” Anderson said. “She’s genuinely concerned about other grieving families, since there is no way of knowing how many bodies were treated the same way.”
Harmes said she was moved by God to investigate her son’s death, and plans to continue that effort.
“I have not lost one ounce of faith through this,” she said. “My faith has only gotten stronger.”
Klontz has not yet responded to the lawsuit, which was filed June 16 in King County Superior Court.
A separate wrongful death action has been filed against Lincoln Square owner Kemper Development Co. and the former owner of Munchbar, as well as the man Steinle’s family claims punched him. That lawsuit is scheduled to go to a jury in March.
Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.Image: Getty
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
You know who had a bad week last week? The folks at Evernote.
The company's been raked over the coals by its users over a change to their privacy policy, that document on nearly every webpage that most people don't really read unless they're bored.
Well, someone read Evernote's policy and found out that the company was going to let engineers have access to user notes in an anonymized fashion. That didn't go over well, even after a defense by the company's CEO. The company eventually announced that it would back off the changes it was going to make, but think of it this way—at least there was a privacy policy there at all.
What if a company made a change like that without telling you? It'd be scary stuff. Let's talk about the online privacy policy, and why it matters.
"Modern information systems are essential to our economy. They contribute to the comfort and convenience of our lives. But they can be misused to create a dangerously intrusive society. Our challenge is to provide privacy safeguards that respond to these social changes without disrupting the essential flow of information."
— President Jimmy Carter, speaking on the importance having of a national privacy policy in a 1979 message to Congress. Carter's comments on the matter, which cited how "personal information on millions of Americans is being flashed across the nation from computer to computer," were perhaps the most significant comments a president had made on the importance of privacy up to that point. (Which, considering the NSA wiretapping program that existed under future presidents, must frustrate him a tad.) Carter's focus on privacy issues led to the passage of at least one important piece of legislation, the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which bars federal authorities from conducting unannounced searches of newsrooms in an attempt to find evidence. He didn't, however, have his hands on the first notable piece of modern consumer privacy legislation, the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
How the pre-internet era defined internet-era privacy policies
In many ways, the privacy policy has come to define our online experiences, but the concerns that led to its widespread use came not from the web, but everything that came before it.
Data collection—think credit scores and bill collectors—grew increasingly complex in the 1980s and 1990s, and this created a massive web of information that seemed to go all over the place. A 1991 Time piece breaks down how messy it was even back then:
To get a driver's license, a mortgage or a credit card, to be admitted to a hospital or to register the warranty on a new purchase, people routinely fill out forms providing a wealth of facts about themselves. Little of it remains confidential. Personal finances, medical history, purchasing habits and more are raked in by data companies. These firms combine the records with information drawn from other sources—for instance, from state governments that sell lists of driver's licenses, or the post office lists of addresses arranged according to ZIP code—to draw a clearer picture of an individual or a household.
The repackaged data—which often include hearsay and inaccuracies—are then sold to government agencies, mortgage lenders, retailers, small businesses, marketers and insurers. When making loan decisions, banks rely on credit-bureau reports about the applicant's bill-paying history. Employers often refer to them in making hiring decisions. Marketers use information about buying habits and income to target their mail-order and telephone pitches. Even government agencies are plugging into commercial databases to make decisions about eligibility for health-care benefits and Social Security.
If not handled correctly, there was a lot of potential for the internet to take these already troubling trends and turn them into full-blown disasters.
In the United States, no single law dealt with the concerns raised by this complex privacy trade that was forming as the technology started to allow it. Instead, it was a whole bunch of laws, many of them only covering the issue in pieces—likely due to the complexity of the situation described in the Time piece above.
Perhaps the two best-known examples of these laws came during the Clinton era: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the 1996 law specifically targeting healthcare disclosures; and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a 1998 law specifically targeting websites that market to children.
Bits and pieces of other laws also played a role in building this rule-making out—most notably, the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA), which represents the kind of comprehensive take on the issue at the state level that the US has never touched—but ultimately, the two factors that played a role in making privacy policies common all over the internet were the Federal Trade Commission, which first proposed the idea in 1995, and efforts by industry groups to self-regulate their own industry before the problems got any worse.
The FTC, which ultimately decided against pushing for new legislation to solve the problem, had a lot of work on its hands. According to a survey the FTC commissioned for a 1998 report to Congress, 85 percent of websites took some form of personal information from consumers, but just 14 percent provided any notice of this transaction, and just 2 percent had a comprehensive privacy policy to explain how the website used the data.
"The development of the online marketplace is at a critical juncture. If growing consumer concerns about online privacy are not addressed, electronic commerce will not reach its full potential," the report stated.
Electronic commerce definitely did meet its full potential. But ultimately, the mess of regulation was never fully spelled out by a single law, as it was in the European Union.
So as a result, privacy standards are completely spread out among US federal agencies. It mostly works, but it's messy.
"If you happen to see a posting anywhere on our site that you feel is objectionable, please utilize the emergency e-mail address listed in the Beanie Info section which will direct your message to one of my friends at Ty who will look into the matter as soon as possible."
— A portion of the privacy policy added to the Ty.com website in 1997, at a time when the standards on privacy policy were still fluid. (Also, how many rare Beanie Babies did Ty have to give to Network Solutions to get that two-letter domain name?) As the New York Times' Stuart Elliott reported at the time, the move to add the privacy policy came not because of federal regulations, but out of concerns raised by advocacy groups such as the Center for Media Education. It was an early example of the kind of self-regulation that has helped keep away more stringent privacy-policy rules.
Privacy policy uptake is a mobile problem, too, according to some new new research
As the Evernote saga recently showed, there are quite a few reasons for a privacy policy to exist, and one of those is that it helps the public know when the apps they use are breaking the contract between the company and the end user.
But what if that contract just wasn't there at all? Turns out that this is a more common situation than you'd think, in part due to lax detection and oversight. Last month, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University cranked up this discussion by analyzing 18,000 Android apps in Google's Play store, using a natural-language-driven approach that allowed the researchers to dive through all 18,000 apps at a rate of around one every six seconds.
"With a few servers, we should be able to scan all the free apps in the Google Play store every month," noted Norman Sadeh, the computer science professor that led the research.
Nearly as crazy as the research strategy were the results: Roughly half of the apps studied didn't have privacy policies at all, despite the fact that more than two thirds of apps (71 percent) used some form of personally identifiable information on the part of the user. (Which makes sense: A mapping app is likely to ask for data that identifies you, because of how digital mapping works at a base level.)
California's CalOPPA obviously mandates that a privacy policy be there, so CMU's researchers are working with the state's attorney general's office to help boost compliance checking.
Sadeh admitted that a second layer of research, this time with human hands, was necessary to check the results.
"Just because the automated system finds a possible privacy requirement inconsistency in an app does not mean that a problem necessarily exists," he admitted in a news release.
But even if a hand-counting found that the result was slightly off, the stats would still make sense as a whole. Privacy policies are pretty much the most boring, least interesting part of any website. It's legalese. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Ain't nobody got time, that is, unless proof of its value stares developers in the face.
Perhaps that's why the Evernote saga is so useful. It shows that the public actually cares about boilerplate language—whether it's federally mandated or not.
About a year ago, I spent a couple of days writing up a privacy policy for my website Tedium.
It's relatively boilerplate, and probably needs an update at some point, but I tried to write it so that, if you were to stumble upon this page, it would not be the most boring thing on the internet. I also tried to give it to you straight—yes, we advertise, and we do so in a specific way; yes, of course we ask for your email address, this is a newsletter; no, we won't be able to figure out your credit card number from all this.
It wasn't hard, but it was different from my normal kind of writing. But I remember that trying to find information on how to put one together was a little confusing, only partly because of the fact that "privacy policy" is a goddamn failure of an SEO keyword. Part of the problem is that, because no firm, singular path was set on the issue way back when, it's difficult to know exactly what the right way to go is when writing such a document. It doesn't help that different federal agencies control specific aspects of the digital regulatory infrastructure.
Michelle De Mooy, the acting director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Privacy and Data Project, told The Hill this month that the US is a rarity in terms of how complicated its data laws are, with the lack of a comprehensive law on the issue that covers every aspect of life ultimately harming the United States by keeping outdated regulations on the books.
"There are only two countries in the developed world with no baseline privacy standards," she said. "One is the United States. The other is Turkey."
The confusion around what a privacy policy is actually supposed to be is just one way that that issue manifests itself on a daily basis. Whether or not it's a problem that needs fixing? That's another question entirely.PARIS -- French authorities say a man has been given preliminary terrorism charges for plotting a possible attack on President Emmanuel Macron or minority groups.
Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said Monday that the 23-year-old suspect |
poduzetim aktivnostima na uspostavi sustava sigurnosti“, a kojega je direktor Karamarkove tvrtke Soboli d.o.o. uputio Svemiru Vrsaljku, zaduženom za poslove sigurnosti u HAC-u, ali i nekadašnjem Karamarkovom kolegi iz zadarske policije, zavičajno, poslovno i prijateljski povezanim sa današnjim ministrom unutarnjih poslova Tomislavom Karamarkom.
Iz ovog dokumenta je jasno kako su ovlaštene osobe u HAC-u, pa čak i prethodna Uprava HAC-a, danas uglavnom optužena za organizirani kriminal i korupciju, ugovarali određene poslove s Karamarkovim Sobolijem, te kako su ugovori potpisani sa Sobolijem u veljači 2010. godine, zapravo, samo nastavak već ranije ugovorene i dogovorene poslovne suradnje Tomislava Karamarka s članovima Uprave HAC-a, od kojih je danas većina pod optužbama zbog korupcije smijenjena u HAC-u.
Da su dogovori o dodjeli poslova Karamarkovom Soboliju postojali još od siječnja 2008. godine, potvrđuje i sadržaj uvodnog dijela navedenog dokumenta, kojeg potpisuje Karamarkov poslovni partner i direktor tvrtke Soboli d.o.o. Davorin Pavlović.
„Provedba zaključaka i preporuka iz Politike sigurnosti HAC d.o.o. predstavlja polaznu točku za razvoj cjelovitog sustava sigurnosti društva.
…
Dokument „Politika sigurnosti HAC d.o.o.“ nastao je kao rezultat svijesti o potrebi, da se problematici sigurnosti Hrvatskih autocesta d.o.o. kao jednog od temeljnih čimbenika razvoja cestovnog prometa Republike Hrvatske, posveti pozornost primjena: aktualnim uvjetima rizika i ugroza iz užeg i šireg okruženja, potrebama izvršavanja temeljne djelatnosti, obvezama koje proizlaze iz postojeće zakonske regulative i normama koje propisuju mjerodavne (i nadležne) međunarodne institucije i strukovne asocijacije.
Cjelovit sustav sigurnosti može se uspostaviti samo na jedan način, a to je s projektnim pristupom kojeg izvodi određeni stručni tim sa zadaćom izrade elaborata sigurnosti.
U cjelovitom sustavu sigurnosti primarni cilj je identifikacija i analiza rizika radi izrade odgovarajućih procjena ugroženosti“, stoji u dokumentu kojeg je Soboli d.o.o. uputio HAC-u u siječnju 2008. godine.
„Sukladno dogovorenim poslovima na spostavi cjelovitog sustava sigurnosti stručni timovi Soboli d.o.o. su u proteklom periodu poduzeli slijedeće aktivnosti: pregledali podatke društva o politici i postupanju s aspekta sigurnosti; prikupljali podatke o organizaciji i aktivnostima koje su poduzete u svrhu utvrđivanja rizika i u kojoj mjeri su percipirani kao odgovornost uprave; pregledali dokumentaciju o mjerama sigurnosti i zaštite postojećih resursa društva; intervjuirali rukovoditelje pojedinih poslovnih jedinica radi prikupljanja važnih informacija o stanju sigurnosti, sigurnosnim problemima, evidentiranim rizicima i ugrožavanjima; obišli sve objekte (baze TJO, mostove, tunele, nadvožnjake, podvožnjake, čvorišta, prateći uslužni objekti) na autocesti A-1 od Bosiljeva do Šestanovca radi neposrednog uvida s ciljem snimanja postojećeg stanja sigurnosti i uočavanja kritičnih točki“, stoji u dokumentu kojeg je Karamarkov direktor Davorin Pavlović 28. siječnja 2008. godine uputio HAC-ovoj osobi ovlaštenoj za poslove sigurnosti, bivšem MUP-ovcu Svemiru Vrsaljku.
Da se doista radi o poslovima, odnosno o postupku javne nabave i javnim natječajima koji su zaključeni u veljači 2010. godine ugovorima potpisanim između HAC-a i Soboli d.o.o., a zapravo se radi o montiranim javnim natječajima koji su raspisani na temelju dogovora sa Karamarkovom tvrtkom Soboli, na način da na natječaju „prođe“ upravo Karamarkovo poduzeće, svjedoči i zaključni dio dokumenta iz 2008. godine, iz kojeg je potpuno jasno kako je već tada Uprava HAC-a s direktorom Soboli d.o.o. Davorinom Pavlovićem, dogovorila ugovaranje poslova, koji su ugovoreno navedenim ugovorima iz veljače 2010. godine.
„… Temeljem svega navedenog predlaže se primjena integralnog koncepta zaštite s ciljem zaštite štićenih objekta sustavima tehničke zaštite i primjene odgovarajućih mjera tjelesne zaštite koje čine: … centračizaciju i nadzor svih alarmnih i drugih tehničkih informacija na jednom mjestu u cilju uspostave stalnog operativno komunikacijskog centra koji bi bio nadležan za cijeli sustav Hrvatskih autocesta.
…
Trenutno je u izradi idejno rješenje Operativno komunikacijskog centra koji će biti prezentiran Upravi HAC-a krajem travnja 2008. godine“, zaključuje Pavlović u svojem dopisu Vrsaljku.
Drugim riječima, prema dogovoru Uprave HAC-a i Karamarkovog Sobolija, Soboli je prvo angažiran za sve pripremne radnje koje su prethodile natječajima koji su zaključeni 2010. godine, te su prema tako dogovorenim projektima, koje je Soboli izradio u dogovoru s Upravom HAC-a, raspisani natječaji, na temelju kojih je u veljači 2010. godine upravo tvrtka ministra unutarnjih poslova Tomislava Karamarka ugovorila višemilijunske poslove za Hrvatske autoceste.
Osim navedenog, USKOK-u bi, kako doznajem, mogla biti sumnjiva i svojevremena nabavka helikoptera preko tvrtke Soboli.
Postoje, naime, sumnje kako je MUP svojevremeno uz posredovanje HAC-a nabavljao helikoptere vrijedne 100 milijuna kuna, upravo preko tvrtke Soboli d.o.o. Stoga se postavlja pitanje Karamarkove odgovornosti i mogućeg sukoba interesa u kojem se našao, te moguće korupcije u slučaju ove nabavke opreme za MUP preko HAC-a, isključivo iz razloga kako bi se prikrio Karamarkov sukob interesa.
Krajem siječnja 2010. godine Hrvatske autoceste raspisale su javni natječaj za nabavku dvaju helikoptera vrijednih čak 100 milijuna kuna, pod opravdanjem kako se radi o helikopterima za nadzor cesta te pružanje hitne pomoći unesrećenima u prometu na cestama.
„Cilj je podizanje razine sigurnosti na autocestama i to posebno smanjiti broj smrtno stradalih u teškim nesrećama u tzv. zlatnom satu, to je onaj period prijevoza od autocesta do bolnice“, izjavili su tada iz Uprave Hrvatskih autocesta opravdavajući raspisivanje ovog natječaja.
Međutim, sudeći prema informacijama iz Ministarstva unutarnjih poslova, radilo se o unaprijed dogovorenom poslu ministra Tomislava Karamarka, Ministarstva unutarnjih poslova, Hrvatskih autocesta i tvrtke Soboli d.o.o. Drugim riječima, HAC je u nabavci ovih helikoptera vrijednih 100 milijuna kuna služio isključivo kao posrednik kako bi se prikrila činjenica da tadašnji ministar unutarnjih poslova Tomislav Karamarko nabavlja helikoptere za Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova preko svojeg poduzeća, odnosno dogovor oko posredovanja HAC-a u ovoj nabavci helikoptera očito je služio prikrivanju sukoba interesa u kojem se Karamarko našao prilikom nabavke ovih helikoptera.
Nadalje, USKOK istražuje i poslove tvrtke Soboli s Podravkom, a glavni trag u tom dijelu istrage u Slučaju Soboli je dokument iz financijske knjigovodstvene dokumentacije Podravke d.d., koji dokazuje kako su uhićeni menadžeri Podravke čak i neposredno prije uhićenja isplaćivali pozamašne financijske iznose poduzeću Soboli d.o.o. Dokument dokazuje kako se u Aferi Podravka tadašnji ministar Karamarko otvoreno našao u sukobu interesa, a financijsko poslovna povezanost Karamarkove tvrtke s Podravkom otvara i pitanje njegove možebitne umiješanosti u Aferu Podravka.
Knjigovodstvena dokumentacija koju su istražitelji pokušali prikriti dokazuje kako su uhićeni menadžeri Podravke od siječnja do prosinca 2009. godine odobravali redovite gotovinske isplate na račune Karamarkovog poduzeća Soboli d.o.o.
Financijski transferi Karamarkovom poduzeću u knjigovodstvu su prikazani kao plaćanje konzultantskih usluga, usluga stručnog nadzora, te drugih neidentificiranih poslova koje je Karamarkova tvrtka obavljala za Podravku d.d.
Tako je tvrtka ministra unutarnjih poslova 30. siječnja 2009. godine Podravci uputila čak dvije fakture, prvu u iznosu od 90 tisuća 255,60 kuna, te drugu u iznosu od 9 tisuća 744,40 kuna, dok je 31. siječnja 2009. Soboli d.o.o. Podravci uputila fakturu na iznos od 75 tisuća 213 kuna.
Dana 2. veljače 2009. godine Karamarkova tvrtka uputila je Podravci na plaćanje fakturu u iznosu od 213 tisuća 100,80 kuna; a 6. veljače 2009. godine Soboli d.o.o. je Podravci d.d. uputila fakturu na iznos od 42 tisuće 344 kune.
Dana 28. veljače 2009. godine Karamarkovo poduzeće Podravci je uputilo fakturu za drugu ratu za plaćanje konzultantskih ugovora u iznosu od 75 tisuća 213 kuna, kao i 31. siječnja iste godine; dok je 3. travnja 2009. godine Podravci upućena faktura na iznos od 192 tisuće 760 kuna, za koje plaćanje u Podravkinom knjigovodstvu nije naveden poseban opis svrhe ovog plaćanja tvrtki Soboli d.o.o.
Dana 30. travnja 2009. godine Soboli d.o.o. je Podravci uputila fakturu za plaćanje treće rate konzultantskih usluga, na isti iznos kao i 31. siječnja i 28. veljače iste godine, točnije na iznos od 75 tisuća 213 kuna; a faktura na isti iznos upućena je Podravci i 29. svibnja 2009. godine, kao i 30. lipnja i 31. srpnja 2009. godine.
Dana 2. srpnja 2009. godine Soboli d.o.o. je fakturirala Podravci iznos od 36 tisuća 600 kuna, za usluge stručnog nadzora; dok je 31. kolovoza 2009. godine fakturiran iznos od 49 tisuća 574 kune.
Istoga dana, 31. kolovoza 2009. godine Karamarkovo je poduzeće Podravci uputilo još jednu fakturu na znatno veći iznos u visini od 150 tisuća 426 kuna; te je istovremeno fakturirana još jedna rata za konzultantske usluge na iznos od 75 tisuća 829,50 kuna.
Već 1. rujna 2009. godine Soboli d.o.o. je fakturirala Podravci novu fakturu u iznosu od čak 246 tisuća kuna, sa svrhom plaćanja za „konzultantske usluge“, a ista takva faktura upućena je Podravci i dana 1. listopada 2009. godine, dok je 29. rujna 2009. godine Podravci upućena faktura na iznos od 75 tisuća 829,50 kuna.
Dana 6. listopada 2009. godine Karamarkova tvrtka uputila je Podravci čak tri računa na plaćanje i to prvi u iznosu od 25 tisuća 639 kuna; drugi u iznosu od 111 tisuća 813 kuna, i treći u iznosu od 12 tisuća 548 kuna.
Dana 15. listopada Soboli d.o.o. je uputila Podravci dvije velike fakture, prvu na iznos od 136 tisuća 718,50 kuna i drugu na iznos od 63 tisuće 281,50 kuna.
Dvije su fakture upućene Podravci i dana 20. listopada 2009. godine, i to na iznos od 109 tisuća 281,50 kuna i 90 tisuća 718,50 kuna, te 22. listopada na iznose od 75 tisuća 829,50 kuna i 155 tisuća 281,50 kuna.
U USKOK-u očito smatraju kako su im raspoloživi dokazi bili dovoljno da ne odbace kaznenu prijavu protiv Tomislava Karamarka u Slučaju Soboli, te da formiraju spis tog slučaja i nastave istragu protiv sadašnjeg kandidata za šefa oporbe.
U međuvremenu se i njegov HDZ našao na optuženičkoj klupi kao kriminalna organizacija, pa doduše ispada u dobroj mjeri prigodno njegovo preuzimanje stranke. Jer tko bi bolje vodio tu političku mafiju nego čovjek s ovakvim iskustvom, i lice s USKOK-ove istražnice.
Pokažu li se točnim informacije o njegovoj prednosti na HDZ-ovim unutarstranačkim izborima, tada je sasvim izvjesno da na čelo HDZ-a i nakon Sanadera dolazi neki novi sanader.Winds of Change: How to Stop Talking and Take Action Instead
Charles Chu Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 26, 2016
Two years ago, I quit my job, got rid of 95% of my things, traveled to 7 countries, learned to program, tripled my freelancing rate, read 200+ books, and wrote over a million words.
And I’m just getting started.
I’m not here to brag. The point is, I wasn’t born with it.
Two years ago, I was working a dead-end job. Two years before that, I was a hopeless college student, eating crap, hating my life, skipping class, and playing video games (League of Legends, anyone?) for 10 hours a day.
Where did this massive change come from?
VISION — targets, sails, ethics, philosophy…
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. — Seneca
99% of people don’t realize: How can you change if you don’t know where you are going?
People who fail don’t know what they want from life. They’ve never even stopped to think about it. They copy what’s in fashion, fail, and spew fucking excuses about why life isn’t fair.
Don’t be that person. Figure out what port you are sailing for.
Here’s how —
Find your heroes. Don’t know what you want? Can’t put it into words? I didn’t either. But I bet you’ve been massively inspired by certain kinds of people. Maybe it was that movie that sent shivers down your spine. Or that Rothfuss novel that sent you bouncing off the sofa. Maybe it was that Superman comic in 4th grade. Seek out people who inspire you. Study them.
