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Tape-delayed coverage on the Pac-12 Networks
This is the biggest rivalry in college track. We don’t have enough “sports hate” in college track, but there’s no shortage here.
It’s an old rivalry, dating to 1934. The 1975 edition is considered the greatest collegiate dual meet of all time. The list of great athletes who have competed in the meet is shockingly deep and includes names that even became crossover stars: Meb Keflezighi, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Rafer Johnson, FloJo.
USC won the first 33 men’s meets in a row, and it merited an entire Sports Illustrated article when UCLA finally broke through and won in 1966. UCLA has so dominated since then that the Bruins are just four wins away from doing what was once unthinkable, and tieing the all-time series record.
4. Molly Huddle vs Sally Kipyego
Women’s 10,000 meters, Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational
Angell Field, Palo Alto CA
Sunday, 9:08pm local time (12:08am ET)
Meet home page | Webcast link (subscription required)
Let me make one thing clear: racing is exciting, running is boring. I’ve driven across three states to see athletes fighting for the win, but I wouldn’t turn on the TV to see them run for time and nothing else.
Meets at Stanford have waaaaay too much of the latter for my tastes, so maybe this isn’t going to be a great matchup. On the other hand, in 2010 this same distance at this same meet gave us a fantastic upset and a real-live race, when Chris Solinsky rained on Galen Rupp’s parade by flat-out beating him and breaking the American Record (and supposedly sparking Alberto Salazar’s intense hatred for the group now known as the Bowerman Track Club).
This race has the opportunity for something like this to happen. Kipyego, the former Texas Tech athlete, won silver in the 10,000 at both the 2011 Worlds and 2012 Olympics. She’s a legit world-wide star, but she was injured for most of last year and is getting back up to speed.
That opens the door for Huddle, the American Record holder at 5,000 meters. Her last track 10k was six years ago, but she’s been racing longer road races recently: third in the NYC Half Marathon six weeks ago, a US record at 12k last November. Her win at the B.A.A. 5k two weeks ago proved she’s race-sharp. She might have a shot at the US record (Shalane Flanagan’s 30:22.22 at the 2008 Olympics), but that’s beside the point. She has a shot at beating an Olympic silver medalist, and that’s what makes this worth watching. Maybe.
5. Ryan Whiting vs Reese Hoffa vs Christian Cantwell
Men’s shot put, Jamaica International Invitational
National Stadium, Kingston JAM
Saturday, 7:00pm ET
I don’t want to say it’s no big deal when the world’s best shot putters face off against each other, but it’s not as rare as it is in other events. Whiting is the world’s best right now and won gold at the World Indoor Championships, but was well beaten by Cantwell and Hoffa at the Kansas Relays two weeks ago. Cantwell won with a big mark (21.36 meters) in his first meet after a long injury layoff. These three should put up some great battles this year.
6. Matt Centrowitz vs Bowerman Track Club
Men’s 5000 meters, Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational
Angell Field, Palo Alto CA
Sunday, 8:50pm local time (11:50pm ET)
The Nike Oregon Project is sending just a few runners to the Payton Jordan meet, and by far the most notable is Matt Centrowitz. He’s already one of the great milers on the planet, but here he’s trying the 5000. He’ll face off against most of the top track talent in Jerry Schumacher’s Portland-based training group that has recently been rebranded as the Bowerman Track Club.
Those athletes include Andrew Bumbalough, Chris Derrick, Ryan Hill, Evan Jager and Lopez Lomong. These are basically all of the top 5k runners in the USA besides Bernard Lagat and Galen Rupp. Hill is the only one of them who has never run 13:12 or better, but his performances during the indoor season indicate that he’s ready to. There are other tough runners in this race, too; long distance guys Ben True, Hassan Mead, and Aaron Braun, and steeplechasers Donn Cabral and Matt Hughes. All in all, seven of the 20 fastest Americans of all time are in this race.
7. Arizona vs Arizona State
Roy P. Drachman Stadium, Tucson AZ
Saturday, 4:00pm local time (7:00pm ET)
Tape-delayed coverage on the Pac-12 Networks
This is another intense rivalry and both teams take the competition very seriously.. Northern Arizona is along for the ride in a meet called the “double dual”, but the real action is between the Wildcats and Sun Devils.
One source I saw long ago says the rivalry dates from 1908 but no one really seems to be sure; Arizona State says the scoring began in 1969 and the series stands at 22-20 (men) and 15-13 (women), the Sun Devils leading both, but there were duals between these to much earlier than that.
8. Anna Willard vs Steeplechase
Women’s steeplechase, Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational
Angell Field, Palo Alto CA
Sunday, 6:48pm local time (9:48pm ET)
Pierce broke the American record in the steeplechase at the 2008 Olympic Trials, then went on to finish tenth in the Olympic final (with a better time, but one bettered yet by Jenny Simpson).
The next year (2009) she mostly abandoned the steeplechase in favor of the 1500 and 800 meters, and ran very well. Then it all started going steadily downhill over the next three years, and she didn’t compete at all in 2013.
She’s now trying the steeplechase again. She’s still the second-fastest American steepler of all time, but I don’t think she can be called the favorite in this race. Olympian Shalaya Kipp is entered, as is Jamie Cheever, who became the fifth-fastest American of all time in this very meet last year. The real question: is this race Willard’s first step back to prominence?
9. Washington vs Washington State
Mooberry Track & Field Complex, Pullman WA
Saturday, 11:00am local time (2:00pm ET)
Meet home page
This is an old and bitter rivalry, and people care about it. An estimated crowd of 3,000 came out to see last year’s meet, the first on Washington’s new purple track. This year’s meet is likely to be just as close and hard-fought as all the others have been, but it has something else, too: it’s the last dual meet for longtime Washington State coach Rick Sloan. For a meet preview and coverage, check out Paul Merca’s blog.
10. Ultrarunning vs interest
Sunday, worldwide
Toni Reavis explains.
On May 4th, thousands of runners worldwide will simultaneously take off on a journey that none will know the final distance for or finish line of.
What?
Called The Wings For Life World Run the event has no set distance or finish line. Instead, participants in 35 locations world-wide will begin their challenge at the same time knowing that a half-hour later a “catcher car” will begin chasing them down at a set speed. When the “catcher car” overtakes a runner, his/her day is through. Thus, the last man and woman to be caught at each location will be crowned local champions, while the final male and female running anywhere in the world will be the global champs.
Since the “catcher car” will give ghe runners a half-hour headstart, and begin at a moderate pace, the contenders for the WFL crown will likely come from the ranks of ultra-marathoners.
This Red Bull event will get television and web coverage on Universal Sports, and Reavis says the overall winner will probably get to 35 miles before being caught. The multi-location setup and last-man-standing format has the potential to make ultrarunning actually interesting to watch.If you don’t think the lads dominate the Irish literary landscape with all manner of Colums and Seamuses, quickly, name three Irish women writers. I’m guessing two of those would be Edna O’Brien and Emma Donoghue. And one of those would no doubt be Anne Enright, whose novel The Gathering, garnered the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2007.
Enright has followed up that dark novel with The Forgotten Waltz, which on the surface is a lighter more external narrative. Set in 2009, Gina Moynihan, a married mid-30s IT professional, looks back at her adulterous adventure with a married man named Sean. It’s a survey of that dysfunctional coupling with precise snapshots dating to Gina’s first sighting of Sean at her sister’s housewarming barbeque seven years earlier.
The period of her dalliance corresponds to the economic bubble known as the Celtic Tiger when, much like other countries riding an economic upswing, the material world dominated the attentions and energies of Ireland’s striving classes (and then some). And so Enright, who is acutely observant and precisely expressive, paints that consuming hysteria as the backdrop for the Gina’s romantic and illicit thrill seeking.
Robert Birnbaum: Did you look at any news source this morning?
Anne Enright: Umm, yeah I glanced at the papers.
RB: What the big story for you today?
AE: Me, I am checking the Eurozone and keeping an eye on the banks. Whether they are going to fall apart — how slowly or how quickly.
RB: Who is going first — is Greece going?
AE: Greece hasn’t gone. They really are going to work to keep it together. There hasn’t been any doubt about that for a while. On the panic level, the worst panic level was probably September, October 2008. After Lehman’s, when the Irish government guaranteed all the banks. Everybody was going crazy about this decision that was made to guarantee all deposits in Irish banks. But in fact I had gone to bed the night before with the assurance that I was going to go into the bank and take all my money out the next morning.
RB: How much has the defanging of the Celtic Tiger affected you?
AE: Personally, I am really lucky. I am always out of sync with Ireland, you know. When Ireland was booming away, I was sitting in my garret, writing The Gathering, rearing two small children out in Bray, which is south of Dublin, wondering why this had nothing to do with me. All I got from the boom was ripped off.
RB: Oooh.
AE: It’s true. Childcare, fees, everything was ridiculously expensive. My nieces and nephews are coming up to their 20s now — so my generation and their generation missed the worst of it. The worst of it hit the people in their 30s. And their early 40s, who really felt the need to buy a house they couldn’t afford, in a place they didn’t want to live and stuck with partners they don’t like anymore.
RB: Much like the characters that appear in The Forgotten Waltz.
AE: Yeah, The Forgotten Waltz is full of real estate that’s unsellable.
RB: Is this an Irish novel?
AE: Umm, when you think about it, it’s a highly contemporary novel set in February 2009, when the economy is falling. There is real estate in it. There’s money in it.
RB: Designer names.
AE: Designer labels. You look at John B. Keane’s The Field, and love and land; we always understood the connection between the two in Ireland. So, it’s Irish to that extent. It’s also interested in family ties and family love and what’s the difference between romantic and family love. That’s quite Irish as well. It’s Irish in that you can’t get away from those forces. The novel is a highly individualistic form — my characters are dragged back to the communal, (laughs) blood ties — and that’s quite Irish.
RB: To look at it, the focus appears to on adultery. But–
AE: Yeah (pauses) actually, it’s a book that seems to be about adultery but is about a different kind of love that sort of creeps in afterwards. On February 6, 2009, it was a day of snow in Ireland and the place was stalled. I was making a journey through the countryside with my family in the snow with all of them annoying me about how to drive —
RB: (laughs)
AE: “Watch out for the black ice,” and all of that, in the back of the car. It was a very melancholy sort of moment — the country was falling and we didn’t know how fast, how far. And something about the stillness of that day (pauses) — you know, it made me think of the silence after all the noise; all the hubbub has stopped. And that’s when reality come stealing in. I’m not against reality. The adultery part of the book is glorious and fantastic, full of denial and bliss and getting away with it–
RB: And passion.
AE: Passion, a bit like the boom. Doing what you want. The country was doing what it wanted for a while.
RB: Maybe, it could be viewed as mass hysteria.
AE: Well, there was a hectic quality to those last years. And there was a lot of — you were not allowed disbelief. If you said it’s all going to come falling down — no, you have to believe in property prices, if you don’t they will crash.
RB: Barbara Ehrenreich has written about this industry of self-improvement rooted in being positive and upbeat.
AE: But it really works economically. Until it doesn’t work at all. It’s a confidence trick — you take belief out of the system and all the money turns into dust.
RB: It’s true in a lot of areas. It’s true in sports. Is it true in writing? Writers don’t have any confidence (laughs)
AE: Writers have a lot of emotions about their work, and about themselves in relation to the work. None of them matter that much. It’s just a way of making you get to the desk a bit more, with more intensity. But yeah, writers always think their work is no good and they have no confidence and yada, yada, yada.
RB: After you won a major prize and went on to work on the next book how did you feel?
AE: I felt just fine. The whole prize thing was so external and so much hard work, actually. And I felt so relieved to get back to the desk, you know.
RB: You were in some way anonymous before winning the Man Booker.
AE: I felt a bit robbed in that way.
RB: (laughs)
AE: Because books are incredibly personal items and you have to keep vulnerable, to keep your vulnerability at the desk. Too famous is not good — for whatever limited amount of time that that happens.
RB: Did I read correctly that you never returned to the room where you wrote The Gathering?
AE: You’ve been doing your research? (laughs) Well, it’s a small room and full of books, it’s a bit unmanageable as a space. No, I didn’t go back, really. I mean, I never wrote in that room again.
RB: Are there other things in your life that you do but can’t explain? Like that — can you explain why you never wrote in that room again?
AE: I didn’t realize I wasn’t going back for a long time. And then I did [realize]. Yeah, I knew why — it wasn’t much.
RB: Sometimes we call those ghosts or skeletons, hanging there, not fleshed out.
AE: Yeah, it’s more an aura.
RB: When I spoke to John Banville recently, he was very positive about the future of the U.S. — the great hope of civilization. When you come to the USA what do you see and feel?
AE: It’s more interesting going to China and looking around China (both laugh). Sean in The Forgotten Waltz, says you should go to Shanghai, just to see that it’s all happening, it’s all real. It was very much my experience in Shanghai, these eight-lane highways with no cars on them. Ah, what do I think of America? Elsewhere is always important for Irish writers because Ireland is a little bit like that room where I wrote The Gathering. (laughs) I always wanted to come back to it (laughs). It’s a complicated place for writers. It’s the origin, it’s the spring of it, you know. The place things come from.
RB: The U.S. is the place things come from?
AE: No Ireland is. Elsewhere is really important for Irish writers because that’s where your book goes. And, the flavor of the readership is important. Or the critical response. America has always been a great opportunity for Irish writers.
RB: And the Continent?
AE: France is slightly impermeable to foreign influence. They say in France, “But we have so many great French writers” — none of whom are translated into English, of course. You want to say, “But who are they?” Germany is important.
RB: The French like Paul Auster and Julian Barnes?
AE: Yeah, they like what they like. Paul Auster walks down the street in Paris and he is bothered. People take his picture. Germany is interested in Ireland in a way that France isn’t. France thinks we are savage (pronounced with French accent).
RB: (laughs) Well, so that should be a positive. Does that mean wild?
AE: Untamed.
RB: Don’t the French use the word apache as a positive description?
AE: I know — of course, they consider themselves very tamed, very sophisticated. It’s not so interesting to be looked upon as some sort of wild object. Fintan O’Toole wrote an article in The Irish Times about how important America was to a whole generation of Irish writers, but he didn’t include me in the list. He said partly because I was a woman. I didn’t know that as a woman I would be less interested in America. I am a little outside the run of regular Irish writing which has post-colonial concerns. So I don’t write about that kind of power relationship between the rural and the urban between Ireland and England, between the noble savage and the chilly aristocrat. Within that argument, America is clear space and an opportunity. And also it has a huge diaspora Irish community. So there is a kind of melancholy connection between the two countries — of loss and opportunity.
RB: Irish Americans are strongly supportive of what is exported from Ireland?
AE: In the readings you meet them. My name is Anne Theresa. I met an Anne Theresa Enright in Australia — Melbourne. And I met an Anne Theresa Enright; it may have been in Kansas, I’m not sure. They looked like each other. They didn’t look like me. I knew there were different Enrights. I am signing books and there is often, there used to often be a Bernadette. We’d know when she was born. She was born when the Song of Bernadette came out as a movie. And then Martinas were born when Saint Martina was being canonized. Not only can you spot trends, you can know what age people are when they tell you their names. Why did Banville voice his admiration for America — he wants Americans to buy his novels? They do. They love him.
RB: I live here and I have my disappointment about the USA. I am buoyed by this Wall Street occupation.
AE: Who’d a thunk it. In Ireland there was a march — 50,000 depressed middle class, middle-aged people walking silently through the city, through the streets in their good shoes. Not their best shoes, but in their decent walking shoes.
RB: One day?
AE: One day. Nobody burned any cars. In Greece they were turning cars over in the streets.
RB: Do you believe in class warfare? Isn’t there complicity between such people?
AE: Yea, but of what kind? It’s a bit like Regina says in the book — the way people have, the way men have of getting ahead. For no ascertainable reason the guy just has a talent for being “on side.” It’s not an envelope full of money. It’s not any of these things — it’s just because–
RB: How or why did you decide to use the title, The Forgotten Waltz?
AE: I was sitting in a chair downstairs writing and the afternoon radio was on, the classical station and he said that was the “Forgotten Waltz” by Franz Liszt. I was half way through the book and I just put it in a headline, as an email to my editor. And I don’t talk to him really at all when I am working. I pressed send to see what it would look like. And then it came back and it was on the title of the email and it looked just fine.
RB: There are no other obvious reference points in the book.
AE: There are various dances.
RB: You also title the chapters after pop love songs.
AE: There is one reference. I mean, there is nothing cheesier than putting “a waltz that has been forgotten” in a book called The Forgotten Waltz. Gina is in the room at the hotel where they have their affair, and says, “…the shape of our love in a room like some forgotten music, beautiful and gone.” So that’s the waltz. Also, I wasn’t going to do explicit descriptions of sex in this book because I didn’t think Gina would. A forgotten waltz is a better way of describing what has been going in between her and Sean. This romance, this game.
RB: And the chapter titles? Any concern that they will be distracting if the reader notices what they are?
AE: I wanted the songs to be catchy and a bit kitsch. Because love is best described in song, I think. The thing I like about pop songs is that they are aware of the foolishness of love. They are delighted by the foolishness of love. I mean, Gina clearly is a woman who likes to be in love and who wouldn’t, ya know? Do they stick in your head and annoy you?
RB: No, they don’t annoy me. It’s another thing to reckon with for a close reader. Do they mean something? Are they clues to the chapter? Is there a code in their order?
AE: Well, there’s a whole heap of The Good Soldier [Ford Maddox Ford] in my Forgotten Waltz — after the fact. Edward, in it, falls in love with the girl at the end — his ward. It depends how plugged in you are to music.
RB: I was tempted to create an iTunes playlist to see if there was a message in the sequence
AE: No, it’s a little more arbitrary that that. As in some of the chapter titles were there before — Like “There Will be Peace in the Valley” which is sort of a little anomalous. And “Love is Like a Cigarette” which is slightly anomalous too. Before it gets into the catchy, boppy, you know, “the Shoop Shoop Song.” Yeah. And then the Leonard Cohen — I had a lot of doubts about putting in the Leonard Cohen. Because his lyrics — he’s too interesting (laughs). You know?
RB: You must listen to music a lot?
AE: I listen to classical music. I had some trepidation with the song titles because I hate the way boys do music — because I always like the wrong things. “Oh you like that, yeah?”
RB: Give me an example.
AE:I don’t know — it’s sort of what I mentioned about men — they use music as a counter. I don’t know what the game is. ”You say Arcade Fire?” “Oh you like Arcade Fire?” “Yeah, I don’t know about Arcade Fire.” Constantly pushing their taste. In a kind of slightly strange–
RB: Using groups as identifiers or parametrics. You are supposed to understand something about someone.
AE: It’s slightly a competition and it’s slightly warm — because music is a filter. If you like something you are really quite exposed by liking it. I listen to Bach. No, I don’t. My husband brings in the new stuff. I am slow to catch on to his stuff. It’s amazing that with the Internet our external sources get smaller and smaller. It’s all about selecting.
RB: Your life is composed of writing and raising your kids–
AE: Which isn’t conducive to keeping up with the music scene, I have to say.
RB: How old are your children?
AE: Eleven and 8. I couldn’t even listen to music after they were born. That was the thing that went.
RB: Because?
AE: I don’t know. It wasn’t talking about emotions that I had.
RB: Did you play Mozart to make your kids smarter?
AE: There’s Mozart around. I do love Mozart. But I didn’t do that. Actually, it put Rachel to sleep. Now they’re coming in and she has her earphones on. Do you know Adele? Adele is on the other end. She can sing.
RB: How much of your life is now devoted to the persona of being a writer? Conferences, festivals, awards juries, and on?
AE: I get invitations — I’m a conscientious sort of chick. I said yes and I went to Australia. It was amazing. I suppose it was amazing. Martin my husband said, “Just do it, do the year.” As opposed to Linda, Roddy’s wife—
RB: Roddy Doyle?
AE: Yeah. When he won [the Booker] they looked at the schedule and decided what he was going to do and said no to the rest of it. He’s very unswayable. I met Kiran Desai. She had won the Booker. And we met in Colombia — in Cartagena. I was there for 2 days. I mean what a life. It was fantastic. I didn’t have much time to go outside.
RB: You would never had gone there–
AE: No. And to meet Kiran Desai, also a great pleasure. Although we did kind of glance off each other. And she said I am going to sit down in March. I emailed her next March and she was doing something else. (laughs) Really, it was hard. I have to say, ”No more, absolutely no more.” So then I sat down in January and looked at the wall for three months, until March basically. I had the book started. It’s the same thing, the same problem as it always is. You have to sink in order to write a book. I don’t mean in a depressive sort of way.
RB: Focus?
AE: It is like a depressive state. You have to sink into it — not even focus. You have to diffuse as much as anything else. Just in those early days — to lose control of it and to be helpless and not know what you are doing. And then the focus comes sentence by sentence.
RB: A vulnerability and openness. I’m reminded of Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) who said that in order to hit really low notes, to sing in low registers, you almost had to go to sleep. Almost suspended animation, hibernation
AE: Ah, ah hah. Those are both good.
RB: Was it hard to come out and talk about The Gathering — since, as you say, it was more private, seemingly more personal?
AE: The great thing about having done two books — people ask if they are autobiographical? — and I am really delighted when they ask that because it means I have succeeded in what I wanted to do. And I have never bothered about those questions. But you know, I steal from my own life quite freely. So some of it, yes for sure happened to me.
RB David Shields [Reality Hunger] would say it was all autobiographical.
AE: (laughs) You have no other place to write from. You can’t be someone else at the desk.
RB: You change some names and some nuance and–
AE: No, actually it much more mechanical, no as organic as that. You steal a bit. For example, I once took a train journey to Gstaad, and I’ve been waiting to use that train journey for 20 years.
RB: You have vivid recollection of the details, exactly as you think it happened?
AE: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
RB: What now?
AE: I have nothing on the screen for the first time in 10 years. This summer I stopped working for the first time in 10 years. I would be in holiday saying, “Isn’t it lovely being able to write my book in the sun?” And so I stopped. We went to South East Asia for a long trip with the kids — came back and I had two weeks when I didn’t work.
RB: That’s a good feeling?
AE: It’s like being young again. It’s amazing. I haven’t a single idea, a single fragment.
RB: I assume you love writing and are devoted to it?
AE: But this is the first time I’ve stopped in 10 years, yeah. Maybe it’s a bit like ooooooooohh yeah? No I am very poor company when I am not writing — so I do need it. Everybody around me needs it.
RB: Am I the only person willing to talk with you right now (laughs)?
AE: I’ve been fine.
RB: You don’t know what to make of it?
AE: Yeah, it’s great. I mean, I have some intimations.
RB: Is there anything else you want to do in addition to writing?
AE: No (pause). No.
RB: You produced a TV show.
AE: I did yeah. I was a baby. I was one of those trendy young media types that get burnt out, thrown on the scrap heap in four to six years. So I was that one.
RB: Like Tina Fey?
AE: No she’s a bit older and she is a much better manager than I ever was.
RB: Like the woman in the BBC’s “The Hour”?
AE: The woman in Broadcast News — Holly Hunter (laughs). No, I used to do things to earn money and there is a kind of balance there. Where you are writing stuff to earn money, but you are writing. So that’s OK. It’s as good a reason as any other. And so it really pushed you. And you go places where you wouldn’t necessarily have thought to go. And I am a great believer in a bit of hard work actually. I was reduced to walking around hands on my forehead saying “Where’s my book?” So, I don’t have to do that so much anymore.
RB: Do you have a timeframe for writing a book?
AE: No.
RB: You churn away at it?
AE: I do.
RB: Can you imagine spending seven to 10 years writing a book?
AE: I can. You know Trollope wrote for three hours every morning. And if he was finished with a book an hour and a half in, he would start another book. But he knew three hours was it.
RB: Do you look forward and have a sense of where you want to go, what you want to accomplish?
AE: (pause) Staying alive is a good way of advancing in the literary world. I am slow — I did a count. It was too scary. I reckoned I have five books left — but it was too scary. I am quite interested in looking at the idea of the late style. And the feeling after a certain stage that you don’t give a monkey — so that you are able to expand on the page or go somewhere strange. Strange (chuckles), I don’t need more strange.
RB: You don’t strike me as someone constrained by much.
AE: No, I wouldn’t mind — you change so much from decade to decade. I like to sort of reflect in the book, where I am. Or find out by writing the book where I am. So, I am into my 50s now and I am thinking it would be good to write some longer, more — having a book that you don’t really know what the edges are so precisely. Does that make sense?
RB: When you are well published you have a couple of jobs.
AE: Yes, it’s an absolute full-time job — the Booker was another full time job. And I had two full-time jobs already. I had a home to run and I had books to write. It was a third full-time job, for sure. And then there’s being the travel agent. After the Booker, I was on Expedia saying, ”I think I can do this — this journey can be done in under 20 hours.
RB: What’s your feeling about winning awards in the future (laughs)?
AE: I am sure I will get a bit plaintive. After the Booker they don’t give you any little ones any more — they give them to other people on the way up.
RB: Some people claim about these awards that they don’t mean anything until you win one–
AE: They mean everything when you don’t have one.
RB: Really?
AE: Yeah. “If only I had the Booker.” I was taking to my husband, we were in Indonesia and we were looking at shooting stars and my daughter asked me what I wished for? And I said, ”Probably that I win the fucking Booker Prize.” (laughs) I really wanted it. Ever writer has that–
RB: Some awards seem to mean something and some seem to be beauty contests.
AE: Yeah, yeah, sure.
RB: I like the IMPAC Dublin because the long list comes from librarian nominations from around the world. Also, the MacArthur–
AE: And the Lannan. I’m the only person I know who doesn’t have a Lannan (laughs).
RB: We could talk some more but you need to go. So thanks.
AE: Thank you.
Image Credit: Robert BirnbaumTORONTO — Ontario’s NDP is pledging to create a provincial pharmacare plan, appealing to the grassroots about a year out from the start of next year’s election campaign.
Leader Andrea Horwath announced the policy Saturday in a speech to about 1,000 delegates at the party’s convention.
“Seeing a doctor just doesn’t mean much if you need a prescription, but you can’t afford to fill it,” she said.
“Just like Tommy Douglas started in one province and built Medicare step-by-step, we’re going to start building universal pharmacare right here in Ontario,” Horwath said, prompting a standing ovation.
Horwath refused to divulge any details, saying she would announce those on Monday, but a party official later said the cost of the plan is pegged at about $475 million.
The Liberal government is set to deliver its first balanced budget since the recession next week, and Horwath suggested she was open to plunging the province back into the red to pay for her plan.
“When necessary a deficit, but not necessarily a deficit,” she said after her speech.
The next provincial election isn’t until June 7, 2018, but Horwath said to be honest, the campaign is already underway.
“I believe leadership is about telling people what your vision is and what it is you plan on doing,” Horwath said later in a not-so-veiled shot at Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown.
Brown has come under fire for backing away from an earlier pledge to release his plan on hydro “soon,” and has been hesitant to make many grand policy pronouncements before his party’s convention this fall.
Horwath largely took aim at the Liberal government, saying Premier Kathleen Wynne denied there was a hydro crisis until it became a political crisis for her party.
Her speech was heavy on other NDP staples: public assets, a $15 minimum wage, worker protections, child care and transit funding.
An NDP government would work with First Nations to improve education and ensure clean drinking water, proper health care and safe housing — and would then send the bill to the federal government, Horwath said.
The NDP has also proposed to buy back shares of Hydro One — the government has sold 30 per cent and intends to sell up to 60 per cent.
The party said it would buy back shares back at a cost of between $3.3 billion and $4.1 billion, financed through the province’s share of its profit from Hydro One within eight years — assuming 70 per cent of the approximately $700 million in revenue it has previously generated for the province.
The Liberals have said returning Hydro One to full public ownership wouldn’t take a penny off people’s bills.
The New Democrat hydro plan also proposes to end mandatory time-of-use pricing, reduce the delivery charge for rural customers and renegotiate power contracts.Well, at least the Russians are keeping things in perspective.
Following the host nation’s stunning 3-1 loss to Finland in the Olympic quarterfinals, coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov appeared to accept the blame, according to USA TODAY Sports’ Kevin Allen.
“I take full responsibility for our team’s performance.”
But the Russian press was out for blood. During a meeting with a throng of reporters from his native land, Bilyaletdinov was asked not-at-all leading questions such as “is this a catastrophe?” and was offered suggestions about how he should have played his lines. Then, the conversation took a turn to the absurd, according to a translation by Anton Troianovski of The Wall Street Journal.
Q: What future, if any, do you see for your own work and for your coaching staff? Because, you know, your predecessor was eaten alive after the Olympics—
A: Well then, eat me alive right now—
Q: No, I mean—
A: Eat me, and I won’t be here anymore.
Q: But we have the world championship coming up!
A: Well then, there will be a different coach because I won’t exist any more, since you will have eaten me.
Q: But you’re staying, aren’t you?
A: Yes, I will remain living.
So he’s self-deprecating and shouldered all the blame, right? Not so fast |
to start doing press-ups, which I did. This went on for quite some time, and I began to struggle because the sweat that was dripping from me on to the smooth table surface was causing my feet to slide uncontrollably.
Next, he suggested that we spar—just him and me—in front of the class. As a lanky teenager against a fast and powerful adult black belt, I stood absolutely no chance. Time and again, he punched me in the forehead and my legs buckled underneath me, and each time he dragged me up by my hair and forced me to carry on.
In reality, the attack was controlled and I suspect that his targeting of my forehead, rather than landing punches on my nose, was deliberate. Nevertheless, it was a public beating and a humiliation that was intended to be some kind of example. Eventually it ended, and so did the class. In the changing room later, a guy told me that he thought what had just happened was “wrong”.
I cried while cycling home that night, without actually knowing why.
I went back to the club a few times, but my heart was never in it after that and I soon stopped going. I switched from karate to running, fell back into solitary activities, and spent my evenings with computers, electronics, physics books and science fiction. People were too difficult, confusing and painful for me.
I had lost something important that night.
Afterword. I originally wrote this as an experiment in challenging society’s attitudes toward males. However, the account is entirely true—it happened to me. But it’s not your sympathy I want, but for you to ask yourself a few questions…
In the text, I qualify the woman’s actions with, “I suspect that there had been some anguish in her life.” Maybe you felt a little sympathy for her, despite her anger? I certainly did, and in fact, it felt almost obligatory for me to put in some kind of compassionate justification for her behaviour in there. But then I asked myself, why? Would I have been so considerate if she had been a he, for example?
Ask yourself this…
What would your reaction be on reading a story in which a 40 year old man turns up to a karate club one night and deliberately attempts to punch a 15 year old girl in the face?
No doubt you would simply regard him as a monster, and nothing more. Please don’t misunderstand me; this isn’t about a bad woman or a bad man, it is about the double-standards in our attitudes.
Moreover, were the actions of the club instructor in my story not really based on misguided notions of chivalry, rather than any rational assessment of the situation? Is it not true that it is often males who display prejudice to other males, but it is not actually regarded as prejudice in our society? Would he have been so willing to beat up a 40 year old woman, had he known the truth, I wonder? (I’m not suggesting that’s what he should have done.)
Finally, I also wanted to communicate that men and boys have feelings—we hurt. Not just physically, but emotionally too. It seems that this needs to be said, because male suffering often goes unseen and unacknowledged. In fact, hostility toward males is normalized in the media to such an extent that males are seen as legitimate targets of aggression. How often do you see TV shows or commercials where a man gets slapped in the face or kicked in the groin, and invited to laugh?
First published on LastLegionary.com.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 lycra-clad colleague sweaty from their morning cycle ride to the office is no one’s idea of a good neighbour.
But London’s growing army of commuter cyclists have a workplace gripe of their own — the lack of facilities to dry and store their kit.
A study found only a fifth of the 61 offices in the City and West End that were surveyed had a room for cyclists to dry clothes.
One cyclist told researchers: “I end up using my handlebars as drying racks and have no choice but to take my wet shoes to my desk. My co-workers are not impressed.”
Another said: “We simply need more showers, overnight lockers, and a dedicated space to dry kit.”
One non-cyclist said: “I’m all for people cycling, but not when their wet kit ends up on their chair.”
The study, by real estate firm Evans Randall Investors, found that workplaces had been unprepared for the boom in the number of Londoners cycling to work.
There was an average of one shower for every 240 employees — including those who run to work — and 60 per cent of cycle storage facilities were full or almost full on a daily basis.
Fewer than one in five workplaces offered space to store suits or other office clothing. Satisfaction was highest where there was a locker for every 30 employees and in firms that offered bike repairs. The report called for offices in excess of 50,000 sq ft to provide:
Secure, dedicated indoor bike storage areas.
Twice as many lockers as bike spaces, with two types of lockers: a clothing locker in the changing room with room to hang a suit, and a general use locker in the bike area.
Showers, a dedicated drying room for wet clothing and a mini self-service bike repair station.
Researchers from ESCP Business School spent three months interviewing building managers and canvassing the opinions of regular cyclists, in person and online. The report named three buildings as “best in class” for cycling facilities: the Cheesegrater in the City, the Alphabeta building in Finsbury Square, which has a ride-in entrance, and 7 Clarges Street in Mayfair.
Kent Gardner, chief executive of Evans Randall Investors, said: “Just five years ago cycling provision in an office was seen as a benefit — it’s now an expectation.”
David Taylor, editor of London property cycling magazine Velocity, said: “The report should be a clarion call to developers across London to support those turning to cycling as a way of getting to work.
“As the Mayor encourages the switch from cars to bikes, our offices will need to respond.”In addition to building organisms and storing Shakespeare’s sonnets, DNA could also keep your favorite nerd-shirt from going up in flames.
Normally, cotton fabrics are highly flammable. But when scientists tried to set fire to cotton coated with herring sperm DNA, the fabric refused to burn, the team reported in Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
“DNA can be considered as a natural flame retardant and suppressant,” said materials scientist Giulio Malucelli, whose lab at Italy’s Politecnico di Torino, Alessandria branch, tested the fire-retardant properties of DNA. “It could work also on other synthetic fabrics, or thin or thick plastic films.”
Malucelli’s lab tested whether the macromolecule could stop fires by using DNA extracted from herring sperm. The team dissolved the DNA in water, coated cotton fabrics with it, let them dry, and tried to light them up. The coating behaved similarly to ammonium polyphosphate, a flame retardant commonly used on polymeric materials such as polyurethanes (found in foams and Spandex) and polyolefins (found in flexible foams and electrical insulation).
DNA’s chemical structure makes it ideal for the flame-stopping job. When heated, its phosphate-containing backbone produces phosphoric acid, which chemically removes water from cotton fibers while leaving behind a flame-resistant, carbon-rich residue. The nitrogen-containing bases release ammonia — which dilutes flammable gases and inhibits combustion reactions — and can act as “blowing agents,” which help turn the carbon-rich deposits into a slow-burning protective layer. Ultimately, these ingredients stop combustion by forming either a carbon-rich foam, or a protective, glassy carbon coating called char.
“I was surprised, and then as I looked at the chemical structure of DNA, it started to become obvious why DNA works as a fire retardant,” said Alexander Morgan, a flame retardant materials scientist at the University of Dayton Research Institute. “You probably get a mix of the glassy carbon and carbon foam forming during burning of DNA on the fabric.”
As a naturally occurring compound, DNA could conceivably be a good green alternative to conventional flame retardants, with a few modifications. First, the cost needs to come down, Morgan says, since it’s between three and five times more expensive than current chemicals. And the toxicological profile needs to be determined. Though it’s a natural substance, Morgan notes the possibility that other organisms — including the wearer of DNA-coated attire — could pick up foreign fragments as the DNA breaks down.
Malucelli thinks that’s unlikely. “To the best of our knowledge, DNA is not toxic at all,” Malucelli said. “Its application as flame retardant should not be harmful.”
Perhaps most problematically, for the time being, you can’t wash a DNA-coated nerd-shirt. The coating is not yet water resistant and will rinse off in the wash. So far, scientists haven’t yet worked out how to make the treatment more permanent. But Malucelli and his colleagues are investigating a chemical cross-linking strategy, which would bind individual DNA strands to the fabric and to each other, creating a giant, insoluble matrix.
“This is a key open issue that has to be solved,” he said.
Citation: J. Alongi, R.A. Carletto, A. Di Blasio, F. Carosio, F. Bosco and G. Malucelli. DNA: A novel, green, natura flame retardant and suppressant for cotton. Journal of Materials Chemistry A. doi: 1.1039/c3ta00107e
Videos: A. Di Blasio, Politecnico di Torino, Alessandria branch.NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Flexible solar cells now power communications equipment used by U.S. Marines fighting in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, enabling them to shed 315 kilograms worth of batteries while on foot patrol. But an F-16 fighter jet flying over Miramar training base in California burns 105 liters of jet fuel a minute with its afterburners engaged whereas the C-17 cargo consumes 11,350 liters an hour.
That heavy reliance on oil—much of it imported—presents a real challenge to the U.S. military. As Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., put it in an address to the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-e) conference here on March 2: "We are reliant on our adversaries for our national security."
That's why the U.S. Defense (DoD) and Energy (DoE) departments are partnering on initiatives to further develop and test energy-storage technologies first developed by ARPA-e. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced two such development and deployment partnerships on March 2 for power electronics modules and batteries capable of storing megawatts of power—both to be funded by a requested $25 million each from DoD and ARPA–e in the fiscal year 2012 budget.
"Twenty-five million dollars is the cost of one H-1 helicopter," Mabus said. "The change that $25 million from DoD and ARPA–e can generate, can multiply that one helicopter hundreds and thousands of times."
Mabus was referring to saving both lives—for every 24 fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq, one soldier or Marine is killed or wounded, according to a U.S. Army study—and money. The DoD fuel bill came to some $14 billion in 2010. "For every dollar the price of a barrel of oil goes up, the Navy spends $31 million more for fuel," Mabus noted. "Our dependence on fossil fuels creates strategic, operational and tactical vulnerabilities for our forces."
The Navy has taken a lead in attempting to change that, setting a goal of deriving half its energy needs from non–fossil fuel sources by 2020 as well as making half of its bases energy self-sufficient. Already, the Navy has ordered some 150,000 liters of jet fuel derived from Camelina—an oil-seed plant like canola—and more than 75,000 liters of diesel like fuel for ships from algae, an order the U.S. Air Force has matched by requisitioning 150,000 liters of bio–jet fuel. "The Navy has taken delivery of its first algae-based jet fuel. We're not talking about some environmental weirdos, we're talking about the Navy," former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) noted in an address to the ARPA–e conference on March 1. "Why should a dried up little country with a crazy dictator like Libya play havoc with America's energy future?"
And the Navy's first hybrid electric-drive ship—that uses electric motors for speeds under 12 knots—saved some $2 million in fuel costs on its maiden voyage from Pascagoula, Miss., to San Diego. "Changing the way we produce and use energy is fundamentally about improving the national security of this country," Mabus said, noting the Navy's history of fuel switches—from wind to coal in the 19th century and coal to oil supplemented by nuclear over the course of the 20th century. "I am confident—as we lead again in changing the way we power our ships and aircraft—that the naysayers who say, 'it's too expensive, the technology is not there,' are going to be proven wrong again."
That is exactly what ARPA–e—and more broadly the goals set by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu—could prove. "You cannot decouple energy and national security," says ARPA–e Director Arun Majumdar. Via the ADEPT (Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology) and GRIDS (Grid-scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage) programs, ARPA–e aims to prove the energy-storage technologies that the Navy and other armed forces need. "We want to develop storage and do that with batteries, flywheels at the cost of $100 per kilowatt-hour, [and] use it anywhere in the world."
And ARPA–e is exploring opening new research programs to turn scientific advances into deployable technologies in the areas of advanced biofuels, natural gas and thermoelectrics, among others. "We should fund ARPA–e at $1 billion per year," said Charles Holliday, former CEO of DuPont and member of the American Energy Innovation Council, which attempted to lay out a vision for the U.S. energy future in 2010.
But U.S. lawmakers currently won't commit that kind of money. In fact, the U.S. Congress is debating whether the ARPA–e program should continue to receive funding and, if so, how much—although Sens. Lamar Alexander (R–Tenn.), Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) and Mark Udall (D–Colo.) all expressed support for the fledgling agency during addresses at the summit. "Many programs are never funded at their authorized level, let alone higher," Murkowski said. "Every program has to live within its means."
Proposals for ARPA-e in 2011 range from $50 million in a budget proposal from the House of Representatives to a $550 million request in President Obama's budget. "We will be working with Congress on the programs that are the most important for the future of the United States, and will put us in the best position for our economic prosperity," Secretary of Energy Steven Chu noted in a press conference here on March 1. "We have our own priorities, whether we get the president's budget or not."
And that means taking into account the human health impacts of fossil-fuel burning as well, argued Schwarzenegger, noting that 100,000 people die prematurely each year because of smog and other air pollution, which also sends 6.5 million people to the hospital with respiratory issues. "One in six children in central California walk around with an inhaler. That's what we do to those kids," he said. "The suffering and expense of petroleum deaths needs to be recognized."
In fact, regardless of funding, improving the security of U.S. energy supply—and thereby national, environmental and economic security—has become a priority for both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. "You have become the sharp end of the spear," Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman told the ARPA–e summit attendees. "It is the kind of innovation you are pursuing that will spell the difference between success and failure."On Saturday Wales lost to South Africa in the most galling of circumstances in a result that will doubtless take Warren Gatland's men a while to recover from
The best, worst, most pleasing, annoying defeat
Wales’ performance against the Springboks, in isolation, was impressive. But in the context of the first test, it was miraculous. The performance must surely rank as one of the greatest seven day turnarounds in Welsh rugby. The Welsh pack was ultra-competitive against arguably the best forward unit in the world. The backrow of Josh Turnbull, Toby Faletau, and Dan Lydiate were mightily effective. Between them they made 44 tackles – Faletau made 18 on his own. Whilst the entire pack’s efforts were laudable, Gethin Jenkins and Alun-Wyn Jones were a level above even that – both senior players put in career highlight performances. Wales claimed 58% of the possession and 53% of the territory. The scrum ran at 83% and the lineout was equally stable, winning 10/12.
With a solid platform and almost violent breakdown work, the Welsh backline flourished – Mike Phillips, Alex Cuthbert, Jamie Roberts and Jon Davies proved that they are more than capable of moving the ball into the wider channels. It was particularly refreshing to see Jamie Roberts being allowed to pass the ball to screened runners and decoys rather being used like cannon fodder. Of course despite being seconds away from becoming the first Welsh team ever to beat the Boks in South Africa, this display can’t be treated as a victory. There were some sizable negatives. Wales didn’t blow one sizable lead, but two – they worked hard to build separate 17 and 13 point advantages. The defensive decision making that led to Wales being reduced to 13 men was questionable – as too was Liam Williams‘ brave but naive tackle and the events that led to the first of the unsuccessful drop goals. However, all of the Welsh squad and the nation will be quietly pleased to have restored pride.
Gethin Jenkins. Bravery personified
Recently there have been calls for some senior players to make way for the next generation. However, Gethin Jenkins’s performance against the Springboks will have put some of those calls into perspective. He was simply heroic on Saturday. His scrummaging was solid and defence was immaculate – completing seven tackles and missing none. But it was his work at the breakdown, in the absence of Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric, which was so impressive. His nickname is ‘Melon’; well maybe now it should be ‘Melon ball’, so compact was his body position in the jackal. The Springbok clearout had enormous problems removing him once he had locked over the ball. To have turned in a performance like that after 107 caps does him immense credit. Respect.
Wales flooded the contact area
The Welsh’s pack’s key performance indicators were all good against the Springboks but it was their work at the breakdown that requires particular praise. There was a marked difference in the Second Test. Wales flooded the contact area with bodies. There were no one man clear-outs and a single guard. Every ruck, numbers allowing, had a minimum of a double clear-out and two guards – without fail. It was a clever and necessary tactic against the Springboks. Whilst the pack weights, between both teams, are largely similar, there is something different about the Bok forwards. They aren’t made like that in the gym – they’re made like that in the womb and consequently require some shifting. The Welsh set-up will be mightily impressed that their pack managed to dominate the Spingboks for large swathes of the game.
‘Feel a tad sorry for Liam Williams
Liam Williams’ shoulder charge in the dying minutes of the game led to a penalty try and a simple conversion that ultimately cost Wales the game. Warren Gatland has since said that Williams has apologised to the players and that he, Gatland, hopes the player will learn from that experience and hopefully doesn’t do it again. However, before everyone lambasts Liam Williams it is worth remembering Williams was doing everything in his power to win the game for Wales, not lose it. Arguably the decision to opt for a lengthy drop goal, when there was still time to build vital phases was equally as costly.
A new approach to defending 5m mauls.
Elite margins require elite decision making and it may be time to reassess the way that rolling mauls are defended. Between the 29th and 32 minute Wales conceded two yellow cards and a penalty try whilst defending the Boks’ phenomenal rolling maul. However there may come a point in elite rugby where it is simply more efficient to concede the five points and leave a difficult conversion rather than risk a yellow card and a penalty try. As this test has proved a single yellow card often leads to the concession of more than 7 points – two yellow cards is suicide. It may seem counter intuitive to willingly concede points, but with repeated warnings from the referee, it is surely the correct decision – rather than concede a penalty try and a yellow card. It’s comparable to cricket where the concession of a single run is deemed more beneficial simply to remove an effective batsman from the strike. Food for thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g71yBh4mVpQThe Giants reached agreement with FB/TE Rhett Ellison, seen here as a member of the Vikings. (Photo: Associated press file photo)
The Giants did not open free agency Thursday with the sizzle of last season’s $200 million splurge, as expected.
One day after making a bit of a splash by bringing Brandon Marshall into the fold, Big Blue ended up with more of a thud — well, someone known for delivering one.
Former Vikings fullback/tight end hybrid Rhett Ellison, a thumper whose specialty is as a blocker, is joining an offense desperate for more blocking across the board.
Ellison and the Giants have reached agreement on a four-year deal worth up to $18 million with $8 million guaranteed at signing, according to a league source familiar with the deal.
The Giants are not expected to confirm the signing until Ellison, 28, completes his physical.
With the market for offensive linemen soaring, tackles in particular, the Giants decided having Ellison line up alongside their tackles for the price paid to him was a better investment than those linemen who secured lucrative deals Thursday.
Andrew Whitworth went to the Rams for $13 million per season. Russell Okung and Matt Kalil each received $25 million guaranteed from the Chargers and Panthers, respectively. So as much as the Giants would like to add to their unit up front offensively, bringing tackles in to compete with Ereck Flowers at left tackle and Bobby Hart on the right side, team brass determined early on they would not be players at the top of the market.
Part of that is due to the fifth-lowest total of salary cap space available in the league — an estimated $8 million after the Marshall signing. The Giants also have $16.9 million currently set aside for defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, who has been assigned the franchise tag.
The Giants and Pierre-Paul’s representatives are hoping to reach a long-term agreement at some point, which would lower his salary and cap hit for 2017, but no deal is imminent.
That could change at any time, of course, especially with Giants co-owner and team President John Mara indicating last week that would be his preference. Until then, though, the Giants will have to do some maneuvering cap-wise to make desired moves. As of Thursday night, there had been no reported movement in the defensive tackle market, which the Giants are monitoring with the hope that 2013 second-round draft pick Johnathan Hankins could be retained.
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The Giants’ signing of Marshall was lauded around the league, and when the official contract details were revealed Thursday, his arrival looked even better. His deal ended up being a two-year, $11 million deal that includes a $2 million signing bonus, plus $1 million in incentives to push the potential total package to $12 million. The cap hit for the Giants in 2017 is $4.5 million.
The Giants also re-signed running back Orleans Darkwa to a one-year deal Thursday before the start of free agency. The signing of Ellison should help upgrade the running game, which is a priority this off-season.
His presence still leaves open the possibility that the Giants can draft a tight end as a downfield threat come April, with expected first-rounders O.J. Howard and David Njoku of Cedar Grove projected at the top of a class considered one of the deepest in league history.
The 6-foot-5, 250-pound Ellison is a five-year veteran who caught just nine passes for 57 yards last season, but he is an accomplished blocker both in-line and out of the backfield. He will likely be used in the role envisioned last season for Will Johnson, who was signed as a free agent from the Steelers. Johnson spent last season on injured reserve after sustaining a burner and has another year remaining on his contract. He will also compete for a spot if healthy.
Asked during last week’s scouting combine if the Giants would look to add a fullback after spending an entire season without one, Ben McAdoo said: “It just really depends on how things shake out, whether it’s the free agency market or it’s the draft class, it depends on what you have to choose from. The guys on our roster going into the season, we had two players that we felt pretty good about playing fullback for us, and neither of them stayed healthy [Johnson and Nikita Whitlock] and that was a part of it.”On Wednesday, director Ridley Scott announced a plan that is virtually unprecedented in the history of Hollywood: With his new film “All the Money in the World” already in the can and less than two weeks from its planned world premiere, he will recast Kevin Spacey’s role (as deep-pocketed oil tycoon J. Paul Getty) and reshoot the publicly disgraced actor’s scenes with 87-year old Christopher Plummer, while still attempting to adhere to the film’s Dec. 22 release date.
It’s a bold move, and one that I predict, sight unseen, could earn Scott his first best director Oscar. Not that awards had anything to do with Scott’s dramatic switch. He wanted to save the picture, which might easily have imploded by association with Spacey, who was last week accused of making sexual advances on several young men.
Spacey is just the latest domino to fall in a brisk industry-wide house-cleaning triggered by last month’s bombshell exposé by the New York Times of Hollywood alleged predator Harvey Weinstein. And he certainly won’t be the last. Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump. This movement, which I call “the Reckoning,” has been brewing for several years now. Sooner or later, showbiz’s sexual-harassment House of Cards had to crumble. And so it has.
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No sooner had Buzzfeed reported Anthony Rapp’s story of Spacey attempting to seduce him at the tender age of 14 then Netflix pulled the plug on Season 5 of Spacey’s show. It was only a matter of time before Sony would have to follow suit with “All the Money in the World,” which had been slated to premiere as the closing night film of AFI Fest in Los Angeles. When the studio announced its decision to withdraw “Money” from AFI, it left the festival — which has previously launched such Academy Award contenders as “American Sniper,” “The Big Short,” “Lincoln,” and “The Fighter” — with zero high-profile world premieres.
But Sony still had a PR disaster on their hands, stuck with a film featuring Spacey in a critical role. That’s where Scott’s decision — backed by producers Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas — was such a stroke of genius. Rather than putting the film on a shelf and waiting for the scandal to blow over (it won’t: Spacey is dunzo), or attempting to downplay the two-time Oscar winner’s involvement in a movie that hinges on his character, Scott announced a scheme to salvage the project altogether. By recasting Spacey, he not only sends a loud-and-clear message that the director disavows the actor, but also gives audiences (and potential Oscar voters), who might have boycotted the film in light of the accusations against Spacey, reason to endorse it instead.
Again, in Scott’s case, I suspect awards were not the issue. There are plenty of directors who seem determined to amass as much Oscar gold as they possibly can. (I’m looking at you, Clint Eastwood, though the list goes on.) Not Sir Ridley Scott, whose career has blazed a decidedly different trajectory, making big, bold, rock-the-system studio pictures — “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Thelma & Louise,” “Kingdom of Heaven,” “The Martian,” to name his five best — that have consistently challenged the industry’s fundamental assumptions and changed the course of filmmaking.
He’s also the guy who directed 2001 best picture winner “Gladiator,” dusting off the sword-and-sandal genre in the process, but Scott has never gotten his due from the Academy (Steven Soderbergh deservedly won that year’s directing prize). Scott’s proposal to expurgate Spacey from “Money” obviously won’t be easy, calling for a mad scramble by editors, visual effects artists, and all kinds of post-production personnel. But if there’s anyone who can do it, Scott’s the man, having nimbly adapted to huge production hurdles in the past (such as the Oliver Reed’s death before the completion of “Gladiator”).
With this announcement, Scott takes an important stand while also creating an enormous challenge for himself and his crew. Nobody expects artists to be perfect, but as a society, we have to draw the line somewhere in terms of what kind of misbehavior we’re willing to excuse. Cross it, and the system shouldn’t cover for you any longer. (Let’s be honest: Weinstein and Spacey are simply the ones who’ve been egregious enough to get caught, but the hypocrisy has to end somewhere.) However much money is at stake, this industry cannot be complicit in enabling or excusing criminal behavior. Period.I held in my hands one of the first animals to drag itself out of the water and onto land. Christened “Tiny”, she (I like to think it was female, but we can’t actually tell) is entombed in a chunk of boring, black rock. I ran my hands over the surface, feeling the bumps betraying a stone pregnant with fossils. Yet, from the outside there’s no sign of the treasure within: no one has ever actually seen it.
“We didn’t really know it was in the small piece of rock that we collected until it was CT scanned,” Dr Nick Fraser, Keeper of Natural Sciences at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh told me. “We were quite surprised to find Tiny hiding in the sediment - we still only know it from the 3D scan and the 3D print and so haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the actual fossil!”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aytonerpeton microps, also known as “Tiny”. A fossil from the Early Carboniferous of Scotland. Photograph: Elsa Panciroli/Elsa Panciroli/National Museums Scotland
Comfortably fitting in your hand and looking superficially reptile-like, Tiny is a rare fossil indeed. She comes from a time in the rock record that has traditionally yielded very few fossils. This time was named Romer’s Gap, after the scientist who identified the paucity, and it has achieved palaeontological notoriety both as an intriguing enigma, and because this enigma obscures the development of the first animals to live on land. What caused the gap? Mass extinction? Low oxygen? Or is there no gap at all, are we just not looking hard enough? Recent finds from Southern Scotland (including Tiny) suggest the latter may be true, yielding exciting new fossils of the earliest land-living vertebrates.
Tiny and I have a lot in common. We both have backbones, hinged jaws, lungs and four limbs. All of these are important steps in evolutionary development leading to the group called tetrapods, literally ‘four-footed’ in Greek. Tetrapods include amphibians, mammals, reptiles and birds.
Tiny and I both grew up on the shores of a Scottish loch; but whereas mine was a deep, cold, freshwater one, hers was tropical and probably brackish. During her lifetime, 350 million years ago, Scotland was part of an ancient landmass called Euramerica, straddling the equator. It was hot, around 30 Celsius, and lush green with ancient lycopod forests. A paradise you may be thinking, but watch out for the copious scorpions and centipedes crawling through the undergrowth.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Palaeoart of the environment where tetrapods first crawled onto land over 350m yrs ago. Illustration: Mark Witton/Mark Witton/National Museums Scotland
The most important thing that Tiny and I may share however, is having five digits at the end of our limbs. If Tiny had this, she would be among the first animals who could play This Little Piggy.
“There are two [animals with five digits] that we know for certain: Pederpes, and an isolated foot found by our project,” Professor Jenny Clack, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge, explained the evolution of limbs and digits to me. Her latest multi-authored scientific paper included the jumble of fossil bones that was Tiny. Many of the first tetrapods had more than five fingers and toes on each limb, some as many as eight. Clack elaborated “as limbs with digits evolved from fins, there must have been experimental forms, and the genetic regulation was less precise, allowing variability. These fish-like animals did not ‘walk’ in the conventional sense.”
Professor Clack is one of the biggest names in palaeontology. An unassuming woman in her late 60s, she has spent a lifetime researching the earliest tetrapod fossils in order to understand the evolution of the first land vertebrates – often called the “fish to tetrapod transition”. In the 1980s Clack and her team of researchers recovered fossils of Acanthostega and Ichthyostega from rocks in Greenland. These were some of the animals undergoing this “transition”, and their anatomy surprised scientists. It seemed limbs had evolved from fins not for dragging the animal from shallow pool to pool, as previously suggested, but for movement within water. The first limbs allowed our ancestors to push their way through dense underwater vegetation in their swampy habitat.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reconstruction of Ichthyostega, one of the earliest known tetrapods. Photograph: Elsa Panciroli/Elsa Panciroli/National Museums Scotland
But why, I asked her, did five fingers turn out to be better than eight? “We’ll probably never know for sure,” Clack answered, “but I reckon it’s to do with producing a wrist or ankle that is both weight-bearing and flexible. The multi-digited forms did not have this; the limbs were stiff and paddle-like without good joints.”
Clack is one of the central driving forces behind the TW:eed project (Tetrapod World: early evolution and diversification), which includes researchers from the National Museum of Scotland, Universities of Leicester, Cambridge and Southampton, and the British Geological Survey. These researchers focus their considerable expertise on the rocks of Southern Scotland. These rocks are younger than those in Greenland, being from the Tournaisian (360-345 million years ago) - the notorious Romer’s Gap. This period marks the end of the Devonian, often referred to as the “age of fish”, and the beginning of the Carboniferous.
TW:eed have now successfully bored and logged two cores through hundreds of metres of solid Tournaisian rock. (If you’re unfamiliar with geological “logging”, think less lumberjack and more sedimentary accountant: it is the painstaking, detailed inventory of layers of rock in a sequence, telling you how the environment changed over time.) TW:eed’s logging in Scotland has been done to an impressive centimetre scale, making these the most detailed accounts of Tournaisian sediments in the world.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Field work in the Scottish borders on rocks from “Romers Gap”. Photograph: University Museum of Zoology Cambridge
“It does appear that if there had been a ‘gap’ it was much smaller than previously thought, and might have affected some groups less severely than others,” Clack told me, talking about the disappearance of many species at the end of the Devonian. “There was an extinction event for many fish species, but no-one is really sure what caused it.”
Clack and her co-authors found evidence in their rock cores that fires burned throughout the Tournaisian, challenging previous theories that low atmospheric oxygen during the time period caused extinctions. “Climate change, possibly, but not certainly. Whatever it was affected the flora as well, eliminating the large lycopsid trees that reappeared only five or six million years later.”
Tiny was not alone in her scorpion-infested Scottish swamp. Only one species, Pederpes finneyae, was previously named from this time period, but Clack and colleagues have named five new species, and found many more fossils too fragmentary to formally identify. This suggests that there may be a chance of finding further important Tournaisian fossils in Scotland.
“There is every chance!” Clack enthused, “no-one bothered to look at the right rocks previously. Because they don’t yield commercially exploitable resources these rocks did not have a history of accidental finds. So because no-one had ever found anything, no-one ever looked, and they were considered barren. It was a vicious circle.”
So what about Tiny? I visited Nick Fraser’s office at the National Museum of Scotland. On his desk between a cast of ancient reptile footprints and a battered taxidermy fish, lay a small |
the property owners for not doing enough to change property ownership patters post-apartheid, but also encouraged them to join the fight against corruption.
Taking his stand behind the podium in chinos and a blazer rather instead of his infamous red overalls, Malema said he was surprised to be invited to the event.
"Sitting here today are the beneficiaries of a crime against humanity," he said after he tied the current property ownership patterns to apartheid.
He said the same people are also the greatest beneficiaries post-apartheid and that profits and greed were placed above reconciliation.
He said the country is heading towards failure, and property owners should shoulder some of the blame as they often scupper government policies aimed to alleviate poverty. "Your riches made you self-centred."
"If there is a disruption we need today, it is your neoliberal short-sightedness."
He said there are many pieces of unused land. "Without a disruption, they are unwilling to share the land."
"Our fellow patriotic white people must stop being oversensitive."
He said the ANC and DA won't be able to help them because they still believe neo-liberalism can be saved. He said the 1913 Native Land Act is still manifested.
"When the EFF take over, we will ensure the state owns all the land. The land belongs to all South Africans."
He said anyone who believed otherwise is blind to black suffering.
"The state must be the custodian of the land. Why? Because you are refusing to release the land."
"The struggle has always been about property ownership."
'The beginning and the end of South Africa'
The only real applause Malema solicited from the white, male-dominated audience was when he said they are not even supporting the EFF's fight against corruption financially.
He said South Africa's economy has been relegated to junk status and we are entering a recessing.
"If the criminal syndicate is not removed, we will enter a permanent depression."
He said the private sector is also involved with corruption with the "gangster regime" and he wants South Africans to unite against corruption.
"You have all the money...Yet you don't use your money to fight corruption."
An audience member asked Malema about the possibility of a coalition government.
"Democracy has already proved that a coalition can work," he said, citing the examples of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Port Elizabeth.
He said that for the EFF their potential coalition partners' policy on land is non-negotiable.
"We stay outside the coalition, but give our support as long as it keeps the gangster away from the purse," he said.
"The gangster and the purse don't go together. Very dangerous."
He again underlined the importance of land.
"The land is everything. Without the land, it is a Mickey Mouse arrangement. The land is the beginning and the end of South Africa."The wait for Intel’s Kaby Lake chip will end in the third quarter this year, as the first PC with the 7th Generation Core chip was announced at Computex.
Kaby Lake, the successor to Intel’s Skylake Core processor chips, will be in the Asus Transformer 3 tablet. The device is much like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, and will ship in the third quarter starting at $799, according to a blog entry on Microsoft’s website.
The Transformer 3 was among a gaggle of PC and phone products announced by Asus at Computex. No other Kaby Lake PC has been announced yet, but expect Lenovo, HP, Dell and others to follow suit.
Intel hasn’t yet announced details of Kaby Lake, and a company spokesman declined to share further information about the chip. He also said the company won’t talk about the chip in detail at the trade show in Taipei.
Intel’s current 6th Generation Core chips are based on the Skylake architecture, and Kaby Lake will be the successor. Kaby Lake has the underpinnings of Skylake, and like all chip upgrades, is expected to be faster and more power-efficient.
On devices containing Kaby Lake chips, Microsoft will not support versions of its OS prior to Windows 10.
Kaby Lake is the third Core chip design to be built with the 14-nanometer production process, and was added as Intel strayed from its traditional model of releasing two Core chip designs for each production process improvement. Manufacturing issues caused Intel to delay a move to the 10-nm process, and it added Kaby Lake to continue delivering yearly chip upgrades.
The Transformer 3, which has a 12.6-inch screen, gives some insight into what top-line Kaby Lake PCs may look like. The tablet PC has a Thunderbolt 3 port, which can drive two 4K displays and doubles as a USB C connector.
Intel has been looking to integrate the controller for that inside its chipset, and also to improve integrated graphics on its chips.
The screen on the Transformer 3 displays images at a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels, compared to 2736 x 1824 pixels on Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4. According to Asus, the Transformer 3 weighs 695 grams and is 6.9 millimeters thick. A keyboard can be attached to turn the device into a laptop. The device has a 13-megapixel camera and can hold an SSD up to 512GB in capacity, and up to 8GB RAM.
The primary competition to Kaby Lake will be AMD’s chips based on the Zen architecture, which will first appear in gaming PCs by year end, and desktops and laptops next year.
Asus announced other Transformers at Computex.
The Transformer 3 Pro tablet also has a 12.6-inch screen, but is thicker than the Kaby Lake Transformer, at around 8.35 millimeters, and heavier, at 798 grams. It has a Skylake chip and can be fully loaded with up to 16GB of memory and 1TB of SSD storage. It will ship in the third quarter, starting at $999. It has USB-C (including Thunderbolt support), HDMI and USB 3.0 ports, and a fingerprint reader.
The Transformer Mini tablet, with a 10.1-inch screen, will also arrive in the third quarter, although Asus won’t yet say at what price.
There’s a new laptop too: The ZenBook 3 is 11.9 millimeters thick, weighs 910 grams and has a 12.5-inch screen. It will ship in the third quarter starting at $999.Donald Trump was elected president of the United States despite the opposition of a number of American institutions. He won his party’s nomination over the objections of its senior leaders, who quickly fell in line once the voters weighed in. He won the presidency despite an array of objections from across the spectrum. Elected officials, including former Republican presidents, declined to endorse him. Members of the intelligence and foreign policy communities actively campaigned against him. Newspapers, including a number that consistently backed Republicans or did not usually endorse, spoke out against him.
Didn’t matter. Trump is president, in large part because of an unwavering base of support that embraced his outsider status. He is also president, in part, because of Republicans who were skeptical of his candidacy but came home to vote for him anyway. At least, many figured, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Trump got about the same level of support as had past Republican presidential candidates, regardless of the questions that surrounded him.
Despite that outcome, the election seems in many ways like a “black swan” event — a thing that was unexpected, unpredictable and hard or impossible to reproduce. Trump was sui generis, and, although he successfully leveraged shifting patterns in American politics, it didn’t seem as though he was necessarily the leading edge of a wave, but, instead, just a tsunami.
Roy Moore’s Senate campaign challenges that idea.
As it stands, Moore is the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat in Alabama. That might change at any point, because Moore’s campaign is beleaguered by allegations that he initiated sexual contact with teenage girls in the 1970s, when he was in his 30s, including a new allegation that he assaulted a 16-year-old in 1977. National Republican Party leaders have called on Moore to withdraw from the race; Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) announced his intention to seek to immediately remove Moore from office should he win next month’s election against Democrat Doug Jones. An editorial describing the potential of Moore as a senator as “unthinkable” appeared in three major newspapers in the state Tuesday.
[Sessions says he has ‘no reason to doubt’ women who have accused Roy Moore of sexual misconduct]
It’s a lot of pressure for a candidate to withstand. But there’s little indication that Moore doesn’t intend to withstand it. He has rejected the allegations against him as broadly untrue. He seems unmoved by the protestations of his party. His political track record, in fact, is predicated on ignoring what the establishment (and the Constitution) says he should do: As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he was twice reprimanded and forced from office for ignoring legal mandates. Barring new revelations or new evidence about his past behavior, the safe bet is that Moore will remain actively in the race until Election Day and, polling suggests, may very well win the majority of votes cast.
We take this in stride, but it’s worth parsing out its significance.
There have traditionally been a number of ways in which candidates for elected office have been contextualized for voters. The media have reported on their positions and editorial boards have offered their opinions. Candidates join political parties that provide a shorthand guide to their values and the parties, in return, have winnowed the pool of possible contenders for an office to one endorsed individual. Business leaders and elected officials past and present have offered endorsements of their own. The goal on the part of the candidates is simple: These are my validators, who can vouch for me.
Trump didn’t need those validators to win. Or, rather, he didn’t need most of them. He communed directly with the American people through social media and by gaming television news coverage to ensure that his unfiltered message was heard. More broadly, his rejection of the establishment was itself a form of validation; as a candidate who was running as an outsider, the rubber-stamp of approval from an insider could be a detriment, not an asset.
Again, many Republicans who were wary of Trump voted for him anyway. Some, no doubt, did so because they were somewhat reassured by the Republican establishment eventually signing off on his candidacy.
Moore, though, doesn’t even have that. He has local and statewide Republican leaders who continue to stand by him, but the national party considers him anathema. (This is informed in part by the national party’s concerns about how Moore’s candidacy might affect the 2018 elections.) Many of the validators who might once have been important to a Senate candidate are absent for Moore, particularly now.
So what? Like Trump, Moore, because of his time on the Supreme Court, enjoys some celebrity that means he has less work to do in informing the electorate of where he stands. He, too, has positioned himself in opposition to the traditional validators. But he stands apart from them more completely than did Trump. Not even much of his own party thinks he should hold office!
That it might not matter is a remarkable statement about the political moment. A candidate can be reviled by his opponents, disavowed by his party and excoriated by outside observers, but voters will still support him. Obvious contradictions and alleged misdeeds are themselves just framed as the establishment trying to hold him back. If you’re voting for someone who will take a stand against the system, everything that flows from that system — including reports that the candidate may have once sexually assaulted a 16-year-old — becomes evidence in support of that candidate.
The same partisanship that favored Trump last November plays a role here, too. Many of those Republicans voted for him because they didn’t like Clinton, but maybe it wasn’t about Clinton. Maybe it was, more simply, that the Republicans disliked her party and her politics. We’ve seen anecdotal evidence that Moore still enjoys support simply because he isn’t a Democrat. In a deeply polarized moment in which negative partisanship drives a lot of political action, that’s not surprising. It probably should be.
The role of the validators has waned for various reasons. The question that has been posed by 2016 and 2017, though, is the extent to which they’re still relevant. We can issue the same qualifiers to Moore that we do to Trump: popular, well-known, outsider, etc. But you don’t get two 500-year storms in two years unless something in the climate has changed. And even if Moore doesn’t win, it seems safe to wonder about just what the political climate will look like next November.The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people's armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.
The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim's bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.
This is precisely what happened to Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student at Staunton River High School in Bedford County, in the US state of Virginia. Ashton spent a week fighting for his life -- and lost. This is probably what also happened to Omar Rivera, a 12-year-old in New York, who doctors sent home because they thought he was exhibiting allergy symptoms. He died that same night.
The same thing almost happened at a high school in the town of Belen, New Mexico. Less than two weeks ago, a cheerleader at the school was hospitalized after complaining about an abscess. Twelve other female students had been afflicted with suspicious rashes. All the students tested positive for a bacterium that the US media has dubbed the "superbug."
The school administration in Belen believes that the bacterium was spread on mats in the school's fitness and wrestling rooms. The facility was thoroughly disinfected 40 times, and yet the fear remains.
Fears of a Pandemic
Microbiologists refer to this bacterium as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or ca-MRSA. The terrifying thing about it is its resistance to almost all common antibiotics, which complicates treatment. And, in contrast to the highly drug-resistant hospital-acquired MRSA (ha-MRSA) strains, which primarily affect the elderly and people in hospitals and nursing homes, ca-MRSA affects healthy young people. The bacterium has become a serious health threat in the United States. Doctors have already discovered it in Germany, although no deaths have been attributed to it yet in the country.
The two bacteria, ha-MRSA and ca-MRSA, are only two strains from an entire arsenal of pathogens that are now resistant to almost all available antibiotics. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.
The British medical journal The Lancet warns that the drug-resistant bacteria could spark a "pandemic." And, in Germany, the dangerous pathogens are no longer only feared "hospital bugs" found in intensive care units (ICUs). Instead, they have become ubiquitous.
About two weeks ago, consumers were alarmed by the results of an analysis of chicken meat by the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), which found multidrug-resistant bacteria on more than half of the chicken parts purchased in supermarkets.
The dangerous bacteria have even been detected on one of Germany's high-speed ICE trains. Likewise, more than 10 percent of the residents of German retirement homes have been colonized by MRSA bacteria. In their case, every open wound is potentially deadly. The pathogens have also been found on beef, pork and vegetables.
Another alarming finding is that about 3 to 5 percent of the population carries so-called ESBL-forming bacteria in the intestine without knowing it. Even modern antibiotics are completely ineffective against these highly resistant bacteria.
Diminishing Defenses
When the neonatal ICU at a hospital in the northern German city of Bremen was infested with an ESBL-forming bacterium last fall, three prematurely born babies died.
Infestation with multidrug-resistant bacteria is normally harmless to healthy individuals because their immune systems can keep the pathogens under control. Problems arise when an individual becomes seriously ill.
"Take, for example, a person who is having surgery and requires artificial respiration and receives a venous or urinary catheter," explains Petra Gastmeier, director of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Berlin's Charité Hospital. "In such a case, the resistant intestinal bacteria can enter the lungs, the bloodstream and the bladder."
This results in urinary tract infections, pneumonia or sepsis, which are increasingly only treatable with so-called reserve antibiotics, that is, drugs for emergencies that should only be administered when common antibiotics are no longer effective.
The Spread of Killer Bugs
Recently, an even greater threat has arisen. With the spread of ESBL-forming bacteria, reserve antibiotics have to be used more and more frequently, thereby allowing new resistances to develop. In fact, there are already some pathogens that not even the drugs of last resort in the medical arsenal can combat.
In India, where poor hygiene and the availability of over-the-counter antibiotics encourage the development of resistance, an estimated 100 to 200 million people are reportedly already carriers of these virtually unbeatable killer bacteria. There is only one antibiotic left -- a drug that is normally not even used anymore owing to its potentially fatal side effects -- that is still effective against these killer bacteria. In serious cases, people who become infected with these types of pathogens die of urinary tract infections, wound infections or pneumonia.
The killer bugs have also reached England, presumably through medical tourists who traveled to India for cosmetic surgery, and they have reportedly already infected several hundred people. A few cases have also turned up in Germany.
Israel even experienced a nationwide outbreak a few years ago. Within a few months, about 1,300 people were afflicted by an extremely dangerous bacterium that killed 40 percent of infected patients. Even today, the same bacterium still sickens some 300 people a year.It’s been the “Wild West” for the users of virtual currencies like bitcoin for years, and the times they are … well, not changing very much at all.
This is especially true when it comes to compliance with the federal tax code. Regulators and federal authorities have been slow to keep up with bitcoin, and the Internal Revenue Service is no exception.
Widespread Non-reporting
According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), virtual currency use continues to climb and the IRS is not doing nearly enough to police these transactions.
A recent review by the watchdog found several deficiencies in the way the IRS currently addresses virtual currencies, specifically bitcoin, which TIGTA identifies as comprising “nearly 82 percent of the entire virtual currency market.”
The report notes that the agency’s failure to provide proper guidance and investigate noncompliance has led to an increase in the “tax gap” — the estimated difference between “the amount of tax that taxpayers should pay and the amount that is paid voluntarily and on time.”
According to the IRS, the tax gap for tax years 2008 through 2010 was approximately $458 billion per year.
While the IRS issued a notice in March 2014 and launched the Virtual Currency Guidance Team, TIGTA says the agency has made little to no effort to follow up:
“… [T]here has been little evidence of coordinate between the responsible functions to identify and address, on a program level, potential taxpayer noncompliance issues for transactions involving virtual currencies.”
At present, the inspector general says the IRS still lacks an “overall strategy” to deal with bitcoin. What’s more, TIGTA points out that the Government Accountability Office raised these concerns three years ago, and yet the IRS’s position on virtual currency “has remained relatively unchanged.”
Indeed, the IRS has remained strangely quiet on the issue over the years, leaving only the March 2014 announcement (Notice 2014-21, “Virtual Currency Guidance”) as their official word on the matter.
That notice, however, did little to help those bitcoin users who want to “come out of the shadows” and comply with federal tax laws, as Bob Derber — an attorney with the Summit Legal Group and contributor to Coin Center — explained to the Tax Revolution Institute’s Fergus Hodgson in early August.
The crux of the issue lies with the IRS’s refusal to classify bitcoin and the like as actual currency, just like the legal tender that is issued from a central bank. Instead, the agency has insisted on treating bitcoin as “property,” which makes reporting requirements complicated, to say the least.
Hodgson explains:
“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this classification is that users are required to calculate the realized gains and losses of every transaction. In other words, if I buy one bitcoin at $500, and then spend it after it has risen in value to $750, I should report income of $250, and that goes for transactions as small as the purchase of a cup of coffee.”
Derber agreed and said at the time of the interview that “widespread non-reporting” is to be expected in the face of such an “unreasonable burden.”
To date, the IRS has not provided further comment on bitcoin or the various questions that Notice 2014-21 has since raised. The agency’s silence comes despite a letter from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in June calling for clarification, and — perhaps even more surprisingly — the IRS’s very own call for public comments on their notice.
This lapse was not lost on TIGTA who chastises the IRS in its report for taking “no action” to address the comments the agency received from the public on their Virtual Currency Guidance notice.
Down a Slippery Silk Road
While the IRS’s efforts to address bitcoin in terms of tax compliance has been minimal, TIGTA says the agency has done even less with regard to the “potential criminal activities” associated with the virtual currency.
Specifically, TIGTA wants the IRS to up its enforcement of bitcoin when it comes to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. The inspector general points to the notorious “Silk Road” case as the prototypical example of a “successful collaborative Federal investigation.”
The Silk Road was a black market website that operated on the “dark web” from January 2011 to October 2013 when it was shut down by federal law-enforcement authorities.
TIGTA’s report describes the website as a “sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace … where unlawful goods and services, including illegal drugs of virtually all varieties, were bought and sold regularly by the site’s users.”
In February 2015, Ross Ulbricht was convicted of being the “Dread Pirate Roberts” mastermind behind the Silk Road following an investigation by the FBI, DEA, and the IRS Criminal Investigation division. While Ulbricht maintains his innocence and his attorneys continue to seek an appeal, he is currently facing a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
TIGTA’s report notes that the Silk Road was designed to “include a bitcoin-based payment system that concealed the identities and locations of the users transmitting and receiving funds through the site.”
The watchdog warns that it is the “anonymity feature” of bitcoin and other virtual currencies that should be of particular concern, claiming that this is “what attracts unscrupulous individuals to their use.”
Ironically, it is this same anonymity that allowed federal agents to infiltrate the Silk Road marketplace in the course of their investigation. It is also what allowed two unscrupulous federal agents in particular to seize user accounts and steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins from the site.
Both agents have since been convicted for their corruption and sentenced to several years in prison. DEA agent Carl Mark Force pled guilty to extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, while Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges pled guilty to the theft of some $820,000 from Silk Road user accounts.
Their actions, however, have raised fresh questions about the integrity of the government’s investigation of the Silk Road and its case against Ulbricht. In fact, it is this corruption that is the basis for Ulbricht’s current appeal.
“They hijacked accounts. They changed passwords. They stole money. They were inside the guts of this website,” defense attorney Joshua Dratel argued before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City in early October.
“For us, this is a critical issue and what we wanted was a chance to put it before a jury,” he said.
Nevertheless, TIGTA wants to see the IRS pursue more Silk-Road type investigations, and is urging the agency to have all bitcoin users — both honest and dishonest alike — brought to heel.Two Williams College students are now facing disciplinary action after hoaxing vandalism which appeared to be Ku Klux Klan (KKK) inspired days after the 2016 Election.
The two students, whom the college has not publicly named, poured fake blood on staircases of a building and spelled out “AMKKK KILL” on the walls, according to the Williams Record.
On the day that the vandalism was discovered, campus organizations had to cancel meetings in the building as a result.
Shortly thereafter, local police were notified of the vandalism and began investigating the incident, even getting the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Massachusetts State Police involved in the case.
After investigating more than 40 persons of interest, police concluded that two students performed the act as a statement against President-Elect Donald Trump.
Williams College President Adam Falk said in a statement that the two students admitted “they had committed the vandalism to bring attention to the effects of the presidential election on many within our community.”
“Their actions did much more than damage property,” Falk continued. “They harmed our entire community and caused considerable fear, among students in particular.”
“We are deeply distressed that anyone in our community would feel compelled to express themselves in such a destructive and harmful way,” Falk said.
The two students are now facing disciplinary action, according to Falk.
The Massachusetts hate crime hoax is one of many that has occurred since Trump’s victory against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
In Louisiana, a Muslim student claimed she was attacked by Trump supporters and had her hijab pulled off her head, only for police to discover that she fabricated the story, as Breitbart Texas reported. The student is now facing misdemeanor charges.
In Ohio, a Bowling Green State University student faces similar charges after repeatedly misleading police investigators about a claimed rock-throwing attack she suffered at the hands of Trump supporters.
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.The Federal Communications Commission will vote in February on whether to preempt two state laws restricting cities from building municipally owned high-speed Internet networks, an FCC aide confirmed.
President Obama is in Iowa on Wednesday to announce new initiatives to expand broadband access. As part of the package, he will call on the FCC to preempt states across the country that set up roadblocks to communities expanding city-owned networks. Nineteen states place such restrictions on municipalities building out their broadband networks.
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Obama’s push, which he will include in his State of the Union, is part of a broader package meant to expand broadband service throughout the country, by increasing competition.
Supporters say city-owned broadband networks bring Internet services to communities lacking private investment. But critics say the locally owned networks have an unfair advantage.
Two petitions are pending before the commission to roll back state restrictions in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C., to allow those cities to expand their networks. In the past, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has vowed to take action against the laws, saying it is in the best interest of competition and the public.
The cities filed their petitions in July. Chattanooga, for example, noted that state restrictions forbid it from expanding its high-speed Internet outside the borders of its electrical power service.
"The FCC has been working diligently to expand broadband deployment and increase consumer choice and competition nationwide, including reviewing complaints from cities that have been prohibited from providing competitive high-speed alternatives," Wheeler said in a statement ahead of Obama's speech.
Critics of the proposal, including Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, said the commission does not have the constitutional authority to preempt state restrictions.
Instead, the commission should focus on private sector deployment, Pai said.
— Updated 5:50 p.m.WeAreChange is looking for interns in NYC!
Here at WeAreChange, we are running a very low budget and low staff operation. In order to grow, we need more hands on deck. If you think you have what it takes and want to gain important first hand experience in a multimedia organization, this is the right place for you.
– We’re looking for an overall positive person who is willing to learn anything and do his or her best.
– You have to be in the NYC area and have an available schedule
– If you have a resume send it if you don’t, don’t worry about it. Just let us know your skills and how best you think you can contribute.
Send this along with a picture and contact information to bedachange.com@gmail.com with “Intern Resume” in the subject.
Were looking for specific help with Camera men/women, video editors, social media managers, researchers, writers and on camera characters. If you have a desire to learn any of these skills, or have some experience in the field, this is a perfect opportunity for you!BREAKING—-
Guccifer 2.0 dropped a new cache of Democrat emails on Wednesday.
The emails were released the latest cache of emails to The Hill.
The Hill reported:
Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who breached the Democratic National Committee, has released a cache of purported DNC documents to The Hill in an effort to refocus attention on the hack.
The documents include more than 11,000 names matched with some identifying information, files related to two controversial donors and a research file on Sarah Palin.
“The press [is] gradually forget[ing] about me, [W]ikileaks is playing for time and [I] have some more docs,” he said in electronic chat explaining his rationale.
The documents provide some insight into how the DNC handled high-profile donation scandals. But the choice of documents revealed to The Hill also provides insight into the enigmatic Guccifer 2.0.
The hacker provided a series of spreadsheets related to Norman Hsu, a Democratic donor jailed in 2009 for running a Ponzi scheme and arranging illegal campaign contributions. The DNC responded by assembling files to gauge the exposure from Hsu to its slate of candidates.
Similar files on Paul J. Magliocchetti, a lobbyist closely associated with the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), provide a quick reference document outlining Magliocchetti’s donations to Republicans. Magliocchetti pleaded guilty in 2010 to involvement in a pay-for-play campaign finance scheme.
Guccifer 2.0 has claimed to be a Romanian hacker with no strong political leanings. Guccifer 2.0’s choice to release documents from Magliocchetti and Hsu, whose cases are now six and seven years old, shows a detailed knowledge of American politics seemingly at odds with the backstory provided by the hacker.In a recent episode of The Daily Shoah, the most popular Alt Right podcast today, after ranting about the various problems of the day they followed through on their previous show’s promise to discuss the “white genocide” happening in South Africa. They brought on blogger and Alt Right “shitlord” Jayoh, who has also appeared on Neoreaction podcasts like Ascending the Tower. After ranting about how “n***ers ruin everything” for fifteen minutes, he finally leveled his real belief to the “problem of South Africa” and integration.
There is no version of segregation that will ever work because somebody will always use it as a cudgel against you…You can’t live around these people, you can’t have them in the next town over. Someone will always leverage them, or they will leverage you, or some way this shit will always fall apart. That’s why I get ragged on for being an unironic exterminationist, but until someone comes up with another solution that hasn’t historically failed, that’s where it stands.
The hosts then justify this discussion by saying that there is an ongoing race war, with the “blacks in South Africa” winning that war. Whites then need to step up and fight, competing with the opposing races for survival, wiping them out in the process.
“That’s how the conflict goes, one wins and one loses,” says co-host Seventh Son, also known as Sven.