Don’t know what you want? Can’t put it into words? I didn’t either. But I bet you’ve been massively inspired by certain kinds of people. Maybe it was that movie that sent shivers down your spine. Or that Rothfuss novel that sent you bouncing off the sofa. Maybe it was that Superman comic in 4th grade. Seek out people who inspire you. Study them. Read. A lot. That year, stuck in a dead-end job and lost for where to go with my life, I turned to…books. And I read. A lot. More than 200 books that year, in fact. Most books were alright. Sometimes, though, a book would completely change how I saw the world. Books like NNT’s Antifragile, SM’s Gateless, TF’s The 4-Hour Workweek. Slowly, I started to figure it out. My direction. My vision.
That year, stuck in a dead-end job and lost for where to go with my life, I turned to…books. And I read. A lot. More than 200 books that year, in fact. Most books were alright. Sometimes, though, a book would completely change how I saw the world. Books like NNT’s Antifragile, SM’s Gateless, TF’s The 4-Hour Workweek. Slowly, I started to figure it out. My direction. My vision. Challenge assumptions. Progress doesn’t come from the status quo. If you take the average road…guess what? You get average results. Sheep are sheep are sheep. Ask, “What do most people believe that isn’t true?” Start thinking different. Seeing different.
Progress doesn’t come from the status quo. If you take the average road…guess what? You get average results. Sheep are sheep are sheep. Ask, “What do most people believe that isn’t true?” Start thinking different. Seeing different. Build your philosophy. Where does massive action come from? Where is the wellspring of motivation? At the bottom of it all is your belief. You’ve found your heroes. You’ve read a lot of books. You’ve asked questions. Now…find your principles. What makes you shiver with excitement every morning? Where does deep satisfaction come from? How will you add value to the world? Write your principles down. Tear them apart. Rebuild them. Your philosophy is everything; make sure it doesn’t suck.
Okay, you’ve started to see the world differently. People are starting to look at you strange. Kids, we’re just getting started. What’s next?
ACTION — plans, brains, networks, carrots, sticks…
Some will get this far. They manage to build their mental fortress, their mental framework for seeing the world. But then…nothing happens. We want results. We want change. But we can’t. WHY? Because we suck at execution. And execution is 90% of the game…
I’ve spent hours writing this, and I’ve got to go.
For now, a summary —Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters on the tarmac at Westchester County Airport on Sept. 8 in White Plains, New York. | Getty Clinton to convene meeting with Petraeus, other national security experts
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton will meet with a bipartisan group of former national security officials on Friday, a group that includes ousted former CIA Director David Petraeus and former George W. Bush Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.
The meeting, announced on Thursday morning as Clinton spoke to reporters outside her campaign plane before a campaign stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, will be a "working session" held at the New York Historical Society, according to a campaign official.
Story Continued Below
Clinton has striven to prove the distance between her and Donald Trump on foreign policy, gathering endorsements from a broad array of Democratic and Republican security experts. Friday's meeting, however, includes some of the most famous and controversial experts to sit down with her yet.
It comes on the heels of Wednesday evening's commander-in-chief forum, from which the Clinton campaign was eager to move on after a defensive performance that officials believed was too friendly to the Republican nominee.
Petraeus, a former commander of U.S. Central Command who was occasionally courted by Republicans to run for president in previous cycles before he left the CIA because of a scandal involving a lover in 2012, is the biggest name on the list.
Chertoff's addition is also noteworthy, given his high rank in a Republican administration whose foreign policy Democrats have excoriated for years.
Others on the list — which is not yet final — include former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; John Allen, the former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL; former acting Homeland Security Secretary Rand Beers; former acting deputy CIA director Michael Morell; former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen; and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe James Stavridis, who Clinton briefly considered as a running mate earlier this year.
"She's convening this working session of bipartisan national security leaders and experts to work on concrete solutions that will deal with the threat of terrorism at home and abroad and keep our people safe," said senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan.The Russian Sleep Experiment is based on the online Short Story of the same name by an anonymous author. In post WW2, three Nazi war criminals are in custody by a group of Russian Scientist. For thirty days the three men are exposed to a gas in an isolated chamber that keeps them awake. Meanwhile, the Russian Experimenter takes logs on the men and their psychological behavior. The three men slowly get aquatinted with each other revealing their violent past and realizing that although they fought for the same cause, they are very different people. Madness slowly seeps into the chamber as the experiment continues causing disturbing hallucinations, violent outbursts and for one man to scream until his vocal chords erupt. You will truly question morality as these historical monsters are put in a hellish environment that some would call deserved. To make this story come to life we need a suitable environment to film in. After searching for the best location available we came across a large, sinister space in Downtown Detroit. With your help in funding we can make The Russian Sleep Experiment more than just a camp fire story but a short film that will go down in the history books as one of the most psychologically disturbing short films ever created.
Visualizing the Film
Working with Director Tim Smith, is Cinematographer Brandan Lee Keller. He has worked on projects ranging from music videos, to corporate commercials, brand videos, weddings, to films. Last summer he was Director of Photography on the independent feature "Sincere Allegiance" which is currently in Post Production.
Recently he released a video he directed, filmed, and edited, with the band SycAmour, signed to Hopeless Records.
Watch Here! smarturl.it/renaissancevideo
With his help, we are shooting with a RED One Digital Cinema Camera, as well as a Panasonic GH4, to provide the most aesthetically pleasing visuals as possible.
Watch More Work Samples Here! vimeo.com/brandanleekeller
Examples of Photography here! flickr.com/brandanleekellerThe Cold War is back.
Russia's military seizure of Crimea and preparations for a possible annexation of the southern Ukrainian province have revived fears, calculations and reflexes that had been rusting away since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Whether the crisis triggered by President Vladimir Putin's attempt to prevent Ukraine, a strategic former Soviet republic, turning to the West, becomes a turning point in international relations like the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States or the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, is not yet certain. There are still some steps to play out.
But policymakers and strategic analysts are thinking through the consequences of a potentially prolonged East-West tug-of-war. And states in the middle such as Germany and Poland are starting to weigh uncomfortable adjustments to their policy.
The standoff is already posing tricky questions about the balance between sanctions and diplomacy, setting loyalty tests for allies and raising the risk of spillover to other conflicts and of possible proxy wars.
"Welcome to Cold War Two," Russian analyst Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace declared in an article for Foreign Policy magazine.
"The recent developments have effectively put an end to the interregnum of partnership and cooperation between the West and Russia that generally prevailed in the quarter-century after the Cold War," he said.
Trenin is not alone in seeing the struggle for Ukraine as the biggest game-changer in European security since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
While no one imagines the superpowers returning to a hair-trigger nuclear confrontation or a bloc-against-bloc military buildup - for starters, Russia no longer has a bloc -the knock-on implications for other security problems, and for the world economy, are significant.
Frozen conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan, all "near abroad" post-Soviet states, could be reactivated.
In Berlin, policymakers worry that Russia could raise the stakes by stopping cooperation with the West over Iran's nuclear programme, the civil war in Syria, security in Afghanistan and managing North Korea's unpredictable leader.
Any one of those could make life more uncomfortable for the United States and its European and Asian allies by destabilising the Middle East and southern Asia or raising tension on the Korean peninsula.
"This is the big one"
The realisation that Germany, Europe's central power, has no special influence with Russia when the geopolitical chips are down, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel has been unable to sway Putin despite their common languages, has concentrated minds.
In hindsight, Russia's 2008 military intervention in breakaway regions of Georgia was a dry run. It had less global impact partly because an erratic Georgian leader fired the first shots, but also because it barely changed the status quo.
"Ukraine is different. It's on the fault line and it's too big," says Constanze Stelzenmueller, senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund think-tank, who led a recent major study on Germany's new foreign and security policy.
"Now we are entering a systemic competition. That's why I think the Cold War analogy is accurate. If you're in Berlin, that's the way it feels. This is the big one."
Despite its strong economic interests in Russia, where 6,200 German companies do business, and its dependency on Russian natural gas for 40 percent of supplies, Stelzenmueller expects Germany to "surprise on the upside by being firm".
Moscow is only Berlin's 11th trade partner, below Poland. Germany's main trade body said last week a trade conflict between the two would hurt German business but it would be life-threatening for a stagnant Russian economy.
As former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten observes, while almost every European household owns goods made in China, few if any have anything produced in Russia, except gas and vodka.
Central European economies could be severely disrupted if Moscow played with the gas taps, but stocks are high, winter is over and Russia needs the revenue.
Going neutral?
In Cold War One, hawks in the United States and western Europe fretted that then West Germany could turn neutral in its pursuit of detente with the Soviet Union and its east European allies, including communist East Germany.
That never happened. Bonn remained firmly anchored in the Western political and military camp. But there were some epic transatlantic battles along the way.
They included a 1982 clash with the United States over a German-Soviet gas pipeline deal which the Reagan administration feared would make West Germany dangerously dependent on Moscow.
The Germans stood their ground. The pipeline was built and is one reason why Germany remains so hooked on Russian energy.
That dispute - just a year after a Moscow-inspired military crackdown in Poland - may have lessons for any new Cold War.
A year later, Bonn withstood mass protests and threats from Moscow to deploy US medium-range nuclear missiles on its soil in response to Soviet SS-20 rockets pointed at the West. That led eventually to a negotiated end to the East-West arms race.
Then as now, a perceived Russian threat ultimately united Europeans and the United States, despite public misgivings reflected today in opinion polls showing neither Germans nor Americans are keen to get tough with Russia.
Then as now, both Moscow and the West turned to China to try to tip the balance. Then as now, US strategists traded charges of appeasement and warmongering as they argued over the right policy mix between containing Russia and taking its interests into account.
If Putin moves to annex Crimea, Europeans may soon have to contemplate awkward sacrifices to show their resolve.
For France, this could mean suspending a contract to sell helicopter carriers to Russia. For Britain, closing its mansions and bank vaults to magnates close to Putin. For Germany, initiating gradual steps to reduce dependency on Russian gas.
It will take Cold War-style determination for any of that to happen. Maintaining EU unity if the going gets tough, with states in southern Europe such as Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria closer to Moscow, could prove a challenge.
First Published: Mar 18, 2014 15:41 ISTRobert Lewandowski: Likely to be working closely with Uli Hoeness
The Poland striker did not mention Bayern by name but told Sport Bild magazine he was keen for a move to his "dream club" to happen this month rather than playing out the final year of his contract with Dortmund.
Lewandowski, 24, has reportedly already agreed terms with Bayern, and will join next summer if not this.
"I expect everything to be cleared up now so that I will be allowed to move to my dream club this summer," he said.
"That would be the best for everybody involved."
Should Lewandowski move to the European and Bundesliga champions, he would follow team-mate Mario Gotze, whose controversial transfer was confirmed just prior to Dortmund's Champions League semi-final tie with Real Madrid.
His loss would therefore be a second major blow to the 2011 and 2012 Bundesliga champions as they bid to keep up with record-breaking Bayern next season.
Lewandowski says his preference to leave is not because he is unhappy in Dortmund.
"Dortmund are a fantastic club whom I will always admire," he said.
"It's just now I want a new challenge for my future."BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Sunday called for a cess to be imposed for funding gaushalas across the country. “In 1962 when China attacked India, an appeal was made to contribute to the defence fund. That is the mood of the country now. If we ask to pay Re 1 on petrol for gaushalas, the country will be flooded with money.” Swamy was speaking at a national conference for cow protection organised by the Virat Hindustan Sangam at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Dalal Street on Sunday. He added, “Cow production cess will be applied to all, Hindus and Muslims, since we tax everybody equally.”
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Three brown cows stood at the entrance of the country’s premier stock exchange as gaurakshaks, businessmen, spiritual leaders, politicians, senior citizens and small-time cow shelter owners attended the conference. “Gaurakshaks are performing a great service. We must give them a certification. A national cadre called Gaurakshaks of Hindustan must be made,” said the BJP leader.
Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir, among the dignitaries at the conference, said it is difficult for farmers to afford old cows which stop milking. “I proposed to use 7 crore hectare of forest land for cow sanctuary. If we want to protect cows, a demand should be made to the government. People should ask the government to create a cow sanctuary just like a tiger sanctuary,” said Ahir, adding that gaushalas are overflowing and a farmer will be forced to sell his cow if no other provision is made to safeguard them. “We have raised enough awareness about cow slaughter. Now we should generate forest grass as fodder for cows,” added Ahir.
Several speakers gave suggestions about how to protect cows. Hrishikesh Mafatlal, vice chairman of Arvind Mafatlal Group, said that companies must conduct research on cow products and make efforts for cow safety under their corporate social responsibility. Swami Arihant, founder of Urjaa World Foundation, proposed that compulsory chapters be introduced in school curricula on cow protection. “We don’t need andolans, we need education. Our children have started going to convent schools and western culture is prevailing. We need to introduce chapters on cow and its protection,” he said.
From claims that cows can cure advanced cancer, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease, to how best to tap the export market for milk and on making cow the national animal, a variety of topics about cows were discussed at the conference. “Cow is the national animal in Nepal and its slaughter and marketing is banned. No other animal has received this stature in our scriptures,” said Deep Upadhyay, Nepal’s Ambassador to India who attended the event.
Swamy said that his government has two more years and he is hopeful that the private bill he introduced in Rajya Sabha to give death penalty to cow slaughterers will come through.
“The identity of India shall remain Hindu. I say this is Hindustan to keep a door open for non-Hindus who are ready to accept their identity… that their ancestors were all Hindus,” Swamy said. He said that fundamental rights have a reasonable restriction. “There is no such thing as absolute fundamental right. The right to eat beef is subject to ‘reasonable restrictions’ in the Constitution. Soon, a national ban will be announced on cow slaughter and consumption.”
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us hoped would never begin. Queens Park Rangers’ long 48 game slog through the winter starts with a visit from losing play-off finalists Reading on Saturday, and looks even longer and sloggier than usual.
The congregation in the parish of Shepherd’s Bush is dwindling in number and low on optimism. The general consensus is a team that proved short of goals at the right end and overly generous at the other last season only looks likely to be just as profligate and leaky this. Parachute payments are down to £10m and cease altogether at the end of next season – belts are being tightened accordingly at a time when Championship transfer fees are exploding. Rangers lost seven of their last eight games last season having lost six in a row over Christmas and it’s hard for many to see exactly how and why things will be different this time around.
This pessimism, while not good for gate receipts, may not be such a bad thing for the team. In everything from individual signings and matches up to entire seasons, it seems that QPR fair a lot better when expectations are low.
After two successive near misses with relegation few held out much hope for anything in 1999/00 when the Chris Wright money dried up altogether and Gerry Francis was forced to shop at Aylesbury (Jermaine Darlington), Saffron Walden (Stuart Wardley) and East Ham United (Ross Weare). In actual fact Francis cobbled together a super little team, led from the front by free transfer Chris Kiwomya and Bradford bargain Rob Steiner – Rangers finished in the top half and threatened a play-off push at one stage. There was a good deal more to spend in 2010/11 but years of rapid management rotation and a host of expensive flop signings had long since rubbed the gleam off Flavio Briatore’s much heralded takeover of the club. Neil Warnock signing crusty old has beens like Shaun Derry, Clint Hill and, fresh from a lengthy drug ban, Paddy Kenny, looked like a dodgy jobs for the boys act and yet Rangers won the division in fine style.
By contrast when Briatore’s money brought a whole new squad for Iain Dowie to take charge of in 2008/09 expectations – inflamed by eye-watering season ticket price hikes – were so ludicrously high that it took just 15 minutes of the first game of the season for the Loftus Road crowd to start chanting Lee Camp’s name at his replacement Radek Cerny on his first ever appearance for the club. And when Uncle Tony and Meticulous Mark went on their infamous trolley dash around Kia Joorabchian’s Mega-Mart there were hopes of European football, even Champions League qualification, on the message boards until a 5-0 opening day loss to Swansea brought home the stark reality. Rangers would win only four times all season in 2013/14. At QPR it seems we often find things aren’t as good as they seem when they’re going well, nor as bad as we think they are when they’re not.
I’m sure you’ll have heard already – and if not won’t be long into your first pint tomorrow before you do – what a horrendously difficult league the Championship is going to be this season. “The toughest ever I reckon” according to some bloke down the White Horse who knew for definite. Let’s be clear here and now – it’ll be the same steaming, festering pile of sloppy mediocrity it always is. We are not the Renford Rejects suddenly being parachuted into the 1993/94 Italian Serie A. This is a dire division of average football teams, structured around an unworkable fixture list, populated with overpaid dross, run by an entirely incompetent administration. To be afraid of it is like fearing your business is going to be overtaken and sent to the wall by one of those shops The Chuckle Brothers used to open – if it happens, it says more about you than it does about anybody else. In fact, with excellent Newcastle and Brighton teams exiting to be replaced by basket cases Hull and Sunderland it’s likely to be even worse than usual, certainly worse than last season when it was unusually strong.
If you think QPR will still struggle then you’re not alone, and quite possibly not wrong, but then also consider this. Had last season finished at the end of March – yes, yes if my aunty had bollocks but bear with – when QPR were top of the form table, on a seven-match unbeaten run and comprehensively outplaying promotion-chasing Leeds at Elland Road then the mood around 2017/18 would be sky high with talk of a surprise play-off push. Those performances and wins with Ryan Manning, Massimo Luongo, Pawel Wszolek and Grant Hall all playing so well, Conor Washington scoring, Darnell Furlong coming through at right back, the division’s best goalkeeper in goal… everybody was purring then.
It could just be that a unique combination of believing we were safe, carrying a few injuries, wanting to experiment with the team all while facing a tough run of fixtures came together in a perfect clusterfuck in April unlikely to be repeated. Losing is a hard habit to break, it was a deeply concerning end to the season, but it’s not necessarily a harbinger of doom. Huddersfield, promoted last season, won just three of their last 14 the season before and finished with a 4-0 loss to Bristol City and a 5-1 home defeat to Brentford. They beat Brentford at home 2-1 in the first game of the following campaign. The season before Ian Holloway got Blackpool promoted, they too only won four of the last 16 matches.
Huddersfield also disprove this idea that not being able to spend as much money means QPR have no hope. They made signings last season, lots of them, but they did so on one of the division’s lowest budgets, with no parachute payments and after several seasons of selling their best players. Aston Villa, meanwhile, finished midtable despite spending in excess of £12m on a striker on three separate occasions over the nine months.
I go on about this a lot but it does puzzle me that QPR – the fans, the manager, the owner – continuously look at the squad and think it needs another load of players signed. That’s not to say the team isn’t short in key areas, because it certainly looks it. Nor is it saying we shouldn’t make any signings at all, and it’s very frustrating to see Ollie Watkins move from Exeter to Brentford after his stellar contribution to last season’s League Two play-offs. Two years ago it was QPR buying the outstanding performers from the lower division play-offs, and whatever you think of Massimo Luongo and Ben Gladwin I liked that strategy and believe it would have worked long term for us – the row away from it since Ian Holloway returned is a shame and the wrong move.
But overall if you have such a low success rate with signings as QPR clearly do, why on earth would you be in a rush to make a load more? Charlie Austin was a rampant success, Alex Smithies has barely put a foot wrong, but apart from that since the Warnock summer of Hill, Derry, Taarabt, Mackie and Kenny who exactly have we signed that’s been any good, that’s been a run away success, that’s really improved the team? Richard Dunne was a shrewd one but even Matt Phillips, brilliant for Blackpool before us and West Brom since, struggled for all but four months of his time here. Players come in at great expense and in large numbers, they rarely do as well as they did at their previous club and the team doesn’t get any better – when you put it like that the ongoing clamour for more signings does seem a bit odd doesn’t it?
The declining playing budget could (could, if done right) be a blessing. The thing the 99/00 Francis season and the 10/11 Warnock campaign have in common is they both followed periods of overspend that hadn’t worked, and the managers and club were forced to think a little bit more carefully about what they were doing, who they were signing, what they were spending and how they were going about things. Suddenly we started making four good signings for every bad one, as opposed to recent years when it’s been the opposite. As CEO Lee Hoos says, it’s about finding value in the transfer market – Josh Scowen on a free, hopefully an example of that.
But more importantly QPR need to find ways of getting more from what they already have. For all the progress made by Hoos and Ferdinand, shown clearly in the accounts, you cannot profess to be a club getting its house in order and still have half a dozen players on first team salaries ostracised, not training with the first team and not going on the pre-season tour. We cannot afford this disposable footballer attitude any more. Ben Gladwin, in from Swindon, 50 professional games in his life, played half a dozen times, written off as shit. Nasser El Khayati, exactly the same. If this attitude had been prevalent in years gone by think of the players we’d have missed out on – Paul Furlong would have been bombed out, Les Ferdinand the same.
Rangers have to look for marginal gains all over their squad, rather than constantly seeking new members of it.
There’s improvement to be had in Jake Bidwell, Joel Lynch and James Perch – because they’ve all played better at this level for other clubs than they have done for us. Perch was Wigan’s Player of the Year playing in a back three, or defensive midfield role – QPR have persisted with him at right back for two years despite him being consistently awful. When he’s moved to left back or midfield for us, he’s looked good. Why would you continue to pick him at right back? A change in position revitalised Grant Hall last season, why do we keep flogging Perch at right back? In Jack Robinson and Jordan Cousins we have two good young players who’ve done it at this level before – can we get them fit? There’s two new players already on the books there if we can. Yeni Ngbakoto and Pawel Wszolek have both got a season of Championship football under their belts, they’ll be better for that. Do we play to their strengths enough? Do we play to Sylla and Smith’s strengths? Why do we seem so keen to discard Sylla – in the current market do you think you’d get even a ten-goal-a-season Championship striker for the money he’d fetch? Conor Washington can finish, can we get him in the position to do so?
This is what I mean about working with what you have, improving what you’ve got, before looking elsewhere. Low expectations among the crowd can help with this as well – see how Grant Hall was able to come in, settle and impress because nobody had heard of him or expected much of him. Players may be given room to breathe, find their feet in the team and the league, discover how they fit into the system without being harangued from the sidelines and written off after a stupidly small amount of games if the supporters expect nothing in the first place.
If QPR can find those marginal gains this season may not be as bad as we all think. Don’t put a lot of money on it though.
Links >>> In defence of a quiet summer – Column >>> More than just a website – Column >>> In the eye of the beholder – Opposition Profile >>> So near and yet so far – Opposition Interview >>> Duncan takes opener – Referee >>> Stan Bowles legend – Podcast >>> Four star Rangers slay Reading – History >>> Farewell to the King – Column
Highlights from QPR’s thumping 4-1 win over the Royals at Loftus Road in 2009 during that glorious fortnight of four goal victories that made it look like Jim Magilton’s team could conquer the world – before he started going round sticking the nut on them.
Saturday
Team News: Ian Holloway says Steven Caulker is now in “a wonderful place”. It’s called The Hope and Anchor, lovely little pub by the river, does a great Sunday lunch. Ok, sorry, low blow, but we do now seem to be in a re-run of 2016 where Caulker follows up a puff piece in the Guardian with a spectacular return to training looking a million dollars and strong start to the season. Don’t knock it too much, the threeAugust wins we accomplished last season while he was playing like that kept us up in the end. Question is, how will he continue to perform/behave from September onwards if the transfer window closes and he’s still here?
Still a very talented centre back, albeit one with ‘issues’, wouldn’t go amiss at the moment with Joel Lynch and Nedum Onuoha the only two senior players currently fit to play in that position and Ollie lining up a back three regardless. Grant Hall has an ongoing tendonitis problem which has been caused by the hardness of the QPR training ground and absolutely not the hardness of the concrete hill they had them running up in Portugal all week. Jordan Cousins’ hamstring has exploded again. Idrissa Sylla remains a bit too foreign.
Reading have issues of their own up front with last season’s top scorer Yann Kermorgant out with an arthritic hip and high-profile transfer moves, most notably for Huddersfield’s Nahki Wells, so far drawing a blank. They have signed Jon Dadi Bodvarsson from Wolves and as the Fin not only nearly joined QPR last summer but also managed to score just three times all season and only once in his last 44 appearances I think we know where that one’s going. One-time QPR target Modou Barrow has joined on a four year deal from Swansea and goes straight into the squad.
Elsewhere: Yes it’s back again, roughly 20 minutes after it finished, another 10,000 rounds of this dirge played every day of the week between now and May and labelled the best/most entertaining/most competitive league in Europe by nobody who’s ever had to sit through any of it for any length of time. I’m tempted to pull an Ivan Dobsky and do something unspeakably evil just to get back into Crowmarsh so I can avoid it all.
Act of barbarism pending, there’s a big thick volley of mediocrity heading straight to your gob this weekend, starting on Friday night as the Derby Sheep visit Darron Gibson’s Winery to kick the whole thing off in front of 30,000 empty seats which will look absolutely brilliant on the tellybox. The idea of 1,500 scholars from the school of Fuck You I’m Millwall descending on Nottingham Hooters to celebrate their promotion on Saturday morning didn’t appeal to East Midlands Police so they’ve shifted their trip to the Trees to Friday night as well.
Eight games for the Saturday 15.00 start time, including Bristol City v Barnsley in this weekend’s key match-up between two teams beginning with B. We welcome back the Sheffield Red Stripes after six years away and they start with a home game against Brentford. Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion is the first date on the Eighth Annual Neil Warnock Farewel Tour.
Fans of the Ipswich Blue Sox probably wish the Mick McCarthy farewell tour would get underway sooner rather than later after a dire 2016/17 and a 6-1 pre-season defeat to Charlton hinting at more of the same. They start with the Birmingham Bad Knees at home with Barry Redchapp already warning a long season will be in store if he isn’t allowed to spend loads more money on loads more players immediately – sweepstake on the old two keepers on the bench trick?
The Sheffield Owls are hotly tipped to go one better this season after two successive play-off near misses and they begin at Preston Knob End. Sporting Wolverhampton begin their enormous FFP gamble on promotion at home to the team that’s actually going to get promoted instead, Champions Middlesbrough. Dark horses Tarquin and Rupert have been down to the pop-up Putney farmers market and brought in a fine selection of organic German sausage (£17.48 per/lb) for the visit of Borussia Norwich.
Big Racist John and the Boys hosting Tigers Tigers Rah Rah Rah rounds off Saturday with an evening Sky game and then it’s the Bolton Brassics against the Champions of Europe on the box to ease your Sunday lunch down the following day.
One down, 9,999 to go.
Referee: Scott Duncan sent off a Norwich player within 30 seconds of the game starting last time he was at Loftus Road, awarding Rangers a penalty into the bargain – which we very sportingly put wide of the post. Let’s hope for more of the penalties and less of the missing this weekend as he makes his first return since then. Full details and stats available here.
Form
QPR: QPR infamously finished last season with seven defeats and one win (at home to Nottingham Forest) from their last eight games to finish eighteenth, just two points north of the drop zone. The Forest win was their ninth at Loftus Road, and they lost ten times on their own patch across the season – only Wolves and bottom-placed Rotherham lost more home matches. Pre-season hasn’t brought a great deal of solace with 4-0 and 4-2 wins against Bromley and Peterborough undermined by two defeats on the same day to todays opponents Reading, a 2-1 defeat to Union Berlin, a 3-2 loss at Lokomotiv Leipzig and a 1-0 defeat at home to Premier League Bournemouth.
Of 72 @EFL teams, only Bolton, Barnsley and Burton have higher odds of winning respective division than @QPRFC #manageexpectations pic.twitter.com/hRYCiJnacm— QPR Stats (@QPR_Stats) July 30, 2017
Reading The Royals finished third last year with 85 points. While that owed much to an impressive home record of 16 wins and five draws – QPR and Villa the only two teams to win there all season – they also won 10 away matches. They achieved that despite conceding 48 goals on their travels (a total boosted by conceding seven at Norwich and five at Fulham) which was more than anybody else bar Rotherham. Bar the two wins against QPR in the behind closed doors games Reading haven’t had a good pre-season results wise either – on a pre-season tour of Holland and Belgium they’ve lost to KV Kortrjk (0-1) and Vitesse Arnhem (2-3) and drawn with Cercle Brugge (1-1), Sparta Rotterdam (0-0) and Turkish side Genclerbirligi (2-2).
Prediction: This year’s Prediction League is being sponsored by The Art of Football and we’ll be handing out prizes from their QPR Collection at the end of October, January and to the overall winner. Last year that was Southend_Rss who went close to 100 points so well done to him, and welcome to the arduous duties of match previewing which come with the prize.
Craig says… “As for any first game of the season, I'm buzzing and can't wait to get back to HQ and ride on the QPR rollercoaster once more. Both sets of fans will be expecting a strong performance and both teams will not want to lose. Especially this one for us, as it's always nice to stick one on the fakes. I don’t imagine we’ll see too much change in the Reading tactics from last year so expect it to be tight. I do like the look of Scowen and I always thought Ariel deserved to have another chance once he had his head settled. It's nice to see Olly getting behind the player publicly, which will boost morale. We are going to need a squad that is in it together this season. My heart says we’ll win 2-1 however I’ve gone for…
Southend’s Prediction: QPR 1-1 Reading. Scorer – Matt Smith.
LFW’s Prediction: QPR 0-0 Reading. No scorer.
The Twitter @loftforwords
Pictures – Action Images
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Myke added 10:59 - Aug 4
A very good piece Clive and in similar vein to Ram's. We don't need new players (with the exception of a CH) but we do need to get much more from the players we have. Is Olli the man to do that? - Time will tell 0
enfieldargh added 11:35 - Aug 4
I'm a little relieved we haven't signed loads of new players as for once so can we let the ones we have already got bed in.
Got fed up with seeing other teams have midfield players I've not really heard of before dictating games. Woods at Brentford, Kelly/reading, Browne & Johnson/PNE, giving us the run around now hopefully we have got one to go with a blossoming Manning.
Luongo should have a good season and with Scowen, Manning, Freeman, Ariel all competing for midfield spots I feel we have quite an aggressive and combative unit. If they can keep the ball more and find telling passes which they are all capable of doing, they all have stamina to chase back and get forward. Gutted for Cousins and hopefully Hall will be back October-ish
Pavel is going to be a key in attack, his patient play and eye for a pass/cross are the best I've seen for many a year down the bush. Please please play him wide olly, although I expect him to be used as a wing back.
Defence is a worry but please can Furlong get a run of games at right back otherwise whats the point of promoting youth.
I've always rated Ned but Lynch gives me the wobbles so hope he's learnt a bit more about positioning. Left back Robinson /Bidwell should do good jobs.
Upfront I can only hope Connor has settled in and starts finding goals. He's looked sharp and in god nick in preseason but again slightly off target.
More optimistic at present and dont expect us to be anywhere near the top, just think this squad has enough about it to entertain and win more than it looses. 0
TheRam added 20:48 - Aug 4
48 game season! Haha, good one, tickled me that x 1← Is this
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This is because several attorney generals have challenged a program that former President Obama launched in 2012 which allows young, unauthorized immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” to live in the U.S. without fear of removal and work legally. The deadline the attorney generals have given is Sept. 5, and all indications are that President Trump will either let this program lapse or fail to defend it.
The ugliness we have seen in Charlottesville and Washington D.C. will pale in comparison to the images of students being handcuffed, forced into buses, and ejected into the dark.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are as many as 1.8 million children who could qualify for legal permanent residence under the Dream Act of 2017, a bill that has been under consideration but not enacted by the House and Senate. The parents of these children brought them here to give them better lives. The children didn’t knowingly break any laws. These Dreamers grew up as Americans, believing they were entitled to the same rights and freedoms as their friends were. Yet when they became old enough to work or to go to college, they learned that there are limits on where they can study and what they can do. They had to live as second-class citizens—in the shadows of society.
In June 2012, Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed Dreamers who passed a rigorous background check to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit. The plan was to follow this up with comprehensive immigration reform—a full legalization of status.
Nearly 800,000 children put aside their fears and applied for the permit under the belief that this would take them closer to gaining legal status. They provided detailed information about their backgrounds and locations. Now, this trust in the American government may lead to their deportation.
The ugliness we have seen in Charlottesville and Washington D.C. will pale in comparison to the images of students being handcuffed, forced into buses, and ejected into the dark.
Trump has on several occasions expressed compassion for these children. He said at a press conference in February: “We’re going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you. To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have because you have these incredible kids.” He refrained from doing what he promised during the election campaign: to deport these children.
But Trump may have been as deceptive about this impending tragedy as he was about his sympathy for racists in Charlottesville. Because at the same time, according to the The Los Angeles Times, the White House had been looking for ways to end protection for Dreamers and shield the president from the blame; it was considering having several states do the dirty work by filing a lawsuit against DACA and then having the Justice Department provide new guidance on deportations.
The LA Times speculated that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was a vocal critic of deportation relief as a senator, would direct department of Justice lawyers to review the program and, if they determined “that DACA is not legal or is no longer a responsible use of prosecutorial discretion, the Department of Homeland Security would be instructed to stop awarding and renewing work permits.” And then “Sessions could instruct his lawyers not to defend the program in court, exposing it to indefinite suspension by a federal judge.”
This is exactly the scenario that appears to be playing out. Ten states, led by Texas, have written a letter demanding that the 15 June 2012 DACA memorandum be rescinded by Sept. 5, failing which they will file a lawsuit. Given that in 2016, Texas successfully challenged an effort by President Obama to expand DACA, it is likely that such a lawsuit will succeed. And the chances that Sessions will defend DACA are slim given that in July, he reiterated that the Department of Justice could have no objection to abandoning it “because it is very questionable, in my opinion, constitutionally.”
David Bier of The CATO Institute estimates that with DACA rescission, 110,653 permits will expire in 2017, 404,909 in 2018, and the remainder in 2019. This means that these children will be subject to deportation at the whim of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents—who will be given vague guidelines. And even though President Trump has shown no willingness to move more aggressively against DACA recipients than is necessary, “certain ICE agents seem zealous about targeting them,” Bier writes.
The hell we have seen in Charlottesville is nothing compared to what lies ahead. And by playing with the lives of immigrant children, we are hurting the soul of America itself.Justice Dept. officials say that details of a hacking tool used to access a terrorist's iPhone should not be released because it may still be "useful" to federal investigators.
The government is fighting a case against three news organizations, including the Associated Press, which are fighting to release details of the hacking tool that FBI agents used to unlock a passcode-protected phone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.
Details of the hacking tool have remained classified, not least because the Justice Dept. believes the tool may still be used by the FBI in similar cases.
"Disclosure of this information could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security as it would allow hostile entities to discover the current intelligence gathering methods used, as well as the capabilities and limitations of these methods," said David Hardy, section chief of the FBI's records management division, in a court filing released late Monday.
The "intelligence activities or methods withheld in this case are still used by and/or useful to the FBI today to gather intelligence information," said Hardy.
Although a third-party company, said to be made up of professional hackers, created the hacking tool that was used to break the passcode lock on the iPhone 5c, the company's name has not been revealed.
The company was one of three firms pitching their tool to the FBI, but only the one unnamed company had "begun to develop or test a solution at the time of the inquiry," while others "would not be able to produce a solution quickly enough to meet the FBI's investigative requirements."
However, the vulnerability used to break into the phone is still not known.
It's long been believed that the hack targeted a weakness in iPhone 5c devices, namely that it didn't come with a secure enclave processor, a key part in the phone's full-disk encryption that even Apple wasn't supposed to be able to break.
Apple previously said that the hack would be "short lived." Months later, Apple retired the iPhone 5c in favor of newer iPhones, all of which now come with the secure enclave.
But the Justice Dept. says that the hacking tool may still have some shelf life left.
A key point in the news organizations' claim that the iPhone tool is of no current value is based on comments made last year by FBI director James Comey that the hack only works on a "narrow slice" of iPhone 5c devices.
But the Justice Dept. apparently called Comey's own statement into question, saying in its filing that this was "unvarnished speculation about the efficacy of this intelligence tool."
The attorneys are also fighting to prevent the release of the cost of the tool, even though Comey said the cost of the hacking tool set the agency back more than $1 million.
"The FBI found that the release of the price of the iPhone tool would also convey useful information to adversaries," said the attorneys.
A spokesperson for the Justice Dept. declined to comment.by April Bender
I would like to take a moment today, to speak with you about how you've been feeling and to assure you that it does indeed directly relate to the opening of the Spring Equinox Portal.
This magnificently robust "opening" actually began in earnest yesterday. That is why in such a short time you've gone from feeling completely emptied/clear and utterly expansive (vessel) - to feeling uncomfortably full, bloated, and squeezed tight (energetically). Seemingly, like there is very little inner "wiggle" room. You are feeling tired, restless, irritable, rebellious, angry and/or sad, along with the typical ascension or "inner expansion" aches and pains within the body.
I wanted to assure you by clarifying for you, that with this Spring Equinox Portal comes GREAT potential for CONTACT or The Event to take place. The enormous boost of highly charged/vibrational energies this portal brings will pack the biggest OOMPH yet! Because this IS such a COLOSSAL portal opening, you are naturally following your usual rhythm of energy/light INDUCTION, but this time filling your newly expanded vessel/vehicle in preparation for a MIGHTY CO-CREATIVE EXHALATION or movement, which will be a synchronized "test," "firing up," or "activation" of the newly restructured and highly infused Grid or Web of Life and/or the Radicalization of the Collective Mind sometime on/around March 20-21.
THE Breath I've been attempting to prepare you for, in This isI've been attempting to prepare you for, in my previous messages up to this point, that will indeed re-establish the link/awareness of your Soul/Star families and lineages back into the experience of Gaia - at a certain level of experience.
That level, depends upon the individual and collective success of the initial "thrust" of CO-CREATION/COMMUNION between all of those of the First Order, Gaia, your Soul/Star families, and all other Warriors of the Light, participating from every level of awakened soul growth, as earlier discussed. Therefore, a GRAND ORCHESTRATION is about to unfold - IS unfolding.Java, Programming, Struts2, jQuery, AngularJS and more > java > struts2 > Creating java web applications with AngularJS and Struts2
Creating java web applications with AngularJS and Struts2
This post likes to show you how simple it is to create a new web application based on the client side JavaScript framework AngularJS and the server side Java framework Struts2.
Why this Struts2 - AngularJS framework combination
Struts2 is a MVC framework to build server side Java web applications. Struts2 is stable, easy to use and active developed and maintained since years. AngularJS is a modern client side MVC framework created and maintained by Google. Both together is a great way to develop stable web applications. You can mix single-page with multi-page web applications like multi-page for user sites and single-page for administration sites. Struts2 can be used for back-end actions as JSON data provider, for file-uploads, streaming actions, security, text provider and more. And of course with the flexible structure of Interceptor Stacks and namespaces you are able to develop extendable good scalable software. On the other side is AngularJS one of the most used front-end frameworks with good tutorials and documentation. The only disadvantage of this combination is you have to master both Java and JavaScript.
Create initial project structure
To create the initial project structure we are using the widely used build framework maven. For details about how to setup and install maven please read following blog post 4 Easy Steps |
vowed to turn The Scene Between into a showcase for vocalists who were more or less unknown, even to himself.
He cast his net wide, and his catches are uniformly stellar. On "What D'You Say?", the young Brazilian singer-songwriter Samira Winter chirps sweetly yet spiritedly over an airy, bouncy track that retains Parton's love of raw-edged distortion. The song opens with the fizzy sound of a can of soda being opened and poured out, and it's the perfect aural metaphor for The Scene Between. The sample-heavy structure of The Go! Team's past has been toned down, and in its place is a more organic mix of acoustic instruments, synths, loops and sugary vocals in "Waking The Jetstream" (featuring Casey Sowa of Minneapolis' Strange Relations) and "Catch Me On The Rebound" (featuring French solo artist Glockabelle). Reaching even farther afield, "Did You Know?" sports the lulling croon of Shi Lu (a.ka. Atom) from Beijing's Nova Heart. Chiming and wistful, her voice hits anthemic heights as the song builds softly into a dizzying whirl of wobbly, happy-sad melody.
In a handful of songs, Parton uses the same vocalists more than once. The Scene Between's title track and "The Art Of Getting By (Song For Heaven's Gate)" clear the stage for the rich timbre of the London Africa Gospel Choir. It's especially stunning in the latter song, where Parton flaunts his cheekiness by using a gospel choir to help pay harmonious tribute to one of the most infamous religious mass suicides in history. Rather than feeling gimmicky or perverse, it's astoundingly melancholy.
That's about as deep as The Scene Between gets, which is to its credit. Doreen Kirchner from Jersey City's Sudden Ensemble and New York solo artist Emily Reo each voice a bracing, ebullient song ("Blowtorch" and "Her Last Wave," respectively), and they also duet in the album's closer, "Reason Left To Destroy." That song's dreamy, big-screen vista threatens to turn epic, but it keeps its shoegaze-in-a-shoebox sound on the humble side. The same can be said of The Scene Between as a whole. Parton may not have his usual array of singers or marquee guest stars this time around, but he's infused The Go! Team's proven formula with a fresh shot of youth, enthusiasm and pure pop fierceness.President Trump, with Defense Secretary James Mattis to his left, signs an executive order at the Pentagon in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)
It was the choice of the word “betrayed” that caught everyone’s attention.
President Trump wasn’t relieving acting Attorney General Sally Yates from her position because she was incompetent or simply because she and Trump didn’t see eye-to-eye. She was fired, a release from the White House read, because she had “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”
One can debate the extent to which Yates betrayed the department she served, but there’s no debate about the betrayal that most immediately irked the White House. Yates had betrayed Trump himself by determining that defending his executive order was inconsistent with the department’s “solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right” — and adding that she was not “convinced that the Executive Order is lawful.” Whether those reasons were sufficient cause for her to take the stand that she did (many argue that they were not), the fireable offense was described as betrayal, not dereliction. Betrayal of Trump’s Justice Department. Betrayal of Trump.
“Betray” is the inverse of “loyal,” one of Trump’s favorite ways of describing the world that surrounds him.
When Macy’s stopped carrying his products after Trump disparaged Mexican immigrants at his campaign announcement, Trump called them disloyal and celebrated a slump in their stock price.
When you do your Christmas shopping remember how disloyal @Macys was to the subject of illegal immigration. #BoycottMacys #DumpMacys — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2015
The phrasing in the tweet above is very similar to the phrasing in the Yates release. Macy’s was disloyal “to the subject of illegal immigration” — which makes no sense, standing alone. Macy’s was actually disloyal to Trump by means of being at odds with his position on illegal immigration. As with Yates, the offense to Trump is framed as an offense to something more abstract.
Trump doesn’t always offer a concrete distraction from his insistence on loyalty to himself. When House Speaker Paul D. Ryan waffled on standing behind Trump’s candidacy after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, Trump declared him disloyal.
Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
To whom was Ryan disloyal? To Trump. When other Republicans seemed to be wavering, they were described the same way.
When Trump celebrated the election of Jane Timken lead the Ohio Republican Party, he summarized his praise in one word: Loyal.
Congratulation to Jane Timken on her major upset victory in becoming the Ohio Republican Party Chair. Jane is a loyal Trump supporter & star — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017
Trump views relationships through this lens. Sen. Marco Rubio’s decision to run for the presidency was disloyal to Jeb Bush. Hillary Clinton was disloyal to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The president of NBC was “loyal” because he sent a nice note after staying in a Trump hotel.
"I'm loyal to people who've done good work for me." #TheArtofTheDeal — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2012
At a rally in North Carolina during the campaign, he praised his supporters as being “the most loyal people, the smartest people.” (He was excoriated during the primaries for asking rally attendees to commit to that loyalty with an oath.) Anyone who isn’t on Team Trump, by extension, isn’t among the smartest people — and certainly doesn’t qualify as loyal. He praised his supporters as loyal in Reno, the weekend before Election Day. In an interview with The Washington Post in August, he was direct when discussing Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who wasn’t endorsing his candidacy.
“I don’t know Kelly Ayotte. I know she’s given me no support, zero support, and yet I’m leading her in the polls,” he told Philip Rucker. “And I’m doing very well in New Hampshire. We need loyal people in this country. We need fighters in this country. We don’t need weak people. We have enough of them. We need fighters in this country.”
Emphasis added. Ayotte wasn’t loyal because she was supposed to endorse him, because he’d won her party’s nomination. He’d earned that loyalty, the implication goes.
That same attitude seeps out in his understanding of what it means for the country to unite around his presidency. He has, on several occasions, spoken about the need for unity as we move forward. But those statements have come from Teleprompter Trump, the politician we got to know over the tail end of the presidential campaign who sticks to prepared remarks. He spoke of the need for unity in his Thanksgiving address to the country and on election night. But when given an unfiltered means of communicating to the world — Twitter or the microphone at a “victory tour” rally — Trump expressed his frustration that there were still elements of the country that weren’t backing him. Paid protesters. Political enemies. And so on.
Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2016
The disloyalty to Trump displayed by Yates probably was to be expected. No government official is supposed to be loyal to a president instead of his or her job. (The 1883 Pendleton Act erected a barrier between political favor and merit in federal employment.) Trump framed the firing as a betrayal of her position, but it’s impossible to separate the use of that word from his insistence on loyalty more broadly.How Hard Are We Pushing The Land?