The whole of colonialism and settlement and the whole of cultures colliding throughout history has been the history of everyone trying to wipe each other out. If it was two black tribes, if it was two Indian tribes, whoever it was. It was just that our people were better at it than everyone else. Well right now we’re losing, so its time to get back on the horse. The microcosm you can look at is Zimbabwe and South Africa.
“These people are animals. What do we have, 70 IQ for these people?” said Seventh Son, trying to keep up. Jayoh goes on, upping the ante on his insults.
From tribe to tribe you can even see the marginal level of being extra retorted. They live like animals. Like, I use this term “jungle people” and that’s what I mean because they are basically fucking monkeys. They are speaking languages that only have 3-400 words… So the next question people ask is what do we do in the meantime, what do we do right now. So RaHoWa is not going to kick off tomorrow, it’s a bummer but it happens to be the case.
He goes on tangential rants about how Zulus have “muck muck” languages and that they destroy all functions of “civilization.”
The Right Stuff, the vulgar core of the aggressive white supremacy of the internet Alt Right, recently put out an infographic that essentially said that the Alt Right means white people just reclaiming their identity, the right to be around their own people, and to advocate for their own interests. This has always been coded language used by white nationalists to allow their real motivating factors, guttural rage towards Jews and non-whites, to become more palatable. The voice of Jayoh, though acknowledged by Mike Enoch as a more radical side in their movement, is not out of the mainstream for the Alt Right and they are considered a legitimate intellectual strain within their milieu.
In an article by “Prez Jeff Davis” published at The Right Stuff in December of 2016 called “Genocide: The Inescapable Conclusion,” the idea that genocide is inevitable between ethnic groups is presented. “Genocide is just a word invented by a Jew to demonize the Nazis.”
Genocide is just a word invented by a Jew to demonize the Nazis. As a Dixian-American, I feel no particular link to the Nazis, swastikas, Roman salutes, etc. I’m really pretty ambivalent on those things. Whatever. Jean-Marie Le Pen hit the nail on the head when he called the Jew/Gypsy genocide a detail of history. Ethnic cleansing is a universal part of world history. Nations have always had intermittent wars, wherein they killed their enemies. So what? The common pejorative use of the word genocide as something unthinkable is ignorance gone to seed as it elevates losing for your people as somehow morally superior to winning for your people. Meanwhile Jews don’t seem to show any remorse for genociding the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, or the Amalekites. It is to our peril that we say “I respect nationalism for all peoples.” While we may sometimes be able to strike up treaties and mutually beneficial trade agreements, or the exchange of scholarly research, or a mutualistic white supremacy such as slavery, we must realize that in the big picture human races are indeed biological competitors, that human evolution is a giant tournament with immutable rules that we cannot cancel and in which elimination means racial extinction rather than just failure to win a trophy. There have always been and always will be eliminations. The only thing we have to decide is whether we want our race to continue to the next round at the expense of others or for other races to continue to the next round at the expense of our own. While it is possible some remnant populations may be retained for cheap labor or medical research, the pro-genocide stance is an inescapable conclusion on at least three different grounds.
This presents a break with the language of “Ethnopluralism” or “Ethnodifferentialism,” a conceptual rebranding of white nationalism that came by way of the French New Right and thinkers like Alain de Benoist. Conventionally, white nationalist and Alt Right language tries to argue for “nationalism for all people,” an idea that appropriates the arguments of post-colonialism to try and have their racism seem more palatable. This has always been coded language that does not change their underlying racial hatred, and as the Alt Right becomes more public, many segments of that movement are moving towards this openly genocidal argumentation.
Although deportations and international treaties may mitigate some of the issues listed above, none of them will be fully resolved without implementing the largest genocide the world has seen up to this point. It is my personal opinion that the biggest threat dindu nations pose to whites is through diseases and that peaceful deportations would do little to diminish that threat. I also think that with present trends, it is more likely that the next deadly pandemic will arise naturally from the 3rd world rather than engineered by the Islamic world, however the West’s penchant for affirmative action in education may just educate the right Muslim scientists for the job. Genocide necessarily involves either suppression of fertility or active or passive killing, or some combination of methods. Passive killing might include the refusal to supply aid such as food or medical care, preferring to just let Nature run her course, or refusal to come to the rescue when brown tribes genocide each other. The passive method would cause greater suffering and would not finish the job, as there will always be a remnant population to rebound in time. Clearly, an active genocide using white man methods would be more humane than passively letting Nature or savage tribes to do a much sloppier and less complete job. In the same way that animal lovers cannot adopt and care for every stray, but must accept that many be euthanized or sterilized, so it must be with the lower races of humanity. Extermination of the brown hordes in their homelands could give vast new territories to us. They are ours for the taking. Perhaps some readers wish they could have taken part in the US Homestead acts. Those days do not have to be gone forever. We could gain vast territories and give them away to settlers much like in the old days. We could even form new white countries, and settle much more territory than the entire continental US put together. In Africa, India, and Latin America 100 or even 1,000 |
facilities for the ITER fusion project in France. When the fusion output is interrupted for any reason, this power must be purchased from the regional grid at retail prices.
The second category of parasitic drain is the power needed to control the fusion plasma in magnetic confinement fusion systems (and to ignite fuel capsules in pulsed inertial confinement fusion systems). Magnetic confinement fusion plasmas require injection of significant power in atomic beams or electromagnetic energy to stabilize the fusion burn, while additional power is consumed by magnetic coils helping to control location and stability of the reacting plasma. The total electric power drain for this purpose amounts to at least 6 percent of the fusion power generated, and the electric power required to pump the blanket coolant is typically 2 percent of fusion power. The gross electric power output can be 40 percent of the fusion power, so the circulating power amounts to about 20 percent of the electric power output.
In inertial confinement fusion and hybrid inertial/magnetic confinement fusion reactors, after each fusion pulse, electric current must charge energy storage systems such as capacitor banks that power the laser or ion beams or imploding liners. The demands on circulating power are at least comparable with those for magnetic confinement fusion.
The power drains described above are derived from the reactor’s electrical power output, and determine lower bounds to reactor size. If the fusion power is 300 megawatts, the entire electric output of 120 MWe barely supplies on-site needs. As the fusion power is raised, the on-site consumption becomes an increasingly smaller proportion of the electric output, dropping to one-half when the fusion power is 830 megawatts. To have any chance of economic operation that must repay capital and operational costs, the fusion power must be raised to thousands of megawatts so that the total parasitic power drain is relatively small.
In a nutshell, below a certain size (about 1,000 MWe) parasitic power drain makes it uneconomic to run a fusion power plant.
The problems of parasitic power drain and fuel replenishment by themselves are significant. But fusion reactors have other serious problems that also afflict today’s fission reactors, including neutron radiation damage and radioactive waste, potential tritium release, the burden on coolant resources, outsized operating costs, and the increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Radiation damage and radioactive waste. To produce usable heat, the neutron streams carrying 80 percent of the energy from deuterium-tritium fusion must be decelerated and cooled by the reactor structure, its surrounding lithium-containing blanket, and the coolant. The neutron radiation damage in the solid vessel wall is expected to be worse than in fission reactors because of the higher neutron energies. Fusion neutrons knock atoms out of their usual lattice positions, causing swelling and fracturing of the structure. Also, neutron-induced reactions generate large amounts of interstitial helium and hydrogen, forming gas pockets that lead to additional swelling, embrittlement, and fatigue. These phenomena put the integrity of the reaction vessel in peril.
In reactors with deuterium-only fueling (which is much more difficult to ignite than a deuterium-tritium mix), the neutron reaction product has five times lower energy and the neutron streams are substantially less damaging to structures. But the deleterious effects will still be ruinous on a longer time scale.
The problem of neutron-degraded structures may be alleviated in fusion reactor concepts where the fusion fuel capsule is enclosed in a 1-meter thick liquid lithium sphere or cylinder. But the fuel assemblies themselves will be transformed into tons of radioactive waste to be removed annually from each reactor. Molten lithium also presents a fire and explosion hazard, introducing a drawback common to liquid-metal cooled fission reactors.
Bombardment by fusion neutrons knocks atoms out of their structural positions while making them radioactive and weakening the structure, which must be replaced periodically. This results in huge masses of highly radioactive material that must eventually be transported offsite for burial. Many non-structural components inside the reaction vessel and in the blanket will also become highly radioactive by neutron activation. While the radioactivity level per kilogram of waste would be much smaller than for fission-reactor wastes, the volume and mass of wastes would be many times larger. What’s more, some of the radiation damage and production of radioactive waste is incurred to no end, because a proportion of the fusion power is generated solely to offset the irreducible on-site power drains.
Materials scientists are attempting to develop low-activation structural alloys that would allow discarded reactor materials to qualify as low-level radioactive waste that could be disposed of by shallow land burial. Even if such alloys do become available on a commercial scale, very few municipalities or counties are likely to accept landfills for low-level radioactive waste. There are only one or two repositories for such waste in every nation, which means that radioactive waste from fusion reactors would have to be transported across the country at great expense and safeguarded from diversion.
To reduce the radiation exposure of plant workers, biological shielding is needed even when the reactor is not operating. In the intensely radioactive environment, remote handling equipment and robots will be required for all maintenance work on reactor components as well as for their replacement because of radiation damage, particle erosion or melting. These constraints will cause prolonged downtimes even for minor repairs.
Nuclear weapons proliferation. The open or clandestine production of plutonium 239 is possible in a fusion reactor simply by placing natural or depleted uranium oxide at any location where neutrons of any energy are flying about. The ocean of slowing-down neutrons that results from scattering of the streaming fusion neutrons on the reaction vessel permeates every nook and cranny of the reactor interior, including appendages to the reaction vessel. Slower neutrons will be readily soaked up by uranium 238, whose cross section for neutron absorption increases with decreasing neutron energy.
In view of the dubious prospects for tritium replenishment, fusion reactors may have to be powered by the two deuterium-deuterium reactions that have substantially the same probability, one of which produces neutrons and helium 3, while the other produces protons and tritium. Because tritium breeding is not required, all the fusion neutrons are available for any use—including the production of plutonium 239 from uranium 238.
It is extremely challenging to approach energy breakeven with deuterium-deuterium reactions because their total reactivity is 20 times smaller than that of deuterium-tritium, even at much higher temperatures. But a deuterium-fueled “test reactor” with 50 megawatts of heating power and producing only 5 megawatts of deuterium-deuterium fusion power could yield about 3 kilograms of plutonium 239 in one year by absorbing just 10 percent of the neutron output in uranium 238. Most of the tritium from the second deuterium-deuterium reaction could be recovered and burned and the deuterium-tritium neutrons will produce still more plutonium 239, for a total of perhaps 5 kilograms. In effect, the reactor transforms electrical input power into “free-agent” neutrons and tritium, so that a fusion reactor fueled with deuterium-only can be a singularly dangerous tool for nuclear proliferation.
A reactor fueled with deuterium-tritium or deuterium-only will have an inventory of many kilograms of tritium, providing opportunities for diversion for use in nuclear weapons. Just as for fission reactors, International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards would be needed to prevent plutonium production or tritium diversion.
Additional disadvantages shared with fission reactors. Tritium will be dispersed on the surfaces of the reaction vessel, particle injectors, pumping ducts, and other appendages. Corrosion in the heat exchange system, or a breach in the reactor vacuum ducts could result in the release of radioactive tritium into the atmosphere or local water resources. Tritium exchanges with hydrogen to produce tritiated water, which is biologically hazardous. Most fission reactors contain trivial amounts of tritium (less than 1 gram) compared with the kilograms in putative fusion reactors. But the release of even tiny amounts of radioactive tritium from fission reactors into groundwater causes public consternation.
Thwarting tritium permeation through certain classes of solids remains an unsolved problem. For some years, the National Nuclear Security Administration—a branch of the US Energy Department—has been producing tritium in at least one Tennessee Valley Administration-owned fission power reactor by absorbing neutrons in lithium-containing substitute control rods. There has been significant and apparently irreducible leakage of tritium from the rods into the reactor cooling water that’s released to the environment, to the extent that the annual tritium production has been drastically curtailed.
In addition, there are the problems of coolant demands and poor water efficiency. A fusion reactor is a thermal power plant that would place immense demands on water resources for the secondary cooling loop that generates steam as well as for removing heat from other reactor subsystems such as cryogenic refrigerators and pumps. Worse, the several hundred megawatts or more of thermal power that must be generated solely to satisfy the two classes of parasitic electric power drain places additional demand on water resources for cooling that is not faced by any other type of thermoelectric power plant. In fact, a fusion reactor would have the lowest water efficiency of any type of thermal power plant, whether fossil or nuclear. With drought conditions intensifying in sundry regions of the world, many countries could not physically sustain large fusion reactors.
Numerous alternative coolants for the primary heat-removal loop have been studied for both fission and fusion reactors, and one-meter thick liquid lithium walls may be essential for inertial confinement fusion systems to withstand the impulse loading. However, water has been used almost exclusively in commercial fission reactors for the last 60 years, including all of those presently under construction worldwide. This circumstance indicates that implementing any substitute for water coolant such as helium or liquid metal will be impractical in magnetic confinement fusion systems.
And all of the above means that any fusion reactor will face outsized operating costs.
Fusion reactor operation will require personnel whose expertise has previously been required only for work in fission plants—such as security experts for monitoring safeguard issues and specialty workers to dispose of radioactive waste. Additional skilled personnel will be required to operate a fusion reactor’s more complex subsystems including cryogenics, tritium processing, plasma heating equipment, and elaborate diagnostics. Fission reactors in the United States typically require at least 500 permanent employees over four weekly shifts, and fusion reactors will require closer to 1,000. In contrast, only a handful of people are required to operate hydroelectric plants, natural-gas burning plants, wind turbines, solar power plants, and other power sources.
Another intractable operating expense is the 75 to 100 megawatts of parasitic electric power consumed continuously by on-site supporting facilities that must be purchased from the regional grid when the fusion source is not operating.
Multiple recurring expenses include the replacement of radiation-damaged and plasma-eroded components in magnetic confinement fusion, and the fabrication of millions of fuel capsules for each inertial confinement fusion reactor annually. And any type of nuclear plant must allocate funding for end-of-life decommissioning as well as the periodic disposal of radioactive wastes.
It is inconceivable that the total operating costs of a fusion reactor will be less than that of a fission reactor, and therefore the capital cost of a viable fusion reactor must be close to zero (or heavily subsidized) in places where the operating costs alone of fission reactors are not competitive with the cost of electricity produced by non-nuclear power, and have resulted in the shutdown of nuclear power plants.
To sum up, fusion reactors face some unique problems: a lack of natural fuel supply (tritium), and large and irreducible electrical energy drains to offset. Because 80 percent of the energy in any reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium appears in the form of neutron streams, it is inescapable that such reactors share many of the drawbacks of fission reactors—including the production of large masses of radioactive waste and serious radiation damage to reactor components. These problems are endemic to any type of fusion reactor fueled with deuterium-tritium, so abandoning tokamaks for some other confinement concept can provide no relief.
If reactors can be made to operate using only deuterium fuel, then the tritium replenishment issue vanishes and neutron radiation damage is alleviated. But the other drawbacks remain—and reactors requiring only deuterium fueling will have greatly enhanced nuclear weapons proliferation potential.
These impediments—together with colossal capital outlay and several additional disadvantages shared with fission reactors—will make fusion reactors more demanding to construct and operate, or reach economic practicality, than any other type of electrical energy generator.
The harsh realities of fusion belie the claims of its proponents of “unlimited, clean, safe and cheap energy.” Terrestrial fusion energy is not the ideal energy source extolled by its boosters, but to the contrary: It’s something to be shunned.posted by mehacton
ADVERTISING:
Recently, substantial allegations of unsportsmanlike conduct against the players of Union Gaming participating in the Canada Cup tournament have come to light. We have carefully reviewed both the evidence developed by Canada Cup, the decision reached by Canada Cup based upon this evidence, and Union Gaming's response. Tournament Rule 6.4 explicitly allows joinDOTA's tournament staff to punish violations of the rules of other tournaments.
Therefore, we have decided that the evidence developed by Canada Cup is sufficient to prove that at least one Union Gaming player had a stream of the game in which he was participating open. While we cannot prove that the team has done this in a joinDOTA-sponsored league or tournament, we feel this violation of Canada Cup rules speaks against the sportsmanship of the Union Gaming players presently participating in the joinDOTA-MLG Pro League.
As a result, we have decided to disqualify Union Gaming from Season 1 of the joinDOTA MLG Pro League, meaning their record for the season will be 0-18, thus relegating them to the second division. Based upon its performance in Season 2, Union Gaming may therefore be able to again qualify for Division 1 in Season 3. To further protect against any unethical activities, we have further decided to prevent the five Union Gaming players from switching or acting as a stand-in for any another team playing in the joinDOTA-MLG Pro League before the end of Season 2. As for other tournaments hosted by joinDOTA, uG will be excluded for three months. Recently, substantial allegations of unsportsmanlike conduct against the players of Union Gaming participating in the Canada Cup tournament have come to light. We have carefully reviewed both the evidence developed by Canada Cup, the decision reached by Canada Cup based upon this evidence, and Union Gaming's response. Tournament Rule 6.4 explicitly allows joinDOTA's tournament staff to punish violations of the rules of other tournaments.Therefore, we have decided that the evidence developed by Canada Cupthat at least one Union Gaming player had a stream of the game in which he was participating open. While we cannot prove that the team has done this in a joinDOTA-sponsored league or tournament, we feel this violation of Canada Cup rules speaks against the sportsmanship of the Union Gaming players presently participating in the joinDOTA-MLG Pro League.As a result, we have decided toof the joinDOTA MLG Pro League, meaning their record for the season will be 0-18, thus relegating them to the second division. Based upon its performance in Season 2, Union Gaming may therefore be able to again qualify for Division 1 in Season 3. To further protect against any unethical activities, we have further decided to prevent the five Union Gaming players from switching or acting as a stand-in for any another team playing in the joinDOTA-MLG Pro League before the end of Season 2. As for other tournaments hosted by joinDOTA, uG will be excluded for three months.
Dennis " HolyMaster " Schumacher
The Background
Union Gaming
Team Fire
A stream is clearly visible on the screen of a Union Gaming player in the bottom-right corner
The Decision
Canada Cup's Evidence
Union Gaming's reply to Canada Cup decision
We are sending this declaration to all of the DOTA community (Organizers, players and spectators) and to all that can will read this document, we want to the say the following:
- We’d like to apologize to the Canada Cup organizers and to all the organizers of the tournament for breaking any rule, for our mistakes and for not reading the rules.
- We’d like to apologize to all of the Dota 2 community for our actions, we will try our hardest so situations like this won’t happen again.
It’s time to understand that we are and up and coming team and that we have to be professional and have to realize that our actions might have consequences ( good or bad ).
For less than a month we have a Gaming House with cameras to show that we are transparent in our actions, we have new PC’s so that we won’t have any problems in-game and we have the best team possible.
And if we lose the chance to play in tournament we lose everything.
We have always been humble, we are a “ghetto” team that is looking to become the best.
Union Gaming asks the Dota community and tournament organizers for a second chance to show how talented we are and improve our selves and make our fans happy.
We are sending this declaration to all of the DOTA community (Organizers, players and spectators) and to all that can will read this document, we want to the say the following:- We’d like to apologize to the Canada Cup organizers and to all the organizers of the tournament for breaking any rule, for our mistakes and for not reading the rules.- We’d like to apologize to all of the Dota 2 community for our actions, we will try our hardest so situations like this won’t happen again.It’s time to understand that we are and up and coming team and that we have to be professional and have to realize that our actions might have consequences ( good or bad ).For less than a month we have a Gaming House with cameras to show that we are transparent in our actions, we have new PC’s so that we won’t have any problems in-game and we have the best team possible.And if we lose the chance to play in tournament we lose everything.We have always been humble, we are a “ghetto” team that is looking to become the best.Union Gaming asks the Dota community and tournament organizers for a second chance to show how talented we are and improve our selves and make our fans happy.
Canada Cup hosted a semifinal match last night,versus. While Union Gaming won the series 2-1 and advanced, substantial allegations of streamsniping were raised shortly after the victory. Eagle-eyed viewers quickly spotted an irregularity - a Union Gaming player alt-tabbed out of the game to watch what seemed to be a Dota 2 stream.These revelations prompted Canada Cup to take a closer look, as it violates their rule 9.3 which states: "Players Prohibited from Watching Streams. Players playing within a game may not watch or listen to these streams at any time during their match." This then led to a decision announced today Canada Cup has decided that:1) The stream was of a Dota 2 game2) Specifically, the stream was the Spanish-language broadcast of the game3) This act was intentional4) As a result, Union Gaming is:- ejected from the present Canada Cup tournament- not permitted entry into Canada Cup Season 4- banned for six months from future Canada Cup tournamentsIn its Reddit post, Canada Cup offers two primary pieces of evidence in support of its decision:1) The following breakdown of the image seen by the Union Gaming player:2) A rather thorough breakdown of the times in which Union Gaming's player was watching the stream and favorable in-game outcomes in close temporal proximity to the alleged stream sniping. Please see Canada Cup's statement on reddit for a more thorough breakdown of this point.Union Gaming replied to the decision earlier today on their Facebook page, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence relied upon by Canada Cup in rendering their decision. Union Gaming states the following:1) The stream was not that of the game, but rather Arteezy's stream (Which Canada Cup claims is a lie 2) The Spanish-language stream of the game had the required five-minute delay3) The actions taken against them are the result of bias stemming from unethical and unsubstantiated distrust of the squad as it "mak(es) a breakthrough" into the competitive scene.}*UPDATE*Union Gaming have since issued another statement, appologizing for their actions:Translated by iamshockwave.Edit: The following was removed after further investigation "It is disgraceful that a fellow Peruvian would make such an allegation against a Peruvian squad"Subway officials have been targeting poor rider etiquette like it’s the plague, warning customers to stop hugging poles, blocking doors or hogging seats.
But after amNewYork was subjected to recent videos of outrageously inappropriate behavior on the subways, we felt the campaign does not go far enough.
We are talking about public urination on trains.
Yes, it has happened and is happening. Don't believe us? Check out this video (Warning: Video contains graphic bodily functions and will make you hate NYC), and the photo to the right, which has been cropped to save your eyes.
And someone needs to do something about it — because it is not only a public hazard, but also downright disgusting. So we are suggesting that, alongside the campaigns against pole hugging and pole dancing, the MTA tackle this malevolent behavior head-on.
So we’ve produced this colorful illustration that can be reinforced with these “Do” and “Don’t” scenarios. The MTA is welcome to use them. They’re free!
Do’s include:
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“Step off the train if you need some relief.”
“Keep your pee to yourself.”
“Relieve yourself before you board your train.”
No No’s include:
“It’s a subway, not a urinal.”
“Need to pee? Don’t do it on a train!”
“Poles are for your safety, not for taking care of nature’s business.”
We would also suggest that the MTA include a reminder that there are plenty of publicly accessible bathrooms at subway stations around the city.New Rochelle, NY, January 3, 2013--More than half of traumatic spinal cord injuries (SCI) in humans are cervical lesions, resulting in chronic loss of limb function. A better understanding of the link between the neurologic damage caused by SCI, spontaneous motor function recovery, and long-term motor deficits would lead to better therapeutic approaches, as discussed in an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www. liebertpub. com/ neu.
About 70% of human traumatic SCIs are incomplete, but the destruction of critical nerve fibers disrupts the signals normally sent between the brain and spinal cord beyond the site of the injury, resulting in locomotor impairment and paralysis. Elisa López-Dolado, Ana Lucas-Osma, and Jorge Collazos-Castro, Hospital Nacional de Parapléjicos Finca La Peraleda, Toledo, Spain, simulated a C6 partial SCI in adult rats and analyzed their recovery of motor function over four months.
The authors report extensive kinetic, anatomical, and electrophysiological data that demonstrate how the animals compensate for the permanent loss of some motor function. In the article "Dynamic Motor Compensations with Permanent, Focal Loss of Forelimb Force after Cervical Spinal Cord Injury," they propose that a premotoneuronal system in the cervical spine may be involved in the production and chronic nature of limb impairment, which could have important implications for the design of future treatment methods.
"This paper is important to the spinal cord injury field because it provides a comprehensive assessment of motor performance up to four months after cervical spinal cord injury," says Deputy Editor of Journal of Neurotrauma W. Dalton Dietrich, III, PhD, Scientific Director, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and Kinetic Concepts Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery, Professor of Neurological Surgery, Neurology and Cell Biology at University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, Lois Pope LIFE Center. "Force and kinematic data identifying progressive sensorimotor compensatory processes indicate new targets for therapeutic strategies to promote recovery and repair."
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About the Journal
Journal of Neurotrauma is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 24 times per year in print and online that focuses on the latest advances in the clinical and laboratory investigation of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. Emphasis is on the basic pathobiology of injury to the nervous system, and the papers and reviews evaluate preclinical and clinical trials targeted at improving the early management and long-term care and recovery of patients with traumatic brain injury. Journal of Neurotrauma is the Official Journal of the National Neurotrauma Society and the International Neurotrauma Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www. liebertpub. com/ neu.
About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management, Tissue Engineering, and Brain Connectivity. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website at http://www. liebertpub. com.
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 140 Huguenot St., New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215
Phone: (914) 740-2100 (800) M-LIEBERT Fax: (914) 740-2101
www.liebertpub.comWhen I was in college, I became addicted to a browser-based word game featuring cute animals. I couldn’t resist it. I didn’t fail any courses, but compulsive play took precedence over studying. At the time I was living with several male roommates, and one of them, a seasoned gamer, scoffed when he saw me playing with the pink elephant in pirate garb on the screen. “Can I find you something to play that’s, like … a real game?”
In most conversations you have with gamers, “real” is synonymous with “hardcore.” These games have big development budgets and require hours of player dedication to complete; they generally refer to first- and third-person shooters, RPGs, and MMOs. You’re a soldier in WWI, or you’re a soldier in WWII, or you’re a soldier in WWIII, and there are aliens. These games don’t have cute animals. Often, they don’t even have too many colors: in a hardcore game like the blockbuster first-person shooter Call of Duty, the color palette is so dominated by greys and browns that the brightest color you’ll see is the red of your enemy’s blood after you shoot him.
READY PLAYER TWO: WOMEN GAMERS AND DESIGNED IDENTITY By Shira Chess University of Minnesota Press, 240 pp., $27.00
Ready Player Two, the new book by media critic Shira Chess, is not interested in that kind of game. Instead, the book investigates how the game industry perceives and markets femininity, with particular attention to what she calls casual games—ones that are “cheap, easy to learn, and can be played for variable amounts of time”—like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Candy Crush Saga, or Diner Dash. From the outset, Chess is clear that while women do play hardcore games, they are “considered outliers, marginalized, pushing their way into a space not originally intended for them,” And those women who play hardcore games aren’t really Chess’ concern. Rather, Ready Player Two looks at games that are designed for women— and because video games are a male-dominated industry, games created for women are often designed by men. Games’ gender binary, Chess argues, is itself a product of design, “often at odds with actual players.”
Chess makes this dissonance the topic of Ready Player Two, interrogating the very concept of what she calls “Player Two,” the industry’s feminine ideal. Player Two is the hypothetical female consumer, imagined by men, whose tastes drive games’ design and marketing to women. She is a white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied, middle-class woman who yearns for domesticity and beautification, and whose leisure time exists in five-minute increments. The Player Two figure, Chess finds, makes a lot of assumptions about women’s lives and leisure: that women don’t have much time for games, for instance, and that the time we do have is spent on activities that mirror the emotional labor and domestic duties we’re presumed to perform in daily life.Pharma companies, hospitals and universities are already using our technology.
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What's In It For Me?Randy Shannon was born and raised in Liberty City — a 10 minute drive south (give or take) from the neighborhood where Florida Gators quarterback Treon Harris lived and went to high school.
Shannon knows what it’s like to live in that area of Miami. There’s poverty, drug abuse and random, senseless acts of violence.
Last week, the Harris family felt the brunt of that senseless violence when Treon’s cousin, Richard Hallman was shot and killed last Tuesday. Harris did not practice on Wednesday and returned home to be with his family as well as attend the funeral while the Gators held their first scrimmage on Saturday.
The outpouring of sympathy on social media was prevalent and the coaching staff, undoubtedly, sympathized with Harris but no coach on staff can empathize with Harris like Shannon.
Shannon’s father was murdered when he was just three years old. He lost two brothers and a sister to AIDS when he was young. Shannon knows the streets where Harris grew up, he knows where Hallman was the night he was murdered. He’s walked those streets, he’s lived that life.
“We talked a lot,” Shannon said of how he approached the situation with Harris. “Knowing Treon’s family, personally, knowing what he’s been through and you talk to them, communicate to them but you also don’t make him do anything but you try to make him feel more relief than just the anger.”
Of course there is anger. A 16-year old boy’s life was ended without rhyme now reason. Harris has every right to be angry, to demand answers as to why this happened, how did this happen?
Shannon wanted to change that. He’s been in the same situation as Harris is in now and his past experiences can make a horrible situation easier, more comforting and maybe even easier to digest and grow from.
“You get him to understand that certain things in life are tough but you’ve got to always keep moving forward because you have goals in life,” Shannon said. “He has goals in life that he’s shared with me and things that he shared with the coaching staff, Coach Nuss and things like that.”
Harris left his family over the weekend to return to Gainesville. He participated in practice for the first time in almost a week and looked sharp throwing the football. The loss of his cousin, his friend is still on his mind and likely will be for the rest of his life. Shannon and the rest of the coaching staff just want to guide Harris and show him that tragedy will happen in life but the way you respond to it and the way you move forward after it is the most important thing.
“We’re there for him. We’re his family, extended family up in Gainesville and he’s got his family back down in Miami,” said Shannon. “We’re happy that he’s back but like any process we’re going to get him through this process being away from home.”Ginetta have announced that the Centre for Advanced Performance Engineering (CAPE) at the University of Bolton are the world’s first Ginetta-Juno LMP3 customer, making them the only performance engineering centre currently working on the newly announced LMP3 car.
The University of Bolton leads in developing its students through an advanced performance engineering career experience in the classroom, in the workshop and on the race track. Bolton is one of the first Universities in the UK to have an in-house, fully-functioning race team on a university campus and is focused on the employability of its graduates.
Professor George Holmes, Vice-Chancellor and CEO of the University of Bolton said:
“Advanced Performance Engineering at Bolton is a unique offer from a UK university. Only our advanced performance engineering students have access to work on a Le Mans race team and as a result of our partnership with Ginetta they will now be working on the brand new LMP3 car. The UK has a shortage of engineers. Over 1.28m engineering professionals are required by 2020. Graduate engineers with strong experience can expect to enjoy competitive starting salaries, and an average lifetime wage premium in excess of £250k. The real-world experience provided by the University gives our students a competitive edge for a wide range of successful, advanced engineering careers, making them stand out from the crowd.”
Team RLR, who competed in the Le Mans Series with their own Lola LMP2 before preparing the Murphy Prototypes Oreca Nissan in its first year of competition, are based on-site at the University of Bolton.
With Ginetta already demonstrating a proven route through motorsport for aspiring racing drivers, this new relationship will provide unrivalled opportunities for undergraduate engineers to gain hands-on experience, vital in the competitive motorsport workplace.
Lawrence Tomlinson, Chairman, Ginetta said;
“Ginetta is delighted to be able to continually develop our motorsport career ladder. Bolton University is one of the UK’s leading centres for the study of advanced performance engineering and prepares students for the best careers in engineering – in particular motorsport engineering – thanks to their first-hand experience working on a car in a motorsport environment, which is what I look for as an employer.”
Ginetta will offer internships to University of Bolton students at their head office in Leeds to a number of CAPE’s students in areas such as design and aerodynamics, and the Ginetta-Juno LMP3 will make its debut as part of the European and Asian Le Mans Series in 2015.A portrait of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is seen printed on the new Syrian 2,000-pound banknote that went into circulation on Sunday, in this handout picture provided by SANA on July 2, 2017, Syria. SANA/Handout via REUTERS
BEIRUT (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad has appeared on the Syrian currency for the first time, his portrait printed on a new 2,000-pound banknote that went into circulation on Sunday.
Central bank governor Duraid Durgham said the 2,000-pound note was one of several new notes printed years ago but the decision to put it into circulation was delayed “due to the circumstances of the war and exchange rate fluctuations”.
The new note is equal to around $4 at current exchange rates. The currency has plunged in value since the conflict began in 2011, from 47 pounds to the dollar in 2010 to around 500 pounds to the dollar at present.
Citing wear and tear of the existing notes, Durgham said the time was right to put the new note into circulation, the state news agency SANA reported.
Previously, the highest denomination of Syrian banknote was 1,000 pounds. Assad’s father, the late President Hafez al-Assad who died in 2000, appeared on coins and on an older version of the 1,000 pound note, which is still in circulation.
Durgham said the new note was put into circulation “in Damascus and a number of the provinces”.
After years of war estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people, Assad appears militarily unassailable thanks in large part to direct military support from his allies Russia and Iran.next Image 1 of 2
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An American flag with President Obama's image in place of the stars flew over a Florida county's Democrat headquarters long enough to enrage local veterans who called the altered banner "a disgrace."
Lake County Democratic Party officials took down the flag, which flew just below a standard Old Glory on the flagpole outside headquarters in Tavares following complaints by local veterans. But merely taking it down wasn't enough for several local veterans, who said they fought for the flag Betsy Ross made famous, not one with a politician on it.
"It's absolutely disrespectful," Jim Bradford, a 71-year-old veteran who participated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion told FoxNews.com. "It's totally ridiculous. To put somebody's picture there, to me, it's a disgrace to do that."
Bradford, an organizer with the Veterans Memorial at Fountain Park in Leesburg, Fla., snapped photos of the flag and distributed them to fellow veterans and friends. By late afternoon, he and several other veterans delivered a copy of the federal flag code to Nancy Hurlbert, chairwoman of the Lake County Democratic Party.
"We read that to her, but she would not accept that," Bradford said. "The discussion finally got a little bit heated."
The flag, which had been flying for several months without complaint and is available online for $12.95, was later removed by Hurlbert.
Bradford said Hurlbert apologized for the incident, but did not offer any promises that it wouldn't fly again.
"What really upsets me is that the flag had apparently been flying for months and no one had done anything about it," Bradford said. "I've got no hard feelings toward [Hurlbert], but people will be driving by there to make sure it doesn't go up again."
Hurlbert said Tuesday's incident was the first time anyone had complained about the flag, which she received as a gift two months ago.
"It leads me to believe that it's not about the flag," she told FoxNews.com. "Certain elements cannot accept Barack Obama as president."
Hurlbert said she intends to contact an attorney regarding the matter and remained non-committal as to whether she'll fly the flag again.
"I won't say no and I won't say yes," she said. "We want to find out |
championships again after 1977."
Here we see the beginnings of the long-term depression that would rob us of him. In the long wake of his 2008 suicide, I wish I could focus only on the joy I get from his gloriously complex take on the sport he loved so much, but I can't. Wallace's work, for me, cannot be saved from his end.Here's a press release from URP announcing the company's acquisition of Bill Smith Custom Records.
Analogplanet did not receive it directly from URP because we probably remain on the company's "do not contact" list.
Why? Because we criticize poor URP pressings and praise good ones. The corporate culture under Chairman and CEO Mark Michaels clearly is thin-skinned. Usually in acquisitions of this sort, both parties make statements praising each other. However, I have to say Kevin Smith's below wins some sort of prize.
UNITED RECORD PRESSING, LLC ACQUIRES CALIFORNIA VINYL RECORD PRESSING OPERATION BILL SMITH CUSTOM RECORDS, INC.
NASHVILLE, TENN. (June 3, 2016) - United Record Pressing, LLC is proud to announce the acquisition of Bill Smith Custom Records, Inc. in El Segundo, CA.
Bill Smith Custom Records has been a leading regional manufacturer of vinyl records for independent record labels and artists on the U.S. West Coast since its founding in 1980. As a part of the transaction the assets of Bill Smith Custom Records will be relocated to United's operations in Nashville, TN.
"I have been privileged to work with many talented artists and wonderful people for almost four decades" said Kevin Smith, president of Bill Smith Custom Records. "I have reached a transition point in my career, and I am pleased to know that our assets and customers will be in the hands of such a passionate and dedicated organization as is United Record Pressing. Their commitment to quality and service resonates with what we have always strived to deliver."
By integrating Bill Smith Custom Records' presses into its 24-hour-per-day operation at United's new modern facility in Nashville, United expects to deliver significant, incremental capacity to a market that is in great need of additional output, while enhancing quality and service for all customers, noted Mark Michaels, Chairman and CEO of United Record Pressing.
"We are thrilled to welcome Bill Smith Custom Records into the United Record Pressing family," said Michaels. "Kevin and his team have done a terrific job serving their customers and caring for their equipment. We look forward to building upon that foundation."
United expects to have the presses running in Nashville by mid-July.
About United Record Pressing, LLC:
United Record Pressing was founded in 1949 in Nashville, TN, and is the largest manufacturer of vinyl records in North America. United is a trusted partner to both major and independent labels and artists around the world. United boasts a storied history of having pressed a variety of influential musical titles, including many of the Motown hits in the 1960's and 1970's. More information about United can be found at United Record Pressing's website.
About Bill Smith Custom Records:
Located in El Segundo, CA, Bill Smith Custom Records has been pressing vinyl records for the past 36 years. The pressing plant was founded by the father and son team of Bill and Kevin Smith.The Institute of Fiscal Studies report on Scotland’s economy released on Monday is a case of ‘bad data in’ equals ‘bad data out’ and bad conclusions.
When I worked at Proctor & Gamble, I spent months analysing sales data and designing optimum promotion pricing and evaluating promotions on brands like Pantene, Wash and Go, Head and Shoulders and Olay.
On one occasion, I spent days building a series of interconnected spreadsheets. I lacked time to source fresh data and instead used some previously compiled by a colleague. The results were so unusual that I knew something had gone wrong. I spent ages looking at my formula but could not find an error. My boss thought the problem might be with the data and when I told him where I had sourced it from he said – “there’s your problem”. He continued, “When you are doing analysis like this your conclusions are only as good as your data. You put bad data in and you get bad data out so your conclusions are flawed”.
That last little nugget has stayed with me for the rest of my career and it forms the basis of my criticism of the IFS report. The data used is poor, even worse perhaps it’s almost certainly politically motivated. Either way, the assumptions the IFS has used are so flawed their conclusions simply don’t add up.
The report appears to be a deliberate attempt to play down Scotland’s prospects as an independent country. But let’s deal first with the more sensible points made by the IFS.
The authors have to admit that independence could give Scotland an opportunity to create an “optimal tax system” which could lead to some taxes being lower than the UK as a whole. This is evident as devolved Scotland already has been able to choose different spending priorities than the UK as a whole and this would be enhanced post-independence, meaning decision-making would be more focused on local needs. They also admit at present North Sea oil revenues more than make up for higher public spending per head of population in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. We know that Scots have contributed more in tax per head of population than the UK average every year for the past thirty years.
So they didn’t get everything wrong. Just the parts they know will get them in the media, and here as it happens upon deeper analysis the report falls apart.
Bad data in
The IFS has used oil price projections from the UK Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) set up by Chancellor George Osborne and, although independently governed, like the IFS it is by no means neutral. It is staffed by London City trained and London centric top down, neo-classical, laissez-fare economists, many of them with similar heritage to the Treasury (HMT). The OBR and HMT have a reputation for forecasts that suit London’s short-term agenda, that over estimate UK growth to help the Westminster Government and, in particular, underestimate North Sea oil prices.
We learnt recently from former UK Chancellor Denis Healey as to why they did that in the 1970s – to undercut moves towards Scottish independence. Indeed, they have been criticised for a lack of neutrality in the past by none other than Alistair Darling, Leader of the No Campaign, who said recently: “Right from the start the Tories used the OBR not just as part of the government but as part of the Conservative Party.”.
The other problem with using OBR data is that it forecasts Scottish oil and gas industry revenues by using what’s known in statistical analysis as an outlier – a statistical anomaly which is markedly different from others in a sample. Normally when projecting economic data based on market prices you would not use an outlier but a mean figure or one more representative of the whole sample.
In plain language, if you use the lowest projection and ignore far higher ones it leaves you open to the accusation that you are deliberately painting a worse case scenario. But a worse case scenario can only be fairly compared with a best case scenario and ideally at least some of those in between. The IFS have made no attempt to consider higher oil prices in reaching their conclusions.
The OBR oil forecast is for an oil price of $98.00 per barrel but the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a well-respected multilateral financial organisation, takes data from the 28 most developed economies in the world in order to make projections and its predicting an oil price of $190 per barrel in 2020. See Financial TImes OECD predicts $190 per barrel and OECD Paper: The Price of Oil.
Hold on a second, so there is almost a $100 per barrel gap between outliers and instead of using a median figure the IFS used the lowest outlier. Plug in the OECD upper outlier figure or for that matter the UK Governments own Department of Environment and Climate Change’s forecast metric or the Scottish Governments conservative projections and you get to a clear picture of Scotland as an economic powerhouse.
Oil revenue isn’t just about price per barrel
The report also suggests that oil revenues will fall sharply but government revenue from oil production will be influenced not just by changes in price but also production and efficiency.
We have dealt with price above so let’s consider production. We are in the midst of a new oil boom. New investment and new discoveries are coming online including the Kraken field in the waters near Shetland, which is estimated to contain nearly 140m new barrels of oil and is mostly owned by Aberdeen-based EnQuest. The development of this new field is expected to create 20,000 new jobs.
West coast oil boom
We have also recently found out that the MOD has blocked oil exploration and extraction on Scotland’s Atlantic Coast as oil rigs would potentially interfere with nuclear submarine activities.
Declassified recently secret briefings dating back to 1983 show that Scottish Secretary of State George Younger said that confirmation of finding “exploitable quantities” of oil wouldn’t be available until drilling had taken place, adding that the “MoD are known to be very strongly opposed to any drilling taking place in the Firth of Clyde”.
So as well as losing the massive cost of nuclear weapons from its annual budget an independent Scotland could be looking at a West Coast oil bonanza. And a source close to the First Minister has promised an independent Scotland will lift restrictions on exploration around the Atlantic coast.
Efficiency in oil and gas production.
Sir Ian Wood has led the largest and most in-depth independent review of the North Sea oil and gas industry ever, and says “production could increase by four billion barrels over coming years if major changes to the operation of the oil and gas sector are made”. Such changes would put the country in a “stronger position” to extract nearly all of the estimated 24 billion barrels still remaining underneath the North Sea potentially leading to £200bn extra to for Scotland’s Economy.
Population predictions
The IFS report also claims “official population projections suggest that the average age of the Scottish population will increase more rapidly than for the UK as a whole, putting greater upward pressure on many areas of public spending”.
However, the official UK Government population forecasts are based on the continuation of London Centric policy decisions that continue to strip wealth and young talent from Scotland and the North of England.
I agree whole heartedly that this will continue if Scotland votes No but this is another area where the report’s conclusion fails to live up to any presumption of objectivity.
The IFS fails to acknowledge that a central economic rationale for Scottish independence is to bring back the economic levers from London by which we can grow our economy, not least by stopping the drain of talented young people to London, and make our economy more attractive to skilled younger workers (especially from the rest of the UK) who will settle in Scotland and have families.
We can grow our working age population more rapidly and defuse the population age time-bomb, including the associated pensions funding challenge faced by Scotland and most other Western countries. Indeed, these type of challenges are exactly why we need independence now.
In the meantime, despite these challenges, Scotland’s total welfare bill is proportionately less than the UK’s. To isolate benefits or pensions is to miss the broader picture of the welfare safety net. Indeed the IFS report does highlight the fact that Scotland is currently in a stronger economic position than the UK as a whole.
Voting for a No future on September 18th 2014 on the other hand, especially with the prospect of a UK in/out referendum on European Union membership, could see the increasingly xenophobic UKiP agenda pull Scotland out of Europe. This will slow the whole UK economy and, in particular, immigration to the extent we not only have an older population but a massive skills gap as well. Both of which are bad news for business and sustainable economic recovery.
Conclusion
The IFS report is nothing more than another of the plethora of institutionalised London centric economic spin-tank reports aimed at once again pulling the wool over the eyes of Scotland’s people so that they miss the true financial position and potential of their country. We really need to keep asking ourselves why London is so keen to keep Scotland under Westminster control if we are the basket case economy they claim we are.
The IFS has based Scottish oil revenue projections on a low outlier which should be considered limited by any competent and genuinely unbiased forecaster. It has also projected forward the low population growth and economic growth problems we have as part of the UK as though they are a reason to vote against independence, when in fact these themes are symptoms of the Westminster economic straight jacket that’s holding Scotland back.
The report completely refuses to consider the higher growth in inward investment enjoyed by newly independent countries or, most pertinently this week, the potential impact of an independent Scottish Government controlling economic levers of growth tailored to boosting Scotland’s economic performance even further. The Scottish Government will today publish a report on how the economic levers of independence might be used to boost the economy.
The IFS is at best patronising and ill-informed. At worst, its report is a poorly designed attempt at disparaging Scotland’s prospects for purely political purposes.
Join Business for Scotland – Read More
Further reading:
10 facts about Scotland’s oil and independence
9.3 is a smaller number than 9.9
Revealed: The ACCOUNTING TRICK that Hides Scotland’s Wealth
Defence in an independent Scotland: spend less, get moreRevellers gather near the corner of the Fraser Highway and Glover Road on July 1, 1917 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. Find the full story online at langleytimes.com. Vancouver Public Library Photo 7824
When the residents of Langley gathered to celebrate the 1st of July in 1917, the community was a far different place than it is today: heavily forested, sparsely populated, and lacking most of the infrastructure and amenities that we now take for granted.
There were no paved roads, street lights, or sidewalks.
In the absence of a municipally-provided supply, residents drew their water directly from wells or streams. Few homes enjoyed the luxury of either electricity or a telephone, while indoor plumbing was all but unknown. Even so, considerable progress had been made in “taming the wilderness” as families of predominantly European origin established homes, farms, and businesses in what they considered a new land.
As the 50th anniversary of Canadian Confederation approached, few in Langley gave much thought to the Native people who had been systematically displaced to make way for a predominantly European society. Instead, the Dominion Day holiday (as Canada Day was then known) would celebrate the nation’s largely British heritage and reaffirm the small community’s resolve to continue the struggle against a brutal enemy far across the Atlantic Ocean.
The First World War had been underway for almost three years and would go on for an additional year and a half.
By the time the conflict was over close to 400 Langley residents – about half the adult male population – would don a military uniform, the vast majority of them serving with the Canadian forces on the Western Front.
Dominion Day would prove to be a bittersweet affair as families pondered absent fathers, sons, and husbands, 15 of whom had already been killed in the shell-pocked fields of France and Flanders. Another two-dozen local men would suffer a similar fate before the war finally ground to a halt.
Despite the dark cloud hanging over the impending holiday, Langley residents were resolved, in the words of contemporary songwriter Ivor Novello, to find a silver lining.
The success of the Canadian Corps at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April had elicited considerable pride across the country and heightened Canadians’ growing sense of national identity.
The impending anniversary of Confederation thus offered the community an opportunity to come together, forget the suffering, and celebrate the nation’s successes..
Early in the war the community had rallied to provide financial assistance to families whose wage-earners were then serving overseas. In the months and years that followed, residents of Langley also provided the men in the trenches with box after box of socks, scarves, tobacco, and baking to supplement their modest military rations.
In the early summer of 1917 several of the community leaders who had led these efforts began to plan what may well have been the largest celebration that Langley had ever seen.
Chaired by Reeve (mayor) Robert Wark, an organizing committee comprising gentleman farmer Brian Harrison, school principal Philip Sheffield, businessman Edward Timms, and shopkeepers Henry Johnston and P.Y. Porter chose Langley Prairie (today’s City of Langley) as the site of the event. Insofar as there were no parks in Langley Prairie or anywhere else in the municipality, the committee elected to hold the celebrations on the village’s main street and on a number of adjacent vacant lots.
In 1917, a number of village centres (including Fort Langley, Milner, Murrayville, and Aldergrove) vied with Langley Prairie to become “downtown” Langley. Located at the intersection of the Yale Road (today’s Fraser Highway), the Langley Trunk Road (now Glover Road), the McLellan Road (now 56th Avenue), and the British Columbia Electric Railway, however, it was the emerging settlement of Langley Prairie that would become the heart of the municipality.
Part of Langley Prairie’s recent success was due in large measure to the efforts of entrepreneurs George Young Timms and his son Edward.
Not only had the two men and their extended family built a large complex of commercial greenhouses on what is today the site of the Langley Mall, they had also erected a series of mercantile buildings – including a theatre, office block, and hotel – on the north side of the Yale Road.
In time the Timms Market Garden (later re-named the Langley Greenhouses) would become one of the largest wholesale flower producers on the continent.
In addition to having a sound talent for business, the Timms family was also remarkably artistic. Edward Timms’s brother Philip was not only one of Vancouver’s most accomplished professional photographers; he was also his church’s choirmaster. Another brother, Arthur, operated a successful print shop, while a third, Vivian, was an aspiring painter. Others in the family had a talent for music. Edward’s father George was a competent cellist and horn player, while several female members of the family were capable singers and pianists.
With such a body of talent at his disposal, it was only natural for Edward Timms to be chosen to co-ordinate the entertainment for the Dominion Day celebrations.
Edward’s plans for the event were nothing if not ambitious, so much so that the organizing committee convinced the B.C. Electric Railway to lay on a special train to carry an anticipated crowd of visitors to Langley from Vancouver, then return them back to the city after midnight.
When the long-anticipated day finally dawned the weather was perfect: sunny but not too warm. Visitors arriving by train were greeted by the large wooden arch that residents had built across the road. Resembling a medieval English castle gate, the crenelated structure was heavily draped with cedar boughs and Union Jacks, while Canada’s own red ensign flew proudly from its centre.
The normally sleepy hamlet was abuzz with excitement. There was music in the air and the tents and marquees erected earlier in the morning had begun to attract an enthusiastic crowd.
The festival’s organizers had worked hard to ensure that there would be events for all ages and interests. A parade of colourful floats from schools throughout the municipality launched the day’s festivities. An energy-charged baseball game followed, the Langley Prairie team being pitted against one assembled by the railway company.
After a break for lunch (some of the refreshments having been prepared by a group of community women) a variety of carnival rides, games, and races ensured that the children in attendance would be kept well amused.
For some of the children, the donkey races may well have been the highlight of the day. A few lucky youngsters, like Reeve Wark’s daughters Dorothy and Mary, were able to take one home for the afternoon. The borrowed animal, however, had a mind of its own. As Mary recalled some 85 years later:
“There were booths of many kinds, a merry-go-round and pony and donkey rides. I loved any animal resembling a horse and my parents hired a donkey for us to take home for the afternoon. He was a kindly animal, both amiable and determined. He graciously accepted our pats, hugs, and carrots, but once my sister was aboard for the first ride, he set out for the friends he had left behind. No amount of coaxing or pulling on the reins could persuade him to stay on our farm! He plodded relentlessly on to join them.”
For the adults in attendance, the afternoon afforded a pony race, “Ford auto races,” foot races, a second baseball game, a tie-making contest, and a “tug-of-war tournament.” At a time when the entire municipality had less than a dozen cars to its name, the Ford auto races (presumably held on the village’s gravel-surfaced main street) must have been a riveting spectacle.
The band concert held that afternoon featured a strong Timms family presence as conductor Edward Timms led Langley’s own band and Vancouver’s Elks Lodge Band in a 90-minute program of waltzes, overtures, marches, and sentimental favourites. Renditions of tunes such as “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “On to Victory,” “Our Allies,” and “We’ll Never Let the Old Flag Fall” served as a poignant reminder of loved ones serving overseas while strengthening the community’s resolve to secure the final victory.
The festivities might easily have ended then, but there was still more to come. An evening vaudeville program began in the early evening. Held in the Timms family’s Langley Theatre, the concert opened with Edward’s wife Annie singing the patriotic anthem “Rule! Britannia,” one of the most popular tunes of the day. Concertinist Henry Fray, a musician brought in from Vancouver, followed with a rousing “Medley of Patriotic Airs,” while local farmer and realtor E.J. Wilson offered up an inimitable impression of Harry Lauder, the legendary Scottish singer and comedian.
The evening’s entertainment continued with songs from additional soloists, concluding with a production of the comedic farce, “The Hitching of Twitchet.” Members of the Timms family figured prominently in the cast; Madge, Philip, and Edward Timms joined members of the Skuce and Penzer families in taking to the stage, either as singers or actors, in the second half of the program.
The vaudeville show ended about 9:30 p.m., but the day was not yet over. As the theatre’s benches were moved to the side, men and women assembled for the evening’s finale, a “Grand Ball” organized by Philip Sheffield, principal of the Belmont Superior School, the Murrayville-based predecessor of the Langley High School. The dance was apparently an alcohol-free event, the community being in the midst of a public debate on prohibition, and Langley Prairie lacking either a liquor store or a licensed hotel.
When the clocks finally struck midnight, the exhausted but happy revellers said their good-byes and set out for home. In the days that followed reports in the press advised that Dominion Day in Langley had been celebrated “in royal style, with sports, speeches, music, and dancing.”
Over $1,000 had been raised “for patriotic purposes,” such as the Canadian Red Cross and the Canadian Patriotic Fund. The fact that the Langley Prairie baseball team had defeated two teams from New Westminster – the “Electrics” in the morning and the “Druggists” in the afternoon – had been the icing on the cake.
•••
Langley Times contributor Warren Sommer is the author of Canucks in Khaki: Langley, the Lower Mainland, and the Great War of 1914 to 1918 and guest curator of the exhibition Sacrifice and Sorrow: Langley and the Great War, currently on display at the Langley Centennial MuseumMikhail Gorbachev has warned that the world looks as if it is preparing for World War Three amid a new nuclear arms race.
The former Soviet leader ruled the Communist Party towards the end of the Cold War when Russia and the US were at constant threat of escalating tensions and engaging in a global war.
But Gorbachev and former US President Ronald Reagan engaged diplomatically and agreed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which saw a significant reduction in nuclear arsenals – much to the world's relief.
Now, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has called on presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to do the same, as new tensions arise.
"While state budgets are struggling to fund people's essential social needs, military spending is growing," Gorbachev wrote in an opinion piece for Time magazine.
"Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction; for submarines whose single salvo is capable of devastating half a continent; for missile defence systems that undermine strategic stability.
"Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defence doctrines more dangerous. Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war."
Gorbachev's warning comes as both Russia on one side and Nato and the US on the other have considerably increased the presence of troops on Russia's eastern border.
Earlier this month, the British Army tested its capability to move tanks through the Channel Tunnel in the prospect of a military escalation in Europe.
Scientists at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have also this week moved the Doomsday Clock thirty seconds closer to midnight – the closest it has come midnight since 1953 at the height of the Cold War.
Gorbachev called on the United Nation Security Council to adopt a resolution to prevent further escalations.
He said: "There is a view that the dialogue should focus on fighting terrorism. This is indeed an important, urgent task. But, as a core of a normal relationship and eventually partnership, it is not enough.
"The focus should once again be on preventing war, phasing out the arms race, and reducing weapons arsenals. The goal should be to agree, not just on nuclear weapons levels and ceilings, but also on missile defence and strategic stability.
"In modern world, wars must be outlawed, because none of the global problems we are facing can be resolved by war – not poverty, nor the environment, migration, population growth, or shortages of resources."Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 18, 2014, 1:11 PM GMT
Maryland health officials are investigating possible cases of food poisoning at what may be the worst-ever venue — a gathering of government and industry leaders attending a national Food Safety Summit.
At least four people called the Baltimore City Health Department this week to report that they developed diarrhea, nausea and other symptoms about 12 hours after eating a meal April 9 during the conference at the Baltimore Convention Center.
That was midway through the annual meeting held April 8 to 10 that attracted more than 1,500 food safety professionals, including staff from federal agencies as well as businesses such as McDonald’s, Tyson, Chiquita and ConAgra Foods.
“None of us are very happy when we hear these things,” said Peggy Daidakis, executive director of the center.
Word of the investigation spread Thursday when Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer, posted online a survey sent to him and other conference speakers and attendees asking them to report what they ate and how they felt after the meeting.
“We have not yet determined how people became ill, and we want your help to do so, even if you did not get sick,” wrote officials with the outbreak response unit for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
That posting actually disrupted the data collection for the investigation, which is still in its early stages, said Sara Luell, spokeswoman for the agency.
City health officials inspected the convention center and its food service provider, Centerplate, said Michael Schwartzberg, a spokesman. The company was issued a violation notice for condensation dripping from one of the two ice machines in the kitchen, which was immediately fixed, he added. The firm had no violations during the most recent previous inspection.
Several officials with the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attended the gathering and may have been affected.
"A couple of our folks indicated that they had experienced symptoms associated with food poisoning after the summit," said Juli Putnam, an FDA spokeswoman.
No particular food has been identified in connection with the illnesses and no one who attended other conferences during the same time frame reported being sick, Luell said.
Officials at the center are cooperating fully with investigators to determine the cause of the illnesses, Daidakis said.
“We’re not trying to hide anything,” she added. “If there is something, we’ll take the corrective measures.”Imagine a life where your No. 1 job responsibility is finding the Northern Lights.
One lucky person will get to do just this. And not only will they be on the constant hunt for one of the Earth's most beautiful light show, they'll be doing so for an ice hotel in Finland. If that's not a conversation starter, I don't know what is.
The Arctic Snow Hotel—which is actually made of snow and is located near the border of Sweden—is hiring a “Aurora Borealis monitor” for a three- to six-month stint. Aside from being able to speak English and stay up into the wee hours of the night, the monitor will also need to predict forecasted weather patterns for the best guess at where the Northern Lights will show up next.
Whoever gets the job will get to stay in a room at the Arctic Snow Hotel free of charge. That's right: The Northern Lights Monitor will get to stay in a room made of ice or a glass igloo while they spend their nights enjoying stunning Nordic landscape and hunting for what many consider a bucket list experience.
Applications are open until September 11.
Erika Owen is the Senior Audience Engagement Editor at Travel + Leisure. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @erikaraeowen.The Republic of Maryland (also known variously as the Independent State of Maryland, Maryland-in-Africa, and Maryland in Liberia) was a small country that existed from 1834 to 1857, when it was merged into what is now Liberia. The area was first settled in 1834 by freed African-American slaves and freeborn African Americans primarily from the U.S. state of Maryland, under the auspices of the Maryland State Colonization Society.[1][2]
The larger American Colonization Society was founded in 1816; it supported the settlement of thousands of free African Americans to their colony based in Monrovia in West Africa, along the coast. There were also initially separate settlements founded by state colonization societies of Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. In 1838, these African-American settlements were united into the Commonwealth of Liberia, which declared its independence from the American Colonization Society in July 26, 1847. The Maryland colony remained separate from Commonwealth of Liberia, as the colonization society wished to maintain its trade monopoly in the area. On February 2, 1841, Maryland-in-Africa became the Independent State of Maryland. Following an independence referendum in 1853, the state declared its independence on May 29, 1854 under the name Maryland in Liberia,[3] with its capital at Harper.
History [ edit ]
Map of Liberia in the 1830s, where the Republic of Maryland and other state-sponsored colonies are identified.
The American Colonization Society had been founded in 1816, in part due to alarms over the violence of the Haitian slave revolution and its aftermath, which resulted in independence for that country in 1804. Fears were raised about the effects of emancipation of slaves in the United States.
In this period, both slaveholders and abolitionists collaborated on the project to transport free blacks to Africa, though for different purposes. They suggested it was "repatriation" but by this point, most African Americans were native-born in the United States. Slaveholders believed that free blacks threatened the stability of slave societies. Abolitionists hoped to encourage slaveholders to free their slaves and also worried about the discrimination faced by free blacks in the United States. Those who supported relocation to West Africa believed the African-Americans might be able to form a better society for themselves there, away from white discrimination. While thousands of free blacks did relocate to the colony, most[citation needed] free African-Americans opposed this project, claiming their native-born status in the United States and wanting to mitigate inequities there.
Maryland had an increasing proportion of free blacks among its African-American population. During the first two decades after the Revolution, about 25% of blacks were freed, in part because slaveholders were inspired by the war's ideals. Practically, changing labor needs meant that fewer slaves were required.[4] By 1810 some 30% of northern Maryland's blacks were free, in what was a more urbanized region, but so were 20% of blacks in the southern part of the state.[4] In the next two decades the number of free blacks increased markedly in the northern part of the state, and many congregated to Baltimore, the state's and the South's largest city.[4] By 1830 Maryland had a total of 52,938 free blacks: 51.3% of blacks in northern Maryland were free, and the black population of Baltimore was 75% free. In southern Maryland, free blacks made up 24.7% of the black population.[4]
The Maryland State Colonization Society was originally a branch of the American Colonization Society, which had founded the colony of Liberia at Monrovia on January 7, 1822. The Maryland Society decided to establish a new settlement of its own to accommodate its emigrants and with the intention of controlling trade to the colony. In December 1831, the Maryland state legislature in the United States appropriated US$10,000 for 26 years to transport 10,000 free blacks and ex-slaves, and 400 Caribbean slaves from the United States and the Caribbean islands, respectively, to Africa. It founded the Maryland State Colonization Society for this purpose.[5]
Settlement of Cape Palmas [ edit ]
The first area in the Republic of Maryland to be settled by the Maryland Colonization Society was Cape Palmas, in 1834, somewhat south of the rest of the American colony.[1] The Cape is a small, rocky peninsula connected to the mainland by a sandy isthmus. Immediately to the west of the peninsula is the estuary of the Hoffman River. Approximately 21 km (15 mi) along the coast to the east, the Cavalla River empties into the sea, marking the border between Liberia and the Ivory Coast. It marks the western limit of the Gulf of Guinea, according to the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO).
Most of the settlers were freed African-American slaves and freeborn African Americans primarily from the state of Maryland.[6] The Colonization Society organizers thought they could establish new trading ties by relocating African Americans to West Africa. The colony was named Maryland In Africa (also known as Maryland in Liberia) on February 12, 1834.
John Brown Russwurm [ edit ]
John Brown Russwurm, first black governor of Maryland in Africa from 1836-1851.
In 1836 the colony appointed its first black governor, John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851), who served as governor for more than a dozen years until his death. Russwurm encouraged the immigration of African Americans to Maryland in Africa, and supported agriculture and trade.[7] He had begun his career working as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society between 1830 and 1834. He also worked as the editor of the Liberia Herald. He resigned this post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies.
In 1838, a number of other American settlements on the west coast of Africa united to form the Commonwealth of Liberia, which declared its independence in July 26, 1847.
The colony of Maryland in Liberia remained independent, as the Maryland State Colonization Society wished to maintain its trade monopoly in the area. On February 2, 1841, Maryland-in-Africa was granted statehood and became the State of Maryland. In 1847 the Maryland State Colonization Society published the Constitution and Laws of Maryland in Liberia, based on the United States Constitution.
Declaration of Independence, and annexation by Liberia [ edit ]
On May 29, 1854, the State of Maryland declared its independence, naming itself Maryland in Liberia,[3] with its capital at Harper. It was also known as the Republic of Maryland. It held the land along the coast between the Grand Cess and San Pedro rivers. It lasted three years as an independent state.
Soon afterward, local tribes including the Grebo and the Kru attacked the State of Maryland. Unable to maintain its own defense, Maryland appealed for help to Liberia, its more powerful neighbor. President Roberts sent military assistance, and an alliance of Marylanders and Liberian militia troops successfully repelled the local tribesmen. The Republic of Maryland recognized that it could not survive as an independent state, and following a referendum, Maryland was annexed by Liberia on April 6, 1857, becoming known as Maryland County.
Legacy [ edit ]
A statue of John Brown Russwurm was erected at his burial site at Harper, Cape Palmas, Liberia.[8]
Governors of Maryland-in-Africa [ edit ]
(Dates in italics indicate de facto continuation of office)
Term Incumbent February 12, 1834 – February 1836 James Hall, Governor, Republic of Maryland February 1836 – July 1, 1836 Oliver Holmes, Jr., Governor, Republic of Maryland July 1, 1836 – September 28, 1836 Three-member Committee, Republic of Maryland September 28, 1836 – February 2, 1841 John Brown Russwurm, Governor, Republic of Maryland February 2, 1841 – June 9, 1851 John Brown Russwurm, Governor, State of Maryland in Liberia June 9, 1851 – 1852 Samuel Ford McGill, acting Governor, State of Maryland in Liberia 1852 – May 29, 1854 Samuel Ford McGill, Governor, State of Maryland in Liberia May 29, 1854 – June 8, 1854 Samuel Ford McGill, Governor, The Independent State of Maryland in Liberia June 8, 1854 – April 1856 William A. Prout, Governor, The Independent State of Maryland in Liberia April 1856 – March 18, 1857 Boston Jenkins Drayton, Governor, The Independent State of Maryland in Liberia
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:Polish Electrical Engineers Call for Accelerated Plan to Bring Nuclear Energy to the Grid
(NucNet): Construction of nuclear power stations should be accelerated with the aim of generating up to 8,000 MW of energy from nuclear by 2030, the Association of Polish Electrical Engineers said. The association said nuclear would diversify Poland’s energy |
his home as a young man. He does mention twice a connection with Damascus, the capital of the Roman province of Syria (2 Corinthians 11:32; Galatians 1:17). Whether he was in Damacus, which is 150 miles northwest of Jerusalem, in pursuit of Jesus’ followers, or for other reasons, we have no sure way of knowing. The account in Acts of Paul’s conversion, repeated three times, that has Paul sent as an authorized delegate of the High Priest in Jerusalem to arrest Christians in Damascus, has so colored our assumptions about Paul that it is hard to focus on what we find in his letters.
Paul connection to Jerusalem, or the lack thereof, has much to do with the oft-discussed question of whether Paul would have ever seen or heard Jesus, or could he have been a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion in A.D. 30. Since he never mentions seeing Jesus in any of his letters, and one would expect that had he been an eyewitness to the events of that Passover week he surely would have drawn upon such a vivid experience, this argues against the idea that he was a Jerusalem resident at that time.
Likewise, Paul’s high placed connections to the Jewish priestly class in Jerusalem we can neither confirm nor deny. All he tells us is that he zealously persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it (Galatians 1:12). Some translations have used the English word “violently,” but this is misleading and serves to reinforce the account in Acts that Paul was delivering people over to execution. The Greek word Paul uses (huperbole) means “excessively” or zealously. We take Paul’s word that he identified himself as a Pharisee, but there is nothing in his letters to indicate the kind of prominent connections that the author of Acts gives him.
Outside the New Testament
Our earliest physical description of Paul comes from a late second-century Christian writing The Acts of Paul and Thecla. It is a wildly embellished and legendary account of Paul’s travels, his wondrously miraculous feats, and his formidable influence in persuading others to believe in Christ. The story centers on the beautiful and wealthy virgin Thecla, a girl so thoroughly mesmerized by Paul’s preaching that she broke off her engagement to follow Paul and experienced many adventures. As Paul is first introduced one of his disciples sees him coming down the road:
And he saw Paul coming, a man small of stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness; for now he appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel.[xvi]
We have no reason to believe this account is based on any historical recollection since the Acts of Paul as a whole shows no trace of earlier sources or historical reference points. The somewhat unflattering portrait most likely stemmed from allusions in Paul’s letters to his “bodily presence” being unimpressive and the subject of scorn, whereas his followers received him as an angel (2 Corinthians 10:10; Galatians 4:13-14).
It might come as a surprise, but outside our New Testament records we have very little additional historical information about Paul other than the valuable tradition that Jerome preserves for us that he was born in the Galilee. The early Christian writers of the second century (usually referred to as the “Apostolic Fathers”) mention his name less than a dozen times, holding him up as an example of heroic faith, but nothing of historical interest is related by any of them. For example, Ignatius, the early second century bishop of Antioch writes:
For neither I nor anyone like me can keep pace with the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who, when he was among you in the presence of the men of that time, accurately and reliably taught the word concerning the truth.[xvii]
Some of the second and third century Christian writers know the tradition that both Peter and Paul ended up in Rome and were martyred during the reign of the emperor Nero—Paul was beheaded and Peter was crucified.[xviii] The apocryphal Acts of Peter, an extravagantly legendary account dating to the third or fourth century A.D., explains that Peter insisted on being crucified upside-down so as to show his unworthiness to die in the same manner as Jesus.[xix]
Ironically it seems that we moderns, using our tools of critical historical research, are in a better position than the Christians of the second and third centuries to recover a more authentic Paul.
Notes
is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada and Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.” Tabor’s latest book is Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity. You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books and projects at jamestabor.com
[i] The Quest was given both its history and its name by Albert Schweiter, whose groundbreaking book, published in 1906 with the nondescript German title, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (from Reimarus to Wrede), was given the more provocative title in English, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by William Montgomery (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1910).
[ii] The beginning of the modern Jesus Quest is usually dated to around 1835 with the publication of David Strauss’s Life of Jesus. The full German title of Strauss’s work, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen: 1835-1836) was published in English as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (3 vols., London, 1846), translated by George Eliot, the penname of British novelist Mary Ann Evans. Baur’s major work, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre (Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Letters and His Teaching) was published in1845. Strauss was a student of Baur at the University of Tübingen.
[iii] Most recently, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (New York: HarperOne, 2009). A more conservative, but nonetheless critical treatment relying more on the letters of Paul than the book of Acts is that of Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, Paul: A Critical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
[iv] An English copy of the New Testament, Revised Standard Version, with text only and no notes or references, runs 284 pages total. The thirteen letters attributed to Paul, plus the book of Acts, add up to 109 pages of the total—just over one-third.
[v] See Bart Ehrman’s summary analysis “In the Wake of the Apostle: The Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles,” in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 272-394.
[vi] “Chester Beatty Papyri” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 901-903.
[vii] Not only was the composition of such speeches common in Greek literary histories, it was expected. Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian war, says that he composed speeches according to “what was called for in each situation” ( 1. 22. 2). Josephus, a contemporary of the author of Acts, is a prime example; see Henry Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (New York: Macmillan Company, 1927), and Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 53-112.
[viii] It is possible that Paul was once married since he says he advanced within Judaism beyond his peers. Jewish men his age would normally marry; not to marry would be considered abnormal. In his letters he speaks of the “loss of all things” and also refers to a situation where an “unbelieving wife” might leave one who has joined his movement, so it is possible he is alluding to his own personal situation since he says the brother or sister, so abandoned, should not feel obligated to heed Jesus’ teaching that there can be no divorce for any cause (Philippians 3:7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-16).
[ix] The letter of James and Jude might be exceptions though many scholars question if these two brothers of Jesus were part of the Twelve and others questions the authenticity of the letters themselves. Few scholars consider the letters of 1 and 2 Peter as written by Peter. 1 Peter, in particular, is surprisingly “Pauline” in tone and content and fits nothing we know of Peter based on more reliable sources—including Paul’s genuine letters. The letters of John are not from John the fisherman, one of the Twelve, but from a later John, sometimes referred to as “John the Elder,” who lived in Asia Minor (see Eusebius, Church History 3.39.4-7).
[x] Pirke Avot 2. 3.
[xi] Jerome, De Virus Illustribus (PL 23, 646).
[xii] See Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, Paul: A Critical Life, pp. 1-5. The translation “ambassador,” found in the Revised Standard Version, is conjectural, with no manuscript support. It assumes the misspelling of the Greek word “ambassador” (presbeutes), as “elder” (presbytes), but “elder” is the reading in all our manuscripts. The New Revised Standard Version and New Jerusalem Bible correctly have “elder.”
[xiii] Josephus, Jewish War 7. 263-265. Josephus mentions John of Gischala often in his history of the revolt.
[xiv] See Digest 48. 6-7, a compendium of Roman law in The Digest of Justinian, ed. T. Mommsen, translated by A. Watson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985).
[xv] A comparison of Mark 13, sometimes called the “Synoptic Apocalypse,” or the “Little Apocalypse,” with Luke 21, which is the author’s rewriting of Mark, one sees how the “end of the age” is indefinitely extended and no longer tied to the Jewish-Roman war of A.D. 66-74.
[xvi] Translation by Wilhelm Schneemelcher in Edgar Hennecke’s New Testament Apocrypha, edited by William Schneemelcher, translated by R. McL. Wilson, volume 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), pp. 353.
[xvii] Ignatius, Philippians 3:2.
[xviii] See Eusebius, Church History 2. 14. 5-6 and 3.1.2, who says he is relying on Origen, an early third century Christian theologian.
[xix] An expanded legendary account is found in the apocryphal Acts of Peter 37-38.
Permalink: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/the-quest-for-the-historical-paul/We've yet to see concrete proof that Apple's portable media players will ship with a camera, but the new iPhone OS 4.0 beta shows Cupertino's at least considering the notion for the iPod touch and even the iPad. It seems AT&T tethering wasn't the only thing hidden in iPhone OS 4.0 beta 4 -- 9to5Mac found a variety of telltale references to an a flash when pouring through the update's source code. Does that mean that the iDevices will actually get cameras, let alone supporting light fixtures? It's too early to tell... but we did spot an LED flash on that early iPhone HD, and a recent Vietnamese leak proves that Apple at least prototyped an iPod touch with a camera -- though no flash, sadly -- as well. Is Apple simply updating their error messages, or is there something to this? You make the call.PDGA Pro Worlds Preview: Ultiworld Disc Golf Staff Roundtable
We break down all the MPO contenders heading into this week's showdown in Kansas
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: The PDGA Professional Disc Golf World Championships kick off tomorrow in Emporia, Kansas, with the cream of the disc golf crop descending on the Midwest to decide who will walk away with the sport’s most prestigious honor. It’s a marathon event comprised of five full rounds and a Final 9, with Open players tackling the 8,035-foot, Par 61 Jones East Park and the 9,712-foot, Par 63 Emporia Country Club over the course of five days.
While there are obvious favorites, these courses – which also host the Glass Blown Open, now an annual staple on the PDGA National Tour – have lent themselves to some surprises. To wit: Since graduating to A-Tier status in 2008, there has only been one repeat champion at the GBO, with Will Schusterick taking back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013. That makes eight different champions in nine years.
Worlds, though, isn’t an A-Tier. It’s a showcase of the sport’s finest, which is why Paul McBeth enters the event as the defending world champion four years running. While he’s experienced an inconsistent season, by his standards, he’s displayed an ability to turn it on late in tournaments, which bodes well for his prospects in a longer event. Ricky Wysocki, meanwhile, has come in second two years in a row at Worlds and has put together his strongest season to date.
But what about the rest of the field? Glad you asked. The Ultiworld Disc Golf staff – editor Steve Hill, staff writer Alex Colucci, and metrics and research analyst John Klimp – collaborated to rank the players coming into the event and break down the field into three tiers: Lead Card Contenders, those players we expect to be within striking distance of the podium; Chase Card Contenders, who we expect to challenge the leaders; and Best of the Rest. Each writer will give his take, as well as where he agrees or disagrees with the rest in our Round Table Preview. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Lead Card Contenders
Ricky Wysocki Consensus Ranking: 1
Ultiworld Disc Golf Editor Steve Hill (SH): If Latitude 64 were looking for a name for a new Ricky Wysocki signature disc, they couldn’t do much better than Momentum. That capacity to keep things rolling has been the 23-year-old’s calling card this season – see his current four-tournament winning streak, for example – but he’s also developed the uncanny ability to tip it back in his favor when it seems like it might shift elsewhere. That knack for stemming the tide after a bogey, or recovering soundly from an out-of-bounds shot, has led him to Emporia, where he finished second at this year’s Glass Blown Open. It may not be fair, but Worlds is Wysocki’s to lose. He’s our unanimous favorite to take home the title.
Staff Writer Alex Colucci (AC): Wysocki has been the best disc golfer this season; I don’t think anyone can produce a cogent argument otherwise. He’s won plenty of big tournaments in every way imaginable: running away from the start, coming back from a rough start, and executing for the win in close contests, including playoffs. Plus, he’s made so many big-time putts at the end, I’ve lost count. He’s only lost five of the fifteen tournaments he’s entered, finishing a close second in four of those five. Competing in fewer total events and concentrating on the bigger tournaments – with Worlds having the utmost priority – has been one of the elements Wysocki has credited for his success this season. The Emporia courses seem to play to his strengths: He’s got the distance and versatile upshot abilities to have success and the hottest putting stroke around at the moment. All the evidence points to Wysocki finally not finishing in second at the World Championships.
Metrics and Research Analyst John Klimp (JK): 2016 has been Ricky’s year. He’s leading the tour in birdie percentage as well as SVEP – strokes versus elite players, a measure of how player’s scores compare to other top players rather than par. He’s neck and neck statistically with Paul McBeth’s performance in 2015, and has eclipsed him in Bogey Recovery and Bogey Recovery Plus, a preliminary measure of mental game.
Ricky isn’t coasting into worlds by any means. The chart below shows his Round SVEP throughout 2016, and after a slight decline he is charging into Emporia. Any SVEP over 1 is incredible, so his drop from 3 to 1.5 isn’t catastrophic by any measure. It means he was still beating players with 1010 ratings or higher by 1.5 strokes per 18 holes.
Ricky is the only player on this list who has never played a round rated below 1000 in Worlds. Like many players, Ricky has suffered from falling off after his third round, but in 2014 and 2015 Ricky didn’t fall victim to marathon golf. Individual rankings: Steve 1, Alex 1, John 1
Paul McBeth Consensus Ranking: 2
AC: It’s safe to say Paul McBeth hasn’t been his usual self in 2016. Injuries have seemingly slowed him down, yet he still owns the highest rating of any disc golfer and – besides a 12th place finish at the Vibram Open – hasn’t finished worse than third at any NT. One of the more uncharacteristic aspects of his play this season is his relative inaccuracy off the tee. At the Masters Cup he had difficulty playing the wind during the final round at the golf course, and at the European Masters he struggled with accuracy from the tee and from the fairway on longer par 4s and 5s. The GBO found him going out of bounds at a number of critical points during the final round, allowing Cam Todd to pass him for the win and Wysocki to catch him for a tie for second place.
Additionally, in the past few seasons he’s been one of the best putters on tour, but that has also been hit or miss all season. It’s strange to see him almost beat himself by allowing other players time to capitalize on his mistakes. This is in contrast to his few defeats last season, where he lost seemingly because he just got outplayed by a hot golfer that weekend (e.g. Michael Johansen at the Hall of Fame Classic, Simon Lizotte at the Ledgestone Open, or Jeremy Koling keeping it in bounds for all four rounds at The Memorial and coming out ahead in a playoff). He definitely still has a chance to win this year; he hasn’t won the last four in a row on flukes. If he does win it’ll be a close one, as he hasn’t run away with a big tournament yet this year.
SH: Can we get the PDGA to make world championship rings? This preview could be a lot more entertaining if we got to talk about McBeth aiming for a handful, or going for a high-five, or some other numerically-based pun. In all seriousness, would anyone be surprised if McBeth turned back into the cold-blooded killer of 2015? For all the talk of him “struggling” this season – and I’ve been guilty of it, no doubt – he’s rarely been out of the mix in the tournaments he has lost, and at the more open-style affairs he has been a staple on the lead card. This strikes me as one of those situations where all of the giraffes are drinking at the watering hole because they think the lion is sleeping, but really he’s behind them licking his chops.
JK: In both the Disc Golf World Tour and Pro Tour, McBeth has an inside the circle putting percentage of 92%, which is squarely in the middle of the top players on tour. That’s still excellent, but not the McBeth we have been expecting. Even with his current putting stroke, McBeth is trailing in SVEP only to Ricky on the year. Between May and June, his SVEP dipped below 0 (meaning he was scoring worse than the average 1010 player) but has been charging back, a sign that his health is improving and his chances at becoming McBea5t are increasing.
If winning a world title is about playing the rounds of your life, McBeth is certainly capable. In his Worlds appearances he has averaged playing eight points above his rating, which is especially impressive as the highest rated player in the world. In 2010, McBeth peaked during his fourth round, and decreased in rating every subsequent round. Two years later, he had learned the lessons of marathon golf and actually began to play better after the fifth round en route to his first championship. He also did not play a single round below his rating in 2012. Individual rankings: Steve 2, Alex 2, John 2
Nate Doss Consensus Ranking: 3
AC: Oh man, look at that: a consensus Top 3 from the Ultiworld writers. Go us! You know that means, right? This is what’s going to happen now. It is writ. These three shouldn’t even bother playing the first four rounds, just put them right into the Final 9 and let’s watch them duke it out for the win there. Anyway, there shouldn’t be any question that Nate Doss can hang with the best in the world, because he still is one of the best himself. He’s only finished outside the Top 10 at Worlds three times since 2005, and, oh yeah, he’s won this three times and finished in the Top 3 an additional three times in that span as well. Sometimes in the past two or three seasons you could question the consistency of his putting, but he just got done chilling in Vacationland brewing beer for the USWDGC; I doubt there’s anything clouding his mind and his putt will be on point. I expect to see his neon green Z Predator staying inside the tall grass all week.
SH: It’s interesting that you brought up the brewing, Alex, because when I saw that he was skipping out on a couple days of practice, I was shocked. Then I remembered, “Oh yeah, this is Nate Doss, consummate pro.” If Doss is comfortable with taking a couple days off of Worlds prep to pursue other endeavors, who am I to question it? Plus, his 2016 season – one win, two 2nds, a 3rd, and only one finish outside the Top 10 – point to his consistency. He has the veteran savvy required for the marathon of Worlds, and wouldn’t it be beautiful for him to take a title and be able to ride off into the sunset as a world champion?
JK: Nate Doss has been playing better in 2016. Most importantly, he has replaced some bogeys in his game with birdies, resulting in a two stroke swing. The percentages may seem small, but over a four round tournament this is four fewer strokes for the three-time champ. He’s played incredibly consistently in previous Worlds, with the third smallest variability in round ratings. Individual rankings: Steve 3, Alex 3, John 3
Nate Sexton Consensus Ranking: 4
AC: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Nate Sexton the golfer? Many of you probably thought “forehand,” or “putter flips.” But the quality that perhaps stands out less than anything we can readily see and hear – but carries as much, or more, significance as anything else – is Nate’s propensity for consistent, thoughtful golf. There’s perhaps nobody better at working a course and letting the birdies come to them in today’s game. You’ll rarely see him force a shot, instead preferring to take what is given and move on, just waiting for the next opportunity as he puts himself in the best position he can. Watching Nate play at his best is like watching something be deconstructed into its constituent parts and reconstituted into a new form you couldn’t have previously imagined. Just take that first round at The Majestic, for example: Hole after hole, shot after shot, he put himself in the position that gives himself the best chance of success, based on his understanding of his abilities. He plays within himself. He pushed for the win and nearly got it at The Memorial, did the same at the Nick Hyde Memorial, and did it once more just two weeks ago at The Majestic. He’s had solid finishes at the GBO for the past two years, and his backhand drive off the tee is looking better than ever. There’s no question in my mind he’ll be in the hunt for the Final 9.
SH: Plus, does anyone outside of McBeth come into Worlds with more to prove than Sexton after his heartbreaking finish at The Majestic? He’s got to have a Dory-like memory (Dad jokes, anyone?) to leave that in Minnesota and not carry it with him to the putting greens of Kansas. While we talk about his consistency, that Majestic performance – outside of the final placing – saw more outliers from Sexton than any other event in recent memory, with the missed putt eschewing his propensity for clutch play and his Round 2 heckling episode running counter to the notion that he rarely goes on tilt. If he’s back in form mentally at Worlds, he’s easily a lead card contender.