› Larger image This global map shows total consumption by region of photosynthetic plant material as a percentage of the plant material grown by region. Scientists call the plant "supply" net primary production, or NPP, and refer to the "demand" as Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP). (Credit: Trent Schindler, Scientific Visualization Studio, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Dr. Marc Imhoff discusses the implications of increasing plant carbon consumption in this short video. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Related Materials
Patrick Lynch
NASA's Earth Science News Team
We may be becoming an ever more technologically advanced society, but we remain as dependent as ever -- if not more and more so -- on the natural world that surrounds us.That is one takeaway from new NASA research that has found humans are using an increasing amount of the Earth's total land plant production each year for food, fiber, building and packaging materials and biofuels.This remains a young data record, as one of the first global measurements tied to satellite data was published in 2004. That baseline-setting measurement was for the year 1995, when humans needed 20 percent of all plant growth for our various products. But the early returns are in, and despite uncertainties in the measurement, the signal is headed in a clear direction: up. From 1995 to 2005, global annual plant consumption rose from 20 percent to 25 percent of all plant production in those years.As the human population continues to grow and more societies develop modern economies, this rate of consumption is increasing both as a whole and on a per capita basis globally, a NASA research group led by Marc Imhoff at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has found.The group has also used NASA satellite data to produce a multi-decadal record of plant production (from 1982 to 2007) that establishes a baseline of the Earth's productivity. But it is the consumption data, estimated from UN Food and Agriculture Organization country profiles, that reveals a snapshot of how much pressure human consumption is putting on the landscape. These new findings are being presented at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting.The first data point that jumps out from the research is the increase in demand for plants, from '95 to '05, from 20 percent to 25 percent. Imhoff said that scientists think this is a significant rise for that period of time, but that part of the challenge of this research is determining the limits of ecosystems' production and the impacts of a rising consumption rate."The question is, 'How hard are we pushing the land?'" Imhoff said. "People are wary about that percentage creeping up. Most people consider that a high number, although we're still doing research."Perhaps the most significant fact about this data, as it concerns future trends, is that both total consumption due to population growth and per capita consumption are rising. It is, Imhoff said, non-linear growth.While plant production itself varies from year to year, mostly depending on weather, the demand trends are holding steady on the increase. Depending on region, some of the increase is due simply to population growth -- more people consume more food, more paper, more wood for burning. This has been seen in places like India, where population is booming but individual consumption levels when averaged over the entire population have not dramatically risen, yet. In other places, where economic growth has allowed for more "westernized" consumption, per capita consumption is driving the trend. And in some places, such as North America and China, both population and per capita consumption are increasing.Already there are great discrepancies in how different regions of the world consume plants for products. The average North American consumes about six tons of plant-based carbon each year, while the average South Asian consumes just a little more than one ton of plant-based carbon each year, Imhoff said. Some of the differences driving this gap could be more material used for product packaging and a greater reliance on a meat-based diet, which requires intensive plant agriculture to feed livestock, in North America. Another potential contributor is the uncertainty in reporting. Consumption is estimated by the products consumed and these are often under reported in some developing countries.An illustrative example of the impact of population growth combined with increased personal consumption habits: If, in several decades, each person on the planet consumes at the current rates of North Americans, we will require more than 50 percent of Earth's plant production each year, Imhoff said."We've always looked at population and consumption as separate issues," Imhoff said. Right now,we are increasing both total population and per capita consumption. What we're realizing is the biosphere doesn't care whether you have a lot of people consuming a little or a few people consuming a lot. It’s the total rate that matters. And that rate is increasing."Implications for consumption at that level do not constitute a "doomsday" scenario, Imhoff said. Too much remains unknown about how the climate could change, how agricultural practices could change and simply how the planet's ecosystems would respond to that level of impact. But the trend does point toward a future of a far more managed planet."We've gone from 20 percent demand to about 25 percent demand in 10 years," Imhoff said. "People worry about that percentage. If, in future scenarios, it's going to go up to something like 50 percent, we're looking at a very high demand for land management at all levels on the landscape globally. We would be heading toward a place where the planet would be very carefully managed, from end to end."As more wild, natural ecosystems would be replaced by managed, monoculture, intensive agricultural systems, the planet would likely lose biodiversity. And as the population grows and becomes more dependent on those managed systems and a long-range food and product distribution network, many populations would become more at risk to perturbations to those systems, such as drought. Already, some densely populated urban areas consume more than 30,000 times the nearby regional plant production.The foundation for all this research is an accurate accounting of the global plant production each year. The research team gathers this data from NASA satellite sensors. The record, which can act as a baseline going forward, now stretches from 1982 to 2007 and is provided for the earlier years from Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors and in more recent years from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments.In itself, these maps of plant production -- called net primary production, or NPP, in the science literature -- provide insights into how weather, climate patterns and in some cases government policy affect plant growth, said Ramakrishna Nemani, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who has worked on the mapping.Annual variations in precipitation and weather are readily apparent in the data, which essentially captures the greenness of different grassland, forest and other landscapes as a measure of their productivity. This measure is combined with relevant weather data, such as sunlight and precipitation, to create an index of global vegetation growth. But, Nemani said, decadal, climate-driven variations also appear in the data, although these remain less well understood. In some cases human decisions make their mark, such as changes to irrigation policy in India in the 1990s. After Indian policy-makers removed subsidies for expanding irrigation, the satellite instruments immediately detected a decline in plant growth, Nemani said. As plant production there has leveled off, population has grown dramatically, Nemani said, making it somewhat of a test case for how societies could deal with changes to this supply-demand relationship.The satellite data also reveals the extent and severity of the impacts of droughts, heat and cold waves, and how fast the ecosystems recover."We're still figuring out how the biosphere behaves at interannual to decadal time scales," Nemani said. "That's where NASA comes in, providing consistent, repeatable global observations year after year."Goddard scientist Robert Wolfe uses the "spaceship Earth" idea to compare this research to another NASA role: Figuring out the essential needs and impacts of humans in a spacecraft. How much food and other products are needed? What happens to the waste? Where will the energy supply come from?These are all questions addressed by this research as our "spaceship Earth" hurtles through space, Wolfe said."The human population is big enough now that it can have a substantial impact on Earth," Wolfe said. "These analyses are really helping in that area. And I think what we've done over the last ten or fifteen years is really improve the data we have from space."A number of variables could change the current plant consumption trend: agricultural advances such as genetic engineering, climate change, or, less likely, drastic changes in consumption habits. For now the team's goal is to continue to observe the Earth's production and human demand for it as closely as possible.You came, you voted, and you chose the 10Best places to go cruising on a motorcycle. The winners in the 'Best Motorcycle Trip' contest category for 10Best Readers' Choice are as follows:
U.S. Highway 101, also known as the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway, takes riders on a grand tour of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, showcasing "the diversity of the region’s ecosystem, from colorful ocean tide pools to a rare temperate rainforest to alpine meadows and ancient forests," says Dale Coyner. It's about 350 miles from Olympia to the Oregon border, at which point the scenic road continues on down the Pacific coast. Photo courtesy of Oksana Perkins/iStock
The Colorado Rocky Mountains provide a stunning setting for a ride no matter what road you choose, but the 236-mile San Juan Mountain Skyway represents the crème de la crème, "the perfect collection of scenery, turns, and great places to check out along the way," says Bill Belei. This curcular path through Southwestern Colorado takes riders through the mountain towns of Durango, Silverton, Telluride and Ouray, ideal for turning a day trip into a long weekend. Photo courtesy of daveynin
Motorcycle expert Bill Belei describes the Pacific Coast Highway as "THE quintessential American road trip," with jaw-dropping Pacific views to one side and the dramatic cliffs of the Central California coast to the other. The 123-mile stretch between Monterey and Morro Bay takes riders through Big Sur and past worthy stops like artistic Carmel-by-the-Sea, Hearst Castle and the must-photograph Bixby Bridge. Photo courtesy of Spondylolithesis/iStock
One of the most popular rides in the Texas Hillcountry takes riders along Ranch Roads 335, 336 and 337, better known as the Three Sisters or Twisted Sisters. With scenery that motorcycle travel expert Bill Belei describes as "as good as it gets, along clear rivers, through very twisty mountain type curves amid real Texas Ranches," it's a perfect way to experience Texas at its friendliest and most beautiful. Photo courtesy of Centex Nomad/MotorcycleRoads.com
The Cherohla Skyway, located in western North Carolina and extending into remote Eastern Tennessee, isn't far from its more well known cousin – Tail of the Dragon at Deal's Gap. "Although its twists and turns are not as extreme as Deal’s Gap," explains motorcycle travel expert Bill Belei, "at 45 miles, it’s 4 times as long and therefore preferred by riders who like a longer ride with a less challenging path." Photo courtesy of Dzmitry (Dima) Parul
The iconic Blue Ridge Parkway wanders for 469 miles along the spine of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains, connecting Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina with Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. It's a long one - a destination unto itself - but luckily, it's lined with numerous access points and cool towns, like Asheville, Brevard and Blowing Rock to help break up the trip. "For many riders, a ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway is their pinnacle motorcycle ride of their life," says Bill Belei. Photo courtesy of GreenStock/iStock
At only 11 miles, Tail of the Dragon at Deal's Gap is our shortest nominee, but it packs a big punch in terms of fun riding. Those 11 miles of U.S. Highway 129 include a whopping 318 curves as the road hugs the border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, mostly in Tennessee before it dips into North Carolina. Riders who want more can continue on to North Carolina State Route 28, also known as Moonshiner 28, for more twisties and mountain scenery. Photo courtesy of llahbocaj
Starting in the town of Red Lodge, Montana, hair-curling Beartooth Pass - one of the most popular stretches of pavement in the Rocky Mountains among motorcyclists - takes riders on a hair-curling 68-mile journey down into Wyoming and right to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park. "Steep switchbacks and stunning vistas make it a motorcycling favorite," says our expert Dale Coyner. Photo courtesy of Montana Office of Tourism
According to our expert Bill Belei "the northwestern portion of Arkansas is a mother load of fantastic motorcycle roads, and the Pig Trail is at the top of the heap." This 19-mile stretch of Arkansas 23 passes through a curvy tunnel of foliage in the Boston and Ozark Mountains, and the charming Victorian town of Eureka Springs is closeby, with loads of restaurants, shops and accommodations. Photo courtesy of William/MotorcycleRoads.com
Hugging the coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, the Cabot Trail offers 187 miles of "stunning mountain and sea vistas, fishing villages and delightfully twisty pavement" says Dale Coyner. Off the bike, the island offers a rich Celtic heritage (complete with foot-tapping tunes) and an excellent series of hiking trails to explore. Photo courtesy of lightphoto/iStock
Cabot Trail Pig Trail Scenic Byway Beartooth Pass Tail of the Dragon at Deal's Gap Blue Ridge Parkway Cherohala Skyway Three Sisters (Twisted Sisters) Pacific Coast Highway San Juan Mountain Skyway U.S. Highway 101
We'd like to thank our panel of experts, who created the original nominee list: longtime blogger Bill Belei, of MotorcycleRoads.com; author Dale Coyner, who also owns OpenRoadOutfitters.com; and motorcycle journalist and author Basem Wasef. All three gentlemen are avid riders, and we appreciate their help.
Congratulations to all these beautiful areas. The winners comprise a true bucket list for motorcycle owners.Mumps in Arkansas eclipse 800; Framingham State University student positive
The number of cases in the Arkansas mumps outbreak that started in “officially” in early September has grown to more than 800 suspected and lab confirmed cases, according to the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) Friday.
The 806 cases under investigation have been reported from four counties: Benton, Madison, Pulaski, and Washington. The ADH says there are currently 27 workplaces, 4 school districts, and 2 private schools impacted.
In Framingham, Massachusetts, officials with Framingham State University reported this week that a student has tested positive for mumps.
NECN.com reports:
Officials at the university said they were notified by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health after the student was tested for the disease. As a precaution, the student was housed in an isolation room on campus immediately after being seen in the campus Health Center.
“The student has remained in isolation for 5 days in adherence with the Department of Public Health guidelines,” university officials said in a statement.
Through Oct. 15, 2,570 mumps cases have been reported nationwide in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
Related:Yosemite > Library > Origin of word Yosemite >
Origin of the Word Yosemite
by Daniel E. Anderson
(December 2004; last updated July 2011)
Gresham’s Law of Information: Bad information drives out good. No matter how long ago a correction for a particular error may have appeared in print or online, it never seems to catch up with the ever-widening distribution of the error.
What does Yosemite mean?
The Yosemite People called Yosemite
Ahwahnee or “mouth,” because the valley
walls resembled a gaping bear’s mouth.
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What did the Yosemite People call the Yosemite Valley?
The Yosemite people called Yosemite Valley Awooni or Owwoni for (gaping) “large mouth,” where the stem Awo or Owwo means “mouth” and the suffix ni means “large.” This referred to the appearance of the Yosemite Valley walls from the the village of Ahwahnee, which was located on the valley floor. The spelling used by Bunnell was “Ahwahne” and later “Ahwahnee.” The Yosemite people called themselves as Ah-wah-ne-chee, or “dwellers of Ahwahnee.” Ahwahnee originally referred to the largest and most powerful Indian village in the valley (located 1/2 mile west of Yosemite Village and south of Northside Drive), but the word also came to mean the entire valley.
When asked, Chief Tenaya, tried to explain the meaning of “Ahwahnee” by using sign language. Tenaya “by the motion of his hands, indicated depth, while trying to illustrate the name, at the same time plucking grass which he held up before me.” Major Savage mistakingly interpreted Ahwahnee to mean “deep grassy valley,” when Tenaya was signing “mouth.” 1
Miwok or Me-wuk (Southern dialect), by the way, is the Miwok word for “people.”
Mr. Bunnell, who named the valley, thought Yosemite meant “Grizzly Bear.” However, this was another mistake in interpretation made by his commander, Major James Savage, who knew the Miwok language but confused Yosemite for ïhümat. i or ïsümat. i, which means “grizzly bear.” Major Savage himself said ”he could not readily understand Ten-ie-ya, or the Indian guide, as they appeared to speak a Pai-ute jargon.”2
So why is the Valley called Yosemite and not Ahwahnee?
Yosemite Valley was named by L. H. Bunnell of the Mariposa Battalion in 1851. The Battalion was formed by local miners in the foothills after neighboring tribes, feeling encroached on their lands, raided Savage’s Trading Post, killing several people there at the time. Mr. Bunnell named the valley in honor of the tribe they were about to capture and drive out of their home, Yosemite Valley. Pioneers at the time often disregarded native place names or didn’t know them and used place names of their own making. To quote Mr. Bunnell3:
As I did not take a fancy to any of the names proposed, I remarked that “an American name would be the most appropriate;” that “I could not see any necessity for going to a foreign country for a name for American scenery—the grandest that had ever yet been looked upon. That it would be better to give it an Indian name than to import a strange and inexpressive one; that the name of the tribe who had occupied it, would be more appropriate than any I had heard suggested.” I then proposed “that we give the valley the name of Yo-sem-i-ty, as it was suggestive, euphonious, and certainly American; that by so doing, the name of the tribe of Indians which we met leaving their homes in this valley, perhaps never to return, would be perpetuated.”.... upon a viva voce vote being taken, it was almost unanimously adopted.
It was common practice by European settlers in 18th century United States to either ignore a Indian (Native American) place name and rename it, or, as with Yosemite, to use another Indian word for a place name.
How do you pronounce Yosemite and Ahwahnee?
Yosemite is pronounced yo-SE-mea-tea.
Ahwahnee is pronounced ah-WAA-nee.
———
Origin of the Place Name Yosemite
The following article explains of the meaning of the word Yosemite in more detail. It is from “Yosemite and Tamalpais,” Names (Journal of the American Name Society) 3(3):185-186 (Sept. 1955) by Dr. Madison Scott Beeler, Professor of Linguistics, University of California Berkeley (1910-1989). Dr. Beeler was an authority on California names of Indian origin.
Yosemite and Tamalpais
MADISON S. BEELER
Recent work on a California Indian language belonging to the linguistic stock called Miwok has familiarized me with the literature on the languages of that family, and particularly with the publications of Lucy Freeland de Angulo, who is the authority on the subject. The following two place names derived from Miwok are presented to draw the attention of onomatologists to work which may have escaped their notice.
The name of Yosemite1 has been connected with the Sierra Miwok word for ‘(grizzly-)bear’ and with a collective noun meaning ‘the killers’ or ‘a band of killers.’ In Mrs.[Lucy Shepard] Freeland’s “Language of the Sierra Miwok”2 ‘bear’ appears as ïšï'·mati (p. 3) and yošé-·met ^ i is defined as ‘the Killers’ (p. 159). These words, although of course distinct in the native tongue, show a notable degree of similarity in their phonological structure, and a confusion between them, or their being taken as variant forms of a single term is easily understandable on the part of those unfamiliar with the language. That the second, and not the first, is the true etymon is most likely. In the first place, the word for ‘bear’ lacks the initial y-, and the high central vowel (transcribed ï) of its initial syllable was commonly equated by Spanish speakers with their vowel e and by Anglo-Americans either with ü or with u. And secondly, yošé-met ^ i fits readily into the morphological pattern of Miwok: the suffixation to the verbal root yóš- ‘to kill’ of the morpheme -e- ‘one who, that which, does something’ yields the agent noun yošé· ‘killer,’ and this is pluralized by the addition of -met ^ i, “a pluralizing suffix, probably more or less collective in meaning, used in all dialects” (op. cit., p. 158). The variant yohé·met ^ i?, proper to the southern or Mariposa dialect of Sierra Miwok, in whose range the famous valley lies, indicates that the word first was heard by white men from the lips of speakers of the more northerly dialects. “This [the form with -š-] is the name which was applied by the neighboring Miwok to the dwellers in Yosemite Valley, who appear to have been (at least in historic times) a band of renegades from various tribes” (op cit. p. 159).
[At this point the article continues about the etymology of Mt. Tamalpais.]
———
Anderson Article References
Copyright © 2004-2011 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved.
Last updated 29 May 2016.
If you have questions or comments, please send a message to Dan Anderson.
http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/origin_of_word_yosemite.htmlOn This Day
Friday 22nd November 1963
55 years ago
William Clay Ford purchased the Detroit Lions professional American football team. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The team plays its home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit. Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and called the Portsmouth Spartans, the team formally joined the NFL on July 12, 1930 and began play in the 1930 season. Despite success within the NFL, they could not survive in Portsmouth, then the NFL's smallest city. The team was purchased and relocated to Detroit for the 1934 season. The Lions have won four NFL championships, tied for 9th overall in total championships amongst all 32 NFL franchises; however, their last was in 1957, which gives the club the second-longest NFL championship drought behind the Arizona Cardinals. They are one of four current teams, the only pre-NFL–AFL merger team, and the only NFC team to have not yet played in the Super Bowl.What Is the Point of My Libertarian Anarchism?
by Robert Higgs
In college in the 1960s I was not a political person. Although I took a keen interest in politics, especially in the war that was raging in Vietnam, I concentrated on my studies, earning a living, and chasing women. After I began work as a professor, in 1968, I gravitated quickly from my collegiate New Leftism toward classical liberalism. As I learned more about Austrian economics, political economy, public choice, and history, I became increasingly libertarian (minarchist variety). My views continued to evolve, however, and by the time the 21st century arrived, if not sooner, I had finally reached my destination as a libertarian anarchist.
Although I make no apology whatever for this ideological identity, I do not share the seeming expectation of some of my fellow libertarian anarchists that a revolution is now, or soon will be, occurring in the direction of my preferred political ideals. Indeed, my expectation is, if anything, the reverse: it seems to me much more likely that the USA will continue to drift and lurch toward totalitarianism, though this system will surely have a unique red, white, and blue coloration to suit the American people’s history, culture, and tastes. I do not expect a dictator with a funny little mustache and a horde of brown-shirted thugs to take power after smashing heads in the streets. I expect instead an elected dictator who looks like George W. Bush or Barack Obama and a horde of police dressed in riot-suppression gear to turn the trick, though most people will not need to have their heads smashed and will go along gladly.
If I comprehend the world in this way, what, some people wonder, am I doing by embracing libertarian anarchism? Well, I am obviously not taking this position in order to come out on the winning side. If that were my goal, I would already have found a way to make myself useful in the military-industrial-congressional complex. No, I have put myself where I am now somewhat as Martin Luther did when he announced: “Here I stand. I can do no other.”
In my case, this declaration means most of all that I am simply doing what seems to me the decent thing; that taking any other ideological position would entangle me in evils of which I want no part. Although I sincerely believe that a stateless world would be better than the present world in countless ways, such as better health, greater wealth, and enhanced material well-being, I am not a libertarian anarchist primarily on consequentialist grounds, but instead primarily because I believe it is wrong for anyone—including those designated the rulers and their functionaries—to engage in fraud, extortion, robbery, torture, and murder. I do not believe that I have a defensible right to engage in such acts; nor do I believe that I, or anyone else, may delegate to government officials a just right to do what it is wrong for me—or you or anyone—to do as a private person.
Still, one might ask, if I do not expect that my vision of a just world can ever be realized, why do I persist in evaluating the events of the nasty “real world” by the standards realizable only in my ideal world? The answer is that everyone must have an ideal; without one, there is no standard against which one may assess the imperfect actions and events of the actual world. Without a standard, one may only shrug his shoulders, like a character in an existentialist novel, in nonchalant indifference to the political wickedness raging on all sides. Just as a devout Christian seeks to live a Christ-like life, knowing full well that no one can live up to the standard set by Jesus, so I aim to live and to make my judgments of the events I hear about in the light of the nonaggression axiom. The initiation of violence or the threat of violence against innocent others is wrong, regardless of the noble ends that one might cite to justify such violence or threat. It is wrong for me, wrong for you, and wrong for the president of the USA and his flunkies.
Like the Christian who inevitably falls into sin, I may fall short of my ideal. I may act or speak inconsistently with it. Many public issues are complicated, and in regard to them I may fail to discern the best way to act in accordance with my ideological ideal. If you let me know about my inconsistency, I can attempt to set aside my pride, admit my error, and correct it. As new issues arise, the task of sorting out the best way to deal with the most pressing problems will present itself repeatedly. Perhaps, like St. Paul in his letters to the new churches of the ancient world, we can strive to instruct one another in the most defensible understanding and practice of libertarian anarchism. Merely shouting that the existing order is rotten, is on the verge of collapse and, once it has collapsed, will be replaced by libertarian anarchism, however, seems to me so hopelessly naïve that I am inclined to urge my ideological comrades who do such shouting to get a firmer grip on themselves. One needs to combine his moral uprightness with a solidly founded understanding of the social, political, and economic world and how it works. Otherwise, our statements and actions become hopelessly quixotic.
I do not expect to live to see a world that even approximates my ideal. In fact, I greatly fear that I shall instead live long enough to see the most obscene species of police state in the saddle in the USA—after all, there is now only a short distance to go to reach this horrible destination, and many Americans seem eager to get to it as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I am comfortable with my ideological convictions. To have embraced anything else would have been a great mistake for me. I took almost a lifetime to reach my current position; I did not come to it lightly or without extended study and thought. Of course, I may still be wrong in every regard; I am a human being, and as such I am certainly subject to running off the moral and intellectual rails. I do not propose to be paralyzed by this universal human susceptibility to error, however. Feeling the |
), and even ‘American’ (because the term too often ignores the existence of South America).
Naturally, a group at Loyola University in Chicago has announced it is establishing a safe space for ‘self-identified white students’ to explore their feelings of whiteness, acknowledge their manifold sins and ‘begin the journey of operating in solidarity with others and their privilege’.
As for the tricky transgender issue which has caught out poor Jenni Murray, she’s certainly not alone.
Colorado College ran into trouble over screening the gay rights movie Stonewall, because the film didn’t include enough transgender people!
Trans students at the college said the film — on New York riots that sparked the birth of the mainstream gay rights movement — was ‘discursively violent’ and ‘reinforced a hierarchy of oppression’.
Let’s be clear. Opposing this kind of madness isn’t defending anyone’s right to spout racist or any other type of abuse. That’s been illegal for decades, and socially unacceptable for much longer still.
It’s about defending the right to have different, nuanced opinions about complex issues, such as gender reassignment or British imperial history.
The reality is that many people will still have doubts about what sex-change surgery really achieves, or decline to view a figure such as Cecil Rhodes as so unquestionably evil that his likeness must be removed from our public spaces.
Because although there is much to laugh at in the creeping insanity beginning to grip our leading universities, some of our most hard-won values are at stake — free speech foremost among them. After all, if our universities won’t defend free speech, who will?The milkshake machine whizzes quietly in the background as I take the two steps up into Leo's Non-Smoking Coffee Shop, and back in time.
Fluorescent lighting illuminates the small diner, quietly snuggled in the corner storefront of the Medical Dental building on Southwest 11th and Taylor. The diner looks like a picture of the 1950s, with teal-colored pleather booths lining the window and swinging seats around a horseshoe bar.
"Hi! Good morning! How are you? I be right with you. Right away. Right away."
Peter Chan, who owns Leo's with his wife, Jane, is the host, waiter, conversationalist and principal milkshake-maker of the diner. Jane, his quiet contemporary and "the boss," as Peter calls her, does the cooking.
They opened Leo's Coffee Shop (it garnered the addition of non-smoking in 1992) in 1984 after the birth of their son, and have been serving up American diner classics ever since.
Peter greets each guest with a newspaper, either a USA Today, The Oregonian or sometimes both, and a glass of water filled to the brim.
"Hiiiii, how are you?" he asks, placing the paper and the water in front of me.
The menu has largely stayed the same, with prices increasing a couple dollars here and there. The breakfast special, which hangs on the wall above the order window is always French toast with two pieces of bacon and coffee or tea, because Peter says he's not tall enough to change it.
He can reach high enough to change the soup of the day, though, which today happens to be chicken with rice.
Leo's is open at 6:30 a.m., serving breakfast in the mornings and lunch in the afternoons until 3:30. If it's quiet in the afternoon, Jane will make breakfast, too.
"Ready to order? I can make breakfast, too."
I order the breakfast special and a chocolate malt.
"Thank you very much. I bring right away, right away."
He walks over to the window and says to his wife, "Order, please."
***
On Friday, Feb. 28, Peter and Jane will close Leo's after 30 years of business. They are going to retire, saying that it's time and that they've been lucky to have been in business for so long.
"I hope after I retire I don't get too bored and come back," Peter says, laughing.
"Nobody keeps job for 30 years."
Peter hopes the building will take care of his restaurant, which has played host to clientele from every background over the decades. Another owner is already in talks with the building to open another "diner." It's speculated that they will be offering similar fare -- soups and sandwiches -- at slightly more upscale than Leo's.
Regulars are already expressing their well-wishes, congratulations and thanks to Peter and his wife for everything they've done over the years.
"Oh, you give me too much," Peter says about a tip a customer leaves on the counter.
"I haven't given you nearly enough, Peter," the man says in response.
***
Jane emerges from the kitchen to bring food to tables. She drops the french toast in front of me, gives me a quick smile and heads back into the kitchen. Peter comes by with a container of syrup he's been warming in hot water.
After dropping off the syrup, he goes back to making the chocolate malt. He's methodical and careful, letting the milk and ice cream blend until there's hardly a chunk of ice left. After five minutes in the blender, he stops the machine and walks over with two to-go cups and the mixing cup because Peter's milkshakes don't fit into one.
"Your right hand can share with your left hand!" he says to me.
It's common knowledge amongst Leo's regulars that Peter will never let you have the last word when saying goodbye. As each table gets up to leave, there's a chorus of thank you's and goodbyes from him.
I walk up to the register to pay my bill. Peter meets me there and begins to thank me for coming in. I say thank you again, turn around and begin walking out the door.
"Bye, bye! Thank you! Have a nice day! Thank you!" Peter calls behind me, waving from behind the register
He repeats his gratitudes to every customer until the door closes behind them.
I can even hear a muffled "Have a nice day" through the glass after I've left.
Leo's Non-Smoking Coffee Shop is located at 837 S.W. 11th Avenue.
-- Samantha BakallShe's previously declared that she would consider posing naked for the right reasons, saying she'd do Playboy if the price was right.
But in the end Amanda Holden, 45, decided to use her first naked shoot to promote a good cause, posing without her clothes on a bed of cabbages for a new campaign poster for PETA.
The Britain's Got Talent Show stripped off for the un-retouched image, taken by photographer Trevor Leighton, to promote the animal rights charity's message to go vegetarian.
Scroll down for video
Amanda Holden decided to use her first naked shoot to promote a good cause, posing without her clothes on a bed of cabbages for a new campaign poster for PETA
Her long blonde hair spread out behind her, the mother-of-two looks completely at ease showing off her body.
She hopes the campaign will encourage others to embrace a vegetarian diet, which she credits for keeping her skin in great condition and her figure in check.
'For me, there are many benefits,' she revealed. 'My skin's always good. I never feel bloated.'
Amanda has been a strict vegetarian since the age of 13, but even before that she was never keen on eating meat.
'I don't really know what prompted it but my mum says that even when I was really little I would eat all the veggies off the plate, including broad beans,' she said.
'And I used to leave the meat or keep it stuffed in my mouth and spit it down the toilet secretly.
'When I was old enough to understand that meat was actually animals there was a point where I went: "No more".'
Amanda credits her vegetarian diet for keeping her skin glowing and she says she never gets bloated
The animal lover urged people to consider how giving up meat can improve health as well as having a positive impact on the planet.
'Each person who goes vegetarian drastically reduces his or her carbon footprint and spares many animals every year immense suffering on factory farms, in abattoirs and on the decks of fishing boats,' she said.
'For anyone who thinks being vegetarian is tricky, it's rubbish. There are so many so many products you can buy - meat substitutes if that's what you want, vegetables, lentils, pulses, there are a million things you can cook and use.
At the Britain's Got Talent Semi Finals this week, Amanda wowed in a white gown that featured a daring thigh high split
She concluded: 'The best thing you can do for animals is just leave them off your plate.'
It's no surprise that Amanda was confident enough to flaunt her figure in the new PETA campaign, as she's known for her fondness for a daring red carpet gown.
At the Britain's Got Talent Semi Finals this week, she wowed in a white gown that featured a daring thigh high split.
The mother-of-two is incredibly body confident and says that her vegetarian diet helps maintain her slim figure
Stepping out alongside her co-judges Alesha Dixon, Simon Cowell and David Walliams, the presenter stole the show in her daring ensemble.
Narrowly avoiding a wardrobe malfunction, the sheaths of material just about protected her modesty, but revealed more of her fantastic figure as she turned to the side.The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) paved the way Friday for the 600-mile, 42-inch fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline to proceed when it issued the final environmental impact statement (FEIS). A joint project of utility giants Duke Energy and Dominion Energy, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would move fracked gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina.
In April, the Sierra Club submitted more than 500 pages of legal and technical comments on FERC's draft EIS, which were joined by more than 18,000 individual comments detailing opposition to the project. The pipeline has been met with widespread opposition, with more than 1,000 people participating in public hearings across the three affected states. The Sierra Club recently requested that FERC issue a new environmental review document analyzing information that came in after or late in, the public comment process.
"Despite all its rhetoric, FERC continues to prove it's nothing more than a rubber stamp for fracked gas pipelines that threaten our communities and our climate," Deb Self, a Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign representative, said. "FERC has failed to account for the dangers the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would lock communities into the dirty and dangerous fuels of the past when clean, renewable energy options are readily available."
Obstacles remain for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, as it still must secure water quality permits in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, where the project is widely opposed. Recently, state agencies have denied certification for three gas pipelines because pipeline companies failed to prove they could protect state waters. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management must consider impacts to species, habitats and landscapes on public lands crossed by the pipeline.
"Along the 600 miles of this proposed pipeline and across the affected states, people are organizing and standing up for their water, protection of public and private lands, and their way of life," Kate Addleson, director of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, said. "Our streams, forests, and endangered species need protection, and so do our communities. Landowners shouldn't have their land taken for private companies' profit, and residents shouldn't be saddled with higher utility bills to pay for an unneeded, destructive pipeline that threatens communities and the climate."The purpose of this blog is to share my experience of practicing the Kadampa instructions in the context of my formal Dharma practice, my personal life and my professional life in the hopes that it may prove helpful to others seeking to transform their modern lives into the path to enlightenment. At a personal level, doing this blog helps me crystallize my own thoughts about the Dharma by putting them into writing and it helps me bring my bodhichitta (the wish to become a Buddha for the sake of all) alive.
How so? At a practical level, the bodhisattva path is the improving of oneself for the benefit of others, in particular the process of gaining Dharma realizations so that we can help others do the same. By doing this blog, I can view each moment of my normal modern life as an opportunity to gain spiritual realizations which I can then share with those who read this blog. It gives purpose to each moment of my life: I must learn how to transform each moment so that I can help others in similar situations do the same.
I encourage the first time reader to read the following posts to have a deeper understanding of my motivation for doing a blog and how a blog can best be related to:
https://kadampaworkingdad.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/my-view-of-how-to-do-a-kadampa-blog-correctly/
https://kadampaworkingdad.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/understanding-the-three-wisdoms-and-the-three-lineages/
The starting point of transforming every moment of our life into the path is to have a unifying narrative that binds every aspect of our life together into a common purpose, or more specifically, project. In this way, everything we do is directed at and contributes to this singular purpose/project. If we can accomplish this, then not a single moment of our life will be wasted. For me, this singular project is “to build my pure land.” At a very profound level, the project is to transform myself into my pure land. What is a pure land? A pure land is a realm emanated by a Buddha within which living beings can take rebirth and enter, progress along and complete the path to enlightenment. Quite simply, it can be thought of as a bodhisattva’s training camp. For maximum benefit, this pure land must pervade the entire universe and function to lead all beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.
The two characteristics of a pure land is there is no manifest suffering and everything functions as a cause of one’s enlightenment. Suffering is ultimately a state of mind that is dispelled by the wisdom knowing how to accept and use painful experiences for our spiritual advancement. Thus, the difference between living in samsara, or a world of suffering, and living in a pure land is our knowing how to use every experience, painful or otherwise, for spiritual development. With such wisdom, we will be able to enjoy every experience as fuel pushing us towards enlightenment, and from an experiential point of view, it will be as if we are in a pure land.
A modern Kadampa life has three main spheres: our formal Dharma practice, our personal life and our professional life. This is true for all Kadampas, not just those who are lay practitioners. A Resident Teacher living in a center, for example, still has their own family and many friendships and engages in all sorts of professional activities in the running of a center. If the unifying project of our life is to build our pure land, how then do we accomplish this project in these three spheres? In our formal Dharma practice, we strive to transform ourselves into the Yidam. In our personal life, we strive to transform ourselves into the Guru. And in our professional life, we strive to transform ourselves into the Protector. In this context, the Yidam, or personal deity, is the supreme spiritual doctor who heals the subtle body, speech and mind of all living beings. The Guru is the supreme spiritual father (or mother as the case may be) and friend of all living beings who leads all living beings from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment. The Protector is the supreme spiritual servant-king who forever and always arranges all the outer and inner conditions so that everything is perfect for the swiftest possible enlightenment of everyone. Practically speaking, this means in our formal Dharma practice, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spiritual doctor. In our personal lives, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spiritual father and friend. And in our professional lives, we strive to develop within ourselves the qualities and engage in the actions of a supreme spiritual servant-king. If we can do this, then our entire life will be integrated into our spiritual path, bringing both meaning to every moment and unwavering progress towards the final goal. Over time, these three spheres will merge into one and we will become the embodiment of Guru, Yidam and Protector liberating all beings in our pure land. We will have completed the path.
Some people mistakenly believe that certain life contexts, such as being ordained in a center doing formal Dharma activities all of the time, are more conducive to enlightenment than other life contexts. As a result of this ignorance, they either become dissatisfied with the life that they have or they judge others who are pursuing a way of life different than their own. The reality is all situations are equally empty, in other words created by mind, and so all situations are equally transformable into the quick path to enlightenment. This blog will attempt to share my personal experience of being a Kadampa Working Dad as my quick path to enlightenment. Hopefully the lessons learned will prove beneficial to all Kadampas, working parents or otherwise. It is my hope that through sharing this experience others can learn from my mistakes and that I can live up to my bodhichitta wishes. Enjoy!
(In late October 2011, I gave a day course in Geneva, explaining in more detail these ideas. For those interested, below is a link to the lecture notes from that course.
Modern Kadampa Life day course lecture notes)Last Updated: 13 February 2018
First impressions take 2 seconds.
People can be downright judgey sometimes.
In fact, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book “Blink”, we’re worse than we initially thought. Turns out, we don’t actually take seven seconds to create a “first impression” of what is before our eyes – we take an incredible two seconds instead.
Two seconds. That’s all the time ecommerce store owners have. The design of your ecommerce website has to be visually appealing at the very first glance.
In other words, your ecommerce store has to capture visitors right off the bat, and in order to do that, its design has to be nothing short of spectacular, visuals-wise.
Almost everybody feels visuals make the most difference to a purchase decision.
Additionally, recent research has also found that 92.6% of people feel that the visuals are the top influential factor affecting a purchase decision.
To be sure, arriving at visually appealing can be an arduous journey. The personality of the website can be conveyed through clever use of typography, creative navigation options, and so on – putting all these ideas together for an ecommerce website is a challenging task indeed!
For now, to whet your appetite and inspire you, we’ve scoured the web and pulled together 48 of the best ecommerce website designs we could find.
Bon appétit!
48 Of The Best Ecommerce Website Designs To Inspire You
1. Threadless sells t-shirts.
2. Twelve South sells phone stands.
4. Hard Graft sells bags.
5. Bellroy sells wallets.
6. Freepeople sells clothes.
7. Redmart sells groceries.
8. Faucet Face sells glass bottles.
9. Stacy Adams sells clothes.
10. Bold & Noble sells handmade wallpaper.
12. Skinny Ties sells skinny ties.
13. TruBrain sells drugs for the brain.
(NOTE: TruBrain uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
14. Pencil by 53 sells styluses.
16. UGMonk sells designer clothes and accessories.
17. Longboard Living sells longboards.
18. The Little Sparrow sells baby accessories.
19. Taylor Stitch sells clothes.
20. Uppercase Magazine sells books.
21. Pop Chart Lab sells prints and decors.
22. UNTUCKit sells clothes.
(NOTE: UNTUCKit uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
23. Satchel Page sells bags and accessories.
24. Everlane sells clothing essentials.
Read more about Everlane: Radical Transparency: 5 Ways Fashion Retailer Everlane Earned Insane Word-of-Mouth
25. Wrightwood sells furnitures.
26. Norwegian Rain sells stylish raincoats.
27. DiBruno sells food.
28. AYR sells clothes.
29. Archie Rose sells spirits.
30. Nutriseed sells healthy food.
(NOTE: Nutriseed uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
31. Au Lit Fine Linens sells bedding and linens.
32. Sierra Designs sells outdoor adventure gear.
33. BornShoes sells shoes.
34. Tessemae’s sells sauces and dressings.
35. Boxhill sells furniture.
(NOTE: Riff Raff & Co. uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
37. Victorire Boutique sells clothes.
38. The Dairy Fairy sells lingerie for mothers.
39. Bugaboo sells strollers.
40. Critical Pass sells flashcards for would-be lawyers.
(NOTE: Critical Pass uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
41. Pure Cycles sells bicycles.
42. Solo Stove sells stoves for camping.
43. Kettle and Fire sells bone broth.
44. Helbak sells ceramics.
45. Falve sells menswear.
46. Leatherhead Sports sells footballs.
47. Black Butterfly sells dresses and skirts.
48. Skyroam sells mobile WiFi.
(NOTE: Skyroam uses ReferralCandy for its referral program!)
Further reading about ecommerce:
Have we managed to get you inspired and raring to go?
Now that you’ll start making your ecommerce website more beautiful – how about getting more customers to come to your store? Consider how else you can improve your store to pull in more customers. When you’re ready, come see how our refer-a-friend tool can plug into your store.
Read next: Inspire your customers with a referral program
ADD_THIS_TEXTThe 2018 NWSL College Draft will take place on Thursday, January 18, at 8 a.m. PT at the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Philadelphia, the league announced.
The draft will open to the public and media and will be held in the CC Grand Ballroom at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. It will be live streamed with details to be announced at a later date.
2018 NWSL College Draft
United Soccer Coaches Convention
Pennsylvania Convention Center
1101 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018
Start time: 8 a.m. PT
Room: CC Grand Ballroom
Check out the 2018 NWSL College Draft Order below. View past NWSL College Draft results.
2018 NWSL College Draft Order
Round 1
1. Washington Spirit
2. Boston Breakers
3. Houston Dash
4. FC Kansas City
5. Sky Blue FC
6. Washington Spirit**
7. Chicago Red Stars**
8. Portland Thorns FC
9. Portland Thorns FC
10. North Carolina Courage
Round 2
11. Washington Spirit
12. Houston Dash
13. Chicago Red Stars
14. FC Kansas City
15. Sky Blue FC
16. Washington Spirit
17. Boston Breakers
18. Chicago Red Stars
19. Chicago Red Stars
20. North Carolina CourageBy now you've probably heard that Google is hosting a Chrome event on Dec. 7 in San Francisco. The press invite promised "exciting news about Chrome." Does that mean the Chromebook is finally upon us?
Maybe and maybe not.
The rumor mill has been churning for months.
Most recently, Digitimes, a Taiwanese Website, reported that smartbooks featuring Chrome operating system would debut this month. Back in August, a newly released beta of Chome 6 hinted at a tablet possibility. Menus were optimized for touch and reports said we might see a Chrome tablet in November.
Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, blasted both rumors. He told reporters at the Web 2.0 summit that Chrome is designed for devices with a physical keyboard and won't be available for a few months.
Tuesday's event might be the halfway point between Schmidt's comment and a public release of the device.
Engadget seems to think all signs point to a launch of the Chrome netbook on Tuesday, but is saying only around 65,000 units will be available "to Google's closest 'friends and family'." Engadget also got its mitts on a supposed image of the Chrome netbook keyboard on Friday. The tech blog does note that the keyboard looks pretty darn similar to the configuration of an earlier Acer Chrome netbook.
Whether this is an photo of an actual Google-branded device is up in the air, but it is interesting to note a few Web-related features. The caps lock key is switched out for a search button, the shift key has a caps indicator light and a few navigating function keys are positioned above the number row.
One thing is for sure, the clock is working against Google on this one.
Google first announced Chrome OS in 2009. The operating system was designed to be fast, web-focused, have a quick-start up time and run on devices with solid-state drives. Oh yeah, and Google even plans a Web store for Chrome apps. Back then, Google said that its partners, including ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba, would have netbooks released in time for the holidays this year.
Netbooks were all the rage in 2009, but that isn't really the case in 2010. The iPad and other tablets have shown up on the scene and are destroying netbook sales. Google would be smart to hedge its bets, and make its beta OS a little more fu ture-proof.
When Google announced Chrome in a blog post, it said:
"Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems."
Do we really need Chrome OS for netbooks/desktops and Android for our portable devices? Why does it matter how people plan to use their device? Sounds like a recipe to further the fragmentation problem facing Big G's fan base.
Speed and ease of use are always king. If Google has a few tricks up its sleeve for Web browsing on Chrome, why not roll them into one future OS -- say that ‘Gingerbread' deal I've been hearing so much about.
Give us what Apple and Microsoft haven't: one operating system that can work with or without a keyboard and on a wide variety of devices. Then you'll be set for life.Spending Bill Requires USTR to Launch List 3 Tariff Exclusions by March 17
Top News | | Ref: 1902170001
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has less than 30 days to launch an exclusion process for the third tranche of Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports that took effect Sept. 24 under the spending bill President Donald Trump signed Friday averting a second government shutdown.
The measure marks the first congressional oversight mandate on Trump's Section 301 Chinese tariffs, and is buried deep in an “explanatory statement” accompanying the spending bill and referenced throughout the legislation. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., submitted the statement with the bill after two weeks of bipartisan negotiations resulted in the compromise budget resolution.
Lighthizer has resisted creating an exclusion process for the third round of tariffs for as long as the duties remain at 10 percent, despite congressional pressure on him to act. Dozens of House Democrats and Republicans signed a letter Oct. 15 urging Lighthizer to initiate an exclusion process on the third tranche, modeled after those in the first two rounds, to "afford U.S. companies the opportunity to seek relief if tariffs harm their global competitiveness” (see 1810160072). An exclusion process "has been an integral part" of the first two tariff lists, and "must be a part" of the third as well, said the lawmakers.
The explanatory statement binds Lighthizer to begin initiating the exclusion process on the third tranche by March 17, plus report his progress within a month to the House Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees and the Senate Finance Committee. Trade experts have criticized the exemption process in the first two rounds for lack of transparency and for the rarity of exclusion-request approvals (see 1810110045). Critics applauded when Lighthizer’s office issued its first batch of exemptions days before Christmas, but well after hundreds of requests submitted months earlier were denied, often with little or no explanation (see 1812260010).