JK: If we gave a “Most Improved” award to players who were already among the best in the world, it would go to Nate Sexton. Just like Doss, he has dropped his bogey percentage and replaced it with more birdies. This change corresponds to five fewer strokes over four round tournaments. Sexton’s been heating up with good showings in both Pro Tour events he’s played in and will tee off on Tuesday trailing only Wysocki in SVEP for July. Individual rankings: Steve 4, Alex 4, John 5
Eagle McMahon Consensus Ranking: 5
AC: I wasn’t quite as high on Eagle as my fellow writers were. Maybe I was considering his relative lack of experience compared to the field? He certainly has played well in Emporia before, placing 4th and 9th the past two years at the GBO. His first season of NT and Major experience in 2015 was really up and down, with a high finish of 9th and a low finish of 66th, and seemingly everywhere in between for the rest. 2016 has been considerably better, as he’s five-for-five in finishing in the Top 10 at four NTs and one Major. He’s got the game for the wide open spaces of Emporia, but can he put it all together when the pressure is at it’s highest? His 10th place finish at last year’s Worlds shows he’s capable, but can he really push for a Top 5 this year? I’ll wait and see.
SH: I’m willing to roll the dice on McMahon, but I understand your hesitation. Early in the season I would have said he was a boom-or-bust prospect, the kind of player who could just as easily finish in 2nd place at Worlds as he could 25th. But his recent play in Europe – on arguably the largest stage he’s experienced at the European Masters – shows me the big moments aren’t too big for him yet. He’s got distance and confidence. Now it’ll be a matter of endurance and mental fortitude over the slog of a week of Midwestern heat.
JK: Eagle rightly gets a great deal of credit for his driving distance, but he was also ranked 9th for fairways hits and 1st in inside the circle putting during The Majestic. That will be a scary combination for anyone on cards with the young gun. In his first Worlds last year he played 17 points above his rating to a 10th place finish. He may have been a bit shaken by the lead card last year, but he’s been in the Top 10 of every NT and Major this year and has had plenty of time to get used to the pressure. Individual rankings: Steve 6, Alex 8, John 4
Paul Ulibarri Consensus Ranking: 6
SH: Paul Ulibarri has been a grinder all season. He’s played 31 tournaments, winning a third of them, and has only finished outside the Top 10 twice. All season. And while he hasn’t chalked up an NT or Major victory this year, he has turned in some absolutely scorching rounds at big events and has dominated chase card action throughout. With an increased focus on the mental game this season, he seems poised for a leap at Worlds. Plus, he performs well in Emporia, with 9th, 6th, 4th, and 3rd place GBO finishes to his name. If he gets his putter dialed in, he’ll make some noise.
JK: Anecdotally it seems like Paul Ulibarri has been shooting a hot round every other weekend over the last few months. It seems that Uli sometimes falls out of the conversation when we talk about battles between McBeth and Wysocki, but he’s second in points and third in cash on tour this year. He’s also no stranger to Worlds with two Final 9s under his belt, and he was the 2006 amateur world champion. His mental game will be essential in such a long tournament, as we’ve seen that he is the least shaken by bogeys of all players on the tour. Paul has cut his bogey percentage in half since 2015, and we may very well see the FPO and MPO trophies pull out of Emporia in the same car.
AC: Uli shows up for Majors, that’s for sure. He hasn’t finished outside the Top 15 in one since 2013. He’s had success at Worlds, too, with finishes of 4th and 7th in the past two seasons, in addition to a 2nd place finish back in 2010. What big tournament hasn’t he played in since 2007? Like Steve said, if his putting is on he’ll be right up there pushing for a Top 5. Individual rankings: Steve 7, Alex 6, John 6
Chase Card Contenders
Nikko Locastro Consensus Ranking: 7
JK: The third-highest rated player in the world is a threat to take down any tournament he enters. Nikko Locastro has six Top 10 finishes at Worlds, but if he wants to push for the Final 9 and a possible win he’ll need to focus on not peaking too soon, an issue that has plagued him before. In 2013, when he maintained stellar play throughout the tournament, he took a 3rd place finish.
AC: You could characterize 2016 as a bit of a down year for Nikko as far as finishes at NTs and Majors are concerned. But he’s a tough competitor and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him near the top at some point during the tournament. Last year he was only one stroke away from the Final 9, and his past record at Worlds is nothing to sneer at. He’s got the long game to play with the best, but will the putting be there? That’s what might hold him back from a Top 5 finish in the end.
SH: Yeah, I honestly don’t know what to make of Nikko this season. Maybe it’s learning the mixed bag he’s throwing, or perhaps it’s the competition around him being more consistent than in years past. Whatever it is, I can only describe his 2016 as manic, as his placings seems to fluctuate wildly from one big event to the next. That said, he’s due for a ride on the higher side of the spectrum, as his last two events saw 14th and 29th place finishes. Individual rankings: Steve 10, Alex 5, John 7
Bradley Williams Consensus Ranking: 8
AC: Some might say Bradley Williams has come out of nowhere this year. But upon closer inspection – to those not in the know – he’s been playing great golf for some time now. Sure, a lot of that has been in B- and C-Tiers in Texas, where he’s been dominant, but this season that knowledge of winning as translated to the victories at the NT Vibram Open and the high profile A-Tier Delaware Disc Golf Challenge. Plus, his last two finishes at Worlds were 7th and 8th. He hasn’t been rated below 1013 since August 2010, which by my count is six years ago. In the 12 World Championship rounds he’s played, none have been lower than 1022 rated, and when he finished 7th in Portland in 2014 he averaged 1040 golf through all seven rounds. That’s consistent, and there’s no reason to believe that won’t continue this year. Perhaps the added confidence of an NT win could see Williams challenge for a Top 5, and a Top 10 seems like as safe a bet as any.
SH: I think Williams might take offense at your calling Texas “nowhere.” All jokes aside, I would have been happy to see Williams in the lead card tier here, because I think he’s the most realistic threat in this second level of players to be able to challenge McBeth, Wysocki, and the like. There’s another point to consider with Williams, though: He didn’t play the GBO this year, so he has less experience there in recent memory than most of the field. While some might see that as a disadvantage, I think there is something to be said for coming in with a clean slate this season.
JK: When this season started I wasn’t keeping track of Bradley Williams in my database. After he won Texas States in April I ran the numbers for him, and he was in the Top 10 of nearly every statistic. Only Wysocki has recorded a smaller percentage of bogeys in June and July. In the Pro Tour, Bradley is 5th in Circle 1 hits in regulation which, combined with a 90 percent putting conversion rate, is going to give him a lot of looks for birdie. Individual rankings: Steve 5, Alex 9, John 10
Devan Owens Consensus Ranking: 9
AC: Devan Owens has spent plenty of time on the lead card this season, but has only stayed in the Top 4 at the end of a big tournament once: at the GBO, where he finished 4th. The high finish in Emporia earlier this year is working in his favor, in addition to his familiarity with the golf in the Great Plains (he’s from Oklahoma). What isn’t working in his favor is his recent experience at Worlds: Finishes of 23rd and 47th the past two seasons don’t exactly bode well. But, in 2010 and 2011 he finished 10th, and in 2012 and 2013 he ended up 20th and 16th. So, he’s done it before, but not lately – finishing inside the Top 15, that is. He’s never finished outside the Top 10 in any GBO he’s played in since 2010, so this seems like a good year to put all that GBO experience to good use.
SH: Alex is making these blurbs a little too in-depth. Come on, man, leave me something to write about. Oh wait, let’s not forget that in those past couple seasons you mentioned Owens was still coming back from a broken leg, and he’s a lefty. Lefties automatically get plenty of love in my book (especially when they shred Maple Hill the way Owens did in June). He’s got spoiler written all over him this week.
JK: It should be obvious that most top players are consistent putters, but few have shown the consistency of Devan Owens. His inside the circle putting percentage at the Vibram Open of 93 percent led him to a 6th place finish. At Silver Cup, his putting percentage was also 93 percent. During the World Tour? You guessed it, 93 percent. Since 2010 he has averaged playing only 0.14 points from his rating. He’ll have to step that up this year, but I expect to see Devan Owens fighting for a Final 9 spot. Individual rankings: Steve 11, Alex 10, John 9
Philo Brathwaite Consensus Ranking: 10
SH: At this point, Philo Brathwaite has already won Worlds. That’s how much good his albatross did for exposure of the sport on a mainstream level, honestly. Give the man the world title based on that alone, and hold a real tournament next year. No? OK, at least give him a shout out at the PDGA awards banquet this week in Emporia. DO IT.
JK: Philo has had an exceptional 2016. Albatross aside, he’s ranked 6th in both points and cash on tour. No player on this list has stepped up his play in 2016 like Philo. He has nearly doubled his birdie percentage from 2015 and dropped his bogey percentage by 28 percent. He hasn’t had his best rounds during the Pro Tour, but he’s got four Top 10 finishes at National Tour events this year.
AC: If you haven’t seen Philo all over the disc golf internet by now you must not have been paying attention. Like John mentioned, his NT game has been strong, as he’s only finished outside of the Top 10 twice in 2016. He’s competed at Worlds for nine years straight, though, and only broken into the Top 20 once, finishing 10th two years ago in Portland. On top of |
four villages of the Shushi province. It has a total of 164 students, including 22 who attend classes in villages.
“Musical education is very important in general, as due to it children can develop their aesthetic tastes,” says Harutiunian. “Not everyone will continue their education in music, but this musical education will definitely have an impact in their lives.” Last year five of the school’s 15 graduates chose to continue higher education in the field of music.
The part of Shushi called the Internal Quarter, which suffered the most during the war and still bears traces of mass destruction, is seeing active construction these days, with a prospect of becoming a student quarter in a couple of years’ time.
Growing a future
If Shushi is bound to be a cultural capital, it might also serve as a center of Karabakh’s other great potential, agriculture.
The war-damaged building of the former technical school is being reconstructed to reopen as the Agrarian University of Artsakh, next September.
In 2008, the Agrarian faculty was separated from Artsakh State University and, through cooperation with the Agrarian University of Armenia, the Agrarian University of Artsakh was established.
Around 2,000 students attend the University, which is now housed in one of the decrepit buildings of Stepanakert.
Dean of the university’s Faculty of Agrarian Biology and Economics Artak Ghulian says the new building which is under construction today will be a unique facility in the South Caucasus due to its conditions and laboratory equipment.
“The new building is very important to the university as we will get an opportunity to include more narrowly specialized directions in the curriculum,” says Ghulian. He adds that a vocational training center will also be affiliated with the Agrarian University.
A new building is rising next to the agricultural academy. The Stepanakert Vocational College is due to move into this building when its construction is finished.
Not far away is a 1977-built hostel, which has housed the State Humanitarian College named after distinguished educator Arsen Khachatrian, since 1994.
Today the college has a number of departments, with 310 students, 145 who attend classes and the rest who study remotely.
College Director Ara Hairapetian says that about 45 students are enrolled in the College’s cultural departments.
“We participate in all cultural events that take place in Karabakh, often organize separate exhibitions, concerts,” says Hairapetian, showing in his room what he describes as Karabakh’s and Armenia’s largest Gobelin tapestry that depicts old Shushi, made by last year’s graduates.
Hairapetian says the college is likely to move to another location next year because the hostel building will be reconstructed according to French standards through a joint effort of the French branch of the All-Armenian Fund and the NKR Government and will become one of the best student hostels in the region.
During Soviet times the hostel could house up to 450 students, but after total renovation the capacity will be for 190 students, as the level of convenience and amenities will be significantly improved.
Pictures, parks, priority
Shushi Mayor Karen Avagimian, who has headed the town since 2009, says that in the initial period after the war the state did not have so many opportunities to make Shushi a point of special attention, but during the last 5-6 years Shushi has become a priority.
“The relocation of infrastructure to Shushi to make it an educational and student center also helps restore the town’s old, historic, but now-rundown buildings,” says the mayor. “After the relocation of student infrastructure, life in Shushi will become more active, cultural centers will operate, the town population will increase.”
Through Nareg Hartounian’s efforts and funding, the Narekatsi Art Union has operated in Shushi since 2006. The Union’s 12 groups bring together more than 50 people of different ages who are fond of arts.
Several theaters that functioned in Karabakh before the war have united today into one, the Mkrtich Khandamirian Drama Theater. At present, 12 students from Shushi are taking acting classes at the Goris branch of the Yerevan State Theater and Cinema Institute to join the Shushi theater troupes after their studies.
The theater today is operating at the Culture and Youth Center, which was Shushi’s former Cinema House, but in 2012 was completely renovated and furnished due to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund and its Canadian-Armenian donors.
Two other buildings are currently being reconstructed in Shushi. One is to become a Geology Museum that will display a collection of rare minerals of Academician Grigor Gabrieliants (advisor to the NKR President, the USSR’s last Minister of Geology).
The other building will house a Picture Gallery, for which, again with Gabrieliants’ support, more than 400 canvases have already been collected.
Behind the Picture Gallery a park of statues is being created. These statues have been collected during two recent symposiums of sculptors held in Shushi. Sculptors and artists from Italy, Japan, Belgium, Belarus and other countries had come to the town to attend the symposiums.
Moscow-based Karabakh native Sergey Sargsian also decided to contribute to the restoration of Shushi and established the Picture Gallery.
Today’s building of the Picture Gallery has a history of about 200 years and is one of the oldest buildings in the town. Beginning from 1828 the building housed the first printing house in Shushi, which was the third largest printing house in the entire region, but during the Soviet years the building housed trade unions. The building was destroyed by fire during the war, with its standing walls badly damaged.
A new three-storey building made according to the old one’s pattern is rising today. The Picture Gallery will have two large exhibition halls.
Sargis Galstian, a representative of the Picture Gallery founders, says it was established within the framework of an investment program, but the $284,000 funding earmarked for the programs was too small a sum for such a huge project. Eventually, twice as much was spent for it.
“The Picture Gallery will not be for permanent exhibitions, it will periodically offer displays on different subjects, by various artists. Visitors will be able to see something new all the time,” says Galstian, who adds that there are also plans to organize children’s exhibitions and the best participants of such exhibitions will be provided with assistance for their further education.
Although the building’s official opening is scheduled for 2013, in October 2012 it already managed to host the Shushi Art Project, an unprecedented cultural event for Karabakh.
Not far from the Picture Gallery is one of the first constructions of Shushi - the 1810-built Post Office building. It was restored by the Avan Company in 2011 and now the building houses a museum of antique-style carpets and rugs.
About 160 carpets on exhibition, the oldest of which is 270 years old, are a private collection of presidential adviser Vardan Astsatrian.
“Artsakh has always been a carpet-weaving center, and because today it is a little bit forgotten fact, the main goal of the establishment of this museum was to help restore historical justice and the Artsakh carpets brand,” says Astsatrian. He adds that Karabakh’s carpets and rugs differ from Persian and Arab symmetric ones by their dynamics, as Karabakh carpets depict an image that has a beginning and an end.
If you build it, they will come
Hotels are also important prerequisites for the development of local cultural life. Shushi has four. Two have opened in the last couple of years. The history of one of them, reopened after reconstruction, dates back to the 19th century.
During the times of Tsarist Russia, in 1831 Borzhom Hotel was built in Shushi, which, however, was destroyed in the 1920s and in 1970 what would later become the well-known Karabakh Hotel was built in the same place.
Although the building was not affected by shelling during the war, it still was plundered and damaged otherwise. Years ago, it became property of the Avan Company, among whose shareholders are Armenian-American philanthropists Alec Baghdasarian, Shirak Amian and others (who also renovated Shushi’s Oriental Bath and Oriental Market). That company undertook to renovate the building and in March 2011 it turned into a modern 11-storey hotel, Avan Shoushi Plaza.
During the summer months the hotel provides an average of about 40 jobs, with monthly salaries at around $170. It receive about 1,000-1,200 guests, while in wintertime the number of guests drops to 200, and only 28 staff are employed.
“Besides receiving guests we also host various cultural events, such as the recent events celebrating the 500th anniversary of printing, various meetings, conferences, etc. That is, the hotel also has its role in the development of cultural life,” says Avan Shoushi Plaza manager Sargis Galstian.
Today, in Shushi there are many locked gates and half-ruined buildings with arched windows that fall into more decay as time goes on and turn into garbage dumps. But next to these buildings are others under repair, and next to those, bright and modern new ones.
It was a town with a legacy of culture, replaced by a legacy of war. Today, strong efforts are afoot to switch the prominence of those legacies, and to see fallen Shushi rise.
“We should be able to make our attitude towards Shushi equivalent to that pride that the liberation of this town granted to every Armenian, in every corner of the world,” Karabakh’s Minister of Culture and Youth Affairs Aghabalian says. “The problem was not only liberating Shushi, perhaps more important than that has been restoring Shushi to make that victory meaningful.”
Shushi was built as a fortress. Until a century ago it played a significant role in the cultural and economic life of not only Nagorno Karabakh, but also the entire South Caucasus. The war of 1991-94 nearly razed it.Today large-scale construction gradually but surely heals the town’s wounds and dreams of a “cultural capital” are coming into view.Karabakh’s Minister of Culture and Youth Affairs Narine Aghabalian says that today there is a need to put a new face on mental images of Karabakh, and Shushi could be the calling card to change perceptions.“The international community associates the name of Nagorno Karabakh only to an unresolved conflict. We must try and change that and present ourselves as a country with millennia-old historical and cultural heritage that today embraces pan-national humanitarian values. Developing culture is very important in this sense,” says the minister.While immediately after the war Karabakh had to pay more attention to the most vital problems of survival, now the proud republic is developing a strategy for cultural development in 2013-2017.It is not a coincidence that Shushi was chosen to become a cultural center – it will be history repeating itself.From 1827-1920, Shushi had five printing houses publishing more than 150 titles a year. Shushi also had a number of educational institutions, such as Karabakh’s Armenian Diocesan School (1838), Our Lady College for Young Women (1864), Urban College (1875), Non-classical Secondary School (1881), Mariam Ghukasian Royal Gymnasium for Girls (1894) and 10 other schools and educational establishments. Shushi’s theatrical life began in 1865. The well-known Khandamirian Theater opened in 1891 and would become regionally-famous.“After the war we restored Ghazanchetsots and already could breathe more easily, but the town was still in ruins, which put potential visitors and settlers off. We were highlighting these problems, saying that Shushi should enjoy the splendor of a cultural town that it once was,” says Aghabalian, adding that today the Shushi Restoration Program has been launched due to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund and Diaspora donors and a series of cultural projects have been carried out in Shushi in recent years.Among the major steps toward cultural revival was the relocation of the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs from Stepanakert to Shushi.In 1912, the Mariam Ghukasian Royal Gymnasium for Girls was built on one of the central streets of Shushi. It was destroyed during the Karabakh war. But exactly 100 years later, in October this year, it was reopened as the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs. Its renovation was financed by Moscow-based donor Konstantin Manukian who, with other Diaspora, shares the dream of Shusi’s cultural restoration.Minister Aghabalian says that some of the cultural programs will move to Shushi and different events will be organized in the town, which will also encourage more tourism.“Those who visit Shushi know that there is also the Ministry of Culture here, which by itself generates interest. And now many traveling from Yerevan to Stepanakert will not bypass Shushi, but will come and see the town,” says the minister.Aghabalian says the town is gradually unyoking the burden of the ruins and regaining its former spiritual, cultural, and educational image.Before the Karabakh Movement, in 1988, Shushi had a population of 15,000. Today, the town has about 4,100 residents, most of whom are refugees from Baku, Kirovabad and some Armenian-populated territories that are now part of Azerbaijan.Today, Shushi has one basic school and one high school along with three music schools.The first music school in Shushi opened just six months after the liberation of the town – in November 1992. It was housed in the building of one of the half-empty secondary schools.At that time the school had only four sections: piano, violin, clarinet and vocal art. It was attended by less than three dozen students.In 2002, one of the old buildings in the center of the town was provided for the Shushi Music School, and in 2004 it was totally repaired due to the funds provided by U.S.-based Karabakh natives Hakob and Hilda Baghdassarian.Shushi Children’s Music School Director Razmik Harutiunian says that today the school has as many as 10 sections: piano, vocal art, clarinet, trumpet, violin, accordion, drum, kanon (a string instrument), shvi (flute) and duduk.Today the school has branches in four villages of the Shushi province. It has a total of 164 students, including 22 who attend classes in villages.“Musical education is very important in general, as due to it children can develop their aesthetic tastes,” says Harutiunian. “Not everyone will continue their education in music, but this musical education will definitely have an impact in their lives.” Last year five of the school’s 15 graduates chose to continue higher education in the field of music.The part of Shushi called the Internal Quarter, which suffered the most during the war and still bears traces of mass destruction, is seeing active construction these days, with a prospect of becoming a student quarter in a couple of years’ time.If Shushi is bound to be a cultural capital, it might also serve as a center of Karabakh’s other great potential, agriculture.The war-damaged building of the former technical school is being reconstructed to reopen as the Agrarian University of Artsakh, next September.In 2008, the Agrarian faculty was separated from Artsakh State University and, through cooperation with the Agrarian University of Armenia, the Agrarian University of Artsakh was established.Around 2,000 students attend the University, which is now housed in one of the decrepit buildings of Stepanakert.Dean of the university’s Faculty of Agrarian Biology and Economics Artak Ghulian says the new building which is under construction today will be a unique facility in the South Caucasus due to its conditions and laboratory equipment.“The new building is very important to the university as we will get an opportunity to include more narrowly specialized directions in the curriculum,” says Ghulian. He adds that a vocational training center will also be affiliated with the Agrarian University.A new building is rising next to the agricultural academy. The Stepanakert Vocational College is due to move into this building when its construction is finished.Not far away is a 1977-built hostel, which has housed the State Humanitarian College named after distinguished educator Arsen Khachatrian, since 1994.Today the college has a number of departments, with 310 students, 145 who attend classes and the rest who study remotely.College Director Ara Hairapetian says that about 45 students are enrolled in the College’s cultural departments.“We participate in all cultural events that take place in Karabakh, often organize separate exhibitions, concerts,” says Hairapetian, showing in his room what he describes as Karabakh’s and Armenia’s largest Gobelin tapestry that depicts old Shushi, made by last year’s graduates.Hairapetian says the college is likely to move to another location next year because the hostel building will be reconstructed according to French standards through a joint effort of the French branch of the All-Armenian Fund and the NKR Government and will become one of the best student hostels in the region.During Soviet times the hostel could house up to 450 students, but after total renovation the capacity will be for 190 students, as the level of convenience and amenities will be significantly improved.Shushi Mayor Karen Avagimian, who has headed the town since 2009, says that in the initial period after the war the state did not have so many opportunities to make Shushi a point of special attention, but during the last 5-6 years Shushi has become a priority.“The relocation of infrastructure to Shushi to make it an educational and student center also helps restore the town’s old, historic, but now-rundown buildings,” says the mayor. “After the relocation of student infrastructure, life in Shushi will become more active, cultural centers will operate, the town population will increase.”Through Nareg Hartounian’s efforts and funding, the Narekatsi Art Union has operated in Shushi since 2006. The Union’s 12 groups bring together more than 50 people of different ages who are fond of arts.Several theaters that functioned in Karabakh before the war have united today into one, the Mkrtich Khandamirian Drama Theater. At present, 12 students from Shushi are taking acting classes at the Goris branch of the Yerevan State Theater and Cinema Institute to join the Shushi theater troupes after their studies.The theater today is operating at the Culture and Youth Center, which was Shushi’s former Cinema House, but in 2012 was completely renovated and furnished due to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund and its Canadian-Armenian donors.Two other buildings are currently being reconstructed in Shushi. One is to become a Geology Museum that will display a collection of rare minerals of Academician Grigor Gabrieliants (advisor to the NKR President, the USSR’s last Minister of Geology).The other building will house a Picture Gallery, for which, again with Gabrieliants’ support, more than 400 canvases have already been collected.Behind the Picture Gallery a park of statues is being created. These statues have been collected during two recent symposiums of sculptors held in Shushi. Sculptors and artists from Italy, Japan, Belgium, Belarus and other countries had come to the town to attend the symposiums.Moscow-based Karabakh native Sergey Sargsian also decided to contribute to the restoration of Shushi and established the Picture Gallery.Today’s building of the Picture Gallery has a history of about 200 years and is one of the oldest buildings in the town. Beginning from 1828 the building housed the first printing house in Shushi, which was the third largest printing house in the entire region, but during the Soviet years the building housed trade unions. The building was destroyed by fire during the war, with its standing walls badly damaged.A new three-storey building made according to the old one’s pattern is rising today. The Picture Gallery will have two large exhibition halls.Sargis Galstian, a representative of the Picture Gallery founders, says it was established within the framework of an investment program, but the $284,000 funding earmarked for the programs was too small a sum for such a huge project. Eventually, twice as much was spent for it.“The Picture Gallery will not be for permanent exhibitions, it will periodically offer displays on different subjects, by various artists. Visitors will be able to see something new all the time,” says Galstian, who adds that there are also plans to organize children’s exhibitions and the best participants of such exhibitions will be provided with assistance for their further education.Although the building’s official opening is scheduled for 2013, in October 2012 it already managed to host the Shushi Art Project, an unprecedented cultural event for Karabakh.Not far from the Picture Gallery is one of the first constructions of Shushi - the 1810-built Post Office building. It was restored by the Avan Company in 2011 and now the building houses a museum of antique-style carpets and rugs.About 160 carpets on exhibition, the oldest of which is 270 years old, are a private collection of presidential adviser Vardan Astsatrian.“Artsakh has always been a carpet-weaving center, and because today it is a little bit forgotten fact, the main goal of the establishment of this museum was to help restore historical justice and the Artsakh carpets brand,” says Astsatrian. He adds that Karabakh’s carpets and rugs differ from Persian and Arab symmetric ones by their dynamics, as Karabakh carpets depict an image that has a beginning and an end.Hotels are also important prerequisites for the development of local cultural life. Shushi has four. Two have opened in the last couple of years. The history of one of them, reopened after reconstruction, dates back to the 19th century.During the times of Tsarist Russia, in 1831 Borzhom Hotel was built in Shushi, which, however, was destroyed in the 1920s and in 1970 what would later become the well-known Karabakh Hotel was built in the same place.Although the building was not affected by shelling during the war, it still was plundered and damaged otherwise. Years ago, it became property of the Avan Company, among whose shareholders are Armenian-American philanthropists Alec Baghdasarian, Shirak Amian and others (who also renovated Shushi’s Oriental Bath and Oriental Market). That company undertook to renovate the building and in March 2011 it turned into a modern 11-storey hotel, Avan Shoushi Plaza.During the summer months the hotel provides an average of about 40 jobs, with monthly salaries at around $170. It receive about 1,000-1,200 guests, while in wintertime the number of guests drops to 200, and only 28 staff are employed.“Besides receiving guests we also host various cultural events, such as the recent events celebrating the 500th anniversary of printing, various meetings, conferences, etc. That is, the hotel also has its role in the development of cultural life,” says Avan Shoushi Plaza manager Sargis Galstian.Today, in Shushi there are many locked gates and half-ruined buildings with arched windows that fall into more decay as time goes on and turn into garbage dumps. But next to these buildings are others under repair, and next to those, bright and modern new ones.It was a town with a legacy of culture, replaced by a legacy of war. Today, strong efforts are afoot to switch the prominence of those legacies, and to see fallen Shushi rise.“We should be able to make our attitude towards Shushi equivalent to that pride that the liberation of this town granted to every Armenian, in every corner of the world,” Karabakh’s Minister of Culture and Youth Affairs Aghabalian says. “The problem was not only liberating Shushi, perhaps more important than that has been restoring Shushi to make that victory meaningful.”The San Francisco 49ers announced Tuesday they have activated LB NaVorro Bowman to the 53-man roster from the Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform List. The team has also placed TE Garrett Celek on the Injured Reserve List.
Bowman (6-0, 242) was originally drafted by the 49ers in the third round (91st overall) of the 2010 NFL Draft. He appeared in all 64 games (49 starts) from 2010 to 2013 and started every game in which he appeared each of the past three seasons. Bowman quickly developed into one of the league’s most dominant defensive players, registering career highs in tackles (192), sacks (5.0), forced fumbles (four) and interceptions (two) in 2013. He was selected First-Team All-Pro in 2011, 2012 and 2013, as well as the Pro Bowl following the 2012 and 2013 seasons.Molly Smith, co-founder of Black Label Media, and her twin partners Trent and Thad Luckinbill are making waves in the mid-budget film space.
This story first appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
As the major studios have all but abandoned midbudget, adult-skewing dramas, upstarts like Black Label Media gladly are stepping in to fill the void. Launched in 2013 by Molly Smith — daughter of FedEx founder Frederick Smith — and identical twins Trent and Thad Luckinbill, the company has backed seven movies to date, including Denis Villeneuve's Sicario ($81 million worldwide) and Jean-Marc Vallee's Jake Gyllenhaal drama Demolition (out April 8 from Fox Searchlight).
After 13 years with Alcon Entertainment, Smith, 35, left the fold (her father continues to be Alcon's primary backer) and teamed with former Justice Department attorney Trent and onetime soap opera actor Thad, both 40, to pursue their shared interest in auteur-driven projects. With a staff of seven and backing from investors including her father and billionaire Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, the company recently signed on to co-finance Damien Chazelle's Emma Stone-Ryan Gosling musical La La Land (Dec. 2) as well as the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Horse Soldiers (both at Lionsgate, which released Sicario). In April, Black Label will begin production on Danny Strong's J.D. Salinger biopic Rebel in the Rye, followed in the summer by Joseph Kosinski's No Exit (Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing the film, about a deadly Arizona wildfire). In addition to making three to four movies a year, the company now is moving into TV, teaming with director Craig Brewer on a period music-themed drama that will be shopped. Smith and the Luckinbills invited THR to the company's Beverly Hills offices to discuss Black Label's billionaire investors, who greenlights projects and plans for a Sicario sequel.
Molly, how did you get into this business?
SMITH I went to NYU, but I always say I got my Ph.D. at Alcon because I got to really grow up under Andrew [Kosove] and Broderick [Johnson] and watch them build their company. I started as a P.A. on their sets — The Affair of the Necklace, Chris Nolan's Insomnia. Andrew and Broderick were young guys, but they were getting married and having babies and so they knew that my bags were packed and I would go anywhere. Then I got the rights to P.S. I Love You (2007), which was the first movie I produced, from Warner Bros. in turnaround, and got Alcon to option it back for me. It did $157 million worldwide, and we had made it for a pretty low budget. After that, they gave me a first-look producing deal. I partnered with Hilary Swank for two years. We optioned Something Borrowed (2011), which we ended up making at Alcon. Then I got slipped the script to The Blind Side (2009), and I knew the Tuohy family very well [Sandra Bullock played Leigh Anne Tuohy]. We grew up in Memphis together. My youngest brother is marrying Collins Tuohy in three weeks. I brought that to Andrew and Broderick. We got really lucky in that everyone in town passed on that script [the film grossed $309 million].
How did the three of you come together?
SMITH We all met and became friends, like in 2009, 2010. Trent had just moved from D.C. Thad brought me projects, which we actually set up in development at Alcon. It was an interesting transition period at Alcon. Thad and I creatively connected. Trent has knowledge and background as an attorney but also in the private equity world. The three of us started talking and went to Alcon and said, "What if we opened a specialty division?" Ultimately, it felt complicated to do it within Alcon. So we went out and raised a film fund and started Black Label.
Why did you decide against doing it at Alcon?
TRENT They have a fixed number of outputs per year, so it looked like a lot clearer path for us to just step aside and do our own business. We still have a great relationship with them.
THAD The Good Lie (2014) went through them. But we have a little more flexibility to do different sizes and scopes of movies at different studios to tailor-fit a particular project.
SMITH We're calling those midtier movies, which are tougher for the studios to finance and make. We can make them for a much more nimble price just purely producing and financing them independently, then deliver them [to a studio partner] and still get the best of both worlds.
Molly, your father is a backer of Alcon. Is he also invested in Black Label?
SMITH He's one of several investors. Daniel Snyder is a minority investor. The way our company is structured, there's a small silent investor group [that also includes former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale], and then our company is separate from that fund, meaning they don't fund our overhead and our development. That's all us. [Editor's note: Smith declined to discuss other backers.]
Alcon has had a tough run of late with the Point Break remake and The 33. Any thoughts on its current situation?
SMITH Andrew and Broderick are really smart business guys, and there are so many variables you can't control in this business. The fact is that they're still around 20 years later and have seen Warner Bros. through four regimes. Their television department is killing it with The Expanse at Syfy, and they've got their management company, Madhouse, and they've got a huge opportunity with Blade Runner (2017), which is going to be a game-changer over there.
Who do you see as your competition?
SMITH There are at least 20 or so companies like us in the space, but the interesting thing is we all talk. We're very close with [producer] Sidney Kimmel. His company partnered with us on Demolition. We're all getting the scripts at the same time. It's a super-collaborative environment in this independent space, more than I ever would have thought. Having said that, we understand it's about being able to react quickly, and the nice thing about us is that we're the three who can make a decision; it's not like we have to go to a board. We're also conscious of not getting into the hype or bidding wars that drive prices up.
Do you have plans to move into TV like your peers?
SMITH Yes. Jon Schumacher is running our television department. We've been developing books and IP that we own and pairing them with our filmmaker relationships. We're taking a couple out now. We have Craig Brewer attached to a book called Beale Street Dynasty, which I'm excited about. I know [Brewer] from Memphis. It's a really epic book almost in the vein of a Boardwalk Empire, about the birth of [the blues].
What is the status of Sicario 2? Happening or not happening?
SMITH We're in full development with the studio. I just got a draft [of a script from writer Taylor Sheridan], and we're really excited.
THAD We've circulated it to the reps, and everybody [from the cast of the original is] on board.
TRENT Taylor's a really great world-builder. He's got that kind of modern Western voice, which is in vogue right now. And he did it again [with the sequel]. It's a great big world. We can't reveal the plot, but you'll see [Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin] all come back. You have such a great character with Benicio, who was as dark as he was and still so loved. That character resonates so well with audiences. People want to know what happened to him, so it's a perfect foray for us to explore. Obviously we would love it if Denis could [direct]. He's a busy man, but he's certainly part of the process with us right now.
How do you divvy up the workload, and who is responsible for greenlighting?
SMITH You're looking at it. And it doesn't matter which one of us you get on the phone. You get the same answer.
TRENT The amount we do [plus] TV requires the three of us to be fully interchangeable.
How would you describe the Black Label brand?
THAD The one common theme is these are filmmakers that we want to bet on or who have already proved themselves in a great way.
Which directors are you dying to work with?
THAD Alejandro Inarritu.
SMITH We'd love to work with [Blind Side's] John Lee Hancock again. Steve McQueen and Paul Greengrass. Ryan Coogler. I remember being in that Fruitvale Station screening at Sundance [in 2014] and watching that Q&A and I thought, "What a sophisticated filmmaker at 27 years old." Scott Cooper (Black Mass) is somebody we love and want to work with.
You were recently in Sundance. Is part of your business plan to buy into finished films?
SMITH Yeah. Our first acquisition was taking a small piece of Begin Again. Unfortunately, we were such a small owner of that movie, so we didn’t have much to do with the marketing. Weinstein Company bought it after our involvement. That was getting our feet wet in the acquisition space, and then the second acquisition we did was 71, Yann Demange’s movie. We acquired for the U.S. and Canada. We knew it was not a huge domestic play, but we just loved the film so much and we were big fans of Yann’s work, and knew he was going to be like a Denis. Our third will be La La Land, which we came in as a partner just off of seeing footage. We’re certainly looking to be more active as buyers at the festivals.
Is there a mandate here to promote diversity in terms of storytelling?
THAD No. We are first and foremost filmmaker-driven. And those are the types of movies that move us.
SMITH The thing about movies like The Good Lie and The Blind Side is they can transcend being more than just a movie. With Good Lie, we realized very quickly the movie wasn’t working theatrically, and we actually went to Warner Bros. and said, “Can we reduce the window?” We made the tough decision, but smart decision, to not go wide and get it on VOD before the holidays, because families will love this movie. Because of that, the film has been discovered in such a big way in the ancillary markets.Unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate firing at a car killing former deputy mayor Neeraj Singh and three others. Singh, his friend Ashok Yadav, his driver and a bodyguard were killed in the shootout today evening.
According to police, the incident took place when Singh was returning to his home.
Situation remains tense in the city following the incident. The administration has rushed in additional police force to avoid things going out of control.
Neeraj Singh had recently contested the Assembly election on Congress ticket but lost.
WHAT HAPPENED
Dhanbad's former deputy mayor Neeraj Singh along with his friend Ashok Singh was returning home in his SUV.
As soon as his vehicle slowed down due to speed breakers, gunmen opened indiscriminate firing at his SUV. Singh seated in front of the vehicle took 17 bullets. The driver, bodyguard and Ashok Yadav were hit multiple times, ADG RK Malik said.
The four men were rushed to a local hospital but none could survive.
The police recovered at least 50 AK-47 bullet shells from the crime spot.
The police have launched a massive manhunt in Dhanbad and adjoining areas to nab the assailants. The attackers are believed to be outsiders, police said. An SIT has been formed to probe the incident.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Raghubar Das has directed the DGP to maintain law and order in Dhanbad following the incident and asked him to nab the attackers as soon as possible.
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ALSO WATCH | Shootout in Dhanbad, 4 people injuredPresident Obama warned in 2011 that the possibility of a "lone wolf" terrorist attack — similar to what the Boston bombings appear to be — was the greatest national security threat America faced in the post-9/11 age.
Obama was speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer weeks before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 2,000 people.
"The biggest concern we have right now is not the launching of a major terrorist operation, although that risk is always there. The risk that we're especially concerned over right now is the lone wolf terrorist," the president said. "Somebody with a single weapon being able to carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort that we saw in Norway recently. You know, when you've got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it's a lot harder to trace those lone wolf operators."
The president continued, adding that intelligence agencies were staying "vigilant" against terrorist threats, especially in the wake of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We're spending a lot of time monitoring and gathering information," he said. "I think that we generally have to stay vigilant. There may be a little extra vigilance during 9/11."
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recommended Australia adopt fair use," the message reads. "The government is currently considering its response to the latest recommendation. If you think Australia should adopt fair use, take action." Fair use would allow extracts of copyrighted work to be displayed without permission in certain circumstances where it didn't harm the market for the original. "When you look up the ABC on Wikipedia and see its logo, that logo is there because a Wikipedia editor has uploaded it as a fair use of the image," said Jon Lawrence, executive director of Electronic Frontiers Australia, which is partnering with Wikipedia. "Wikipedia users can can only upload this content because they are able to rely on the US's fair use provisions. If Wikipedia was based in Australia, you wouldn't see that logo." Cabinet is considering a recommendation from the Productivity Commission to extend the US right of fair use to Australia, allowing local websites and teachers and authors to quote fair use material and allowing libraries to display thumbnail pictures of book covers in their catalogues. The Copyright Agency, which collects payments on behalf of authors, has amassed a $15 million fund to fight the change. "Wikipedia pages display thumbnail images of album covers," said Katherine Maher, head of the San Francisco-based Wikimedia Foundation. "It is conceivable that, if an Australian teacher wanted to display those pages, she would be subject to a licensing fee, even though we are able to display them. "Australians run into conflict with the law without realising it. Forwarding an email or including the text of an email in a reply can break the law. Our Australian users have told us they want us to campaign for fair use because they support our mission to ensure every person in the world has access to knowledge." Jessica Coates of the Australian Digital Alliance, which represents librarians and is also partnering with Wikipedia, said fair use would future-proof the law so it didn't need to be updated each time technology changed. "It took until 2006 to legalise taping a TV show on a video cassette recorder in Australia, by which time most VCRs were already mothballed," she said. "We need copyright law that focuses not on specific technologies but on what is fair." Ms Maher said Wikipedia's contributors and editors respected copyright. "I have never met a group of people who care more about the rights of creators," she said. "You won't find lyrics on Wikipedia, for instance, because we believe the rights of creators should be protected. But you will find references to copyrighted work, references that are forbidden by Australian law." The rotating banner messages will be shown to about half the Australian visitors to Wikipedia for several days, shrinking to 15 per cent for the next few weeks. Follow Peter Martin on Twitter and Facebook
If Wikipedia was hosted in Australia, it would be breaking the law. In an Australian first, the US-based crowd-sourced encyclopedia will launch on Monday a political campaign to change the Australian law, by displaying messages targeting Australians who visit pages it was able to create using a US provision known as "fair use". The banner advertisements will say that Wikipedia was only able to create the pages because of a provision denied to Australians. "Six Australian government reports since 1998 have recommended Australia adopt fair use," the message reads. "The government is currently considering its response to the latest recommendation. If you think Australia should adopt fair use, take action." Fair use would allow extracts of copyrighted work to be displayed without permission in certain circumstances where it didn't harm the market for the original. "When you look up the ABC on Wikipedia and see its logo, that logo is there because a Wikipedia editor has uploaded it as a fair use of the image," said Jon Lawrence, executive director of Electronic Frontiers Australia, which is partnering with Wikipedia. "Wikipedia users can can only upload this content because they are able to rely on the US's fair use provisions. If Wikipedia was based in Australia, you wouldn't see that logo." Cabinet is considering a recommendation from the Productivity Commission to extend the US right of fair use to Australia, allowing local websites and teachers and authors to quote fair use material and allowing libraries to display thumbnail pictures of book covers in their catalogues. The Copyright Agency, which collects payments on behalf of authors, has amassed a $15 million fund to fight the change. "Wikipedia pages display thumbnail images of album covers," said Katherine Maher, head of the San Francisco-based Wikimedia Foundation. "It is conceivable that, if an Australian teacher wanted to display those pages, she would be subject to a licensing fee, even though we are able to display them. "Australians run into conflict with the law without realising it. Forwarding an email or including the text of an email in a reply can break the law. Our Australian users have told us they want us to campaign for fair use because they support our mission to ensure every person in the world has access to knowledge." Jessica Coates of the Australian Digital Alliance, which represents librarians and is also partnering with Wikipedia, said fair use would future-proof the law so it didn't need to be updated each time technology changed. "It took until 2006 to legalise taping a TV show on a video cassette recorder in Australia, by which time most VCRs were already mothballed," she said. "We need copyright law that focuses not on specific technologies but on what is fair." Ms Maher said Wikipedia's contributors and editors respected copyright. "I have never met a group of people who care more about the rights of creators," she said. "You won't find lyrics on Wikipedia, for instance, because we believe the rights of creators should be protected. But you will find references to copyrighted work, references that are forbidden by Australian law." The rotating banner messages will be shown to about half the Australian visitors to Wikipedia for several days, shrinking to 15 per cent for the next few weeks. Follow Peter Martin on Twitter and Facebook This story Wikipedia targets Australians in bid to change the law first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald. facebook SHARE
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whatsappUse of modern HR technologies is seen helping India Inc improve productivity and save millions of dollars
: Use of modern HR technologies can help India Inc improve productivity and save millions of dollars by optimal use of human resources, say experts. India commands a slice of nearly $600-700 million from the global pie of $54 billion human resource technology market. Even though HR technology is still nascent in India, it has already achieved a base of $0.5 billion, according to a research by Everest group.Tremendous forces are radically reshaping the workplace which are leading the companies to change their traditional human resource (HR) processes to new technology driven methods."The shift to HR applications in the cloud and artificial intelligence to use predictive data analytics has the potential to transform the entire HR landscape by taking away transactional roles and replacing them with strategic partnering roles...," says Jagjit Singh, chief people officer at PwC India.Chief people officer of PNB Housing Finance Anshul Bhargava said that in his company, the adoption of appropriate technology has enabled it to design focused programmes."Backed by concrete information and more efficient processes, the hiring process and employee efficiency have improved with the application of analytics," he said.Experts said technologies can improve productivity which will drive greater business growth and leave a positive impact on the companies.A recent study by PeopleStrong, a major HR technology company in India, claims that India Inc can save at least $600 million annually by 2021 using HR Technology.Dinesh R of OYO said the HR function is increasingly relying on technology to drive results and more predictable outcomes.Workforce technologies, especially those which are designed by keeping 'user' at the centre, have a tremendous role to play, said Pankaj Bansal, co-founder and CEO at PeopleStrong. "The new world of work will see employees taking control of their digital landscape of work and will be the decision makers of what gets used by organisations. It will be a defining phase of HR Tech not only in India but globally," he added.There’s an intersection just outside of town that Michael Chong can’t avoid. It’s where he lost both parents in separate car accidents, two decades apart.
Sitting down for lunch at the Brew House on the Grand in Fergus, Ont., Chong explains that the spot is not far from here.
It’s down the road from his house as well as the home in which he grew up. Naturally, his mind goes back to that gut-punch coincidence each time he drives through. Only for a moment.
Michael Chong speaks at Conservative leadership debate in Edmonton on Feb. 28, 2017. (Photo: Codie McLachlan/The Canadian Press)
“You don’t dwell on it,” the 45-year-old says, a slight cold detectable in his voice on this the first day of spring.
The story of Chong’s parents — chiefly, their experiences coming to Canada as immigrants — is key to understanding his campaign for the federal Conservative leadership at a time of rocky renewal. So too is the tragic way they left him at very different stages of his life.
“This is the greatest country in the world,” Chong says. “I literally would not be in front of you here today if it wasn’t for Canada.”
A member of Parliament for Wellington-Halton Hills since 2004, Chong says he is largely in public life because of what he sees as an unpaid debt. The sacrifices of Canadian troops are intricately connected to the stories of both his father and mother.
Michael Chong’s parents at their wedding in 1969. (Photo: Michael Chong)
His dad, Paul, was born in Hong Kong. At age 12, he witnessed Canadian soldiers defend the then-British colony from the Japanese. The Battle of Hong Kong is often forgotten, Chong says, because it happened at roughly the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But hundreds of Canadians died in battle and are buried at the Sai Wan Cemetery, “one of the most poignant pieces of Canada on the face of the Earth,” Chong says. “My father never forgot that sacrifice.”
Chong’s father came to Canada in 1952. He worked odd jobs, including a stint as a lumberjack in British Columbia, before earning a medical degree. Chong’s website notes his dad was one of the first Canadians of Chinese descent to be accepted into a medical school in this country.
Paul Chong married a nurse, Cornelia de Haan, who had immigrated from the Netherlands in the 1960s. Her family was also liberated by Canadian troops in the spring of 1945, after what the Dutch call the “winter of hunger.”
Michael Chong’s father, Paul, worked as a lumberjack in B.C. (Photo: Michael Chong)
They settled down in Wellington County and Chong’s mother eventually gave up nursing to raise their four children. In 1978, she was killed in a crash while heading out to buy groceries. Chong, the oldest of the kids, was just six.
“It grows you up really quickly when you lose a parent at such a young age,” he says, pausing as the server comes to take his order.
Chong asks for a cheeseburger and side salad.
“You realize that you have to take every day, one at a time. And put everything into what you do. You face your mortality pretty young.”
Two years later, Chong’s father remarried another Dutch-born woman named Adriana, who helped raise Chong, his sister, and two younger brothers. He practiced medicine in Wellington County and Guelph for decades.
Chong family in 1980. (Photo: Michael Chong)
Chong was 27 when his father was killed in that familiar place in 1999, with the same local police officer investigating.
When asked about coming to terms with that twist of fate, Chong explains that car accidents are a “fact of rural life,” where there’s often a lot more driving at high speeds and over long distances.
As a young man going to school in Toronto, about 90 minutes away by car, Chong was struck one day by the realization that he had gone whole years without losing someone close in a crash.
The leadership hopeful has made a point of referencing his parents in his campaign materials, including a video produced by his team. He says it provides context for why he’s running and the kind of leader he aspires to become.
“I think politics is about your story,” he says. “It’s about who you are, where you come from, what experiences inform you.”
Michael Chong and his father in 1972. (Photo: Michael Chong)
Chong projects pride in his roots, noting he “grew up on a dirt side road” and is the only leadership contender who lives on a farm. His childhood was one of pond hockey and playing in the bush. As a teen, he worked as a farmhand for his neighbour’s cattle operation.
He also speaks of “small-town values,” which includes looking out for neighbours. It’s perhaps risky ground to cover with a visiting Toronto journalist, considering how rival Kellie Leitch was lampooned for inferring big-city folks aren’t the kind you can ask for a cup of sugar.
“Frankly, I think my belief in the need to conserve our environment for future generations comes from the fact that I grew up in this area,” he says. “It’s a beautiful landscape and I think we have a responsibility of protecting it for future generations.”
But Chong suggests he’s familiar with another aspect of rural life — the urge to leave. At least for a while.
“When I was 18, like any small-town boy in rural Ontario, I couldn’t get out of her fast enough.”
Michael Chong says his childhood involved pond hockey and playing in the bush. (Photo: Michael Chong)
He ended up at the University of Toronto, where he studied philosophy and first set eyes on his future wife, Carrie.
“We met in frosh week,” he says, laughing.
They became friends but didn’t start dating seriously until their late 20s because each headed on different paths, which for her meant returning to her native British Columbia and some time in Japan. They’ve been married for almost 15 years and have three sons: William, 12, Alistair, 9, and Cameron, 7.
A passion for politics was ingrained in Chong after his local MP, Perrin Beatty, spoke at his high school. Though he joined the U of T’s campus Progressive Conservative club and was a delegate at an Ontario PC convention in 1990, he never mulled a life as a political staffer.
At 26, Chong co-founded the Dominion Institute, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about Canadian democracy and civics. The group has since merged with Historica Canada, makers of the much-loved “Heritage Minute” commercials.
Chong spent a decade working in Toronto’s financial services sector with Barclay’s Bank and Research Capital Corporation. He also served as chief information officer for the NHL Players’ Association, something he describes as a “great job in an intense environment.”
He envisioned running for office in his 50s or 60s, after he’d retired and raised his kids. A friend pulled him aside to warn against waiting for a door to open.
“Sometimes you can’t pick your opportunity, your opportunity picks you,” Chong recalls being told.
It was never a question where he would run. Chong wanted to go home.
“This is the community that I know and that I grew up in, so this is the community I wanted to represent,” he says. “The community I wanted to fight for.”
Chong says he wasn’t seen as a johnny-come-lately when he returned to these country roads to launch his political career. He had kept in touch and was home frequently.
Michael Chong and his wife, Carrie, on their wedding day. (Photo: Silvercreek Photography)
His first shot at a seat in the House of Commons did not go well. As the Progressive Conservative standard-bearer in the now defunct riding of Waterloo-Wellington in 2000, Chong finished a distant third behind the Liberal incumbent and Canadian Alliance candidate.
Four years later, with the right newly united, Chong ran as a Conservative and won by 2,300 votes. Chong has captured more than 50 per cent of the vote in every election since.
Lunch arrives. Chong is greeted with a Philly cheesesteak sandwich on a pretzel bun.
“Oh, it looks good,” he says. “Thank you.”
He dumps some balsamic dressing on his salad, takes a big bite of the sandwich, and keeps talking.
Wait. Isn’t that the wrong order?
“I ordered a burger but that’s fine,” he says, chuckling. “I’m not fussy.”
Michael Chong is sworn-in to federal cabinet as prime minister Stephen Harper and Governor General Michaelle Jean look-on at Rideau Hall on Feb 6, 2006.(Photo: Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
After the Tories won a minority government in 2006, Chong — then 34 — was named to former prime minister Stephen Harper’s first cabinet as minister for intergovernmental affairs and sport. It was an overwhelming feeling, he says, with a tinge of sadness.
“My parents weren’t around to see me elected to Parliament and they weren’t around to see me appointed to the federal cabinet. They would have been very proud.”
He ended up lasting less than a year in Harper’s inner circle.
Chong famously quit cabinet on a point of principle, refusing to support a motion from Harper recognizing that the “Québécois form a nation within a united Canada." The motion was interpreted by some as an attempt to divide Liberals in the middle of a competitive leadership race.
Chong told reporters in Ottawa at the time that “recognizing Quebecers as a nation, even inside a united Canada, implies the recognition of ethnicity, and I cannot support that.
"I do not believe in an ethnic nationalism. I believe in a civic nationalism."
Michael Chong walks past provincial flags upon his arrival for a news conference in Ottawa on Nov. 27, 2006 announcing his resignation from cabinet. (Photo: Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
Chong says his decision was about reflecting how Canadians share something “pretty special”: common rights and responsibilities.
“I think that whole common bond is based on that common citizenship. And the reason why I didn’t support the motion is because I felt it ran contrary to that idea of Canada.”
But he says that he has no interest in reopening the issue, calling it an “old debate from over 10 years ago.”
Those were the same words Chong used last July after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that yes, Quebec is a nation. It was in response to sovereignists irked by Trudeau’s Canada Day message.
Chong said at the time that his view on the matter had not changed.
"I don't stick my finger in the wind to figure out which way the wind is blowing and to figure out my principles, which is what the prime minister — who once opposed this motion — is appearing to do," Chong said last summer.
Michael Chong has three young sons. (Photo: Michael Chong)
He called HuffPost back shortly after that interview to reiterate that he wasn’t going to reopen old wounds on the matter.
Quitting on Harper made him an outsider for two years or so, Chong concedes, but he has had good relations with his fellow Tory MPs. And he has no regrets, despite there being no telling how much higher up the food chain he might have climbed during a near-decade of Tory governance.
“The primary reason why you go to Ottawa is not to get into cabinet. The primary reason you go to Ottawa is to be a member of Parliament, to represent a particular group of Canadians and your constituency on Parliament Hill.”
The move cemented his reputation as a maverick and freed him to push to lessen the power of party leaders, including the prime minister. The very notion of responsible government, Chong says, relies on an executive that is accountable to the legislature.
“Over the years, I became more and more convinced that we needed to reform the system,” Chong says.
Michael Chong addresses a press conference in Ottawa on Dec. 3, 2013. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
“If we don’t do that, then we risk alienating millions of Canadians who feel that their voices aren’t being heard in their political system. We risk the same kind of populist uprisings that we’ve seen in places around the world.”
Chong introduced the so-called Reform Act in late 2013 and did yeoman’s work to see it passed into law in 2015, albeit a watered-down version. The law gives MPs the right to vote at the start of a parliamentary session to determine if they want to be able to trigger a leadership review and have the ultimate say over expelling or re-admitting members of caucus.
The most contentious part of the Reform Act — which would have stripped leaders of their veto over who can run as candidates — was ultimately dropped.
Chong says one of the main reasons he’s in the race is to fight for those abandoned pieces of the bill and to strengthen the voice of grassroots party members.
But he denies that the Reform Act was about Harper. In fact, accusations that Trudeau played favourites in recent byelections — most notably in Markham-Thornhill where his former aide Mary Ng was elected weeks later — is further proof for Chong of how leaders can meddle.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper sits with ex-Tory MP Michael Wallace and Michael Chong MP at a meeting in Toronto on Jan. 20, 2010. (Photo: Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
“As I said when Mr. Harper was prime minister, this isn’t a problem created by any one prime minister or any one party,” he says. “This has been a problem decades in the making and it needs to be fixed.”
The server makes his way to Chong as he chomps on bites of salad.
“Did I give you a Philly cheesesteak instead of a burger?” the man asks.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Chong says with a smile. The sandwich is already well on its way to gone.
Democratic reform is a pillar of Chong’s campaign. He’s calling for party memberships to be free, something he believes would make institutions that benefit from tax credits and subsidies much more accountable.
“Right now, political parties operate largely as private clubs, as they did in the 19th century.”
Chong wants Canadians to have the option of registering support for one federal party each year by checking a box on their income tax form. Those party lists would form the basis of future leadership contests and nomination races.
His proposal became further food for thought after allegations of vote-buying were bandied about between former rivals Maxime Bernier and Kevin O’Leary, something Chong says bubbles up in every hotly contested battle.
“We desperately need to reform political parties in Canada. Going to free memberships and public registration of party membership eliminates all the voter fraud because you no longer have the game of people improperly paying for party memberships," he says.
It’s not such a novel idea. Conservatives pledged in their 2004 election platform to create a “voluntary voter registration for Canadians to register their party affiliation.”
Michael Chong arrives at the Conservative leadership candidates' bilingual debate in Moncton on Dec. 6, 2016. (Photo: Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
Yet Chong is proposing something else that sharply deviates from Conservative party doctrine — a carbon tax. Or, as he is careful to describe it each time, a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
Chong has sparked jeers at leadership events with the mere mention of the T-word, including at a debate in Edmonton where he compared the fight to price carbon emissions to the free trade battles of the 1980s. Tories used to oppose free trade, Chong reminded the crowd, but former prime minister Brian Mulroney did what was needed.
“Listen to this… listen to this,” he said to those booing his signature environmental policy. “It is the cheapest way to reduce emissions. Any other approach leads to bigger government, more government bureaucracy, more green programs, more green subsidies and more green regulations.”
Not even the dangling carrot of “one of the largest income tax cuts in Canadian history” could calm the more hostile hecklers that night.
Chong maintains his plan is the most conservative way to reduce emissions because it shrinks the size of government and harnesses the power of the free markets. And he does not think any Tory leader can beat Trudeau without a credible plan to tackle climate change. Full stop.
Chong would leave in place the Trudeau government’s plan for a pan-Canadian carbon price of $10 per tonne in 2018, rising by $10 each year. However, he’d phase in his own plan in 2021, raising the annual price by $10 until a $130-per-tonne price is reached by 2030. (Liberals aim to raise the costs by $10 each year until it hits $50 per tonne in 2022).
While the Liberal plan calls on provinces and territories to keep revenues from a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program, Chong is pledging to use those funds to slash income taxes by $18 billion in his first year as prime minister.
Chong wants to reduce the number of income tax rates from five to two by 2020, keeping only the rates of 15 and 29 per cent. That would mean a tax break of four percentage points for Canada’s wealthiest, who are currently taxed at 33 per cent.
Michael Chong walks with his wife Carrie and sons Cameron (left), Alistair and William (right) to a news conference in Ottawa announcing his leadership bid. (Photo: The Canadian Press)
Chong understands why some feel rich Canadians ought to pay more, but believes the changes brought in by the Liberals to increase taxes on upper income earners are hurting job creation.
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” he offers.
Chong is also proposing to slash corporate tax rates by $1.9 billion a year.
It all feels pretty conservative. So, why are some hell-bent to paint Chong as a secret Liberal?
He says it’s a question that confounds him, especially because his environmental policy is about making good on a Conservative pledge.
He notes that the Liberal government’s current promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 was first made by Harper in 2015. He is convinced a carbon tax is the only way to achieve that goal.
“This is a Conservative commitment and a commitment that we, as Conservatives, should honour and uphold.”
Michael Chong is the only Tory leadership hopeful who lives on a farm. (Photo: Michael Chong)
Asked if he thinks most Tories see climate change as a threat, Chong says that while the majority do, it is “certainly not unanimous.” He points to fellow leadership candidate Brad Trost, who has clearly staked out his place as the skeptic in the race.
Chong says he appreciates that Trost has been “honest and upfront” about where he stands. In an earlier interview, Trost touted Chong as someone who is a “compass” rather than a “weathervane.”
“The rest of the candidates in the race are saying two things that are contradictory,” Chong says, suggesting they are hammering his policy mostly because it’s an easy rhetorical device.
“They’re saying, on one hand, ‘We need to reduce emissions.’ On the other hand, they don’t have a credible plan to do that.”
Chong can rhyme off a host of other big- and small-C conservatives who have gotten behind carbon pricing, including Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown, who “understands the path to power,” and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning.
Chong family in Wellington County. (Photo: Michael Chong)
And Chong firmly rejects that the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House means that he needs to pump the brakes. Quite the opposite, in fact.
With Trump itching to make deep income and corporate tax cuts, Canada will need to answer to stay competitive.
“But unlike the Americans, we need a source of funds. We can’t borrow to pay for tax cuts, we’re not a reserve currency,” he says. “So, my plan does exactly that. It has a source to pay for it.”
Chong offers something else interesting when asked if he’s tired of people calling him a Liberal.
“What I’ve been clear about throughout this race is that I’m inclusive,” he says. “I believe everybody should be included in our party, and I want to build a much bigger, inclusive Conservative party. So, I won’t tolerate anyone playing to anti-immigrant sentiment.”
Kellie Leitch is flanked by Kevin O'Leary and Michael Chong at a debate in Halifax on Feb. 4, 2017. (Photo: Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
Chong has publicly accused Leitch of “dog-whistle politics” because of her controversial plan to screen immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.” In his closing statement at a debate in Moncton last December, he targeted how Leitch’s “race-baiting” campaign had been endorsed by a white supremacist group.
And then came the massacre at a Quebec City mosque in January, where six men were gunned down while praying. Chong released a statement that pulled no punches, calling it a direct result of “demagogues and wannabe demagogues playing to fears and prejudices."
“That’s what political leadership is all about,” Chong says, drinking water to handle a pesky cough. “When 25 people were shot in a place of worship in this country — six of whom died — it is incumbent on all leaders to denounce this kind of hate and this kind of prejudice.”
Chong says he is very concerned Tories could be seen as anti-Muslim. In another frank moment, he says the barbaric cultural practices tip line Tories proposed in 2015 — championed by Leitch and leadership hopeful Chris Alexander — was a “clear attempt” to play to anti-Muslim sentiment.
“We will not win if we become the anti-immigrant party. Canada is not the United States and the Conservative party is not the Republican party,” he says.
“But more importantly, it’s not a question of whether it’s going to work. It’s wrong.”
Leitch is not the only rival Chong has tried to publicly shame.
He also called out Alexander for “egging on” protesters at an Edmonton rally, who chanted for Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to be locked up. Faith Goldy, a commentator with Rebel Media, which organized the event, responded with a video calling Chong a “cuckservative” — a term favoured by the alt-right, derived from the word “cuckold,” meant to describe conservatives who sell out their own.
At a debate in February, he accused O’Leary of trying to make himself look like “Rambo” by posting a video of himself firing a machine gun at a Miami range on the very day a memorial was held for victims of the Quebec City attack.
“This is not the judgment of someone who should be leader of the Conservative party or prime minister of Canada,” Chong said at the time.
In a contest that will be decided by a ranked ballot — where being the second choice of party members will count greatly — Chong hasn’t been afraid to rock the boat.
This mosque attack is no accident: It's a direct result of demagogues and wannabe demagogues playing to fears and prejudices 1/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
Politicians talking division, not unity, help normalize hate. Not acceptable, enough is enough, stop 2/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
And yes, I'm angry. This is Canada. This was an attack on real Canadian values enshrined in the Charter: religious freedom 3/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
“People want to vote for clearly defined choices. If you are pablum, and trying to be everything for everyone, you’re not going to win,” he says.
He’s on his feet now.
“I’ve just got to blow my nose for a second. I’ll get out of your face so I don’t…”
Chong takes a few steps back and lets loose with three strong spurts. After a pause, he adds a fourth for good measure.
It’s a reminder that there have been lighter moments during his leadership run, too, such as when Chong’s photo surfaced as part of an ad touting the cleanliness of a public restroom in Guatemala.
And there was that strange, spiked column from a writer at The Globe and Mail who said she once tried to breastfeed one of Chong’s sons — even though she wasn’t lactating or pregnant.
Having a small stroke. @MichaelChongMP, your stock photo is reassuring public washrooms users in Guatemala pic.twitter.com/AAcFeIz5cC — Bailey Greenspon (@baileygreenspon) March 16, 2017
“This incident happened over 10 years ago. It was odd, no doubt, but not of any real consequence,” Chong said in a statement at the time that made clear he’d rather discuss other things.
If he doesn’t win, Chong says he will have no trouble running again. “And here’s why. As an MP, I don’t report to the leader. The leader works for me.”
He says he’d serve in cabinet again, if asked. “But if I have a strong disagreement with the prime minister on a particular issue, my record demonstrates I’m willing to stand up and voice that disagreement.”
If there’s another issue beyond the carbon tax that firmly separates Chong from the pack it might be his vote (days after this interview) on a non-binding motion from a Liberal backbencher that spurred unexpected controversy.
Motion 103, tabled by Iqra Khalid, called on the House of Commons to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism. Though largely symbolic, it asked the heritage committee to study ways to tackle the scourge.
"We are the party that traditionally has been the party of minorities. The party that has stood up for the underdog, that has stood up for the dispossessed, that has stood up for the downtrodden."
Chong was the only Conservative leadership hopeful and one of just two Tory MPs to back M-103. The motion was interpreted by some as an attempt to divide Tories in the middle of a competitive leadership race.
Many of Chong’s rivals fell over themselves to amplify their opposition to the motion, primarily over concerns it could restrict free speech or grant special treatment to Muslims.
Misinformation about M-103 littered right-wing blogs in Canada and the U.S., with some even suggesting it was the first step to Shariah law.
The motion was featured prominently in leadership fundraising pitches. Andrew Scheer released a 19-second video to Facebook of him rising from his seat to vote against it.
When asked why he supports M-103, Chong replies, simply: “I’m a Conservative.
Michael Chong rises during question period in the House of Commons on Feb. 4, 2016. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
“When I say I believe in individual liberty, I believe in individual liberty. I believe in freedom of religion, in freedom of expression, in freedom of conscience,” he says. “You want to talk about fundamental Canadian values? Those are fundamental Canadian values.”
It’s the same reason Chong voted to support the Liberals’ transgender rights legislation. He backed a similar NDP bill in the last Parliament. Conservatives, he says, have a long tradition of defending individual rights.
“We are the party that traditionally has been the party of minorities. The party that has stood up for the underdog, that has stood up for the dispossessed, that has stood up for the downtrodden,” he says, listing how the first Chinese-Canadian MP, the first black Canadian MP, and Canada’s first female cabinet minister were all Tories.
It’s as if he’s worried those pieces of history are being forgotten, too.
'Their project is not yet finished'
In his maiden speech to the House, nearly 13 years ago, Chong spoke with reverence of a country with many cultures but “one Canadian identity, fragile as it sometimes may be.”
He paid tribute to those who, in “this vast and inchoate land,” dared blaze a path.
“Like many new Canadians who come today and those who came before, my late mother and father came to this country with nothing but dreams and hopes,” he told the House in 2004.
“We owe much to these pioneers who came before and began to build this country. Their project is not yet finished and we must carry on.”
With a file from The Canadian Press
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Also on HuffPostOf all the things I've written about in the last 30 years, the topic of male rape in the military always got the biggest response -- from veterans telling me I was a crazy bitch who was full of shit, who hated the military so much that I would fabricate a story. That those things, if they happened at all, were so rare, it was hardly worth mentioning and I should be ashamed of myself for besmirching the good name of the service and implying such things were common. (My favorite reader response was, "Well, if it happens at all, it's only the Navy." It's not.)
I knew better; I had a friend who was a VA shrink, who told me the problem was large enough that VA hospitals had special units to deal with it. But no matter what I did or how carefully I documented it, people who served in the military simply refused to believe it. And the Pentagon went out of their way to keep it quiet. After all, how do you sell the idea of the warrior culture to men when oh, by the way, you might get gang raped -- by the people on your side?
That's why this Baltimore Sun "Breaking The Silence" series is so important. I stumbled across it last night, and it deserves a much larger audience. Please share, because you don't know who might be keeping this kind of secret:
Brian Lewis figures he could have dealt with the rape.
It's the Navy's response to the attack that still haunts the Baltimore native.
Lewis, the son of a Defense Department civilian who commanded his JROTC battalion in high school, sailed through three years in the Navy and three months aboard the submarine tender USS Frank Cable.
Then, one night on shore in Guam, he was taken out to dinner by a higher-ranking shipmate, a man who had a wife and children. After the meal, he says, his dinner partner pulled out a knife, threatened his life, and sodomized him.
A friend reported the attack, and Lewis was visited by a senior officer on the Cable. He says the officer ordered him not to cooperate with Navy investigators.
↓ Story continues below ↓
Lewis says he did as he was told. The investigation stopped dead. There was no court-martial. His attacker was never punished.
That outcome is typical for male victims of military sexual assault, a Baltimore Sun analysis of hundreds of cases found.
The outrage over sexual assault in the military has focused largely on female service members, and with reason: A woman in uniform |
Can’t be converted to Rank-1 so to represent this type in Haskell, you would need to turn on Rank-2 or Rank-N compiler extension.
Classical Hindley-Milner type system allows Rank 1 types. This is because of the fact that in an arbitrary rank system, type inference is undecidable, i.e. it is impossible to infer types of some well typed expressions without some type annotations. Also, arbitrary rank type inference is harder to implement.
For now, we’ll implement Rank-1 types where the forall quantifier can appear only on certain places.
Let expressions
To ease implementation, we won’t allow function arguments to have polymorphic types. We’ll add another type of binding which allows polymorphic types to be assigned to variables. These are let bindings. This type of polymorphism restricted to let bindings is also known as “let-polymorphism”.
A simple let expression can be
let x = 3 in plus(x)(1)
Here, variable x is being bound to the value 3 in the body (plus(x)(1)) of the let. Don’t confuse this with let/var statements in other languages. This is an expression which evaluates its body. This expression will return 4 when evaluated. In statement oriented languages, let statements don’t have a body. They just bind a variable to an expression’s value from the next statement to the rest of the block.
So, let expressions will be used to assign polymorphic types to variables. For example, our identity function can be defined and used as
let id = ((x) => x) in id(1)
The id binding will be visible in the body of the let.
Type checking let bindings
Let’s go through the process of type checking this snippet to informally to get an intuition for the process.
let id = ((x) => x) in id(1)
We start with the let declaration. We start by taking the RHS of the assignment ((x) => x) and calling infer on it. As we know from the previous part, the inferred type of the RHS would be (T0 -> T0) where T0 is a newly generated type variable.
This will take us back to the call to infer for the let expression. We have the type of the RHS of the let binding (T0 -> T0) and our environment is empty.
Now, we can see intuitively that (T0 -> T0) should be polymorphic. So we can generalise it to a polymorphic type (forall T0. T0 -> T0).
Notice that we can’t just quantify over all the type variables. If a variable occurs in free the environment, that means it could be bound outside the scope of the current let binding. Occurring free means not bound by a quantifier. For example, A is free in the type (A -> A), but it’s not free in (forall A. A -> A).
So we have to check the environment for free occurrences of the type variables in the type we’re generalising. If they don’t have free occurrences in the environment, we can quantify over them. In this case, the environment was empty so, we can generalise over T0.
So, back to the inference. Now, we have found the most general type for the RHS of the let, we can add a binding to the environment (id: forall T0. T0 -> T0).
Now, we can infer the type of the let expression’s body (id(1)). We start by trying to infer the type of variable “id”. We look it up in the environment. We find (forall T0. T0 -> T0). Now, infer function needs to return a regular type. We have a polymorphic type. So we need to “instantiate” the polymorphic type by removing the quantifier. We can do this by taking the quantifier’s name, generating a new type variable for it and replacing its instances in the quantified type with the new generated type variable. So, this would give us (T1 -> T1). We still don’t know what T1 actually is. We created a new type variable because once we infer the actual type of T0 (Int in this case), we don’t want T0 to be Int right? Otherwise, other calls to id will require their argument to be of type Int. So we generate a new variable. Anyway, call to infer on the variable id returns (T1 -> T1). Now, we infer the type of the argument which will give us Int along with the substitution (T1: Int) as usual. So, the type of (id(1)) will be Int, and the type of the entire let expression will be the same.
That was a lot of hand waving, so lets look at the actual code.
The code
First, we add a new type for let expressions.
A let node has a name, RHS expression, which is bound to the name, and a body.
Next, we define the type for Forall quantified types.
It can quantify over multiple type variables (quantifiers).
Note that we don’t extend our Type union to include the Forall type. This is because we want to restrict the places where a forall can occur. It shouldn’t be allowed at all places where a Type can occur.
The environment can now contain types as well as Forall. So we update the Env type to reflect that.
We need to add a function to apply a substitution to a Forall type.
As you can see, we don’t replace the types that are quantified over by the forall, because the forall bindings “shadow” the previous bindings with the same name. This is similar to how function bindings work. A the function parameter variable hides variables with the same name from outer scopes. So we clone the given substitution and delete the quantified names from it, then apply the substitution to the type of the forall. Note the use of object spread syntax here. { …subst } is equivalent to writing Object.assign({}, subst).
We need to change the signature of our addToContext function to accept Forall along with Type.
Next, we need to add some functions for getting free type variables from different types. Remember free vars are the type variables that aren’t bound by a quantifier. So, for Forall types, free variables are the free variables of its body minus the quantifiers. Here are those functions.
Instantiation
We need a function to instantiate Forall types. As I said earlier, it involves generating new type variables for each quantified variable and substituting them in the body of forall and returning it.
Inference for vars
Now, since our environment can contain forall as well as regular types, we need to update our inference for variable expressions. If the variable name is bound to a type, then it is the same as before, however, if its a Forall, we need to instantiate it and then return it.
Note that I’ve separated out a new function inferVar that handles inference for vars from the main infer function. The same for other node types. The switch case in infer just matches over the node type and calls the appropriate specific infer function (inferVar, inferCall, etc). Just to make the code a little bit cleaner.
Generalisation
Let bindings can bind polymorphic values so we can generalise the RHS type of the let binding to a forall type.
Here’s the generalize function
It takes the free vars in the given type and puts them to the left hand side of a forall. Note that we first check if the type variable is not free in the environment. We can’t generalize free vars in the environment because they may be bound to specific types later.
Infering Let expressions
Now we move on to inference for let expressions.
So we infer the RHS of let, generalize the type and add the generalized type to the context environment. Then infer the type of the let body under the new environment. Then we return the body’s inferred type and the composed substitutions from previous steps.
Now, we can check our inference for polymorphic types.
Here are a few helper functions.
And here are some tests.
Conclusion
In this part, we added a form polymorphism (let-polymorphism) to our language. This makes our type system a lot more expressive. Again, play around with it. Here’s a very simple exercise. Add a `throw` function to the initial environment. It can take one parameter of any type and returns a value that can be used in any expression regardless of what type of expression is expected there. Think of the type of throw. Hint: It’s polymorphic obviously.
In the next part, we’ll continue our journey further and add records to our language. They will allow us to represent key value pairs in a concise manner. They will be statically typed of course. We will also have a discussion about nominal and structural typing.
That’s all for now folks. Have a nice day.Set 1
Iko Iko, Jack Straw, Sugaree, Minglewood Blues, Althea, My Brother Esau, When Push Comes To Shove, Cassidy, China Cat Sunflower-> I Know You Rider, Looks Like Rain, Terrapin Station-> Drums-> Jam-> I Need A Miracle-> Black Peter-> Around & Around-> One More Saturday Night
Set 2
Tangled Up In Blue, I'll Be Your Baby Tonight*, Man Of Peace, Judas Priest, John Brown, Simple Twist Of Fate, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Memphis Blues, Chimes Of Freedom, Queen Jane Approximately, Gotta Serve Somebody, Joey, All Along The Watchtower, E: Touch Of Gray
set 2 with Bob Dylan; *w/Garcia On Pedal Steel: Firsts: Tangled Up In Blue, Judas Priest, Simple Twist Of Fate, Gotta Serve Somebody.
Notes:
-- Set 1 is seamless
-- Set 2 with Bob Dylan
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Reviewer: kbmill - - August 29, 2017
Subject: bread crumb I sang a little while and then moved on. - August 29, 2017bread crumb
Reviewer: Solemnly Stated - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 11, 2017
Subject: My First Show Great show! It was so hot that day, over 100 degrees on the field. I was 17 that summer and had run away from home, so since I was on my own I went to JFK the night before. What an adventure: so many freaks, so much drugs. The next day I met up with my friends and ran into a lot of kids from school, everyone was dropping acid and getting high. By showtime I was a mess. I remember a puddle an inch deep of whoknowswhat in the dilapidated old bathrooms. Some girl was blowing dudes in the stall. Weird scene. When I got down on the floor it was crazy hot and I remember a guy chatting me up and asking what I thought the first song would be. How the hell should I know, I thought. I didn't know about Bob and Jerry alternating openers and which songs were reliable first set songs, etc. I remember rolling a joint on my leg and it was so humid the weed stick to my fingers and pants (i was very high). When Aiko started me and my buddy Dave Hand tried to move up through the dancers but it was too hard nAvigating through a sea of people. We retreated to the bleachers which were fiberglass and made your butt itch. There were a few teenage black kids behind us and right before on of them literally fell over off his seat one of the kids said, "Man, even the music gets you high." Great set list. - August 11, 2017My First Show
Reviewer: robnbeth4 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 26, 2017
Subject: Thanks Patty for bringing me to the Dead. My first Dead show and i have my friend Patty Gallagher to thank for a lifetime of smiles.The show was amazing a very hot day and a hot show. I remember they had water showers on the sides of the field to keep cool. I almost past out from the heat thanks to 2 girls who gave me a sip of soda to refresh me. Just a really fun show Thanks Patty. - February 26, 2017Thanks Patty for bringing me to the Dead.
Reviewer: miok23 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 19, 2016
Subject: excellent I followed a rabbit hole and found MercurialWombat review of LLR. I consider myself an expert on LLR versions. The man is correct this is a stellar version. 12-11-92 is still my favorite and 12-1-79 will always hold a special spot in my heart because it was the first bootleg i had with that song on it. I played it over and over and over......great show, especially the GD part. I love bob d but this was not his best work....peace - May 19, 2016excellent
Reviewer: MercurialWombat - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 17, 2015
Subject: Looks Like Rain This version of LLR is absolutely stellar. It appears to be totally overlooked unfortunately, too. I haven't found one single thing written about it online. Truly a hidden gem!!!
Other big stand-outs are Jack Straw, My Brother Esau, Cassidy and Tangled Up In Blue...but I'm telling you....this Looks Like Rain is one of the greatest live performances I've heard by Any band. Do yourself a favor and give it a listen! <3 - June 17, 2015Looks Like Rain
Reviewer: kee-zee - favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 10, 2014
Subject: Philthy Nice sound here..I did a good chunck of this summer tour and had fun..but~ Just not a big fan of big stadium shows and Dylan live..I love the music he wrote but I'll end it there..this show was probably my favorite of the East Coast stadium shows but had way more fun in Roanoke with just the Grateful Dead~!!!! Philly is home and the Philly Heads always show their love in the city of brotherly shove~So Please~GIVE IT A WHIRL~Forever Grateful>Forever Dead~!! LIFER - July 10, 2014PhilthyAnd if you think I'm bullshitting you, then go ahead and explain why this week's Steelers "throwback" stunt had them dressing up like convicts.
Eventually, with the return of civilization brought by a combination of economic improvement and strong law enforcement (known to the locals as "the shooterers"), the city returned to normalcy. However, the team name pays tribute to a former era of hard times and survival whose lessons the city hopes never to forget.
7 Why Is a Safety Both a Guy and a Play?
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Pool safety.
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If you haven't watched football before, you're probably only familiar with "safety" as an abstract concept of freedom from danger, or maybe a kind of dance. However, football gives it two totally new and confusing meanings.
A safety is a kind of defensive player who goes all the way back and tries to stop receivers from catching the ball. I guess they are called safeties because they are the last line of defense, and once you get past them, there is nobody to stop you. One of the safeties is called a strong safety (because he is strong) and one of them is called a free safety (because he's not a conformist). You could probably do a good buddy movie with two safeties.
I'm not married to the title.
Unfortunately for the new football viewer, a safety is also a kind of play. When the offensive team is so far back that the ball carrier gets taken down in his own end zone, the defensive team gets two points for humiliating them in such a manner. Theoretically, a safety could cause a safety, which is really really confusing.
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Why are these terms so confusing? I'm pretty sure it's part of the NFL's master plan to keep regular people from thinking that football is easy to understand, because otherwise you will start complaining more, and they think you already complain enough. If you think it is a mysterious, complex thing that you can't possibly grasp the ins and outs of, then the commentators will keep their jobs and the teams will supposedly get less complaints.
That probably sounds crazy, but keep in mind that the NFL kept the All-22 footage (a high-up camera angle of every game that shows what every player on the field is doing) under wraps for so many years specifically because they didn't want fans to find more stuff to criticize coaches about. Well, it's public as of this year, so take a look and complain your heart out. See if you can find any safeties causing safeties.Feminists everywhere should be screaming, “Hooray for sex dolls!” Three waves of feminism later, everything you ladies, and selected gentleman worked hard for has arrived.
All you Baby Boomers and Baby Busters told yourselves you would be the ones that would change the world. You were going to rip that G.I. Joe action figure from your son’s hands and replace it with a Barbie…wait that’s too objectifying. How about a Bratz? Nope they look like whores. Hell I don’t know, some kind of doll. But sadly, you found out that unless everyone was paralleling your actions, you wouldn’t be able to get your son’s dirty fingers around that busty blonde Barbie — unless no one was looking.
But maybe your efforts weren’t wasted after all. Turns out these days, after puberty has past and bank accounts have filled, more and more men are beginning to play with dolls, $8,000 sex dolls that is, in the privacy of their own homes. And here are some reasons third wave feminists, just might find this techno-sexual revolution empowering.
Let’s start with the pornography. First you may need a quick background in feminism. Second wave feminists said pornography led to violence. Third wave and sex-positive feminists had the “balls” to say, hey second wavers, not all porn is rape. Some porn is just sex! Good old fashioned sex. Hell, half of it is almost missionary anyways. Don’t act like you haven’t flicked the bean, second wavers. So in this sense, when a man is willing to pay eight large for even a speck of what a woman offers, take it as a compliment.
I’ll put it this way: remember the guitar you wanted one Christmas? You wanted to make beautiful music. So you learned some chords and strummed some rhythms, but when you put on Clapton you couldn’t top it. Ultimately, it made you appreciate his work that much more. Ladies, you’re like a beautiful instrument. Some men might want a sex doll — hell a few might even fall in love with them — but my guess is after awhile, they’re going to learn that these dolls don’t have emotions and intelligence, or anything else we value as human, so what’s the worry? See it as a practice for men, warming up for the big show: You!
And let’s not be hypocrites ladies — that ten inches of plastic you have in your sock drawer hasn’t stopped you from going on any dates, has it? The way I see it, the sex doll is just the male response to the dildo. A little revenge for the times you were too tired from the plastic stallion.
As for the idea of objectification, to second wave feminists it could be said that at least the entire body is presented and not just select parts, which is certainly not honoring women. It’s also more than can be said for female toys. You know men are more than just inches of vibrating plastic, right? And to third wave feminists who embrace objectification and consumerism — well, enough said.
Don’t forget that sex dolls are equal opportunity; meaning, there are sex dolls for women too. And in all fairness, I would prefer women used the rubber stud over the dildo, so we’re not objectified too. Feministly thinking, male sex dolls may just be the most empowering thing for feminism since it eliminates the need to pleasure a man, and instead a woman can focus on her needs, and hers alone.
So men grab your dolls, women grab your six-foot “action figure,” and let’s agree that this techno-sexual revolution could be an empowering step in the right direction. It really isn’t too far off the path we were already on; I mean don’t all human relationships eventually lead to lifeless robotic sex anyways?Throughout history, Cannabis sativa has been exploited by humanity. Hemp seed oil is rich in omega 6, an essential fatty acid, and its fibre is used in the production of fabrics. Marijuana is known for its mind-altering properties and has been used medicinally for over 2700 years. The changes to the genome that led to drug-producing plants is a mystery of cannabis evolution, but one that has now been solved, thanks to an article published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology.