The exclusion process for the third round of tariffs should follow “the same procedures as those in rounds 1 and 2,” said the explanatory statement. “It is concerning that there is no exclusion process for goods subject to tariffs in round 3." The process should allow “stakeholders to request that particular products classified within a tariff subheading subject to new round 3 tariffs be excluded,” said the statement.
It bears watching how Lighthizer interprets his “instruction” to initiate the exclusion process, including whether he will apply it retroactively to Sept. 24, blogged customs lawyer Ted Murphy of Baker McKenzie. Though “the expectation that USTR will create an exclusion process within 30 days is clear,” less so is “exactly what it will cover and how it will be implemented,” he said Friday.
Lighthizer arguably might read the language on "new round 3 tariffs" to support his “existing plan of creating an exclusion process for List 3 only if the duties increase to 25%,” Murphy wrote. The increase is scheduled in less than two weeks, unless Trump extends the deadline again (see 1902130040). Murphy asked: “Does ‘new round 3 tariffs’ mean when the List 3 duties increase to 25%, any List 3 duties paid after the date of enactment of the spending bill, or something else?” Lighthizer’s office didn’t comment Tuesday, but a House Appropriations Committee spokesperson said the law requires USTR to initiate a List 3 exclusion process now and abandon its policy that it won’t start a process for List 3 unless the duties rise to 25 percent.
Though the new mandates on Lighthizer are "the first example of increased Congressional oversight of the Section 301 process," Congress has been "increasingly involved in the Section 232 process" on steel and aluminum import tariffs imposed last year on national security grounds, Murphy emailed us Sunday. He views the new Section 301 mandates as a "further extension" of congressional attempts to "re-calibrate the relationship with the White House on trade," he said. Whether "this is the first," or only, step toward more Section 301 oversight "largely depends on President Trump," said Murphy.
Venable Partner Lindsay Meyer worries that when the exclusion process starts for List 3, it will likely make things worse for companies still waiting for decisions on requests from the first two lists, she told us. "It has been a slow roll for List 1 and List 2," she said. She suggested that Lighthizer may argue that evaluating exclusion requests for List 3 should be given a lower priority than those already in the queue for List 1 and List 2, given that the first two lists have had 25 percent tariffs in place since the summer. Congress might agree that these requests go "at the back of the line behind List 1 and List 2," she said. The House Appropriations spokesperson said it's difficult to speculate on a hypothetical like Meyer described, but he stressed that no language in the law gives USTR discretion to prioritize exclusion requests.
Importers “have expressed due process concerns over the fact that the third round of tariffs went into effect without an ability to contest their implementation,” said trade lawyer David Cohen with Sandler Travis. Cohen is among those who have called for more transparency in the exemption program. Requiring USTR to consult with and report progress to the various committees in the House and the Senate “is encouraging as it provides a forum through which importers may voice concerns over the process in place for List 1 and List 2 tariffs,” he said.
USTR's exclusion denials by and large have been “terse," and many "appeared unsupported by any details justifying the denial,” said Cohen. “The hope is that the consultation requirement will encourage the USTR to improve the process to include a right to appeal denials and a more iterative process through which importers may provide additional information." Importers also would support an "open-ended opportunity to seek exclusions rather than the USTR setting forth an arbitrary date by which submissions be filed," he said. He noted that under the exclusion process for Section 232 duties, "there is no deadline for submissions.”
CTA and the National Retail Federation generally hailed the exclusion-process language in the spending bill. “Ensuring that we have a fair, workable exclusion process in place is essential to reducing the damage any new China tariffs will inflict on American workers, businesses and consumers,” said Tiffany Moore, CTA senior vice president-political and industry affairs.
U.S. businesses “deserve access to an efficient and timely tariff exemption process, especially when there is no alternate supplier for the products impacted,” said Jonathan Gold, NRF vice president-supply chain and customs policy. “It makes no sense that a process was provided for the first two tariff lists but not for the larger third list that targeted $200 billion worth of imported goods, many of which are consumer products. We encourage the administration to move swiftly to provide an exemption process as requested by Congress, and we hope the U.S. and China will reach a positive resolution to put an end to tit-for-tat-tariffs that are hurting communities across the country.”I upgraded to an Android phone recently, and love it to bits. It’s like having a PC in my pocket, but unlike my actual ageing PC it is faster than a snail with a wheel clamp on it, and doesn’t take so long to boot up I have time to pull on my jacket and go up into Kendal to do a bit of shopping before it’s ready to do some actual work.
If I’m honest, I upgraded to my phone mostly because I wanted to be able to use planetarium apps on it, apps like Sky Safari that tell you what you are seeing when you point your phone at the sky. But since getting it I’ve found so many brilliant astronomy apps my home PC now growls at my phone, it’s so jealous of it. I have apps which help me track and predict passes of the space station and Iridium flares, apps which help me monitor space weather and alert me to the possibility of an auroral display, and apps which provide me with a high resolution Moon map I can use at the eyepiece of my telescope.
FanTAStic.
I also have more than a few apps which are Mars-related, as you might expect, and some of them are helping me follow Curiosity’s mission at Gale Crater. I thought I’d tell you about them. They’re all available through Google Play. As for cost, well, some are free, others aren’t, but as I’m heading out to work soon I don’t have time to go back and check what they cost – that might have changed by now anyway. So, take a look, and if you fancy trying any or all of these for yourself, wander on over to Google Play and find out more.
1. MARS CLOCK
If you ever find yourself wondering “What time is it on Mars right now, for both Opportunity and Spirit?” well, this app is for you. It was written by rover driver Scott Maxwell, and does exactly what its name suggests – gives you the time on Mars…
You’ll note Scott’s app also gives the time for Spirit. Well done, Scott. Gone, perhaps, but forgotten? Never.
2. MARS IMAGES
This app lets you browse the latest images sent back by both Curiosity and Opportunity. Images are initially displayed as thumbnails, and tapping one brings it up as a larger version…
A very nice feature of this app is how it can generate 3D anaglyphs from pairs of images, so if you have a pair of funky red and blue 3D glasses handy while you’re using it you can see Mars in 3D…
I like that app a lot. 🙂
3. MARS ROVER CURIOSITY
Another app which lets you browse the latest images from Curiosity, but this one presents them as colour thumbnails, and does a lot more besides…
Of course, tapping one of those thumbnails brings up a full size, higher resolution version. The app lets you select images taken by the rover’s individual cameras…
…and can also provide you with information about the weather at Gale Crater…
That part of the app doesn’t appear to update daily, so I don’t rely on it too much, to be honest. Interesting tho… and I love the “– %” figure for rainfall… 🙂
4. CURIOSITY WIDGET
Not an app as such but a widget which displays lots of Curiosity- and Mars-related information in a tiny window on your phone…
Tapping any element of that mini screen brings up a wealth of information, it’s really a snapshot of where Curiosity is and what it’s like there…
I’m really enjoying playing about with using that app for serious Outreach.
5. CURIOSITY CLOCK
Ahhh, my new favourite spacey app, and one I simply can’t stop looking at every time I go to my phone. CURIOSITY CLOCK offers a graphic and from what I can tell VERY accurate representation of Curiosity’s view at Gale Crater, complete with Mt Sharp looming over it. Text on the screen tells you when local sunrise and sunset occurs. But by sweeping a finger on the time bar at the top right you can animate the display, and watch the Sun rising or setting.. and it just looks beautiful, the next best thing to standing there. The butterscotch-hued sky darkens, changing colour from a biscuity brown to a slatey grey-blue as the Sun sinks down to the horizon…
And really that’s all it does. No additional info, nothing about air temperature, Earth transit times, whatever, just sunrise or sunset as seen by Curiosity. And that’s good enough for me, I think it’s brilliant!
So, there you go. Those are the Curiosity-related apps I use, you might find them useful too. If you use any I haven’t found yet, I’d love to hear about them.
AdvertisementsYet another scientific study has undermined one of the shoutiest claims of the anti-wind movement – that inaudible sound waves (or infrasound) emitted by operating wind turbines causes people living close by to wind farms to get sick, with a litany of symptoms ranging from anxiety, to nausea to migraine, heart disease, sleep deprivation and tinnitus.
The study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – and published in the November edition of the peer reviewed Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine – finds that living in close proximity to wind farms does not |
power, where the ultimate sovereign power was the UN. That created a highly irresponsible political culture where the politicians felt free to say very irresponsible things.
If you deny people agency, they feel less of an obligation to behave responsibly. We must have a sense of moral responsibility toward each other. We’ve got to do some highly thoughtful, considerate, deliberate action, because espousing barroom opinions is no way to run things. We’ve got to take each others’ views very seriously, and we have to try to accommodate them if we’re going to get anything done that is durable and sustainable. These duties now apply to us as they once applied to authority.
SR: To quote from early in your book: “It is the actions of other people that have the most impact on what we do.”
CR: It has been empirically proven that what we tend to take the most notice of aren’t governments or disembodied experts telling us what to do — it is the people right next to us, the people we have trust in, the people we look up to, the people whom we measure ourselves against.
We’ve been led to believe that political change flows from us electing a government, that then tells us what to do, and we act accordingly. We are legislated to have policies imposed upon us. In fact, that is the least efficient way of actually creating change. By far a more efficient and direct way is to change our own behavior, and thus change others around you.
SR: There are threads of anarchism that run through The Leaderless Revolution, and you’re open about that, but I imagine you to live a bifurcated life. For half the day you’re working on collective action, and the other half the day you’re reporting to the UN.
CR: It is a bifurcated existence, but there is a common thread, which is a fundamental philosophy that people have a right to be heard about decisions about their own lives. That thinking unites my work with Independent Diplomat and Occupy. It’s exactly the same theme driving it, manifest in different ways. I personally think anarchism has become more relevant in the 21st century than it ever was.
SR: Anarchism is the new Marxism.
CR: Except that Marxism doesn’t give you a prescriptive answer to what to do. Its prescriptions have been shown to fail, at least as manifested in the Soviet system.
SR: And in the Chinese system.
CR: Absolutely. Above all, anarchism is about a practical prescription about what to do. It is much less about comprehensive political theory and much more about practical answers to and how we deal with each other in our life’s affairs. It seems to me demonstrably true that decisions would be better if everyone were included in them. Decisions should be made horizontally and reflect people’s spontaneous desires rather than imposed political ideas. People must behave nonviolently toward each other. And people ultimately are free to express what it is that they most passionately feel and find an embodiment of that, politically. Those seem to be unanswerable political principles.
I am very much against armed anarchism. I believe in nonviolence. I do not associate myself with tossing Molotov cocktails about and calling it anarchism. I don’t believe in overthrowing the current system. I actually believe in replacing it with something better. Violence begets violence.
SR: What’s the difference between anarchy and anarchism?
CR: These semantic distinctions are tricky because they do mean different things to different people. One of the reasons I am cautious about using “anarchism” in the US is because it has much more negative baggage here than it does in Europe. I would like to make that word more palatable again for mainstream conversation, because I think it’s absolutely valuable. What anarchism offers is important.
Some people would say that anarchy is a state where anarchist principles have been put into practice. My distinction is that anarchism is a political philosophy. Anarchy is not a system where anarchism has been imposed, but actually a chaotic state of all against all. Therefore the distinction I would make is that I am for anarchism and against anarchy.
I don’t want all against all, any more than anybody else. I’m terrified of chaos. I feel the suppressed violence and anger of the current situation. The coercion necessary to police it and to keep stability is a form of persistent, chronic violence that we have now. I would argue that stability is better maintained by people negotiating relationships directly — horizontally — with one another so that the social fabric carries some substance of negotiating our common business, rather than this empty vessel of us supposedly getting on with each other and authority making the most important decisions for us.
SR: How far can you scale an anarchist form of government? It’s one thing for 10,000 people, but a million? One hundred million?
CR: It has worked. I don’t think people in Porto Alegre, Brazil would call it anarchism, but deliberative democracy is a concept I am extremely supportive of. In Porto Alegre, they have tried this for many years: mass participation in political decision-making over the city budget, and it worked. It led to more equitable outcomes and even a World Bank study. So it can be done at the scale of the city, and I don’t see it being beyond the wit of man to scale systems like that to a higher level.
At the same time, I don’t think the current machinery is scalable either. I don’t think you get better world administration by having a bunch of largely undemocratic and non-representative governments trying to decide things together. And I don’t mean the manifestly non-democratic countries like Saudi Arabia or China, I also mean us. I don’t think our governments are representative of the collective interest of our people.
SR: On one hand, anarchism requires collective action. On the other hand, there is an advocacy for individual action and agency. One has to be wary of collective action stepping on the toes of individual agency and individual agency usurping collective action.
CR: This boils down to how you arbitrate conflicting interests and protecting minorities. These are important problems, and I don’t think anarchists can lightly dismiss them by saying they will be sorted out in the wash.
A corollary of imposing anarchism is to believe in a gradual evolution of political behavior by individuals and groups, and the establishment of collective norms, and respect of pluralism in the richest sense. That, to me, comes about in the development of norms that are not currently visible, or at least are emerging.
SR: Or that are not codified. There are norms of behavior that are not necessarily legislated.
CR: There are also things like gay rights, which were supported by a large majority of Americans before it became law. That to me tells its own story about the importance of social norms and governing behavior — that in many ways government has lagged behind emerging social norms. And if you put norms as the priority and say that our duty is to propagate these social norms and negotiate with each other, they become all the more powerful.
SR: This brings me back to the time-speed-democracy issue. Gay rights is a wonderful example of how the country was ready for it long before legislatures ever were. A state legislature, through its democratic process, takes longer to catch up to what is happening in the streets. If legislators instead prioritize norms, the democratic process catches up quicker to public sentiment.
CR: Yes, but you wouldn’t need legislation. It is ridiculous and absurd that we require government to authorize us to marry. Marriage is a profoundly personal decision that should be yours and yours alone. For government — essentially other people — to accord you legal respect and rights is to me a revolting idea.
SR: You say the ends are the means, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there should be no goals, right?
CR: It’s not for me to tell you what your goals should be. I have respect for your goals. All I am saying is that in assuming your goals, be aware that the way that you pursue them is actually an end and not merely a means. The way you pursue your personal goal is going to have more effect than the end you seek, because that is actually what’s going on now.
In a sense, this plays to your temporal argument: it’s now. It doesn’t matter to a dead person in Iraq that democracy was the goal of the person dropping the bomb; that argument is immaterial to them. What matters is that they’re dead. I suppose this is a way of illustrating what seems to be a profoundly political argument — a moral argument really — that what matters is what you do, not what you say you’re doing.
SR: To bring it back to what you said earlier about demanding power from power: having goals is one thing, but perhaps demands shouldn’t be made, because that acknowledges a power structure?
CR: That’s an interesting point. In the current system we are forced to make demands of others who have power. I think that’s humiliating to us; we shouldn’t have to demand things about how to run our own lives.
The idea of making demands does reinforce a system that I ultimately find objectionable. And to me, making demands, perhaps more insidiously, reinforces our impotence over our own circumstances.
We have been taught a system of perpetual impotence, that only the government can change things and that we can only appeal to government to change things, and I think that has fundamentally destroyed the idea that we are, in fact, the most powerful people to make change. Obviously as individuals we cannot compete with the power of the government, but collectively we have far more power than any government.
One of the things I found remarkable working in government was how powerless politicians felt, how they felt they were being swept along by forces much larger than them that were basically immutable. I don’t believe in immutability. I believe that things can be changed, and can be changed very quickly and dramatically.
SR: Let me switch gears and talk about the Occupy Money Cooperative. Let’s start with the bigger picture: banks, the financial system, financialization, et cetera. Are banks more powerful now, after the recession, than they were before?
CR: I certainly don’t think they have been adequately reined in subsequent to the 2008 crisis, as politicians would have us believe. I think that Dodd-Frank and any of the other combined legal actions on any level are nothing but inadequate. The proposed actions will do nothing to stop banks from behaving irresponsibly or to stop another financial crisis from happening. The essential fragility and vulnerability of the system has been preserved.
The simple things to do to banks to reduce the systemic risk of the global economy have not been done. They’re very simple, and they don’t need 600 pages of legislation like Dodd-Frank to be done. They need two pages of legislation.
SR: Give me one.
CR: Reduce the size of banks. This idea has been obscured by lots of complicated arguments about “too big to fail” and the Volcker Rule, but basically if you didn’t have such big banks, you wouldn’t have such systemic risk because risk would be spread out amongst a far greater set of smaller institutions, which if any one of them collapsed would pose much less risk to the whole system. The problem is that now you have a few megabanks. The US banking market is dominated by a tiny number of huge banks, which if any of them fail would pose an immense risk not only to the American economy but to the world economy.
Another: insist on better capital ratios. For instance, all banks have to do is withhold earnings. It doesn’t mean they have to stop lending. The argument that it’ll make them stop lending is just not true. They just need to withhold their earnings — perhaps their own earnings, heaven forbid.
Third: force bankers to have a personal stake in their own risk-taking. Their own salaries or stockholdings or bonuses should be reduced if their bets fail. They need some skin in the game, because at the moment they don’t have any. They get their rewards whether the risks pay off or not. The taxpayer remains the insurer of last resort. We pay for the risks, but get none of the rewards.
SR: What would the ideal bank look like?
CR: An ideal version of a bank is not that difficult to imagine at all; it’s more or less everything today’s banks are not.
My ideal bank would be a cooperative, it would be community-based, and it would restore a sense of personal relationship between a banker and a customer, which has been completely lost in the maze of internet banking. It would be much more transparent. It would be simple. This is not a particularly radical thesis — analysts have come up with the same conclusions: you just return to simple, boring banking. Make banks smaller, more transparent, make them do less. Just require them to do the basic things that banks do: lend money to people and hold their money.
We would put people back in control of a public good, which is the means of exchange. One of the crises of capitalism is that common goods have come under the control of rapaciously profit-seeking institutions to the detriment of public interest. Those institutions have gone on to corrupt the legislature to protect their own quasi-monopolies. This isn’t free competition; this is something else very ugly.
SR: What is the Occupy Money Cooperative (OMC), and how is it different than a credit union?
CR: Credit unions can do more than we can at the moment. You can have a checking account with a credit union; you can’t have a checking account with the OMC. At the moment we’re only planning to launch one product — an innovative prepaid card — which is one of the services the so-called “unbanked” are forced to use because they can’t have a checking account and are often ripped off by prepaid card providers. We’re proposing to offer a very good value, transparent alternative to them.
One important distinction is that anybody can use our services, whereas a credit union is legally obliged to serve only a defined membership, like, for instance, armed services members or residents of the Lower East Side. Our services, however, will be available to anybody.
One of the ways private banks have hobbled the credit union industry is by preventing them from being universally available. There is no universally available national credit union that anybody can join. There should be, but it’s legally not possible because the banks know full well that it would take away their profits. Because it’s a cooperative, by its nature it could operate at a lower cost than a bank.
You are not allowed to set up a national credit union. There is absolutely no good reason for that. The only reason it is illegal to do so is to protect the profits of the banks.
SR: How do you answer the criticism of working with Visa?
CR: My answer is that we decided not to make the best the enemy of the good. We decided to do what we can; if you want to use a national payment network, then you have to use something like Visa. You have no alternative. In the long run, I hope we will be big and powerful enough to have alternatives and perhaps to establish alternatives ourselves. Our critics have not answered the question: “What would you do instead?” How would you offer a nationally available alternative service without using some of the financial system that is obviously compromising and obviously demands improvement? I share these concerns, and I share the criticism.
As a group we felt it was more important to do something and actually be helpful to the unbanked, who are the most vulnerable members of our society, rather than twiddling our thumbs waiting for something to come along.
SR: What do you mean by “unbanked”?
CR: Banks basically don’t give accounts to low-income people and people who have bad credit histories. In essence, they are excluded from the traditional banking system; they can’t build up credit records without having a bank account. A bank account is a very important way to access credit. If, for example, you’re starting your own business, you have to have access to credit.
Denying people banking services is a way of excluding them from the economic system as a whole, condemning them to live in a world of cash economy, payday lenders, high-interest lenders, and totally inadequate financial services.
SR: What is the cost structure for using the card?
CR: We can’t announce the cost details until we actually launch the card. With a prepaid card or a debit card, the cost structure is quite complicated. You can take money from the consumer in all kinds of different ways. The current card providers tend to do that in a hidden, untransparent way, and that’s why people are racking up charges without realizing it.
One thing we are determined to do is, if we have charges, to be absolutely clear on how to minimize charges. We have every interest in doing this because the most innovative feature of the card is that if you use it, you are a member of the cooperative that runs it. If the card is ripping you off, it’s ripping off itself. We’re not going to rip off our customers because our customers are us.
SR: How does one sign up for the card?
CR: You can sign up to volunteer, and shortly you’ll be able to make donations to help us get our start-up costs, but you can’t yet join because to join you have to get the card. At the moment the thing is run by a small founding board. As soon as we get the membership, they will be involved in the decision-making.
SR: Do you have plans to offer more products?
CR: Absolutely. The card is just a start. This is one of the things our critics have to understand: we have to start with something. We don’t have the capital to launch regular banking services. That will take us many years and will be extraordinarily complicated and difficult to do. But we hope through this initial product to gain momentum to develop new products.
We’ll also be very much open to the ideas of our members about what kinds of products they need and how those can be provided at a minimum cost. We’ll then have a powerful platform for the innovation of good, quality banking services.
We’re also exploring ideas of peer-to-peer banking services to reduce the structural costs of providing services. For instance, there are already peer-to-peer lending services where you can go online to invest and lend to people, but we would like that process to be a much lower cost. At the moment, to do that we have to pay hefty fees.
SR: Theoretically, could OMC buy a bank and change its charter?
CR: Yes. It’s much easier for us to buy a bank than to set one up, because the FDIC licensing system is enormously onerous. As far as I am aware, they haven’t licensed a new bank since 2008. So it’s very, very difficult to get a license; it’s much easier to buy an existing bank. There are lots of little banks out there that you could buy. Obviously it’s a major undertaking to do that, and you can only do so with enormous care and responsibility, but it is a way for us to get into banking.
SR: Now I want to turn to Gandhi. Why are you inspired by the Salt Satyagraha (Salt March)?
CR: I took inspiration from it because it was a classic political action of showing and doing: they did the thing they wanted to see, which was to make salt. Up to that point, British colonialists monopolized salt. Gandhi asserted their right to make salt not by demanding from the government they be allowed to do it, but by actually doing it. That was an extraordinarily powerful example of taking very direct and practical action. Eventually, it worked.