A team of researchers led by Drs Jon Page and Tim Hughes from Canada sequenced DNA from the potent Purple Kush (PK) marijuana strain, which is widely used for medicinal purposes. The PK genome and transcriptome (genes that are switched on) were then compared to those of 'Finola' hemp, and scanned for differences which might explain why marijuana produces tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA), the active ingredient of cannabis, while hemp strains lack THCA but contain the non-psychoactive cannabinoid, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA).
The transcriptome held the clues to solving this genomic puzzle. Dr Page explained, "The transcriptome analysis showed that the THCA synthase gene, an essential enzyme in THCA production, is turned on in marijuana, but switched off in hemp." Dr Hughes continued, "Detailed analysis of the two genomes suggests that domestication, cultivation, and breeding of marijuana strains has caused the loss of the enzyme (CBDA synthase) which would otherwise compete for the metabolites used as starting material in THCA production."
Dr Page added, "Plants continue to be a major source of medicines, both as herbal drugs and as pharmaceutical compounds. Although more than twenty plant genomes have been published, ranging from major food crops such as rice and corn, to laboratory models like Arabidopsis, this is the first genome of a medicinal plant. Decoding the cannabis genome will help answer basic questions about the biology of Cannabis sativa and further the development of its myriad applications including strains for pharmaceutical production, and hemp plants with improved productivity and fatty acid profiles."
###
Notes to Editors
1. The draft genome and transcriptome of Cannabis sativa
Harm van Bakel, Jake M Stout, Atina G Cote, Carling Tallon, Andrew G Sharpe, Timothy R Hughes and Jonathan E Page
Genome Biology (in press)
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication.
2. Genome Biology is an Open Access, peer reviewed journal that publishes research articles, new methods and software tools, in addition to reviews and opinions, from the full spectrum of biology, including molecular, cellular, organism or population biology studied from a genomic perspective, as well as sequence analysis, bioinformatics, proteomics, comparative biology and evolution.One day, 20 messages appeared in my inbox: notes from Alan’s friends, who had seen my piece last spring and were writing to inform me of “his passing.” There were links to Alan’s Facebook page and to a guest book on Legacy.com. There I found my counterpart passionately praised, in dozens — hundreds — of posts as “the last true society gentleman,” “the Grand Patriarch of New York City balls,” “the Oscar Wilde of our time.”
“Alan,” someone wrote, “your Waltz will be danced forever in the lives of all those you have touched with the love of White Gloves and White Ties. Rest in peace, dear friend, and save a dance.”
At last, there was only one unopened message in my queue. Saddened, I clicked it. This is what it said:
Dear Mr. Feuer,
Ever since reading your article about the other Alan Feuer, I have thought about writing to you. I had no desire to disrupt his life while he was alive, but since he has passed away, I am wondering if you would be interested in learning the truth about his background.
The writer, I was shocked to find, was the other Alan’s stepniece; she told me she had known him since she was 5. Her letter laid out the family’s relationships — I knew that Alan was estranged — and then concluded on a melancholy note.
While the adult life he described to you was certainly true, his background was far from the one he claimed. If you would be interested in further information about this sad and, I think, somewhat troubled man, please feel free to contact me.
Needless to say, I did.
JUST north of the Bronx, in the suburb of Mount Vernon, a brick row house sits on a side street, indistinguishably fastened to its neighbors. It is plain in every way — from the single-car garage to the old stone staircase leading to its door. A Metro-North train yard hulks two blocks away.
Alan Z. Feuer moved here in 1952, when he was 11, possibly from Brooklyn — the documentary evidence is thin — with his twin, Stephan, and his parents, Emma and Nelson. Emma Feuer was a secretary at Mount Vernon City Hall. Nelson Feuer had a law degree, but according to the family, his main source of income was a liquor store he owned. He died in 1960, when Alan was 18.
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Nelson’s father, Samuel, had, in fact, come from Austria, as Alan claimed, although clearly not as a blueblood: the 1910 census lists his address as a tenement apartment at 88 Sheriff Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His occupation was recorded as “saloonkeeper.” Though Samuel’s situation gradually improved — 20 years later, he was a “realtor” and owned a house in Brooklyn worth $20,000, not a trivial sum — he did not forget his roots. When asked by the 1930 census what language he spoke before arriving in this country, Samuel said: “Yiddish.”
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I never asked Alan if he was Jewish; frankly, it didn’t occur to me to ask. Though he never — and I’ve thought about this since — explicitly denied being Jewish, he did communicate a kind of Episcopalian aura through some unspoken alchemy of his social ties, old-world manners and Anglophilic accent.
“Let’s put it this way,” said Neil Teicher, Alan’s stepbrother, whose father married Alan’s mother in 1964. “I was very bemused to see his memorial service was at the Church of the Incarnation on Madison Avenue.”
In 1963, Alan graduated from Ohio University, and a few years later, during the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the Air Force. He was stationed in England, and when he returned, in 1968, he was — to his family’s astonishment — transformed.
“He had turned into a kind of English fop,” Mr. Teicher said. “He had that accent, and was wearing an ascot and carrying a walking stick.”
These affectations were apparently not only for public consumption; Alan kept them up at family dinners in Mount Vernon. In 1969, Mr. Teicher briefly moved to England, and Alan went to visit. There he was, in Swinging London, with his canes, cravats and long, skinny filters for his cigarettes. “He was the parody of a British aristocrat,” Mr. Teicher said, “but among real British people.”
All I could think of upon hearing this was that vibrating moment when the young Jay Gatz, not yet Gatsby, sees his future arrive in the guise of a yacht dropping anchor on Lake Superior. Alan, too, must have had a moment, one in which my second self, catching sight of his own second self, let go of Mount Vernon and grabbed the hand of the beckoning Edwardian.
I never found that moment. One of Alan’s Facebook friends, an Englishwoman, posted that she remembered him fondly in England during Vietnam, but didn’t respond to my many attempts to reach her. Because I was not his relative, the Air Force wouldn’t tell me at which English base Alan served. His real family didn’t know.
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A society friend, Richard Rabbito, wondered whether it was truly unhappiness that had caused the metamorphosis, as the stepniece suggested. “Alan had a culturally rich perspective just waiting to be harvested,” Mr. Rabbito said. “I don’t like the phrase ‘reinvent yourself.’ I think what really happened is that when Alan got to England, whatever he found there allowed him to discover who he already was.”
Mr. Rabbito, a private-equity consultant with a Continental background, met Alan in 1974, through a mutual friend at the English Speaking Union in New York. Alan was at that point working at S. Wyler, an East Side dealer in antique English silver. In 1975, Mr. Rabbito sponsored Alan at his first society ball, the Quadrille Ball. “He took to it like a butterfly leaving the cocoon,” Mr. Rabbito recalled. “It was his stage, his Broadway. It was like he had found his North Star — his bliss.”
Soon, there were invitations to the Russian Nobility Ball and the Viennese Opera Ball, so many that Alan made a list of them with the image of a couple dancing on its cover, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He enmeshed himself in the life of these events as a planner and a mentor to the young. “Patiently and lovingly, Alan guided generations of young Quadrille Ball dancers not only in the art of the quadrille dance,” its organizers wrote in a tribute, “but also in civility and etiquette, thereby helping them to appreciate the timeless values for which he stood.”
When I met Alan, this was his occupation: teaching protocol, organizing table cards, finding deep pockets for charity affairs. It was unpaid work, and I wondered how he managed. His apartment, on 65th Street near Second Avenue, could not have cost him much: it was a dark cave filled with knickknacks. Mr. Rabbito, repeating what I heard from many friends, said, “Alan always told us he had a modest inheritance.”
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I asked him if he had ever doubted Alan’s story. “We knew or we suspected — or some of us did,” he said. “But we didn’t care.”
He continued, misquoting Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and die with their song still inside them. Well, Alan’s song came out.”
Still, I had to wonder if his “inheritance” was the $1,000 that Mr. Teicher said Alan got each month from his mother. Alan worked only occasionally. Beyond S. Wyler, he held jobs at an antiquarian bookstore and a couple of brokerage firms, but none panned out.
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“Over the years,” his stepniece, Merrie Lipton, told me in a follow-up note, “he became more contemptuous of his mother, although I am sure on some level he loved her. When he told you, ‘Mother lived too long,’ he undoubtedly meant that, though certainly not because she had gone through some imaginary fortune.”
When Alan’s mother died, in 2000, he refused to put a death notice in The New York Times. “We were all at the house composing the obituary, and Alan went crazy,” Mr. Teicher said. “He was shouting: ‘You can’t do this! Over my dead body!’ He obviously wanted the secret to remain in Mount Vernon.”
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Perhaps, I thought, Alan’s brother, Stephan, could help me see the bottom. Stephan was living in Mount Vernon, in his childhood home. I called him one night.
When no one answered, I left a message with contact information for my office and my cellphone. Seconds later, using caller ID, Stephan called me back.
He was as rough as Alan was polished. The first words out of his mouth were “What do you want?”
I told him what I wanted: to know why Alan had felt compelled to reinvent himself.
“I know exactly why,” he said, “but I’m not saying nothing. And it’ll stay that way till my grave.”
Taken aback, I said tactically, but truthfully, that I also felt responsible for having helped perpetuate a story that wasn’t true.
Stephan surprised me with his sensitivity, his protectiveness of Alan.
“Listen,” he said, “you didn’t perpetuate nothing that wasn’t true in my brother’s eyes.”
EARLY in all this, one of Alan’s closest friends said, “He lived in a fantasy world.” Then again, the longer I spent in Alan’s world, and the more I spoke with members of his social set, the more I came to suspect that, if his world was a fantasy, it was one residing in the larger fantasy of New York society.
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I talked to experts, and they told me the same thing: Alan’s world of Austro-Hungarian dance steps and small, unheard-of charities was genuine and pleasant, but it had no gravity in New York; it was not, say, Ronald Lauder’s world of rich industrialists supporting the opera or Save Venice Inc.
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“These are social events, but not necessarily society events,” said David Patrick Columbia, proprietor of the online New York Social Diary, which chronicles the city’s megawealthy. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They may be obscure to someone like me, but they’re certainly not obscure to people who attend them.”
I tried to picture Alan, in his tails and top hat, among the truly, if crassly, powerful hedge-funders at a soiree for the Costume Institute. Most likely, he would have been laughed off the dance floor. But, of course, he preferred soirees where the dress and etiquette looked away from the crass present toward some antiquated European past. Why? Because he found it more authentic? Because he had mastered, and thus could hide within, the ornate folds of its chivalric code? Because, as Mr. Rabbito said, balls were Alan’s bliss?
I didn’t know, but I was told that the person I needed to see was Ivan Obolensky, the one, true society don of Alan’s world. Mr. Obolensky, to use the scientific term, is the real deal: the sixth prince of the Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky family and a grandson of John Jacob Astor IV, who died on the Titanic.
He suggested a drink one evening at the New York Yacht Club. I arrived in a tie and blazer, but unfortunately also in what the maître d’ sniffingly referred to as “denim trousers.” I ran, literally, down the block to Brooks Brothers, where, for an exorbitant price, I obtained the world’s fastest pair of ready-to-wear gray slacks.
Mr. Obolensky, 86, was waiting in the bar with a vodka. We talked about him for a while — his Navy hitch during World War II, his amateur boxing days, the preposterous burdens of his name. “It still shocks me,” he mused, “that whenever I go to England, I’m seated at the right hand of some Lady I’ve never even met.”
When the conversation turned to Alan, he said, “Ah, yes, Alan lived by his wits.” I asked what he meant. Well, Mr. Obolensky told me, it was common knowledge that Alan wasn’t rich — “I heard he had a small trust fund” — but he nonetheless always found a way to attend society balls. Once inside, he added, “Alan was the man right at the door, greeting everybody, even though he didn’t have a reason to be greeting them.”
The old social nose had detected something “studied,” something “roguish.” Alan, Mr. Obolensky said, was a great lover of women and was always, without permission, rearranging table placements as favors to his lady friends.
Still, Mr. Obolensky told me, Alan could be “useful.”
How so?
He presented a scenario: Say some “businessman from Podunk” arrives in New York as a chief executive and has to attend a function at the Pierre. “He doesn’t know bags from beans — he’s a fish out of water,” Mr. Obolensky said. “Alan was brought in as a consultant. Someone would send him over, and he’d whisper in their ear: ‘Go to such-and-such a store. Do this, do that.’ He gave them comfort; he provided ease.”
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There seemed no better moment to ask Mr. Obolensky if he knew about Alan’s history.
“Oh no,” he demurred. “I don’t ask about lineage. It’s not done.”
“Well,” I said, “what if I was to tell you.... ” And I told him. Everything.
My host sat back in his club chair, silenced, and I worried for a moment that I had made a terrible mistake. But then a look of wild delight sprang into his eyes — the look, I thought, of a man who hadn’t been surprised in 40 years.
Slowly, Mr. Obolensky said: “God bless him. That’s fantastic. Some people just need to be on deck, don’t they? There’s nothing wrong with that.
“No,” he continued, smiling now, shaking his head. “There’s nothing wrong with that at all — with being a character.”The fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a St. Anthony police officer brought international attention to Minnesota and comes during a record year for police-involved fatalities in the state.
Police officers have fatally shot 13 people this year, the most since the state began keeping records 38 years ago. The previous high was 12 deaths, in both |
Chingonzoh’s Twitter profile reads: “I am out, taking over the world”. Apt maybe, Neolab Technology, the award-winning start-up he founded with partners Jabulani Mpofu and Blessing Mukome, works on pioneering technology for emerging economies. They also work with Saisai Wireless, a wireless network for free access to WiFi hotspots in public areas. Neolab, which Chingonzoh calls “the start-up factory”, works in close conjunction with the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, and the students, training and getting them to work in teams and turn concepts into sustainable start-ups. Chingonzoh was only 19 when he started the venture, after acquiring a Bachelor’s degree in quantity surveying. “I have always had the inclination and passion for technology and how it can revolutionize communities… We have created a model that works in the African context based on one key principle: that an entrepreneur must be able to create and transfer value to the end user, using the least amount of resources. Capital must only be availed to scale a product that has already proven its potential. This way, we more or less guarantee the success of a product and do away with over-hyped products whose seeming success is as a result of money and resources. When that money burns out, the product/start-up will then fail. Our model does away with this unsustainability. We believe in ‘frugal innovation’: doing more with less!”
Chingonzoh is now seeking partnerships and investment to scale this model and expand to other markets in and around Africa. “I want to help create and launch 100 sustainable companies in and around Africa by 2020; that means launching at least 20 disruptive start-ups every year. We are already working with 22 start-ups for this year.” Chingonzoh is also a YALI Washington Fellow, the “youngest in 2014,” he says.
Rupert Bryant
29, South Africa
Co-founder, ISP Web Africa
A school drop-out, Rupert grew up in Cape Town has been running his own web development company since the age of 14. At age 16, his friend asked him to jump in on a joint venture. This is how he became the co-founder and chief operating officer of Web Africa, one of the biggest internet service providers in South Africa. Web Africa was started with no money and built it into a $11 million a year business. In 2014, Bryant relaunched Accommodation Direct, an online tourism business that specializes in short-term accommodation rentals. His dream is to sail around the world.
Ali-shah Jivraj
27, Uganda
Chief Executive, Royal Electronics
Jivraz began life as an entrepreneur in Kampala at age 17 after a chance meeting with an electronics technician. The two struck on the idea of repairing and manufacturing television sets, radios and DVD players. Out of this, in 2005, came the Royal Electronics firm in Kampala. Less than a decade later, this company is one of six in East Africa that earns $15 million a year in revenue. In the next 10 years, Jivraz plans to venture into foreign currency earning cash crops – like maize and green chilies – and property. He also hopes to build homes for low income earners in Uganda. “These are the people who are driving the economies of Africa and all too often they feel pushed out of the community,” he says.
Jivraz comes from an influential family. His grandfather Merali Jivraj, once one of the richest men in Uganda, lost almost everything when Ugandan-Asians were expelled in 1972 by Idi Amin. He says luck has played more of a part than family ties in his success that sees him drive through Kampala in a white Porsche 911 Carrera S. “There was even luck in that. I was lucky to find the car in Dubai for three quarters of its price and couldn’t let it go,” he says.
The cover of FORBES AFRICA, the domain of African multi-millionaires? “Maybe when I’m 50,” he chuckles down the line from Kampala.
Arthur Zang
27, Cameroon
Founder, CardiopadZang
The Cameroonian engineer is the inventor of the Cardiopad, a touch screen medical tablet that enables heart examinations such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) to be performed at rural locations while the results of the test are transferred wirelessly to specialists who can interpret them. The device spares African patients, living in remote areas, the trouble of having to travel to urban centers to seek medical examinations. Zang is the founder of Himore Medical Equipments, the company that owns the rights to the Cardiopad.
Clarisse Iribagiza
26, Rwanda
Founder and CEO, HeHe Labs
Iribagiza runs a Kigali-based company, HeHe Labs, which builds mobile technology solutions for the government and private companies looking to improve their operational efficiency. HeHe means ‘where’ in Kinyarwanda, says Iribagiza, who founded the research and innovation lab in 2010 while still in college studying computer engineering.
“I always loved physics and maths and it was an attractive space for me to be in. My mother is an entrepreneur and my father a teacher. I am a mash-up of what they do,” says Irigabiza, who went to high school in Uganda. HeHe runs six labs across Rwanda. It is also working with more than 100 Rwandan students in high schools and colleges. The company’s GirlHub has empowered more than 13,000 teenage girls. “We are now refining our vision. It’s a company for Africa by Africans and we are looking at the next vision for Africa,” says Iribagiza. HeHe has over $200,000 in revenues annually. “For a young company, that is great and we are investing in more ideas,” she says. In 2012, HeHe won a $50,000 grant from Inspire Africa, a Rwandan TV entrepreneurial contest.
Clinton Mutambo
25, Zimbabwe
Founder, Esaja.Com
Mutambo describes himself as an entrepreneur, marketing whiz and all round blogger. He is also the brains behind the recently launched esaja.com – a business network that is dedicated to intra-African trade. Esaja stands for empowering solutions and joint action. “Kwame Nkrumah once said ‘I wasn't born in Africa, Africa was born in me.’ This quote defines me as an entrepreneur,“ he says. “We have a massive African youth bulge and need to get this lion roaring or else it'll devour its own future. Trade is key.”
Raindolf Owusu
24, Ghana
Founder, Oasis Websoft
Owusu is a software engineer based in Accra, Ghana, and was dubbed the Mark Zuckerberg of Accra by FORBES AFRICA in November 2012. He runs Oasis Websoft, which developed the Anansi Web Browser – hailed as Africa’s first web browser. “I believe software can solve many problems in Africa. Our problems on the continent are different and existing software from abroad are not built to suit the African setting. Propriety operating systems are being entrenched into our society and we spend so much money paying for licenses on this software. I decided to build a company that will address this problem and develop homegrown software,” says Owusu.
His most recent projects include Anansipedia, an education platform that allows less privileged students to share educational resources; and Bisa, a mobile application that supplies information to the public and gives them access to doctors. Some of his other notable projects include Dr Diabetes, a web application that educates Africans about diabetes. “We hope in a few years we can expand our operations in other parts of Africa and to build a digital hub where Africans can learn more about emerging disruptive technologies like 3D printers, drones and how they can be used to improve our lives,” says Owusu.
Julie Alexander Fourie
28, South Africa
Founder, iFix
Fourie is the founder of iFix, which repairs and services all Apple products and Samsung smartphones. The company employs 40 people and services more than 4,000 clients a month. iFix has branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Fourie started the company in 2006 from his dorm room at the University of Stellenbosch, helping colleagues and friends repair broken and faulty iPods and computers. Satisfied customers recommended Fourie’s business and it took off.
Verone Mankou
28, Republic of Congo
Tech Entrepreneur, Founder & CEO, VMK
Mankou is the founder of VMK and the creator of the first African-made mobile phone, Elikia. He is also the inventor of Way-C tablet, Africa’s version of the iPad. Mankou, the son of a school mistress and an oil engineer, provides affordable smart devices in Africa and increases Internet access in the Republic of Congo. Before receiving $700,000 from the Congolese government, Mankou had to finance his project himself. Banks refused to help him because he was too young and “a little bit crazy,” he says.
Ludwick Marishane
25, South Africa
Founder, Headboy Industries
Marishane was in high school when he came up with DryBath, a gel that does all the work of a bath without water. Within a year, he launched Drybath with his company Headboy Industries. He had previously tried his hand at business with his own brand of biodiesel, healthy cigarettes and a security magazine. The idea for DryBath was inspired by a friend of Marishane’s who was too lazy to bath. "Why doesn't someone invent something that you can put on your skin and then you don't have to bathe?" asked the friend. Marishane, born in Limpopo, was voted the best student entrepreneur in the world by the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation. Google named him as one of the most intelligent young brains in the universe.
Stephen Sembuya
28, Uganda
Co-founder, Pink Food Industries.
Sembuya is living proof that a phoenix can rise from the ashes of a family fortune. The Sembuyas were the Rockerfellers of Kampala with their business empire based around Sembule Steel Mills. In the late 1990s, a power struggle at the company, followed by court cases and debt, led to its decline. Young Sembuya dabbled in publishing for a while, but discovering that the family still owned a cocoa plantation he took it over and make it the heart of a chocolate-making company set up a year ago. “I have always come up with crazy ideas,” he says. The 700-acre farm, which employs 100 workers, is the largest individually-owned cocoa plantation in Africa. It supplies a factory that makes everything from chocolate bars and drinks to biscuits. New machinery has increased output from 80 kilograms a day to 60 kilograms an hour. The chocolate is making inroads with exports across east Africa; the region gets most of its chocolate from Egypt, South Africa and Europe.
Senai Wolderufael
28, Ethiopia
Founder of Feed Green Ethiopia Exports Company
Wolderufael is the founder of Feed Green Ethiopia Exports Company, an Addis Ababa-based outfit that produces and exports popular Ethiopian spice blends such as Shiro, Mitmita, Korarima and Berbere. He worked for Ethiopian Airlines for almost four years and noticed many Ethiopians travelling with bags full of Ethiopian spices. Wolderufael founded the company in 2012, exporting spices and dry food to the United States and Europe and, as demand increased, to new markets within Africa. His latest export is Ethiopian coffee and Wolderufael hopes to be one of the biggest food companies in Africa in 10 years. The company largely employs single mothers, young men and women from poor backgrounds.
Ronak Shah
27, Kenya
Founder, Kronex Chemicals Ltd
This Asian-Kenyan is the founder and CEO of Kronex Chemicals, a manufacturer of affordable dishwashing liquids and multi-purpose detergent for Kenya’s lower class. He started the company to improve the deteriorated levels of hygiene in the country. Kronex set up a manufacturing plant along Mombasa Road in January 2013 and operations started in June that year. He is taking on larger firms in Kenya by producing liquid soap and changing the perception that it a luxury product.
Joel Mwale
22, Kenya
Founder, Skydrop Enterprises
Mwale founded SkyDrop Enterprises, a rainwater filtration and bottling company which produces low-cost purified drinking water, milk and other dairy products in Kenya. In 2012, Mwale sold a 60% stake in Skydrop to an Israeli firm for $500,000. Next stop: education. Last year, Mwale founded Gigavia, an educational social networking website. Five years after dropping out of high school, Mwale travelled the world and rubbed shoulders with several presidents. The idea for his first business was inspired by two events from his childhood. At 14 he suffered dysentery (infection of the intestines) from drinking dirty water in his village outside the western Kenyan town of Kitale. As a student, his school had visited a Coca-Cola bottling plant where he saw how the company made its bottled water. “I knew if there was any business I could easily go into, it was in water,” recalls Mwale. So, at 16, he started SkyDrop Enterprises, a producer and bottler of low-cost purified drinking water. He boiled water, packed it in polythene bags and sold it to truck drivers in Kitale.
Issam Chleuh
28, Mali
Founder and Chief executive, Africa Impact Group
Chleuh is the founder an international organization focused on directing investment to socially and environmentally beneficial ventures, an asset class called Impact Investing. The company’s services include data and research, news, advisory services, and start-up incubation. Africa Impact Group’s clients include impact investors, private equity firms, family offices, leading African corporations, governments and non-profits.
Ellen Chilemba
21, Malawi
Founder, Tiwale
Chilemba is easing the difficult circumstances that women in Malawi face with Tiwale, her for-profit social enterprise she started when she was 17. Tiwale trains women as entrepreneurs or finds them jobs that suit their skills. It also has a microfinance loan program. Tiwale’s Design Project trains women to do traditional fabric dye-printing. Some of the revenue from this is used to fund other programs offered by the organization that give women opportunities to support themselves. These include a school grant program that covers fees, transportation costs, school supplies and offers a small stipend.
Kennedy Kitheka
25, Kenya
Founder, Funda
In 2008, Kitheka and his friends established an online education platform, Blu-Uni (later renamed Funda), providing university students with a cheaper way to get course material. Kitheka started his business along with his partners after returning to the Miambani village where his father grew up in. After being away for 10 years, the 21-year-old Kitheka was heartbroken to see the lack of progress in the community. Funda was created to provide resources young Africans who have the potential to become the next presidents, CEOs and entrepreneurs. Kitheka says these are the people who will create change in Africa.
Doug Hoernle
25, South Africa
Founder, Rethink Education
This young entrepreneur turned his first cents selling wrist bands in school colors to his friends in the playground, at the age of 12, at the elite Johannesburg school of St Stithians.The next venture came at the University of Cape Town. Hoernle liked a glass of wine and, while finding supply, hit on the idea of driving across the Western Cape to buy in bulk to retail to his college friends. When he left college, Hoernle founded Rethink Education with the aim of focusing directly on the high school market, in an effort to make current technology more useful in the schooling system. “We saw the gap in the market where you find people paying R100,000 a year in school fees and yet they still struggle with fractions,” he says. Rethink’s platforms give learners access to high school mathematics and science content in a chat-styled interface via both mobile phones and the web. To date, Rethink Education has distributed math and science content to more than 500,000 South Africans and is launching in Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe.
Ola Orekunrin
29, Nigeria
Medical Doctor & Founder, The Flying Doctors
Orekunrin is founder and Managing Director of Flying Doctors Nigeria Ltd., an air ambulance service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Orekunrin’s company is the first air ambulance service in West Africa to provide urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services. “Tragedy led me to entrepreneurship,” she says. “I believe that perhaps my sister, who died when she was just 12 years old, may have lived if this sort of service was available in Nigeria at the time,” she says. Born in London and raised in a working-class foster home in Lowestoft, a little fishing town in the East of England, Orekunrin enrolled for a medical degree at the University of York and qualified at 21 – one of the youngest ever to take the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath in Britain. She is a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and was named a Young Global Leader in 2013 by the World Economic Forum.
Best Ayiorworth
23, Uganda
Founder, Gipmo
Often in Uganda when families struggle to put their children through school, the girl is forced to stay at home while the boy completes school. Ayiorworth couldn’t afford to go to school following the death of her father. She started a microlending business so other girls can. Girl Power Microlending Organisation (Gipomo) is a business tied to loans where mothers take out loans to start their own small businesses and in return they must make sure their daughters attend school. This project gained Ayiorworth the Anzisha Price in 2013 for young African entrepreneurs. She ploughed her winnings back into her microlending business.
Sangu Delle
28, Ghana
Founder, Golden Palm Investments
Delle is a co-founder of Golden Palm Investments, a holding company that invests in startups across Africa. Some of the entrepreneurs on this list have benefited from his investments. Golden Palm Investments focuses on real estate, healthcare, agriculture and technology. Delle showed entrepreneurial promise while in school. He sold his homework to classmates to earn money to travel to the United States, where he had accepted a scholarship. He is also the co-founder of cleanacwa, a non-profit that provides clean water in Ghana’s underdeveloped regions. Sangu, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Valiant Capital Partners, is currently an MBA candidate at Harvard.
Max Hussman
29, South Africa
Founder, Elegance Group
A 2016 swimming Olympic hopeful, Hussmann also runs an aviation business through Elegance Group, which includes Elegance Air, sport consulting and aviation consulting. He was born in Accra, raised in Germany, but made a home in South Africa where Elegance is thriving and making its mark in the aviation industry. It offers “the hour package flying principle” with chartered airlines, where companies are able to buy bulk hours of 25 to 50 hours and utilize them when it suits.
Bankole Cardoso
26, Nigeria
Co-founder, Easy Taxi Nigeria
Cardoso was the founding chief executive of online taxi hailing app, Easy Taxi Nigeria, a Rocket Internet-backed startup. While still affiliated with Easy Taxi, he is moving on to new projects. Easy Taxi, under Cardoso’s watch, grew to be one of the most used taxi hailing apps in Lagos and Abuja. It has been a tough year for Cardoso. His mother, Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, died of Ebola this year. Adadevoh was one of the doctors in Nigeria who helped treat the disease.
Catherine Mahugu
27, Kenya
Co-founder, Soko
Mahugu is one of the founders of Soko, an online platform where global shoppers can buy handcrafted accessories direct from artisans in Kenya. Born and raised in Nairobi, Mahugu studied computer science for her graduate degree. “I used to fix things and gadgets as a child… From a young age, I was fascinated by science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Family support motivated my sister to study civil engineering and me to study computer science. Although these are male-dominated fields, my parents’ positive attitude provided an empowering environment, and we were encouraged to pursue our own interests.”
“If you want to be an innovative tech company anywhere in the world right now, mobile must be a significant component of what you do. Pervasive mobile phone ownership and services such as M-Pesa have made Kenya a global hub of innovative business models that leverage mobile in order to leapfrog many of the infrastructural barriers the industrialized world faces for challenges as diverse as payment solutions and opportunities for poverty alleviation,” says Mahugu.
Mahugu took the Design Liberation Technology course at Stanford University in 2010 and has been involved in various development projects including Stanford’s Nokia Africa Research Center which builds mobile applications for informal communities.
Forbes Africa is a licensed edition of Forbes magazine published in South Africa.Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says he's stunned at the level of disrespect shown by the prime minister after his unilateral carbon tax announcement today, all while provincial environment ministers were meeting to discuss climate change strategies.
In the House of Commons on Monday, while the country's environment minister were meeting in Montreal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a federal carbon pricing deadline all provinces must comply with by 2018 — or the federal government will impose a price.
The federal government's direct-pricing plan means polluters will pay $10 per tonne starting in 2018, increasing to $50 per tonne by 2022.
Already hurting from a downturn in commodity prices, Wall said, Saskatchewan will be one of the provinces hardest hit by a carbon tax because of its export resource industries.
"I cannot believe that while the country's environment ministers were meeting on a so-called collaborative climate change plan, the prime minister stood in the House of Commons and announced a carbon tax unilaterally," Wall said in a statement. "The level of disrespect shown by the prime minister and his government today is stunning."
Wall said that Saskatchewan industries and the province's families will feel the impact of this plan. He said his government estimates the carbon tax will cost the average family around $1,250 a year. He added Ottawa's plan will also impede the province's continuing efforts to export high-quality food products to global customers.
"The carbon tax will siphon over $2.5 billion from Saskatchewan's economy when fully implemented and make our province a less competitive place to do business," Wall said.
Wall said the carbon tax will likely push oil rig companies south of the border, resulting in fewer people working in Saskatchewan's already struggling oil and gas sector.
Saskatchewan Environment Minister Scott Moe was among three ministers who left the Montreal climate change meeting in protest following Ottawa's announcement of its carbon pricing plan. (CBC News)
Before the talks were over, three environment ministers got up and left the climate change meeting in protest, including Saskatchewan's Environment Minister Scott Moe and ministers from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Moe told reporters a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system would be a challenge for the province.
With cap-and-trade, permits allowing specific amounts of carbon emissions are sold to companies. The firms that want to emit more can buy credits from other permit holders.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that scientists say is accumulating in the atmosphere and causing climate change that could have devastating effects around the world.
'Bad timing,' Sask. NDP says
Reacting to the news in Saskatoon, the Saskatchewan NDP's environment critic Cathy Sproule said the announcement came as a shock, considering the meeting with environment ministers was dubbed a collaborative climate change meeting.
"It's a pretty heavy-handed announcement at this time, when we know that Environment Minister [Catherine] McKenna is looking for a way to work with provincial governments, so a bit heavy-handed and bad timing," Sproule told CBC News.
Sproule added the province's Official Opposition has been waiting for the Saskatchewan Party to implement the green technology fund it promised back in 2009.
"It would basically be a fund that draws from the high emitters," she said.
"All the high emitters would have to contribute to this fund, and what it would do is create a [green] technology fund, called the climate change foundation, that would then create funding for innovative projects to reduce our impact."
Opposition NDP environment critic Cathy Sproule says Wall needs to accept Saskatchewan's role in climate change and carbon emissions. (CBC)
Sproule said she's worked across from five different Saskatchewan Party environment ministers since she became critic, and every year when she asks for an update on the technology fund, she keeps getting the same response: the government isn't ready to implement it just yet.
"Right now we're saying let's get the technology fund up and running. We want to see how that looks first because we think it has a lot of potential," she said.
Sproule also slammed Wall for not taking climate change seriously, considering Saskatchewan is one of the country's worst polluters.
"For example, he said in Canada we only produce two per cent of the carbon emissions in the world — we're only 0.5 per cent of the population, so we need to do more," she said.
"He has missed opportunity after opportunity to transition to a green economy. Other provinces are doing it and we're being left behind, so as a sole crusader it's almost like he's looking more like a dinosaur all the time."Marijuana legalization may be a bit of a quiet issue in this election year. But before long it’s going to get much bigger, moving into the electoral arena around the country and forcing itself into national debates in a way it hasn’t been before, much as same-sex marriage did over the last few years.
We’re rapidly approaching the day when no politician with any significant ambitions can avoid having a well-considered position on the issue. Would-be public officials are going to be asked about it with increasing frequency, and it won’t be enough to make a Cheech and Chong joke to change the subject.
That isn’t stopping them from trying, however. When Chris Christie got asked about legalization on his radio show, he said:
‘”For the people who are enamored with the idea with the income, the tax revenue from this, go to Colorado and see if you want to live there…see if you want to live in a major city in Colorado where there’s head shops popping up on every corner and people flying into your airport just to come and get high. To me, it’s just not the quality of life we want to have here in the state of New Jersey and there’s no tax revenue that’s worth that.”
Officials from the rancid cauldron of sin and misery that is Colorado were quick to respond. “From the beauty of the rolling hills of the Eastern Plains to the magnificent landscapes in the mountains and from our smallest rural towns to our largest cities, Colorado offers the greatest quality of life in the nation,” said Senator Michael Bennett. “A lot of people think Colorado is great place to live, work and play. Plus, we have a pretty awesome quality of life,” said a spokesperson for Governor John Hickenlooper. Obviously, those guys must be high.
This is something of a preview of the arguments we’ll see as we move toward 2016 and legalization initiatives are on ballots all over the country.
You’ll notice that Christie’s argument was pragmatic, not moralistic. He didn’t say that people who smoke pot are losers and criminals, or that it’s an instrument of evil. Instead he talked about the trade-offs between tax revenue and the vitality of urban shopping districts.
Opponents of legalization realize that moralistic arguments against marijuana are going to be political losers, what with the fact that a majority of Americans now support legalization, plus the fact that most Americans have used it at some point in their lives. But that doesn’t mean Republicans are going to come around to legalization any time soon, a fact Democrats hope will allow them to use ballot initiatives to burst turnout among some of their target constituencies.
To be sure, this fall there may end up being only a couple of marijuana initiatives on the ballot. Florida voters will decide on a constitutional amendment providing for medical marijuana, and a full legalization initiative could make it to the ballot in Alaska. Advocates are also trying to put a measure on the ballot in Oregon.
But if you’re a legalization advocate, you actually shouldn’t want to have an initiative on the ballot this year. In state after state, advocates have decided to wait until 2016, when they know more of Democrats and young people will be going to the polls to vote for president, to put the question to the voters. Advocates in California considered mounting a push this year, then put it off until 2016. That presidential year could also see initiatives in Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, and Nevada, and possibly other states as well.
There’s a good reason for this: Polls show huge divides by age and party on the issue. Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center show that while only 32 percent of Americans over 65 favor legalization, 70 percent of those 18 to 29 favor it. The divide between parties is only slightly smaller, with 63 percent of Democrats favoring legalization compared to 39 percent of Republicans.
With half a dozen or more states deciding legalization at the polls in 2016, it will be impossible for any politician to ignore. And after years of fruitful hippie-bashing, Republicans will find themselves increasingly on the defensive. And this issue is only going to get bigger and bigger.Image caption Citigroup said the referendum process would "create huge uncertainty" over green investment
A major finance group has urged extreme caution over investing in Scotland's renewable energy sector, partly because of the independence referendum.
Citigroup said the referendum process will create huge uncertainty at the moment when major decisions on green projects are needed.
First Minister Alex Salmond dismissed concerns in the report.
He said much of the renewable energy produced would be for export and would help "keep the lights on" in England.
A new report by Citigroup analysts said SNP's two flagship policies - an independence referendum towards the end of the current parliament and a big increase in renewable energy and green jobs - may be in conflict.
It argues the referendum process will "create huge uncertainty" at precisely the moment when big investment decisions in renewable projects will need to be taken.
The report also argues that an independent Scotland would have too small a consumer base to generate the annual subsidy of £4bn, which they believe would be needed to support a hugely increased reliance on renewable energy.
As so often in both politics and business, it is, I suppose, a matter of confidence. Are we optimistic or pessimistic about Scotland's renewable energy prospects?
It states: "Continued subsidy from consumers in England and Wales would be required, but Scotland seceding from the UK would clearly place this subsidy stream at grave risk.
"Renewable investors risk seeing their assets stranded in a newly independent Scotland."
The Citigroup report concluded: "Utilities and other investors should exercise extreme caution in committing further capital to Scotland."
But Mr Salmond told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme: "In order to get anywhere near the renewable energy obligations that London is going to have, England is going to have to have Scottish renewables from the sea.
"Perhaps the reason why all these international companies are committing funds to Scotland is because in 10 years' time, without Scottish offshore wind power, then there would be a severe danger of the lights going off in England. I don't think anybody is going to want or allow that to happen."
Mr Salmond hit out at the Citigroup report saying: "The analyst from Citigroup, he seems to think we're going to use all this power in Scotland. We're not. It's power for export.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Alex Salmond: "In 10 years' time, without Scottish offshore wind power, then there would be a severe danger of the lights going off in England."
"Believe me, in the modern world the ability to produce power is a great asset, not a liability."
The first minister added: "If an analyst in Citigroup has a kind of brainstorm, so what? You don't need a crystal ball. You just need to read the book and the book tells you that over the last year alone £750m has been invested in Scottish renewables."
Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray said the report showed "the SNP's refusal to come clean about a referendum is creating uncertainty and damaging Scotland's economy".
He added: "We have been warning about this for months and now we see a major global bank actually advising its clients not to invest in Scotland.
"What is even worse is they are advising clients not to invest in Scotland's key growth industry of renewable energy. The best future for that industry is for Scotland to remain part of the bigger economic market that is the UK."
'Create uncertainty'
Scottish Secretary and Lib Dem MP Michael Moore agreed that the report pointed to a "perfect example of the referendum uncertainty".
He added: "It is vital that we maximise the potential of the renewables sector by providing the stable environment in which that can happen.
"The Scottish government must end the uncertainty and confusion caused by the delay over the referendum and should bring forward their proposals now.
"Scotland's renewables sector has enormous potential, and we are determined that Scotland will feel the full benefit of it. But the report makes absolutely clear that it is only the size and scale of UK investment and its consumer base that will make that happen."
The Scottish Conservative Party's David McLetchie agreed that the referendum was starting to create uncertainty among the business community.
He added: "We have repeatedly called for the SNP to set a single question and to set a date as soon as possible for the referendum so we can settle this matter once and for all.
"With businesses being advised not to invest in Scotland until this is resolved we can ill afford any further delay. We need to start concentrating on what Scotland needs, rather than on Alex Salmond's narrow minded independence agenda."President Barack Obama delivers his farewell address on Jan. 10. (C-SPAN Twitter)
How Barack Obama Fundamentally Transformed the United States
COMMENTARY: The true Obama legacy has occurred not in economics, government, or foreign policy, but in culture.
Paul Kengor
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in Columbia, Missouri, on Oct. 30, 2008, on the cusp of his historic presidential election.
It was a bold statement, revolutionary even, surpassed only by the response of those in attendance, who, rather than pausing to reflect upon such an audacious assertion, wildly applauded. To be sure, these Obama enthusiasts would have ecstatically cheered anything he said at that moment.
There was a full-fledged personality cult in motion at that time. The new president could have promised anything and received a giddy reaction. Obama himself admitted to serving as a kind of “blank screen” upon which Americans desiring some warm-and-fuzzy “hope and change” could project whatever they wanted.
But even then, the words “fundamentally transform” should have alarmed everyone. We Americans generally don’t do fundamental transformation. We make changes, yes, small and large, but who among us — other than the most radical revolutionaries — actually want to fundamentally transform the nation?
Many people think that America has many problems, but those can be addressed without a fundamental transformation. Ask professors who teach history or political ideologies (as I have for two decades), and we will tell you that totalitarianism is the ideology that fundamentally transforms.
Indeed, the textbook definition of totalitarianism, which I’ve scribbled on the chalkboard every fall and spring semester since 1997, is to seek to fundamentally transform — specifically, to fundamentally transform human nature via some form of political-ideological-cultural upheaval.
So, that being the case, I winced when Barack Obama said that, and then felt sick to the stomach when I watched people blissfully and blindly applaud without question or objection.
But now here we are, at the end of Obama’s two-term presidency, and the question begs to be pondered: Did Barack Obama fundamentally transform the United States of America, as he promised?
The answer is absolutely Yes.
That fundamental transformation, however, has not happened in areas where many might have hoped (or feared) in 2008. It has not been a fundamental shift in the attitudes of the vast majority regarding the role of government, taxation, regulations, economics, education or even health care, where Obama had his signature legislative achievement. It hasn’t happened in foreign policy, though Obama has made a seriously detrimental impact in regions from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.
The reality is that the true fundamental transformation has been in the realm of culture, notably in matters of sexual orientation, marriage and family. The shift there has been unprecedented and far beyond anyone’s imagination eight years ago.
Looking back, I think that was where Obama’s heart was, and that was where his deepest impact will be felt. Changes there, more than anywhere, seem irreversible by anything other than the miraculous, than anything short of a religious revival or dramatic shift in spiritual-moral thinking.
Obama’s cultural revolution on the sexual-gender-family front is all around us.
We see it in the culture of fear and intimidation by the forces of “diversity” and “tolerance” who viciously seek to denounce, dehumanize, demonize and destroy anyone who disagrees with their brazen newfound conceptions of marriage and family, even as our position (not theirs) has been the prevailing position of 99.99% of human beings who have bestrode the earth since the dawn of humanity.
Instead, in the Obama era, we are the ones portrayed as the outliers, as abnormal, as extremists, as “haters.” If you dissent from this new vociferous breed of human-nature redefiners, they sue you, they jail you, they smear you, they boycott you, they harass you, they ruin you — and they do so (with no sense of their hypocrisy) in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity.”
Whether you’re a Baptist grandma who bakes cakes or a Catholic photographer who takes wedding photos or a Mormon florist who arranges flowers, they refuse your appeals to your conscience; they steamroll you. Changes by Obama and his allies here have constituted a major attack on religious liberty, where 200-year-old First Amendment guarantees have been torched by modern culture warriors discerning heretofore unknown higher rights like “marriage equality” and co-ed toilets.
That is a fundamental transformation of a culture and a nation that did not exist prior to Barack Obama’s ascent.
The manifestations of this are so ubiquitous that laying them out here isn’t necessary, but I’d like to offer just a handful of brief |
HAROLD: Master Kamui and Lady Aqua just so happened to be together as I approached them. First, I asked Lady Aqua to ignore your professed love to her, and although she simply tilted her head in response, I believe she understood. Then, I delivered to Master Kamui the message of your profound love, as you instructed... and then Kamui said again, "Please, stop this." CAMILLA: Huh... HAROLD: It pained me so to think your feelings could be unrequited, that I fled the scene, clutching my dizzied head. CAMILLA:? Why did you feel dizzy? HAROLD: Oh, that? While I was heading to Master Kamui's quarters, I was struck twice by horse carts. It was then that I must have injured my head. It left me rather lightheaded. CAMILLA: Oh, is that what happened? I just spoke with Kamui, but nothing was making sense to me. Now, I understand after hearing what you have told me. HAROLD: Huh? What do you mean, Lady Camilla? CAMILLA: You were dizzy after hitting your head, and that caused you to mistake Kamui for Aqua and Aqua for Kamui... Perhaps that is what happened? HAROLD: Th-that explains everything! No, this is no time to rejoice! What a grave error! Please, have mercy upon me! CAMILLA: Oh, I don't mind. It was just bad luck on your part again. People do say you have the worst luck in all of Nohr. You did well while working against such a handicap. It doesn't seem to have hurt my relationship with Kamui anyway. I know you were only trying to help, and you did try so hard. HAROLD: Camilla... once again, you show me more kindness than I deserve... CAMILLA: Oh, I'm not worried about that. People are rarely able to communicate their feelings to one another. HAROLD: If you would please grace your faithful servant Harold with one more chance! CAMILLA: N-No, I think I'll pass. --- S RANK HAROLD: Lady Camilla... CAMILLA: Harold, what is it you wanted to discuss? If it's about Kamui again, it's fine. I can talk to Kamui myself.... HAROLD: No, this concerns you and me, not Master Kamui. CAMILLA: You and me? HAROLD: I am sorry for all the mistakes I have committed the other day. CAMILLA: Again, you don't need to apologize for that. HAROLD: No, that's not all. Each time I failed you, you gave me your forgiveness... such generosity is what has won over my heart. CAMILLA: Huh? HAROLD: I know that you and I may be too far apart in standing, and this may not be much for royalty like you, but... I got this for you. CAMILLA:... What a lovely ring... HAROLD: Could you please marry me? CAMILLA:... Are you sure about this ring? HAROLD: Come again? CAMILLA: Perhaps you had some accident on the way and got the wrong one... HAROLD: No, this is no mistake. CAMILLA: Alright, and are you sure you want to give this to me? You haven't hit your head and mistaken me for someone else, have you? Here, take a good look. It's me, Camilla... HAROLD: No, I am not mistaken on that either. CAMILLA: Fufu... You do have a rather cute face. I never even noticed. I was always watching Kamui, when maybe I should have paid more attention to you. HAROLD: Then... your answer is... CAMILLA: Though your bad luck does seem quite worrisome, I like how earnest and faithful you are. I say that not as your liege, but as a woman. HAROLD: Th-Then, you will... CAMILLA: Yes, I shall. HAROLD: Thank you, Lady Camilla! From this moment forth, I, Harold, shall protect you with my very own life! CAMILLA: Could you please not get so fired up? I'm worried what might happen with your luck...BELLEVILLE, Ill. (AP) — A judge has issued an order requiring Illinois government agencies to immediately reinstate mandatory union dues for nonmembers.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner last month issued an executive order ending the dues, which nonmembers must pay to cover the cost of non-political union activities that benefit all employees.
Friday’s order by St. Clair County Associate Judge Christopher Kolker requires the Rauner administration to “remit fair share fees … pending the resolution of the case” and to transmit “the correct payroll information” regarding gross pay for affected employees to Illinois’ comptroller. The order is based on an agreement between the administration and unions.
Unions have filed a lawsuit seeking to permanently overturn Rauner’s order.
Illinois AFL-CIO president Michael T. Carrigan says he’s pleased fair-share agreements will be honored while the lawsuit proceeds.
Rauner’s administration says it has agreed to allow government agencies to reinstate mandatory fair share fees for non-union members in return for union agreement to a faster timeline for resolving their dispute over the payments.
The Rauner administration says the deal to reinstate the fees pending a resolution “will speed up the case and remove legal obstacles to resolving the underlying First Amendment issues as efficiently as possible.”
In a statement, the administration adds that it’s confident it will ultimately win and will assist nonmembers in recovering the fees.
(TM and © Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., center, speaks to reporters following the weekly Democratic policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell exhibited no interest Tuesday in considering legislation shielding the special counsel from Donald Trump, even as Republicans warn the president against interfering with Robert Mueller’s investigation.
McConnell’s remarks came as Trump has continued using Twitter to complain about the continued focus on “phony Trump/Russia” connections, instead of on Hillary Clinton and Democrats. They also came a day after Mueller’s inquiry into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential race yielded a guilty plea and two indictments of Trump campaign officials.
Two bipartisan bills were introduced months ago that would make it harder for a special counsel to be fired. After an initial flurry of support, the bills have stalled as Trump has softened his public criticism of Mueller.
“We’ve got plenty of things we have to do between now and the end of the year that will take up floor time,” McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday when asked if he’d bring the measures to the Senate floor if Trump impedes Mueller’s work.
At one point, Trump’s legal team looked into potential conflicts surrounding the team Mueller has hired, including the backgrounds of members and political contributions by some members of his team to Clinton.
McConnell, who has expressed confidence in Mueller’s work, said the Senate’s role in the investigation is being performed by the chamber’s Intelligence committee.
“That’s our role in it, and special counsel has his job to do, and we’re going to concentrate on what we’re doing here,” said McConnell.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a brief interview that he’d not asked McConnell to bring the bills protecting Mueller to the Senate floor, saying, “We’ll see what happens.” On Monday, Schumer called for swift congressional action should Trump interfere with the investigation.
Legislation sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would prevent the firing of any special counsel unless the dismissal was first reviewed by a panel of three federal judges. Legislation co-sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., would let any Justice Department special counsel challenge their removal in court.
The Senate GOP’s No. 2 leader complimented the guilty plea by George Papadopoulos for lying to FBI agents about Russian contacts.
“I think hopefully it will send a message to everybody else to cooperate with the investigation and to answer the FBI’s questions and not to lie,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “So I thought that was a very positive move from that standpoint.”
Other Republicans made clear their opposition to any presidential interference in Mueller’s work, including Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another GOP leader. Blunt said he wasn’t concerned that Trump might take on Mueller more aggressively but added, “I’m also not for it.” He said firing Mueller “would be a big mistake.”
“Everybody that I know does not think that’s a good idea,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who’s clashed with Trump, said of a Mueller firing. “I don’t know what the actual reaction would be if it happened. I doubt if it’s going to, but I’ve been wrong almost every time.”
Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, shot down the possibilities of firing Mueller and or the president pardoning people caught up in the probe.
“The president has not indicated to me or to anyone else that I work with that he has any intent on terminating Robert Mueller,” Sekulow said in an interview Tuesday with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
On pardons, he said: “I have not had a conversation with the president regarding pardons. And pardons are not on the table.”
Besides Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have both pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and money laundering charges.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters after the charges were released that “there is no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel.”
Lawmakers have been on guard since May, when Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey and Mueller was appointed.
___
AP reporter Matthew Daly contributed.A dark-horse preseason pick to ride back to the playoffs in a deep AFC West, the Los Angeles Chargers are wallowing in winless muck through the first quarter of the season.
Following Sunday's loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, coach Anthony Lynn went off on his team's surprising 0-4 start to the season.
"Never in a million years did I think we'd be here at 0-4, but we are," he said, via the team's official website. "I look at football in four quarters, just like a game. And we just stunk the first quarter of our season. We've got three quarters left to figure some things out and get this thing turned around. There's going to be a lot of evaluating going on tonight and into tomorrow. There are some things that are going to change. But we're going to get this figured out and moving in the right direction."
On paper, the Chargers boast talent on both sides of the ball. Philip Rivers, Keenan Allen, Melvin Gordon on offense provide a playmaking trio. On defense, L.A. has the best pass-rush duo in the NFL in Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa.
Despite the talent, the Chargers continually falter in close games. Sunday marked the third loss of three-or-fewer points this season and L.A. has lost 12 one-possession games since 2016 (4-12 in one-possession games in that span).
The Chargers have lost nine straight games dating back to last year, and it's the franchise's first 0-4 start since 2003 -- the following season, Rivers joined the team.
One thing both Rivers and Lynn agreed was that of all the team's struggles to start the season, the effort isn't lacking.
"I've never questioned that," Rivers said. "Again, this team is still growing together, but I don't think there's any lack of fight, want-to or desire to care. That's never been a problem here. I don't sense that it is at this point in time. Guys are fighting, scratching like crazy. We just haven't been able to overcome it yet."
Now the Chargers need to find a way to turn that effort into Ws.In October, Donald Trump, a golden goblet filled with backwash and our next president, stayed home a lot. Trump, like everyone else, believed he was about to lose the election, and the New York Times reported that he was holed up in his “enormous penthouse,” becoming “increasingly upset and isolated.” Now, with three days remaining until he’s sworn in, he’s doing the same thing. Stop waiting to be reassured. It’s not happening.
The first Times report, datelined October 9, depicted a man coping with imminent defeat by self-imposed isolation, visits from yes-men, enraged tweeting, and furious viewings of CNN. Soon after he was elected, on November 19, the Times found him doing basically the same thing, with the additional activity of calling people to ask who should be in his cabinet. At the time, the paper’s sources told them, he’d been briefly startled into self-awareness by a meeting with President Obama: “He was nervous and jolted, they said, by the 90-minute Oval Office meeting with Mr. Obama, and for the first time appeared to take in the enormousness of the job.”
Now, as we careen ever closer to really doing this thing, the Washington Post reports that he’s still in there. (The piece was co-authored by Ashley Parker, who also co-wrote the second Times story.) He’s tweeting, he’s occasionally visiting the two restaurants he likes, and he literally doesn’t get outside even to glimpse the sun:
He spends most of his days in Trump Tower, with few close friends and few meaningful one-on-one interactions beyond the family members, advisers and loyalists who are whisked by gold elevator to his 26th-floor office for private audiences. Trump rarely leaves, not even for a breath of fresh air; nor does he encounter many people he does not already know or who do not work for him.
Interestingly enough, while he’s in there, Trump is also picking up his cellphone, even for unidentified callers:
When Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) needs to reach Trump, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman does not have to go through an aide or schedule a meeting. He said he simply dials Trump’s cellphone directly, and the president-elect answers, even though Corker’s number registers as “No Caller ID.”
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As a bonus, the story also features a quote from former Trump campaign manager and exuberant dick Corey Lewandowski, who defended Trump for not even venturing outdoors to do a customary day volunteering at the soup kitchen on Veterans Day. Lewandowski called volunteer efforts by previous presidents “platitudes,” adding, “Donald Trump wants to bring jobs back so we don’t have soup kitchens. He has not been a person to do staged events for the sake of doing staged events.”
Anyway, we know where this is going: Someone is going to have to lure Donald Trump out of Trump Tower with a six-foot portrait of himself and force him to be president.Shapeways is a 3D printing service that enables people to upload their designs for jewelry, toys, or whatever, and have them made into real, physical products. It also provides an avenue to sell the stuff: This lovely Amulet of Mara, for instance, goes for $28 (or higher, depending on material) plus shipping. All of which is relevant to our interests because today the company announced a deal with Valve that will allow people to upload, print, and even sell objects based on its games without having to worry about receiving a nasty letter from the legal department.
"Starting today, you can take advantage of a new Valve licensing agreement on Shapeways. This will not only allow you to create merch around any of Valve’s games and game assets, but also mods and accessories for hardware like the Steam Controller and Steam Link," Shapeways explained. "For Shapeways designers, this means that the Valve and Steam game communities will now have access to your products, and you can advertise and promote your Valve-related products anywhere you like."
The process for setting it up is by all appearances very simple: Set up your shop, upload your model, adjust pricing, tags, and other elements accordingly, and accept the license, which grants Valve a ten percent cut of your sales. The full process is a bit more detailed that that, naturally (assuming you want a shop that people can actually find and buy things from, anyway), but by and large, that's it.
"Once you opt in, you’re good to go. No other approvals needed. No takedowns, no missed revenue," Shapeways wrote. "We’ll automatically deduct a 10 percent royalty from sales of merchandise connected to the game franchises and send them to Valve. No royalties are deducted on accessories developed for Steam hardware. And that’s it!"
"Never before has it been so easy for designers and fans to make physical objects based on their favorite games," Shapeways internet CEO Tom Finn said in a statement. "We’re thrilled that Valve has decided to embrace and empower its fan community in this way, and we’re confident it will pave the way for a new movement in companies engaging with fandoms."
That, in a nutshell, explains why Valve would want to get involved in this kind of arrangement. The advent of 3D printing means it's super-easy (and getting easier) to make these sorts of things, and anything that one person can make, other people will want to buy. It's going to be out there anyway, and a ten percent cut keeps Valve's finger in the pie without too much risk of scaring off creators. Better to give up a small percentage of your profit, after all, that risk a cease-and-desist smackdown, or worse.
And people are already taking advantage: These wonderfully clever Portal earrings, available in blue, orange, or polished silver for more formal outings, are among the first to take advantage of the new license, but I expect we'll see a lot more to come very quickly.In one of the more bizarre feats of activism to ever cross the music industry, an anti-animal cruelty organisation is calling on iconic Aussie rockers Hunters & Collectors to change the band's name.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have apparently written an open letter to the band, expressing that in the lead-up to duck-hunting season the band should change their name "to discourage people from hunting animals".
The letter, signed by PETA Australia's associate director of campaigns Ashley Fruno, went on to say that 300,000 waterbirds face death during hunting season, with one in four dying a slow, painful death.
"We feel sure that it was never your intention to promote the killing of intelligent, sensitive and defenceless animals, your name may nevertheless make hunting seem appealing to fans," the letter said.By Shawn Nelson
February 2013
Overview
The early Christian church was heavily influenced by Plato, and the effects of Plato’s teaching can still be seen within Christianity today. This is particularly true when it comes to the topic of heaven. Many Christians today would be surprised to learn that they hold a Platonic view of heaven which is not Biblical. This brief paper will explain who Plato is, his main philosophical views, and how those views have shaped popular opinion about heaven today.
The Popular View of Heaven
There’s something very wrong with the popular view of heaven today both inside and outside the church. N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, calls the prevailing view a “distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope.” Sadly, Wright is right. Two-thirds of Americans who claimed to believe in the resurrection, when polled, said they do not believe they will have physical bodies after the resurrection, but will be disembodied spirits. Wright adds, “I’ve often heard people say, ‘I’m going to heaven soon, and I won’t need this stupid body there, thank goodness.’”
For many Christians today, heaven is seen as an ethereal, ideal, otherworldy place where disembodied perfected spirits roam. It’s largely an unfamiliar, non-Earth like environment where everything remains the same. It’s seen as a purely spiritual place without time and space, where there’s nothing to do but float around and gaze at God.
The Biblical View
While the idea of being set free from our bodies might be tantalizing to some, the Bible presents a vastly different concept of heaven. According to the Bible, heaven is actually a restoration of our physical universe, one which includes a new, resurrected Earth. Instead of dwelling in an abstract, otherworldy place, this newly resurrected Earth will be familiar to us, only much better. It will be a place where culture and society continue to enjoy being productive. We will be living in resurrected physical bodies which dwell inside time and space. Instead of sitting around with nothing to do, we will actively serve and worship God by helping others much like we do today. It will be a fascinating place where we get to spend an eternity learning and discovering the wonderful new creation of God.
The concept of a resurrected universe is the overarching theme of the entire Bible. God cursed the ground at the Fall, at which time the earth and the entire universe was changed. At that time “the creation was subjected to frustration.” (Romans 8:20) The universe which was previously declared by God to be good (Genesis 1:31) had been subjected to entropy as the direct result of man’s disobedience, and would from that time undergo a breaking down process. The Biblical hope, however, in sending the Messiah (Genesis 3:15) would be that Messiah would undo the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), which includes not only redeeming mankind from the penalty of sin, but also restoring God’s physical creation to its perfect state before the Fall. At that time, “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21) The Bible begins with the Fall of Genesis and ends with the Restoration of Revelation where Heaven, the New Jerusalem, will be united with Earth and “the dwelling of God (will be) with men, and he will live with them” and creation will be restored. (Revelation 21:2-3)
How this foundational teaching of the Bible can be so easily misunderstood boggles the mind. How could there be such a big misunderstanding of what would seemingly be such an important topic within the Christian world? It has to do with Plato.
Brief Summary of Plato
The Greek philosopher Plato (427 BC) is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He was born four centuries before Christ yet his teaching would have tremendous influence over early Christian doctrine and continue to shape Christian thought until this day.
Plato asserted that what we see around us in our physical world—trees, chairs, horses, plants and people—everything we see, touch, taste and smell is not actually real. Only the idea behind a thing is real. For example, everybody has an idea of a horse. When we compare one horse to the next, we can see that there are differences, but we all know they are horses because there’s an idea of a horse. And this idea is the perfect horse. The perfect horse only exists as an idea or “form”. Because only ideas of things are perfect, Plato asserted that the realm of ideas was far superior to this physical world we live in.
As a result, Plato wanted to set people free from their bondage to this world. In his Parable of the Cave, he explains how a person could be set free from bondage to the shadows of this world by becoming aware of the higher reality of forms. His parable asserts that all human beings are chained in darkness, believing reality to be the things that we see around us. But there is a higher reality that exists beyond, and if we could just be set free and experience it, we would understand that it is far better, because it is the actual true reality of which everything is but a shadow.
Plato’s Concept of Heaven
Not surprisingly, Plato’s heaven is one in which man is free from the imperfect physical, material world. Plato believed that man is primarily made up of soul, and that man’s soul is trapped in a body, much like being trapped in a prison. This is the basis for Plato’s phrase “soma sema” which means the body is a prison or tomb for the soul. To Plato, salvation occurs when the soul is set free from this prison-body. The soul is then free to live in the realm of pure forms. And there, it “can behold the absolute Good, the Pure Form.” What does Plato’s view of heaven have to do with Christianity?
Plato’s Influence on the Early Church Fathers
It may be a surprise to some that the early church fathers were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Some actually believed that God had given Greek philosophy to the Gentile world to prepare it for the coming Messiah in the same way that God used Moses to prepare the Jewish people. Plato, in this way, was seen to have a kind of preparatory role for the Gospel. They believed that the great philosophers had been recipients of “the universal light of a divine revelation through the ‘Logos,’ which, and through human reason, ‘lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’” As a result, many of Plato’s ideas were espoused by these early influential leaders. Here is a brief survey.
Clement of Alexandria (150 AD) believed that Greek philosophy was the handmaid of theology. His writings were full of Platonic teachings. Perhaps his admiration for Plato can be best seen in his statement:
…before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith… philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring “the Hellenic mind,” as the law, the Hebrews, “to Christ.” Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.
Early apologist Justin Martyr (100 AD) believed Plato “spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word”. While recognizing that there were clear differences between the two teachings, Justin did find much similarity between Platonic philosophy and Christianity. This admiration for Plato was shared by other apologetic writers, especially Athenagoras. They had a reverence for Platonic teaching, and made frequent reference to it, sometimes quoting entire passages from Plato while making a defense of the Christian faith.
Eusebius of Caesarea (263 AD) diligently sought to harmonize Plato with Christianity. He said of Plato that he was “the only Greek who has attained the porch of (Christian) truth” And, Bishop Theodoret (393 AD) was widely acquainted with Greek literature and the philosophers including Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Zeno, Parmenides, Empedocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and he largely quoted from Plato.
Clearly, the early church was heavily inundated with Greek, namely Platonic thought. But perhaps the theologian who is most responsible for shaping the church’s Platonic view of heaven is Augustine.
Augustine
The famous theologian Augustine (354 AD) was very heavily influenced by Plato. Augustine’s De Civitate Dei has been called “the ripest fruit of the inward union of Christian and Platonic wisdom” Augustine went so far to say in his Confessions that he thanked God that he became familiar with Plato first, because had he not, he probably would never have been able to receive the Gospel. With such a high view of Plato, it’s no surprise, then, that Augustine’s view of heaven was so heavily affected by him. As Benedict Viviano says of Augustine,
“We need only note that Augustine was strongly influenced by neo-Platonic philosophy and has even read Plotinus and Prophyry… This philosophy was highly spiritual and other-worldly, centered on the one and the eternal, treating the material and the historically contingent as inferior stages in the ascent of the soul to union with the one.”
Augustine’s Spiritual View of Heaven
Augustine “was attracted to the spiritual interpretation of the kingdom.” For Augustine, “the kingdom of God consists in eternal life with God in heaven.” Michael Vlach adds that “it was Augustine’s spiritual view of the kingdom that also contributed to his belief that the church is the fulfillment of the thousands year reign of Christ. It was then his spiritualized view which became the accepted Roman Catholic view, which remains the dominant view within the Catholic Church today, as well a popular view within the protestant church at large, and general Western secular thought. Thus the origin of Christianity’s unbiblical view of heaven can be found in the church’s adoption of key concepts from Plato.
Importance of Studying Philosophy
It may come as a shock to many Christians today that their view of heaven does not originate from the Bible, but from the Greek philosopher Plato. This underscores the importance of studying philosophy for the Christian worker. Without an understanding of the big influential thinkers throughout history, it can be difficult to recognize truth from error. Indeed, this can be seen when it comes to the topic of heaven within the church today. Pastors would do well to study philosophy in order to better recognize the major flows of thought that have influenced the church throughout its history, and thus be better equipped to communicate an accurate Biblical worldview.President Obama has made it clear to voters: If you don't want Donald Trump as president, choose Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton instead.
"If you don't vote, that's a vote for Trump," Obama stressed in a new line of attack during a radio interview with Steve Harvey that aired Wednesday morning. "If you vote for a third-party candidate who's got no chance to win, that's a vote for Trump."
The president conducted the interview via telephone on Tuesday, reacting to the first presidential debate and urging listeners to register to vote.
"People just do not give [Clinton] credit, and part of it, maybe, is because she's a woman and we have not elected a woman president before," Obama said. "But here's somebody who, as I said at the convention, is as qualified as anybody who has ever run for this office, and she's been on the right side of the issues that we care about, and we need to support her, and that begins by making sure that everybody is registered and everybody is voting. The stakes in this election is so high."
The president criticized Trump's performance during Monday's debate, noting the moments when Trump crowed about not paying federal taxes and capitalizing on the housing crisis.
"You know, for someone who wants to be president of the United States, and you're not thinking about the hardship of foreclosures and people losing their homes and being out on the streets, that your only focus is, 'How can I make a buck off it?' Yeah, that's not the kind of person that I think we want representing us in the Oval Office," Obama remarked.
In the interview he also denounced Trump's treatment of women.
"You had somebody who basically insulted women and then doubled down... in terms of how he talks about them and talks about their weight and talks about, you know, how they look instead of the content of their character and capabilities, which is not something that I want, not somebody I want in the Oval Office that my daughters are listening to and that sons are listening to," Obama said. "And so, across the board, you know, you've got somebody who appears to only care about himself."11 arrested in South Carolina prostitution bust
Tiffany Dawn Evans, 30, arrested in prostitution ring. Tiffany Dawn Evans, 30, arrested in prostitution ring. Photo: Myrtle Beach Street Crimes Unit Photo: Myrtle Beach Street Crimes Unit Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close 11 arrested in South Carolina prostitution bust 1 / 38 Back to Gallery
Police arrested 11 people for prostitution-related charges Wednesday night.
The Myrtle Beach Street Crimes Unit busted the group of offenders at an undisclosed Myrtle Beach, S.C. location.
An undercover investigation revealed offenders agreed to engage in sexual activity for amounts between $20 to $200, according to WMBF.
FAMILY BUST: 8 arrested, including 4 family members, in meth bust
Public records show those who were arrested in the sting: Tiffany Dawn Evans, 30, Ashley Janay Pearl, 25, Amisha Nichole Eller, 28, Michelle Renee Rowan, 24, Jules Roy Hixenbaugh, 56, Desiree Dawn Mcgill, 35, Gary Lewis Clark, 58, Jose Juan Cruz-Toribo, 32, Daniel Quardre Bryant, 23, Jose Torres-Platas, 37, John Henry Brown, 58.
Charges include prostitution, although some face additional offenses. Pearl, Evans and Rowan also face charges for unlawful advertising for sale and drug possession.
According to Lt. Joey Crosby with the Myrtle Beach Police Department, the investigation doesn't indicate whether the arrests were connected.
"This time our investigation doesn't reveal there's any ring or organization and that's something that of course we look at as we conduct these kinds of investigations," Crosby told that outlet. "But at this time, our intelligence is showing us that it's not."Ikunori Yamamoto
The triangle might be the defining shape of the ancient pyramids, but in the architectural free-for-all that is the 21st century, triangular building silhouettes are reshaping skylines with new skyscrapers in Paris, Jerusalem, and beyond. But children growing up in the shadows of these triangular structures still live in a Lego-dominated world of toy building bricks.
Ikunori Yamamoto
Ikunori Yamamoto
Renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma—who won the bid to design the new Tokyo Olympic stadium—has created a set of toy building blocks that offer an edgy, minimalist take on the Lego.
Ikunori Yamamoto
Ikunori Yamamoto
Tsumiki (Japanese for “wooden blocks”) are intriguing lightweight V-shaped pieces that can be slotted together endlessly to create imaginative objects with sharp lines and angles.
Ikunori Yamamoto
Ikunori Yamamoto
Made in collaboration with forest conservation organization More Trees, Tsumiki come in three sizes ranging from about 1.5 inches to nearly 5 inches and are made from Forest Stewardship Council–certified Japanese cedar.
Ikunori Yamamoto
Ikunori Yamamoto
They are available online for about $72 here.Cross-party group will visit Estonia and Finland where politicians will inform them of hybrid warfare threat
A cross-party group of senior MPs, including the shadow defence secretary, Nia Griffith, is to be briefed by officials in Finland and Estonia on the threat posed by Russia, in an attempt by the MPs to help suspend any sympathy British politicians may have with the Kremlin.
A delegation of six MPs will meet officials and local politicians on Sunday to discuss the threat of hybrid warfare from Vladimir Putin’s government. Last month it was announced that the European Union was planning to set up a “hybrid threat” centre in Finland to combat the growing number of cyberattacks, including disinformation and fake news promoted on social media. Estonian politicians have accused Russia of stirring antagonism towards immigrants in their country.
John Woodcock, the chair of Labour’s backbench committee on defence who is part of the delegation of MPs, said he hoped to be able to garner intelligence that could then be used to persuade any “Kremlin apologists” in the Commons of the real dangers posed by the president.
On Saturday, it was reported that Theresa May was preparing to hold a National Security Council session to examine Russia’s actions towards Britain and its allies.
Woodcock said: “Russia under Putin has been steadily increasing its level of threat to its neighbours, and after the slaughter it sponsored in Aleppo, it deserves to be treated as a pariah nation.
“Russia’s contempt for humanitarian laws and disregard for the system of rules in place since the second world war is a profound threat to global security, and its level of covert aggression towards the UK is arguably already akin to the cold war era.
“Britain can no longer afford to leave unchallenged the recent examples of craven Kremlin apologism in UK politics, particularly given anxiety over how Nato will hold together with Donald Trump as US president.
“I am pleased to have been able to organise this cross-party delegation to two European nations on Russia’s border, and hope that the briefings we will organise in the new year will be helpful to Labour colleagues.”
Others in the delegation are the Labour MPs Alison McGovern and Toby Perkins, the Labour and Cooperative MP Adrian Bailey, and the Conservative MP Mark Menzies.Addressing the Nation of Islam's annual convention, Minister Louis Farrakhan accused the Jews of trying to push America into war with Iran.
Minister Louis Farrakhan, the racist leader of the Nation of Islam, once again echoed the anti-Semitic propaganda of which he has been widely accused.
Speaking to the Nation of Islam’s 82nd annual Savior’s Day celebration in Chicago on Tuesday, he accused Jews of controlling the media and “Zionists” of trying to push American into war with Iran.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) characterized his speech as “a textbook example” of the continuing potency of anti-Semitism and hatred that continues to exist in some segments of society to this day.
He echoed the typical anti-Semitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories, accusing the Jews of controlling the government, media, finance and entertainment but professed that he is “not anti-Semitic,” but rather “just telling the truth.
Addressing the crowd he announced, "I advise white and black America, Hispanic and Asian America, why would you send your children to die in a war engineered by Zionists who love Israel more than they love the United States of America?
"Don't send these children to war for the sake of Israel," he pleaded.
“In 100 years, they control movies, television, recording, publishing, commerce, radio, they own it all. Jewish people were not the origin of Hollywood, but they took it over," Farrakhan claimed.
"Farrakhan's annual address to the Nation of Islam was dripping with anti-Semitism and hatred and should stand as a textbook example of the continuing potency in some circles of anti-Semitism in America," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.
"Rather than laugh him off the stage, tens of thousands of supporters cheered him on and encouraged his anti-Semitism and bigotry. Not since Father Coughlin have we seen a religious figure so obsessed with anti-Semitism. In the past few years Farrakhan has turned his message and the mission of the Nation of Islam into a wide-ranging campaign to demonize and scapegoat Jews," according to Foxman.
“In addition to Farrakhan’s speech, the convention included a plenary session that sought to demonstrate disproportionate Jewish involvement in the slave trade. The session, titled ‘Business is Warfare: The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,’ borrowed its name from a set of Nation of Islam books alleging that Jewish exploitation of blacks during the slave trade has caused deep and prolonged repercussions for African Americans,” the ADL reported.Ajax midfielder |
. Maybe that’s why I’ve never been cast in a Star Wars movie.
Willard Huyck: The other casting that went on forever was the voice of Howard. Everybody from Robin Williams to every sort of comedian came in. People seemed to enjoy flying up to San Francisco to do tests.
Gloria Katz: George has this big conceptual idea. He didn’t want to cast a star to do the voice, because he felt that then it became about the star and not the duck, so Chip Zien, who is a very well known Broadway actor, was the voice of Howard.
Lea Thompson: The way they voiced the duck on set was so mechanical. It was impossible to tell jokes that way. It was very difficult for us as actors, and especially as comedians, because we had puppeteers doing jokes. Maybe they were actors, but they weren’t great comedians. Then you’d have to try and pick it up. It was really difficult to be funny. If you can have the actual voice actor saying lines for the character on set, like Bob Zemeckis did with Roger Rabbit, it really helps. People tend to underestimate the power of timing.
Jeffrey Jones: When we were in San Francisco. I’d go to comic book stores and buy up all the Howard the Duck comics I could find. I thought if the film were successful, I’d be able to sell them. I still have them. Anybody want some Howard the Duck comics?
PART IV: “HOSTILITY IS LIKE A PSYCHIC BOOMERANG” – Cajun Sushi restaurant waitress
Lea Thompson: The reviews didn’t matter that much to me. What was really upsetting was how badly it did at the box office. It was upsetting that nobody went because you knew how expensive the movie was. Back to the Future and Howard the Duck opened very close to being within a year of each other. It was an experience to go through such a hit and such a bomb in the same year.
Tim Rose: It was the only movie I had done that I would be getting royalties on, so I was hoping it would be quite successful.
Willard Huyck: I think we left the country. We took a little vacation, which was the best thing for the first few weeks. There are movies like Ishtar, Heaven’s Gate and Howard that become targets when they fail. Of course, Howard the Duck – the title – helps when you’re writing a bad review. The good news is, initially, whenever articles talked about the biggest Hollywood flops, Howard the Duck would be in there, but after thirty years, it has descended from that top spot.
Holly Robinson Peete: I remember this giant billboard on Sunset, with a duck’s beak protruding from it and smoke coming out. It was the coolest billboard I’ve seen to this day. I really got the feeling I was in something that was going to be special. Once I saw the movie at the premiere, I didn’t know whether or not it was going to be received well. I really didn’t ever think it would be a flop. We had all the things to make it a hit. There was a part of me that thought the movie wasn’t amazing, but I thought people would eat it up. The Marvel comic crowd had enough of a fan base. Then there was George Lucas, and that billboard.
Tim Rose: Howard is the most difficult professional job I’ve ever had, and the one I’m most proud of. I think we succeeded nicely. No matter what people say about the way it looked, we kept him alive in every scene of that movie.
Willard Huyck: The screenings went all right. People laughed.
Gloria Katz: I did the response cards. We had to give them all to the studio, but the negative ones I tore up so we could say, “Hey, we got a ninety-five percent on the screening!” Maybe we could have had a more Ted-like tone.
Willard Huyck: It could have been edgier and dirtier, but Universal wanted a family movie. I don’t think people understood the tone. It was a mixture of monster science fiction and humor.
Gloria Katz: I knew we were in trouble when we did a press tour and the Foreign Press went, “Who exactly is this movie for?” But like most disasters, there’s a silver lining. When it went to Japan, it became a phenomenal success. We would always say, “Well, it was big in Japan.”
Holly Robinson Peete: There were several visions working at once. There were several narratives happening. People weren’t on the same page between the studio, George, Willard, and Gloria. I’m not sure if they knew exactly the movie they were trying to make.
Lea Thompson: The comic books were so great, and inspired, and floppy, and messy. The movie was too smoothed out. It was a difficult tone to hit.
Gloria Katz: When it was released in England, we also had to take out the duck bed scene. By this time we had been beaten down we just told them to do it. There was also some problem with Jeffrey’s tongue coming out and getting power from the cigarette lighter. The English didn’t like that.
Lea Thompson: I had just done a love scene with my son in Back to the Future and nobody seemed to be too upset about that. I thought it was hilarious. That’s my sense of humor. My biggest regret about that scene is that it the reason my kids have never seen me sing “Howard the Duck” in front of the giant egg. They have to turn it off at the love scene.
Jeffrey Jones: I don’t think I saw the whole thing until just before we had to go trot out the canned stories for the press. Sometimes, if they’re not all that confident they have a winner, they want to keep things quiet until the last moment, and then give a movie a blast of publicity in hopes of selling as many tickets as possible before everybody says it’s a stinker.
Willard Huyck: It hurt the film ultimately. At the time there it was this very strict thing. You couldn’t show the duck. The studio was behind that, I guess just to build some kind of suspense.
Lea Thompson: I’m happy with my performance. I worked my butt off and I sold a lot of absolutely impossible things. That was our job. I sold that duck. I was in love with that duck, which was nearly impossible to act. I’ve never been ashamed of my work in that movie. That was some of the hardest work to do.
Ed Gale: The first time I saw the movie was at a theater in Palm Springs near my home. I was cordially uninvited to the premiere and asked to not attend. They figured, if there’s a little person there, he must be Howard the Duck. They wanted to hide the fact that Howard was a little person. I felt it was another way of discrediting me, and, because of the credits, everyone thinks eight little people played Howard. That’s not to say that the puppeteers weren’t a part of Howard too, but I was inside the suit. That was the only little piece that hurt, but then I realized what Gloria and Willard were aiming for. They wanted audiences to see Howard the Duck the character, not Howard the Duck the little person.
Allee Willis: I did not have great feelings about the film. At the screening they made everyone put on these duckbills and I just thought, “This has got to be the most surreal photo ever taken.” If you were involved with the film, you already knew it was not going to fly.
Willard Huyck: At the premiere they had trained a hundred trained ducks walk in a row through the banquet hall. Oh my God, that was so corny! By that time there was already word that things were not going to go well.
Gloria Katz: We had a big screening at Grauman’s, then we went to the Beverly Hilton. It was a typical Hollywood party. Our very good friends made beelines to the studio head, Frank Price, to tell him how wonderful the picture was. Everybody we know we were having a terrible experience, and obviously we were not thrilled when Steve Gerber started badmouthing the movie.
Allee Willis: A film has to be disastrously bad in a different way to be kitsch, as in they didn’t have enough money to spend on production. If someone slams the door, the walls shake. Howard the Duck wasn’t bad in that sense. It was just fairly boring. It was reminiscent of a lot of films that were out at the time, but not as good. People were really getting in to special effects then, so the duck just seemed too cheap, and not in a funny way.
Gloria Katz: It actually wasn’t a financial bomb. What amazes me is that some pictures just get absolutely steam rolled, and other financial bombs just go unscathed. Crimson Peak cost a fortune and it just disappeared. No one trashed anyone.
PART V: “HOWARD THE DUCK IS READY TO FIGHT” – Howard the Duck
Willard Huyck: A few years later, when we made another film with George, he kept saying, “You know, if they show this film fifty years in the future, and they show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and someone’s asked which one was the hit, they’re going to say Howard the Duck.” We kept saying, “George, we’ll be dead in fifty years. It’ll be too late.”
Holly Robinson Peete: Tim Robbins and I are still friends. He’s probably one of the most fun people I’ve ever had a chance to work with. We were on a plane together recently, just catching up. We talked about what if Howard the Duck was filmed today, with the different resources we would have. The duck would work better and it would just be a different movie.
Jeffrey Jones: You never know how things are going to turn out. Frequently actors are not blamed for the movies they are in because we don’t really have any power. You do what you are asked and hope that the editor treats it kindly.
Lea Thompson: I’ve definitely experienced press bullying for a long time. It’s intense when people turn on a movie like that. It’s just fun to pick on things. We all do it. But I’ve always been an iconoclast. I appreciate people who like things that aren’t particularly popular, who have their own sense of what they like and aren’t swayed by the mass media. That’s why I love my Howard the Duck fans, because they’ve had a rough time of it. It’s not a popular position.
Ed Gale: In the industry, they want to play the game. It comes off as jealousy, but it can’t be. “You were in Howard the Duck, why do you put that on your resume? If I were in that movie, I wouldn’t put that on my resume.” Well, yeah, you would. I was in the movie and I’m proud to have that on my resume. I did a movie called Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. Howard the Duck isn’t that bad.
Holly Robinson Peete: I took it off my resume. I wasn’t exactly running around telling people I was in Howard the Duck at first. I graduated, and then got 21 Jump Street, so it wasn’t like I ever needed to talk about it.
Lea Thompson: It’s funny to me that people keep acting like I care when someone puts it down. So many people tell me they love the movie, sometimes with tears in their eyes. I see more of that in my real life, so when people are snotty about Howard the Duck, I just tell them that a lot of people really liked it, and that means more to me than people who want to try and make me feel embarrassed or bad about a movie I think I did good work in. I didn’t edit it, I didn’t write it, and I didn’t create the duck. I did the best job I could and I’m proud of that.
Val Mayerik: I’ve been going to a lot of comic conventions lately and people bring the old Howard the Duck comics to my table. Some of them were probably only six or seven-years-old when the movie came out, and they talk about it very fondly. To them it was just like watching any of these 80’s films that became popular, like Indiana Jones. It was just a fun movie. People who were really aficionados of the books were disappointed, but it seems like the movie was a positive thing for the character for some people that saw the movie but never read the comics.
Willard Huyck: Gloria and I haven’t seen it in a long time. A friend of ours, just a week ago, said, “My God, I finally saw Howard the Duck and it’s outrageous. It’s great.” I have no idea if he’s right. Usually when I look at the things I’ve done, I just remember the pain of doing it.
Holly Robinson Peete: When my kids saw it, they went nuts. They were like, “What in the…what are you…you’re with a duck…you’re dancing…you’re singing…what is happening?” They were blown away by it. One of them said, “Mom, I bet this movie made millions and millions at the box office,” and I just said, “Well, I’ll let you Google that one, son.”
Lea Thompson: Trust me, there are a lot of bad movies being made. To be in one that has been remembered so well is kind of a feather in my cap.
Holly Robinson Peete: I love the fact that, retroactively, this is a movie we could all be proud of, especially since, at the time, it was rough. I thought this movie was going to be a hit and I was going to be a part of this group called Cherry Bomb in real life. I was going to graduate college and become a music star. Today, that’s totally doable. You can name groups like Fifth Harmony that have come out of movies and TV shows that actually go on to sell records or chart on iTunes. I was really excited about the possibilities.
Lea Thompson: It was great to see Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy the way I always imagined he should look. He was just like in the cartoon, floppy and grungy. Watching it made me feel like I had made the silent movie version of Ben-Hur and then got to see the one in Technicolor.
Ed Gale: I just don’t see them making another straight up Howard the Duck movie. They keep making Superman movies because Superman can sell tickets. I don’t think Howard is strong enough to hold a complete movie anymore, but he could definitely be a good sidekick, like Rocket Raccoon. I don’t think he could hold his own movie either, but I could see Howard having a bigger role in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but it’s up to the people like Stan Lee and the geniuses of this industry to determine who can hold their whole weight.
Lea Thompson: I’m a hundred percent sure they would not want to associate with the first Howard the Duck if they made a second one, but that would be so badass. “We don’t care what you think, we’re making a new one.” I think they should, but with CGI and a great actor doing his voice. Someone who could improv, and then they could animate to that. That would be cool.
Holly Robinson Peete: I would definitely do another Howard. I was single and childless thirty years ago, now I’ve got four kids and have been married twenty years. That would definitely be an aging rock star moment, but I would love it.
Lea Thompson: It’s cool that we’re still talking about it after thirty years. That’s pretty badass, as far as I’m concerned.
Willard Huyck: Whether or not they should reboot Howard the Duck isn’t the question. The question is whether anyone has the nerve to do another Howard the Duck?
Gloria Katz: I don’t think they would, but they’re remaking all these other things people have never heard of, so who knows?
[You can stream Howard The Duck on HBO Go, HBO Now, Amazon Video, and more, or you can buy the 30th anniversary Howard The Duck on Blu-Ray, too]
Caseen Gaines is the author of We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy, Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic. He freely admits to enjoying Howard the Duck. Follow him on social media: @caseengaines.Broad support from women and minority voters has helped Hillary Clinton open an early lead over Donald J. Trump nationally, according to a new poll released on Monday.
A Monmouth University survey found that 47 percent of registered voters back Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, while 40 percent support Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s standard-bearer. The survey is the latest in a succession of recent polls that show Mrs. Clinton having an advantage, as Mr. Trump’s campaign has sputtered amid internal strife and an array of provocative public comments.
“Clinton has the advantage as the general election campaign kicks off, particularly in key swing states,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. “However, all signs point to 2016 turning out the most polarized electorate in memory.”
The lack of diversity that comprises Mr. Trump’s core supporters has become a problem for his general election prospects. The poll found Mrs. Clinton drawing the support of 72 percent of minority voters and 57 percent of female voters. Mr. Trump holds more modest leads among men and white voters.New York (CNNMoney.com) -- As 2009 approaches, plummeting oil prices have sent the price of gasoline to the lowest level in nearly five years, according to a daily survey of gas station credit card swipes.
Gas prices fell for the tenth consecutive day Monday, according to motorist group AAA. Regular unleaded fell to an average of $1.619 a gallon, the lowest since gas hit $1.617 a gallon in January 2004.
Prices are down nearly $2.50, or more than 60%, since hitting a record average high of $4.114 a gallon this July. Prices have plummeted along with the price of crude oil, the main ingredient in gas, as the current economic has crisis intensified and threatened demand for petroleum-based fuels.
Oil has shed more than $100 a barrel since July.
"When you have the price for the raw material drop over $100 a barrel, that's why you see the price of gasoline drop," said AAA spokesman Troy Green.
In the United States, the world's largest oil consumer, citizens drove 100 billion fewer miles during the 12-month period between November 2007 and October 2008 compared with the prior year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
And crude demand in China fell 3.2% in November compared to the prior year due to lower imports and a decline in refinery usage, according to estimates compiled by Reuters.
Gas may continue to sell at record lows heading into 2009 unless economic activity shows some sign of recovery, according to Green.
Usually gas prices rise in the spring as Americans take to the road.
"Will the economy be in such bad shape that we don't see that typical runup?" posed Green.
State prices: Prices remained above $2 a gallon in only two states Monday: Alaska ($2.518) and Hawaii ($2.332).
Gas was cheapest in Missouri at $1.419 a gallon on average, and sold for less than $1.50 on average in ten states.
Diesel: Meanwhile the price of diesel fuel, which is used in most trucks and commercial vehicles, fell to $2.435 on average Monday.
The AAA figures, compiled by Oil Price Information Services, are state-wide averages based on credit card swipes at up to 100,000 service stations across the nation.Watch... if you’re looking for something weird to engage both kids and adults. Jake the shape-shifting dog and Finn, the last human on Earth, are always on some sort of quest — to save princesses, to defeat monsters, to keep the Ice King from doing anything too creepy. But Finn and Jake have personal struggles as well: Finn with his first heartbreak and with realizing his parents aren’t as perfect as he imagined, and Jake, with his inadequacies as a father to his brood of puppies. Those who get deep into the show will realize that the Land of Ooo is a post-apocalyptic paradise, reset after humans destroyed it the first time around. Don’t worry, the kids will be too busy with toilet humor and sword fights to realize how intellectual and subversive the cartoon truly is.
Skip... if you need your stories to make strict narrative sense. Everything in “Adventure Time” adheres to its own unique physics — all the candy talks, for instance, and no one ever eats it — and if you’re not willing to play along, it’s best to skip this ride. Other potential turn offs include bright and bizarre animation, unexplained mysteries, and the occasional twee pop song.Big Oil found their target.
Just now, as expected, Robert Menendez sought unanimous consent for the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act of 2010, which would raise the liability cap on oil spills from $75 million up to $10 billion. And it would have surely passed. Big Oil needed one Senator to raise an objection and fend off those who want fair compensation for people unwittingly affected by the underwater gusher in the Gulf and other disasters in the future. And they found her in Lisa Murkowski: amazingly, the Senator from Alaska, the site of the last major oil spill in America, the Exxon Valdez disaster.
“I don’t believe that taking the liability cap from $75 million dollars to $10 billion dollars… 133 times the current strict liability limit, isn’t where we need to be right now,” Murkowski said, objecting to immediate consideration of the bill. She cited the Administration’s unwillingness to put a specific number on the liability cap as a reason not to move to consideration now (thanks for providing the talking point, President Obama!). “I do think we need to look at the liability cap, but we need to be careful of unintended consequences of just picking a number,” she concluded. And she actually tried to turn this into a fight for the little guy, saying that smaller oil producers wouldn’t be able to get insurance with that kind of liability cap, and that it should be structured in a way that “doesn’t give big oil a monopoly over the entire OCS (Outer Continental Shelf).”
Menendez responded by saying that “When BP makes $5.6 billion in three months, $10 billion is a drop in the bucket.” He rebutted Murkowski’s claim that small claimants could go through state courts to get recompense in a way that is not capped by reminding the Senator from Alaska of what happened in the Exxon Valdez case. “It took 20 years. And some of them fell off the way because they couldn’t hang in there. And they lost everything.”
But at least Big Oil got off easy today, thanks to Lisa Murkowski.
UPDATE: Majority Leader Reid was quick with a response....:According to Pete Hines, VP of Marketing at Bethesda, has confirmed that the copy of Fallout 3 included with Fallout 4 will be backwards compatible but not remastered via Twitter.
In my opinion this is a good thing. Fallout 3 will remain in its state from when we played it before and won’t detract from the updated visuals in Fallout 4. Granted, Fallout 3 could definitely benefit from a facelift, but in this case it will remain in the state it was the first time we played it.
I’m also glad that they did not take time away from the production of Fallout 4 to remaster the entirety of Fallout 3. We might have had to wait another year for them to update and create all new assets for what is a huge game.
I hope for Obsidian to follow suit and provide a backwards compatibility option for New Vegas, as it is not included in the games currently backwards compatible for Xbox One, a feature which was revealed on Monday at E3.
To learn more about Microsoft’s conference, you can read our summary here. For all other Fallout news in the past and the future, stay tuned to Pretty in Pixel.
AdvertisementsWomen on the Hill make thousands less than their male counterparts each year, with the gap particularly pronounced amongst Republican staffers.
On average, women in the House make $5,862.56 less each year than male staffers. But for GOP women, that number increases to $10,093.09, according to an analysis by National Journal. On the House Democratic side, female staff make, on average, $1,473.65 less annually than their male counterparts.
The overall disparity is even higher in the Senate, where women make $7,277.69 less annually on average than male staff. Republican women working in the Senate earn, on average, $9,805.85 less annually than than men, while the difference on the Democratic side was $4,916.46.
The wage gap is due in large part to the gender disparity among the more influential jobs on the Hill -- a disparity that is more prevalent on the Republican side, according to National Journal. Only 41 percent of House offices employed female chiefs of staff in 2010, but women filled 84 percent of entry-level positions, such as schedulers and assistants.
Last month, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have ensured women received the same pay as their male counterparts, citing concerns that it would invite unnecessary litigation.
The wage disparity underscores a wider pessimism among women in Washington that they have fewer opportunities than men.
More than 500 professional women in Washington -- 73 percent of those surveyed -- told National Journal that men have more advancement opportunities than women. Sixty percent said it is harder for women to attain positions of leadership than men. Half said they had experienced sex discrimination at work, with that number increased to 71 percent for women over 60.A casting notice is circulating for an “up-and-coming conservative media network currently in development,” Fox News reported Thursday.
The notice — seeking hosts, reporters and panelists — comes amid rumors that Republican nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE is considering launching a TV network if he loses the presidential election.
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“[Talent] must be knowledgeable about conservative viewpoints, current events and the presidential election,” a casting ad says.
Auditions are being held at an undisclosed New York City studio on Nov. 7, the day before Election Day, Fox reported. The notice calls for applicants that "look upscale and intelligent" and are "energetic and outspoken."
It notes that initial programming will be streamed online. Trump's campaign recently set up similar streaming coverage via Facebook Live, broadcasting a nightly program beginning in late October.
Trump slammed speculation that he is laying the groundwork for a new media empire, insisting he instead remains dedicated to defeating Democratic nominee Hillary 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.
“No, I have no interest in Trump TV,” Trump told 700WLW Radio in Cincinnati last month. “I have one interest, that’s on Nov. 8. So no, I have no interest beyond that. I have interest in making America great again."Remoaners seize veto on Brexit as government loses vote
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The government have just lost, with a cross-party anti-Brexit alliance winning the vote to secure a veto on Brexit. The government lost by 309 – 305 votes.
They want MPs and Lords to be given the sign-off on any UK-EU deal.
That will likely result in the pro-EU establishment blocking an exit from the Single Market/Customs Union, with Labour keen to bring down the government completely.
Amendment 7 will allow politicians to block the will of the people. Yet again politicians ignore the public and do what they like.
The pro-EU establishment in Parliament today, who campaigned for the UK to be ruled from Brussels, talked about Parliamentary sovereignty time and time again today as soon as they sensed an opportunity to stop Brexit. Disgraceful.Etienne Capoue and Jan Vertonghen returned from injury and played their part as our Under-21s completed their Barclays U21 Premier League campaign with a rollercoaster ride of a victory against Reading at Stevenage's Lamex Stadium on Sunday.
Capoue played 60 minutes on his return from two months on the sidelines while Vertonghen completed the full 90-minute shift after a a four-week absence.
It was a game that had just about everything as we cruised into a 2-0 lead but then had Nabil Bentaleb sent off and played for 50 minutes with 10 men, during which time Reading levelled at 2-2 before goals from Ruben Lameiras and Kenny McEvoy secured the three points.
Lameiras' strike for 3-2 was the key moment but Jordan Archer's fine one-on-one block to deny Tarique Fosu just seconds later was just as important before McEvoy ended the contest in the third minute of injury time.
The result on the final afternoon of the regular season sees us climb above Arsenal, Villa and Bolton into 12th place of 22.
Reading had the first chance of an all-action first half when Gozie Ugwu lobbed just over in the second minute, but bar for a couple of shots from distance, it was all Spurs for the rest of the half.
It took just a minute to respond to that first chance as Daniel Akindayini on his first start for the U21s did well to meet McEvoy's cross but couldn't keep his volley down.
Our high pressing was the feature of the first half and forced Reading into mistakes, almost punished on six minutes when Bentaleb met another McEvoy cross, only to see his header deflected over. Lameiras drove in the corner and Giancarlo Gallifuoco launched himself in at the far post, his header just off target.
We were ahead with nine minutes on the clock. Capoue was upended by Aaron Tshibola and Bentaleb made no mistake from the penalty spot.
The chances kept coming. Lameiras darted to the near post to meet McEvoy's cross, glancing just over, before providing another opportunity from a driven corner, this time Milos Veljkovic volleyed wide.
Capoue burst into the box again on 17 minutes but was denied one-on-one by Stuart Moore and moments later, having won possession centrally, fired just wide from 25 yards.
Jack Stacey dragged wide for Reading before our next chance with Capoue involved again, this time breaking into the box on the right before squaring for Lameiras, who beat Moore, only for Sean Long to clear off the line.
The second goal arrived on 36 minutes, another penalty. Lameiras got the better of Pierce Sweeney in the left channel and was dragged down by the centre-back. Lameiras picked himself and drilled the spot kick into the bottom corner.
But the game changed on 41 minutes. We won possession again centrally and Bentaleb looked to break forward. He was chased by Craig Tanner, who clinically hacked him down from behind. Bentaleb was clearly infuriated but raised his hands in retaliation and was sent off for his reaction.
The team remained fluid in playing system, re-organising into a 4-2-1-2 system for the start of the second half, with Lameiras the link between holding midfielder Capoue and Veljkovic and Akindayini and McEvoy in attack.
The second half was a different story though as Reading forced their way back into the game.
After a relatively quiet start, Fosu rattled the crossbar from 25 yards on 55 minutes and two minutes later, the visitors were back in it as Stacey curled into the top corner from the same distance.
Filip Lesniak replaced Capoue on the hour mark and we had a breakaway chance on 65 minutes when a shot from Lameiras flew across the face of goal to McEvoy, but the winger couldn't divert it on target.
Reading then levelled on their next attack as Tanner floated in a corner, Sweeney powered his header at goal and the ball appeared to take a deflection on the way home.
Vertonghen tried his luck from 25 yards as we started to work our way back into the game offensively with the sheer hard work of Akindayini, McEvoy and guile of Lameiras taking us back into more positive areas.
The key moment arrived on 75 minutes as Lameiras worked a yard to shoot from the edge of the box and his low effort went through Moore and crept over the line in slow motion as the goalkeeper scrambled back.
Archer's fine one-on-one save with his feet to deny Fosu a minute later was just as important and after a relatively chance-free final 10 minutes, McEvoy secured the victory after Moore hit an attempted clearance straight to him in the box.
Quite an afternoon!
Spurs: Archer; McEneff, Gallifuoco (Dombaxe, 80), Vertonghen, McQueen; Bentaleb, Capoue (Lesniak, 61), Veljkovic; McEvoy, Akindayini (Campbell-Young, 82), Lameiras. Unused sub: Miles.
Reading: Moore, Long, Griffin, Tshibola, Cooper, Sweeney, Stacey, Kelly, Ugwu (Cardwell, 80), Tanner, Fosu. Unused subs: Keown, Lincoln, Fridjonsson, Murombedzi.Why did you choose the Ural Mountains and these towns?
I decided to head inland to the Ural Mountains, Russia’s "spine" where Europe and Asia meet. This is the middle of Russia, not geographically but culturally. I explored two regions of the Urals - Perm Krai and Sverdlovsk Oblast. Both of them have one representative in the Russian Football Premier League, but I was more interested in documenting the life of the real football underdogs - amateur clubs from local championships. There are seven towns in my story from The Ural Mountains: Perm, Uralsky, Chusovoy, Lysva, Kachkanar, Degtyarsk and Rezh.
The main economic activities in The Urals are mining and metalwork, which deeply impact social life and football, including the names of the stadiums and clubs. Of the seven local stadiums that I visited three were named "Metallurg" and two were called "Gornyak" ("Miner").
The harsh nature of provincial Russia is displayed on the football pitches. The economic crisis in the country affects many parts of football, including financial support of the teams, the condition of pitches and even the availability of medical care at the stadiums.
Nevertheless, the spirit of football traditionally prevails on a match day in the towns. Football always attracts a large number of locals into the stands at the weekend. Although there is no financial reward for a victory, players in the countryside fight in the matches for their team and town, as their fathers and grandfathers once did. The continuity of generations, conservatism and patriarchal character of modern Russia is shown very well in the football stadiums of small provincial towns.ctvmontreal.ca
MONTREAL - Montreal police are investigating an officer who knocked down a woman during Thursday's student protest in downtown Montreal.
The incident was caught on camera by a student at the demonstration and quickly made public.
The video shows a woman leaning near an officer in full riot gear, who then uses his shield to shove her to the ground.
The woman hit her head on a Canada Post mailbox as she fell.
The student, whose identity CTV News has agreed to keep concealed, says he started filming moments before the woman was pushed.
"I started filming and right away after five seconds she gets pushed, and that is what really surprised me, no one was there to help her," said the 22-year-old Cegep student.
"I called out for someone to help and students that were around helped her quickly.
"I think in the video we hear a police [officer] tell the other police to get help."
The student says the woman was in her fifties and not part of the protest.
Police launched investigation after seeing video
A spokesman from the Montreal police department said that officers at the scene called for an ambulance, and that the woman was treated by paramedics, but refused to be hospitalized.
They also said she did not want to press charges against the officer, and left as soon as paramedics finished.
After seeing the video online, the SPVM began its investigation of the officer, but has not said if the man in question has been suspended or relegated to desk duty.Introducing Mapbox Android Services
Mapbox Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 18, 2016
By Antonio Zugaldia
Today we’re releasing Mapbox Android Services (MAS) v1.0, a new Java library to help consume Mapbox APIs on Android. Mapbox Android Services is the evolution of the existing geocoding and directions libraries, rearchitected to enable more features and faster iterations.
Getting started
We’ve ported all previously available functionality, including access to the latest directions and geocoding, and the autocomplete widget. All services are now contained within one package that you can add using Gradle:
dependencies {
compile ('com.mapbox.mapboxsdk:mapbox-android-services:1.0.0@aar'){
transitive=true
}
}
Static API
Performance is paramount in mobile and, sometimes, to make your apps respond faster you don’t need to load a full map. For example, if you need to put multiple map thumbnails on a page showing who is dialing into the call, or a visual list of geotagged receipts, this is a quick and memory-efficient solution.
Use Mapbox Android Services to build the URL from the Mapbox Static API and use, for example, a RecyclerView to build a gallery of maps:
java
MapboxStaticImage staticImage = new MapboxStaticImage.Builder()
.setAccessToken("...")
.setStyleId(Constants.MAPBOX_STYLE_SATELLITE)
.setLon(lon).setLat(lat)
.setZoom(15).setBearing(45).setPitch(60)
.setWidth(500).setHeight(500)
.setRetina(true)
.build();
Static Images is the first new API to be supported by Mapbox Android Services. We plan to include more in the future, let us know which one you want to see next.
RxJava support
Under the hood, we’re using |
and probably a very nice, clear night, but obviously may not have been aware of the dangers."
Victim'started to scream and was dragged into the water'
The victim's friend is being treated for grazes and shock at the Mossman Hospital.
Neil Noble from the Queensland Ambulance Service said the 47-year-old woman had a graze on her arm that is believed to be from the crocodile.
"They felt a nudge and her partner started to scream and then was dragged into the water," he said.
Mr Noble said a local crocodile expert said a five-metre crocodile had been seen in area in the past few weeks.
"The whole of Cairns and up into the Cape is known for its large crocodiles," he said.
"Certainly one has to be very careful around our waterways. Stay well away from the water when you can, especially when you can't see.
"Just be very mindful that they are out there and that they can get you really quickly."
Search includes shoreline, estuarine areas
Senior Constable Parker said a rescue helicopter was in the air last night using thermal imaging equipment to try to locate the woman, but could not find her.
A large-scale search began at first light this morning.
"We've got a forward command post set up at Thornton Beach," he said.
"We are utilising our own water police and land-based officers, as well was SES volunteers and so on, and we've got the SES boat in there as well."
Acting Inspector Ed Lukin said authorities and a rescue helicopter had been searching along the shoreline and estuarine areas such as Cooper Creek.
"The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection are here — they're providing expert assistance to us on crocodiles that may be of interest in this incident," he said.
He said the search would continue until dark.
Local resident Lee Randall said the area was a known crocodile habitat.
"There's a large male down at Cooper Creek, he's probably about four-and-a-bit metres, or even up to five metres," he said.
"As I said the other day, there's this little one just sitting here on the bank."
The local cafe has been closed to the public while rescuers use it as a command post.
The last fatal crocodile attack in the area was in 2009, when five-year-old Jeremy Doble was taken from a swamp near his home.
Topics: crocodile, emergency-incidents, daintree-4873, cairns-4870, lithgow-2790, nsw
First postedIllustration: Dionne Gain. Credit:Dionne Gain For most, their early interactions with Australia's $2 trillion superannuation system go something like this. As a teenager, you land your first part-time job, answering telephones or flipping burgers. Some guy wearing a tie forces you to sign a bunch of paperwork in return for your much anticipated paycheck. Then, every year, as if by magic, you start receiving an A4 envelope – perhaps several – stuffed with a confusing array of statements and disclaimers, something to do with past returns being no indication of future returns. You promptly bin them or, if you're really diligent, place them in folder with all your other "grown up" paperwork. Your early 20s roll around. You land a more permanent, full-time job and spend the rest of the decade working hard and playing hard. Then, some time in your 30s, those letters start to come in with what looks like real money on them, as one did for me this week.
Blimey. I'd better read this thing, you think. Steeling yourself, you start to scan the list of transactions. You see money coming in. Good. You see tax going out - 15 per cent of whatever has gone in. Bummer. But wait, what are these other deductions? Monthly admin fees. Fair enough, perhaps, they are looking after your money. Hang on, what's this? Insurance premiums. I have life insurance through my super? And I've been paying more than $10 a month for it this whole time? Australia's deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, last week expressed sympathy with the idea that young, part time and contract workers should not be forced to put aside 9.5 per cent of their measly earnings into super. They should be able to use the money to save for a home instead. But rather than denying vulnerable workers their chance to enjoy the wonders of compound interest and build a retirement nest egg, we should be doing better to protect their hard earned cash once it is in super. First of all, we need to fix the glaring inequity that people on very low incomes actually get a tax penalty for money that goes into super. If they earn less than the tax free threshold, presently $18,200, each year, they actually pay higher tax for each dollar in super (15 cents in the dollar) than otherwise.
Labor introduced a low-income tax offset to correct this unfairness. But in its quest for budget savings, the Abbott government scrapped it. If Joyce wants to help low income earners, he should push to reintroduce it. But, if we really want to bolster the super savings of low income earners and relieve pressure on the age pension, we need to go further. Contrary to popular opinion, Australia's compulsory super system was never intended to replace the age pension but to top it up. But in the process, policy makers, through both inertia and well-intentioned big brotherism, have created a two trillion dollar financial behemoth that is subject to little scrutiny and making a motza charging fees on our savings.
It is time to fix a series of rorts and idiosyncrasies that end up draining super balances by hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime, serving only to feather the nests of the increasingly powerful super industry. For instance, why do we force young people to pay hundreds of dollars a year out of their super as premiums for life insurance? It doesn't take long for a modest sized account to go completely up in smoke this way. In other industries, making it a condition of purchase that a customer also purchase a product from a third party is called "third line forcing" and is illegal under competition laws. According to Alex Dunnin, the head of research at Rainmaker, policy makers bundled life insurance into compulsory super out of concern about underinsurance. "You can't say it's a bad thing, but the tail is sort of wagging the dog," says Dunnin. People may need life insurance, but they should choose when and where to get it.
According to Dunnin, savers are, in fact, entitled to request to have insurance removed from their super. "You can turn it off," he says. But if you do, don't be surprised if your fund pushes back with threats of additional paperwork or that you'll need to undertake a medical exam to requalify for insurance. Plus, do you really want to leave your family starving when you die? The super industry argues that super members get a good deal on bundled life insurance. Super funds sign big wholesale deals with insurers to get a discounted price for members. But a truly liberal government would look seriously at a policy which forces young Australians to pay premiums for insurance most are not aware of and are unlikely to use any time soon. Then again, many financial high fliers make a fortune from the current arrangements and guess which way they vote? Indeed, in addition to paying $7 billion in insurance premiums from their super, Australians fork out $21 billion in fees to the super industry each year. The biggest sting comes for those nearing retirement, thanks to an industry norm of charging fees not as a flat charge, but as a percentage of fund balance.
Quite why managing $100,000 of your money requires 10 times as much effort as managing $10,000 is unclear. That extra keystroke must really be hard work. The Grattan Institute estimates super fees are inflated by at least $4 billion thanks to a simple lack of competition and consumer inertia. It pays to worry a little bit about your super, at any age.Sebastopol teen fights to stay independent as she battles sight loss
Destiny Snell's expression is one of abiding glee as she recalls the day a few weeks back when she first heard the chirping sound at the crosswalk near her high school, Analy, in Sebastopol.
It came months ahead of what she'd been told would be the case. It signaled freedom.
A year into learning how to navigate life with most of her vision gone, the sophomore is driven to master all the tools and skills at her disposal to minimize limitations on her life.
The busy crossing at North Main Street on her route between school and home was a clear impediment to independence. Now, she can cross it off the list.
In the months since she learned about the sight-stealing tumors in her brain, the 16-year-old has undergone two surgeries and suffered weeks of daily radiation to preserve what little vision she had left. Through it all, Snell has confronted her situation with a fortitude and practicality that's awed those around her.
That she's brave in the face of growing blind is impressive. That it's just the latest hardship to come her way earns her instant respect.
"Destiny is one of the most courageous people I have ever come across," said Leslie Edmonds, part of a team from the Sonoma County Office of Education that is teaching Snell adaptive skills, from Braille to using talking computers, to overcome her impairment. "The inner strength is just off the charts."
Snell gives credit for her endurance and upbeat perspective to simple optimism, as if it's a small habit from childhood she realized one day was of use.
The challenges of her life might have taught her otherwise. Bitterness would have been an understandable choice.
Having endured a childhood without her parents, neglect as a preteen and the more recent shock and discomfort of losing her eyesight, Snell said she copes because it's her custom "to look at the bright side."
Diagnosed with the benign tumors that pressed on her optic nerves right around the time she was to start driving lessons, Snell will miss out on that landmark high school achievement. The trade-off, she says, is deciding she has license to appoint personal chauffeurs on a whim.
"I tend to find the positive in things," she said during an interview at home near downtown.
Since her open-heart surgery seven weeks after birth, "taking care of myself a lot" as a child, and the gradual transfer of parenting from her biological mother to guardians whose attention faded with time, Snell has been forced to develop the kind of resilience that's impressed those aiding her through the latest round of adjustments.
Next up is still-unscheduled surgery to correct a 2-inch discrepancy in the length of her legs -#8212; surgery she hopes will ease chronic pain in her hips and ankle, and is thus welcomed despite the recovery.
It helps to have the obvious love and support of her newfound family: a father who conquered addictions before fighting in court to get her back, a take-charge stepmother she calls Mom, and protective siblings from a blended family. She's got a team of adoring educators, as well, who specialize in different areas of instruction for the visually impaired, including technology, social skills, Braille, mobility and orientation.
But Snell admits it's been difficult to settle into a new school just as she's relearning how to live, knowing the kids who surround her haven't figured out what to make of the girl who uses a white cane and has an ever-present school aide.PARMA, Ohio — As a proud Ukrainian-American, Taras Szmagala has worked for decades to elect Republicans, the party he associates with freedom. He ran an ethnic outreach program for Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 campaign, and advised President George H.W. Bush as the Soviet Union crumbled, when Ukraine became an independent state.
Szmagala, 83, will mark Wednesday’s 25th anniversary of statehood at a parade and festival on Saturday in this Cleveland suburb, where the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine flies along the main thoroughfare in “Ukrainian Village.”
But there is a pall over the festivities. His name is Donald Trump.
Ukrainian-Americans have felt at home in the Republican Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin divided control of Europe at Yalta. But across the United States — and especially in swing state Ohio, where Trump became the party’s nominee — they are watching the 2016 presidential race with a mix of confusion and fear.
“The party’s dead as far as I’m concerned,” Szmagala declared.
As if Trump’s admiring statements about President Vladimir Putin of Russia and his questionable explanation of events in Ukraine were not tough enough to stomach, then came news that Paul Manafort, until last week Trump’s campaign manager, was tangled up in a corruption inquiry and designated to receive millions in secret cash payments from the party of a pro-Russian leader he had helped to elect.
All summer, Ukrainians — many of them already wary of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee — have been obsessing over American politics. The Ukrainian Weekly, a New Jersey-based newspaper that has been carefully tracking the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, is awash in political commentary — including a rebuke of Trump by the country’s ambassador to the United States.
“A vote for Trump is a vote against Ukraine!” wrote one longtime Republican from Morristown, New Jersey, in a letter to the editor.
There are nearly 1 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, clustered around cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, where the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, a rich repository of folk art, periodicals and immigration documents, chronicles the history of a people who have felt oppressed by Russia for 350 years. Currently on display: “Politics and Ukrainian-Americans,” an exhibit that includes a photograph of a young Szmagala with Nixon.
There are, of course, loyal Democrats here; the museum’s resident scholar, Andrew Fedynsky, once chief of staff to a Democratic congresswoman, is one. But many Ukrainian-Americans are deeply skeptical of President Barack Obama and Clinton, whom they regard as not aggressive enough in protecting Ukraine against an incursion from Russia.
So the absence of a friendly Republican is generating a particular kind of despair.
“It’s very confusing,” said Eugene Luciw, a Philadelphia lawyer who is active in Ukrainian affairs there. “It’s been difficult to wrap your hands around Mr. Trump.”
Manafort’s abrupt departure does not change that; many Ukrainians want to know why he was hired in the first place. Still, said Andriy Futey, executive vice president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, who is in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, for the anniversary celebration and to meet with government leaders, there was “a sigh of relief” there when Manafort quit.
Here in Parma, Cleveland’s center of Ukrainian cultural and religious life, the angst — coupled with what many call a “bittersweet” celebration of a nation whose independence feels threatened — is clear.
At St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, where a granite monument to “victims of the man-made famine,” which the Ukrainian government recognizes as a genocide, stands in a garden, a small group of parishioners gathered last week as a black-robed pastor served the Moleben, a prayer for the health and well-being of the sick.
Gene Boyko, 75, whose grandfather was banished to Siberia by Stalin, was among them; he and his parents escaped during World War II and arrived in New York when he was 10.
“When we got here, even as a 10-year-old, I wanted to kiss the ground,” he said. He has long voted Republican, but is waiting for the debates to make up his mind about Trump.
At State Meats, a local butcher shop and smokehouse, George Salo, the owner, was preparing to make several thousand pounds of kielbasa — “the world’s best!” he boasted — for the upcoming parade. Salo, 31, took over the shop when he was 17, after his father died, and learned business by reading books — including some by Trump, whom he admires as an entrepreneur.
But as for the election, “I’m telling everybody I’m voting for Gary Johnson,” he said, referring to the Libertarian nominee.
At the takeout restaurant next door, Oksana Zavhorodnyuk, 44, was serving schnitzel and jumbo pirogi from behind a counter. She wrinkled her nose when asked about the presidential race.
“I don’t like Trump,” she volunteered, in English that is still halting, though she has been here for 25 years. “He likes Russia; he likes Putin. He’s not in his mind, you know? It’s like, not president for America.”
The Trump campaign says it is not concerned. “Mr. Trump has tremendous support in Ohio, and he will continue to share his message of change,” his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, wrote in an email.
Ukrainians arrived in America in four distinct waves, beginning in the late 1800s, and many eventually settled in suburbs like Parma. In Ohio, they are part of a broad bloc of voters who trace their ancestry to Eastern and Central European nations including Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic and Slovenia, the homeland of Trump’s wife, Melania.
In this swing state, politicians of both parties aggressively court what they call the “ethnic vote.” Last week, Sen. Rob Portman, an endangered Ohio Republican (and co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine Caucus), met privately with ethnic leaders here. One big issue: At the Republican National Convention in July in Cleveland, the Trump campaign stripped the party platform of language calling for the United States to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.
Democrats, seizing on a potential vulnerability for Trump, are stepping up their own ethnic outreach this year — an effort that has been caught up in Russian political intrigue.
The personal emails of the woman running the outreach effort, Alexandra Chalupa, were among those hacked at the Democratic National Committee, a breach U.S. intelligence officials attribute to Russian spies. Chalupa, who is of Ukrainian descent, had been researching Manafort while consulting for the committee when the hack occurred. She has been traveling the country, talking to Democrats about what she has found.
“I’d talk about the Russia connection and what we were seeing,” she said in an interview. “People were terrified.”
Still, Clinton may have an uphill battle. The Podesta Group, a Washington firm co-founded by John D. Podesta, her campaign chairman, has surfaced in the same corruption investigation that has entangled Manafort.
“The unease is about Manafort, the unease is about Podesta — all of them have been getting money funneling in from Russia,” said Michael Koziupa, a Ukrainian-American leader in New Jersey.
For Szmagala, a retired Cleveland transit official who has devoted his life to Ukrainian affairs and Republican politics, the campaign is especially painful. He has fond memories of a flight aboard Air Force Two with George Bush, then the vice president. And after Ukraine declared its independence, Bush, then the president, sent him there as part of the official delegation for a somber ceremony at Babi Yar, a site of mass killings by the Nazis.
Szmagala has been a delegate to Republican conventions in the past; this year, though national Republicans gathered in his backyard, he stayed away. He has never voted for a Democrat for president, and is mindful of Ohio’s status as a swing state. He is not eager to vote for Clinton.
“But if it’s close,” he said, “I’ll do it. It’ll hurt, but I’ll do it.”amazing
Now that I've given you a totally sincere compliment I suspect that you are highly susceptible to what's about to come. Yes, let's go with that.
After many woeful hours of attempting to build our own gorgeous cities for trailers and screenshots we have realized that, in comparison to many of you, we are merely plebs fruitlessly attempting a master craft.
In light of this humbling realization we, the content creation team specifically, have decided to recruit a permanent city maker from the community. Having this position you would be used as the main resource in creating custom cities for trailers, screenshots and other future marketing/PR assets.
To be a candidate you need to adhere to the following requirements:
Be at least 18 years of age and able to legally sign an NDA
Able to build a town/city in a short time (if required) and meet deadlines
Have deep knowledge of Cities: Skylines design tools such as the map editor
Willing to modify Skylines installation depending on specific requirements Remove mods Install betas
Understand how to work within the confinements of unfinished game versions
Doing this you will have partial access and knowledge of unreleased content and get a chance to work alongside parts of the team behind Cities: Skylines, and of course be credited for the assets themselves.
To apply, follow these steps:
Build small town (50.000 pop max) after the theme "cute/cozy village" on a custom made map No mods or custom assets may be used (in-game terraforming is accepted)
Submit screenshots of city + save file in an email to john.rickne@paradoxplaza.com Last date for submission is December 17th Email needs to contain your name, location, age and availability for the coming month. Additional details are voluntary.
Best of luck everyone, and thank you for your interest! I would very much appreciate if you spread this around your skilled friends so that we have the best possible chance of great looking assets in the future - for everyone to enjoy.
EDIT: To clarify, this is not a position at Paradox or CO. The terms of the agreement will be defined after we have found our candidate.
Regards,
JohnCALGARY — There was little choice but to fatally shoot a cougar that had been loitering outside a Calgary hospital Thursday, provincial wildlife officials say.
Wildlife officers shot the cougar about three hours after it was spotted lurking around a stairwell at a nearby construction site before moving on to the grounds of the South Health Campus on the edge of Calgary.
At least two shots were fired at the big cat in tall grass near the hospital’s front entrance after officers deemed the situation too dangerous to the public to tranquillize it, Alberta Justice and Solicitor General spokesman Brendan Cox said.
"Officers will always try to remove the animal, they were hoping to immobilize it," he said. "But even if you tranquilize them, they get agitated and there’s a good chance they could escape since they’re very quick.
"Our officers concluded that tranquilizing it would increase the threat to the public."
Cox said when a cougar is tranqulized, the effects of the drug don’t kick in immediately.
"In that time, the cougar could escape," he said. "In this kind of situation their first priority has to be public safety."
Witness Gordon Griffiths said the wildlife officers first tried to tranquilize the animal.
"They did shoot a tranquilizer and it (the cougar) rolled, but then it got up and lunged toward them," Griffiths said. "It didn’t pounce at them but it went toward their direction.
One more bad picture of the cougar through binoculars @CTVCalgary @660News pic.twitter.com/PfU0m9FRbN — Russell K (@CouleeHiker) September 18, 2014
"The only choice they probably had was to put it down."
Initial reports suggested two of the lanky felines may have been in the area, but police could not confirm that.
"We have officers that have eyes on the one cougar, but there hasn’t been a sighting of that second cougar for more than an hour," said police Insp. Keith Cain, who figured the two animals could be one and the same.
The hospital was never locked down, though access was restricted at its main south entrance, Alberta Health Services spokesman Bruce Conway said.
"Patient care continued — patients and staff were re-routed through the north entrance," he said.
Gawkers could be seen at a hospital window snapping photos of the beast as it lay in the grass for more than three hours.
Cain said officers were prepared to shoot the cougar should it threaten humans, but was confident Fish and Wildlife officers would be able to tranquilize it. A graphic video was taken of the shooting.
"We secured the area and wildlife officers moved in and did what they had to do," Cain said two hours later.
Officers could then be seen hauling the animal away in a black bag.
Wildlife sightings of bears, cougars and even bobcats have increased in Calgary since last week’s unseasonal snowfall.
Cox said it’s not uncommon to see bears moving into urban areas in search of food before heading into winter hibernation.
"Cougars are pretty rare, but not unheard of," he said.This is a pattern for Data Access Objects with JDK 5.0, from the CaveatEmptor example application. It is also explained in the book Java Persistence with Hibernate. Two links you might find useful: Sessions and transactions and Open Session in View.
This time I based the DAO example on interfaces. Tools like Hibernate already provide database portability, so persistence layer portability shouldn't be a driving motivation for interfaces. However, DAO interfaces make sense in more complex applications, when several persistence services are encapsulate in one persistence layer. I'd say that you should use Hibernate (or Java Persistence APIs) directly in most cases, the best reason to use an additional DAO layer is higher abstraction (e.g. methods like getMaximumBid() instead of session.createQuery(...) repeated a dozen times).
The DAO interfaces
I use one interface per persistent entity, with a super interface for common CRUD functionality:
public interface GenericDAO<T, ID extends Serializable> { T findById(ID id, boolean lock); List<T> findAll(); List<T> findByExample(T exampleInstance); T makePersistent(T entity); void makeTransient(T entity); }
You can already see that this is going to be a pattern for a state-oriented data access API, with methods such as makePersistent() and makeTransient(). Furthermore, to implement a DAO you have to provide a type and an identifier argument. As for most ORM solutions, identifier types have to be serializable.
The DAO interface for a particular entity extends the generic interface and provides the type arguments:
public interface ItemDAO extends GenericDAO<Item, Long> { public static final String QUERY_MAXBID = "ItemDAO.QUERY_MAXBID"; public static final String QUERY_MINBID = "ItemDAO.QUERY_MINBID"; Bid getMaxBid(Long itemId); Bid getMinBid(Long itemId); }
We basically separate generic CRUD operations and actual business-related data access operations from each other. (Ignore the named query constants for now, they are convenient if you use annotations.) However, even if only CRUD operations are needed for a particular entity, you should still write an interface for it, even it it is going to be empty. It is important to use a concrete DAO in your controller code, otherwise you will face some refactoring once you have to introduce specific data access operations for this entity.
An implementation with Hibernate
An implementation of the interfaces could be done with any state-management capable persistence service. First, the generic CRUD implementation with Hibernate:
public abstract class GenericHibernateDAO<T, ID extends Serializable> implements GenericDAO<T, ID> { private Class<T> persistentClass; private Session session; public GenericHibernateDAO() { this.persistentClass = (Class<T>) ((ParameterizedType) getClass().getGenericSuperclass()).getActualTypeArguments()[0]; } @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public void setSession(Session s) { this.session = s; } protected Session getSession() { if (session == null) throw new IllegalStateException("Session has not been set on DAO before usage"); return session; } public Class<T> getPersistentClass() { return persistentClass; } @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public T findById(ID id, boolean lock) { T entity; if (lock) entity = (T) getSession().load(getPersistentClass(), id, LockMode.UPGRADE); else entity = (T) getSession().load(getPersistentClass(), id); return entity; } @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public List<T> findAll() { return findByCriteria(); } @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public List<T> findByExample(T exampleInstance, String[] excludeProperty) { Criteria crit = getSession().createCriteria(getPersistentClass()); Example example = Example.create(exampleInstance); for (String exclude : excludeProperty) { example.excludeProperty(exclude); } crit.add(example); return crit.list(); } @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") public T makePersistent(T entity) { getSession().saveOrUpdate(entity); return entity; } public void makeTransient(T entity) { getSession().delete(entity); } public void flush() { getSession().flush(); } public void clear() { getSession().clear(); } /** * Use this inside subclasses as a convenience method. */ @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") protected List<T> findByCriteria(Criterion... criterion) { Criteria crit = getSession().createCriteria(getPersistentClass()); for (Criterion c : criterion) { crit.add(c); } return crit.list(); } }
There are some interesting things in this implementation. First, it clearly needs a Session to work, provided with setter injection. You could also use constructor injection. How you set the Session and what scope this Session has is of no concern to the actual DAO implementation. A DAO should not control transactions or the Session scope.
We need to suppress a few compile-time warnings about unchecked casts, because Hibernate's interfaces are JDK 1.4 only. What follows are the implementations of the generic CRUD operations, quite straightforward. The last method is quite nice, using another JDK 5.0 feature, varargs. It helps us to build Criteria queries in concrete entity DAOs. This is an example of a concrete DAO that extends the generic DAO implementation for Hibernate:
public class ItemDAOHibernate extends GenericHibernateDAO<Item, Long> implements ItemDAO { public Bid getMaxBid(Long itemId) { Query q = getSession().getNamedQuery(ItemDAO.QUERY_MAXBID); q.setParameter("itemid", itemId); return (Bid) q.uniqueResult(); } public Bid getMinBid(Long itemId) { Query q = getSession().getNamedQuery(ItemDAO.QUERY_MINBID); q.setParameter("itemid", itemId); return (Bid) q.uniqueResult(); } }
Another example which uses the findByCriteria() method of the superclass with variable arguments:
public class CategoryDAOHibernate extends GenericHibernateDAO<Category, Long> implements CategoryDAO { public Collection<Category> findAll(boolean onlyRootCategories) { if (onlyRootCategories) return findByCriteria( Expression.isNull("parent") ); else return findAll(); } }
Preparing DAOs with factories
We could bring it all together in a DAO factory, which not only sets the Session when a DAO is constructed but also contains nested classes to implement CRUD-only DAOs with no business-related operations:
public class HibernateDAOFactory extends DAOFactory { public ItemDAO getItemDAO() { return (ItemDAO)instantiateDAO(ItemDAOHibernate.class); } public CategoryDAO getCategoryDAO() { return (CategoryDAO)instantiateDAO(CategoryDAOHibernate.class); } public CommentDAO getCommentDAO() { return (CommentDAO)instantiateDAO(CommentDAOHibernate.class); } public ShipmentDAO getShipmentDAO() { return (ShipmentDAO)instantiateDAO(ShipmentDAOHibernate.class); } private GenericHibernateDAO instantiateDAO(Class daoClass) { try { GenericHibernateDAO dao = (GenericHibernateDAO)daoClass.newInstance(); dao.setSession(getCurrentSession()); return dao; } catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Can not instantiate DAO: " + daoClass, ex); } } // You could override this if you don't want HibernateUtil for lookup protected Session getCurrentSession() { return HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession(); } // Inline concrete DAO implementations with no business-related data access methods. // If we use public static nested classes, we can centralize all of them in one source file. public static class CommentDAOHibernate extends GenericHibernateDAO<Comment, Long> implements CommentDAO {} public static class ShipmentDAOHibernate extends GenericHibernateDAO<Shipment, Long> implements ShipmentDAO {} }
This concrete factory for Hibernate DAOs extends the abstract factory, which is the interface we'll use in application code:
public abstract class DAOFactory { /** * Creates a standalone DAOFactory that returns unmanaged DAO * beans for use in any environment Hibernate has been configured * for. Uses HibernateUtil/SessionFactory and Hibernate context * propagation (CurrentSessionContext), thread-bound or transaction-bound, * and transaction scoped. */ public static final Class HIBERNATE = org.hibernate.ce.auction.dao.hibernate.HibernateDAOFactory.class; /** * Factory method for instantiation of concrete factories. */ public static DAOFactory instance(Class factory) { try { return (DAOFactory)factory.newInstance(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Couldn't create DAOFactory: " + factory); } } // Add your DAO interfaces here public abstract ItemDAO getItemDAO(); public abstract CategoryDAO getCategoryDAO(); public abstract CommentDAO getCommentDAO(); public abstract ShipmentDAO getShipmentDAO(); }
Note that this factory example is suitable for persistence layers which are primarily implemented with a single persistence service, such as Hibernate or EJB 3.0 persistence. If you have to mix persistence APIs, for example, Hibernate and plain JDBC, the pattern changes slightly. Keep in mind that you can also call session.connection() inside a Hibernate-specific DAO, or use one of the many bulk operation/SQL support options in Hibernate 3.1 to avoid plain JDBC.
Finally, this is how data access now looks like in controller/command handler code (pick whatever transaction demarcation strategy you like, the DAO code doesn't change):
// EJB3 CMT: @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public void execute() { // JTA: UserTransaction utx = jndiContext.lookup("UserTransaction"); // JTA: utx.begin(); // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().beginTransaction(); DAOFactory factory = DAOFactory.instance(DAOFactory.HIBERNATE); ItemDAO itemDAO = factory.getItemDAO(); UserDAO userDAO = factory.getUserDAO(); Bid currentMaxBid = itemDAO.getMaxBid(itemId); Bid currentMinBid = itemDAO.getMinBid(itemId); Item item = itemDAO.findById(itemId, true); newBid = item.placeBid(userDAO.findById(userId, false), bidAmount, currentMaxBid, currentMinBid); // JTA: utx.commit(); // Don't forget exception handling // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().getTransaction().commit(); // Don't forget exception handling }
The database transaction, either JTA or direct JDBC, is started and committed in an interceptor that runs for every execute(), following the Open Session in View pattern. You can use AOP for this or any kind of interceptor that can be wrapped around a method call, see Session handling with AOP.
Preparing DAOs with manual dependency injection
You don't need to write the factories. You can as well just do this:
// EJB3 CMT: @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public void execute() { // JTA: UserTransaction utx = jndiContext.lookup("UserTransaction"); // JTA: utx.begin(); // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().beginTransaction(); ItemDAOHibernate itemDAO = new ItemDAOHibernate(); itemDAO.setSession(HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession()); UserDAOHibernate userDAO = new UserDAOHibernate(); userDAO.setSession(HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession()); Bid currentMaxBid = itemDAO.getMaxBid(itemId); Bid currentMinBid = itemDAO.getMinBid(itemId); Item item = itemDAO.findById(itemId, true); newBid = item.placeBid(userDAO.findById(userId, false), bidAmount, currentMaxBid, currentMinBid); // JTA: utx.commit(); // Don't forget exception handling // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().getTransaction().commit(); // Don't forget exception handling }
The disadvantage here is that the implementation classes (i.e. ItemDAOHibernate and UserDAOHibernate ) of the persistence layer are exposed to the client, the controller. Also, constructor injection of the current Session might be more appropriate.
Preparing DAOs with lookup
Alternatively, call HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession() as a fallback, if the client didn't provide a Session when the DAO was constructed:
public abstract class GenericHibernateDAO<T, ID extends Serializable> implements GenericDAO<T, ID> { private Class<T> persistentClass; private Session session; public GenericHibernateDAO() { this.persistentClass = (Class<T>) ((ParameterizedType) getClass().getGenericSuperclass()).getActualTypeArguments()[0]; } public void setSession(Session session) { this.session = session; } protected void getSession() { if (session == null) session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession(); return session; }...
The controller now uses these stateless data access objects through direct instantiation:
// EJB3 CMT: @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public void execute() { // JTA: UserTransaction utx = jndiContext.lookup("UserTransaction"); // JTA: utx.begin(); // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().beginTransaction(); ItemDAO itemDAO = new ItemDAOHibernate(); UserDAO userDAO = new UserDAOHibernate(); Bid currentMaxBid = itemDAO.getMaxBid(itemId); Bid currentMinBid = itemDAO.getMinBid(itemId); Item item = itemDAO.findById(itemId, true); newBid = item.placeBid(userDAO.findById(userId, false), bidAmount, currentMaxBid, currentMinBid); // JTA: utx.commit(); // Don't forget exception handling // Plain JDBC: HibernateUtil.getCurrentSession().getTransaction().commit(); // Don't forget exception handling }
The only disadvantage of this very simple strategy is that the implementation classes (i.e. ItemDAOHibernate and UserDAOHibernate ) of the persistence layer are again exposed to the client, the controller. You can still supply a custom Session if needed (integration test, etc).
Each of these methods (factories, manual injection, lookup) for setting the current Session and creating a DAO instance has advantages and drawbacks, use whatever you feel most comfortable with.
Naturally, the cleanest way is managed components and EJB 3.0 session beans:
Writing DAOs as managed EJB 3.0 components
Turn your DAO superclass into a base class for stateless session beans (all your concrete DAOs are then stateless EJBs, they already have a business interface). This is basically a single annotation which you could even move into an XML deployment descriptor if you like. You can then use dependency injection and get the "current" persistence context provided by the container:
@Stateless public abstract class GenericHibernateDAO<T, ID extends Serializable> implements GenericDAO<T, ID> { private Class<T> persistentClass; @PersistenceContext private EntityManager em; public GenericHibernateDAO() { setSession( (Session)em.getDelegate() ); }...
You can then cast the delegate of an EntityManager to a Hibernate Session.
This only works if you use Hibernate as a Java Persistence provider, because the delegate is the Session API. In JBoss AS you could even get a Session injected directly. If you use a different Java Persistence provider, rely on the EntityManager API instead of Session. Now wire your DAOs into the controller, which is also a managed component:
@Stateless public class ManageAuctionController implements ManageAuction { @ |
could really add up in the future. One report claimed that Walgreens could save $4 billion over five years by becoming a Swiss company. The news about Walgreens has not yet been officially announced by the company. See Walgreens Shuns Inversion In £5bn Boots Deal. The timing for the anti-inversion crowd couldn’t be better.
Americans for Tax Fairness is also trumpeting the results of a new poll showing that Americans overwhelming disapprove of corporate inversions. The deals involve companies dissolving their U.S. corporate status and reincorporating in a low-tax country to avoid U.S. taxes. The poll found that about half of likely voters are aware of the issue.
Over two-thirds of likely voters disapprove of corporate inversions, including 86% of Democrats, 80% of Independents and 69% of Republicans. The poll was conducted from July 25-27 with a national sample of 1,752 likely voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 2%.
This election season, the issue is a hot button. Political candidates will be pushing it hard as it’s likely that corporate inversions will be a hot topic with voters. If Walgreens announces that it will go ahead with plans to become a Swiss company after all, this issue could burn even hotter.
U.S. tax law already tried to stop inversions in 2004. Since then, Section 7874 of the tax code requires that more than 20% of the post-marriage combination must be owned by foreigners. But that hasn’t stemmed the tide of deals. Now, Congress is trying to make inversions much more restrictive, upping the 20% to 50%.
We may be seeing a rush to get deals done before the law is changed, and the effective date of the proposed law is now itself controversial. Many U.S. companies that expect much of their sales growth outside the U.S.–say China or India–have a special reason to go offshore. Having all income taxed in the U.S. can make them vulnerable to competition.
The Walgreens deal dates to 2012, when Walgreens moved to buy Alliance Boots (AB), Europe’s largest drug wholesaler and retailer. In 2012, Walgreens bought a 45% equity stake. In February 2015, Walgreens has an option to buy the remaining 55%, which could spell inversion. Some U.S. Activists Slam Possible Walgreen Tax Move as ‘Unpatriotic’, while AB had its own run-in with being called that, reincorporating from the United Kingdom to Switzerland in 2008.
Contact me at Wood@WoodLLP.com. This discussion is not intended as legal advice, and cannot be relied upon for any purpose without the services of a qualified professional.DETROIT - The Detroit Red Wings today released their 2017-18 training camp roster, comprised of 74 players who will hit the ice on Friday, Sept. 15 at Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City, Mich., for four days of camp before beginning preseason play at Boston on Tuesday, Sept. 19.
This season, the Red Wings will bring 41 forwards, 25 defensemen and eight goaltenders to Traverse City to participate in daily on-ice practices or situational scrimmages. Following the team's annual Red & White Game on Monday, Sept. 18, players will break camp in preparation for the preseason opener on Tuesday, Sept. 19 against the Boston Bruins, the first of three-straight preseason road games prior to the first-ever preseason home game at the state-of-the-art Little Caesars Arena on Saturday, Sept. 23 against the Bruins.Data just released to the public shows details of the attacks made on firefighters in Greater Manchester
Groups of drunken youths throwing stones, objects being dropped from a highrise building and even abusive passers-by are revealed in the release of data showing attacks on the fire service.
In 69 recorded incidents between April last year and last week, the data shows that Salford had the most attacks with 14 incidents.
Some of the other information contained within the data:
* Alcohol was identified as a factor in almost half of the attacks (30 incidents) and drugs featured in seven cases.
* Firefighters face dangers from motorists including a taxi driver which the logs says drove at a firefighter at Ashton town hall in Tameside.
* Aggressive youths feature in many of the incidents including being pelted with eggs, having fireworks aimed at firefighters and dropping objects from highrises.
* People preventing access to deal with fires or injuries.
* Firefighters being racially abused while attending jobs.
* The data set available below is an edited version of the full set which was released last night at the Greater Manchester data store along with details of the number of fire and rescue incidents for the service.
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• Follow us on TwitterBuyer beware, the fantasy hockey guides read. Mark Stone may have put up 64 points last season, but don’t expect a repeat. The guide could then offer a variety of reasons; it could be an unsustainable shooting percentage that accounts for this statistical downturn.
Instead, fantasy guides and analysts alike often offer up two words to describe why a rookie will not be able to repeat a promising inaugural season: Sophomore slump.
No Evidence of Sophomore Slump Among Top NHL Rookie Skaters
It is a term that has taken on a mythical form, a label dreaded by fans and players alike as some sort of inexplicable disease that can befall the young and promising. Usually, that player will bounce back but not until his third NHL season.
The sophomore slump, however, is an abnormality, at least when it comes to skaters in post-lockout hockey. The only players where there is any indication it consistently exists is with goaltenders.
There are certainly outliers who display a “sophomore slump.” Perhaps most notably was Cory Conacher, who went from a Calder Trophy candidate one year to a 7-goal, 26-point player in his second season. Fast forward the tape and he is currently playing in the Swiss League.
On average, however, when analyzing the statistics of the 122 skaters who have received votes for the Calder Trophy between the 2005-06 season and 2012-13, there was no significant statistical drop after their initial season (player statistics for the 2012-13 season were prorated for the purposes of comparison with the rest of the data).
In fact, on average rookie forwards hardly drop at all, less than a point from their rookie season. Rounding up to full points, however, an average rookie fitting the above criteria plays in 72 games and scores 20 goals and 45 points in their rookie season.
In their sophomore season, the average rookie forward also plays 72 games and scores one less goal, 19 resulting in one less point, 44. Hardly a slump, even if there isn’t any increase in scoring from second-year forwards.
Unsurprisingly, forwards have their best year in their third NHL season, on average scoring 20 goals and 47 points despite only playing in 69 games.
So maybe Stone takes a step back this year, and it could even be a significant one. But between Stone, Johnny Gaudreau, Filip Forsberg, Mike Hoffman and the rest of the forwards it is highly unlikely they all put up less points.
Defencemen given a calder vote usually have a slight downturn in their second season, but again it is not enough to be considered a slump: 38 points as compared to 36 in their second NHL year.
Those numbers return back to 38 points on average in a defenceman’s third season, but goals never return to rookie numbers. The average rookie defencemen scores 7 goals in his first season, and just 6 in the next two.
The lack of a major statistical sophomore slump is more surprising in defencemen because theoretically there would be cause for it to occur, namely second-year defencemen would in theory be asked to play more difficult minutes, and potentially have less offensive zone time.
Both of these would, one assumes, conspire to see defencemen produce significantly less points in their second year, certainly more than two less on average, and only one less goal.
Combining forwards and defencemen gives a macro sense of how first-year skaters fare statistically in their first three NHL seasons: The average skater scores 39 points in their first season, 38 in their sophomore season and 41 in their third NHL season.
There are obviously a ton of exceptions to this rule. In fact, a few of the players who received Calder votes never even made it to their third season for a variety of reasons; Alexander Radulov, Michael Sauer and Marc-Andre Gragnani did not play three straight years.
For the most part, however, being a standout player in one’s first NHL season means they will follow it up with an almost equally strong second year and an even stronger third NHL season.
This isn’t overtly surprising when it comes to forwards and defencemen. The same skills that help a player succeed in his initial NHL season will help them succeed in all the other ones that follow.
An outstanding rookie season usually leads to a player finding themselves in a better situation the next season as well. A coach is likely to give this player more powerplay time, and ice time in general, both conducive with boosting, or at least maintaining, offensive output.
This also means a young player will likely play with better players more consistently, which won’t hurt offensive output either.
So contrary to what the analysts say, most of the time there is nothing to worry about as a rookie skater enters their second year. Their base-line talent is already there, what remains to be seen is how much better they can get.An expert witness called by the defense testifies on the ninth day of the trial of Jeronimo Yanez
The jury in the trial of St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez was deadlocked for almost a week before acquitting him on all charges for the shooting death of Philando Castile.
Nearly a week after a jury found Yanez not guilty on second-degree manslaughter and felony weapons charges, one of the jurors has given MPR News the first detailed account of what took place during deliberations.
• Full coverage: The death of Philando Castile and the trial of Jeronimo Yanez
The juror spoke with MPR News host Tom Weber on the condition that he remain anonymous, because he said he is afraid of retribution. During deliberations, the jury was deadlocked for days before reaching its unanimous verdict to acquit Yanez on all counts.
This juror discussed the group members' mindsets during deliberation, but declined to make public how he voted each day.
"What happened to Philando is not OK to any of us. Nobody felt good about any part of this," the juror said. "We were just asked to do a job and we did it, and I think every one of us is proud of how we acted, but nobody felt good. Nobody was OK with it."
Castile's death and Yanez's trial held the nation's attention since that fatal traffic stop last July. But the goal of jury selection is to find a group of people who don't know much about the case and who have no preconceived opinions on it. Jurors are to consider only what's presented in court.
The juror who's now speaking out didn't know who Philando's mother Valerie Castile was when she stood up and walked out of the courtroom right when the verdict was announced.
Here's one juror's account of how the trial went down and what he's taken away from it all.
On who the jury was
The jury comprised "down the middle, working people," the juror said.
"I don't want to call us average, but that's exactly what we were," he said.
When they realized the gravity of the case, the juror said, those selected to sit on the jury seemed to hope they were alternates. At least one volunteered for the role.
Everyone was respectful to one another regardless of their thoughts on the case, the juror said.
In the middle of the week, he said, the jury was "hopelessly deadlocked." But one of the jurors had a birthday.
"We brought in a crown from Burger King and somebody gave her some M&Ms and somebody brought her some tea they picked up in Scotland and we sang happy birthday to her at the end of the day."
How the jury went from deadlock to unanimous verdict
Jurors were quick to decide Yanez's acquittal on felony weapons charges. The juror said photos of Castile's body showed that Yanez was aiming away from the two passengers, Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter.
Jurors couldn't agree on the manslaughter charge for days, though.
"What we were looking at was some pretty obscure things to a lot of people, like culpable negligence. You think you might know what it means: It's negligent, but maybe pretty bad negligence. Well, it's gross negligence with an element of recklessness... We had the law in front of us so we could break it down."
"It just came down to us not being able to see what was going on in the car. Some of us were saying that there was some recklessness there, but that didn't stick because we didn't know what escalated the situation: was he really seeing a gun? We felt [Yanez] was an honest guy... and in the end, we had to go on his word, and that's what it came down to."
On his takeaways of the past week
"Overall, I think if anybody's handling this the right way, it would be Philando's mom. I think if you want to make a change, you can't go after jury or a police officer. I think you need to go after the law. I don't know what that means. I've been thinking about it this week. I don't know how you go about doing that. Do you run for city council?
"I feel like Obama said it best when he was leaving office: Just get involved. I don't know if that means contacting your representative or your congressman or picking up a book and going to law school. I don't know you do it, but I think people should figure out a way to make a difference. They should get involved.
"Go after the law. Don't go after people. There are some situations where people are clearly guilty and then yes. But in situations like this, it's the law. It's the law that people need to go after."
To listen to the interview, click the audio player above.Editor’s note: The Village of Ryley has since responded to this story, two days after the mayor declined comment. You can read the update, published Tuesday evening, here.
William Yarmovich has lived in the Village of Ryley, east of Edmonton, for nearly 20 years. He’s loved all of it except the last couple- he claims he’s been bullied by the village’s administration.
The 86-year-old told Global News he’s been forced to sell his beloved home and move into a friend’s seniors residence after he was saddled with a $4000 bill for painting the exterior of his home, a requirement of the village.
Since Global’s story was broadcast, several Ryley residents have called, emailed or commented to question Yarmovich’s account, saying he was given ample time to comply with the painting order and refused offers of help.
Here's what the house looked like after 86 y/o William started scraping paint off. Broke two ribs when he fell from ladder. #yeg pic.twitter.com/AueoGcYIqW — Sarah Kraus Global (@SarahNKraus) February 19, 2017
His story begins in the summer of 2015 when Yarmovich says a village bylaw officer told him his home needed painting.
“I started scraping the loose paint and of course I fell off a ladder, broke two ribs and I was incapacitated for two months,” Yarmovich recounted.
While he was on the mend- he says he was issued a ticket by bylaw officers- fining him for “tall grass” on his property.
“They got somebody to cut the grass. Charged $200 for a job that’s worth $25,” he said.
Yarmovich was also handed this $180 fee for someone to cut the grass at his house when he had 2 broken ribs from falling trying to paint. pic.twitter.com/6e8SpEQ7Ly — Sarah Kraus Global (@SarahNKraus) February 19, 2017
The senior paid the fine and was given an extension on the painting of the house. The village requires homeowners to maintain the exterior of their homes as well as their yards through a ‘community standards’ bylaw.
By the summer of 2016, Yarmovich said he and a neighbour had about a third of the house painted.
“They gave me a time limit,” he said. “By the 31st of August I needed to have it done and of course it rained darn near every day. You do not put paint on wet lumber because it will not bind.”
That’s when Yarmovich says village administration took matters into its own hands, sending a crew out to paint the house and making him foot the bill, nearly $3500.
Yarmovich says he arranged to have the rest finished too – just not quick enough.
“I already bought the paint, I made arrangements to get it painted for roughly $800,” he said.
The senior has not been able to make the payment. He looked into getting government assistance for the maintenance, but was unsuccessful. Yarmovich said his only option was to sell the home and pay the bill.
“I’m 86 years old, I’ve only got so much ability and so much financial resources.”
In the meantime, he’s also been charged an additional 18 per cent late payment fee and another 10 per cent since. His bill now sits at $4000.
“Well there’s no way I could come up with that kind of money,” the senior said. “So I decided to put the house on the market. Luckily, a guy was interested and he bought it, which was a relief. Even though I basically gave it away, it was a relief.”
Ryley Mayor Lavonne Svenson did not answer questions when reached on Saturday, but told Global News “We have forwarded all of our documents to our legal council and are waiting for his response.”
Seniors advocates liken Yarmovich’s experience to elder abuse.
“We allege that the CAO and the mayor and the council have subjected Mr. Yarmovich to virulent elder abuse,” said Ruth Adria, spokesperson for Elder Advocates of Alberta. “We’re outraged.”
The organization has written a letter to the village asking for the painting fees to be waived and the lawn mowing fine to be returned. Adria said they also want an apology for Yarmovich and a promise not to treat any other seniors in Ryley the same way.
“They’ve been in hiding ever since- so obviously we hit the mark,” Adria said.
Yarmovich now plans to move out of the village he once loved and into nearby Tofield.
“They’ve caused me enough frustration,” he said.
He said he will miss his garden the most- where he grew vegetables for so many neighbours.
William Yarmovich says he knew his house needed painting, and was working on it. Just not fast enough for the village of Ryley. pic.twitter.com/s05o6rXnaz — Sarah Kraus Global (@SarahNKraus) February 19, 2017
The senior, who worked as a contractor for over 35 years, said he felt bullied by the village.
“There are other houses that need paint more than mine, he just targeted me,” he said speaking of the bylaw officer.
The Village of Ryley is a small community of 497 residents located just 50 minutes east of Edmonton on Highway 14.
with files from Sarah KrausThe 1,500 word People's Daily editorial appeared to be a direct response to The New York Times's explosive exposé last week about the $2.7 billion (£1.67 billion) "hidden fortune" of the family of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao.
But in a humiliating about-turn, within hours of the People's Daily publishing its lengthy assault on the American newspaper's journalistic integrity it emerged that much of the Chinese newspaper's critique had in fact been plagiarised from other sources.
The Beijing-based People's Daily turned its canons on the 161-year-old newspaper on Monday, three days after The New York Times published the highly embarrassing results of its one-year investigation into Mr Wen's family's finances.
"For a long time, the New York Times has [had] one line printed on its masthead, 'All the news that's fit to print'," noted the People's Daily opinion piece, under the headline: 'New York Times: scandals stack-up, prestige declines'.
"This century-old newspaper claims its news is authentic and reliable, yet there have been quite a few [cases of] plagiarism and fake news in recent years," added the combative piece published on the website of a newspaper which is controlled, funded and censored by the Chinese government.
"It turns out the New York Times has a history of faking news," the People's Daily went on, pointing to the damaging scandal surrounding reporter Jayson Blair, who resigned in 2003 after being accused of "frequent acts of journalistic fraud".
Doug Young, a journalism professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, said that while the People's Daily had not directly referred to The New York Times' allegations about Mr Wen's family wealth, the editorial was a "clear response" from the Communist Party leadership.
"It is the official Party newspaper [and] they are speaking on behalf of the Party," he said. "An editorial like that is basically their rebuttal even though they aren't giving The New York Times the pleasure of having their story mentioned."
The People's Daily story was an attempt to "discredit" the western media, added Young, the author of a book on the Chinese media called 'The Party Line'.
But the People's Daily and other state-controlled media outlets have themselves struggled with plagiarism in the past. In August, a reporter from its sister paper, the English-language Global Times, was sacked after being caught fabricating or copying a number of reports on the London Olympics. Among the plagiarised stories was a supposedly "exclusive interview" with London mayor Boris Johnson, which had been cribbed from one of Mr Johnson's Daily Telegraph columns.
On Monday afternoon, meanwhile, it emerged that large chunks of the People's Daily article on The New York Times had been plagiarised from a variety of online sources. Several sections appeared to have been lifted word-for-word from China News Agency stories while other parts had been copied from previous articles in the People's Daily itself.
Calls to the People's Daily HQ went unanswered on Monday afternoon. Users of China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo were unimpressed.
"The domestic media is so entertaining," wrote one. "Plagiarism, faking, scandals stack-up – all because [The New York Times] reported the unspeakable secret."“I tell you what, you’ve hit the bonanza!” says Robert “Swan” Richards as he pulls a pile of photo albums and scrapbooks out of storage containers under a desk in his office. I’ve turned up to Richards’ cricket store in Collingwood, north of Melbourne, in search of clues about the somewhat mythical origins of the Gray Nicolls Scoop, the sword in the stone of all cricket bats and a bona fide object of desire in the cricket world of the 1970s and 80s.
As excited as I am when Richards chances upon the original drawings of the Scoop and handwritten manufacturing notes by the late, legendary bat-maker John Newbery, Richards himself appears even more pleased to have finally hit the jackpot. “This here is gold,” he says with contagious enthusiasm. “They are the original drawings. That’s all John’s writing. You’ve got the originals. You can’t get any better than that. I can tell by the way he wrote. He was a brilliant drawer, John.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Original Gray Nicolls Scoop drawings by John Newbery. Photograph: Courtesy of Swan Richards
I explain to Richards that the Gray Nicolls Scoop is currently celebrating its 40th birthday but Swan, nicknamed thus on account of an “elegant” string of eight successive ducks during his time as a club cricketer for Glenelg in Adelaide, needs no prompting to recall the time in 1974 that he himself crafted the first example of the famous bat used in international cricket. Ian Chappell put that one to work during the 1974-75 home Ashes series in Australia.
Soon Chappell’s brother Greg followed suit and many more Australians, catapulting one of cricket’s most novel innovations into the realm of fetish object for cricketers around the world. “There’s a lot of myths about all this,” says Richards as he casts his eyes over match-used Scoops wielded by the likes of the Chappells, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge and Lawrence Rowe, all crafted by with his own hands in Gray Nicolls’ first Australian factory in Mordialloc, south of Melbourne.
The precise details of the Scoop’s invention have always been a little scarce, which seems odd given that cricket’s most famous and fondly-recalled bat was hatched in its most famed production house of bats; the original Gray Nicolls factory in Robertsbridge, Sussex. The company’s roots trace back almost 160 years, when early examples of their bats were used by the likes of WG Grace.
Arriving at the conclusion that cricket’s future would benefit from a splash of colour, Gray Nicolls had pioneered bright red sticker designs in the early 70s, long before the game itself was jolted out of its sepia-toned complacency by World Series Cricket. Swan Richards was right on the spot in 1971 when he took an 18-month crash course in bat-making at Robertsbridge under the master bat craftsmen Len Newbery (“a genius man he was,” says Richards with fondness undimmed by the passing decades) and his son John, then partners in the Gray Nicolls business.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Original Gray Nicolls Scoop drawings by John Newbery. Photograph: Courtesy of Swan Richards
It was during that period, in 1972, that South African golf club engineer Arthur Garner and Cambridge-based golf course designer Barrie Wheeler approached the Gray family with the original idea for a scooped-back bat with perimeter-weighted edges. The concept owed more to golf club design than cricket and the pair’s early advances were rebuffed by a host of other manufacturers.
The Scoop was a bold re-imagination of conventional bat designs of the times and Gray Nicolls picked up on the idea immediately, agreeing to pay Garner and Wheeler royalties on account of their 18-year patent, which expired in 1990. It proved to be money well spent.
Forty years later, Swan Richards has particularly fond recollections of Wheeler and the seemingly-crazy idea that propelled the Gray Nicolls brand to unprecedented levels of success and an unimpeachable place in the hearts of cricket nostalgists. “He [Wheeler] was a wonderful man. He had this invention and everybody knocked it back but Grays took it and it does work scientifically.” From a wafer-thin prototype crafted by John Newbery grew a cricket phenomenon.
At that point Gray Nicolls’ main competition came from bat brands like SP sports, Duncan Fearnley and Stuart Surridge, whose Viv Richards-endorsed “Jumbo” was the only bat to really compare with the Scoop in the popularity stakes. Even then it didn’t enjoy the same lengthy tenure of popularity.
The Scoop could also be fairly described as an Anglo-Australian sports marketing phenomenon and in Australia, Richards’ role in popularising the bat was pivotal. Once Gray Nicolls had sent him back to establish the company’s Australian manufacturing operation in 1973, it was Richards’ boundless energy and networking with his many friends in cricket that got the early Australian examples of the bats into the hands of the Chappells and other Test stars.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Original Gray Nicolls Scoop drawings by John Newbery. Photograph: Courtesy of Swan Richards
“Just after I left [the UK] they started playing around with these perimeter weighted bats,” says Richards, “and they came here and we really set it alight. The Chappells were always Gray Nicolls people – the easiest players ever to deal with and everything.” By February of 1975 The Cricketer had carried a picture of Chappell showing off the bat and a year later both he and Graham Yallop modelled it again in contrasting fashions.
Conventional advertising at that point was non-existent and though Richards was making the bat for Test stars as early as 1974, it wasn’t until the 1975-76 that it became available to the public. By that point the buzz surrounding the bat and resultant demand was at fever pitch. As the first summer of Kerry Packer’s breakaway venture rolled around in 1977-78, the Richards-run Australian factory was producing in excess of 35,000 Scoops a year with orders for more. At that point the premium model retailed for $70, well in excess of any other bat on the market but money seemed no object to eager buyers. A comparable St Peter bat that summer retailed between in the $39 to $45 range.
It was the same story in England, where production couldn’t meet demand. In the UK market, the bat was available for purchase as early as the 1974 season, when Barry Richards used it to great effect in the county championship. By 1976, 34% of surveyed English professionals were using the bats and the number was closer to 50% in Australia. The Scoop was everywhere and Gray Nicolls had become the brand of choice for pros and amateurs alike.
With the biggest names in cricket acting as walking billboards for the brand, marketing activities were not vital to success but still illustrative of the growing strength of the Scoop brand. Early British advertising campaigns from 1977 didn’t even show the bat’s famous backside and featured a staid black-and-white image of WG Grace. The Technicolor explosion of World Series Cricket probably provided the perfect storm to nudge things along a little and by 1979, full-page colour ads for the Scoop adorned almost every cricket magazine.
Some advertising campaigns highlighted endorsements of the likes of Greg Chappell and David Gower, others presented the bat as a precious artifact within an art gallery montage. The explosion of colour and the radical design features proved irresistible to cricket enthusiasts. Soon came “Twin Scoops”, the Chappell “GC Master” model and, by the late 1980s, the Dynadrive. The latter precipitated the end of the Scoop’s reign atop the Christmas wishlists after a 15-year run of unparalleled success. There was also a brief early-90s renaissance when Brian Lara used a Scoop to post his world record Test score of 375.
At Gray Nicolls’ newer and more plush current headquarters in Cheltenham, only a short drive from that first factory in Mordialloc, there is still great affection for the Scoop and its place in the company’s history. Production manager and master bat-maker to the company’s current stable of international stars, Stuart Kranzbuhler, has been with the company for 21 years and still gets asked about the Scoop. “Everyone’s grandfather or father had a Scoop,” he says. “Whenever I mention where I work, people straight away people say, ‘Oh, I remember the Scoop or Single Scoop or the Twin Scoop.’ Every single person I meet says that.”
That affection for the bat among amateur cricketers was both immediate and long-lasting. Vintage 70s era models now sell in excess of their original retail price on eBay and the demand that came from that nostalgia market gave Gray Nicolls the impetus to re-introduce the heritage brand when they re-launched a new model Scoop three years back, retro sticker designs and all.
Cricket writer and historian Gideon Haigh has such a fondness for the Scoop than a “Hookes Hurricane” model now takes pride of place on his custom-made “bat rack” at home, much as a treasured painting or sculpture would for others.
“The first bat I saved up for and bought was a GN500 from Jarmans in Geelong when I was 14,” says Haigh. “Why? Because it looked cool – hell, I already had SP batting mitts too.” Haigh used the bat well into his 20s, upon which time it perished during a net session. “In fact, it broke so badly that there was no point keeping the shards,” he recalls. “To fill the gap in my bat rack where it should have been, I recently inherited a mint condition Hookes Hurricane, which brings to the display a certain retro chic. The Scoop and its variants are design classics – never out of fashion.” Quite.
Though the fundamentals of bat-making remain the same as they did when Garner, Wheeler and John Newbery pioneered the Scoop, the re-released bat is as good an example as any of the marked evolution in bat profiles. The first perimeter-weighted Scoops featured edges with a thickness that rarely exceeded a range of 10mm to 13 mm. By comparison the current model looks like it’s on steroids and features edges as thick as 45mm.
Explaining the original science behind the Scoop’s perimeter-weighting, Kranzbuhler says: “The whole theory of it was to widen the sweet spot, so effectively it did exactly that by having thicker edges so it was more forgiving when you didn’t hit the centre but what it tended to do was take a bit of the power from higher up the blade because it was scooped out.
“To get a bat that was as forgiving back then it would have been way too heavy to use which is why they went down that path. They no longer had to hit it dead centre. It still had to be hit in the middle but it could be slightly off and still hit pretty well.”
Gray Nicolls sales manager Greg Smyth, himself a veteran of almost 30 years with the company, says that the ongoing appeal of the bat in the eyes of both older and younger cricketers alike is remarkable. “Not many bats last that long,” he says before noting that the re-release was a surprising sales hit in the Indian market, where it was never originally available. Kranzbuhler and Smyth both still speak with passion and fondness for every bat Gray Nicolls manufactures. Now they’re produced both domestically and in the exact replica of their Cheltenham factory in India, whose bat-makers Kranzbuhler trains.
Back in the mid-70s, the Scoop wasn’t the only radical idea that the heritage brand considered putting into production. An alternative design had a series of round gouges in the back. “They never worked and it looked ugly,” says Swan Richards. “The Scoop was beautifully curved. If you see an original it looked like it didn’t work but John Newbery kept working on it and kept refining it.”
Garner and Wheeler’s idea wasn’t without its faults, to be fair. Early attempts at crafting the bat were a trial and error process with John Newbery and another English bat-maker, Bill Lucking, constantly honing the measurements to avoid breaks. “They were splitting straight down the middle because there was no guts,” explains Richards. “As soon as we played around with it and got it right we never changed it. The only thing we changed was the colour of the Scoop. The Chappell one was red, I can remember it quite well.”
Richards walks me through to his “other office”, where walls and shelving literally groan under the weight of a lifetime of collected cricket objects and ephemera. The more precious and valuable items, including bats used by Murdoch, Darling, Trumper and Armstrong having long-since been donated to the MCC museum. Each bat that’s passed through Richards’ hands or disappeared off his workshop bench puts him in a truly unique position, physically linked to the far-flung corners of Test cricket history in Australia through his craftsmanship and love for bats.
At one point he pulls out a “Hookes Hurricane” model Scoop, named in honour of one of South Australia’s favourite cricket sons and a man with whom Richards’ involvement dated back to his playing days in Adelaide grade cricket. “That came in the early 80s. I built it, that one,” he says with modest pride.
At the mention of the Hookes Hurricane, Greg Smyth had laughed and recalled the time in 1983 that his former Gray Nicolls colleague Tony Fletcher got a panicked morning call from Hookes, who’d broken a bat and was in urgent need of a replacement for a Sheffield Shield game about to start at the Junction Oval. Fletcher bombed down the Nepean Highway with a brand new bat that was yet to be knocked-in, parked his car and ran through the ground entrance just in time to see Hookes about to make his way through the gate to bat.
Turning around upon registering Fletcher’s panicked call, Hookes quickly removed the new blade from its plastic wrapper, strode onto the ground and promptly blasted the Victorians to the tune of 193 from 147 deliveries. Hookes’ first hundred came from 75 balls and in 91 minutes of brutal hitting. By the end of the knock the 3lb 1oz Hookes Hurricane Scoop had to be swapped for a lighter model to ease the strain on his weary arms. “This was Hookes at his dazzling, incomparable best,” noted Mike Coward. The bat’s moniker seemed more apt than ever.
Swan Richards says the involvement of both Hookes and the Chappells was central to the raging success of the Scoop and its one-time place on the Christmas wish list of every eager cricketer in Australia. Though he’s been off the Gray Nicolls payroll for 25 years, Richards still talks with great affection for the company, its history and the bats it still makes. “It’s not a plug, it’s the truth,” he says. “They’re the world’s best.”Posted on: October 16, 2015
The author climbing way above a #1 Ultralight Curve Nut. [Photo] Kristen Ardani
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and therefore stolen, property is returned by any means necessary to the private sector…. Therefore, the libertarian must cheer any attempt to return stolen, governmental property to the private sector: whether it be in the cry, “The streets belong to the people”, or “the parks belong to the people”, or the schools belong to those who use them, i.e. the students and faculty. The libertarian believes that things not properly owned revert to the first person who uses and possesses them, e.g. the homesteader who first clears and uses virgin land; similarly, the libertarian must support any attempt by campus “homesteaders” the students and faculty, to seize power in the universities from the governmental or quasi-governmental bureaucracy. [4]
Rothbard argued that “the most practical method de-statizing is simply to grant the moral right of ownership on the person or group who seizes the property from the State.” This would entail, in most cases, treating the State’s property as vacant or unowned, and recognizing the homestead rights of those actually using it. In the case of “public” universities,
the proper owners of this university are the “homesteaders”, those who have already been using and therefore “mixing their labor” with the facilities…. This means student and/or faculty ownership of the universities. [5]
This principle of homesteading State property by workers or clients is amenable to wide application. Larry Gambone has proposed “mutualizing” public services as an alternative to corporate privatization. This means decentralizing control of, say, schools, police, hospitals, etc., to the smallest feasible local unit (the neighborhood or community) and then placing them under the democratic control of their clientele. For example, the people of a town might abolish the city-wide school board, and place each school under a board of selectmen responsible to the pupils’ parents. Ultimately, compulsory taxation would be ended and the schools run on user fees. In practical terms, mutualizing is more or less equivalent to reorganizing all the State’s activities as consumer cooperatives. [6]
Privatization in Post-Communist Societies
Murray Rothbard and Hans Herman Hoppe have attempted to apply the same homestead principle to state property in post-communist societies.
Although Rothbard’s assessment of the libertarian potential of Yugoslavia’s combination of worker self-management and market socialism was over-optimistic and naive, his statement of principle for post-Communist societies was quite sound: “land to the peasants and the factories to the workers, thereby getting the property out of the hands of the State and into private, homesteading hands.” [7]
The fall of the Soviet empire and its satrapies in 1989-91 transformed this from a theoretical to a very practical issue. The course generally followed in the ensuing period involved issuing equal, marketable shares in State enterprises to all citizens, and then allowing subsequent ownership to develop through the buying and selling of such shares. Rothbard proposed, instead, a “syndicalist” solution:
It would be far better to enshrine the venerable homesteading principle at the base of the new desocialized property system. Or, to revive the old Marxist slogan: “all land to the peasants, all factories to the workers!” This would establish the basic Lockean principle that ownership of owned property is to be acquired by “mixing one’s labor with the soil” or with other unowned resources. Desocialization is a process of depriving the government of its existing “ownership” or control, and devolving it upon private individuals. In a sense, abolishing government ownership of assets puts them immediately and implicitly into an unowned status, out of which previous homesteading can quickly convert them into private ownership. [8]
Hoppe made a similar proposal specifically regarding East Germany, albeit more hesitantly and with more qualifications. [9]
Of course, the term “syndicalist” was used mainly for color, since Rothbard and Hoppe were both adamant that such “syndicalist” property be devolved to individual workers and peasants as marketable shares, and not to the members of production units collectively. The ideal, as Hoppe expressed it, would be for share-ownership and labor to become separated as quickly as possible. But there is no reason in principle, as Carlton Hobbs showed in regard to the commons, that such production units should not remain the joint and indivisible property of their labor force, with a usufructory right in the wages and pensions derived from it. Such a system would by no means necessarily prevent a market in factors of production. Workers’ collectives would buy new capital equipment on the market; but their property claims to any industrial production unit would be collective so long as the enterprise maintained organizational and spatial continuity.