I read a lot about the independence process for India. Obviously it was a complicated story, and one cannot attribute it entirely to Gandhi, but clearly he changed the moral tone of the conversation. It was very striking to read the accounts of British imperial officers at the time who believed, because of Gandhi, that it was not plausible to hold onto the country forever. He made it clear that the colonialists did not have public consent.
SR: Do you think he realized that at the moment? Or, is this something you can only realize in retrospect, because you’re too close to it? For example, with OMC you are shooting something over the bow. It’s a warning shot: there’s an alternative to the banking system. We’re doing it. We’re taking action. I don’t know what the long-term effects will be, but it is possible that something could happen.
So, when you’re in a momentous occasion like that — when you’re not getting off the bus in Birmingham, if you’re marching to the coast, if you’re starting an Occupy Money Cooperative…
CR: I wouldn’t put those on the same par at all.
SR: It’s too soon to tell, so I guess you just answered the question. If you’re in the moment, you can’t see its total impact.
CR: We’re very different in terms of the risk, above all. Gandhi and the Civil Rights marchers took extremely personal, physical risks that I would never take. It’s very important to make that distinction.
The OMC is worth doing in its own right. If it’s just a little thing that helps a few people, then it’s worth doing. I will be glad that I was a part of it. If it helps trigger broader change, then brilliant. If somebody comes up with a better mode of change, a better idea, a better way of fixing a broken financial system, then I’ll be delighted.
I’m of the view that in reforming capitalism, there isn’t one right way. We should try many different ways and see what works. Occupy, in a way, embodies that eclecticism: it allows people to try lots of things driven by a common concern about the state of the economy and above all, about inequality. This is why our critics have it wrong: we’re not saying the OMC is the only way to fix banking. If others have better ideas, then good luck to them. I will be the first to applaud them.
In that sense, it’s rather different than a revolutionary political movement. The distinction between civil rights and ending imperialism in India is that their goals were about one thing. Civil rights was about ending inequality. Ending imperialism was about liberating a people from oppression. Changing capitalism is about many things. Claiming there is one solution is mistaken.
SR: You were and continue to be disillusioned with the way the international, state-centric system works, but you’re not cynical. You’re not pessimistic.
CR: About what?
SR: About the human experiment. You don’t seem willing or able to dismiss this as “that’s life.” There’s a sense of optimism about you.
CR: It’s an optimism driven by despair, because I am despairing about the current situation. But I do believe it is entirely possible there could be something better. I don’t believe in the unfixability of the current system. To be truly cynical is to shrug your shoulders and say, “This is the best we can do,” but I don’t think that’s true. We’ve become frozen in the headlights of a system that desperately requires change and that has outlived its purpose as a political and economic philosophy. Given the acute problems we face, it makes sense to explore alternatives.
When I sit in my Occupy group with a bunch of ordinary people who, before Occupy, were totally unpoliticized, but were galvanized by the emergence of that movement and the possibilities it created, and the inspiration it gave them, I do feel optimistic. My Occupy group makes me feel optimistic. It’s now a small group of people, and they’ve kept going through thick and thin, often discouraged, often facing many obstacles, totally unpaid, totally unrewarded, largely unrecognized, and for the most part they’ve stuck at it. One or two of them have done far more than I have done. I really admire them. They inspire me.
When I started the group, I thought I would be motivated by this goal of reforming banking and rebuilding banking — and to an extent that’s still true — but in the darkest days what kept me going was my loyalty to my fellow group members, that I wouldn’t let them down. We kept going for each other.
SR: How do you start a leaderless revolution?
CR: It’s entirely possible for people to construct better things. You don’t need permission. Just go and do it.
¤
Shaun Randol is the founder and editor in chief of The Mantle.The Global StarCraft II Team League has been the staple team tournament in Korea. Players have built a name for themselves and some have fallen short of living up to the hype. GSTL has been one of the most anticipated tournaments of this year! Here at SK-Gaming we've summed up the action from the week so let's just jump right in!This week was full of games with great and innovating strategies and nail biting series. Ace players were pulled to play but not all of them performed as expected. A lot of Terran versus Protoss games were played in the past days almost no Zerg games were seen.One of the most appealing and must watch games was in day one between Jjakji and Seed. This game went passive at the start until both of them started their 3 base play and the poking started, the first attacks were from jjakji with a +1 attack, stim and combat shield timing but it did not work versus the Colossus play from Seed. Later one the game got dragged till the late game, where nukes were seen and a lot of storms. With some back and forth action between the two of them, things went a little crazy when Seed managed to get into Jjakji’s main base. The multiple tech switches from Seed proved difficult for Jjakji to handle. In the end it was enough for Seed to claim victory for himself and IM-SK. This game was perfect for a number of reasons, Seeds ability to make the perfect decision when needed is what sets him apart from the rest. Check out the VOD you will not be disappointed!One of the upsets of the weeks was the game between Jjakji and MVP. Where Jjakji opted for a proxy Starport near MVP’s base and even though MVP held the attack off without much damage he wasn't able to capitalize on the pressure fomr Jjakji. In the mid game MVP started to struggle in securing a fourth base since Jjakji had his third base so much earlier. In the end MVP was too far behind in economy and was not able to catch up and he was forced to leave.The most disappointing game of the week was between Yonghwa and Moon. Moon known for being one of the best Warcraft 3 progamers needed to show some good results in this game, but sadly it went rather poorly. YongHwa upon seeing that the overlord of Moon was not over his second Hatchery he immediately placed a Pylon followed by two Cannons who managed to kill the Hatchery and the Zerg player ended up with a one base play. Moon decided to go with the desperate decision to make a Nydus Network and hope that YongHwa won’t scout his base but that did not happen and the tactic was denied upon it’s start. Right after the failed Zerg attempt to win the game YongHwa attacked with his army and won the game. This game was one of the worst games of the week, save yourself some time and count yourself lucky if you haven't seen the VOD yet!Next week there will only be one match, the teams that will battle it out will be New Star HoSeo and Fnatic. Even though there will be only one series it will feature players like the Code S champion Jjakji, IPL winner aLive and the amazing Protoss player Oz. There is definitely potential for an exciting series so make sure you tune in for that.Don’t forget to come and check to read the next weekly recap of series on Monday the 17-th. Also check GOMTV’s Video Live StreamScientists have performed a successful test of a possible new drug in a mouse model of an autism disorder. The candidate drug, called NitroSynapsin, largely corrected electrical, behavioral and brain abnormalities in the mice.
NitroSynapsin is intended to restore an electrical signaling imbalance in the brain found in virtually all forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
"This drug candidate is poised to go into clinical trials, and we think it might be effective against multiple forms of autism," said senior investigator Stuart Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Hannah and Eugene Step Chair at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), who is also a clinical neurologist caring for patients.
The research, published on today in the journal Nature Communications, was a collaboration involving scientists at the Scintillon Institute; the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine; Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and other institutions. Lipton's fellow senior investigators on the project were Drs. Nobuki Nakanishi and Shichun Tu of the Scintillon Institute in San Diego.
ASD is brain development disorder that affects 1 in 68 children in the United States alone. Because ASD has been diagnosed more often in recent years, most Americans now living with autism diagnoses are children -- roughly 2.4 percent of boys and 0.5 percent of girls.
Genetic Analysis Leads to Potential Treatment
The new study stemmed from a 1993 study in which Lipton and his laboratory, then at Harvard Medical School, identified a gene called MEF2C as a potentially important factor in brain development.
This breakthrough led Lipton and colleagues to the discovery that disrupting the mouse version of MEF2C in the brain, early in fetal development, causes mice to be born with severe, autism-like abnormalities. Since that discovery in mice in 2008, other researchers have reported many cases of children who have a very similar disorder, resulting from a mutation to one copy of MEF2C (human DNA normally contains two copies of every gene, one copy inherited from the father and one from the mother). The condition is now called MEF2C Haploinsufficiency Syndrome (MHS).
"This syndrome was discovered in people only because it was first discovered in mice -- it's a good example of why basic science is so important," Lipton said.
MEF2C encodes a protein that works as a transcription factor, like a switch that turns on the expression of many genes. Although MHS accounts for only a small proportion of autism disorder cases, large-scale genomic studies in recent years have found that mutations underlying various autism disorders frequently involve genes whose activity is switched on by MEF2C.
"Because MEF2C is important in driving so many autism-linked genes, we're hopeful that a treatment that works for this MEF2C-haploinsufficiency syndrome will also be effective against other forms of autism," Lipton said, "and in fact we already have preliminary evidence for this."
For the study, the researchers created a laboratory model of MHS by engineering mice to have -- like human children with MHS -- just one functioning copy of the mouse version of MEF2C, rather than the usual two copies. The mice showed impairments in spatial memory, abnormal anxiety and abnormal repetitive movements, plus other signs consistent with human MHS. Analyses of mouse brains revealed a host of problems, including an excess in key brain regions of excitatory signaling (which causes neurons to fire) over inhibitory signaling (which suppresses neuronal activity).
In short, these two important kinds of brain signals were out of balance. A similar excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance is seen in most forms of ASD and is thought to explain many of the core features of these disorders, including cognitive and behavioral problems and an increased chance of epileptic seizures.
The researchers treated the MHS-mice for three months with NitroSynapsin, an aminoadamantane nitrate compound related to the Alzheimer's FDA-approved drug memantine, which was previously developed by Lipton's group. NitroSynapsin is known to help reduce excess excitatory signaling in the brain, and the team found that the compound did reduce the E/I imbalance and also reduced abnormal behaviors in the mice and boosted their performance on cognitive/behavioral tests -- in some cases restoring performance essentially to normal.
Lipton and colleagues are currently testing the drug in mouse models of other autism disorders, and they hope to move NitroSynapsin into clinical trials with a biotechnology partner.
The work also has support from parents of children with MHS. "We are all hanging on to the hope that one day our children will be able to speak, to understand and to live more independent lives," said Michelle Dunlavy, who has a son with MHS.
In fact, Lipton's group is also now using stem cell technology to create cell-based models of MHS with skin cells from children who have the syndrome -- and NitroSynapsin appears to work in this 'human context' as well. Dunlavy and other parents of children with MHS recently organized an international, Facebook-based support group, which is coordinating to assist in Lipton's research going forward.
In an amazing twist, the scientific team also found in Alzheimer's disease models that the new NitroSynapsin compound improves synapse function, the specialized areas for communication between nerve cells. Thus, the ability of the drug to improve 'network' communication in the brain may eventually lead to its use in several neurological diseases.Ocular Overload
Continuing my exploration of neurodiversity issues. I challenge you, reader, to see things in a different way than you’re used to seeing.
If you weren’t expecting it and someone started screaming in your ear, how would you react? Most likely, your first instinct would be to turn your head away. Screaming is intense, maybe even painful.
That’s the best way I can think of to describe sensory overload. Some people, including many on the spectrum, are extra-sensitive to sensory overload, and not just aural. For example, when I need to find a particular item in a colorful aisle of goods at the supermarket, it looks approximately like this to me:
(Image by Dehydrating under CC license)
Many folks on the spectrum have problems with eye contact. I’ve mostly learned to deal with it, but then again so do new recruits in every single military movie learn to deal with screaming in their face when first confronted with the shouty drill sergeant. 🙂
I found this article to be a particularly good description of the phenomenon.
Do you have anyone in your life who doesn’t handle eye contact the way you expect? If so, the set of suggestions at the end of the article are particularly helpful.
Don’t force eye contact
Don’t assume that someone’s not paying attention
Explain, practice, and think.
In short, try to see things from a different point of view.
I welcome your thoughts and experiences.Large-scale population displacement, and food and water shortages, will result if efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are unsuccessful, a lawyer for a Hamilton student has told the High Court.
Law student Sarah Thomson is challenging the government over the way this country's climate targets have been set, in the first case of its kind in New Zealand.
Photo: RNZ / Emile Donovan
About three-dozen banner-carrying protestors lined the street outside the High Court to support Ms Thomson's cause. Representatives of climate action groups spoke to the crowd about the importance of the legal action, and the precedent it set in holding governments to account.
Ms Thomson's lawyer, Davey Salmon, told the court this morning the effects of climate change painted a grim picture for the world's geo-stability.
He said the worst effects would occur when tens of millions of people sought to migrate to other countries because they lacked food and water.
Mr Salmon said the case was not about lobbying, but was an orthodox judicial review proceeding in which there were few actual disputes.
He said the Minister for Climate Change Issues had failed to reset New Zealand's targets under the Paris climate agreement as required.
The accord, in December 2015, agreed a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperatures to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
"The 2 degrees wasn't a target, it was where things went from frightening to terribly frightening," said Mr Salmon. "Paris said 2 degrees was the line but 1.5 degrees was the better goal."
Mr Salmon said New Zealand's 2050 target for emissions reduction had not been revisited, but the reasons why it should be are largely-self-evident.
He said the plaintiff's case was that the decision made was unreasonable and those making it proceeded from the wrong starting point.
The case is set down for three days.
New Zealand has committed to reducing emissions by 11 percent on 1990 levels by 2030 as part of the Paris agreement. However, New Zealand's most recent greenhouse gas inventory shows emissions in 2015 were 24.1 percent higher than 1990 levels.
Gross greenhouse gas emissions from human activity for 2015 were 80.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with 64.6 million tonnes in 1990.Marvel teased that Red Wolf would be a part of the "All New, All Different" comic launch a few months ago, but I had no idea that they planned on giving him his very own comic series! Marvel has officially made the announcement, and they released the beautiful art above that was created by Jeffrey Veregge, who is a member of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe based out of Kingston, Washington, and who is also of Suquamish and Duwamish descent. It's been almost 40 years since Red Wolf has had his own comic, so as you can see, the comic publisher is really taking strides to diversify.
Nathan Edmondson will be writing the series, Dalibor Talajić will be doing the art, and Veregge will be doing covers, design, and consulting on it. In an interview with Mashable, Veregge said this about the comic:
"There's not a character like Red Wolf out there right now. As a Native, I’m really excited to see that he can do things, he can figure out things and stand with Captain America, and hold his own in this universe. That’s what’s awesome about it: You have all these characters of different nationalities and ethnicities, but it’s not all about their culture. It’s about them being a hero."
Red Wolf was the first Native American hero character, and he was introduced in 1970 as William Talltrees in Avengers #80. He got his own nine-issue, Old West-set series that started in 1972. According to the report, the new version of Red Wolf will reside in the American Southwest, "where his more grounded powers — think of him as being to New Mexico what Daredevil is to Hell's Kitchen — will be put to the test against some very gnarly criminal elements in what's being described as a gritty, brutal crime series."
That sounds fantastic! This character will not follow any of the versions that we've seen in the past. He will have his own origin, backstory, and powers. I imagine he will have some of the powers that we've seen from him in the past, though. Edmondson explains that, " |
Day in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side. A 26-year-old woman was shot in the left leg and left hand in the 6300 block of South Hamilton, police said. She took herself to Holy Cross Hospital, but her condition was not known.
At least 17 other people were wounded in shootings across Chicago between 4 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Tuesday. Follow the holiday weekend’s gun violence with the Chicago Sun-Times shooting tracker.
Last year, 59 people were shot in Chicago over the holiday weekend, leaving 11 dead.One of the world’s leading experts in fire forensics says the Mexican government’s account of the fate of 43 students that went missing in September 2014 is “impossible”, adding to the suspicion that a state cover-up may be afoot. According to the Mexican attorney general, the students were murdered by members of a drug cartel before being incinerated at a trash dump, but Jose Torero from the University of Queensland says the evidence suggests otherwise.
The students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College had hijacked five buses in order to travel to a protest in Mexico City commemorating the massacre of up to 300 students in 1968. However, members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel later claimed to have ambushed the students in the town of Iguala with the help of local police, who were supposedly acting under orders from the local mayor.
The cartel members say they abducted and executed 43 individuals, later burning their bodies on a pyre made of wood and tires at a dump near the town of Cocula. Shortly afterwards, investigators uncovered bags of ashes in a nearby river.
The contents of these bags were completely charred, with virtually all of the organic matter having been burned away. As a result, scientists were unable to extract much DNA from the remains, and could only identify two of the missing 43 students from this grisly discovery. It is this detail that aroused the suspicion of Torero.
In an interview with Science, he explained that it is virtually impossible to eliminate all the organic material from a human body when burning it on an open fire. This is because bodies contain a large water content, and not enough fat to provide the fuel for such complete incineration.
To confirm this, he ran a series of experiments using pig carcasses, which he burned on a pyre made of tires and dry wood. His findings revealed that it takes around 27,000 kilograms (59,500 pounds) of wood to burn 43 bodies, and that even this still leaves around 10 percent of the organic material intact. As such, he began to suspect that the Ayotzinapa students must have been disposed of at a crematorium.
He then decided to visit the site of the alleged fire in order to look for signs that a major blaze had occurred. Given the scale of the inferno that would have been needed to reduce the bodies to ashes, many of the surrounding trees should have been permanently scarred, yet Torero found no such markings on the nearby vegetation.
As a result, he states that “the hypothesis that 43 bodies were burned in that dump is impossible,” placing yet more pressure on the government to uncover the truth.Florida has a young craft brewing history, only dating back to 1996, when the state's first microbrewery, Dunedin, popped up just west of Tampa. The same year, Tampa Bay Brewing Company also opened their doors. But after those two brewers arrived in the state, it took a while for the craft beer to really catch on with locals. The 2000s saw a new batch of craft breweries in Florida that helped put the state on the beer-destination map: in 2006, Jacksonville's Bold City Brewing opened, and Tarpon Springs became home to St. Somewhere, a brewery focused on farmhouse ales. Cigar City Brewing, perhaps Florida's best-known craft brewery, started selling their adventurous brews in Tampa in 2008.
But Florida's brewing culture continues to grow. Just over the last year or so, the state has welcomed several new small breweries—the Tampa Bay area is cultivating a fervent craft beer scene, while the other side of the state is just getting started. If you find yourself thirsty in Florida, here are three new local breweries to seek out.
Rapp Brewing Company (Seminole, Florida)
This barely one-year old brewery has earned a name as the best new brewery in Florida from Rate Beer. Founder and brewer Greg Rapp had been home brewing IPAs and experimenting with sour beers for 11 years when he decided to go pro.
Rapp focuses on styles that serve to refresh in Florida's balmy weather. "I make a lot of session beers—I try to make beers that work well in our climate." He works in small batches—about a barrel and a half at a time. He regularly rotates out the brews he has on tap in his tasting room—his most popular brew is a gose, a slightly sour German beer style that's only recently seen a resurgence. He notes, "No one else in the area brews it and it seems to be a perfect Florida beer."
Rapp's gose interpretation stays pretty close to the traditional style (it's salty and tangy, brewed mostly with wheat). The cloudy yellow concoction offers a lemony tartness to balance the salt, and the result is especially refreshing thanks to its low alcohol level.
Rapp Brewing Company: 10930 Endeavour Way Suite C, Seminole, FL 33777 (map) 727-692-7912; rappbrewing.com
Due South Brewing Co. (Boynton Beach, Florida)
This Boynton Beach-based brewery (which just celebrated its first anniversary in May) has a penchant for malty but easy-to-drink beers. Brewery Operations Manager Mike Jurewicz explains that the owner and brewer Mike Halker originally set out to make wine for his wife. "When he went to buy his equipment, the owner of the homebrew shop talked him into doing beer instead. After about five years of homebrewing, he decided that he wanted to do it for a living."
Due South's most popular brew—and the one the team considers to be most representative of the brewery—is their Caramel Cream Ale. "People say [it tastes] like a caramel beer soda or those small caramel candies," says Jurewicz. The dark amber beer has a vivid caramel aroma, but it's a bit more balanced in flavor, with roasted malt up front and caramel candy in the finish. Due South's Caramel Cream Ale manages to deliver sweetness without overpowering the other flavors in the beer.
The brewery also produces what they call a Florida-style IPA, which offers a careful balance of bold citrusy hops and a nice helping of malt. Their other brews include a Honey Vanilla Wheat (brewed with local honey) and the malty, coffee-heavy Cafe Ole Espresso Porter.
While the team has recently added a 60-barrel fermenter to their facility (and expects to grow even further), they still want to focus on their current distribution area, reaching almost 300 miles from Vero Beach down to Key West on the east coast of the state.
Due South Brewing Co.: 2900 High Ridge Road, Boynton Beach, FL (map) 561-463-2337; duesouthbrewing.com
Gravity Brew Lab (Wynwood, Florida)
The Miami area was a bit slow to get on the craft-beer train, but over the last year, that has begun to turn around. One new South Florida brewery to watch: Gravity Brew Lab in Wynwood.
In 2012, Diego Ganoza started brewing out of a warehouse space he borrowed from a friend. He has his sights set on a larger facility but even though he's producing just a quarter barrel at a time, he's managed to deliver some of the most creative beers the Miami area has seen. He's developed four core beers so far: a pale ale, a sour wheat, a coffee stout, and a watermelon saison.
A dedication to local ingredients is key when it comes to Ganoza's brewing technique. He notes, "We're trying to keep the flavors as local as we can." Ganoza's Cortadito Coffee Stout uses an espresso blend direct from Panther Coffee, the local coffee shop. His sour Berliner Weisse is made with Jabuticaba, a locally grown grape-like fruit that gives the very tart orange brew a plum-like character.
In an attempt to cater to Florida drinkers who don't have much experience with hoppy, West coast-style IPAs, Ganoza created his Biscayne Gold Pale Ale, using only aromatic hops. The intention was to create a pale ale that featured IPA-like aromas without a super-bitter flavor. Ganoza thinks of it as a bridge for drinkers to become more familiar with hoppier beers.
And when those same drinkers are ready to take on a hoppier beer, Ganoza has something for them. His Citra Pale Ale starts with the mild Biscayne Gold which he then dry-hops with Citra hops. The resulting beer pours a cloudy orange and smells grassy and earthy. The flavor brings together the milder pale ale with a touch of citrus.
The loyalty Ganoza feels toward local ingredients translates to his current distribution plan. He's staying very local for the time being, serving the beer at festivals and at a few locations in the immediate area, with hopes to make the business national someday when he has the resources.
Gravity Brew Lab.: 786-536-7085; gravitybrewlab.com/
What are your favorite Florida breweries? Let us know in the comments.
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Britain is preparing itself for almost 100% migration following the news that it does after all have poisonous spiders, the only reason that people live here as opposed to somewhere nice and hot.
It’s thought that the influx of false widow spiders is so widespread that every house will have one somewhere and most people will have one somewhere under their bed. Generally they only attack in the dark, but even in the day time they can scramble out of nowhere and attack without warning, so it’s important to be vigilant and remember to speak in a deep manly voice as they’re naturally attracted to mincing.