Although Rothbard made no such qualification in his 1969 statement (written, after all, at the height of his attempt at a coalition with the New Left), he and Hoppe agreed two decades later that an attempt should be made to restore state property to its original legitimate owner before confiscation, if records of ownership still existed. Hoppe attached similar caveats to “syndicalist” privatization of post-communist state industry inDemocracy: The God that Failed. (10) Rothbard and Hoppe agreed that such restoration would be easier in the case of land, and would be easier in the case of Eastern Europe (where the expropriation had taken place only forty years earlier) than in the Soviet Union. Rothbard stressed, however, that such a restoration would be virtually impossible in the case of manufacturing and capital goods, since most of the industrial economy had been developed under state ownership. So industry was best placed under the control of workers.
Practical Difficulties of Corporate Capitalist Privatization of State Property
Privatization of state property, as it is actually carried out is just another form of state capitalist subsidy. In the first state, transnational capital promotes infrastructure projects in Third World countries that are essential to returns on Western capital in those countries, as a way of subsidizing foreign investment there at the expense of native taxpayers. Next, the resulting debt load is used to discipline the country’s government into carrying out policies favorable to Western capital. And finally, under the “structural adjustment” regime imposed by the IMF and World Bank, the country is forced to sell assets (previously paid for in the sweat of the native producing classes) to Western capital at pennies on the dollar. Sean Corrigan ably described the phenomenon in an article for LewRockwell.com:
Does he not know that the whole IMF-US Treasury carpet-bagging strategy of full-spectrum dominance is based on promoting unproductive government-led indebtedness abroad, at increasingly usurious rates of interest, and then – either before or, more often these days, after, the point of default – bailing out the Western banks who have been the agents provocateurs of this financial Operation Overlord, with newly-minted dollars, to the detriment of the citizenry at home?
Is he not aware that, subsequent to the collapse, these latter-day Reconstructionists must be allowed to swoop and to buy controlling ownership stakes in resources and productive capital made ludicrously cheap by devaluation, or outright monetary collapse?
Does he not understand that he must simultaneously coerce the target nation into sweating its people to churn out export goods in order to service the newly refinanced debt, in addition to piling up excess dollar reserves as a supposed bulwark against future speculative attacks (usually financed by the same Western banks lending to their Special Forces colleagues at the macro hedge funds) – thus ensuring the reverse mercantilism of Rubinomics is maintained? [11]
Privatization also commonly involves a phenomenon known as “tunnelling,” in which politically connected elites have an advantage in acquiring rights to the former state property. For example, besides Western capital, the other group that had funds available for buying up former Soviet enterprises was the Party nomenklatura, which had accumulated ill gotten gains from decades of graft and corruption. (Sort of like the good ol’ boy sheriff who uses labor from the county work farm to staff his plantation, but on a much larger scale.)
Expropriation of “Private” Property of Statist Ruling Class
But the line of argument so far applies not only to property currently under formal state ownership, but to nominally “private” property acquired through statist means, or to enterprises built with profits derived predominantly through state intervention. In the comments above by Rothbard and Hess on occupations by student demonstrators, the property claims of ostensibly “private” universities funded mainly by the state were treated as deserving of contempt. They were as liable as outright state property to being treated as “unowned” and opened to “homesteading” by the occupiers, the students and/or faculty.
Rothbard applied the same principle to private corporations that derived most of their revenues from the State. Nominally private universities like Columbia that got most of their funds from the taxpayer, private “only… in the most ironic sense,” were as deserving of confiscation and homesteading as those owned by the State.
But if Columbia University, what of General Dynamics? What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to private property? Surely less than zero. As eager lobbyists for these contracts and subsidies, as co-founders of the garrison state, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. [12]
To treat gross revenue as the main criterion, as Rothbard did, is probably too simple. The percentage of a firm’s profit margin that has come from the state in past years is a more relevant standard, since the present size and equity of a corporation is a result of its past accumulation. In the case of the United States, the highway-automobile complex and the civil aviation system were vitual creations of the State. Large civilian jet airliners were possible only because of federal spending on heavy bombers. C. Wright Mills pointed out inThe Power Elite that the value of plant and equipment expanded by roughly two-thirds during WWII, mostly at taxpayer expense. The electronics industry was built largely from Pentagon R&D money through the 1960s; and had not the first supercomputers been bought by the U.S. government, it is unlikely that the industry would have been able to reach the takeoff point for reducing costs to make mainframe computers economical for the private sector. And don’t forget the role of the Pentagon in creating the infrastructure of the worldwide web….
But what of non-monetary benefits from the state, like the ability to charge monopoly prices thanks to State-enforced patents? Much of the cartelization of industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was achieved by exchange of patent rights (e.g. between GE and Westinghouse). The U.S. chemical industry achieved world prominence only after the U.S. government seized German patents during WWI and gave them away to the leading chemical firms. And what of the total effects on the rate of accumulation owing to the State’s intervention in the labor market? (This latter would include restrictions on the right to organize like the Railroad Labor Relations Act or Taft-Hartley; restrictions on free banking that keep interest rates artificially high, limit working class access to credit, and maintain debt as an instrument of discipline.) And then there’s the collective benefit of primitive accumulation in the early modern period (by which peasants were robbed of their traditional property rights in the land and turned into tenants at will by the state), the role of mercantilist force in creating the “world market,” the near-totalitarian controls on the population during the British Industrial Revolution, the massive subsidies to internal improvements, etc.
Taking these things together, it requires no stretch of the imagination to treat virtually the entire large manufacturing sector as a creation of the corporate state.
Landlordism and the State
Jerome Tucille once contrasted legitimate libertarian principles of land ownership with “anarcho-land grabbism”:
Free market anarchists base their theories of private property rights on the homestead principle: a person has the right to a private piece of real estate provided he mixes his labor with it and alters it in some way. Anarcho-land grabbers recognize no such restrictions. Simply climb to the highest mountain peak and claim all you can see. It then becomes morally and sacredly your own and no one else can so much as step on it. [13]
Of course, this Lockean labor standard of appropriation raises all kinds of complicating issues. Just how much “labor” is necessary to appropriate a given piece of land? Does it require direct occupancy and cultivation, or is simply circumscribing it (on foot? in an SUV?) and marking it off sufficient admixture of labor? If the latter, is there a time limit? Where do we stop short of recognizing the right of a pope to draw a line across the map of South America and apportion it between Spain and Portugal? On the other hand, if some tangible act of working or altering the land is required, it would seem that the amount of land an individual could appropriate would bear some definite relation to the amount he could personally cultivate. In this latter case we are approaching something like the mutualist “occupancy and use” standard for appropriation, which is merely an alternative, non-Lockean system of private property rules (and one to which this author holds).
Tibor Machan inadvertently pointed to the close parallel between the State’s robbery by taxation, and the robbery involved in much of what is called “rent”:
In those days the upper classes, from the king to all his cronies, routinely engaged in extortion. They disguised this, however, with the phony claim that everything belongs to the king and his cronies. Yes, monarchs and those who rationalized monarchy spun this fantasy and managed to sell it to the people that they where the rightful owners “of the realm,” that they had a “divine right” to rule us. This way when the bulk of the country went to work on the farm or wherever, they had to pay “rent” to the monarch and his cronies.
Of course, if I live in your apartment, I pay you rent. It is your apartment, after all, so you have it coming to you. But what if you got your apartment by conquest, by robbing a bunch of people of what belongs to them? That is mostly how the monarchs got to rule the realm, by conquest. By all rights it is the folks who were working in the realm — on the land and elsewhere — who actually owned that realm, the monarchs being the phony, pretend owners, nothing better. But since they managed to bamboozle a great many powerless folks into believing that they did own the realm, the “rent” had to be paid. [14]
Although there are significant and fundamental differences between mutualist and Lockean (and Geoist, for that matter) theories of land ownership, the issue is beyond our scope here. What is really important to note is the extent of agreement between these rival theories as to the illegitimacy of much of present nominally “private” landlord property. The vast tracts of land claimed by present-day land barons are illegitimate by any plausible libertarian standard, including the Lockean rule of appropriation. In early modern Europe, the landlord class acted through the State to turn its “ownership” in mere feudal legal theory into a modern right of absolute ownership, and in the process robbed the peasants who had occupied and tilled the land from time out of mind of their very real traditional rights in the land. This process was followed by rack-rents or by mass eviction and enclosure. In the New World, the state acted to preempt access to empty or nearly empty land, by claiming it for the “public” domain. This was followed by restrictions on access by individual homesteaders, coupled with massive land grants to land speculators, railroads, mining and logging companies, and other favored classes. The result was to limit the average producer’s independent access to the land as a means of livelihood, to thereby restrict his range of independent alternatives in seeking a livelihood, and thus force him to sell his labor in a buyer’s market.
In virtually every society in the world where a few giant landlords coexist with a peasantry that pay rent on the land they work, the situation has its roots in some act of past robbery by the State. The phenomenon goes all the way back to the Roman Republic, as recounted by both Livy and Henry George, in which the patricians used their access to the State to appropriate the common lands and reduce the plebians to tenancy and debt slavery. As Albert Nock wrote, “economic exploitation is impracticable until expropriation from the land has taken place.” (15)
Conclusion
There is no need for the libertarian right to be so closely wedded to the corporation as an ideal organizational form. A corporate economy on anything like the current pattern does not by any means logically follow from the principles of non-coercion and free market exchange. A free market society that makes room for the vision of, say, Colin Ward and Ivan Illich, instead of just Uncle Milty and John Galt, would be a lot more humanly tolerable.
Among non-libertarians, libertarianism is often perceived as just a form of Republicanism that’s soft on drug laws. In many cases, this is unjust. The libertarian movement includes a very large petty bourgeois, populist strand that goes back to Warren and Tucker and the other individualists, and has been passed down through the hands of Nock and Mencken. And most Rothbardians adhere to principles that would mean the destruction of most big business as it exists today.
But in too many cases, the perception is unfortunately quite just. A large segment of the libertarian movement is a glorified apology for those currently on top: for big business against small business, consumers and labor; corporate agribusiness against organic farmers; for oil, timber and mining companies who want access to government land with politically determined leases; and for the settlers in Third World pariah states or former pariah states like Israel and Zimbabwe at the expense of the native dispossessed. Or in the words of Cool Hand Luke, “Yeah, them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get.”
If libertarianism continues to be perceived in this way, as an elaborate justification of sympathy for the haves against the have-nots, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of ever achieving victory. But if we act on the principles of non-aggression and non-coercion, even when those principles are harmful to big business, we will have the basis for a genuinely libertarian coalition of left and right that can storm the citadel of the State. I hope I have provided some concrete examples of how these principles can be applied in response to current issues.
Translations for this article:
Notes:
1. “Common Property in Free Market Anarchism: A Missing Link” http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=362
2. “Letter From Washington: Where Are The Specifics?” The Libertarian Forum June 15, 1969 p. 2
3. In Henry J. Silverman, ed., American Radical Thought: The Libertarian Tradition (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., 1970), p. 268.
4. “The Student Revolution,” The Libertarian (soon renamed The Libertarian Forum) May 1, 1969, p. 2.
5. “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle,” The Libertarian Forum June 15, 1969 p. 3
6. http://www.geocities.com/vcmtalk/mutualize
7. “Confiscation” p. 3
8. “How and How Not to Desocialize,” The Review of Austrian Economics 6:1 (1992) 65-77
9. “De-Socialization in a United Germany” The Review of Austrian Economics 5:2 (1991) 77-104
10. Democracy, the God that Failed (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002) pp. 124-31
11. “You Can’t Say That!” August 6, 2002. http://www.lewrockwell.com/corrigan/corrigan13.html
12. “Confiscation” p.3
13. “Bits and Pieces,” The Libertarian Forum November 1, 1970, p. 3
14. Tibor R. Machan, “What’s Wrong with Taxation?” http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1103
15. Chapter 2, Our Enemy, the State http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets2.htmlThe sun dips, the cattle low as they are driven back to the farms and a telephone rings with a Bollywood soundtrack tone. Tujinder Singh is calling the sarpanch – the elected head – of Manochahal, his native village 30 miles from India's western border.
The conversation – about crops, prices, weather and mendacious middlemen – is like a million or so similar early-evening calls placed by farmers across south Asia. Except that the land that Singh is now tilling is in Georgia, the small mountain nation in the Caucasus.
Singh, 38, is one of a new wave of farmers pioneering one of the world's more unlikely migrations. During a recent spell as a cook in Düsseldorf, Germany, he heard about thousands of acres of fertile land on former collective farms lying fallow in Georgia for want of manpower.
The contrast with his native Punjab, with its surging population and high land prices, was striking. So two months ago, he and three friends flew from Amritsar to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to seal a deal for the lease of 50 hectares. Back for a short break and some tandoori chicken, Singh said he was very happy with the move, even if he remains slightly vague about the geography of his new home.
"We are paying $950 [£580] for each hectare for a 99-year lease. You'd not get much for that in the Punjab. I'm not sure if the farm is in the north or south but it is sort of over by Turkey and Armenia," he said.
Singh and his associates are far from alone. A growing number of Punjabi farmers are heading for Georgia. Agents in major towns such as Jalandhar are advertising Georgian land deals and business is brisk.
"It started a while back, just a dozen or so. Maybe now it is hundreds. Once words spreads there will be many. They come to me for passports. They are looking for pastures new," said JS Sodhi, the bureaucrat who issues travel documents in Amritsar, the nearest major city to Manochahal.
The farmers of the Punjab, known as the grain basket of India, have long searched overseas for new land. An earlier wave of migrants went to Canada, where urbanisation meant thousands of farms were empty. More recently, Punjabi farmers have been buying or renting thousands of hectares in Ukraine, Uzbekistan and across eastern and central Africa.
"Punjabi people are always going to different countries. They are very adventurous and enterprising," said Sodhi.
The money the farmers make overseas is often sent back to buy land at home, contributing to the rise in prices that forced them to leave in the first place. Georgian officials in India say the new arrivals may be disappointed.
"We are not encouraging them. They are going on their own. There are some private people in Georgia selling land. We have no programme for this," said one last week.
It is illegal for a foreigner to directly own land in the country and, though it is relatively cheap, it is less abundant than often reported, a second official pointed out. A recent project to attract farmers from overseas, particularly white South Africans, was a failure.
But attempts to dampen enthusiasm seem unlikely to have much immediate effect. "There's a huge hunger for land and it's said to be very good land over there, fertile and well irrigated," said Gokul Patnaik, a Delhi-based specialist on global agriculture. "It's mechanised farming but the Punjab is the one area of India where tractors are widely used so that won't be too much of a problem."
Nor is the cultural gulf separating the Caucasus and western India an obstacle. "I like the food and the people are very friendly," said Singh, though he admitted that not speaking Georgian in a country where few speak Punjabi was "a challenge".
Some in the Punjab fear an exodus from the villages and the end of a centuries-old way of life. Dulwinder Singh, the village head of Manochahal, says he does not think large numbers of young farmers will follow his neighbour to Georgia, however.
"Over there you work the land, you invest in it, you sweat over it, but it is yours just for 99 years. Then what?" he asked, as he sipped tea with four neighbours outside his farmhouse. "My land here was worked by my father, my father's father, his father and as far back as anyone can remember. What can replace that?"The Order: 1886’s Gameplay Will Have the Same Quality as Cutscenes: New Story Details Revealed
Giuseppe Nelva February 17, 2014 6:28:47 PM EST
Some more details have surfaced about The Order: 1886, thanks to a preview published by the french magazine Jeux Vidéo.
According to the magazine Ready at Dawn gave the same level of quality and graphical detail to the upcoming title’s gameplay and cutscenes. There’s no difference in the models and textures used.
In addition to this, we also learn more about the story, adding some missing pieces to what we already knew. Apparently the knights of the order can live a long life and regenerate thanks to a substance called “Black Water.” According to Ready at Dawn’s Co-Founder Ru Weerasurya, it’s both a blessing and a curse, as it’s unnatural and causes those that drink it to become a bit less human. He also teased the possibility of a link with the legend of the Graal.
We also learn that there will be several different kinds of enemies. Players will be able to face them all with the same approach if they so wish, but it’ll be advantageous to change tactics depending on what enemies they’ll be fighting, especially in hand to hand, in order to exploit the weaknesses of each kind.
One thing is for sure: the more I read and hear about The Order: 1886, the more interesting it sounds. PS4 users around the world seem to be in for a treat.Ratchanok, the seventh seed and world No 7, started dismally to trail Li 1-5 in the opening game. However, the Thai girl clawed her way back to catch her tough opponent 19-19. Li, the world No 3 and two-time Asian champion in 2010 and 2012, proved that her victory over the Incheon Asian Games winner and compatriot Wang Yihan, Asian winner in 2011 and 2013, in the semi-finals was no fluke. She produced well-placed drop shots and devastating cross-court smashes to claim the close first game 22-20. Ratchnakok fought back to win closel-fought second game 23-21. Her confidence boosted, the determined Ratchanok hit exceptional form after taking a commanding 15-9 lead, and captured the game 21-12, the gruelling match and Asian crown.
For Ratchanok, this is her first title after she captured the world crown in 2013. More importantly, she beat Li Xuirui in China in the final to land both the World and Asian crowns in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
Ratchanok claimed US$15,000 cash or around Bt480,000 for the victory.The first line of a song can be a glorious, life-affirming moment. But it can also go horribly wrong. Just ask Johnny Borrell
"I received an erotic letter, but it didn't turn me on." So goes the opening line to Erotic Letter, the final song on Johnny Borrell's magnum opus, Borrell 1, which sold 594 copies in its first week. The song titles alone – including Ladder To Your Bed and Pan-European Supermodel Song (Oh! Gina) – prove that this is certainly a man who doesn't like to make things easy for himself. A man, indeed, who tried to break America by calling a song America and who actually wrote the lines "And I met a girl / She asked me my name / I told her what it was." The spoken word vignette that begins Erotic Letter, however, is truly the pinnacle of this man's ridiculousness.
The first line of a song can be a glorious, life-affirming moment. But the bad ones can destroy your faith in an artist, your belief in their artistry plummeting as you wince in disbelief, wondering how someone you held in such high-regard could put pen to paper and think: 'Yes, this is exactly how I'd like to start my song'.
Borrell may be an easy target, but he's in very good company. Popular music is riddled with dreadful intro lines; even the most eloquent lyricists falling victim to a botched phrase or poetic blunder. Here's five of the very worst:
Michael Jackson – Bad
Bad is one of the best songs ever written, but it's also guilty of containing possibly the worst opening line in music history. What was he thinking when he announced, apropos of nothing, that "Your butt is mine / gonna take you right"? Hold up MJ, we haven't even gotten to know each other yet.
Pitbull – Give Me Everything
Armando Cristian Pérez, better known as Pitbull, may top the charts but he's not the world's most eloquent wordsmith, surpassing expectations on Give Me Everything: "Me not working hard? / Yeah, right! Picture that with a Kodak / Or, better yet, go to Times Square / Take a picture of me with a Kodak." From a man who describes his semen as "egg whites" we should be thankful that not making sense is his biggest crime here.
Black Eyed Peas – My Humps
No article on terrible lyrics would be complete without mentioning the Black Eyed Peas, whose members appear to be in constant competition with one another to see how many terrible lyrics they can pack into one song. They're a band who are not afraid to ask the big questions in life, so when Will.i.am puts his mind to it, you know you're in for something special: "What you gon' do with all that junk? /All that junk inside your trunk?" he ponders. Bit of a cheat this one, as the lyrics do remain consistently awful throughout the song.
Madonna – I Love New York
Reading on mobile? Watch the video here
"Hey, what rhymes with New York?" you can imagine Madonna ask in the studio floor, her brain frazzled after a vigorous Ashtanga yoga session. "Cork?" someone suggests, thinking maybe she's after another city. "No, no, no." "Dork, then?" Yes! Of course, and thus the opening to I Love New York - "I don't like cities/ But I like New York / Other places / Make me feel like a dork" - was born.
Culture Club – The War Song
Reading on mobile? Watch the video here
Boy George is livid. Bloody war – it's stupid isn't it? And people, they're stupid too… hang on a moment hand me my pen. He has the answer in song-form. Who can forget the profundity of The War Song's opening couplet: "War is stupid / And people are stupid"? What it lacks in complexity in made up for in its directness. Perhaps.
Got any more to add to our list? Let us know below.2. Do each thing with all of your being
“When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”
– Shunryu Suzuki
To do something with every ounce of your being means to live with mindfulness and concentration in every moment. It means to be totally and completely focused on that one thing with every inch of yourself.
This doesn't just mean to do one thing as I just mentioned, it also means to be totally concentrated on that thing. But really it's being totally concentrated and mindful of this moment.
You don't open a door while forcefully pushing away any thoughts or outside sounds that arise, you open the door with all of your being, while still being openly mindful of whatever arises within that moment.
This isn't a hard, vein-popping, concentration. This is a soft but persistent concentration on the present moment. You're being here, awake to your life, in every moment. And that's really what this is all about.
This point is closely tied with Zen's emphasis on sitting meditation, which I'll mention later, but it's the greater effort of bringing that same single-pointed awareness and mindfulness from the meditation cushion into your everyday life.
Nothing special is necessary to begin living your life in this way though. To live in each moment, doing each thing, with all of your being and to the best of your ability, makes a significant and concrete difference in the quality of your day-to-day experience.
The benefits of living in this way are too long to mention, but suffice it to say that it's the most important effort of all. Mostly important to remember is it's the key effort in each moment, the heart of daily practice as a Zen monk or nun, while most of the other points while significant are either things to keep in mind from time to time, establish once, or keep tabs on regularly.
My second book, Zen for Everyday Life, helps you make most notably the mindfulness aspect of this a reality. You can check it out here: Zen for Everyday Life: How to Find Peace and Happiness in the Chaos of Everyday Life.
3. Work diligently to let go of hang ups and nurture true well-being
This point has two parts really: work diligently and let go of hang ups/nurture your well-being.
First, Zen monk's work diligently to realize satori, or awakening. This is considered the supreme effort, achievement, or realization in all of life. And being so keenly aware of one's own impermanence, the precious nature of this one life that we're given, they work day and night to realize this complete awakening for themselves so that they can go beyond hang ups (or attachments), let go, and realize true peace.
Being diligent in one's efforts is very important because all we have is this life. Whether you believe there's something after this or not, all we know for sure is that we have this life. And this life is here and gone in an instant. Time flies, and before we know it, we're gone. For that reason, you should work diligently to realize true peace and happiness.
That ideal life will look different depending on the person, but the idea is the same: we only have a short time to enjoy this life, so we shouldn't waste a minute.
The second aspect to this point is the major effort of this life, and that's to let go of those things which are keeping us from peace and happiness so that we can realize a clear path to living peacefully and joyfully.
Throughout our lives, we resist the natural way of things. It's our job to find that resistance (whether it's an attachment to something we like or aversion to something we don't like) so that we can remove the friction in our lives and life with greater ease and freedom. In this way, we open up a clear path to living peacefully.
This is easier said than done, and is a pretty large topic in itself, but you can start here for more information:
4. Simplify your life down to the essentials
By the time we're adults, we've generally amassed quite a lot of things in our lives which are either useless or relatively unimportant (both material possessions and non-material things). The monastic way of life (for any spiritual tradition really) is designed so that only the essentials remain: physical nourishment, a place to rest, a community, and the practice.
Now, this might be a little extreme and even unnecessary to most, but the idea is what's most important. The idea is to remove everything in your life that isn't essential. Essential to what? Essential to your well-being and the well-being of others.
But where do you begin? How do you decide what's essential and non-essential? The best place to start is to ask yourself if the item or thing is ever used or ever holds any purpose. If it's never used, or holds no purpose, those are the first and most obvious things to go.
From there it gets more difficult, but the question to ask is simple: does this thing help contribute to the well-being of myself and those around me? If the answer is no, or even maybe (suggesting it's really not essential), then the likelihood is it not only doesn't serve a purpose but often gets in the way of allowing those things that really matter to shine in your life.
You can also go in the opposite direction by asking yourself:
If I had to live with only a handful of things, what would they be?
Again not just material possessions but non-material things in activities, responsibilities, etc. This question can help distill your life down to it's essence. As an example, when I asked myself that question, I got this:
My family
My practice
Buddhaimonia / my work
Laptop computer (strictly for Buddhaimonia / my work)
Smartphone (strictly for family communication)
My home
Physical nourishment
Basic set of clothes (few pairs of pants, shirts, one pair of shoes, socks, a jacket)
It might be beneficial to ask yourself that question a few times too, because sometimes you'll put down things you think are essential, but upon closer examination you realize they really aren't. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll want to give it up, but in any case it will give you clarity.
From here, you can work backwards and look at your life. What exists in it now which wasn't included in this list? Why didn't you include it? Can you give it up? Should you? Would you have more time to focus on what's important if you gave it up?
Zen practice as a whole, as we talked about earlier, is very concentrated and intentional. In living the life of a Zen monk, all fluff is removed and only the essentials remain. This can truly help improve our life in meaningful ways, helping to remove that which is useless and potentially distracting and giving us more time for what matters most.It was one of the most stressful moments I’ve faced as a parent.
My heart pounded so hard I could almost hear it through the noise thundering all around us. Sweat beaded on my brow. They were out there all by themselves and I felt helpless in |
For establishing marker trait associations, 288 test cross hybrids were generated by crossing of PMiGAP lines as pollen parents with a common seed parent ICMA 843-22. These hybrids were grouped by maturity (early, medium early, medium and late) and phenotyped for 20 morphological traits under two drought stress conditions (early and late stress) along with controls (or no stress) for two years (2011, 2012). Experiments were conducted in an alpha-lattice designs with two replications in three test environments during Summer 2011 and 2012 (January to May) in the red precision (RP) experimental fields at the ICRISAT, Patancheru, Telengana, India (545 m above mean sea level, 17.53° N latitude and 78.27° E longitude). The early maturity group consisted of lines which had days to 50% flowering (DFF) from 42-52 days; the medium-early maturity group consisted of lines with DFF from 53-57 days; the medium maturity group consisted of entries with DFF from 58-62 days; the late maturity group consisted of lines which recorded more than 62 days for DFF. Early drought stress is a more severe stress imposed by withholding irrigation from about one week before flowering until maturity. Late stress is a less severe drought stress initiated during early grain-filling by withholding irrigation from 50% flowering time till maturity.
The three test environments consisted of early-onset of stress, late-onset stress, and a common, fully-irrigated non-stress treatment. Drought stress was imposed by withholding irrigation from about one week before flowering in early-onset treatment, while drought stress in the late-onset treatment was imposed by withholding irrigation from 50% flowering. Data were recorded for a total of 20 traits namely, grain yield (GYHA), panicle yield (HYHA), panicle harvest index (PHI), time to 75% flowering (TB), plant height (PH), panicle length (EL), panicle diameter (ED), panicle number (HCHA), number of tillers per plant (Till), biomass yield (BM), grain harvest index (HI), thousand grain weight (TGW), grain number per panicle (GNP), grain number per m2 (GNM2), agronomic score (AgS), stover dry matter fraction (DMF) and vegetative growth index (GI). PH, EL, and ED were measured on the main stems of five representative plants of each entry in a plot at maturity. At harvest, data were recorded from the harvested area on plant population (PCHA), panicle numbers (HCHA) and fresh stover yield (FSWTHA). Effective tiller number (Till) was calculated as the ratio HCHA/PCHA. HYHA, GYHA and TGW were recorded after oven drying for about 24 h. Stover dry matter yield (DMY) was estimated from plot FSWTHA using the fresh and dry weights of a chopped subsample of stover from each plot. BM was calculated as HYHA + DMY on a plot basis. Grain number per panicle (GNP) was derived from primary data as [(GYHA/HCHA)/ (TGW/1000)]. Grain harvest index was calculated as the ratio between grain yield and biomass yield at harvest, and panicle harvest index as the ratio between grain weight and panicle weight. Flowering time was recorded as days from seedling emergence to stigma emergence for 75% of the main shoots in a plot. The traits measured include grain yield (kg/ha), panicle yield (kg/ha), panicle harvest index (%), time to 50% flowering (number of days), plant height (cm), panicle length (cm), panicle diameter (cm), panicle number, tillers per plant, biomass yield (kg/ha), vegetative growth index (kg/ha/day), grain harvest index (%), fresh stover yield (t/ha), stover dry matter yield (kg/ha), stover dry matter fraction, 1000-grain mass (g), grain number per panicle, and grain number per m2 (Supplementary Data set 2). Analysis of variance for all traits was performed using the PROC MIXED procedure in SAS 9.3 (SAS Institute Inc 2013) with Kenward-Roger degree of freedom approximation method considering replicates and accessions as fixed effects, whereas incomplete blocks within each replication were considered as random effects for combined intra and inter block analysis. Best linear unbiased estimates (BLUEs) were calculated for all accessions.
For GWAS analysis, a total of 3,117,056 SNPs retained after filtering the minor alleles (MAF<0.05) and 20% missing data were used. Marker-trait associations were established using AOV model with a bloc effect for maturity group in R (Phenotype∼Bloc+SNP). We tested the suitability of the model by plotting the observed P-values from the association test against an expected (cumulative) probability distribution. These quantile-quantile (q-q) plots clearly indicated that we corrected properly for population stratification (Supplementary Fig. 23). Significance of associations between loci and traits were determined adjusting for multiple testing by using FDR at a 0.001 threshold level and considering p value lower than 10−10.
Genomic prediction analysis for testcross performance.
Grain yield performance of 259 PMiGAP lines was used for hybrid prediction analysis. In our analysis, flowering time was considered as a cofactor. For genomic prediction analysis, we performed a one-stage phenotypic data analysis on 259 PMiGAP lines as test cross hybrid trials using a linear mixed model that included genotype, flowering time, year, stress, interaction among genotype, stress and year, replication, incomplete block and residual effects. The effect of flowering time was always assumed to be fixed. When estimating variance components, all other effects were assumed to be random. To get the BLUE of each line, we set the genotype effect as fixed.
The heritability on the line mean basis was estimated as where and are variance components arising from genotype, genotype × year interaction, genotype × stress interaction, the three-way interaction and the residual, respectively. y, s and r are the number of different years, stresses, and replications. In addition, we calculated the BLUE for each genotype in each environment (stress versus control) across years. That is, for each environment we fitted a linear mixed model including genotype, flowering time, year, genotype × year interaction, replication, incomplete block and residual effects. The assumptions of the parameters were similar to above. The heritability in this case was estimated as All phenotypic data analyses were done using the ASreml- R 3 software93.
A total of 2,235,060 SNPs with <20% missing rates were used with above mentioned phenotyping data for genomic prediction analysis. We used the genomic best linear unbiased prediction (G-BLUP) model for genomic selection:, where y refers to n-dimensional vector of phenotypic records, 1 n is an n-dimensional vector of ones, is the mean, g is an n-dimensional vector of additive genotypic values and e is an n-dimensional vector of residual terms.
In the model we assume that is a fixed parameter, and g, e are random parameters with and, where G denotes the n × n genomic relationship matrix. G was calculated as follows: Let X = (x ij ) be the n × p matrix of SNP markers, where x ij equals the number of a chosen allele at the jth locus for the ith genotype. Let p j be the allele frequency of the jth marker. W = (w ij ) is an n × p matrix with w ij = x ij − 2p j.
Then we have Note that when calculating the kinship coefficient for two genotypes, only those markers without missing values in both genotypes were considered.
The accuracy of genomic prediction was evaluated by fivefold cross-validation with a total of 100 cross-validation runs. The cross-validated prediction accuracy was calculated as the Pearson product-moment correlation between predicted and observed genotypic values of the lines in the test set. The GBLUP model was implemented using the R software94.
Hybrid prediction analysis.
Grain yield of 64 pearl millet hybrids grown at five locations in India (Jamnagar, Anand, SK Nagar, Mahuva, Kothara) during the time period 2004-2013 was measured. Trials were conducted during 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2012 in Kharif, Summer and pre rabi season. However, during 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2013 trials were conducted in only Kharif and Summer. We adopted randomized block design with a spacing of 60 cm between the rows and 10-15 cm between the plants and adopted standard agronomic practices. The 64 hybrids were generated by crossing 20 male and 23 female lines.
By using the grain yield phenotyping data for 64 hybrids as mentioned above, we used the following linear mixed model to estimate the variance components as well as BLUEs:
Yield ∼Genotype + Replication.
To estimate variance components, all effects were treated as random. The BLUEs for each environment were calculated by the same mixed model but modelling genotype as fixed effect. Repeatability was estimated as, where N R refers number of replications, refers to genetic variance, and refers to residual variance. Four environments with repeatability lower than 0.5 were removed from further analysis. The BLUEs of the 64 hybrids of each environment were used for an analysis across environments by fitting following model:
Yield∼Genotype + Environment.
The genotype effects were treated as fixed and the environment effects as random. The distribution of the BLUEs across environments approximated a normal distribution. The variance components of genotypes, genotype x environment interactions and of the residuals were estimated using a one-step model. Broad-sense heritability was then calculated as the ratio of genotypic to phenotypic variance:
where l refers to the number of environments and r is the average number of replications per environment. The hybrid prediction was based on 302,110 high-quality SNP markers obtained from 580 B- and R- lines. We used ridge regression-BLUP considering additive and dominance effects to predict the hybrid performance. Details of the implementation of the models have been described earlier95. Briefly, the general form of the model is defined as the following:
where 1 n is a vector of ones and n is the number of hybrids, μ refers to the overall mean across all four locations. Z A and Z D are n × m design matrices for the additive and dominance effects of the markers, where m refers to the number of markers. The elements of Z A are -1, 0, 1, and elements of Z D is 0, 1. While a = (a 1, a 2,..., a m )T and d = (d 1, d 2,..., d m )T are the vectors of length m, and a i d i denote the additive and dominance effects for the ith marker, respectively. e = (e 1, e 2,..., e n )T is a vector of length n and e j is the residual for the jth hybrid.
Prediction accuracy was studied using cross validations. In each cross validation, 48 hybrids were randomly selected as training set and the remaining 16 hybrids were used as test set. The cross validation was run 500 times and accuracy was estimated as the Pearson correlation coefficient between predicted and observed values standardized with the square root of the heritability (h = 0.76). Next, we used all 64 hybrids as a training set and predicted the hybrid performance of 167,910 possible single-cross combinations among the 580 inbred lines (260 B-lines and 320 R-lines). Based on the predicted values, we selected 0.1% hybrids that had the highest predicted yields (170/167,910 hybrids). Of those 170 hybrids, 11 have been bred so far and are thus a subset of the 64 phenotyped hybrids. The remaining 159 hybrids are based on parental inbred lines that have never been used for hybrid breeding and could be tested in the field. All analyses were done using the ASreml-R 3 software93.
Data availability.
Genome sequence assembly and annotation data: BioProject ID PRJNA294988; BioSample ID SAMN04124419. Resequencing data: SRA SRP063925. Transcriptome data: BioProject ID PRJNA391885. BAM and SNP files are available at http://ceg.icrisat.org/ipmgsc. GigaScience Database record: http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100192 Scripts used in the MS are available at https://github.com/ICRISAT-CEG/PM-Scripts.git
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A driver yesterday took a photograph of a man lying in the street and posted it online as a “joke” – but did not call 999.
Ikram Choudhury, 19, got out of his car to snap the man who would later be hit by another vehicle.
He put it on Twitter for his 3,407 followers sparking an angry response.
One asked him: “Did you no go see if he was orite?”
When he replied no she branded him “sick”.
Police found the victim 10 minutes after his picture was posted online.
He later died in hospital.
Police quizzed the teenager at his parents’ home in Edinburgh where the hit and run took place.
They are also looking for a silver Vauxhall Astra which spilled engine coolant due to damage from the impact.
A spokesman said: “The car was badly damaged and that will be obvious to anyone who uses it.”
They added: “In particular, we’d like to hear from service stations or outlets that may have sold water or coolant to the driver of a silver hatchback.”BY DAVID A. ANDELMAN
Brunei, the tiny sultanate perched on the South China Sea off the northwestern corner of Borneo, derives more of its gross national production each year from oil and natural gas than any other Asian nation. In this respect it outranks Qatar, Iran and Russia and approaches Saudi Arabia. But with oil prices plummeting over the last two years, the tsunami of cash that has fueled a remarkable expansion is shrinking instead. So the 420,000 citizens and guest laborers are pulling in their belts and output is being revamped.
The Sultan of Brunei--ruler for 49 years, whose crown's worth was estimated by FORBES in 2009 at $20 billion--has placed at the heart of this effort Haji Mohammad Yasmin bin Haji Umar, adding industry to the energy portfolio the minister has handled since 2010. Prior to that he was deputy defense minister (the Sultan is minister of defense).
Minister Umar's immediate goal is to wean the ASEAN nation from the huge subsidies that have been sapping innovation and discouraging outside investors. But he is equally focused on security. This Sunni-dominated nation has been flirting with a version of sharia law that's being implemented gently--in Brunei style--and has fended off all threats to order. Our March interview, as edited below, took place in his government office.
FORBES ASIA: What are your priorities, particularly for foreign investment, especially in the petroleum sector?
I just took over this portfolio last October. The way I look at it, in some ways we've been too bureaucratic for too many years. If you look at our way of doing business, last year we were number 84, this year or next year we are confident we will be in the top 50 countries, maybe the top tenth in ease of doing business [a World Bank measure]. When you privatize some things it becomes easier. Government tends to be bureaucratic. That has to go.
Say I have a company that would like to open a manufacturing operation in Brunei. Do I need a Brunei partner?
Not necessarily. It is good if you have a Brunei partner, but it is not essential. You come in and bring business, you give opportunities to our own small and medium-size enterprises, you may do so on your own terms. At the same time it is essential that we are in a position to supply you with the best Bruneians to work in your company.
Where will these businesses come from? ASEAN, the U.S., Europe?
From across the world. China is building our new petrochemical plant, and we are also investing in a new ammonia and urea plant, which we expect to be operational by 2019. It is not just going to produce ammonia and urea, but also methanol. So the by-products of this will give us another sector. That is the sort of industry we want in our future plans.
Meanwhile, the cost of raw material is plummeting--particularly oil and gas, which accounts for 90% of your national output. So how are you going to bridge to 2019 until enterprises like this can come online?
The way we look at it, we have gone through the highs and the lows on oil prices. We have been a producer more than 50 years. The good times, we save. The bad times we really have to do something different. Our joint ventures have to be much more efficient than during the good times. I want them to be efficient in all times. A lot of our FDI is coming in the next two years, and we will have sufficient reserves to carry us through.
Are you prepared to hold down production in an effort to raise oil prices?
I think we are the only country that produces according to the principle of sustainability. If we take a barrel out of the ground, we will already have discovered another to replace it. It has to be sustainable.
Aren't some of these new fields, especially those far offshore, more expensive to produce and unlikely to be profitable with oil at $30 a barrel?
Some of the economics will be very challenging, I admit this. But we have also discovered fields that are economically advantageous. There are some discoveries in new commercial blocks offshore. When you combine a number together, they become more economically viable.
Are you worried about China encroaching on any of your oil?reserves, your proper territory?
My foreign affairs colleague will have to speak to that. I did spend years as defense minister, you know. But we have a very good bilateral relationship with China, and we are committed to all the initiatives by ASEAN to preserve our rights.
His Highness the Sultan said in his address [the same day of this interview] that the national budget would have to be restrained to $6.7 billion this year--still substantial for a country of 420,000 but below previous years. How do you convince the people this kind of austerity is necessary when they are used to so many years of anything goes?
When I first came in, I looked at our electricity tariffs. I was shocked to find the way it was structured. This was 2010. If you spent less, you would be penalized. If you spent more, you would be rewarded. A year after that we decided to embark on a complete reform. In the beginning so many people were unhappy, because I was punishing people who were accustomed to waste. Those people who actually saved, I basically say, this is good for you and for us. And rewarded them. A lot of people were building a house with five or six air conditioners operating 24 hours whether there was anybody in the house or not. They kept all the lights on if there was anyone there or not. So we stuck to the reform. And until now I can tell you that over 90% of the Brunei population have shifted their patterns of using electricity from wasteful to conservationist. It took us a good two to three years to educate the people. Plus our climate is changing. We are committed that by 2035 a substantial percentage of our energy will come from renewable energy.
How important is the Trans-Pacific Partnership for your future development?
It is very important in that it will give us opportunities to access other markets. But the standard is high. We know that. The mere fact that we came to this level, our standard seems to be acceptable internationally as well.
There is a chance the U.S. Congress will reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How bad would that be for Brunei? And as far as you are concerned, can the treaty go ahead without the U.S.?
We are one of the four founders of the TPP--Singapore, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand. We also have the ASEAN economic community. That will give us access to 650 million people... ever broader opportunities. But TPP is also for [the U.S.]. Do you know the number of American companies operating in Brunei? There are quite a lot. Oil and gas, U.S. companies like Baker Hughes, Halliburton. All these are services companies. They, too, need TPP.
There is some thought here that you need to develop a domestic oil services competency that you can sell to others.
That is another thing--oil outsourcing. We should be?leveraging our oil and gas expertise as well as our resources, because we have been in this industry for the past 50 years. Another thing we should be leveraging is Islamic finance. We have a lot of expertise here.
You are not a huge market, and an investor can probably find a much larger base of employees at lower cost in the Philippines or Bangladesh or India. So what commends Brunei to an investor?
You look at our educational system. It is a good system. We are producing more graduates than the country needs. And they all speak English. I will make sure that supporting business in this country will be customized. We have proved this by producing the right people to staff the energy sector. I call this an industry-ready workforce. There is no reason why we cannot do it across all industries. You will see--in six months to a year we will have call centers here. We are having early discussions with people like Microsoft.
Do you have a minimum wage?
We don't call it a minimum wage, we call it a reasonable wage. For people working offshore, it will be at least $1,000 Brunei a month [U.S. $640]. In oil and gas, for instance, there are no taxes. As for housing, the government helps out, but they still have to pay rent or a loan over 30 years to buy. What we have to get away from is the mentality of subsidies. Subsidies for the low-income worker are okay, but only for the low income.
But subsidies were okay when oil was higher priced.
I enforced my reform on the electricity sector when oil was $100 a barrel. Fuel subsidies in Brunei are for the well-being of all the people because there is no good public transport system. We have to improve our public transport system. On my last trip to the U.S., I visited Uber. They are talking about launching here in Brunei. The thing I like about Uber is not only do you liberalize the market but you give the opportunity for people to work. When we were in San Francisco, we were driven by a mother who'd just taken her children to school.
Put on your previous hat as chief of security and defense minister. How concerned are you about the security of Brunei--its industries, resources and people. You are a Sunni nation in a world that is concerned about Sunni nations.
Everywhere people are concerned about security. That is the first thing. And we are also very concerned because we are a very small nation. We cannot afford to have any terrorists sitting in Brunei. This is why we have to be proactive--in educating our people. In Brunei it is all regulated properly--religious education. So we will not allow a person to come and give a sermon without permission. It is enshrined in our constitution.
So who decides who is radical and not allowed to speak?
The ministry of religious affairs.... Every preacher will have to apply. The Friday sermon is approved in advance by the ministry. How can we run a country without that? Our population is young. If there are foreigners who violate those rules, we will deport them. For a Bruneian it is the same, or he will have to go to rehab. Singapore is doing the same thing--one year or two years' rehab, but not sent to Guantanamo.
Are you worried about the security of your oil reserves, attacks on that?
We have been in this business a long time. And this is part and parcel of our calculation--our own plan.
We've seen little overt security here. A few soldiers in camouflage uniforms, but they have no weapons, no guns. His Majesty drives himself in a Jeep in a two-car caravan. How is that possible in this day and age?
His Majesty goes and sees people at every Friday prayer. How is that possible? We are a special place. There are some occasions where our people would carry weapons.JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa should raise state spending on higher education by around a third to at least 1 percent of gross domestic product, a report commissioned by the presidency and released on Monday found.
President Jacob Zuma gestures as he addresses parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham
The recommendation by the commission appointed by President Jacob Zuma came as a senior Treasury official resigned after news reports said he had complained about presidential interference in the budget process, and as state-owned utility Eskom said it was facing serious liquidity issues.
South Africa relies on foreign investors to finance its hefty budget and current account deficits. Investors are nervous ahead of important credit rating reviews scheduled this month and with the ruling African National Congress gearing up to elect Zuma’s successor as party chief in December.
The presidency said on Monday that Zuma would make an announcement on the higher education report once ministers had processed its findings.
Zuma set up the commission early last year in response to protests by university students demanding free education.
The rand and benchmark bonds weakened after the presidency said it would publish the report on Monday, but they were little changed after its release.
Currency traders and analysts said markets were waiting to see how the presidency would react to the report, but they said its recommendations were risky from an economic standpoint.
“If we start repeating this pattern of recording higher and higher budget deficits we are undoubtedly headed for downgrades,” said senior Nedbank economist Nicky Weimar.
South African GDP was around 4.3 trillion rand ($296.6 billion) last year, so an increase in government spending on higher education of 0.25 percent of GDP would amount to around $750 million of additional expenditure.
The commission also recommended that all university students should be funded through a cost-sharing model, whereby the government would guarantee income-contingent loans issued by commercial banks. Should a student fail to reach a certain income level, the state should repay the tuition loan, it advised.
Introducing those measures would make it more difficult for Treasury to rein in a projected budget deficit of over 4 percent of GDP for the 2017/18 fiscal year.
But it would be popular among young people and ANC voters, many of whom are dissatisfied that South African society remains deeply unequal more than two decades after the end of apartheid in 1994.
South Africa next holds a national election in 2019, and the ANC has seen its electoral majority shrink in elections.
TROUBLE AT TREASURY?
South African markets have also been pressured by fears that the independence of financial institutions is under threat.
Local media outlet Fin24 cited sources on Monday as saying that Treasury Deputy Director-General Michael Sachs had resigned last week after complaining that Zuma was interfering in the budget process.
Treasury confirmed Sachs’ resignation, saying only that his departure was because he wanted to “serve the public sector in a different capacity”.
International ratings agencies downgraded South Africa’s debt earlier this year after Zuma fired respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan in an abrupt cabinet reshuffle.
S&P Global and Moody’s are expected to review the country’s ratings again on Nov. 24, and all eyes are on whether they will downgrade its local-currency rating to “junk” status after Gordhan’s replacement, Malusi Gigaba, unveiled dismal medium-term budget forecasts last month.
Downgrades to sub-investment grade could trigger forced selling of up to $12 billion of South African bonds and pile further pressure on the rand, which is already trading at a 12-month low against the dollar.
South Africa’s debt insurance costs hit a four-month high on Monday, reflecting a greater likelihood of ratings downgrades.At first glance, it may seem like photographer Lissa Rivera leads a familiar trope of being the woman who “wears the pants” in her relationship with BJ Lillis.
Lillis, studying for his PhD in American History at Princeton, is quiet and reserved—a quality that, even in 2017, is more likely to be attributed to a lack of masculinity than considered thoughtfulness. It is for this reason that Lillis often uses the word "spectrum" to describe himself, because society isn't always kind to those who identify as gender fluid—much less a man who is actively opting for femininity. “I use masculine pronouns, I have a male body,” Lillis explains, “but I also enjoy being feminine.”
In a conservative culture that cleaves severely (and sometimes violently) along gender lines, the notion that a man “demotes” himself into a realm of femininity is one that Rivera aims to address in her new exhibition, Beautiful Boy, opening June 1 at ClampArt in New York.
Lissa Rivera
Beautiful Boy began in early 2014, when Rivera and Lillis were still just platonic friends. (The pair became romantic while working on this project together.) In a moment of profound vulnerability, Lillis revealed to Rivera that he was gender-queer and during college had mostly worn feminine clothing. He admitted he missed that freedom. It was a secret lifted, but for Lillis, who had intellectually explored gender-fluidity as a student at Wesleyan, there was still the question of what his gender identity meant for him.
Rivera, who also works as the associate curator for the Museum of Sex, felt she could help Lillis explore this crossroads. “I wanted him to be free, I felt it was awful and unfair that there was so much of him that he felt that he couldn’t be,” she says. Indeed, sitting for Rivera helped Lillis realize there was definitive point where he and his gender would settle, but it would be on a spectrum—forever an exploration. “There’s a spectrum of gender identity… different ways of expressing masculinity or femininity, and what the project has helped me do is let go, experiment, move around and feel comfortable in different ways of being feminine and masculine,” says Lillis, adding: “It’s just as much about her relationship to gender and femininity as it mine.”
Lissa Rivera
Lissa Rivera
Rivera, who had often felt she didn’t fit prescribed notions of femininity, agreed. She says she struggled with social rejections, particularly in high school and in past relationships. "It alienated me,” she admits thoughtfully and cautiously, some of those scars still tender. “I’m very feminine and I love glamour…[but] I have a lot of what would be considered ‘masculine traits’ in my personality. I feel unconventional in my own gender.”
Rivera’s photographs, which draw inspiration from the likes of Man Ray and Hannah Höch, as well as the Golden Age of Hollywood, feature Lillis’s androgynous body, fluid in gender and emotion, going either way and never settling on a definitive point, except perhaps, the entire spectrum. The photographer explains that women have been allowed to embrace masculine things, even masculinity, in a way that’s become normative: pants, short haircuts, having a career. Yet, the pendulum of men embracing the feminine without homophobic backlash simply does not swing the other way. “It was something that really intrigued me,” says Rivera. “Femininity has a lot more weight than masculinity, in terms of what people are allowed to explore…There’s a line there, for male bodies.”
Lissa Rivera
Men are, Rivera says, constantly pressed into choosing suffocating (and often hyperbolic) ideas of masculinity, and are socialized to believe anything signifying care or softness is feminine, and therefore beneath them. The message is everywhere, from “man” candles in camouflage (the only way to enjoy a well-scented room) to “man” soaps and body washes (lest the very act of bathing makes one’s sexual orientation become suspect). It’s no accident that most of the media’s narratives around men embracing grooming fall into tropes of the “metrosexual”, “coastal elite”, “flamboyantly gay”, and “European”—anything but normalizing the complexity of masculinity. And with the current political climate, it feels as though America is still centuries away from where other countries are, with gender, sexuality, fluidity and the illusion of binaries.
The timing of Beautiful Boy couldn’t be more right, or more necessary. The national and political conversations around the role of gender, sex and all the spectrums in between are finally coming to the mainstream. But so is the hate and vitriol for anyone daring to step out of the unforgiving binaries that so many unquestioningly accept as fact.
Lissa Rivera
For those who seek to move beyond ignorance, to be a part of the discourse, it can be difficult to know where to begin: how not to be offensive, especially for the cis-gender, heterosexual population, who’ve largely not had to think about these issues until now. There’s the hope that Beautiful Boy, for its creators, can help facilitate a conversation by being an accessible—and visually arresting—entry point.
The political conversations at the center of Beautiful Boy are important to Rivera and Lillis, but they also point out that it is—most poignantly—an intense exploration that is deeply personal. “I see the work as being personal first, political second. It has to be that way,” says Lillis. “For me, it’s just been incredibly liberating because I was really struggling when Lissa and I met, to understand my gender identity and where I would fall on the spectrum.”
For Rivera the relief is mutual, and hard won. “I feel that I finally have a place of comfort in my life, in a relationship, where I can be myself without editing, or being afraid. We don’t put up parameters around our work…we just go.”
Lissa RiveraBy Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent BBC News website
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lays out the five principles In the aftermath of the Georgian conflict, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has laid down five principles that he says will guide Russian foreign policy. The new Moscow rules are not a blueprint for a new "Cold War". That was a worldwide ideological and economic struggle. This is much more about defending national interests. Going back to the 19th Century? The principles, with their references to "privileged interests" and the protection of Russian citizens, would probably seem rather obvious to Russian leaders of the 19th Century. They would seem rather mild to Stalin and his successors, who saw the Soviet Union extending communism across the globe. In some ways, we are going back to the century before last, with a nationalistic Russia very much looking out for its own interests, but open to co-operation with the outside world on issues where it is willing to be flexible. President Medvedev's principles do not, for example, necessarily exclude Russian agreement to continuing the strong diplomatic stance against Iran. And energy contracts are not necessarily threatened. Above all, what they tell us is that the Georgia conflict was for Russia, in Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's words, a "long-cherished moment of truth", which has created a new "clarity". Here are the principles, in the words which President Medvedev used in an interview with the three main Russian TV channels (translated by the BBC Monitoring Service). 1. International law "Russia recognises the primacy of the basic principles of international law, which define relations between civilised nations. It is in the framework of these principles, of this concept of international law, that we will develop our relations with other states." 2. Multi-polar world "The world should be multi-polar. Unipolarity is unacceptable, domination is impermissible. We cannot accept a world order in which all decisions are taken by one country, even such a serious and authoritative country as the United States of America. This kind of world is unstable and fraught with conflict." 3. No isolation "Russia does not want confrontation with any country; Russia has no intention of isolating itself. We will develop, as far as possible, friendly relations both with Europe and with the United State of America, as well as with other countries of the world." 4. Protect citizens "Our unquestionable priority is to protect the life and dignity of our citizens, wherever they are. We will also proceed from this in pursuing our foreign policy. We will also protect the interest of our business community abroad. And it should be clear to everyone that if someone makes aggressive forays, he will get a response." 5. Spheres of influence "Russia, just like other countries in the world, has regions where it has its privileged interests. In these regions, there are countries with which we have traditionally had friendly cordial relations, historically special relations. We will work very attentively in these regions and develop these friendly relations with these states, with our close neighbours." Asked if these "priority regions" were those that bordered on Russia he replied: "Certainly the regions bordering [on Russia], but not only them." And he stated: "As regards the future, it depends not just on us. It also depends on our friends, our partners in the international community. They have a choice." The implications Those therefore are the stated principles. What implications do they have? To take them in the order he presented them: The primacy of International Law: This on the face of it sounds encouraging. But Russia signed up to Security Council resolution 1808 in April this year, which reaffirmed "the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Georgia... " - and has since abandoned that position. It argues that a Georgian attack on South Ossetia on 7/8 August invalidated its commitment and required that it defend its citizens there. But it perhaps cannot proclaim its faith in international law and at the same time take unilateral action. This principle therefore has to be seen as rather vague. The world is multi-polar: This means that Russia will not accept the primacy of the United States (or a combination of the US and its allies) in determining world policy. It will require that its own interests are |
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Stutzman and his wife, as well as his top aides, also cooperated with OCE investigators.METAIRIE, La. -- Identifying what has gone so epically wrong with the New Orleans Saints' defense is kind of like the age-old "chicken or the egg" debate.
The Saints keep changing their defensive players, coordinators and schemes because they’ve been so lousy on that side of the ball. But they keep struggling on defense because they have no continuity.
The Saints have started 55 different defensive players since the start of the 2014 season. And 23 different defensive backs have started at least two games in that 50-game span. Both are the highest totals in the NFL, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
By contrast, the Minnesota Vikings have used only 26 starters since the start of 2014. And the Denver Broncos have had only eight defensive backs start multiple games since then.
"There’s no consistency. I mean, there’s new faces every year. Nobody even gets to know each other. And because they’ve been bad, they just keep rotating guys," said former Saints linebacker Scott Shanle. Former Saints cornerback Jabari Greer echoed the same sentiment when asked for thoughts on why New Orleans has continued to struggle on defense through multiple players, coordinators and systems.
Dennis Allen, right, is the latest coordinator that coach Sean Payton, left, has turned to in an effort to fix a defense that has struggled to stop anyone over the past few seasons. Derick E. Hingle/USA TODAY Sports
In less than four years, the Saints have used five different players in the middle linebacker/"quarterback of the defense" role.
Some of it has been bad luck -- injuries to key starters such as Delvin Breaux, Nick Fairley, Keenan Lewis and Jairus Byrd, among others. Some of it has been impatience with players who were inconsistent in New Orleans but have thrived elsewhere -- such as Malcolm Jenkins and Akiem Hicks.
And a lot of it, Saints coach Sean Payton readily admitted Thursday, has been missing on too many defensive draft picks and free agents, including linebacker Stephone Anthony, a first-round selection in 2015 who was just traded to the Miami Dolphins for a fifth-rounder.
"They’ve just had issues with keeping a consistent starting 11 on the field," said Greer, who noted that was one of the strengths during the successful defensive seasons he was part of in 2009 (the Saints team that won the Super Bowl), 2011 and 2013. "And I think having a different voice in the leadership positions over the last three years is something that’s been a problem. They haven’t had a four-star captain like they do on offense with Drew [Brees] and Zach [Strief]. So when you have a shift in leadership that’s been dramatic over the past three years, you have the results.
"The roots are not as deep."
Burning through coordinators
To an extent, the defense has always been the Saints’ Achilles' heel during the Payton/Brees/general manager Mickey Loomis era. No NFL team has gained more yards since Payton and Brees first arrived in 2006 (405.1 per game). And no NFL team has allowed more yards (360.5 per game).
Some of those struggles date back to coordinators Gary Gibbs and Gregg Williams. But it has really become an epidemic since 2012 as the Saints have burned through coordinators Steve Spagnuolo (2012) and Rob Ryan (2013-15). Current D-coordinator Dennis Allen took the reins after Ryan was fired in November 2015. The Saints also fired longtime linebackers coach Joe Vitt and longtime defensive line coach Bill Johnson this year, bringing in Mike Nolan and Ryan Nielsen.
Under Spagnuolo in 2012, the Saints set the NFL record for most yards allowed in a season (7,042). Then, under Ryan and Allen in 2015, the defense set NFL records for most TD passes allowed (45) and highest opponents’ passer rating (116.1). This season, through two games, they’re on pace to shatter all three of those marks.
"I think having a different voice in the leadership positions over the last three years is something that's been a problem. They haven't had a four-star captain like they do on offense with Drew [Brees] and Zach [Strief]." former Saints cornerback Jabari Greer
Payton -- an offensive-minded head coach -- has been a constant through all the struggles. So it’s fair to wonder how much of a role he’s had in the defense’s demise. And he doesn’t shrink from that responsibility, saying, "It’s never gonna be the coordinator’s defense himself. It’s gonna be the Saints’ defense, No. 1."
Payton could be accused of running Williams out of town because of a personality clash, and of not having much patience with Ryan or Spagnuolo because of their historic struggles. But it’s hard to argue that any of those coaches deserved to stay, particularly considering Williams orchestrated the infamous bounty program that cost Payton a one-year suspension and the Saints two second-round draft picks.
Plus, Payton’s relationship with Allen is as strong as he’s had with any defensive coordinator, and that hasn’t proved to be a magic solution so far.
Ryan accused Payton and Loomis, in part, of ruining a good thing in 2014 by trying to mimic what the Seattle Seahawks were doing after the Saints had a good defense in 2013 (swapping out Jenkins for Byrd in free agency and drafting Stanley Jean-Baptiste in the second round in 2014, among other failed moves). But Payton ultimately fired Ryan during the 2015 season because his defense was too undisciplined and was plagued by assignment, alignment and substitution errors.
The area where Payton deserves -- and accepts -- the most blame is in the personnel decisions that have missed the mark the past several years.
The Saints whiffed on Anthony, Jean-Baptiste and several midround picks in the draft. And they whiffed on free agents such as Byrd, linebacker James Laurinaitis and cornerbacks Brandon Browner and Champ Bailey.
Payton and Loomis collaborate equally on personnel decisions, along with top personnel executives such as former personnel director Ryan Pace, current pro personnel director Terry Fontenot and current college scouting director Jeff Ireland. All have some hits and misses on their track record.
But Payton said they've been improving in recent years.
"From a personnel standpoint... making sure that it’s something I’m comfortable with in regards to personnel and making sure that we’ve asked the right questions so we know the player can learn and we know the player can fit in this role [is important]. And I think that process recently has served us very well," Payton said.
Plagued by the secondary
Both Greer and Shanle note that the Saints bailed too early on Jenkins, who became a Pro Bowler with the Philadelphia Eagles (though in Hicks’ case, Greer said he understood why a change of scenery was probably a win-win).
"If Coach could go back, I’m sure that he would keep [Jenkins and safety Roman Harper in 2014], because they brought much more to the team than just performance and stats," said Greer, who now analyzes the NFL for TSN. "Their leadership and that stability on the back end was key to keeping our team mentally afloat when the hard times came.
Safety Kenny Vaccaro, a 2013 first-round pick, has been plagued by inconsistency as part of a secondary that has had tremendous turnover since the start of the 2014 season. Wesley Hitt/Getty Images
"We had a really good defense; we were pretty opportunistic. But the thing is, we were pretty consistent with the starting lineup. You know, we had the same 11 on the field for an extended period of time.... Because in the middle of the game, when you’re in Week 8, 9, 10, you need to understand how your teammates play, what their tendencies are, how they react to motions, to shifts."
Greer pointed to an ugly play near the start of Sunday’s 36-20 loss to the New England Patriots: Second-year safety Vonn Bell moved rookie cornerback Marshon Lattimore out of press coverage after running back James White shifted from the outside to the inside, something Greer said is usually a no-no. And White wound up gaining 12 yards on the third-and-5 play.
"When I saw that, I realized that they were disjointed, that they were not communicating effectively. But those are little nuances you get when you’ve played with a player for a long period of time," Greer said. "Teams are gonna use motions and shifts to make those defensive backs communicate. And if they’re not comfortable communicating with each other, if they don’t know each other’s playing styles, they’re gonna be in for a very long season."
Saints safety Kenny Vaccaro is a 2013 first-round pick who has taken turns excelling and struggling throughout his four-plus-year career in New Orleans (including his benching late in the loss to New England). He has mentioned multiple times this year how difficult it is to develop chemistry with different players constantly rotating through the secondary.
"I’ve been here through it all, through a thousand different members in the secondary," Vaccaro quipped the other day.
Vaccaro was expected to be the one veteran member of the secondary to provide some glue and guidance this season, but he has struggled along with the younger players. Shanle said he and former Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma have talked about how they would have loved to play with Vaccaro. But he said Vaccaro is "the most bipolar player I’ve ever seen as far as consistency. When he’s on, he’s one of the best players in the league. When he’s off, I just don’t get it."
Shanle said he sees potential in the Saints’ latest defensive incarnation, including rookie starters Lattimore, linebacker Alex Anzalone and safety Marcus Williams.
"But that’s been the problem -- they’ve been way too young on defense the past few years," said Shanle, who now analyzes the Saints for Cox Sports Television. "I believe that Dennis knows what he’s doing. But I don’t care if you bring Wade Phillips in, Buddy Ryan, whoever you want to bring in, I still think you’re not gonna have a great defense, just because some of the mistakes these guys are making on the back end.
"Everybody knows the secondary’s been the Achilles' heel of this team. I mean, we saw it in ’09 -- when we finally fixed the back end, we were able to do what we wanted to do on defense and be aggressive and play man [coverage]. Until you do that, all you do is try to do smoke and mirrors to cover up for those guys back there."As some of you may know, my parents met in a religious cult.
I won’t get into which one, but they were out of it by the time I was in kindergarten. Did it influence me and my brothers? Of course. But it was less of an influence from the cult itself, and more of an influence from what my parents took away from it that still seemed worthwhile, even after the organization itself proved to be corrupt. And what my parents took away from that religion was essentially affirmations of what they had brought with them to that faith. They were and are both spiritual people, seeking spiritual answers. They agree with things that feel right to them, and disagree with things that do not. There’s not a lot of facts and reasoning behind that, but that’s really what spirituality is all about: listening to your gut about things that can’t be proven or disproven.
Part of their spiritual philosophy is that they don’t tell other people what to believe, including their own kids (i.e., me). The one exception to that is that they did encourage us to believe in our Self as something separate from our physical body–so, they encouraged us to believe that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. They were always willing to talk with us about possibilities–reincarnation, spiritualism, God/Goddess/divinity or the lack thereof–but it was always a conversation, never a lesson. And though I’ve gone through times where I wish I had a stronger spiritual practice and community, I am hugely and profoundly grateful for the independence I was given.
Whether by nature or nurture, I have also always been a spiritual seeker. My book shelves are equally as full of books on spirituality, religion, mythology, and magic as they are full of stories, and I’ve always been drawn to any kind of spiritual philosophy that implies humans have more power, more senses, more capabilities than we are currently aware of. So it’s no surprise that when I was in middle school I started reading about witchcraft and paganism, and by the time I was 12 I self-identified as a witch (though I did not tell anyone else that for quite some time).
My self-identification as a witch has had its ups and downs over the years, mainly because of what other people have told me a witch is or is not. Also, there’s a bit of…I don’t know…sensationalism attached to the word. It felt ostentatious to call myself a witch–almost like I was asking for a confrontation or a misunderstanding. So I called myself a witch in my head, where it felt right, but not out loud, to other people (aside from my witchy best friend, who I met when I was 19).
Now it’s 2018, and I’ve been a self-identified witch for 21 years. I feel comfortable saying this because, at the moment, being “witchy” is trendy as hell. This is not surprising after the 2016 US “election” (can we still even call it that?)–witchcraft is notoriously associated with people seizing power when they are feeling especially powerless (especially women, especially the oppressed). The most common witchcraft lore is concerned with death, healing, and harvest/prosperity, three things that can feel wildly out of our control.
But the power of witchcraft is not the same as the powers that oppress us, nor is it the same as the natural chaos that touches each and every one of us at some point in our lives. Witchcraft is subversive. It doesn’t operate by the laws of the patriarchal world. It’s not about using the same old tricks to claim the throne. Hell, it’s not about wanting the throne at all.
Witchcraft is about subtlety. It’s about intuition and intention. It’s about inner strength and guidance, communion with the natural world, loving and respecting your body, the bodies of others, the body of the Earth. It is about magic, but what magic is to each of us is subjective.
For me, magic has never been about casting spells* or performing rituals. I’ve never believed it was essential to have the right physical objects present to make magic happen (this is part of why I do not like my practice to be conflated with Wicca). Magic has always been about paying attention to how my inner life resonates or dampens in relation to my outer life. It’s about tuning the radio dial of my mind to match up with my heart and soul. When I do that, life is good. Not easy, but good. Magical things happen. Yes, butterflies land outside my kitchen window, and I find $20 bills fluttering across parking lots, and people offer me free stuff, and most importantly I just start to feel connected to the world around me. But also, I have more clarity. And with clarity of mind comes inspiration, action, and opportunity.
Can I prove it’s magic? No. But I know that when I don’t make the effort to tune into myself, when I let the outside world overly influence my inside world, the magic disappears.
Maybe it’s all just brain chemistry and mind games. Maybe it’s something we cannot currently explain in scientific terms. All I know is that life is good when I’m witchy, and life is bad when I give my power away to circumstance.
I believe in magic. My kind of magic. A fluid, ever-evolving, deeply personal kind of witchery.
Runcible witchery.
At her lecture on poetry at the VCFA residency this past July, Louise Hawes introduced many of us to the work of Edward Lear, specifically his poem “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which contains the passage:
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
which they ate with a runcible spoon
I could paraphrase the definition of “runcible” but why make extra work for myself? Here’s Wikipedia:
“Runcible” is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear. The word appears (as an adjective) several times in his works, most famously as the “runcible spoon” used by the Owl and the Pussycat.[1] The word “runcible” was apparently one of Lear’s favourite inventions, appearing in several of his works in reference to a number of different objects. In his verse self-portrait, The Self-Portrait of the Laureate of Nonsense, it is noted that “he weareth a runcible hat“.[2] Other poems include mention of a “runcible cat“,[3] a “runcible goose” (in the sense of “silly person”),[4] and a “runcible wall“.[4]
The point is, “runcible” doesn’t mean anything.
Or, it means whatever you want it to mean.
That’s how I feel about magic. That’s how I feel about witchcraft.
The thing is, I have been in a crisis of faith for the last several years. For a while, I stopped believing in anything. I thought too much about proof, about evidence, about science and facts, and it ruined me for magic and synchronicity and finding meaning in anything at all. I was deeply, profoundly depressed, partly because I had lost something that had always been an essential, integral part of who I am.
It’s chicken or the egg, which came first. But I can tell you that once I began to emerge from my depression (thanks to affordable mental health care!), magic slowly started coming back to me.
Then I was at residency, thinking about runcible spoons, and the power of language, and the power of community and authenticity and following your heart…and someone I love and respect looked at me and, out of nowhere, with nothing but equal love and respect, told me: “You’re totally a witch. I know it.”
And I was like, fuck.
Yeah, I am.
I can’t believe I let myself forget that.
Since I’ve returned home from graduation, I’ve been on a mission of rest, but also of listening. I’m listening for that inner voice, or spirit, or anything that helps me reorient myself to my Self. I jokingly told myself that August was a good month to rest since not just Mercury (planet of communication) was retrograde, but Mars as well (planet of action). Then I discovered the night Mercury went direct that Mercury retrogrades are excellent times for self-reflection, and Mars retrogrades are best utilized by resting and recuperating.
Did I know that on some unconscious level? Did astrology predict my month of rest and reflection? Or did I find the connection after the fact because that’s what humans do?
Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It was a little nudge of affirmation, a little “you’re on the right track, sweetheart, keep going.” And like most people I’m pleased with any affirmation I can get, especially when it comes to making a choice to do something that goes against my practical, semi-perfectionist brain. But especially as a witch, these little synchronicities feel like signs from some higher order.
So anyway, after 21 years of cautiously self identifying as a witch, I’ve finally found the name of my kind of witchcraft: Runcible Witchery. It’s whatever I want it to be, and I don’t have to explain it to anyone.
Just as a good spiritual practice should be.
Anyway, I have a lot more to say about all of this…but I think that’s enough for one post.
*for the record, I do believe in the power of spells. I have done some good ones. I have even been hexed and it was shitty and I still don’t forgive that person.Enlarge Image Getty Images
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have gone toe-to-toe on cyber security, with both presidential candidates warning that the stakes are high in the next age of digital warfare.
But what's the biggest threat to America's national cybersecurity? Well, that depends who you ask.
During Monday night's first presidential debate, in a segment called "Securing America," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton described cyber security and cyber warfare as "one of the biggest challenges facing the next president."
America's adversaries, according to Clinton, come in two guises. There are the "independent hacking groups" that attack the United States for commercial reasons, and then there are the "state actors" from overseas. Chief among them? Russia
"There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organisations in our country and I'm deeply concerned about this," Clinton said.
"[Vladimir Putin has] let loose cyber attackers to hack in to Government files, to hack into personal files, hack into the Democratic National Committee, and we recently have learned that this is one of their preferred methods of trying to wreak havoc and collect information."
But Donald Trump was quick to dismiss Clinton's Russian hacking claims, proposing a much less glamorous alternative.
"I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC," the Republican nominee said. "She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia. Maybe it was. It could be Russia but it could be China, it could be lots of people. It could be somebody that sits on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. You don't know who broke into DNC."
But the two candidates weren't totally opposed on cybersecurity.
"As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said," Trump said in response to his Democratic opponent.
The internet, and "the cyber", were quick to respond.
When it comes to presidential debates, never raise the wrath of cyber space.The Capitol dome. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
A federal commission is calling for increased “evidence-based policymaking” through potentially controversial use of data gathered from confidential information.
“Traditionally, increasing access to confidential data presumed significantly increasing privacy risk,” says the commission’s report released Thursday. “The Commission rejects that idea.”
The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking was created through legislation enacted last year. The 15 members were appointed by President Barack Obama and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.
“Policymakers must have good information on which to base their decisions about improving the viability and effectiveness of government programs and policies,” the report, presented to President Trump and Congress, begins. “Today, too little evidence is produced to meet this need.”
To get the needed information, the commission members recommended revising “laws authorizing Federal data collection and use … but only under strict privacy controls.”
The reports urges the adoption of “modern privacy-enhancing technologies for confidential data used for evidence building.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who worked with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to create the commission, praised the panel’s work.
“Because no matter what any of us think about government in general — and no matter what we may think about programs or investments in particular — surely we should be able to agree that we should all do everything we can to make them work as well as possible,” she said in a statement. “Not just by wishing for it, and not just letting blind ideology or partisanship guide the way or undermine policies that help people — but by using evidence … facts … science — making sure our policies are aligned with what we know works — and what we know doesn’t.”Muhiddin Kabiri was on the run before he knew it. After the rigged election in his home country of Tajikistan, in which his party officially received a mere 1.5 percent of the vote, he needed time to rest. A conference in Malaysia he had been invited to was a good reason to leave. After that, he planned a short stay in Turkey to relax before deciding what to do next. The 2015 election was the first time since the 1997 peace deal ending the civil war that his Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) did not make it into the parliament.
That, however, did not come as a surprise. Since 2010 the regime of President Emomali Rahmon has been tightening its grip on power, crushing any dissent. In the traditionally pious Tajik society, this meant targeting religion, which the authorities justified in the context of the global war on terror. The government banned wearing the hijab in public, introduced control over sermons, and forbade the attendance of those under the age of 18 at religious ceremonies. Men wearing long beards were forced to shave. One of the most affected groups was the electorate and activists of the IRPT, at the time the second biggest political force and the only parliamentary opposition in the country. Arguably, it was also the only group capable of challenging Rahmon’s rule.
It was March 2015 when Kabiri packed his bags, preparing to spend one month abroad. He soon found out that a return would not be easy. As soon as he left the country, a regime-run newspaper, Djumhuriat, published a statement from the General Prosecutor launching a criminal investigation into Kabiri’s involvement in an illegal sale of property 15 years earlier. The case was widely seen as a political move to discredit his party. It also brought back the memory of Zaid Saidov, a leader of the New Tajikistan party, who was charged with fraud and polygamy a few months into his oppositional involvement. He is now serving a 26-year prison term.
At the time, a third of the IRPT’s Political Council thought that Kabiri should return. But the majority decided that it was too risky. When I asked Kabiri how he felt leaving his peers and family, he took a moment to think about the answer. “For sure, this feeling is only familiar to those who were in a similar situation,” he replied calmly, taking a deep breath. “It’s very difficult. On the one hand, you want to be with your peers and friends to go through the difficulties together. On the other hand – responsibility requires that you do not put yourself and the party in danger. If something happens to the party and the leader is free, he can still support his people.”
The Hunt
Even with the imminent threat of the leader’s arrest and the lost parliamentary seats, IRPT members failed to foresee what was to come.
“On September 9 we had the Political Council meeting. I took part online and the rest of the leadership was in my home in Dushanbe, as they had closed down our office a month earlier. Some members wanted to organize protests in front of the Ministry of Justice if they don’t let us hold the party congress at the end of the month. But the majority said the government was only waiting for such a provocation and suggested that we refrain from such actions.” Kabiri seemed composed while relaying the tale; he probably had told the story many times before.
“After two days I received information that there is a question on a high level: what to do with the party? Our sources said that once the decision about arresting the party leadership is made, we will have approximately two days to help our people flee.” But when the time came, Kabiri found it difficult to convince his associates to leave.
“Even my son, who is now in Germany, challenged my decision. He said that if he leaves it will look like a family escape. If there are arrests, he should be with the rest of the party. He had those romantic thoughts.”
Romantic it may have been, but the view was shared by the majority of party leadership. No one believed that the response of the authorities could be so ruthless. He therefore decided to give the activists individual orders to leave the country. “I called my first deputy and said that as the party leader, I tell you to leave Tajikistan. If you don’t, it will mean that you are violating the party discipline.” Thanks to those calls, around a third of the leadership managed to escape the country. But some missed the chance by a matter of minutes. Kabiri’s driver was caught as he was boarding a plane. Kabiri’s first deputy was arrested at the airport. During a two-day hunt, the authorities arrested over 200 party members. Around 1,000 activists managed to escape to Europe.
They Began With Beating
Kabiri’s relatives and friends who stayed in the country were arrested, including his elderly aunts. The authorities began with beatings, but soon after moved to more sophisticated measures.
“Imagine, a person who has been impelled to speak against his own son or brother. What kind of torture they had to go through, both physical and psychological? There were around ten videos only with my relatives speaking against the party. They forced everybody – even my daughter-in-law, my brother, and my teacher, and whoever had any contact with me.” The same happened to the families of his peers.
Soon after, the trials behind closed doors began. No witnesses, journalists, relatives, or OSCE observers were allowed in the court. Kabiri’s deputies were sentenced to life imprisonment; other party members and activists received 20, 25, or 30-year sentences. Following the IRPT’s trial, the authorities kept the ruling secret, although the party got hold of it through unofficial channels. The IRPT was charged with extremism and terrorism. No foreign government or organization has so far reiterated the accusation.
The authorities subsequently moved on to arresting the party’s lawyers. Buzurgmehr Yorov, the IRPT’s main attorney, is currently serving a 26-year sentence. His brother, Jamshed, managed to escape and is now awaiting a decision on his asylum application in a European country.
It has been two years since Kabiri last spoke to his grandchildren, who are under house arrest. They are not allowed to speak to their own father, and had not been allowed to see Kabiri’s father, who lived in Dushanbe just a few kilometers away. He passed away several months ago unable to say goodbye to his family.
“When the repression machine begins to work, it destroys everyone. It does not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, young and old, it crushes everyone. And once there are no oppositionists left, it begins to turn against itself,” Kabiri says.
The World’s Silence
The response of the international community to the brutal crushing of the opposition in Tajikistan has been meek. The UN, which negotiated and was the guarantor of the 1997 peace deal, has done nothing to bring the issue to the international agenda. The EU continues to support the country with millions in development assistance and in February 2016, the United States promised to grant the country an additional $50 million in military aid to support its anti-terrorist efforts. The reluctance of the West to acknowledge and address the suffering of Tajiks can be seen as a deal with the regime, driven by anti-Islamic paranoia.
“Without democracy and strong civil society there will be neither stability nor development. We are trying to convince the EU that they should pay more attention to our region, but unfortunately, our European partners think that we are exaggerating the problems. It is easier to cooperate with official government structures in the fights against radicalism than with NGOs and opposition parties,” Kabiri says.
Kabiri sees an analogy between the current situation in Central Asia and the Middle East on the onset of the Arab Spring. “There is an example of Tunisia, where after the fall of Ben Ali, there was a responsible opposition both of an Islamic and secular character that managed to stabilize the situation. But why it did not happen in Libya? Because Gaddafi had destroyed the whole opposition. The only ones who remained were himself and a mob of radicals.”
As he explains, the high proportion of Tajik citizens in the ranks of the Islamic State is not accidental. People are disillusioned not only with their own governments, but also with the West, which they see as the main supporter of local dictators. They no longer believe in democracy and peaceful change. Through repression, the government is creating extremists, who, according to Kabiri, will soon be the only alternative to Rahmon’s rule.
Life Abroad
In February 2017, Kabiri received refugee status in an EU country. Until then, he stayed in a refugee center with other asylum seekers from Tajikistan and elsewhere. “I had the financial means not to stay in the camp, but I didn’t want to. Maybe because I wanted to somehow compensate for the feeling of guilt,” he wonders. “But I don’t have any regrets. I had to start everything from the beginning and the few months were a university of life for me. Only because of that I now have some peace of mind. I feel the same way as I used to 20 years ago, when I was starting to build my life.”
He began with the reform of party structure to adjust to the realities of exile. He does not rule out that the party may change its name and objectives in the near future. Altering the program is necessary in the new circumstances. In Tajikistan, the party was focused on solving internal issues through dialogue and compromise with the authorities, for which it was often harshly criticized. Critics claimed that such excessive compliance is a sign of weakness, which the government used against the party and society. Now, there is no place for dialogue.
But for all the tragedy of the situation, Kabiri remains optimistic. “When I received asylum, my wife, who lives in Istanbul, said that on the very same day she received a phone call from someone from Dushanbe asking if it’s true. She said this person had heard it from someone in prison. This is how fast the good news reached my peers. They said that once I received status, it means that Europe does not see me as a criminal. And that there is hope for them too.”
Return
Before we finished our talk, sitting in the comfortable office of a Polish NGO run by my friends in central Warsaw, I once again asked about Kabiri’s feelings. He did not seem to be accustomed to this kind of question.
“Will you ever return?” I asked. “For some reason I am sure that I will,” he replied without much hesitation.
“In the cemetery in my village I planted a couple of trees. They took away everything I had, but I asked someone to take care of the trees. I planted them because I want to be buried there. I don’t know whether it will ever happen. But my return will mean that my peers are free.”
Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska is a journalist focusing on the post-Soviet space and an editor with New Eastern Europe magazine.The U.S. Republican Presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump on Monday said “China should go into North Korea” to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear development, during the first Presidential Debate with Hilary Clinton held at Hofstra University.
Trump doubled down on previous statements that Beijing should solve the current diplomatic deadlock on the Korean Peninsula, while also reiterating previous claims about potentially altering the U.S.’ mutual defense treaties in the region.
“You look at North Korea; we are doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea,” Trump said.
The Republican candidate’s proposed policy on North Korea has not been welcomed with open arms, and is often viewed as overly simplistic.
“Has the Bush administration not tried to use Chinese leverage to control Pyongyang? Has not the Obama administration?,” Eom Sang-yoon, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute told NK News.
“What is Trump saying is very basic, so far he has not provided any details on how his policy will be different from that of Obama.”
The presidential nominee followed up the remarks by saying he would have used the U.S. – Iran deal to further pressure the DPRK into giving up its nuclear weapons.
“Iran is one of their biggest trading partners, Iran has power over North Korea, and when they (current U.S. government) made that horrible deal with Iran, they should’ve included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea.”
While Tehran and Pyongyang almost certainly have some trade interactions, their exact scope is unknown, as neither country publishes bilateral trade figures.
“Neither Iran or North Korea are overly interested in publishing their trade data, and according to the ITC trade database, there hasn’t been any trade between the two countries since 2005,” Leo Byrne, the Data and Analytic Director at NK News said.
DEFENSE TREATIES
During the debate, Trump once again took aim at how U.S. allies, including Japan, and South Korea’s are “free-riding” on U.S. defense budgets. Democratic hopeful Clinton took the opposite tack, saying the U.S. would “honor mutual defense treaties.”
“We defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries,” Trump continued. “They do not pay us, but they should be paying us because we are providing tremendous service and losing a fortune.”
Trump insisted the U.S. footing other countries’ defense bills was the reason why “we lose on everything,” while adding that it’s possible the U.S. “can’t defend Japan, a behemoth selling us cars by the millions” unless it pays the fair share.
“They may have to defend themselves, or they have to help us out, we are a country that owes $20 trillion. They have to help us out.”
In response, Hillary Clinton used the debate platform ease potential concerns among long-term allies about U.S. commitment to its defense agreements.
“I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties, and we will honor them.”
Trump’s first raised the issue of defense costs in Asia back in March, when he claimed that if elected President he might withdraw U.S. forces from Seoul if it does contribute more to its defense costs.
The remarks ruffled feathers in the South, where both progressives and conservatives expressed concern and criticized Trump’s plans. But the plans won the Republican hopeful a ringing endorsement from North Korea linked outlet DPRK Today.
“The president that U.S. citizens must vote for is not that dull Hillary but Trump, who spoke of holding a direct conversation with North Korea,” the article, published in May reads.
Featured Image: The Presidential Debate – LIVE Monday, September 26, 2016, 9 PM ESTYour teams on the go or at home. Personalize SI with our new App. Install on iOS or Android. This story appears in the June 6, 2016, issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. To subscribe, click here.
If this is indeed LeBron James’s moment—when he |
of Baja Calif.
The State Department noted there is no evidence that criminal organizations have targeted U.S. citizens based on their nationality. However, shooting incidents involving criminal organization assassinations and turf battles between criminal groups, have occurred during daylight hours in areas frequented by U.S. citizens.
Innocent bystanders have been injured in the ongoing public acts of violence between rival criminal organizations, officials said.
Mexico City, Hidalgo, Guanajuato (includes San Miguel de Allende and Leon), Campeche, Puebla, Queretaro, Tabasco (includes Villahermosa), Tlaxcala and Yucatan (includes Merida and Chichen Itza) do not have advisories in effect.
U.S. citizens can contact the nearest U.S. embassy or Consulate in Mexico at +52-55-5080- 2000 x4440, (5080-2000 for calls in Mexico City, 01-55-5080-2000 for long distance calls in Mexico) Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. CT. In case of an emergency, the after-hours number for U.S. citizens is +52-55-5080-2000.The national bird is threatened by toxic bullets that wind up in the animals it eats, but the Trump administration overturned a rule to stop it
His head twisted almost upside down and his body all but paralyzed, the bald eagle sat on its haunches, talons clenching, while two humans neared to put him in a cage. They could not save the bird from lead.
The eagle was the third this year to die from lead poisoning at the Blue Mountain Wildlife center, in north-east Oregon, where Lynn Tompkins has helped rehabilitate sick and injured birds for 30 years. “They eat things that have been shot,” Tompkins said, “whether it’s big game like deer or elk or coyotes or ground squirrels.”
The poisoned birds suffer paralysis, don’t eat and struggle to stand. As with mammals, lead causes blindness, brain damage and organ failure.
One of the recent eagles, Tompkins said, had 622 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in its body, and a second had 385. The Centers for Disease Control recommends immediate medical intervention for children whose blood tests at 45. Many birds, Tompkins said, test at 5-10 micrograms, “too low to show symptoms, but the same level of lead seen in the kids in Flint, Michigan”.
“The short answer is that no level of lead is acceptable for living things – eagles, condors and people,” said raptor biologist Glenn Stewart.
Bald eagles have rebounded across the US since 1972, when the government banned the pesticide DDT. But 10-15% of bald eagles die in the first year because of lead poisoning, Stewart said, in part because the young birds almost exclusively eat carrion.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An bald eagle that died from lead poisoning in north-east Oregon this month, after testing found it had 385 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in its body. Photograph: Lynn Tompkins
Last week, nearly 30 doctors and scientists sent a letter to the department of the interior to “strongly support” a rule that Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump’s new interior secretary, revoked on his first day in the post. The rule, enacted by the Obama administration on its last day, would have banned lead ammunition across 150m acres of national wildlife refuges.
“It worries me to think about hunting and fishing becoming activities for the land-owning elite,” Zinke said.
On the other side of the spectrum, Jonathan Evans, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, said: “We shouldn’t be killing our national symbol because we’re too lazy or too concerned with past types of ammunition to switch.” The National Rifle Association (NRA) has previously sued over attempts to phase out lead ammunition for hunting.
Biologists hesitate to estimate how many animals die from lead each year, but studies suggest the numbers are significant. A 2014 study found that of nearly 3,000 eagles killed over 30 years, about 25% died from poison, most often lead. In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people who eat game meat tend to have higher levels of lead in their blood.
“The science is overwhelming,” said Dr Myra Finkelstein, a toxicologist who studies lead poisoning in condors. “The answer is so clear that I wish we could just make the switch and protect human and wildlife health.”
Every year, one in five condors suffers lead poisoning so severe they need treatment, she said, and although the birds are the largest flyers in North America, a fingernail’s worth of lead can kill one. Lead poisoning appears to have stalled the species’ recovery in the wild.
“This has nothing to do with people’s right to hunt,” she said. “We took lead out of gas and out of house paint. That doesn’t mean you don’t drive a car or paint your house. It’s about using something that’s safe for you and your family as well as an animal that comes upon it.”
The solution, according to scientists and a growing coalition of hunters, is non-lead ammunition. “I’m a hunter, too, so I’m kind of stuck in the middle,” said Chris Parish, who called himself a “redneck biologist” with the Peregrine Fund, a nonprofit tracking raptors in Arizona and Utah. Parish and Leland Brown, a biologist with the Oregon Zoo and himself a hunter, argued that hunters and scientists are natural allies to study, manage and preserve wildlife together.
“It’s not just good for the sport but ties directly into the tradition of taking care of the landscape, of being good stewards for wildlife,” Brown said.
Parish pointed to a small, voluntary program in Arizona and Utah that has managed to convince 87% of its hunters to either use non-lead bullets or haul out contaminated guts. “Do x-rays on carcasses and show hunters the gut piles,” he said. “This is real conservation that makes sense.”
But Parish said that politics have paralyzed many state agencies, hunters and scientists. The three groups should band together, he said, separate from government or political activists, and support programs that promote copper and steel ammunition.
“Read all the politics you want, but here’s the real dope. Here’s what we need you do to, and here’s a box of bullets to give it try,” he said. “The condor could stand as a symbol of what we’re capable of, not just another endangered species program nagging you.”Brand Amma just got bigger on Saturday with Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa announcing the government would construct air-conditioned Amma marriage halls for people from economically weaker sections who otherwise cannot afford to hire such halls.
In a statement in Chennai she said, 11 Amma marriage halls would be constructed at 11 locations across the state at a cost of Rs 83 crore.
“I have ordered Amma marriage halls for the benefit of poor. The halls will have facilities including air-conditioned rooms for bride and groom, guest rooms, dining hall and kitchen,” the chief minister said. The Tamil Nadu housing board and cooperative societies will be building the Amma marriage halls.
The halls will be built in Tondiarpet, Velachery, Ayapakkam, Periyar Nagar, Korattur in Chennai, Anna Nagar in Madurai, Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli, Salem in Salem, Kodungaiyur in Tiruvallur, Udumalaipet in Tirupur.
The Amma marriage halls are the latest addition to the list of subsidized essential items that Jayalalithaa government distributes across the state as part of welfare measures. It all started with Amma Unavagams (Canteens) in 2013 that served hot cooked food at rock bottom prices.
The Amma canteens became a runaway hit, giving birth to Brand Amma that Jayalalithaa began building assiduously, adding one item after another so as to touch every aspect of human life.
Brand Amma also offers subsidized cement, medicines, drinking water, fruits and vegetables.
First Published: Sep 18, 2016 10:41 ISTShare. Framerate, local multiplayer, and more Switch features discussed. Framerate, local multiplayer, and more Switch features discussed.
Psyonix announced Rocket League will be released for the Nintendo Switch later this year, and IGN spoke with Vice President Jeremy Dunham and Producer Bobby Garza for more details about the Switch version.
"Performance was what mattered most to us, so we aim to make sure that the game runs at 60 fps docked and undocked," Dunham explained. That effort to maintain the performance of Rocket League as it plays on other systems is in part why the game will have a native resolution of 720p.
Exit Theatre Mode
As mentioned during the game’s announcement, Rocket League on Switch, which will be cross-network compatible with Xbox One and Steam, will have every feature all of the other versions have, including Season mode, Hoops, Drop Shot, Rumble, and Snowday. Rocket League will also take advantage of the Switch’s portability, however, allowing for local multiplayer for up to eight Switches. Psyonix will also allow for up to four players to play splitscreen when the Switch is docked and two when undocked.
"We don’t think people want to squint that much to see four players on an undocked system," Dunham said.
Psyonix is "aiming for" 60 fps in splitscreen, but will provide exact numbers closer to launch.
Exit Theatre Mode
As for taking advantage of other Switch-specific functionality like motion control and HD rumble, Dunham said the studio is exploring those features. Psyonix has nothing to announce at this time about what additional features the game is supporting at this time, however, with more official word on that coming nearer to release.
Dunham and Garza also explained how the system and its games — namely, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — has already inspired them in developing the Switch version.
"The fact that they’re getting 60 fps docked and undocked, even in splitscreen [with two players in Mario Kart 8] is a huge thing for us,” Garza said. “And then how seamless the multiplayer experience is. Their lobby system isn’t as complex as ours, but it’s so easy to use."
Exit Theatre Mode
Garza pointed to the recent Arms global testpunch as another example of smart, inspirational lobby design. But Mario Kart’s influence carried through to one of the biggest factors of the Switch version — local multiplayer.
"We weren’t entirely sure it was going to be possible for a lot of technical reasons, but I thought we should absolutely try it after playing through the Mario Kart [multiplayer]," Garza said.
Rocket League for the Nintendo Switch is set to be released this holiday season.
Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.People keep asking me what it feels like to have been assaulted in a hate crime. Honestly, I can't come up with a better response than simply "gratitude."
I'm thankful for a few reasons.
If they had attacked me any more violently, I may not be awake right now to tell my story. If they had attacked me even half an hour earlier, they would have harmed my wife and one-year-old son. And if they had attacked me anywhere else, I may not have had bystanders there to save me.
I recall my assailants shouting slurs like "Osama" and "terrorist" before grabbing my beard. My most vivid and unexpected memory actually occurred after I was punched and thrown to the ground. I remember lying on the ground, waiting for their kicks and punches to stop.
Yes, it is true that my assailants fractured my jaw and dislodged some of my teeth while shouting slurs at me. Yet, I understand that it could have been much worse. I am a resident physician in East Harlem, Manhattan, and I've seen the kind of damage people can inflict when inspired by hate. So I consider myself to be extremely fortunate.
People keep asking me if we're going to leave our neighborhood. My wife and I have no intention to move. We have loved spending the last few years in this vibrant and friendly area, and our experiences here have been largely positive. We love serving this community, and we have specifically structured our professional careers around helping our neighbors access health care.
My wife just launched City Health Works, a nonprofit venture that helps cultivate health workers and improve the health of the Harlem community. I am also a doctor in this neighborhood and a professor at Columbia University, and my primary focus is to help provide health care for underserved communities.
Even more important to me than my attackers being caught is that they are taught. My tradition teaches me to value justice and accountability, and it also teaches me love, compassion and understanding. It's a tough situation. I care about the people in my local community. I want the streets to be safe for my young son, but at the same time, I am not comfortable with the idea of putting more young teenagers from my neighborhood on the fast track to incarceration. This incident, while unfortunate, can help initiate a local conversation to create greater understanding within the community.
My wife and I plan to raise our son in this same Harlem neighborhood, and I can't help but see the kids who assaulted me as somehow linked to him. In a hostile world, could he too be driven to such action? Could he too feel such hate?
My hope is no. My hope is that our family continues to be a part of this neighborhood, from visiting parks and playgrounds to building relationships through our work. I believe this will bring about positive change that strengthens us through our diversity.
One day my son may choose to continue practicing the Sikh faith as an adult. My hope is that our neighborhood and all neighborhoods across America will support him, no matter his path.
So today, my response is gratitude. Tomorrow my response will be gratitude, as well. To the nurse, to the elderly man and to the other good Samaritans who came to my aid; to my Harlem community, my Columbia community and my Sikh community; and for my role as husband, father, doctor, American, teacher, advocate and neighbor.
This gratitude enables my wife and I to remain optimistic that our son will never have to go through what I just experienced.
Prabhjot Singh is an Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a resident in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, USA.
[Courtesy: NY Daily News]
September 26, 2013INDIANAPOLIS — With free agency approaching this time last year, Chris Johnson said re-signing with the Cardinals was his top priority.
His approach in the 2017 offseason has changed.
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While stating that “both sides are definitely interested” in a possible return to Arizona, Johnson plans to first see if there is a better fit for him elsewhere heading into what the running back hopes will be his 10th NFL season.
“I think I want to go out there and see what options I have first,” Johnson told SiriusXM NFL Radio on Tuesday. “I feel at this point in my career if it’s not a situation where a team wants to bring me in to be a starter, I definitely need to be somewhere where I have a role.
“I need to be involved. At this point in my career, I don’t want to sit on the sideline. I want to get in the game.”
MORE: Jets announce release of Darrelle Revis
Johnson, who turns 32 in September, would again be assuming a backup role behind David Johnson if he rejoined the Cardinals. Chris Johnson held that spot through Arizona’s first four games last year before suffering a season-ending groin injury.
After a middling 2014 campaign with the Jets, Chris Johnson rebounded to rush for 814 yards and three touchdowns in 11 games before landing on injured reserve with a leg injury. He pointed to that showing as proof he can still excel when given the opportunity.
“I definitely know I can still make plays. I still have speed,” said Johnson, whose 4.24-second time in the 40-yard dash from 2008 remains an official NFL Scouting Combine record. Johnson’s 2,006-yard season with Tennessee in 2009 highlighted six straight years with at least 1,000 rushing yards.
Arizona’s other top backup running backs — Andre Ellington and Stepfan Taylor — also are set to become unrestricted free agents.After a team effort that stretched from Central Ontario to Indianapolis, Kelly-Moss Road and Race moved into the IMSA Prototype Challenge presented by Mazda championship points lead as Colin Thompson scored two second place finishes at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Entering the weekend fresh from a breakthrough victory at Watkins Glen for Thompson in the No. 14 Norma M30, the team was looking to convert his consistent finishes into a boost in the championship standings.
The plan, however, was thrown out the window following a heavy accident that saw Thompson suffer extensive damage to the Norma.
With a sparse spares inventory on hand at CTMP, the team quickly realized that the needed parts were in Indianapolis.
Fortunately, the team was also competing in PCA Club Racing action at Putnam Park in Indianapolis, resulting in the crew scrambling from that event to secure the parts needed and headed towards Toronto on Friday night.
At the same time, Alex Stone (KMR Assistant Competition Director) and John Thompson, Colin’s father, headed south to meet the truck and pick up the parts in a late-night exchange in Toledo.
Driving through the night to get back to the track with the needed parts, Stone and Thompson brought what the Norma needed and the crew had the car ready to go in time for qualifying on Saturday morning.
”This weekend was a really solid points weekend,” said Thompson. “Kenton (Koch) was so strong this weekend but we kept pushing as hard as we could.
“The whole Kelly-Moss crew went above and beyond once again, the whole weekend to make sure we were on track every season and performing to the best of the car’s ability.
“That second race, we had pace but traffic didn’t play our way and we got a little unlucky.”
That effort saw Thompson score front row starting spots for both races, which he duly converted into two runner-up finishes to move into the lead of the championship with seven races to go.
Thompson now holds a 20-point lead over Koch, with former points leader Andres Gutierrez slipping to third after missing the CTMP weekend.
“We knew going into this weekend that we wanted to focus on taking the lead in the championship and we were able to do that,” said Thompson.
“So it is a good position to be in and we will just focus on getting the most that we can out of the next three weekends.”
“It was a really good weekend, although it felt like a very long one!” said team owner Jeff Stone with a laugh. “We are just thankful to be where we are.
“Colin drove great – we had an issue in the second half of the last race but he was able to bring it home okay. We will get it sorted out and will come back to it at Lime Rock Park.”(CBS/AP) A Russian ship carrying small arms and ammunition and possibly a small contingent of troops is on its way out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean bound for Syria, CBS News correspondent David Martin reports. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons are intended to re-supply or beef up the defenses at Russia's naval base in Syria.
The move, while not necessarily an indication of new military support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, comes amid increasingly tense U.S.-Russia relations regarding the Syria crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week issued harsh words over Russia's refusal to take tougher measures on Syria, though her accusation that Russia "dramatically" escalated the crisis in Syria lost steam Thursday when the State Department acknowledged the helicopters she accused Moscow of sending were actually refurbished ones already owned by the Assad regime.
The claim had complicated the Obama administration's larger goals for Syria and U.S.-Russia relations.
Russia: No talks on Syria's future without Assad
Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that Moscow is only providing Syria with defensive weapons, adding that the refurbishment of the helicopters supplied many years ago had been planned in advance.
Also Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied Thursday's statement by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland that Moscow and Washington "are continuing to talk about a post-Assad transition strategy," saying that Moscow isn't discussing Syria's future without Assad.
Lavrov, who met with the State Department's No. 2 official William Burns in Kabul on Thursday, maintained that Russia believes it's up to the Syrians to determine their country's future and said foreign players shouldn't meddle.
"It's not true that we are discussing Syria's fate after Bashar Assad," Lavrov said following talks in Moscow with his Iraqi counterpart. "We aren't dealing with a regime change either through approving unilateral actions at the United Nations Security Council nor through taking part in some political conspiracies."
Despite pressure from the West, Russia, along with China, has twice shielded Syria, its last remaining ally in the Arab world, from international sanctions over Assad's violent crackdown on protests that have left 13,000 people dead, according to opposition groups.
Lavrov argued that an international conference on Syria that Russia has proposed should focus on persuading the Syrian parties to sit down for talks. He said that a June 30 meeting on Syria in Geneva proposed by U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, should pursue the same goal, warning that Russia would oppose any attempt to use the conference to determine Syria's future.
"This meeting should be aimed at mobilizing resources that foreign players have to create conditions needed to start an all-Syrian political process, not to predetermine its direction."
He warned against using the conference to "justify any future unilateral actions."
Lavrov said that Russia believes that a conference on Syria it's proposing should bring together the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council along with all Syria's neighbors, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Arab League, the European Union and Iran.
In an apparent reference to the U.S. objections against Iran's participation, Lavrov said the conference organizers should be driven by a desire to settle the conflict, not "ideological preferences."
In an opinion piece posted Friday on the Huffington Post, Lavrov insisted that "Russia is not a defender of the current regime in Damascus and has no political, economic or other reasons for becoming one."
He also reaffirmed criticism of Assad, saying that "the main responsibility for the crisis that has swept over the country lies with the Syrian government, that has failed to take the course of reform in due time or draw conclusions from the deep changes unfolding in international relations."
But Lavrov also argued that a push for an immediate ouster of Assad would plunge Syria into an all-out war. "Pressing for an immediate ousting of Bashar al-Assad, contrary to the aspirations of a considerable segment of Syrian society that still relies on this regime for its security and well-being, would mean plunging Syria into a protracted and bloody civil war," Lavrov wrote.Hezbollah and the soldiers and advisers of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will continue to play “an active role in maintaining a long-lasting cessation of hostilities” in Syria. This was announced on Thursday, November 23, by the commander of the IRGC Brig. General Mohammad Ali Jafari.
Israel, Saudi Arabia Celebrate Dismantling of Iran Nuclear Deal
Regional tensions in the Middle East have escalated off late between Sunni monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, whose rivalry has wrecked havoc in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has denounced Iran-backed Hezbollah for helping Houthi rebels in Yemen and launching a ballistic missile on Saudi Arabia.
Hezbollah will not be Disarmed
At the same time, the commander of the elite troops of Iran rejected the demands of some forces in the Middle East on the disarmament of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and the immediate expulsion of his fighters from Syria.
Are Saudi-Israel Boosting Relations to Counter Iran?
“Hezbollah should be armed to fight the enemy of the Lebanese people, which is Israel. In fact, they must have the best weapons to ensure the security of Lebanon, “the Iranian military leader said.Technical details: It was hell of an effort to place all those objects on the sphere. I was using "normal align" tool few times per minute. Also the local coordinates system was my primary one. I wanted to create as much geometry in Max as possible. I extensively used the Advanced Painter tool, which allowed me to scatter objects perrrrrpendicular to the surface and to paint the roads. There are 10 kinds of people scattered all around.
Having modeled everything, I rendered the Baked Irradiance Map, which contained "shadows" beneath all the objects, mapped using current UVW's and projected onto the plane. I exported it into Photoshop and on its basis I created the full texture (the whole globe is 1 2048x2048px.psd file). I created all the models myself. Textures come from cgtextures.com. Everything is lit with HDR map only - no lights. Rendered with 3dsMax 9 and V-RAY 1.5, for about 2 hours!
Edit: it did not
I wanted to portray all of the most characteristic features of my hometown - Łódź.The final render includes: large shopping centre manufaktura, 24-level skyscrapers, air-conditioned supersonic tram, neogothic church near the market, tenement houses which can be found in the city center, powerplant EC4 far away from the residental area, soccer playground, the liberty square with Kościuszko's statue and many, blocks of flats.I hope you appreciate the effort I put into this work. It took me roughly more than month to create it. Maybe it will contribute to the fact that some people will visit my city more often--------------I'm really glad for choosing this work as a DailyDeviation! This is the piece I was working on the longest and the hardest that year, so I feel really appreciated--------------See the second part: [link]I arrived home from a long week at school after meeting all of my new reception pupils. I was exhausted but seeing a package waiting for me on my doorstop made me feel instantly better. I knew it must be my teacher exchange gift and ran inside to open it.
I opened the box to find a note from my match saying that they hoped the gifts would help me out this school year and they certainly will! They even went as far to leave me their email, telling me to feel free to contact them if I ran out of any of the colours! You are too generous!
After reading the note I delved into the box and found three packs of jumbo colouring pencils, 4 packs of felt tip pens and another 2 packs of smaller colouring pencils. Thank you so much for these! My children adore colouring and they go through pens and pencils very quickly, no matter how well we take care of them. I was only given a pack of 30 colouring pencils to replenish the supplies in my classroom this year and so these help me out so much! I know the children will love using them, especially the big chunky jumbo pencils as they are easier for little hands. Thank you for hunting these out for me!
As if that wasn't enough beneath the pens and pencils I found 15 picture books! Since starting teaching last year I have been trying to slowly but steadily build up our classroom book corner to make it as inviting and encouraging as possible. These books have helped me out even more and will be loved by the children who love to read stories over and over again.
Thank you so much for my gift you have been so generous! I know the children will love everything you have sent, it will all be put to great use. It is people like you and the teachers exchange that allow us teachers to provide the children with the resources we want to but are unable to. It makes our jobs so much more fulfilling to be able to do so and a whole lot easier, so once again thank you so much!Welcome to Welcome to /r/btc! Home of free and open bitcoin discussion, bitcoin news, and exclusive AMA (Ask Me Anything) interviews from top bitcoin industry leaders!
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Misc LinksA woman told police that a delivery driver brought the wrong pizza Saturday night, then injured her when she tried to get the correct pie.
Police in Dayton, Ohio, did not take an official report on the incident, but rather a memo report.
Police were called shortly before midnight to the Grandview Hospital emergency room, where a 27-year-old woman said she was hit on the right arm by the driver’s side mirror of a delivery driver’s car. The officer said there was no bruising or redness on the woman’s arm, according to the memo report.
>> Read more trending stories
The woman said earlier that night a driver for Cousin Vinny's pizza restaurant delivered the wrong pizza to her apartment. When the driver returned later with the correct pizza, the delivery driver wouldn’t exchange pizzas. The woman said she was struck by the car’s mirror while the driver was backing out.
When police talked to the 20-year-old Centerville woman who had delivered the pizza, the driver said she never hit the woman with her vehicle.
She said the woman had eaten most of the pizza, and that it was against Cousin Vinny’s policy to exchange pizzas when there is less than three-quarters left of the original pie. When she explained this, the driver said the woman started throwing pizza at her and tried to grab the other pizza out of her car.On the other side, some agribusinesses and the shipping lobby wish to keep food aid the way it is, arguing that eliminating the grow-pack-ship steps in the U.S. would cost thousands of jobs in the shipping and farming sectors, not to mention millions and sales and household earnings each year.
This has led to an awkward trade-off: Do we preserve more jobs at home, or do we feed more hungry people abroad?
***
Here's a look at how the numbers stack up. A 2010 report by the research company Promar International found that the combination of handling, processing, and transporting commodities from farms to U.S. ports, plus the cost of transporting those products to foreign ports, adds up to $1,984,000,000 in output, $523,000,000 in earnings for households, and 13,127 jobs.
Texas would be the most heavily impacted state if we restructured food aid, followed by breadbasket states like Illinois and Iowa and rice growers like Louisiana:
When combined with growers and shippers, Promar estimates that's somewhere between 16,000 and 33,000 jobs we'd lose if food aid was no longer mandated to be grown in the U.S. and sent abroad.
The economic impact could be dramatic for states with large farming sectors, according to 21 senators who wrote a letter to President Obama arguing against a change to the current aid program in February. It was signed by heavy hitters on both sides of the aisle, including Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that controls agriculture spending.
"American agriculture is one of the few U.S. business sectors to produce a trade surplus, exporting $108 billion in farm goods in 2010," the senators wrote. "During this time of economic distress, we should maintain support for the areas of our economy that are growing."
***
Meanwhile, charity groups rallying for a change say that the current setup is outdated. In the 1950s, the federal government wanted to boost struggling farmers' profits, so they bought up surplus grain and -- realizing they then had way too much of it on their hands -- decided to ship it overseas to needy countries. And even though the government changed its farm policy in the early 2000s, we're still managing foreign aid the way we did 60 years ago.
The downside? Buying food in developing countries to then give back to vulnerable groups -- displaced people, refugees, malnourished children -- would be much, much cheaper than buying it in the U.S., so aid dollars could theoretically be stretched further. Cereal prices alone are 53 percent lower when bought locally (LRP), versus in the U.S. (transoceanic), according to a paper by three Cornell University researchers:
What's more, buying food locally shaves 14 weeks off the delivery time, which can be crucial during a famine.A view of the Burj Khalifa tower is seen in downtown Dubai, in this May 10, 2011 file photo. In September 2012, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven Gulf emirates, told state employees that if they lived outside its city limits they would not be eligible for housing allowance, which accounts for about a third of their salaries. The government has said the new rule was aimed at cutting traffic and road accidents, a nod to the risk of commuting on the busy desert highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. But analysts and industry experts say the policy is designed to help absorb a glut of new high-end homes in Abu Dhabi and revive state developers such as bailed-out Aldar. The Abu Dhabi government declined to comment on the rulings implications for the property market. REUTERS/Jumana El-Heloueh/Files (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Tags: SOCIETY EMPLOYMENT BUSINESS)
What would be the best thing about living in the world's tallest tower? The view, the prestige...the climb up the stairs?
Yes, that is exactly what tenants at Burj Khalifa were faced with earlier this week when developers said the elevators and air-conditioning in the 163-floor tower would be switched off as landlords had defaulted on their service fees.
Emaar told residents last month that access to facilities and utilities would be cut off on February 8 if outstanding fees had not been paid.
“We write to you in respect of outstanding service fees. Despite our earlier notice, follow-ups and legal notice issued to the unit owner the fees have not been settled,” the letter read. “Should we fail to receive the payment by February 5, we will be forced to cease all of the above services effective February 8.”
However, tenants - who faced using the stairs to reach their apartments between the 19th and 108th floors - were granted an extension.
“We got a call from Emaar that we could use the lifts and they said the air conditioning would not be switched off. They have turned off everything else – gym and pool access," one resident told Abu-Dhabi paper The National.
“We have asked for an extension of facilities since we have paid our rent in full. We view it as a small win for tenants that we can use the elevators but it’s best to move soon.”
The Burj Khalifa has 900 apartments, with rents starting from AED 100,000 for a studio to AED 450,000 for a three-bedroom apartment. Emaar said some landlords had defaulted on service fees since 2012, forcing them to consider the move.
“While most homeowners have paid their service charges, it has been noticed that a few owners are yet to make the payment. A circular has been issued to remind and urge residents to pay the service charges to ensure the seamless management of the common areas and other community amenities,” a spokesperson said.
“For the welfare of all residents, it is the responsibility of individual homeowners to make the service charge on time.”
Tenants are unsure how long the extension will be in place. Maybe they can pick up some tips from Vittorio Brumotti?
RELATED: VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BURJ KHALIFAFour-time Rio gold medalist Katie Ledecky is among Olympic swim stars entered in Mesa as USA Swimming re-sets for 2020.
Katie Ledecky gets ready for an event at last year's Arena Pro Series in Mesa. (Photo: Rob Schumacher/azcentral sports)
Michael Phelps was retired when USA Swimming first brought one of its major professional meets to Mesa in 2013.
Now, starting a second Olympic quadrennium with Mesa continuing as part of the Arena Pro Series, Phelps is living in metro Phoenix and retired again, this time he swears for good after adding six more medals (five gold) at the Rio Olympics. His final Olympic scorecard – 28 medals, 23 gold.
"The greatest swimmer in the history of our sport is a big one to fill," said Frank Busch, going into his final summer as USA Swimming national team director before retiring in September. "Our goal is to try and figure out how to do it by committee. We had one of the best Olympics we've ever had (in Rio) particularly for first-time Olympians. That is very promising, but you can't base anything on past performance. It's all about what's next."
In the short run, what's next is the World Aquatics Championships, July 14-30 in Budapest. The new big-picture goal is the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which could include 10 more medal events for 44 total if the International Olympic Committee approves a proposal by the international swimming federation (FINA).
The U.S. won 33 swimming medals (16 gold) in Rio, its most since the 2000 Olympics.
Busch said that this year "from a structure standpoint might be the most important when putting in the approach to make 2020 better than 2016. That's what we're doing right now." Advancing pro swimming is first on that agenda, and Mesa is central each year as the first major outdoor long course meet.
"It draws us into the season right away," said Busch, who coached at Arizona from |
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and sign their petition. Once you’re done, tweet #4immigrantwomen on why you believe that #15years is too long to wait!Credit: 247Sports
With one Tennessee-themed tweet Monday, Texas high school quarterback Quinten Dormady sent a sigh of relief across Rocky Top.
Suddenly, head coach Butch Jones and the Volunteers went from watching quarterback dominoes fall off their board to landing a significant target with a high ceiling.
Dormady's pledge fills a massive need in Knoxville.
After the surprising decision by UT redshirt freshman Riley Ferguson to transfer, the Vols have just three scholarship quarterbacks. One of them is senior Justin Worley, so getting more arms on campus was a necessity not only for competition but depth.
Dormady ultimately chose UT over Alabama following a three-day visit to Knoxville that ended Saturday. It probably didn't hurt that Jon Gruden (a former UT assistant) was on campus to speak and teach at the coinciding camp.
"It is hard to overstate the importance of this commitment for Tennessee," GoVols247 recruiting analyst Ryan Callahan told Bleacher Report.
"Tennessee's coaches already were high on Dormady before his visit last week, but they really liked what they saw from him at their camp over the weekend. And Jon Gruden apparently spoke highly of him, too, after seeing him work out.
"He's a really talented kid who should have a bright future at Tennessee."
UT coaches didn't mask their enthusiasm, taking to Twitter with not-so-subtle responses to Dormady's announcement.
After Zach Gentry committed to Texas and Sheriron Jones pledged to Florida, the Vols were down to just a handful of viable targets with UT offers remaining on the board.
With Torrance Gibson and Deondre Francois not expected to decide soon, Dormady represented Tennessee's best chance to secure a high priority early in the process.
Here's a deeper look at what the impact of Dormady's commitment means for the Vols.
Untapped Potential Is the Biggest Upside
Credit: 247Sports
The 6'4", 208-pound signal-caller from Boerne, Texas, is still a somewhat unknown commodity in recruiting circles.
Tearing a labrum and missing your entire junior season will do that to a prospect's stock, and that's exactly what happened to Dormady.
Once 247Sports analysts watched him throw at the Dallas Nike Football Training Camp, however, they elevated him to a 4-star prospect and the nation's fifth-ranked pro-style quarterback.
Dormady is a strong-armed slinger who is ideally sized for the position. Though he's primarily a dropback passer, he does have athleticism necessary to move the pocket, evidenced by him commandeering a spread offense in high school.
Tennessee offered Dormady on May 28, soon after watching him throw in person. Six days later, Dormady traveled to Alabama where he worked out for Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin and was offered.
Oklahoma State, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, TCU, Indiana, Houston and Texas-San Antonio also had extended offers.
The nation's elite teams were beginning to take notice, and UT offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian deserves credit for securing his commitment.
With a strong senior showing, Dormady could wind up one of the most coveted quarterbacks in the class.
Another Huge Recruiting (and PR) Win
Wade Payne/Associated Press
Tennessee was nowhere near panic mode when Dormady pulled the trigger, but his commitment was important for other reasons besides his on-field impact.
The Vols hadn't received a verbal commitment since April 12 when running back Rocky Reid pledged after the spring game. For a fanbase spoiled by Jones' consistent success on the recruiting trail, two months was a long time to wait.
After UT failed to sign a quarterback during the 2014 cycle, there were legitimate concerns about whether Bajakian could lure a top-shelf gunslinger to Knoxville.
Dormady's commitment puts those worries to rest.
Also, any time UT can beat Bama at anything, it makes the fans happy.
With the Vols failing to best UA on the field since 2006, winning a head-to-head recruiting battle against Saban for a crucial commit (not to mention offensive coordinator Kiffin, who has a bit of history with UT, if you haven't heard) is huge.
"They needed a quarterback pretty badly," Callahan said, "and for the Vols to get one of the top guys on their board—and to beat out Alabama to do it—at this point in the summer is pretty impressive."
Variety Is the Spice of Life
Credit: 247Sports
Following Ferguson's transfer, there was no way Jones could wait on 5-star top quarterback target Gibson to make a decision that could drag all the way to national signing day.
Especially considering UT is currently neck and neck with Auburn for his signature, according to AL.com's Wesley Sinor.
If the Vols put all their eggs in Gibson's basket and he chose somebody else, the egg would wind up on Jones' face.
Waiting wasn't an option.
Whether Dormady's commitment hurts UT's chances with Gibson or not doesn't matter. The dual-threat quarterback was actually visiting Knoxville on the day Dormady announced he was committing, so he remains interested in the Vols.
Gibson's other co-leader, Auburn, has a QB committed already as well in Tyler Queen. For that matter, so do the Vols.
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, athlete Jauan Jennings may project to various positions on the next level, but his progression at quarterback has been lauded. Barton Simmons of GoVols247 praised Jennings' film recently (subscription required).
This past weekend, Jennings participated in UT's quarterback camp alongside Dormady and was critiqued by Gruden. He told GoVols247's Callahan (subscription required):
"I felt like I did good," Jennings said. "They felt the same way."
Teaming Dormady with Jennings gives UT a nice one-two punch with diverse skill sets. If their commitments stick, the duo can provide Joshua Dobbs with some strong competition to be the future leader of Tennessee's talented offense.
The importance of Dormady's decision could be felt in Knoxville for years to come and may be one of the biggest puzzle pieces to Jones putting Tennessee football back on the map.
All recruiting rankings and statistics courtesy of 247Sports.
Brad Shepard is the Tennessee Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained firsthand, unless otherwise noted. Follow Brad on Twitter here:
@Brad_ShepardKUALA LANGAT Malaysia (Reuters) - An overloaded boat carrying suspected illegal Indonesian immigrants sank as it left Malaysia’s west coast early on Wednesday, and at least three passengers drowned and 34 were missing.
The boat, whose passengers included women and children, sank at the mouth of a river shortly after midnight as it left Malaysia’s Carey Island, likely bound for Indonesia’s Sumatra island, officials and witnesses said.
Police said the boat lacked safety equipment such as life jackets, but that rescuers were still holding out hope of finding more survivors. The boat went down in shallow water close to shore.
“It is likely that survivors could have swum ashore and went into hiding since they have no legal documents here,” said Mohammed Hambali Yaakup, head of operations in the area for the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).
Hambali said he could not confirm reports that a people-smuggling gang had been involved with the boat. All 60 survivors have been arrested under immigration laws, he said.
Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia’s wealthier economies, has long been a magnet for illegal immigrants from Indonesia and other poorer countries in the region. Many undocumented Indonesians work in Malaysia’s extensive oil palm plantations, a mainstay of its economy.
“This was an illegal boat and all the passengers were Indonesian,” Mohamad Zuri, another MMEA official told Reuters.
Police said two bodies had been recovered. A Reuters reporter saw three bodies - two on the deck of a rescue boat and another washed up on shore.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Rescuers were scouring the area for survivors and had deployed a helicopter, one large ship and eight smaller boats in the operation, officials said.
Despite periodic crackdowns on illegal workers, Malaysia is home to an estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants or about 7 percent of its 29 million population.
The question of migrant workers has long been a touchy issue in Indonesia. Both candidates in a July 9 Indonesian presidential race have said that Indonesian workers overseas, often doing menial labour, need better protection.An Overview of the Clock Tower Penthouse
Sotheby’s International Realty is pleased to present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live within San Francisco’s most visible and historic clocktower. Perched high above South Park, a burgeoning epicenter of industry and technology that embodies San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, the Clock Tower Penthouse is on the open market for the first time since being offered to the public nearly a quarter century ago. Owning this amazing penthouse also comes with exclusive use of the top three adjoining levels, including the interior of the famous tower and the “Clock Room” itself, plus an enormous wrap around view deck.
Imagine taking in panoramic views of The City while the sun casts a bronze glow on the brick buildings of South Beach. Host a lavish dinner party in the spacious formal gathering areas, entertain your guests on the expansive wrap-around view deck, then retire to the library for refreshments while witnessing a dazzling fireworks display over AT&T Park after a Giants victory. Move the soiree up to the game room for recreational pastimes and end the evening relaxing inside the “Clock Room” to experience the glow within, as the sunset bathes the four clock-faces in luminance then fades to night. After dark, the iconic clock-faces come to life yet again, illuminated by the tower’s eye-catching spotlights. Maintenance of the tower, and the clocks themselves is conveniently done by the building’s Home Owner’s Association.
Now considered the crown jewel of the ClockTower Building, the penthouse residence presents a spacious and open living arrangement that is ideal for comfortable living, in-home work needs, and entertaining. The residence spans over 3,000 square feet and features hardwood and concrete flooring throughout, original brick and concrete walls, exposed steel structural beams, automated window shades, and fine appliances in the gourmet kitchen. Vaulted ceilings expand the dimensions, custom-built cabinetry and shelving offer abundant storage spaces, and wide walls of view windows imbue a true feeling of openness throughout the design.
The sun-filled living room shares a glass-enclosed fireplace with the elegant formal dining room, both of which are appointed with the finest materials and finishes. The main-level master bedroom suite includes a spa bath and dressing room, and a second main-level bedroom also has an en suite bath. A second-level office boasts lofty ceilings and around-the-compass views, as does the third-level game room with billiards table. The fourth level is comprised of the actual “Clock Room,” a large space behind the clock faces that exposes the gears of the tower’s four ticking clocks – a truly unique gathering and entertaining point that will impress all who experience it.
Outside, the exclusive use wrap-around roof deck has beautiful vistas of San Francisco and presents a lovely setting for quiet contemplation. With views in all directions, the penthouse looks out to a sweeping panoramic that encompasses The Bay, downtown San Francisco, AT&T Park, Sutro Tower-Twin Peaks, and Bernal Hill. Completing the appeal of this rare and unique property is its incredible location in the heart of SOMA-SouthBeach – one of The City’s most inspiring places to live – at the center of the tech 2.0 universe with easy access to fine dining, art galleries, cultural attractions, parks, Giants baseball, entertainment venues, and plenty of transportation routes. Experience the best of city living at its absolute finest in this one-of-a-kind historic home.
A History of the Building
Originally constructed in 1907, the six-story, two- block industrial structure at Second and Bryant streets has long been known as “The ClockTower Building.” But it was actually first built without the iconic Clock Tower. In 1921, the site became headquarters to the Max Schmidt Lithography Company – the largest printing company on the west coast at the time and one of America’s great “label houses.” The Schmidt Company designed and produced many classic California fruit box labels and a number of posters for the Panama Public International Expedition. Circa 1922, Mr. Schmidt added a rooftop-accessible penthouse unit. It was intended as an exclusive light-filled artist’s studio to be used only by the company’s professional lithographers. Up here, above the hustle and bustle of the city, the expansive views were framed by walls of glass, providing an abundance of sunlight and consummate privacy for the staff artists to complete their illustrations. Crowning the penthouse was a 10-story, four-sided steel-frame clock tower with operational clock-faces on each side. The clock tower was nearly demolished when the Bay Bridge viaduct was constructed in the 1930s, but Schmidt threatened to take his successful business to the East Bay if the tower was touched. Thankfully, city officials relented and redesigned the viaduct plans to preserve the tower.
The Schmidt Lithography Company is now gone from San Francisco, but the iconic Clock Tower has since become the everyday time piece for Rincon Hill residents and commuters on the Bay Bridge. The building is even considered an official San Francisco landmark by The Landmarks Preservation Advisory board and has been named a “Contributory Building to the South End Historic District.” In 1992 the factory underwent a tremendous change when San Francisco architect David Baker and the McKenzie, Rose, & Halliday development firm converted the entire brick-and-timber structure into 127 live/work condominiums and commercial office spaces. The retrofitting and upgrades cost more than $33 million and the spaces were arranged around three landscaped courtyards. Today, the district complex maintains its historic character, evoking the same scale and industrial grandeur that was once commonplace in the South End.
A Look Back:
When it was originally purchased by the current owners in 1993, all four levels of the penthouse were unimproved and in their original raw state. Being the first residents, the current owners were able to work from a blank canvas to create a true urban sanctuary that enjoys exclusive stairway access to the entire tower. The space was retrofitted by architect David Baker, and after 3 years of renovation and several hundred thousand dollars in repairs and upgrades, the penthouse was completed in 1997. Modern upgrades included new tower windows, heating, ventilation systems, a gas fireplace, and a completely re-envisioned floor plan with all new materials, finishes and fixtures. A second renovation was completed in 2014 by General Contractor Paul Stricklin, that brought the residence into the 21st century.
Features of the Clock Tower PenthouseALAMEDA (CBS / AP) — A high school water polo player in the Bay Area has been accused of sexually assaulting an opposing player during a game.
The Alameda Police Department says they have opened a criminal investigation after multiple Encinal High School players accused a Berkeley High School team member of behaving inappropriately in the water during an Oct. 11 game.
Berkeley Unified School District spokesman Charles Burress declined to comment on the investigation.
This is the second time in less than a year that a Bay Area high school water polo game has led to a criminal investigation. Last year, a boy playing for Acalanes High in Lafayette broke the nose of an opponent during a game and was charged with felony assault and battery.
© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.MageKing17
Joined: Feb 22, 2006
Space EmperorJoined: Feb 22, 2006
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 12:32 am Post subject: Total Eclipse (now v1.01)
Download it
For a full list of things changed, consult changelog.txt. EDIT: Also quoted here:
I've been using a personally-customized version of the Eclipse Mod for over seven years now. After some convincing from people on IRC, I decided I should release it.Download it here. EDIT: Now also here, on spaceempires.net.For a full list of things changed, consult changelog.txt. EDIT: Also quoted here: changelog.txt wrote: Version History:
1.01:
-Converted all data files to work with the Templatizer for more consistency. A shitload of typos and grammatical errors fixed in the process; too many to be worth listing. Quite a few other bugs found and fixed in the process, which I will try to list below.
-Construction Bay V description inaccurately stated it had a minerals construction rate of 11000 when it was actually 15000; took this to be a mistake in the description rather than with the build rate.
-Structural Integrity Field II had the same mineral cost as the Structural Integrity Field I; bumped up to 125.
-Gave Potarite Reactor 50000 supply storage and Fighter Potarite Core 5000 supply storage; despite generating infinite supplies, certain things will refuse to work if your total supply storage isn't high enough (so Potarite-powered ships couldn't do some Stellar Manipulation, for instance).
-Removed drone-launching capability from the Unit Launchers since drones currently don't exist.
-Fighter Stardrive Engine was 2kT while every other fighter engine was 1kT; this made 2 Fighter Quasar Engines superior to a single Fighter Stardrive Engine, which was a little... odd.
-Sensor Jammer V description inaccurately stated it functioned as a long-range scanner jammer. It does not.
-Telepathic Illusion III-V were erroneously unlocked at level 2, at the same time as Telepathic Illusion II; now they unlock at their respective levels.
-Particle Beam V damage was inconsistent with the rest of the series; probably a typo.
-Small Neutron Shredder III was erroneously unlocked at level 5, at the same time as Small Neutron Shredder II; bumped to 9 to match the majority of small weapons with three levels.
-Positron Blaster X had a radioactives cost of 272 when it should have been 275.
-Small Positron Blaster II-III were unlocked at research levels 2 and 3; bumped to 5 and 9 to match the majority of small weapons with three levels.
-Plasma Beam IV damage was inconsistent with the rest of the series; probably a typo.
-Bioelectric Ray IX had a very slight damage inconsistency (5 less than it should have been at maximum range).
-Magma Beam description said it was similar to the core of a "star", which would be a plasma beam; changed to "planet".
-Flamethrower damage was slightly inconsistent; I decided not to try to fudge my damage function so that the numbers match the original, because some of the inconsistencies were probably typos anyway, and the rest just rounding off.
-Polaron Beam X cost 300 minerals when it should have cost 400.
-Warp Core III had a "Roman Numeral" of 2.
-Construction Matrix dropped to 1,000,000 resources per turn, in an attempt to reduce the likelyhood of accidentally clicking "one turn" on a unit causing a freeze (1,000,000/turn is still plenty to build almost anything in one turn).
-Dropped starting level for "Warp-Capability" and "Hyperdrive Theory" back down to 0 and added "Warp-Capability" to the Trek AIs' research files; should no longer get Star Wars or Star Trek technologies showing up in "expected results" if you don't actually meet the requirements.
1.00:
Here is a list of things Total Eclipse changes from the original Eclipse Mod.
-"Theory" put into the name of most specialty techs, as I shifted dependancies "down a level" to a tech automatically researched upon starting the game with that racial tech, to remove the annoying "expected results" displaying specialty techs bug.
-Crew Quarters Boarding Defense ability reduced by 4 to recognize the built-in boarding defense of 4 for Crew Quarters.
-Gas giants reduced in size to merely 20% better than normal planets (so normal huge is 100, gas giant huge is 120, gas giant huge with subterranian is 180; as opposed to before, which was 300).
-Neutral culture now gives slight bonuses in all areas instead of being completely useless.
-Added new culture type: "Heavy Hitters"
-Added some types to DefaultDesignTypes.txt: "Flagship", "Research Ship", "Siege Platform", "Research Station", "Troop (Infantry)", and "Troop (Mechanized)".
-Nanobots now go up to level 5, as 7 was an odd ability amount to end with (progression is now 2-4-6-8-10).
-Nanobots size reduced to 1 kT. These are freaking NANITES we're talking about... they're not going to take up 5 kilotons. I figure the 1 kT is simply equipment needed to control them.
-Specialty Tech reactors all added to the main reactor upgrade tree so you can't, for example, stick on a prospace generator, a solid energy generator, a prismatic generator, a solar generator, etc. all on one ship (which you could before).
-Now that it can't be used to boost other reactors, the Prismatic Generator is fucking useless.
-Fixed annoying typo of Siege as "Seige".
-Siege Cannons I, II, and III reduced in power to 500, 1000, and 1500 damage, respectively.
-Removed +50 accuracy bonus from Siege Cannons, to reflect their description.
-Fixed Siege Cannon's TechArea.txt description, which was just a duplicate of Nova Cannon's description.
-Drones removed from tech tree entirely, since there's no point without ModMissiles.
-A few Settings.txt tweaks: Remote Mining no longer decreases asteroid value, the AI Computer Mega Evil Empire Score Percent was raised up to 500% (to match the AI Human Mega Evil Empire Score Percent), and the Default Number Of Units Per Player and Default Number Of Ships Per Player were increased to 20000 and 10000, respectively (mostly so I wouldn't have to click so much during game creation).
-Fixed certain techs that didn't provide anything upon researching them (Advanced Medicine tech 5, Espionage tech 3, Mines tech 4/5) by reducing maximum level (to 4, 2, and 3 respectively).
-Graviton Wake and Telekinetic Motivator bonuses reduced (to 1-2-3-4-5 and 2-5-8, respectively).
-Modified AI files to reflect changes in trait names.
-Fixed Endo Union dialogue (kept calling themselves the Ixaris Continuum).
-Same with the Sethulkra.
-Added Maximum Weapons Range strategy to Federation_AI_Strategies.txt for... some reason that I have long forgotten. I think it was throwing errors without it, possibly?
-Interceptor Missiles at level III and up (or II and up for the small variant) now have infinite range. Now they're truly interception missiles.
-Removed maintenance cost reduction from Tiny Carriers.
-Added Juggernaut to VehicleSize.txt, essentially replacing the Worldship, which has now been upgraded to twice its previous size.
-Flagship VehicleSize renamed "Superdreadnought", Baseship renamed "Monitor", Juggernaut renamed "Supermonitor". So I was reading some David Weber, so sue me. It makes sense.
-Worldship renamed "Juggernaut" again, made even bigger Worldship. Again. Now it's *almost* as big as the Worldship from the Expanded mod.
-Behemoth. BEHEMOTH. 60 MT behemoth (beating a dead horse is fun!) obtained via nanotech. Why? Er, because, that's why.
-Starships max level raised to 13 to allow some spread for these massive constructs.
-Added "stealth" variants of some ship sizes (Frigate, War Destroyer, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Heavy Battlecruiser, Battleship) for those who go down the Cloaking Device + Scanner Jammer research tree as well as the normal Starship research. Good for Special Ops ships, but have increased maintenance costs.
-PD Cannon changed to require Energy Pulses, not Energy Beams.
-Removed the pointless "Transition Gate" tech and components.
-Moved "Expansion Project" to be after the Factory facilities in Facility.txt so that it would be the only one to show up with "hide obsolete" checked, while still upgrading into the factories.
-Changed Raider events to all use the Alert picture, so that the picture didn't give away what was going to happen beforehand.
-Ditto with planet insurrection and PlanetRevolts.
-Construction Matrix switched to 10,000,000 resources per turn instead of 0... it appears that glitch was fixed at some point as of 1.95 so it was preventing a planet from constructing, not allowing it to construct any ship instantly.
-Added the Nano-Construction Bay, which requires knowledge of Construction Matrix technology (as well as a level of Nanotechnology and maxed-out Remote Construction), but allows ships and shipyards to construct at a prodigious rate (of course, shipyards can't use the technology until it's fully researched, but larger space stations can use even the level 1 version).
-Renamed the Baseship Mount to Monitor Mount, and changed a couple descriptions, to remove the phrase "baseship" from anything shown to the player (since it was renamed "Monitor" quite a while back).
-Fixed a couple more typos; "Constuction" -> "Construction", "Miscellanious" -> "Miscellaneous"
-Changed fighter weaponry from "Point-Defense" to "Direct Fire"; sorry, Kevin, but I don't think it's worth it to make 99% of AI-controlled fighters do nothing but flee.
-Changed instances of "<blah> based" to "<blah>-based", and added a comma to the Siege Cannon description, because I am become Grammar, editor of descriptions.
A few things got added to the data files but aren't actually enabled:
-Prospace Field (Added to TechArea.txt and Components.txt)
-Potarite Field (Added to TechArea.txt)
-Telekinetic Field (Added to TechArea.txt)
-Temporal Field (Added to TechArea.txt)
-Nano-field (Added to TechArea.txt)
-Nano-armor (Added to TechArea.txt)
Like Eclipse Mod, Total Eclipse requires
If you have any balance suggestions or notice any buggy behavior, typos, or grammatical errors, let me know about it. Like Eclipse Mod, Total Eclipse requires ImageMod and the Sound Pack If you have any balance suggestions or notice any buggy behavior, typos, or grammatical errors, let me know about it.
Last edited by Last edited by MageKing17 on Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:57 pm; edited 2 times in total
Back to topPrime Minister John Key is heaping pressure on Peter Dunne to vote for controversial spy legislation, as he scrambles to build Parliamentary support for the controversial bill.
The Government is working on legislation to extend the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to spy on New Zealanders, although Key maintains this simply formalises what has been happening for years.
With the Maori Party indicating it will not vote for the legislation, it will almost certainly rely on the support of Dunne or NZ First.
Dunne has expressed deep reservations about the bill, saying he wants a ''very clear boundary'' between the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), which focuses on domestic surveillance, and the GCSB, which focuses on foreign threats.
The GCSB should not spy on New Zealanders ''under any circumstances'', Dunne said.
But Key said this morning that he was ''extremely confident'' that Dunne, a Government partner, would vote for the bill.
''He knows the value of national security and he knows that we actually do need to clarify the law to allow assistance to be provided to the likes of the SIS and the police,'' Key told TV3's Firstline this morning.
''This is not a debate about whether a particular New Zealander will have intelligence gathered about them and about their activities. That will happen. The question is whether SIS do it or GCSB do it under a warrant provided by SIS as an assisting agent.''
The Government is prepared to work with New Zealand First on the bill, but Key said it was not unusual for National to work with the party.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has said that there has been a lack of analysis done on the bill, and that greater safeguards need to be put in place to monitor the GCSB.
Meanwhile Key indicated it was only the influence of Grant Robertson, Labour's deputy leader, stopping that party supporting the bill.
''Labour have got themselves in a bit of a terrible bind. They actually know that they need to vote for this legislation, they know it's increasing the oversight, but Grant Robertson's sort of running the ship around there. He's just playing politics with it and [David] Shearer's been rolled over by Robertson and that's the problem.''
Yesterday Key warned the surveillance capabilities of police, the SIS and Defence Force would be beefed up if controversial spy legislation falls over. That would be at "significant cost", Key warned.
In an unusual move, Key is set to chair some of the public hearings on the bill, which has attracted 121 submissions, some of them scathing about the sweeping nature of the legislation.
The Law Society says the bill will empower the GCSB to spy on New Zealand citizens and residents in a way that was not previously contemplated and was inconsistent with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
But Key yesterday dismissed the complaint and said he did not agree the legislation expanded the mandate of GCSB.
Under existing legislation the GCSB is supposed to be used for foreign intelligence-gathering operations and is not allowed to spy on New Zealanders.
However, an inquiry revealed the GCSB had possibly spied on more than 80 New Zealanders illegally in the belief it was entitled to do so while acting under warrant from another agency like police, the SIS or Defence.Last year, I wrote about colorblind accessibility in Sega Saturn games. Puyo Puyo Tsuu was one of the games I highlighted as being inaccessible for colorblind gamers. I mentioned how Puyo Puyo Tetris improved the shape and definition of the Puyos, but what I didn’t know was that SEGA actually added in colorblind-friendly Alphabet Puyos into the game as an option. I still believe my original solution of defining the eyes/shapes/material of the Puyos would work, but I have to admit, I love what SEGA did to make the game accessible!
Above: Puyos shaped as letters in their Alphabet form!
There is, however, one problem. In order to use Alphabet Puyos, you must first earn 100 credits and buy them through the in-game shop. Earning enough credits isn’t a difficult task (you just need to play around 5 games of Tetris), however, the Alphabet Puyos could easily be unlocked at the start of the game. You start off with multiple types of Puyos and Tetrominoes to use, so why not include the colorblind set?
Many colorblind gamers would either have to stick with Tetris until they get enough credits for the Alphabet Puyos or struggle through Puyo/Puyo Tetris modes. Again, getting 100 credits isn’t a long or difficult task, but when your game is so close to being accessible from the start, why not make it happen? The code to make this possible is changing one value, switching the unlock boolean tied to Alphabet Puyos from false to true.
The same day I learned that Puyo Puyo Tetris gated its colorblind-friendly Puyos, I personally ran into difficulties playing another puzzle game. I am not colorblind and have perfect vision, but occasionally struggle seeing portable games because I need to look down at my feet to play.
I was playing Taito’s Puzzle Bobble Mini (also known as Bust a Move Pocket) on my Neo Geo Pocket Color. The Neo Geo Pocket Color is my favorite handheld system ever, but a notable flaw is the screen is not lit in any way. Playing down at my feet, this can make the system difficult to play in certain conditions. As I was working my way through the game’s puzzle mode, I noticed my bubbles were not popping. In my perspective, I was matching red bubbles to red bubbles and blue bubbles to blue bubbles. In reality, I was matching red bubbles with pink bubbles and blue bubbles with navy bubbles!
Above: The backlit screen of an emulator helps, but imagine playing with no light at your feet.
I couldn’t tell the colors apart but I knew that Puzzle Bobble Mini was forwards compatible with the original Neo Geo Pocket, a system that does not output color. Curious how Puzzle Bobble Mini plays on the original Neo Geo Pocket, I decided to consult the game’s manual to see how it plays on the system.
Above: A comparison of color bubbles and their symbol counterparts.
So as it turns out, Puzzle Bobble Mini changes the color bubbles to symbol bubbles when playing on the original monochrome Neo Geo Pocket! Considering the code to change the bubbles to symbols is already in the game, I went into the options menu figuring that I could enable symbol bubbles on my Neo Geo Pocket Color. Sadly, I learned that changing the bubbles was not an option.
Since I do own an original Neo Geo Pocket, I concluded that I’d be better off experiencing Puzzle Bobble Mini on that system. However, I wasn’t ready to give up on activating symbol bubbles on the Neo Geo Pocket Color! Using my computer, I loaded Puzzle Bobble Mini into a hex editor and began my search for values that would force the game to use symbols. I found out that the ROM header (a small set of values containing various pieces of information about a game) contained a hex value that determines whether or not a game can be played in color. I changed this value, 10 (color compatible) to 00 (monochrome only), and hoped for the best.
Above: Changing a hex value in the ROM header!
After saving my changes along with changing the file extension from.ngc (Color) to.ngp (Original), I booted the game on my Neo Geo Pocket Color emulator. Normally, Puzzle Bobble Mini plays only in color on this emulator. I’m happy to report that the changes I made allowed the game to boot up in monochrome mode! That’s right, changing ONE hex value made the game accessible. I do not own a flash cartridge to test on real hardware, so I can’t say with certainty that the game would also play in monochrome on a real Neo Geo Pocket Color. But given that the game continued to display in monochrome on other emulators, I’d say it’s very likely to behave the same.
Above: Puzzle Bobble Mini successfully booted into monochrome mode!
What I’d love to see is a community effort to enable monochrome modes in retro color-centric games. This extends past the Neo Geo Pocket: there’s hundreds of GameBoy and Wonderswan games that could be modified in the same way. If enabling monochrome gameplay is as easy as switching a hex value in the header globally, I imagine work could be done quickly.
I’d love to see modern color-dependent games offer more ways to play so color isn’t a dependency. Customizable colors and symbols can go a long way! And if a game offers more accessible ways to play, like Puyo Puyo Tetris, it should unlock accessibility from the beginning. Whether it’s an upcoming game or a game released 20 years ago, it’s never too late to be shedding light on vision accessibility! For more information on vision accessibility, check out AbleGamers’ vision accessibility guide over on includification.com.Dina: “I had no idea you could milk a cat.”
Greg: “Oh yeah, you can milk anything with nipples.”
Jack: “I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?”
-Meet the Parents (2000)
The short answer is no, you can’t milk Robert DeNiro. Barring specific medical conditions—like a tumor on the pituitary gland—men generally lack the necessary levels of prolactin to stimulate lactation and cannot produce milk. So if they aren’t able to be useful and help feed their offspring, why the heck do men even have nipples? The answer comes down to timing of sex determination during embryonic development.
Humans are mammals, which means they are warm-blooded, hairy vertebrates that breathe air and produce milk for babies. Up until genes on the Y-chromosome kick in after week 4 in development, however, male and female embryos develop identically. The primary formation of mammary glands and tissues are highly conserved across mammalian species and begin to form early in development, before the gender-specific processes take place.
The embryo’s gonad appears around week 4 of development and is considered bipotential or indifferent, meaning that gender is not playing a role in development at that point. This will continue for a few more weeks. During week 8, germ cells start to undergo sex determination. Males will then secrete factors that block the development of female ducts and structures. Once the male embryo produces testosterone, the hormone can influence other sex-specific traits around the body.
Men having nipples doesn’t really have any evolutionary advantage, but it usually doesn’t hurt anything either. As a result, the trait was never selected against. Developing those structures must also not be very energetically costly in the grand scheme of things. Most of the work with developing breast tissue and mammary gland function in females happens during puberty, while prolactin levels aren’t ramped up until pregnancy.
Despite having a limited amount of underdeveloped breast tissue, men are still capable of getting breast cancer. It is extremely rare for a man to develop breast cancer, and men account for less than 1% of all breast cancer cases, but it can happen. Risk factors include estrogen levels, obesity, alcohol consumption, and liver disease.UPDATE 6:25 p.m. ET: Sources say that blogger Aaron Walker has been released from custody in Rockville, Maryland. He was charged with “incitement,” but released on his own recognizance. Readers are encouraged to donate to the National Bloggers Club to help support Aaron’s defense against Brett Kimberlin.
*** PREVIOUSLY (11:59 a.m.) ***
FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Aaron Walker, whose complaint against convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin became a conservative cause célèbre this past week, was reportedly taken into custody today after a court hearing in Rockville, Maryland.
One person who attended the hearing in Montgomery County District Court said that Kimberlin asserted that Walker’s continued blogging represented a |
of ephemeral, inconvenient, and unworkable ethical and moral truths hidden in eons-old scripture.
George Fitzhugh and Southern intellectuals proved enthusiastic supporters of the Confederate cause. And while the flag that flew in South Carolina was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, to assign it the values Fitzhugh articulated is not a historical overstatement. The battle was itself caused by the secession, and Southern states seceded to defend slavery. The Army of Northern Virginia fought to preserve a republic devoted to maintaining slavery. (An excellent work for any Christian who sees slavery as anything but a primary cause for secession is Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion.) The Battle Flag has, thus, always had this direct association, and it is an association with some measure of heterodoxy. Indeed, the effect of this deviation from orthodoxy was tragically total. Even otherwise generally orthodox Southern intellectuals, with a few exceptions, increasingly affirmed the unorthodox and unbiblical societal formulations of Fitzhugh.
Why did southern Evangelicals (and Catholics and Christians of all sorts) disregard years of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy and embrace pro-slavery ecclesiology and theology? The short answer is that they wished to engage the culture. Slavery enjoyed de facto religious protection (but not necessarily affirmation) in the Colonial Era. Most Colonial Americans, and especially those in the American South, understood slavery as a societal given. Elite slaveholders, who shaped societal and cultural values, typically held looser views, that is to say “less traditional” views, on slavery. In order to gain elite congregants, and in order to engage their culture, orthodox Southern ministers slowly but surely began to preach sermons declaring that slavery, while certainly sinful, surely didn’t represent that much of a societal ill. In a remarkably short time-span, Southern ministers began preaching that slavery was a positive good. Furman’s early conversion was soon joined by Presbyterians like Robert Lewis Dabney. By 1860, the notion that slavery was a positive good was not just extant among southern Christians, it was no longer unusual.
Ironically, a similar breakdown in orthodoxy and orthopraxy has just recently occurred on an issue not unrelated to the history of chattel slavery, though the self-styled progressives would likely not make the connection. And this is where a better grasp of history is essential and why “conservatives” certainly ought not to waste their energy claiming the Lost Cause for themselves. You see, our ongoing marriage controversy does indeed form an interesting parallel to Civil-War humanitarian issues, but in perhaps a way opposite of how it is commonly construed. As Tera Hunter noted in the New York Times, “slaves could not marry legally, they were allowed to do so by custom with the permission of their owners — and most did. But the wedding vows they recited promised not ‘until death do us part,’ but ‘until distance.’” This was anything but traditional Christian practice. The new heretical embrace of slavery actually lead to the destruction of Christian marriage, and slavery’s predilection for destroying the natural family betrayed more than anything the institution’s rebellion against divinely ordered natural law. It was a case of socio-economic pressures and a cultural fixation contradicting Christian tradition and not the other way around. Yet in 2015, self-identified Christians are now celebrating the state’s invasion of marriage as a boon to Christian witness. Matthew Vines, Rachel Held Evans, Jonathan Merritt and others see the church’s orthodoxy and especially its orthopraxy as a stumbling block to Christian unity, a point made particularly clear thanks to cultural advance. So did George Fitzhugh.
Contrary to both the narratives of the paleo-conservatives and the social justice warriors, today’s progressives actually stand in continuity with the motivations of the Confederacy. And so perhaps they ought not be pulling down the Battle Flag after all. It pairs nicely with the rainbow. A more critical evaluation, however, might suggest tossing both.New Sunn O))) EP ‘La Reh’ Available To Pre-Order Now
‘La Reh’, the forthcoming release from drone overlords Sunn O))), is now available to pre-order, but you’ll have to act quickly!
2014 looks set to be a busy year for the mighty Sunn O))). That highly anticipated collaboration with Norwegian shape shifters Ulver has been penned in for a February release, but to whet our appetites even further, the duo will be releasing a brand new demo entitled ‘La Reh’ in January. This will be the first new material we’ll have heard from the band since their 2012 rehearsal demo, and with the highly talented Brad Boatright (Sleep, Noothgrush, From Ashes Rise) behind the mixing desk, it’s a safe bet that this is going to sound enormous!
‘La Reh’ will be released as a 12″ 180 gram black Vinyl (limited to 1500 machine numbered copies), as well as a high-quality digital format. You can pre-order the vinyl here, whilst the digital version can be purchased at the band’s Bandcamp page.
‘La Reh’ is due to be released on January 20th via Southern Lord Records.You fell in love with an illusion. You fell hard and deep for something which never existed. The golden days that we created together were the twisted reflections of my manipulative hold over you. I know how anxious you were to try to recover the golden period. You poured your beautiful heart into securing the impossible. I know that my silences, my verbal violence, the cheating and the lies, my perfidious control of you was brutal, malicious and devastating. I understand that the whole avalanche of manipulative techniques I applied to you, in savage wave after insidious wave crushed your self-esteem, mauled your sanity and shattered your world. This brutality was nothing compared to the aftermath.
For now you have slipped away from my tight, choking grip. I know however that you sit looking from the window where you used to watch for me strolling up the driveway, a bouquet in my hands and the pain still wracks you as you remember how you fell in love with someone who was not real. Memory after memory stirs from within, an endless loop of ‘best of’ moments that you want to stop remembering but you cannot. It hurts yet you still want to remember because even as the pain rises in your chest, you still feel the flicker of your love for me and you still cherish that. Like the drug addict, you know that line of cocaine is no good for you but still you need to snort it. The cold silences may no longer chill our living room. The sting of my slap across your cheek has long since faded. The barbed comments I fired your way each day have lost their power to wound. All of that has gone. The one lingering, tortuous pain that still sits deep within you is the knowledge that you were in love with an illusion No matter how much you discuss it with your friends, the earnest hours with your therapist and the pile of books about healing that are stacked up besides your favourite chair (which I always tried to sit in before you), none of them help take away that awful aching.
You can manage the shame of being fooled. You take a strange pride in having given your all to such a despicable person because that is the person you are. Honest, decent and a provider of unconditional love. You do not want that to change. You do not want to lose the empathy for which you are renown. The battered bank balance will repair (eventually) and the dosage of the medication will come down (your doctor has said as such in soothing tones). The strength of character which made me choose you means you can deal with all of these things. The one thing that will never leave is that deep-seated pain that you loved a ghost. Your head will eventually accept what happened, that you were charmed, entranced and enchanted and you never stood a chance. That was why you were chosen. Emotionally, you will never lose that dull ache as you sit and reminisce about our time together and how wonderful being in love with me was. Your heart will never accept that it was not real.
That crack, that fracture, that tiny chink that remains from your frenetic and devastating time with me shall always remain. It is through it that I can return as I slip, shadow like into your heart through that unhealed wound. That is why we did what we did; so we always had a way back in. For all of the strength that you exhibit through never taking a call from us, from changing email accounts, from burning the pictures and changing mobile numbers, you are never truly safe. Yes, you manage to evade the snaking tendrils that we uncoiled to try to haul you back under our spell. You will have to maintain that vigilance for the rest of your life. Our polluting influence, if ever allowed near you again, will creep and trickle through the hole that will never seal. You are consigned to a lifetime of wariness and maintain your defences because that damage is permanent.
You will always be in love with the person you thought I was.
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Like this: Like Loading...Gay Black Santa is Coming to Town With His New Boyfriend
A new children’s book slated for Christmas 2017 will tell the story of a gay black Santa Claus and his white husband who live together in the North Pole.
The book, appropriately titled, “Santa’s Husband” will be published by Harper Design, a member of the Harper Collins publishing group. The book goes on sale Oct. 10. According to a description of the book provided to Time, Santa’s spouse frequently fills in for his husband at malls.
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*THREAD* I can’t believe it, but this is officially happening. ‘SANTA’S HUSBAND’ Coming Holidays 2017 w/@alperryman from @harperdesignbks. pic.twitter.com/WpHe84Kso9 — Daniel “Kibblesmith” (@kibblesmith) March 28, 2017
The gay black Santa children’s book is the brainchild of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer Daniel Kibblesmith
The iconoclastic children’s book was penned by Daniel Kibblesmith, who is a staff writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and co-author of How to Win at Everything. He decided to write the parody children’s book after tweeting in December that he would only tell his future child Santa was black. “If they see a white one, we’ll say ‘That’s his husband,’” Kibblesmith tweeted.
We can’t wait to get our hands on Santa’s Husband!If you want to understand what’s happening in Israel/Palestine now, here is how it goes, according to NPR. The Israelis (we must start with their viewpoint) are “facing murderous attacks, random knife attacks and more.” Not just in Jerusalem, but “well beyond.” Intrepid journalists want to know who started it this time (always the most pertinent question), and the answer is clear: the Palestinians, with their “knives flashing suddenly in the streets” and “Israeli Jews dying, assailants, suspects shut down.” It also turns out that there isn’t an occupation of Palestine; at least one expert doesn’t recognize such a thing, when you get another expert to utter the term. And if there were such a thing as “occupation”, it’d be silly to think it might have something to do with the current situation. At least according to the worldview of NPR’s popular “On Point” show with Tom Ashbrook.
The recent murder of the Dawabsheh family by settlers isn’t considered relevant background for NPR. Neither are the cases where Palestinians were gunned down (like 18 year old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint), or lynched, while even “centrist” Knesset members call for shoot-to-kill policy. The assault on Gaza last summer is too ancient to merit mention. 67 years of land grabs and erasure of Palestine and its inhabitants, 48 years of advanced military occupation and dedicated efforts of dehumanization. History, political context, and the dire conditions in East Jerusalem aren’t taken for granted as important factors in this conversation. Whether these are relevant depends on who your expert source is.
As his guide to the current crisis, Tom Ashbrook chose Gerald Steinberg from the “Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation” at Bar-Ilan University (the pun is surely not intended.) Steinberg founded “NGO Monitor”, a right-wing advocacy group that picks on human rights groups and leftist nonprofits under the guise of “NGO accountability.” It is enough to read their reports on a couple of respected nonprofits to see what NGO Monitor is really about.
Steinberg was pitted against Sayed Kashua, the author and veteran Haaretz columnist. (Etgar Keret, the other scheduled guest, couldn’t join much of the conversation for technical reasons.)
It’s hard to find a good analogy for what it means to have Kashua debate Steinberg on East Jerusalem. Perhaps it’s like having the world’s leading evolutionary biologist—who on the side is also an accomplished painter that produces impressionist renditions of Darwin’s voyages—debate the slickest public relations representative of an Intelligent Design think tank, on the theory of evolution. Except that it’s the public relations representative who gets to lead and set the terms of the debate.
NPR’s grossly misleading introduction framed a narrow question: where did this out-of-the-blue violence against Israelis come from, and how can it be managed? The “Palestinian fury and Israeli response.” Ashbrook lets Steinberg start off the discussion. Steinberg is introduced as the founder of a group that “critiques NGO coverage of the Middle East and more” and as an expert on “conflict management.” Ashbrook is walking on egg shells, making sure not to say “occupation” as he feeds Steinberg softball questions, starting with: “How would you assess the conflict management that we’re seeing or not seeing now?”
Steinberg uses the usual maneuvers to confuse listeners. First, the conflict must be “managed” by obtaining security (for Israelis). Steinberg then appeals to the rhetoric of complexity: these “deep identity conflicts” aren’t to be resolved—even “trying to discuss the tradeoffs” of a resolution would be pointless. Reaching the security point where a “civil conversation” might some day be possible will “take generations.” But why is this erupting now? According to Steinberg, these bloodbaths instigated by Palestinians happen every ten years, starting in 1929, usually over Jerusalem. Religion and incitement from leaders and social media are what drives it. It’s a conflict where one side “doesn’t want the other side to win.” Israel can only manage the cycle of violence, which is fueled by deep-seated elements that lie beyond comprehension. Finally, Steinberg pulls the ISIS fear-mongering card. He invites listeners to drive three hours north of Jerusalem to the Galilee, where they “can see the fighting going on in Syria…can see Daesh fighting” and where “occasionally they [Daesh] come over our border.” There’s “tremendous violence” in “Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen”, and Steinberg says it’s “inevitable that it’s going to spill over.” This is what we’ve been seeing.
Ashbrook doesn’t challenge Steinberg’s ludicrous account, but delicately suggests that maybe all of this has something to do with the “Palestinian perception” that Israel “has been moving toward changing the security and control arrangements on Temple Mount.” Ashbrook, the otherwise excellent interviewer who has no trouble probing his guests on other topics, can’t ask a single pointed question when it comes to Israel and Palestine. Per usual, the American media treads carefully behind an Israeli lens.
On social media, Ashbrook selectively quoted fragments from Steinberg that sound remotely liberal-moderate, but that weren’t at all representative of Steinberg’s views. He quotes Steinberg’s assertion that “Ministers going up to the Temple Mount did not contribute to conflict management” but not that “There’s been a strong erosion of Jewish rights, this is a city we’ve been in for 3000 years.” The selected snippets maintain the impression that NPR delivers the leftist perspective that the right-wingers caricature it for. NPR’s debate is rigged toward the Israeli Hasbara viewpoint, and the traces are covered.
When NPR gives Steinberg this stage, it not only elevates Steinberg’s credentials to that of a legitimate expert and creates false symmetry between the two sides. It also sets up a nearly impossible task for Kashua, who joins the conversation after Steinberg’s opening.
Faced with the groundwork of distortions laid by Steinberg, the burden of proof that falls on Kashua is so immense—and so hard to package into radio sound bites—that it’s nearly impossible not to lose.
Steinberg can throw out casually: Occupation? It doesn’t exist. You think it affects the situation? Prove it. If the default assumption is that there isn’t such a thing as “occupation” (or that the term is wide open for debate), then proving its existence and linking it to the current situation is unimaginably harder than Steinberg’s use of the ISIS scare tactic, or declaration that these generational conflicts are too complex for listeners to understand.
There is an amusing interview with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida that illuminates some of these discursive traps. Derrida was interviewed by an American who appears to have pushed some of Derrida’s buttons. Derrida told the interviewer that it’s “very American” of her to “just give him [Derrida] a topic and ask him to speak”—to tell him “to elaborate” on a topic. Elaboration, according to Derrida, is: “Here’s a word, now go and work.” Derrida complains that “hurried, manipulative journalists” ask him to speak on command on topics like “Being” or “love”, just because he’s a philosopher, “as if there’s a ready-made discourse on Being or love.” But no discourse is ready-made, Derrida says.
Like “love” or “Being”, discussing the situation in Palestine without context is impossible. NPR and much of the American media fail to provide this context. Unlike for abstract philosophical concepts, the challenge here is much harder, since the very existence of occupation is questioned by the way the debate is framed.
Kashua has no choice. As an interviewee put on the spot, he has time to only quickly gesture to what is being missed in the avalanche of confusion that Steinberg created for listeners. Kashua suggests that instead of taking Steinberg’s three-hour drive to the Galilee, perhaps it’d be worthwhile to spend 15 minutes in East Jerusalem neighborhoods and see how the other half lives. But undoing Steinberg’s multiple layers of distortion, in the narrowly framed debate, is a monumental task. In a few minutes, what can you really say?
NPR’s failed conversation can be summarized with a pernicious version of Derrida’s pet peeve. This so-called “Occupation”, Mr. Kashua? And the idea that it might be relevant for the present? Elaborate.
Tom Ashbrook’s full introduction to the show:
“Nobody should have to live this way. Not Israelis, facing murderous attacks, random knife attacks and more, in Jerusalem and now well beyond. Not Palestinians, up against years of frustration, failed negotiation, roadblocks, crackdowns. What started in Palestinian attacks out of East Jerusalem – knives flashing suddenly in the streets, Israeli Jews dying, assailants, suspects, shot down – now threatens to rage wider. Secretary of State John Kerry, now heading to meet with Mideast leaders. This hour On Point, the bloodshed this time. Palestinian stabbings, Israeli response, and what now.” [emphasis added, Y.K.]As the recent discussions on Freight highlighted (part 1, part 2 and part 3 here), High Speed 1 (HS1) remains one of the few routes to London on which significant surplus freight capacity exists.
In that light, it is interesting to note that last week saw St Pancras welcome its first TGV – No. 951 ‘La Poste’, a postal/freight unit.
The visit was both a test ad a PR exercise, carried out by freight consortium EuroCarex to demonstrate the viability of freight services through the tunnel and onto HS1 itself – the operation of which EuroCarex themselves hope to begin in 2017. Indeed the TGV did not travel up HS1 under its own power, instead being hauled by two of Eurotunnel’s Mak diesel locos in the early hours of Tuesday morning (which, thanks to some creative shunting, departed the scene before press and passengers were around to take pictures).
Alongside Deutsche Bahn’s plans to begin non-Eurostar passenger services in 2015 using Siemens Velaros, however, it shows that the Eurotunnel/HS1 market is finally beginning broaden.
It also adds some welcome variety to the rolling stock traffic, although Eurostar’s own controversal decision (in French rail circles at least) to choose Velaro-Ds for its new fleet means that the Velaro body will almost certainly become the standard image of the cross-channel train for the upcoming generation of travellers and spotters.
All photos come courtesy of Sparkyscrum, who has our thanks.
The TGV at St Pancras, alongside a Eurostar 373
The TGV, viewed from across the mezzanine
A closer view of the TGVHey guys. I found Athena and Keighlyn floating around in my town and decided to do something a little special for ya’ll 🙂 I am in the process of uploading everyone to the exchange. Below you will find a photo shoot with generations 4-7. Yes, Gwen and Ari are YA in theses pics and both in the heir only picture. Only the one with the tattoo will actually be heir, but ya’ll don’t know who yet so I just put them both in there! 🙂 Enjoy!
Heirs from left to right:
Athena, Logan, Levi, Gwen and Arabell
Heirs and Spouses from left to right:
Athena and Keiglyn, Logan and Ezra, Levi and Autumn, Gwen and Arabell (Sisters)
Generation 4 and 5:
Athena, Keighlyn, and Logan
Generation 5 and 6:
Logan, Ezra, and Levi
Generation 6 and 7:
Levi, Autumn, Guinevere, and Arabell
AdvertisementsHome Daily News Traces of marijuana in bloodstream not enough…
Criminal Justice
Traces of marijuana in bloodstream not enough for DUI conviction, Arizona Supreme Court rules
Drivers whose blood carries trace amounts of a metabolite of marijuana can not be found guilty of driving while intoxicated unless there’s actual evidence that the drug impaired them, the Arizona Supreme Court found Tuesday.
The opinion (PDF) involves a driver stopped for a traffic violation, Capitol Media Services reports. Hrach Shilgevorkyan was given a blood test, and Carboxy-THC was found in his system. Shilgevorkyan told officers when stopped that he had smoked marijuana the night before, and he voluntarily submitted to a blood test. He was charged with driving while having an illegal drug in his body.
Image from Shutterstock.
A trial judge dismissed the charges against the man, who in a pretrial motion argued that the blood test did not reveal the presence of THC, or “its metabolite,” Hydroxy-THC. The state, which according to the opinion presented expert witness testimony that it did not test for that because it doesn’t “exist in the blood for very long” and converts quickly to Carboxy-THC, filed an appeal. According to Capital Media services, Carboxy-THC can remain in someone’s bloodstream for up to 30 days.
The opinion provides protection for Arizona’s more than 40,000 medical marijuana users and for drivers visiting from Washington or Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is legal, the article states.
The opinion reverses a 2012 memorandum decision (PDF) by the state appellate court, which found that state law prohibiting “driving with a proscribed drug or ‘its metabolite’ includes the metabolite Carboxy-THC.”
Arizona legalized medical marijuana in 2010. The Arizona Supreme Court opinion does not mention whether Shilgevorkyan had a prescription for medical marijuana, but does note that the state’s position could be problematic for residents who use the drug legally.
“This interpretation would create criminal liability regardless of how long the metabolite remains in the driver’s system or whether it has any impairing effect,” Justice Robert Brutinel wrote for the majority. His ruling notes that the way the law is worded, “if a metabolite could be detected five years after ingesting a proscribed drug, a driver who tested positive for trace elements of a non-impairing substance could be prosecuted.”Political junkies will be transfixed Monday when FBI Director James Comey talks about wiretaps and Russian interference to the House Intelligence Committee. But is it all a distraction?
President Donald Trump has launched the most activist presidency since Ronald Reagan's first months, almost 40 years ago. With the support of Congress, the president is rewriting the rules around health care; his first budget proposes staggering cuts to spending on domestic programs, while ramping up spending on defence; Congress and the administration will soon set about a wholesale reform of tax code.
But these issues, which should dominate the news every day, often take a back seat to efforts to temporarily ban visitors from certain Muslim countries, or Mr. Trump's claim that Barack Obama tapped his phone during the election campaign. As the headlines roar, work on the Trump agenda continues.
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Read more: Comey faces panel into Russia-Trump ties
Both Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees have said they have found no evidence of government surveillance of the Trump campaign, and Mr. Comey has reportedly declared off the record that the FBI did no such thing. He will probably say as much on the record Monday.
As for whether there are any ties between the Russian government and the Trump election team, or the Trump administration, for that matter, "a sure sign that the Russia Connection is not that big a deal is if Comey talks about it," Benjamin Wittes wrote on the weekend in Lawfare, where he is editor-in-chief.
Mr. Wittes predicts that, if Mr. Comey has concluded there are no real ties between the Kremlin and the West Wing, he will speak freely about what the FBI has found. While some of those findings might embarrass the President or his advisers, the damage should be minor.
If, however, the FBI is actively investigating a possible criminal conspiracy involving the Trump team and the Russian government, then the FBI director will protect the integrity of that investigation by refusing to discuss it.
But the claims and counterclaims around wiretaps and Russian interference, while wonderfully salacious, don't influence the day-to-day lives of citizens. The President's legislative agenda is a different story.
The administration and the Republican-led Congress are making good progress in their efforts to repeal Obamacare. The American Health Care Act, as the Republican substitute is called, would strip 14 million Americans of their health coverage within a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with another 10 million losing coverage over the coming decade.
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While moderate conservatives fear the bill goes too far, and extreme right-wingers complain it doesn't go far enough, GOP House Leader Paul Ryan is confident that he has found the "sweet spot," as he put it, that will allow the legislation to pass in both the House and Senate.
"We feel like we're on track," he told Fox News Sunday. "We are right where we want to be." The House could pass the bill as early as Thursday.
Congress is also grappling with a proposed budget that the White House sent to the Hill last week. President Trump's first budget would preserve social security payments, while increasing defence spending by 10 per cent, at the cost of savage cuts elsewhere.