One delegate at the Labour party conference in Brighton told us that having just heard the news he would be immediately quitting British politics and moving to sunnier climes. “I’ve had to sit hear all day listening to posh pretend leftie Eddie ‘dogshit’ Miliband wittering on about how he’s going to make energy companies freeze their bills when he clearly isn’t and all the time I’m thinking it can’t be that bad, at at least I won’t get bitten by a poisonous bitey spider. And now I find out I might be after all and it could happen at any time. Well bollocks to it. I’m taking my arachnophobia to somewhere with a nice beach and palm trees.
“Turns out the bloody things been in the country for 100 odd years. That’s four generations of my family that lived in fucking Basingstoke when we could have been living on a desert island drinking lilt. Or something.”
David Cameron has promised that organisation of any mass migration will be in safe hands under the coalition. “We’re all in this together. So I’ll be going on ahead with my banking mates to find a nice beach somewhere.”Islamabad (AFP) - Pakistan on Friday welcomed the return of international tennis after a 12-year hiatus, taking a 2-0 lead against Iran in a Group II Davis Cup match in Islamabad. International sporting events have rarely been held in Pakistan, which has fought a homegrown Islamist insurgency for years and due to foreign teams citing security fears.
A 2009 militant attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team bus in Lahore effectively sealed Pakistan's fate. Pakistan has played at neutral venues ever since, hosting its "home" cricket matches in the United Arab Emirates, and tennis games in opponents' countries.
But security has improved in the last two years, signalling hopes for the slow revival of international sport on Pakistani soil. Hopes were high at the Davis Cup match in the capital where Pakistan won both singles matches in straight sets.
Aqeel Khan beat Iran's Shahin Khaledan 7-6 (7-1), 6-4, 6-2 while Aisam Qureshi downed Anoosha Shahgholi 6-1, 6-2, 6-2. Khan said he was "extremely happy" to see international tennis return to Pakistan.
"We have to play well as the home crowds have a lot of expectations from us," he admitted.
"This is a huge achievement," Salim Saifullah Khan, president of the Pakistan Tennis Federation told AFP, saying that having the home advantage for the first time in years would represent a "huge leap" in Pakistani tennis.
Pakistan last hosted a Davis Cup tie in Islamabad against New Zealand in 2004, and were forced to play its Group I play-off tie in Christchurch, New Zealand which they lost 5-0.By Mike Wood
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Commuter train passengers braced for a crowded ride home from New York City's Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday, with Metro-North Railroad service still only partially restored after a massive four-alarm fire disrupted the evening rush hour the evening before.
The New York City Fire Department ruled that the cause of the fire, involving elevated track at Park Avenue and 118th Street, was gasoline spilled on a hot generator at a garden supply store beneath the tracks.
While repairs were under way - possibly until Friday - trains serving tens of thousands of Metro North passengers from the city's northern suburbs and Connecticut were operating on a limited weekend schedule.
Fire department investigators determined the fire broke out when heat from the generator ignited gasoline fumes, which set ablaze wooden pallets and other debris, said a Fire Department spokesman.
"They were trying to refuel when the generator was hot," he said. "It was accidental."
During the morning rush hour, customers on standing-room-only trains said the suburban train trip was more like a packed New York City subway ride.
"I'm surprised we got here at all," said Lisa Bucci of Norwalk, Connecticut, who works in clothing sales, as her train crawled into the station, doubling her morning commute to more than two hours.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates Metro North, was investigating what materials were being stored under the elevated tracks, spokesman Aaron Donovan said on Wednesday.
"We need to understand why they are being put there," Donovan said. The Fire Department did not immediately respond to questions about the fire.
Train service during the evening rush hour on Tuesday was halted as firefighters battled the blaze. Metro-North crews worked throughout the night, repairing and restoring two of the four tracks for the morning rush hour.
MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast told one TV station the fire caused “severe damage to a vertical column that supports the structure and especially the two center tracks. We were able ascertain that the two outside tracks and the structure supporting them are sound."
Trains were operating on the two outside tracks at reduced maximum speeds of 30 miles (80 km) per hour, instead of the usual 60 mph.
(Additional reporting by David Gregorio and Barbara Goldberg in New York, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Steve Orlofsky)Ryan Roy, a former Pizzeria Uno cook who was fired for attending a white nationalist rally (Screen cap).
Is there anything in the Bible that justifies racism, anti-Semitism and slavery?
Most Christians would be horrified at such a idea — but that hasn’t stopped white nationalists from twisting select Bible verses toward their own ends, just as members of terrorist groups such as ISIS selectively use passages from the Koran to justify committing mass murder.
In an interview with Religion News, scholar Damon T. Barry — who has written a book on the links between Christianity and white nationalism called Blood and Faith: Christianity in White American Nationalism — explains how white nationalists have appropriated Christianity and used it to defend their own racist ideology as God’s holy word.
Of particular importance are verses contained in Genesis that white nationalists claim outline the biblical basis of white supremacy.
“They use the Bible to teach that the Jews derive from Cain, himself the product of a sexual liaison between Eve and the Serpent in Eden, and so are biologically evil, and that the beasts of the field were non-whites created to do manual labor,” Barry explains. “And they use various stories from the Bible, like the Tower of Babel, as scriptural evidence that God wants racial segregation.”
Christianity isn’t the only religion that white nationalists have latched onto, however, as Barry notes that some white nationalists have clung onto the Pagan beliefs associated with Norse mythology to justify white supremacy as well.
Read the whole interview at this link.When you start with a commitment of $250 million before you even have a website, it’s probably inevitable that expectations will be dashed at some point, but First Look Media — the brave new journalism venture financed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar — has gone from promise to disappointment in record time. Highly-regarded writers and editors have quit or been let go, projects have been halted, and a wide range of grievances aired in all too public a fashion.
Chris Lehmann has another in a somewhat depressing series of articles about the organizational intrigue at First Look, in which he details the often bizarre lengths to which the company seems determined to go to micro-manage the star talent it spent so much money attracting in the first place — including resisting a request to give the staff telephones, and requiring them to sit through interminable management meetings.
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A previous story in New York magazine also had some details about the dysfunction at First Look, and a subsequent piece written by First Look staffers — including Intercept editor John Cook, who has since left to go back to Gawker Media, and star investigative blogger Glenn Greenwald — had even more depressing details, such as a requirement that some senior staff have their taxi receipts personally approved by Omidyar.
Iterate, iterate, iterate
The headline on Lehmann’s piece suggests that “maybe Silicon Valley shouldn’t manage journalists,” and I agree that’s definitely one interpretation of what seems to be happening at First Look. The kind of managers who understand rolling out tech services may not be well suited to handling the giant egos and contempt for rules that come with the kind of talent they hired, which seems like a fairly predictable outcome.
That said, however, I think the real problem is that someone at First Look — whether it’s Omidyar himself, or the managers he has chosen — have forgotten the most important principle when it comes to startups, whether they are technology-based or not, and that is: start with a “minimum viable product,” and then iterate on that as quickly as possible. Instead, First Look seems to have tried to build a management structure before they even had a product.
When Omidyar first announced that he was going to create a new media entity with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill — before the name First Look had even been suggested — I thought the company’s approach was going to be much more of an “agile” one, to use a popular term from the software industry. It sounded as though Greenwald and his team would have a blog, and then other groups would have blogs (or magazines, as First Look called them) then a structure would gradually form around them.
A loose collective
That approach still seems like a smart way to go, as I tried to argue in a post at the time: A kind of loose collective of smart blogs or media outlets, run by writers and editors who specialize in one topic and have an existing brand or relationship with readers, with a corporate entity handling the back-office and administrative tasks, and the marketing/distribution side.
Instead, judging by what New York magazine and Lehmann and First Look writers themselves have described, it sounds like the company constructed many of the corporate processes and management functions that it believed it might need first, before there was even much to manage. That seems like a recipe for disaster, to put it mildly.
If you look at the successful media entities that have emerged over the past decade, some of the best started with the most minimal products– Twitter was so minimal no one even knew what the heck it was supposed to be. Gawker started with a snarky blog, VICE magazine was a pop-culture rag and BuzzFeed began as a series of lists. Even more recent startups like Vox began with very little to show, and have tried to build on that.
Too much money
As I suggested above, First Look seems to have had an additional challenge, and that is the $250-million price tag that was put on the company right out of the gate. That kind of number puts a lot of pressure on a brand-new entity to come up with something that really blows the doors off, and may have encouraged the company to lose sight of its original goals.
In that sense, First Look feels like a journalistic version of a once-promising tech startup known as Color, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen — whose previous company had been acquired by Apple — and funded to the tune of $41 million, only to implode in a fireball of missed expectations. Its vision and the founder’s track record seemed so appealing that it grew too quickly, before it even had a viable product.
Someone I know in the financial industry liked to say that weed killer works not by poisoning its victims, but by forcing them to grow too quickly — causing them to burn themselves out as they use up all their energy. I wonder what First Look Media might be like now if it had started smaller and tried to iterate over time, as it grew to understand what its readers wanted, rather than trying to come up with a company that could suddenly justify a pre-determined $250-million value.Advancements in distributed and clean energy technologies are redefining the provision of safe, reliable, and cost-effective service within the electric utility industry. New business models are emerging to challenge the utility-dominated archetype of the past century.
But the debate over how to manage the transition to a new normal is just beginning. It is going to take a combination of political will and smart policy to avoid stifling innovation and progress.
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At the end of last month, President Obama announced an energy plan that included sweeping initiatives to manage carbon emissions, accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, and strengthen energy efficiency goals. That announcement came on the heels of a motion issued a few weeks earlier by California Public Utility Commissioner Carla J. Peterman that set energy storage procurement targets for the state’s investor owned electric utilities (IOUs).
While it is, unfortunately, likely that these proposals will be watered down over time, they are still notable for their scope and tone. Together they represent the kind of inspired thinking that the industry needs – and ultimately will benefit us all.
California backs energy storage initiatives
In brief, the California ruling proposes to eliminate the market barriers that plague emerging storage resources – nascent technologies such as large batteries that can collect and discharge energy on command in order to capitalize on price arbitrage, stabilize short-term fluctuations in the grid, and provide a host of ancillary benefits (including backup power in an emergency). By standardizing the procurement and evaluation of these resources, the Commission hopes to transform how the California electric market is “conceived, designed, and operated.”
In contrast to previous energy storage legislation such as Assembly Bill 2514 – which declined to give specific storage capacity targets – the latest announcement is explicit. If adopted as written, it would require each utility to procure specific amounts of storage in transmission, distribution, and customer-cited applications that are an order of magnitude increase in the storage available today.
As with any standard, the design of the California proposal is critical to its ultimate success. First, the ruling requires the IOUs to apply their best efforts to build or obtain viable and cost-effective storage resources via competitive auction mechanisms. And notably, the commission deliberately left room for interpretation, and expects to refine the process over time. At the same time, the ruling allows existing storage projects that meet certain criteria to count towards the targets. Finally, the outcome of the ruling is meant to complement and inform ongoing long-term planning and resource proceedings. These may seem like trivial points, but in an industry as regulated as energy, the details are often the difference between success and failure.
Heavy skepticism
So, how will stakeholders respond? In the past, opponents of such legislation have advocated for a market-based approach to the commercialization of energy storage technologies. In their eyes, targets are blunt and arbitrary instruments destined to result in sub-optimal projects and stranded assets. Many have acknowledged the threat of intermittency that is often associated with renewable energy and the need to reduce carbon emissions, only to point out that storage is but one of many suitable solutions. They view is that they would rather learn from existing initiatives than risk investing in and installing what may end up as zombie projects.
The critics make some great points and there are certainly some fair reasons to be skeptical of such targets. But consider the following:
The energy industry is not a free market. It is also incapable of valuing externalities such as environmental and health considerations.
New technologies such as solar and PV are enabling choice for consumers, but reducing demand. As demand erodes, utilities must raise prices across the base of ratepayers to maintain the backbone of the distribution grid, which is still needed to ensure service in most cases. This then incentivizes customers to adopt increasingly cost-competitive technologies, further reducing demand. It’s a vicious spiral.
Existing regulatory schemes are not designed to manage this disruption. The cost recovery and rate design process must be rethought to halt the death spiral described previously, account for hidden costs (such as managing intermittency), and avoid subsidizing the demand destruction of early-adopters by charging the entire customer base.
Change creates confusion
The energy industry is encountering a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. In this case, cost-competitive renewable and demand-side technologies are now destroying the paradigm of the last century. The centralized, static, and unidirectional grid is giving way to a distributed, dynamic, and bidirectional system. Demand is decreasing, while costs are increasing. The patchwork of capital investment recovery models, planning proceedings, and other processes that comprise our regulatory scheme is increasingly inadequate. As a result, it is extremely difficult to evaluate nascent business models and technologies. Thankfully, the industry and regulators are beginning to realize the gravity of the situation.Proper execution demands inspired leadership and legislators. If we are lucky, we might get both.
Hanns Anders is an associate at seed and early stage firm Claremont Creek Ventures, where he focuses on energy technology investing.
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Photo courtesy wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com.One’s man’s trash is another man’s treasure. This is perhaps never more than case than with one unforgettable dish in traditional Icelandic cuisine, the decomposed shark carcass known as “hákarl”.
As a heads up, upon first encountering hákarl, one should expect a full-on assault on the nostrils from a putrid smell that is reminiscent of rotten cheese mixed with ammonia. If one survives the gag-inducing smell, he or she may feel brave enough to try and sample this fermented shark flesh.
This is highly discouraged for outsiders, however, if one dares to be so bold, he or she must be sure to prepare to torture the taste buds by consuming what is perhaps the most unimaginable, rancid thing on planet earth.
Sound appetizing? Maybe not to outsiders; yet, to many Icelanders, it’s a different story.
Why Rotten Shark?
Icelanders are a people with a great pride and deep-seated traditions.
When their Viking forebears settled the island centuries ago, Greelandic shark, which is abundant in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, became the main staple of the island. The problem with the Greenland shark, other than the fact that it is fairly ugly, is that the meat is toxic to humans.
At the time, it was one of the only sources of nourishment for the island’s small population, so to conserve as much food as possible, the resourceful Vikings developed a preservation technique like no other to purify the poisonous shark meat.
How Is It made?
Kæstur Hákarl, or hákarl for short, is prepared through a time-honored process. The same process used in Viking times is still used today.
First, the shark is beheaded.
Then, to eliminate poisons, such as trimethylamine oxide and uric acid (a compound found in urine), a shallow hole is dug in the sand and the hákarl is placed in it with stones, sand, and gravel placed on top. The pressure of the stones causes liquids to seep out over a period of 6-12 weeks, a time frame that allows the shark to ferment properly.
After this, the fermented shark - which is 24 feet long on average - is taken out of the ground, cut into long pieces and hung up to dry for several months.
Many hákarl preparers claim they know the meat is ready just by the smell and once a characteristic dry, brown crust forms. When the time is right, the pieces are taken down, the crust is removed and the meat is cut into slices and served and enjoyed by many.
Today to get hákarl, you don't need to bury your own shark, it can be purchased as a prepared food in Icelandic grocery stores.
Icelandic Cuisine: As Unique as Its Culture
Iceland, a remote island in the North Atlantic, is a country filled with majestic natural beauty, vast resources, and a profoundly rich culture that is preserved by its small, but proud population of 323,000.
Because of its remote nature and small population, Iceland has become something of a novelty in the minds of outsiders and this concept is no different in the perception of Icelandic cuisine which, along with hákarl, features a variety of other unheard of delicacies such as Brennivín, Svið, Slátur, and Hangikjöt.
Brennivín (Alcholic Beverage): Brennivín is translated as “burning wine.” It is a schnapps made from fermented potatoes and caraway and delivers a powerful punch to the system of even the most seasoned of drinkers.
Svið (Sheep’s Head): In Iceland, the whole head of the sheep is eaten, but not the brain.
Many stores in Iceland sell different versions of Svið as a pre-cooked meal. Sheep head jam is also available in many parts of the country. It is made by cooking chopped up bits of sheep heads, pressing it together, and allowing it to cool.
Slátur (Sheep Intestines, Blood, and Fat): Slátur in Icelandic means “slaughter.” Appropriately.
It is made from sheep intestines, blood and fat and is often served with the sheep’s head (Svið) as an added treat. Comparable to Scottish haggis, this unique meal is often served with sweet rice pudding.
Hangikjöt (Smoked and Boiled Lamb): Hangikjöt is often prepared by burning birch wood or dried sheep dung in order to smoke lamb meat. Once smoked, the lamb is then usually boiled, cut into slices, and served hot or cold alongside peas or potatoes. It is an especially popular Christmas dish.
Disgust or Delicacy?
Hákarl, like many other Icelandic dishes, is certainly unlike any other food in the world.
Many consider it to be the most disgusting food on earth, yet what is disgusting to some may be delicious to others. What makes the difference?
In the case of Iceland, tradition rules. Societies and cultures are intricately linked together by traditions and at the center of so many traditions is the food cultures consume. As one of humanity’s most fundamental needs, food brings people together in a powerful way. It unites people groups, excludes outsiders, and is at the center of many religious rituals.
Certainly each culture has its “norms” when it comes to cuisine. What is “typical” for one people group may be putrid for another.
This is certainly something to consider next time one consumes bits of slaughtered poultry, with long, narrow slices of animal fat-saturated potatoes to accompany it, or round, processed wheat that is drenched in smashed tomatoes, covered in fermented cow’s milk, and dotted with slices of pig flesh – fried chicken with french fries, and pizza, staples in modern Western society.by John Raimo
Prague’s famous Wenceslas Square fell silent on August 22nd and 23rd, 1968. Warsaw Pact troops invaded what was then Czechoslovakia the day prior in order to repress what had come to known as the Prague Spring. Under Alexander Dubček’s leadership, the country’s communist party had earlier initiated reforms aiming towards ‘socialism with a human face.’ The crisis this provoked and its violent repression only gradually subsided into ‘normalization’ and an uneasy status quo held until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Increasing tension saw curfews and peaceful confrontations lead to outright military force exercised upon Czechoslovakian citizens and blanket censorship of news. Images lived on, however.
Many western thinkers took the Prague Spring for the end of time. That is, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was understood to mark the end of communism as a viable historical possibility. In the pages of Le Figaro, Raymond Aron systematically reduced the Prague Spring to an “impossible conversion” rendering the future itself moot. Hannah Arendt anticipated a simple, grim waiting game. “The head-on clash between Russian tanks and the entirely nonviolent resistance of the Czechoslovak people is a textbook case of a confrontation between violence and power,” she wrote in 1970. “To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.” From the left, Costa-Gavras’s L’Aveu (co-written by the former Czech deputy minister of foreign affairs Artur London and Jorge Semprún; 1970) ended with a “new era” dawning on communist Czechoslovakia. A montage of still photography and movie footage of the invasion concluded the film, much of it was taken on the scene by Chris Marker. He revisited the episode in On vous parle de Prague : Le deuxième procès d’Artur London (1971) and Le fond de l’air est rouge (1977) in structuring a larger argument that social revolution had passed from Soviet-sponsored communism to radical, Third World socialist movements.
The military invasion and occupation of Prague yielded many iconic pictures, not least the recurrent image of civilians facing tanks in a recognizably European cityscape. Nevertheless, the most celebrated representation of the Prague Spring may be the one above taken by Josef Koudelka, a young photographer who took over five thousand photos of Prague in the week beginning on August 21st. Something ambiguous occurred here. As the Večerni Praha (Prague Evening News) reported, “Yesterday’s appeal to clear Wenceslas Square, where a huge demonstration against the occupiers was supposed to take place and could have become a welcome pretext to declare marshal law, was an example of the outstanding qualities of the people of Prague in these eventful days.” After the square’s clearance, “[a]lmost no civilians remained there. Absolute silence spread over the square, which only a few minutes earlier had been full of noise” and the daily bustle. Heavy shooting nearby had been reported on the 21st. Yet the photo’s stark formal composition and resonant symbolism makes a non-event of sorts into an event. Time appeared to literally stop at roughly half-past noon on August 23, 1968.
The Western notion of what occurred in Prague came at a greater distance, with Marker proving a notable exception. First-hand accounts and photography in particular only slowly breached the Iron Curtain. This opened up in turn a curious story of chronology and reception. For many, Koudelka’s photography of crowds, tanks, graffiti, and buildings pockmarked by bullets determined what had happened. Not many other images traveled outside of the country; indeed, only ten of Koudelka’s photos were smuggled out to the Magnum Photo agency and seen before the exhibit Invasion 68: Prague some forty years later. Excepting a handful of photos taken by fellow Magnum photographer Ian Berry, Koudelka’s award-winning photography became the first visual record of the Prague Spring’s repression. They immediately proved without a doubt the lie of “fraternal help” distributed by Soviet propagandists. Moreover, Koudelka’s work also became the canonical historical record in the west’s imagination. The images wrote a certain history.
Koudelka’s photos lent themselves to greater historiographical and intellectual divides. Westerners were not wrong to read a universal, Cold War history into those same ten images. As the photographer later conceded, their juxtaposition of violence and a historical record carried a “universal value” and “significance beyond Czechoslovakia.” An inherent abstraction emerged. “In [the photos] it is not so important who is Russian and who is Czech,” Koudelka claimed in 2008. “It is more important that one man has a gun and one man has not.” The initial ten photographs accord with the Prague Spring’s evident historical finality: peaceful, middle-class protestors encounter only armed soldiers, and revolutionary gestures recycled from romantic thought and Communist iconography go on to meet gunfire.
At the same time, the full range of Koudelka’s photography documented a much more open historical narrative. Five thousand photographs capture a range of personal experiences. Families, bored onlookers, young soldiers, and daily life held their weight beside the tanks. An elderly worker with a suitcase heaves a brick at the occupiers before continuing on to work. The photographs captured a fast-moving “complexity” immediately effaced by both the Soviets and, paradoxically, Westerners in the Prague Spring’s aftermath. As Koudelka later made clear, the Prague Spring had been experienced serially and individually by Czechs and Slovaks: experience itself and the imperative to remember undercut any larger eastern or western narrative.
All the same, the sheer aesthetic power and immediacy of Koudelka’s photography cannot be denied on its own terms. Historians encounter here a subtle tangle of methodological issues. There is a question of orientation: recovered contexts might limit formal or aesthetic interpretation, and vice-versa. Josef Koudelka’s photography obviously calls for both movements. It’s not quite the difference between history and art history because the chosen starting point and means of crossing over will change the reading. What we find nevertheless is that firsthand experience and later receptions (moments or decades later) do not easily share the same focus. That gap or disjunction may then prove the final subject for historians of all stripes—intellectual or otherwise—looking to Koudelka’s great record of one end to several times in 1968.
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