Foreign aid would be slashed by 28 per cent, and the State Department budget would be cut by a similar amount.
The Environmental Protection Agency would lose 31 per cent of its funding, including all funding to fight climate change.
"I think the President was fairly straightforward – we're not spending money on that any more," Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters. "We consider that to be a waste of your money."
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Other departments also face serious cuts, and some programs would be eliminated altogether, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding for public broadcasting.
Not all of this will come to pass: Congress is ultimately responsible for the budget, and senators and representatives will protect local interests. But a Republican Congress will have a hard time saying no to increases in defence spending, or letting the deficit balloon, so cuts are coming, one way or another.
The President and his allies in Congress are also committed to sweeping tax reform, which could include a tax on imports – very bad news for Canada. And there are many other commitments: renegotiating trade agreements, the wall on the southern border, demands for increased defence spending from America's allies.
This activist President may horrify with his mendacious tweets or his rude treatment of foreign leaders, but the agenda is what matters. That agenda is being implemented at full speed.The growth of Islamic extremist activity in Latin America is a major security threat to our country. And Iran’s influence in Latin America demands a new national security strategy in the region.
That is all according to a new report released by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonpartisan public policy research organization.
The report, authored by David Grantham, senior fellow on national security at the center, looked into the growing influence of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran in Latin America.
IRANIAN MINISTER'S TRIP TO CUBA, LATIN AMERICA RAISES CONCERN ABOUT ITS INFLUENCE IN REGION
In regards to Iran, the report warns of the prospect of a retaliatory attack on the U.S., saying, “The Islamic Republic has the capability and infrastructure to strike the United States from Latin America, but experts disagree over whether it would take that risk.”
As Islam grows in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in places like Brazil, Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, experts say Islamic radicalization in parts of these regions is growing as well – which is particularly disconcerting because of their proximity to the United States.
Of particular concern is the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, 800 miles north of Buenos Aires, where the Islamic militant group Hezbollah has set up its most important base outside of Lebanon.
But other threats include Trinidad and Tobago, a small island nation off the coast of Venezuela that has become a breeding ground for ISIS. About 70 of the 100 Latin Americans who have joined ISIS originated from the island nation, which is about 1,600 miles southeast of Florida.
A major concern is Iran’s growing influence in Latin America, where some leaders have shown a willingness to work with a country that has a long history of hostile relations with the U.S.
In March of 2015, Homeland Security Director Gen. John Kelly, who was then commander of the U.S. Southern Command, addressed the Senate Committee on Armed Services and said Iran has opened a number of embassies and “cultural centers” in the region to gain a foothold in Latin America.
SYRIAN MIGRANTS SHOW THAT LATIN AMERICAN HUMAN SMUGGLING PIPELINE HAS GONE GLOBAL
“I'm a little bit suspicious of these – of this activity, just because there is such a vast difference between the two countries – or the two regions, two cultures,” Kelly said. “So, we keep an – we keep a watchful eye on them.”
Kelly, however, did say the threat was not imminent.
The report argues the Trump administration should shift priorities in the regions toward disrupting financial networks of Islamists because it claims “the threat is worsening – not “waning” as the Obama administration claimed about Iran in 2013.”
Grantham told Fox News the report proves the threat from terrorism in the western hemisphere is not just from "lone wolf" radicalization or loosely affiliated jihadists tinkering on social media.
“Islamists are organized, well-funded and operating sophisticated operations against the United States only a few hundred miles south of our border,” he said.
The U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for U.S. military activities in Central and South America and parts of the Caribbean, did not comment on the report but pointed to comments Navy Admiral Kurt Walter Tidd made at the University of Texas last week. Tidd said the country has to do more than stopping terrorists from heading to Latin America or preventing homegrown attacks in the hemisphere.
“We also have to do a better job addressing the conditions that allow those pathways to exist,” he said, “and those extremist messages to resonate in the first place.”
You can see his full comments here and here.P.K. Subban knows how to dish out an assist. And a compliment.
After the star defenseman registered a goal and two assists as the Nashville Predators took Game 1 of their Stanley Cup Playoff series against the St. Louis Blues Wednesday, he took a little time to brighten Pierre McGuire's day.
After Subban gave the reporter a detailed interview on the Predators' playoff success (they are now 5-0 this postseason) and his thoughts on the team's leadership, he had a little opinion on McGuire's presentation.
"You know what else is true? You get better looking every day," Subban said to a smiling McGuire. "What's the secret?"
"I go to the gym like you," McGuire replied.
This wasn't the first tender moment the two shared after a game. Subban planted a smooch on McGuire in 2014.
An interview with Subban is never mundane.
Watch: Youtube VideoForge of Gods is a free to play multiplayer fantasy card strategy RPG offering fast paced, thrilling, and addictive gameplay. Gods are not born, they are made by you! Collect and train as many monsters as you can to assemble the greatest team and burst through hordes of enemies in challenging strategic battles! Conjure powerful dragons, sturdy warriors and exotic beasts to fight for you in the land of Pangea, and let your enemies tremble before you. Rush to forge your own gods in this huge and dangerous fantasy world, and have a load of fun while doing it! To help spread the word about Forge of Gods, Panoramik has teamed up with MMOGames to bring you this Forge of Gods Guardians of the Universe Pack Giveaway! Get your key now, and get a bunch of goodies for Forge of Gods!
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This is a limited code giveaway to be given out on a first-come-first-serve basis. It will run as long as there are keys available. If you have any issues, please contact us.Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived for work Tuesday at the Pentagon just three hours after he arrived back in the country at 3 am local time, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Mattis returned from a number of foreign meetings, including the NATO defense ministerial conference in Brussels, the Munich Security Conference, a meeting with Emirati authorities in Abu Dhabi, and a visit to Iraq.
He delivered several important messages on the trip, telling NATO allies, “America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to the alliance, each of your capitals needs to show its support for our common defense.”
The defense secretary also reassured Iraqis that the U.S. is “not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil.” Aside from reassuring commanders, Mattis visited the country to “get current on the situation there, the political situation, the enemy situation and the friendly situation.” He continued, “we’re going to make certain we’ve got good shared situational awareness of what we face as we work together, fight alongside each other to destroy ISIS. That’s the point about going in there.”
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Send tips to saagar@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.Charlotte, N.C. — The neo-Nazis who planned to descend on Charlotte in December, like they did on Charlottesville, won’t be rolling into town after all, it appears.
Organizing group Anti-Communist Action (Anticom) posted on Twitter that the event, which was to feature speakers and a torch march, was cancelled due to “safety concerns.”
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In light of safety concerns, we'll no longer be holding an event in Marshall Park. This was agreed upon by both organizers and guests. — Anti-Communist Action (@AnticomOfficial) September 28, 2017
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department retweeted Anticom’s announcement, adding that it was attempting to contact organizers of the event to get more information.
Update: This was posted about an hour ago. #CMPD is still trying to reach this organization to get more information. https://t.co/iNvdeOm7DC — CMPD News (@CMPD) September 28, 2017
The announcement comes just after the rally’s most well known white supremacist speakers, Richard Spencer, announced he was no longer going to attend. He also cited safety concerns, saying it was too dangerous to hold it at an outdoor venue.
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The plan was to hold it at Marshall Park after the organizers failed to secure a private, indoor facility.
1/ Regarding the Charlotte really: I happily agreed to speak back in the spring, |
a fun thought has now at least become what seems to be a legitimate possibility.
From GQ:
He's given the question more thought. "A year ago," he says, "it started coming up more and more. There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, 'Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful.' I didn't want to be flippant—'We'll have three days off for a weekend! No taxes!'" So, after all that consideration, Johnson doesn't hesitate when I ask him whether he honestly might one day give up his life as the highest-paid movie star on earth—which is unquestionably easier, more fun, and more lucrative than being president of the United States—in order to run for office. "I think that it's a real possibility," he says solemnly.
This after The Rock decided not to endorse either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump a year ago because he didn't want to upset any fans or sway opinion in one direction or another.
As far as how he feels about key issues of the day, Johnson did not get into most of those with Caity Weaver, the author of the feature, though he felt comfortable enough to address the Muslim ban that remains in legal limbo.
"I completely disagree with it," he said without hesitation. "I believe in our national security to the core, but I don't believe in a 'ban' that bans immigrants. I believe in inclusion. Our country was built on that, and it continues to be made strong by that. And the decision felt like a snap judgment. I feel like the majority of, if not all, Americans feel that protection is of huge importance. But the ideology and the execution [of national-security initiatives] is where we really have to be careful of not making those snap decisions, because there's a tail effect... Within 24 hours, we saw a 'tail effect.' It grew to heartache, it grew to a great deal of pain, it grew to a great deal of confusion, and it had a lot of people scrambling."
Johnson singled out proving oneself as a leader who takes responsibility for every citizen of the country as a primary charge. He went on to note that inclusivity is also important, particularly when it comes to those with differing ideologies.
"I feel like one of the qualities of a great leader is not shutting people out. I miss that part. Even if we disagree, we've got to figure it out. Because otherwise I feel, as an American, all I hear and all I see in the example you're setting is 'Now I'm shutting you out. And you can't come.' [Disagreement] informs us. The responsibility as president—I [would] take responsibility for everyone. Especially when you disagree with me. If there's a large number of people disagreeing, there might be something I'm not seeing, so let me see it. Let me understand it."
With three years until the next election and Johnson still rolling as an actor and entrepreneur, President Rock is far from reality at this point. But one wonders what it would be like it if it did transpire one day.
Let's just say 4 a.m. tweets would be drastically different coming from @TheRock. And they'd probably come with selfies.On This Day
Wednesday 17th May 1922
96 years ago
The first English woman ever to compete in a motor race, Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt (40), died. In 1905 she established the record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver by driving a De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back over two days. Later that year she set the Ladies World Land speed record at Brighton and the following year she increased it to 90.88 mph (146.26 km/h) at the Blackpool Speed Trial. Levitt's book The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women who Motor or Who Want to Motor, recommended that women should "carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving" so they may "hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic", thus inventing the rear view mirror before it was introduced by manufacturers in 1914. She also advised women travelling alone to carry a handgun; her recommendation was an automatic Colt, as in her opinion its relative lack of recoil made it particularly suitable for women.Yes, this blog is subjective and will start fires, but I’m going to give you a list of the worst social establishments in Washington, D.C. It’s not necessarily the bars themselves or their staff, but sometimes it’s just the people attracted to the spot. Sure, it’s not tech, but this is something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for days. So here we are at last:
5.Town Hall – Glover Park
Rating: Bourgeoisie
We’re no longer in high school, so we’re not allowed to make fun of people for how they dress. Of course, if everyone in your bar came by wearing letter jackets and cheerleader outfits, you might feel a little left out or critical of the group. Meet Town Hall: A Georgetown establishment known for its old money ties and absurd attire. Don’t get me wrong, Town Hall is an incredible bar with a giant patio and friendly staff who know how to serve customers.
Of course, then you realize something’s different. Am I the only one this summer who didn’t buy a $60 Lacoste polo and J. Crew khaki shorts? Shit, I coincidentally also forgot to wear the $150 Sperry’s I bought for my dad’s yacht. This bar, sponsored nightly by the Ivy League (or Ivy League rejects), is like entering Gatsby’s house without a pocket square; you just feel out of place and unable to take your eyes off the “sameness.” Sure, the people are friendly…while they look down their noses at you. Run.
4. Lost Society – U Street
Rating: Overcrowded half-open button down
This heralded spot on U Street is a great place to meet people simply because everyone else says that (meaning: sort of, but not at all.). So there you are, in a line waiting 20 minutes to enter, only to realize the place is already twice-past fire code once you get in. IF you manage to find your way to a bartender (and good luck), you’ll have your ass grabbed by at least five people, have knocked noggins with two, and stepped on everyone’s toes to get there.
One of my socialite friends said, “Yeah, but that’s why it’s fun.” Considering I don’t feel any more claustrophobic than the next person, and I feel like I want to die as soon as I set foot in this ego and popped-collar-filled establishment, I find her assessment absolutely ridiculous. Go on a week day when you can actually walk around and breathe fresh oxygen from their beautiful patio. Their brunch is fantastic, and their first floor bar is a great place for a cocktail and dinner. I held my birthday there this past June (On a Tuesday).
3. RedRocks (Rooftop) – H street
Rating: Tiptoe Around the Rooftop Bartenders
Let’s get the point. Most people go out to be served drinks by friendly people, chat with friends, and flirt with the rest of the DC population. Unfortunately for this lovely and enormous establishment, the rooftop bartenders either have resting-bitch face syndrome or simply hate their customers. A group of us had a pleasant going away there on a Friday this summer (no, not understaffed evening at all), and the bartenders continually leered at us, forgot about us, or simply gave us attitude and made us feel bad for the imposition of requesting service. The main floor restaurant is an entirely different story, and I’ve never had problems, but blackballing any restaurant or bar based on indignant staff should be fair game to anyone. Sure, it was one night, but it left enough of a bad taste in our mouths to not want to go back.
2. Tap & Parlour – U Street
Rating: Where the hell did she go? Is that dish soap in my beer?
Tap & Parlour already has less than stellar reviews, so this should be no surprise for anyone. The first thing you’ll notice is that the outdoor patio tables look unkempt and in disarray, with beer-sponsored umbrellas that don’t generally match. The indoor bar is actually fairly classy–a wood-filled space with a nice lounge atmosphere with comfortable couches and chairs. Most people go here for a quick drink before a concert or a gathering with a group of friends or family.
Of the several times I’ve gone, the SERVICE has always been a horror story. Ordering one round of drinks with table service can sometimes take up to twenty minutes (not exaggerating). Once we asked for a the Heineken draft special ($2, which is amazing) and they brought us BOTTLES for full price instead. You have to be kidding, right? They didn’t even charge us correctly for it later. When they did get us our draft beers (finally), they literally tasted like Dawn dish soap. I’m all for a little extra lemon, but I’d be more appreciative of the fresh produce kind. If you’re going to Tap & Parlour, sit at the bar and don’t expect fast service. Their food can be a bit dry as well.
1. Sign of the Whale – Dupont
Rating: OMG, what is that smell?! Seriously, a Miller special?
Bar marketing is a thing in DC, and if you were ever 21 in this city, you definitely were invited to at least three Sign of the Whale “happy hours.” You know, those things where you get a special wrist band for a crappy buffet and $4 rails and $3 Miller Awful? That’s what Sign of the Whale is for. Period. So what’s the problem? This seedy Dupont Circle bar (right next to a Gentleman’s Club) is always overcrowded with interns. Besides this possible nuisance, it always ***ing smells. I’ve not been there once without smelling vomit or piss throughout the bar. It’s a sticky place much like McFadden’s, but it’s arguably worse in terms of social scene. Most people I know get there and want to leave immediately. If it’s not the smell, it’s how overcrowded the bar is.Outside the gates of the Dachau concentration camp, scripted on a memorial commemorating the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust, are the words “Never Again”. Yet, modern history is haunted by acts of brutal violence from the mass killings in Kosovo, Cambodia, and Burundi to the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. American leaders continue to vow repeatedly “Never Again”; yet repeatedly fail to stop genocide.
As recent as April 2012, President Obama announced the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention Board proclaiming, “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” Yet today, the Obama Administration remains reluctant to designate the Islamic State’s (ISIS) atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria as genocide, reserving a possible “genocide” designation solely for the Yazidi community. While it is unequivocal that the Islamic State has unleashed atrocities rising to the level of genocide against Yazidis, it is no less true for Christians and other religious minorities.
Presidents of the past have made proclamations similar to that of President Obama, yet they too failed to act in the face of genocide. In 1979, President Carter, having ignored the mass killings in Cambodia, swore, “Never again will the world stand silent…fail to act in time to prevent this terrible act of genocide.” Five years later, President Reagan similarly swore, “I say in a forthright voice, Never Again!” In 1991, President George H.W. Bush, after a visit to Auschwitz, was moved, as he described, “with the determination not just to remember but also to act.” Running against President H.W. Bush in 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned, “If the horrors of the Holocaust taught us anything, it is the high cost of remaining silent and paralyzed in the face of genocide.” Yet during his Presidency, President Clinton apologetically admitted, “We did not act quickly enough after the killing began [in Rwanda].... We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide.” After the Clinton Administration failed to intervene in Rwanda, Susan Rice, the current U.S. National Security Advisor, said: “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” And yet history continues to prove that American leaders repeatedly fail to count the cost of inaction and apathy in the face of genocide.
Samantha Power, the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in her book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, that “The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred.” Through careful study, she debunked the argument that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century.
Yet in the face of an ongoing genocide at the hands of Islamic jihadists in Syria and Iraq, U.S. leaders are faced with whether “never again” will carry any meaning. To date, the United States’ response seems similar to genocides of the past century: shamefully inadequate.
The word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who made it his life’s work to see that the United Nations make genocide the subject of an international treaty. Through his work, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide became international law on December 9, 1948. It took the United States nearly 40 years, under President Reagan in November 1988, to ratify the treaty. This is despite Senator William Proxmire taking to the Senate floor every day it was in session for 19 years to urge ratification of the U.N. convention. During the 19-year-delay, Senator Proxmire spoke about the deaths of a million Nigerians in the Biafran War, the murder of more than a million Bengalis in Pakistan, the Tutsis murdering more than 100,000 Hutu in Burundi, and the killing of nearly two million Cambodians at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
But despite implementing the Genocide Convention, since 1988 over 800,000 people were slaughtered in the Rwanda genocide and hundreds of thousands more perished in Bosnia. During these tragedies, the U.S. Government seemed more preoccupied with avoiding labeling the violence as “genocide” – and thus triggering its obligation to respond – than actually preventing deaths.
So why is the U.S. Government so hesitant to label the Islamic State’s atrocities against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria genocide? Because doing so would require it to act.
A declassified Department of Defense paper dated May 1, 1994 reveals that during the Rwandan genocide—after an estimated 300,000 Rwandans had already been killed—government officials warned against designating the atrocities in Rwanda as genocide because doing so would force the U.S. Government to act. More specifically, the discussion advised “Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit USG to ‘do something.’”
What will the annuals of government documents reveal when future Americans look back on the United States’ response, or lack there of, to the mounds of evidence that the Islamic State conducted genocide against the Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria? Will history reveal a similar stain on the U.S. Government’s inability to act on behalf of those who are mercilessly slaughtered?
The U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These acts can include killing, causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction (e.g., denying the group basic necessitates, destroying properties, etc.), imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (e.g., killing of the male population while forcibly converting and/or raping the female population), or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (e.g., selling the children of the religious minorities in sex and labor markets).
Modern technology no longer allows world leaders to claim ignorance of the Islamic State’s genocidal acts. The intent element of genocide is easily satisfied by the Islamic State’s stated ideology to eliminate all individuals who do not conform to its interpretation of Islam—to eradicate those whom it considers infidels. Some claim that the option to pay the “jizya” or tax places the atrocities against Christians outside the definition of genocide. However, as Nina Shea, an expert on religious persecution, correctly asserts “the payment of jizya, is a ruse, for the tax is raised until it becomes unpayable and property and lives are taken after all. Hence, last summer, Mosul’s bishops chose exile for their communities, rather than attend an ISIS meeting to learn of its jizya terms.” Furthermore, the Islamic State made its intent very clear when it warned Christians in a video, “You will not have safety, even in your dreams, until you embrace Islam.”
Significant video and first-hand evidence also exposes the Islamic State’s actions sufficient for a finding of genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria who refuse to conform to its radical definition of Islam. The Islamic State has intentionally destroyed large Christian communities, churches, monasteries, and homes. The Islamic State marked the properties of Christians with the Arabic letter “N” calling for complete eradication of the Christian community in Iraq and Syria either through death or threat of death. According to Canon Andrew White, the Vicar of Baghdad, the Islamic State has mercilessly beheaded and crucified Christian and Yazidi children. Researchers have found mass graves of Yazidis systematically targeted and slaughtered by the Islamic State. The Islamic State released a pamphlet in 2014 describing how its affiliates could take women and girls as young as nine years old into sex slavery. Once in captivity, these women and girls are often forcibly converted and expected to raise any children born from their rapists under the Islamic State’s strict ideology.
These acts of rape and other sexual crimes against women and children, accompanying mass executions targeting males of these religious minorities, are nothing less than intentional acts of genocide. We can no longer as a nation hide our head in the sand and claim we are unaware of the evidence—we are reminded of it daily as a panoply of evidence floods our e-mail inboxes, social media pages, and TVs.
Designating the atrocities as genocide is an important step to unlocking a robust tool kit of options for both preventing further genocide and punishing the perpetrators of genocide. Under law, the designation would legally obligate the United States to “prevent and punish.” We should not fear this legal obligation; instead we should be a nation that leads by example.
Designating the atrocities in Syria and Iraq as genocide does not equate to a legal obligation for military intervention, though often prevention does require some sort of military force. Potential actions include but are not limited to the United States taking steps to have the U.N. Security Council designate the atrocities as genocide, rallying support for troops in the United Nations and other countries to protect the innocent, threatening prosecution of perpetrators through international tribunals, using intelligence assets to block recruitment tools and calls to violence over the Internet and radio waves, freezing foreign assets of perpetrators, and imposing travel bans for the perpetrator and supporters of the Islamic State.
The designation also allows the United States to bring an action for intervention before the U.N. Security Council, which in return can authorize use of military force and other diplomatic, humanitarian, and strategic measure to address the crisis.
It is critical that the United States lead by example designating the Islamic State atrocities as genocide for the Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq. The cost of inaction and apathy in the face of genocide is too high. We must ensure that we no longer promise “Never Again” while simultaneously turning a blind eye to genocide. The lives and ancient cultural heritage of Middle East Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities depend on our doing so. As Samantha Power, the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, once said: if genocide is “not the U.S.’s problem, it’s nobody’s problem.”
To the hundreds of thousands of Christians suffering the Islamic State’s genocide, we can make the difference. It is our sacred responsibility to act. At the ACLJ, we are aggressively advocating on Capitol Hill and across the globe. We just filed a critical amicus brief at the European Court of Human Rights to protect Christians fleeing this genocide.
Now, we are working in Congress, demanding President Obama and the U.S. State Department recognize the atrocities the Islamic State is committing against Christians as genocide and provide them critical legal protections. Add your name to our petition today.They call them “flying toilets” – the bags of human poo that are thrown out of the windows of the thousands of small shacks that make up Nairobi’s slums.
The largest of Nairobi’s informal settlements is Kibera, just three miles from the city centre. An estimated one million people live there, and toilet facilities are scarce. The bare earth streets are carved with gullies: equal parts open sewer and rubbish dump. The nearest toilet for most people is a hole they have dug in a bare patch of ground at the back of their shack.
But Josiah Omotto, a managing trustee of the Umande trust, has high ambitions: he wants Nairobi to become an open defecation-free city. It’s a big challenge to set for yourself. “If open defecation was banned in Nairobi today, every member of the informal settlements would have to queue for two days to use the existing toilet facilities,” he says.
Umande and the British charity Practical Action have devised a solution that turns the mountains of odorous human waste from a problem into an asset.
They are building bio-centres – toilet facilities where human slurry is collected and put in a digester which collects the methane emitted from poo as it breaks down. The methane is sold back to the slum dwellers as biogas, used for cooking within the centres or to power hot showers.
“Every individual creates 300g of human waste each day, and 60% of Nairobi’s four million inhabitants live in its informal settlements – that’s 2.4 million people,” says Omotto. “What we have in Nairobi is 720,000 kg of shit. We want to turn it into biogas so that we can tackle the energy crisis.”
Methane is a greenhouse gas. If released into the atmosphere it is many times worse for the environment than CO2. Steps are being taken worldwide to reduce emissions but since we humans are likely to carry on defecating for many years to come, human poo could be considered the ultimate source of renewable energy. It’s much better for the environment to burn the methane from poo than from fossil fuels, after all.
Umande and its partners have built 57 biocentres in Nairobi, which have so far managed to collect at least 60,000 kg of poo, according to Omotto.
Some biocentres also have other facilities incorporated within the same block, including spaces for recreation, social activities and small businesses.
The Stara biocentre in Kibera is run by women who also manage an orphan school. At the bottom of the centre they offer hot showers powered by biogas, and the first floor is let out as a legal advice centre. The orphanage earns 45,000 Kenyan shillings a month from the biocentre, which they use to fund their work with the children.
Aidah Ebrahim, project director for Umande, says that between 350 and 1,000 people visit each of the toilet blocks every day, paying three cents each to use the loo, and a few cents more for a hot shower, if those are available.
But the project was not without its challenges. Transporting heavy building materials across dirt streets riven with gullies and piled high with detritus is not easy, and theft of building materials is commonplace in Kibera. Umande held negotiations and the community helped to transport the building materials, and keep them secure while the facility was being built.
“Most of the projects are funded by grants from donors, but since last year we have partnered with financial institutions who are providing loans to pay for future sanitation projects,” says Ebrahim. “This came after we definitively proved that the projects are bankable, profitable and scalable.”
Umande is working with engineers from Denmark and the Netherlands on converting the bioslurry into fertiliser, and to see how we can recycle the water. They are also working with a private company from Thailand to bag large quantities of gas for resale to small businesses in the city. In the future, Umande would like to incorporate solar panels to buildings and biodigesters to existing toilets so that they do not have to build completely new facilities to create energy.
Practical Action is replicating the project in other countries. In Vattavan, Sri Lanka, they power their digester with animal waste, providing cooking gas and lighting in rural areas. One of the project’s fans is Sakunthaladev Kathiravetpillai who lives with her husband and four children. She used to spend each day collecting fire wood for cooking but now she uses biogas and has more time to grow food, or earn money for the family. She uses the dried out manure that is left after the poo has decomposed as fertiliser on her vegetable garden.
This week, Umande broke ground on the first of a series of toilet block biocentres in a slum in Kisumu, near Lake Victoria. City officials reached out to the group after seeing the success they’d had with the biocentres in Kibera. It seems the renewable energy potential of poo is an idea worth spreading.
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Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.SARAH Palin has opened the way for a class-A nutter to grab the Republican presidential nomination.
After months of will-she-won’t-she speculation, the former Alaskan governor confirmed she would not stand, probably because of all that stuff about her being a bit of a coke-addled skank.
Experts say the move now leaves a gap in the race for the sort of charismatic, fruit-loop moron who will make Republican right-wingers want to touch themselves in the bad place.
US political analyst Helen Archer said: “We still have Michelle Bachmann in the race, but it turns out she gets terrible migraines that cause her to have black-outs and hallucinations. And while Americans can certainly be imaginative at the ballot box, I suspect her insane star may be on the wane.
“Rick Perry seems to be nicely mad on a lot of key issues but seems more of a George W Bush than a Pat Robertson. A bit thick rather than terrifyingly unhinged.
“That leaves Mitt Romney, who can often seem relatively stable. He’s a Mormon, which means he believes Joseph Smith translated a golden book given to him by an angel by staring into the bottom of stovepipe hat, which – I grant you – is pretty fucking mad, but at least he doesn’t rub it in your face.
“What all this means is there is now a huge opening for a firey-eyed, frothing loon who will ban Modern Family and declare war on China unless they stop making pirate copies of Grease 2.”
Archer added: “I don’t think it matters whether it’s a man or a woman as long as you get the impression that at any moment the top of their head could flip open and a little bright orange demon will pop up and ask for a cup of tea.
“I’m actually quite excited.”Twitter users praise the Pope for warning politicians against corruption while some criticize President Aquino for taking a swipe at bishops''silence' during the Arroyo administration
Published 12:47 PM, January 16, 2015
MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – Ouch, that hurt.
Of all the topics Pope Francis touched on in his Malacañang speech – from Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) to migration and indigenous peoples – one comment drew the most praise from Twitter-savvy Filipinos.
“I hope that this prophetic summons will challenge everyone, at all levels of society, to reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor,” the Pope said before an audience that included the country’s top politicians.
The pontiff’s remark in his first ever speech in the Philippines on Friday, January 16, hit a nerve for Filipino Twitter users, with the message resonating in a country outraged by corruption scandals at the highest levels.
The Pope made the comment as he stressed the importance of social justice, criticizing what he called the “glaring and indeed scandalous, social inequalities.”
Watch his whole speech below.
Instantly reacting to the speech, Filipino netizens said the comment was a “memo to politicians” especially Vice President Jejomar Binay, accused of rigging bids, using dummies and amassing wealth from infrastructure projects in Makati when he was mayor of the country’s financial capital. Binay is running for president in 2016.
Binay was among the guests at the Palace event addressed by the Pope.
Filipino volleyball player and TV host Gretchen Ho tweeted that the Pope’s comment was “somewhat embarrassing” but necessary.
It's quite embarassing that the Pope has to highlight corruption in his speech. But yes, we needed that. #truth #reality #PopeFrancisPH — Gretchen Ho (@gretchenho) January 16, 2015
Social media users pointed out that right after the Pope made his corruption comment, the TV pool coverage cut to the reaction of Binay.
Pope Francis: "Reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor." *Binay's face* Lol pic.twitter.com/SMz1QYZgkx — Landerxx (@landerthunder) January 16, 2015
“@rapplerdotcom: Pope Francis: Reject all forms of corruption that divert resources from poor." FYI @VPJojoBinay — Ish Abat (@ishfillet) January 16, 2015
The Pope challenged the politicians to reject corruption that abuses the poor and the camera focuses on Binay...lol — ulupong (@srmntmtbs_) January 16, 2015
Your pope calls for honesty, to reject corruption! And the Binays, Revillas, Estradas, Enrile were like — Ammi Postrero (@queenammilada) January 16, 2015
I'm guessing the blood pressure of VP Binay shot up when he heard Pope Francis say "reject all forms of corruption". malaking dagok! — WhatAWasteofAdMoney (@wawam) January 16, 2015
Others though said that President Benigno Aquino III should get the Pope’s message.
Pope Francis: "Stop corruption that divert resources away from the poor." In your face, Noynoy! — Marjohara Tucay (@marjohara) January 16, 2015
Some netizens noted the irony of the Pope making his speech at the presidential palace, the country’s seat of power, with politicians in attendance.
Pope Francis talked about corruption infront of the most corrupt people in The Philippines. IRONYYYYYY — Sandy Aranas (@sandyaranas) January 16, 2015
Filipinos said they hoped that politicians will heed the words of the so-called "rock star pope" instead of just jostling to shake his hand, getting photo opportunities, and putting their names and faces on banners welcoming the Pope.
Pope Francis remarks on Corruption in the Philippines. Corrupt political leaders is drenched by the rain of shame. #LoloKiko — Miguel Lopez (@KidManila) January 16, 2015
Makonsensya naman po, si Pope Francis na ang nagsabing iwasan na ang corruption! — the third (@thiiirdangel) January 16, 2015
O sabi ni Pope to reject all forms of corruption. Yung mga humalik dyan, included kayo ha! #PopeFrancisPH — cuisinera (@cuisinera) January 16, 2015
Major corruption scandals hit the Philippines in the past years, starting with the multi-million peso scam involving senators and congressmen’s development funds known as the “pork barrel scam.” Lawmakers are accused of conniving with bogus NGOs to funnel development funds for the poor into their own pockets.
The Vice President also faces several corruption scandals, and is accused of owning a lavish estate complete with gardens similar to Britain’s royal Kew Gardens and an airconditioned piggery.
The President’s allies and friends including police chief Alan Purisima are also accused of corruption. The Ombudsman suspended Purisima pending an investigation into allegations he influenced the outcome of a questionable contract the police entered into with a courier service.
Aquino speech ‘inappropriate’
While netizens welcomed the Pope’s remark, some questioned Aquino’s remarks.
The President spoke before the Pope took the podium, delivering a speech where he criticized the local Catholic Church’s “silence” on “the previous administration’s abuses.” It was an obvious reference to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now detained over corruption charges.
Watch his speech below.
Some bishops were perceived to be close to Arroyo, and even got implicated in the so-called “Pajero Bishops” controversy for accepting luxury vehicles from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
Aquino is fond of criticizing Arroyo in his speeches but some Twitter users including Rappler Thought Leader and Ateneo political science instructor RR Rañeses felt that he should have spared the visit of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
in the spirit of mercy and compassion, i'll just think of President Aquino's speech this morning as "sorta inappropriate" — RR Rañeses (@residentrebel) January 16, 2015
Yung speech ni Pres. Aquino ang daming angst. Pati pagbatikos sa kanya ng ilang pari "isinumbong" sa Santo Papa. Masyadong malambot. — Emmanuel de Leon (@EmmandeLeon) January 16, 2015
The man has balls. - RT @gmanews: PNoy criticizes Filipino clergy in front of Pope Francis http://t.co/Rtaf1ZBkt1 pic.twitter.com/EUGeBv3GhQ — Manny del Rosario (@mannydr) January 16, 2015
Kailangan talaga banggitin ang nakaraang administrasyon tuwing speech ni Aquino ano? Patapos na termino nya pero walang katapusan patama nya — Jazz Pangilinan (@JazzPangilinan) January 16, 2015
To attack some bishops & mention of Marcos regime in Aquino's speech to the Holiness is not the proper venue......@ANCALERTS @Pontifex — nc sabio (@leonsab) January 16, 2015
Aquino's speech is off. — Leland Dela Cruz (@lelanddelacruz) January 16, 2015
The President contrasted the Church’s “silence” during the Arroyo administration with its role of standing up to the Marcos dictatorship where it acted as “the Church of the poor and oppressed.” He saw now during his administration, Church leaders often criticize him.
Some though praised the President’s speech.
President Aquino has an excellent speech — Majeszty♔ (@JessecaBombita) January 16, 2015
Great speech Mr. President. It was the perfect venue for revealing the hypocrisy of the Philippine Catholic Church #PopeFrancisPH — Reignell Potter (@reignell) January 16, 2015
What's the big fuss over @noynoyaquino's speech? Was it not the truth? Does the truth choose the time it has to be spoken? #PopeFrancisPH — Jong D. G. (@attyjong) January 16, 2015
What are your thoughts on the Pope and the President’s speech? Let us know in the comments section below. – Rappler.comWhat is a slush fund?
What is a slush fund? Wiki has this to say
A slush fund, also known as a black fund, is any fund or account maintained for corrupt or illegal purposes, especially in the political sphere. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from other funds that are used for legitimate purposes. They may be employed by government or corporate officials as part of efforts to discreetly pay influential people in return for preferential treatment
A Reddit discussion sounds these thoughts:
It's off-the-books money used for illicit purposes, especially in politics. It comes from donors but is hidden from the public and regulators.
Sometimes you want to pay someone money without anyone asking annoying questions like "why are you paying this person" or "who are they and how do you know them" or "how did you even get this money in the first place." A slush fund is when you pull that off by making it hard to figure out where money came from, where it went, or how much there is.
We will look at little at the mechanics of how slush funds work, then we will look at the biggest example of a slush fund in American political history, the Clinton Foundation, we'll extend that look to the Democratic party, and we'll end by looking at other government oriented slush funds. While slush funds can be run by any organization, our Information War take will be limited to political corruption
How do they work?
Most of the time, slush funds are simply accounts that are hidden from public oversight. This can take many forms. They are usually established under someone else's names and hidden in places where they wouldn't be easily found. Many slush funds are held in foreign banks, where they are protected by local confidentiality laws. In most cases, the money is deposited in slush funds in secret. In other cases, the money is deposited under a seemingly legal facade. For example, many politicians have deposited money by creating fake jobs. In this setup, |
connection.com.
CBS4’s Rick Sallinger is a Peabody award winning reporter who has been with the station more than two decades doing hard news and investigative reporting. Follow him on Twitter @ricksallinger.Did Russia interfere with the U.S. presidential election?
Signs point to yes.
That is an unbelievable outrage.
I support an independent and serious investigation into this question.
I also support the U.S. responding to this outrageous action, which could mean freezing the assets of Vladimir Putin’s allies in the U.S., recalling the Russian ambassador in Washington or other diplomatic responses.
But to borrow a phrase from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, let’s “dispense with this fiction” that “Russia determined the outcome of the presidential election.”
That lazy conclusion has no facts to back it up. You might even call it “fake news.”
Here’s what Russia didn’t do:
Set up a private email server for the future Democratic nominee for President while she was secretary of state
Block Hillary Clinton from setting up official government email while serving as secretary of state (to handle classified info)
Illegally delete tens of thousands of work-related and classified emails from a private server under congressional subpoena
Require Hillary Clinton to lie to the public and Congress (while under oath) for over a year about her private server and her mishandling of classified information
Invite the Clintons to create a charitable foundation that accepted foreign donations WHILE Hillary was serving as secretary of state (the literal definition of a “conflict of interest“)
Devise an objectively failing government takeover of health care that would be felt by millions of Americans mere days before the election as letters with rate and premium increases hit their dinner tables
Force the Clinton campaign not to visit Wisconsin even once in the general election and to visit Michigan only twice
Prevent Hillary Clinton from developing any economic message that resonated
Demand that the Democrats run the most insider candidate ever in the most outsider year ever
Invite Bill Clinton to reportedly encourage Donald Trump to run for President in 2016
Operate focus groups so the Clinton campaign could consider 87 separate campaign mottos before settling on “Stronger Together”
Organize a Democratic National Convention that viciously attacked Donald Trump but offered no economic message for the white working class voters who would deliver the Blue Wall to the Trump campaign
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through stunningly arrogance and unrelenting incompetence, found a way to lose an “unlosable” election.
Russia appears to have been involved with Wikileaks.
Wikileaks hacked the DNC and perhaps John Podesta’s emails, revealing that Clinton, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign had been lying to the public and rigging the Democratic primary.
But did Russia cause Hillary to consistently lie to the public? No. So let’s settle down.
Hillary’s campaign staff are trying to shift blame away from their dreadful campaign, to ensure that the first draft of history does not blame the senior staff and the candidate their historic and stunning loss.
We need an investigation of what Russia did here. No question. And Congress will conduct these hearings, probably through a Select Committee with subpoena power.
But that will take years.
We already know why Hillary blew a one-foot putt. It’s her fault. It’s her campaign’s fault. Full stop.
Blame shifting is a tactic. Let’s not pretend it’s not happening.
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.
Matt Mackowiak is syndicated columnist, an Austin-based Republican consultant, and a former Capitol Hill and Bush administration aide.by Tyler |
I fully embrace the evangelical form of Christian faith, but that doesn’t mean I always agree with the teachings of leaders within the large community. Recently the debate on how accommodating businesses should be toward those who live in ways that do not reflect their beliefs has reached its height. The state of Arizona is currently going through debates on a bill that would allow businesses to reject the potential business of LBGTQ individuals.
As this debate in Arizona has progressed, another debate has begun online centered on the same issues. Should a Christian take part in the wedding of two individuals who are LBGTQ? Russell Moore says that the Bible outlines an answer of no. Many others agree. Many others disagree. That’s typically how a debate goes.
I agree this deserves discussion because the mixture of religious liberty and fair business practices is messy, but as it relates to the Christian the way forward is more easily seen.
Should a business be able to ignore the money of anyone it chooses? Let the free market make that decision.
Should a Christian ever deny working with someone based on their lifestyle choices? I think Jesus shows us the answer is clearly no (though I will say there are certainly instances when God’s Spirit convicts us to move away from certain people. I would hope this is not the norm.)
A devotional written by Matt Chandler back in November 2013 seems of particular interest as it relates to all this. In it he says (here’s the full article):
Here’s the truth—If you’re going to be on mission, you’re going to have to befriend lost people. Simple as that. You can’t catch sin. You don’t catch sin by hanging out with sinners. Don’t forget, you’re still a sinner too. Yes, you are saved by grace and you now have the presence of the Holy Spirit. You’re no longer a slave to sin, but you cannot look down on others with an air of superiority. After all, salvation is a gift of God’s grace.
One of the most notorious men in Jericho was watching Jesus and Jesus called out to him, asking him to allow Jesus into his home. Well, as you can imagine, the religious community was not thrilled with this. “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner,” many said to each other (Luke 19:1-9).
If being a Christian means only doing business with and spending time with those who are like us, then Jesus didn’t fit the mold too well. He was far more concerned with his mission to draw people toward His Kingdom, than he was making sure his reputation was held in tact.
When Christians choose to deny opportunities to those whose sexual orientation, or beliefs, do not reflect their own, they are choosing to protect themselves over loving others. Jesus didn’t ask us to build walls around Him, only letting those who reflect Him near us. Instead, we’re to break down those walls, inviting all to experience the light of life within us.
This is far from accepting and advocating for the beliefs that do not reflect our own, it is loving people, and leaving the work of regeneration up to God.One person died Friday in a three-vehicle crash in Aurora, police said.
The crash happened at the northbound Interstate 225 off ramp at East 6th Avenue, according to an Aurora Police Department Twitter post.
Police said a black Audi sedan driven by a 25-year-old man was northbound on I-225. Witnesses told investigators the Audi was weaving and speeding. The Audi exited the highway at 6th Avenue, at a high speed, and rear-ended a silver Honda CR-V that was stopped at a red light. The Audi careened into the intersection and broadsided a gold Honda Accord. The Accord, driven by 41-year-old man, slammed into a light pole.
The driver of the Accord died from injuries suffered in the crash after being taken to a hospital.
The driver of CR-V, a 40-year-old woman, and the driver of the Audi were taken to a local hospital.
Investigators believe the driver of the Audi suffered some kind of medical problem while driving, according to an Aurora police media release.
The injuries of the CR-V driver are not life threatening and she is in stable condition, police said.
An investigation is ongoing.
Both the eastbound and westbound lanes of 6th Avenue were closed because of the crash, according to a 7:32 p.m. police Twitter post.By Grace-Marie Turner and Doug Badger
The Obama Administration is unlawfully diverting billions of dollars from taxpayers to insurance companies that sell Obamacare policies.
That is the conclusion reached in a legal opinion letter released today by former Ambassador and White House Counsel Boyden Gray.
Mr. Gray’s letter reinforces the conclusion of legal experts at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service who found that the administration’s actions “would appear to be in conflict with the plain text” of the Obamacare statute.
Mr. Gray’s letter documents how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is diverting $3.5 billion that it was legally obliged to remit to the Treasury and instead providing it to sponsors of Obamacare policies to compensate them for medical expenses of high-cost policyholders.
This unlawful diversion is occurring through the Transitional Reinsurance Program (TRP), established to smooth out losses for insurance companies selling Obamacare policies in the individual market. The TRP compensates these insurers for the costs of large medical claims incurred by their customers. CMS picked up the entire cost of medical claims between $45,000 and $250,000 for individuals enrolled in Obamacare individual policies in 2014, relieving insurers of the burden of paying these high medical bills.
The money for the TRP comes from an annual assessment on all individual and group insurance policy holders—primarily people with employer-based coverage—of $63 in 2014, $44 in 2015 and $27 in 2016. In addition to financing the TRP program, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires CMS to remit $5 billion of these collections to Treasury.
When these collections came up $3.5 billion short over the first two years, CMS made a fateful and unlawful decision: the agency decided to fleece taxpayers in order to pay insurers.
According to the Gray legal opinion letter, “by the time the books close on TRP for the 2014 and 2015 benefit years at the end of 2016, reinsurance-eligible issuers will likely have received 98% of expected payments ($15.6 billion out of an expected $16 billion), whereas Treasury will likely have received only 12% of expected payments ($495 million out of an expected $4 billion).”
“The HHS allocation scheme prioritizing payments to reinsurance-eligible issuers over payments to Treasury violates the ACA,” Gray concludes.
HHS initially issued regulations that would provide taxpayers with their legal share of the reinsurance taxes, but it quickly changed course to put taxpayers last in line for funding. In a March 2014 rulemaking, CMS said Treasury would get its share of the funds even if collections fell short. But 10 days later, the agency reversed its position and said, essentially, it would stiff the taxpayer if there was a shortfall.
Which is just what it is doing. Unlawfully, as Gray’s legal opinion demonstrates.
The administration is flatfooted in its defense. Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight on April 15 but was at a loss to explain why the agency changed its rules so swiftly and dramatically.
Gray explains that HHS failed to set the tax rate at a level that would produce the required revenue, saying “the ACA requires the implementation of a collection methodology” to produce the $5 billion owed to Treasury. “Congress,” he emphasizes, “did not make contributions for payments to Treasury ‘secondary’ to contributions for payments to reinsurance-eligible insurers.”
Gray’s letter references multiple legal precedents to demonstrate that CMS does not have any leeway to ignore this statutory language, as it has done. “[T]he statute does not use ‘permissive language’ with respect to collections for payments to Treasury,” his letter says. In addition, “HHS’s prioritization scheme is not a permissible interpretation of the law. None of the rationales HHS has offered in support of its prioritization scheme withstand textual scrutiny.”
“Congress specifically protected Treasury’s share of each contribution, declaring that it ‘may not be used’ for payments to reinsurance-eligible issuers,” the letter declares.
The ACA requires the administration to remit a total of $5 billion of its reinsurance tax collections to the Treasury, reserving the rest for reinsurance subsidies. The administration chose to bilk the taxpayers to keep health insurers in the game, even as the billions of dollars they are receiving through the TRP and other subsidies subsidies are inadequate to stem their losses for coverage they are offering in the Obamacare exchanges.
University of Houston Prof. Seth Chandler sums it in Forbes: “It’s a scheme in which the Obama administration collected less in taxes from health insurers (mostly off the Exchanges) than they were required to do under the Affordable Care Act, created a plan to pay insurers selling policies on the Exchange considerably more than originally projected, and stiffed the United States Treasury on the money it was supposed to receive from the taxes.”
Congress and the courts are rapidly losing patience with the agency’s pattern of malfeasance. In a separate but related case, a federal judge earlier this month ruled that CMS was unlawfully providing billions of dollars in cost-sharing subsidies to insurers, spending money that Congress did not appropriate.
Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee moved one step closer to issuing a subpoena to CMS to obtain documents explaining how the agency came to adopt its unlawful approach to the TRP program. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) has introduced a bill to address the agency’s actions.
The walls are closing in on CMS’s lawlessness.
Key arguments in the legal opinion letter from Boyden Gray & Associates
Boyden Gray’s letter analyzes five key areas in which the administration’s justification for its actions involving reinsurance fails legal tests:
1. The ACA requires HHS to implement a collection methodology that fully finances the transitional reinsurance program, rendering irrelevant its silence with regard to allocation of insufficient collections.
2. None of HHS’s rationales for prioritizing payments to reinsurance-eligible issuers over payments to Treasury withstand scrutiny. A) the statute does not use “permissive language” for payments to Treasury; and B) HHS distorts the ACA’s text by asserting that collections for payments to Treasury are secondary because they are to “be collected ‘in addition to’” contributions for payments to reinsurance-eligible issuers.
3. The Secretary does not have “general authority” to “design the method for determining the contribution amounts” that go “toward reinsurance payments.”
4. HHS’s reliance on the ACA’s policy goals of market certainty and premium stabilization to justify its prioritization scheme impermissibly ignores the act’s competing policy goal of protecting the federal fisc.
5. HHS’s use of notice-and-comment to adopt its regulations prioritizing payments to reinsurance-eligible issuers does not render them lawful.
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, where Doug Badger serves as a senior fellow. With appreciation to Derek Lyons with Boyden Gray & Associates for preparing the draft and to Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Institute for his contributions to research for this letter.Icon Football Club is an American soccer team based in Montville, New Jersey. It was announced in May 2014[1] the club would join the professional American Soccer League beginning with the 2014-15 season.
Icon FC competed in the Garden State Soccer League, a United States Adult Soccer Association fifth-tier league from 2010-14.
U.S. Open Cup [ edit ]
The club is best known for their performances in the 2013 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup which they qualified for by advancing to the final of the 2013 USASA Region I National Cup. Their striker, Argjent Duka (brother of Chicago Fire midfielder Dilly Duka), finished tied for third among the top scorers[2] with four goals in two matches.
U.S. Open Cup results [ edit ]
Season League W D L Result Playoffs 2014-15 ASL 10 4 4 2nd Won ASL Cup (defeated Western Mass Pro)The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is lifting an Obama-era ban on importing elephant heads from trophy hunts in two African countries, The Hill reports.
The FWS is allowing hunters to ship their trophies back to the U.S. from Zambia and Zimbabwe, as long as the elephants were killed between Jan. 21, 2016 and the end of 2018. Experts at the agency say the move will encourage the local African communities to invest in conservation.
“Legal, well-regulated sport hunting as part of a sound management program can benefit the conservation of certain species by providing incentives to local communities to conserve the species and by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation,” an FWS spokesman said in a statement, according to The Hill.
Though elephants are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, officials can allow imports of hunting trophies if evidence shows that hunting encourages conservation of the animals by making them more profitable to protect, ABC News reports.
Officials in Zambia and Zimbabwe presented information to the FWS that supported lifting the ban.
The policy change was first announced by Safari Club International (SCI), a hunters’ rights and conservation group, at an African Wildlife Consultative Forum in Tanzania.
“These positive findings for Zimbabwe and Zambia demonstrate that the Fish and Wildlife Service recognizes that hunting is beneficial to wildlife and that these range countries know how to manage their elephant populations,” SCI President Paul Babaz said in a statement. “We appreciate the efforts of the Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior to remove barriers to sustainable use conservation for African wildlife.”
The Humane Society President and CEO Wayne Pacelle slammed the move in his blog.
“Perhaps not surprisingly, a hunting outfitter advertised elephant hunts in Zimbabwe as soon as the SCI announcement was made public,” Pacelle wrote. “It’s a venal and nefarious, pay-to-slay arrangement that Zimbabwe has set up with the trophy hunting industry.”
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Dodgeball! A game that brings back memories from school For some, those are fun memories. For others, a fear of that big, red ball lingers.
Wizards! Beings that wield power forces beyond space and time.
In Wizard Dodgeball YOU are a wizard! (Well, 5, actually) Relive the glory of old or reclaim your honor from that forsaken arena!
Here's what other people are saying about Wizard Dodgeball
For more details, see the "Reviews" section below. Check out the rulebook here and try it for yourself with the free print and play here.
The Relaunch
A quick list of what's changed since the last campaign:
New art! We're going to bring a full cast of characters to the stat cards and get more of an athletic trading card feel.
sample of new art and new card layouts
Revised rule book with a basic version, quick start guide, and a non-elimination variant.
with a basic version, quick start guide, and a non-elimination variant. Lower funding goal! There was some miscommunication with the printer last time about the minimum print run that determined the funding goal. That has been sorted out and we're now shooting for a 1000 unit printing for the first go.
Wizard Dodgeball is a turn-based, light tactics sports game for 2 players. If you're familiar with dodgeball and/or a roll-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons, you'll be well equipped going in to a game of Wizard Dodgeball.
Each player drafts a team of wizards and then chooses spells based on their team’s stats. There are no tables to look up or spell lists to consult as all the information is in front of you on the cards. This leaves you all the time to focus on your strategy of when to rush for the balls, cast spells, and throw at your opponent's team.
Wizard Dodgeball also uses a simplified stat system for throwing and dodging balls and spells. On each wizard's card are colored squares representing the 2 dice you will roll (typically) for the various actions. These correspond to the custom dice with the following ranges:
dice mockup
Wizards take turns in a fixed order throughout the game. When a particular wizard is active, they can move, cast a spell, and throw a ball (if they have one). Dice are rolled only when attacking and defending; passing to, or enchanting your team just requires spending an action to do so.
Throwing a ball at an opponent is range based, meaning you're going to roll 1, 2, or 3 dice depending on how far away your wizard is from their target. Casting spells at your opponent is not ranged based and some wizard can attack multiple targets with a single spell.
Defending gives your wizard a chance to turn the tables. Typically, you'll be rolling 2 dice to either dodge a ball or resist a spell. When you roll doubles is where it gets interesting. Rolling doubles while dodging means your wizard catches the ball, sending the thrower out and bringing an eliminated teammate back in the game. Rolling doubles on spell resistance and that spell rebounds at the attacker requiring them to resist against their own spell.
To show you how far this game has come, here are the art samples along the way.
The first up is the court which started as an open space for more of a wargaming approach. But, moving and range were too difficult so I read up on the standard court sizes from the NDL which lead to the present court. The initiative track was eventually dropped to keep the focus on the court and reduce the setup time as there was an extra initiative card for each wizard.
court evolution
The stat cards for the wizards used to have a lot more numbers on them, including range. To reduce time, new dice with different value sets were implemented so the cards needed to reflect that. Range went away because it was already accounted for in the other stats.
stat card evolution
The spell cards have seen a lot of graphic design love since the early beginnings. A cost value was added so you didn't need to remember that a card with one spell on it cost 1 magic point of your team.
spell card evolution
Ladies, gentlemen, and ungendered species! The Interplanar Wizard Dodgeball League and Mind the Gap Studios would like to welcome you to the annual all-star game of WIZARD DODGEBALL!
The IWDL is made up of teams from all physical and ethereal planes, twenty-four in all. The all-star game is the yearly gathering of the best wizard dodgeballers from each of the teams in the league.
The IWDL rules trace their roots to the human version of dodgeball; the players that don’t dodge the ball are eliminated, a caught ball eliminates the thrower, the winner is the last team left on the court.
But, that’s just the beginning! Wizard Dodgeball allows teams to also cast performance enhancing (or inhibiting) spells. Boost the strength of your wizards! Freeze your opponent's wizards! Shield your wizards from spells and balls! Teleport wizards and balls! And watch out for fireballs!
Game in progress (prototype components shown)
Game in progress (prototype components shown)
current print and play components shown
The dice, 8d6 and 5d12, are custom dice that will not require stickers.
The 24 wizard jersey markers will be silk screen, 1/8" thick, round wood discs and also not require stickers.
Additionally, the game will come with a rulebook and a box to keep it all in.d
Kickstarter Exclusive!
Backers will get an additional 10 cards of spells for more asymmetrical play. These cards will be an expansion after the first print run. See Update #11 for more details.
Check out the rulebook here and try it for yourself with the free print and play here.
basic version with points
(advanced elimination version)Xenotransfusion (the transfusion of blood from another species) of canine blood to cats has been historically performed commonly and is still performed nowadays in some countries. Considering the current lack of commercial availability of haemoglobin-based oxygen carrier solution (Oxyglobin), there may be rare occasions when treating an anaemic cat when compatible feline blood cannot be obtained, and where a transfusion with canine blood may need to be considered as a life-saving procedure. This article reviews the published evidence about feline xenotransfusion with canine blood and the results that can be expected with this procedure. Published evidence in a limited number of cases (62 cats) indicates that cats do not appear to have naturally-occurring antibodies against canine red blood cell antigens: compatibility tests prior to the first transfusion did not demonstrate any evidence of agglutination or haemolysis of canine red cells in feline serum or plasma. No severe acute adverse reactions have been reported in cats receiving a single transfusion with canine whole blood. Anaemic cats receiving canine blood are reported to improve clinically within hours. However, antibodies against canine red blood cells are produced rapidly and can be detected within 4-7 days of the transfusion, leading to the destruction of the transfused canine red cells in a delayed haemolytic reaction. The average lifespan of the transfused canine red cells is less than 4 days. Any repeated transfusion with canine blood later than 4-6 days after the first transfusion causes anaphylaxis, which is frequently fatal.A day after being shot in the stomach, 4-year-old Khalise Weatherspoon was taking a few steps from her hospital bed and asking to speak with her 3-year-old brother who was with her when she was hit, according to her family.
"She's in good spirits, she wants to see her partner in crime, which is her little brother," her grandfather Richard Spires said Tuesday.
Khalise is the fourth child 7 or younger to be shot and wounded in Chicago this month.
She was on a scooter, playing with her brother and two older sisters near their grandmother's home near 71st and Rockwell streets in Marquette Park, when two gunmen stepped out of an alley and opened fire about 4:55 p.m. Monday, according to Spires and police. Khalise was struck in the abdomen and a 31-year-old man was also hit.
The girl was taken by a neighbor to Holy Cross Hospital, then transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was listed in good condition. The man suffered a gunshot wound to the buttocks and was taken to Holy Cross Hospital.
Police said no one was in custody and they had no description of the shooters.
Spires and other family members were at Mount Sinai today and said the girl's condition is improving.
"She walked a little bit down the corridor of the hospital, " Spires said. "She's in a little pain, she's hungry. The doctors don't want her to have anything in her stomach just in case there's fragments there."
Spires said the man who was also shot was walking out of a home toward his car when the shooting began. "They just opened, started shooting. It was a coward, senseless act. It's just crazy, man, it don't make no sense. It's real bad, man.
"My grandbaby doesn't even know what a gun is," he added. "I mean, it's crazy. We celebrated her fourth birthday just this past weekend."
The girl's aunt, Theda Smith, called the shooting "devastating."
"Innocent children are getting shot by guys that want to come in different areas or territories and shoot other guys," Smith said. "It's crazy."
For Bamani Obadele, whose children are friends with Khalise, the shooting left many questions.
"What do you say to this 4-year-old, a child that just turned 4, that's got a bullet hole in her stomach?" he asked. "What do I say to my four children and cousins, who play with this young girl and had to watch her laying in an alley by their house?"
He paused, and shook his head.
Three other young children have been shot and wounded this month:
• A 7-year-old boy was shot in the neck in Cole Park in the Chatham neighborhood on July 3.
• Jaden Donald, 5, was shot in the chest at Cooper Park in the West Pullman neighborhood early on July 4.
• Quianna Tomplins, 6, was shot while riding a scooter in the Roseland neighborhood July 20. She was at a memorial for a man shot to death on the same street five years ago.
chicagobreaking@tribune.com | Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking- ~36" from hoof to top of head
-Has super soft inserts in the feet to make them flat
-Fully appliqued eyes (with 3D lashes) and minky appliqued cutiemark
-Made with Shannon Cuddle 3 minky (Turquoise, Cherry, Pumpkin, Yellow, Jade, Azure, Purple), Kona cotton for the eyes, and Madiera Polyneon embroidery thread
-All body parts are triple stretch stitched for durability and longevity
-Commissioners initials are embroidered into one of her hooves
Wow, I feel like I really outdid myself with this dash. She's been a real challenge to make, but I feel like I pulled her off. This is the first time I've fully designed a mane from scratch but I feel like it fits her expression rather well. Overall I'm super excited with how she came and can't wait to get onto the next pony and hopefully make it even better this one!-Expression with complimenting mane style-Moderately stuffed with Polyfil Supreme for maximum cuddlinessCritique is appreciated!Additional pictures: sta.sh/21ktnt3h96ukShifting from the economy to education, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneywas proposing a voucher-style system that could significantly alter the public school system and revive the debate over school choice.
Romney, who has been reluctant to stray far from the economic issues at the core of the presidential campaign, was outlining the proposal during a speech Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
A Romney aide who previewed the speech for reporters said the candidate would let low-income and disabled students use federal funding to attend public schools, public charter schools and, in some cases, private schools. Federal funds could also be applied to tutors or digital courses.
The plan is line with GOP reforms aimed at giving students more educational choices. But it's unclear how schools in areas that depend on the federal funding would fare.
The proposal was not expected to include any new federal money for education.
Romney has so far offered few details for his plans on several key policy areas, including foreign policy, health care and education. He attacked Obama's education policy while speaking to donors in New York City on Tuesday evening, previewing themes likely to play prominently in Wednesday's speech.
"This president receives the lion's share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers' unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party," Romney said. "The challenge with that is when it comes to actual reform to make schools better for our kids, they talk a good game, but they don't do it."
He continued, "If I'm president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future."
The message is consistent for the Romney campaign, which regularly heaps criticism on the Democratic president's policies but offers only a vague road map for what Romney would do.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that Romney's shift to education was welcome after a campaign season in which he said the GOP rarely mentioned the issue.
"Education never came up in the Republican primary in any of the debates, or if it did, it came up almost never," Carney said.
Carney said Obama's education initiatives have received broad bipartisan support and that the president "looks forward to defending that record."
Romney's shift carries some risk. His regular criticism of labor unions, in particular, threatens to alienate voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a close election may be decided.
Before the speech, Romney announced Tuesday a team of education policy advisers that includes formerEducation Secretary Rod Paige and other officials from President George W. Bush's administration. Paige is among several prominent opponents of teachers' unions on the panel. As education secretary in 2004, he labeled the National Education Association a "terrorist organization."
Romney's positions on education have evolved over time. He once supported abolishing the EducationDepartment but reversed that position as a presidential candidate in 2007. At the time, he said he came to see the value of the federal government in "holding down the interests of the teachers' unions" and putting kids and parents first.
Romney also changed his position on the Bush-era education overhaul known as "No Child Left Behind." He said he supported the law as a candidate in 2007, but he has since generally come out against the policy many conservatives see as an expansion of the federal government.
Romney continues to support the federal accountability standards in the law, however. He also has said the student testing, charter-school incentives and teacher evaluation standards in Obama's "Race to the Top" competition "make sense," although the federal government should have less control over education. The campaign in recent days has emphasized his support for charter schools while governor of Massachusetts, a theme likely to play out in Wednesday's address.
The speech represents Romney's first public event in four days. Working to close Obama's cash advantage, he's coming off a three-day fundraising swing in the New York area that his chief finance aide said had netted $15 million. A single finance event in Manhattan on Tuesday evening generated $5 million.
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Still, the campaign is eager to drive a positive message for voters now tuning in to the contest.
The education speech follows a relatively quiet phase for Romney, who has been focused on fundraising but usually delivers one major address a week. Most of his recent speeches, however, have been about the economic themes that so far have defined his campaign.Lawmakers in Niagara Falls, N.Y. have a proposed a solution to boost the city's dwindling population: attract recent college graduates by promising to pay off their student loans.
Seth Piccirillo, Niagara Falls' new director of community development, has proposed a plan that awards up to $3,500 per year, so students, who graduated from two or four year schools, can apply it to their debt. The city could initially fund the program with $200,000 from the Urban Renewal Agency fund. Applicants must have graduated within the past two years and can only receive the reimbursement money for a maximum of two years. The city would require them to live in a downtown area of Niagara Falls.
Though applications should roll in soon, the city will only accept the first 20 applicants into the pilot program.
"The graduating class of 2013 will be our first real swing at it,” said Piccirillo in an interview with "Good Morning America."
Niagara has battled a steep decline in population, which fell precariously close to 50,000 in recent years. If the city cannot grow, it could lose some forms of federal funding.
Piccirillo said that he saw an opportunity to apply a simple answer to multiple problems. Even if the program grows slowly, he said it's still effective.
"We're not talking city-wide. We're taking acres," added Piccirillo. "There's no doubt in my mind that getting even 100 to 150 people could revitalize the neighborhood.”Broadband customers are suffering “dire” internet connections at home and at work and the situation is “untenable”, a coalition of more than 100 cross-party MPs has warned.
A “staggering” 5.7 million people do not receive the minimum expected download speeds as stipulated by Ofcom, while some customers experience “no service at all”, according to a study endorsed by 121 MPs.
The poor service can leave customers waiting up to two hours to download an hour-long video, and have forced some businesses to close in the worst-affected parts of the country, the researchers say.
“There are still a staggering 5.7 million people across Britain who cannot access the internet at the Ofcom required 10 megabits per second. But the problem is even worse for businesses.”
Despite the Government spending £1.7 billion on improving broadband, businesses are struggling and Britain is now lagging behind other countries including Japan, South Korea, and Spain, the report warns.
The research, published by Grant Shapps, the former Cabinet minister, says Britain’s network of “outdated” copper cables must be entirely replaced with a super-fast “fibre” system.
It recommends a radical overhaul of the internet market and calls for the break-up of the “monopoly” that BT holds on the cable network.
BT’s Openreach division, which owns and maintains the cables, must be sold off to promote competition and improve the quality of internet services more quickly, the report says.
The radical conclusion is endorsed by 121 MPs from across parties in a letter to the Telegraph.
Their support will intensify pressure on the Government and Ofcom to act.
• Every MP offered additional security after Syria death threats
• Labour facing official investigation over 'Ed Stone'
The regulator has been reviewing the operation of the sector and is expected to publish its findings within weeks.
The study details the connection speeds in every part of the country, and warns that the poor level of internet service “is untenable”.
“Whilst rural small and medium-sized enterprises and consumers are left with dire speeds or even no service at all, Openreach makes vast profits and finds little reason to invest in the network, install new lines or even fix faults in a properly timely manner,” the report says.
“We deserve better. We should be leading the world on digital investment and innovation. Instead we have a company that clings to outdated copper technology with no long-term plan for the future.”
The report warns that companies are being “held back” by slow internet connections. It says 42 per cent of small and medium-sized businesses report problems with their internet connections, at an estimated cost of £11 billion to the economy. The letter’s signatories include the former Tory Cabinet ministers Owen Paterson and Liam Fox, as well as 23 Labour MPs, with support from Liberal Democrats, Ukip, Plaid Cymru and the SNP.
The MPs say: “There are still a staggering 5.7 million people across Britain who cannot access the internet at the Ofcom required 10 megabits per second. But the problem is even worse for businesses.”
Mr Shapps said the public was furious with slow internet speeds. He added that he knew of individuals who had closed their businesses because of inadequate broadband speeds.
The report is the first publication of the British Infrastructure Group, which Mr Shapps formed in Parliament to campaign for action on major national construction projects.
A BT spokesman said the report was “misleading and ill-judged”.
“Ofcom, the EU and others repeatedly place the UK number one for broadband and superfast broadband when compared to other large EU countries,” he said. “The idea that there would be more broadband investment if BT’s Openreach infrastructure division became independent is wrong-headed. As a smaller, weaker, standalone company, it would struggle to invest as much as it does.”
A spokesman for the Department |
normal, you can see how the world is putty in the intelligence professional’s hands. Nobody they target can see what they do, precisely because they have been trained by society to blind themselves to it. Indeed, we have been conditioned to not think in ways which would protect us, lest we become that dreaded word, paranoid.
Paranoia, properly controlled however, has little downside, even in its extreme forms. Properly controlled, it will do little more than keep ominous possibilities forefront in your mind. The benefits to it though, are an ability to potentially keep at bay even the most dangerous individuals in the world. As a K-strategist wolf in a dangerous world, when the collapse comes, those dangerous individuals are the biggest threat you will face, even if you are expecting them, be they PI’s targeting your business advantages, government targeting your activism, or high end criminal gang’s targeting you.
In truth, during K-selection, Darwinian selection does not favor that individual who is right about their environment most often – it favors that individual who is always right when the worst is about to happen. The individual who is right 99% of the time, but wrong that one time somebody set him up to be killed will be less adapted to K-selection than the individual who is right only 20% of the time, but who is always ready for action when the shit is about to go down, because he always thinks the shit is about to go down, even when it isn’t. Don’t let anyone kid you – paranoia is highly adaptive under the right circumstances. If you’re going to face a threat be paranoid, whether you want to win, or you just want to live.
As the Apocalypse unfolds, make a conscious effort – don’t let yourself or your behavior be molded easily. The right circumstances to favor paranoia are rapidly approaching.Shares
Of all the modalities of alternative medicine currently in use, arguably acupuncture is the one that has achieved the most mainstream acceptance in medicine. I’ve often asked why it has become so common in academic medical centers and elsewhere, despite the evidence being overwhelmingly in favor of the conclusion that it is nothing more than a theatrical placebo. It doesn’t matter that acupuncture is part of a prescientific system of medicine now known as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), whose concepts are rooted in vitalism. It doesn’t matter that what has passed for acupuncture since the 1940s and 1950s bears little resemblance to what was practiced hundreds or thousands of years ago and even 100 years ago more resembled the bloodletting that was common in ancient European medicine more than the use of thin needles along “meridians” to “redirect the flow” of the life energy or qi to alleged healing effect. It doesn’t even matter that acupuncture, along with the rest of TCM, was basically foisted upon the world when Chairman Mao Zedong, unable to provide real medicine for his people after World War II, decided to make up the difference with folk healers even though he himself basically didn’t believe in TCM and chose “Western” medicine instead. At that point, the history of TCM and acupuncture were effectively “retconned” into the form we know them today. In the case of acupuncture in particular, the retconned version, which posits acupuncture as being thousands of years old and having been practiced in basically the same form over all that time, has little resemblance to the original, which wasn’t documented until the 17th century. Basically, TCM is more philosophy than medicine. None of this has stopped China from continuing to support and do its best to export TCM to the world, even in 2017.
We’ve discussed acupuncture many, many times on this blog because it’s an excellent alternative medicine modality to use to discuss placebo effects, shortcomings of clinical trials, and how alternative medicine is sold to the public—even revisionist history. In particular, it’s interesting to note how very many forms of acupuncture have developed, and how they are used, and how many conditions that acupuncture can supposedly treat, which encompass basically everything. It’s also a great jumping off point to discuss appropriate placebo controls, something that many acupuncture studies conveniently leave out, and how, the larger and more rigorous a study is, the smaller the effect observed is, until the largest, most rigorous studies show no difference between “sham” acupuncture and “real” acupuncture, and how meta-analyses sold as showing the therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture in actuality show no such thing. Basically, it doesn’t matter where you stick the needles or even if you stick the needles in; the effect is the same. And I haven’t even pointed out how studies of acupuncture from China are virtually always positive.
Not surprisingly, acupuncturists and believers in acupuncture always think that their favorite modality is being treated unfairly. Also not surprisingly, many of them publish in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine ( JACM ). Unfortunately, at least one of them writes for Popular Science.
In which medicine is accused of a “double standard” with respect to acupuncture
What made me think about these issues was an article by Kendra Pierre-Louis in Popular Science entitled “Why it’s so hard to figure out if acupuncture actually works: Should you stick a needle in it?” Notice the statement in the title. Yes, I agree that it’s hard to figure out whether acupuncture works. Past tense would be better, though, as figuring out whether acupuncture works is something that has already been done over the last three decades. It doesn’t.
Pierre-Louis, however, doesn’t seem to think so:
Does medicine have a bias against acupuncture? That’s the verdict of a paper (and an accompanying commentary) published earlier this week in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. While there’s still no medical consensus on acupuncture, and most reputable medical organizations do not support its use for arthritic knee pain, the authors’ critique lends interesting insight into the process by which medical procedures are accepted—and which are excluded. How does alternative medicine get to be plain-old medicine?
In fairness, that last question is a very good question that plays off a common adage in skepticism and science-based medicine: What do you call alternative medicine that has been scientifically proven to work? Medicine. But what does “scientifically proven to work” mean? If Pierre-Louis had focused on that question, using acupuncture as an example, even if I ended up disagreeing with her conclusion, the article would have been much more worthwhile. Unfortunately, Pierre-Louis is not about exploring that question; she’s about proving that acupuncture actually works and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which provides guidelines for recommended treatments for diseases and conditions, has a bug up its butt about acupuncture:
Led by Stephen Birch of Kristiania University College in Norway, the researchers behind the new study allege that the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which details recommended treatments for given ailments, holds acupuncture to a higher standard than it does traditional medical modalities. If all of the treatments that NICE recommend for knee arthritis—including weight loss and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs like ibuprofen—had to meet the minimum required standards that NICE sets for acupuncture, “opiates would become the first line of drug prescription,” wrote Birch et al.
I’d hardly call Birch’s article a “study.” It’s more of an opinion piece with some data backing it up kvetching about how NICE came up with its guidelines for the treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee. Before coming back to the rest of Pierre-Louis’ piece, let’s take a look at Birch’s article, whose title gives away the game, “The U.K. NICE 2014 Guidelines for Osteoarthritis of the Knee: Lessons Learned in a Narrative Review Addressing Inadvertent Limitations and Bias.”
Bias. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Birch’s complaint is stated most succinctly in the abstract:
Several systematic reviews suggest that acupuncture is effective for knee osteoarthritis (OA), and furthermore a safe and cost-effective treatment for this condition. A recent clinical practice guideline (CPG) from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), in the United Kingdom, recommended against the use of acupuncture on the grounds that the effect size (ES) in comparison with sham acupuncture is too small.
I read this, and couldn’t help but think, “You say that as though it were a bad thing.” And, yes, Birch does think it’s a bad thing:
The 2014 NICE guideline on OA (CG177) was not a complete revision of the 2008 guidelines, it was more limited. Although originally intended to be more extensive including a broader review of drugs such as NSAIDs, it was decided to review those at a later date. Not only did the update focus on only a few of the interventions, it also applied different criteria for evaluating and accepting interventions. In effect, as will be described, the process selected for evaluating acupuncture required the treatment to meet higher standards than many other included treatments. A key problem in this NICE update is the introduction of a focus on the development of recommendations based on the consideration of which interventions make ‘‘minimal important differences’’ (MIDs) to patients as a replacement for usual CPG comparisons of evidence. The MID was set as an effect size (ES) of 0.5 or greater. The analysis of the evidence for acupuncture in this review emphasized results from sham studies with a de-emphasis on evidence from pragmatic comparator studies. Despite the fact that the assessment of MIDs should include analysis of benefit and harm, this review did not include an analysis of safety data on acupuncture. This coupled with the lack of usual CPG head-to-head comparison of interventions excluded data relevant to the use of acupuncture as an intervention for knee OA in comparison with other standard recommended care options, namely that it is much safer than many other accepted interventions for knee OA pain. This shift in methodological approaches might have inadvertently biased against acupuncture.
Notice the main complaint about the NICE guidelines: That they’re too rigorous. The dead giveaway in the paragraph above is this sentence: “The analysis of the evidence for acupuncture in this review emphasized results from sham studies with a de-emphasis on evidence from pragmatic comparator studies.” I’ve discussed before how much acupuncture advocates love pragmatic studies. Pragmatic studies are designed to demonstrate the “real world” effectiveness of a treatment. Often they are not randomized and don’t have a placebo or sham control. Clinical trials are very regimented, with clearly defined protocols, rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria for subjects, endpoints, and reporting. When a treatment that’s been shown to be efficacious in randomized clinical trials gets out into the real world, the inclusion criteria inevitably expand and the exclusion criteria contract. When that happens, patients who wouldn’t have been eligible for the clinical trials used to demonstrate the efficacy of the treatment receive the treatment, and the possibility of the treatment not working in these patients or causing adverse reactions becomes a real concern. The idea of a pragmatic trial is to study how well a treatment that has already been demonstrated to be effective and safe works in the real world. Here’s the thing. Pragmatic trials are not meant to be the first to demonstrate efficacy. They are meant to see if a treatment proven in randomized clinical trials still works as well when released “into the wild,” so to speak.
Unfortunately, acupuncture advocates flip the order and put the cart before the horse, emphasizing pragmatic trials. The reason is obvious. Pragmatic trials, because they often don’t have a placebo control arm or a sham treatment arm, by their very nature, will produce positive results. That’s acceptable for pragmatic trials used properly, because they aren’t meant to be the first demonstration of efficacy of a trial. That’s exactly what Birch et al. are doing here, and the reason they focused on osteoarthritis of the knee is because they can point to a meta-analysis that acupuncturists love to cite as evidence that acupuncture “works.” It was discussed many times on this blog when it was first published, and its author, Andrew Vickers, was most unhappy at the criticism.
See what I mean in the accompanying commentary by Hugh MacPherson:
Second, a new methodological approach was used in 2014. Different thresholds were used for the recommendations in 2008 from those made as part of the 2014 update. The new guidance introduced the concept of the minimum clinically important difference (MCID), and required those interventions such as acupuncture that were within the scope of the update to show an MCID of an effect size of 0.5, a difference that is commonly considered ‘‘moderate.’’ When acupuncture is compared with usual care, there is an effect size of approximately 0.5, as has been shown in an individual patient data meta-analysis of acupuncture for osteoarthritis.
As I pointed out, the Vickers meta-analysis did not show an MCID for acupuncture compared to sham acupuncture. That’s why MacPherson harps on an MCID between acupuncture and no treatment/usual treatment, a measure that maximizes placebo effects.
Does acupuncture do anything besides leaving little holes in the skin?
I’ll have more to say about Birch et al., but this seemed like a good point to jump back to Pierre-Louis’ article, because she asks the very pertinent question: Does acupuncture do anything? She seems quite taken by the fact that earlier this year the American College of Physicians listed acupuncture as a minimal invasive treatment of low back pain. But did it? Yes, it sort of did, but it was hardly a ringing endorsement. The actual studies used to justify the recommendations were questionable. For example, this study showed that there was no difference between “true” acupuncture and sham acupuncture (which is what pretty much all well-designed acupuncture studies show). In other words, it showed that acupuncture is a placebo intervention. This study tested a sort of “scalp acupuncture” that I’ve never heard of before. Another study was from China, and, as has been discussed before, pretty much all acupuncture studies out of China are positive.
What about chronic low back pain? Take a look:
Low-quality evidence showed that acupuncture was associated with moderate improvement in pain relief immediately after treatment and up to 12 weeks later compared with sham acupuncture, but there was no improvement in function (125–130). Moderate-quality evidence showed that acupuncture was associated with moderately lower pain intensity and improved function compared with no acupuncture at the end of treatment (125). Low-quality evidence showed a small improvement in pain relief and function compared with medications (NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, or analgesics) (125).
I laughed. At least, I laughed when I looked over the list of references. The authors actually included the GERAC study in its list, which basically showed that acupuncture does not work, given that sham acupuncture was indistinguishable from acupuncture. Another study was a “bait and switch” in that it studied “electroacupuncture,” which is in reality TENS. We’re talking thin gruel indeed.
However, that’s not enough. Pierre-Louis has to pick out another study that really impressed her.
Carpal tunnel and acupuncture a-go-go
The study that impressed Pierre-Louis so much is one that has special resonance for me, because I once suffered from the condition for which acupuncture was tested. I’m referring to carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes, around 16 years ago, I developed a really bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand. Given that I’m a surgeon, you can appreciate the anxiety and fear that that caused me. I saw my career as potentially being over. The pain and numbness were manageable for a long time, but I saw the progressive nature of my carpal tunnel syndrome threatening my ability to operate. I even endured a nerve conduction study, which is basically torture with electricity. In the end, I was begging the hand surgeon to operate on me because I couldn’t take it anymore. Eventually, he did, and I recovered. My career was saved, and, other than an occasional twinge, I haven’t had any symptoms since.
So Pierre-Louis invokes a recent study that I meant to blog about when it first appeared, but for some reason never did:
A more intriguing example is a March study that appeared in the journal Brain, which found that acupuncture improved the outcomes for carpal tunnel syndrome by literally remapping the brain. Researchers came to that conclusion after exposing subjects diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome—broken into three groups—to acupuncture treatments. Patients in the first group received an acupuncture treatment as prescribed by traditional Chinese Medicine—that is, needles were inserted at the site of the pain. The researchers exposed the second group to something known as distal needle acupuncture, in which acupuncture needles aren’t inserted where it hurts, but rather at other sites that practitioners say are connected to the painful regions by “channels of energy.” Yes, we know this sounds like snake oil—and the study authors aren’t alleging that the so-called channels exist. But if you want to know if something—a drug, a workout regimen, or in this case an acupuncture technique—has any effect, you have to test it. Finally, a third group received what’s known as sham acupuncture, which is essentially the sugar pill of acupuncture. In this case, sham acupuncture involved non-penetrating placebo needles designed to convince participants that they had undergone a real acupuncture treatment. Each participant received 16 treatments of their designated form of acupuncture over the course of eight weeks. At the end of the study, all groups equally reported that their symptoms had improved. That’s proof that acupuncture is a sham, right? Not exactly.
This is the study. Each group of patients with mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome received 16 sessions of acupuncture over eight weeks, with before-and-after carpal tunnel symptom questionnaires, median nerve conduction studies, and, of course, functional MRI (fMRI). In any event, the reason why all three groups improved in the short term should be obvious. All are placebo. This result is exactly what I would have predicted. Of course, the other thing that is obvious is that this is a typical “bait and switch” acupuncture study. It’s not acupuncture at all. It’s electroacupuncture, which is in reality a form of transcutaneous nerve stimulation (TENS). Let’s just put it this way: There was no electricity hundreds or thousands of years ago. Hooking up electrodes to acupuncture needles is a 20th century “innovation” that serves no apparent reason other than to “sex up” acupuncture. It also makes no anatomic sense. The distal acupuncture, for instance, was administered to acupuncture points in the lower leg; there is no anatomic reason to believe that this should have any effect on nerves in the distal arm. Remember, carpal tunnel syndrome is due to a very specific anatomic issue, entrapment of the median nerve as it goes through the carpal tunnel, defined by bones and ligaments in the wrist. That’s why the surgical treatment, cutting the transverse carpal ligament, works; it frees the entrapped nerve.
Now here’s where this study has some interesting results. They are not results that have anything to do with acupuncture, as this is in reality the application of electrical current at acupuncture points. But they are somewhat interesting. First, there was a modest (and not strongly statistically significant) improvement in median nerve conduction in both the distal and local acupuncture groups compared to the sham. This result makes little sense from an anatomic standpoint, although it’s not entirely implausible that running a weak electrical current along the lower arm might potentially affect nerve conduction studies in the same arm. In fMRI studies, the investigators reported brain remapping associated with symptom improvement only in those receiving the local acupuncture, a result that’s somewhat plausible. Of course, again, none of these results has anything to do with acupuncture, the existence of meridians, or TCM, even as they are sold as slam dunk evidence that “acupuncture” remaps the brain.
This study also has some significant flaws. For instance, although it was blinded, it appears not to have been truly double-blinded. Patients were blinded to allocation, as were the study physicians who evaluated patients for inclusion. Experimenters, the people who did the nerve conduction studies and evaluated the fMRIs, were blinded as well. You know who weren’t blinded? The acupuncturists. I’ll give the investigators credit for inserting all the needles in the distal and local acupuncture groups to hide from the patient the allocation. However, the acupuncturists knew which experimental group each patient was in at the first treatment session. So that’s a huge problem right there, especially since adequacy of blinding was only evaluated after the first treatment and the patients were unblinded after the fMRI. There’s also another huge defect in that the sham acupuncture specifically does not pass current through the needles. A much better control would have been to use random acupuncture points and actually run the same current through the needles. My guess is that this group, had it been included, would have shown the same results as the distal and local acupuncture groups.
So basically, what this study shows is mildly interesting, but is not evidence that acupuncture relieves symptoms and function in patients with mild to moderate carpal tunnel. The most generous interpretation is that passing current through the forearm 16 times over eight weeks might improve nerve conduction somewhat. That’s about it. Unfortunately, in a statement issued by Massachusetts General Hospital (which ran the study) and Harvard, the study’s principal investigator Nataly Napadow basically sells this as showing that “true acupuncture” works by a different mechanism than the “placebo” of sham acupuncture:
Even after years of clinical research, controversy continues as to whether acupuncture works primarily by the placebo effect, especially given the slight differences between the efficacy of real and sham acupuncture. The findings of the Brain study help to address this question. Sham acupuncture may produce a stronger placebo effect than a pill because it sends inputs to the brain via skin receptors and is coupled with a specific ritual. But the symptom improvement produced by sham treatment for conditions like CTS also might derive from entirely different mechanisms than those elicited by real acupuncture, the mechanisms of which may more specifically target CTS pathophysiology.
No, no, no. Maybe running electricity through the leg or arm causes an effect, but acupuncture doesn’t. After all, what was the main difference between both “true” acupuncture groups and the sham acupuncture group? It was the application of electrical current!
Studies like this and how they are sold infuriate me and are not evidence that acupuncture “works.” In this case, though, the press pretty much credulously ate up the given narrative, and I couldn’t find a single skeptical take on the study anywhere.
When is a placebo not a placebo?
Pierre-Louis, unfortunately, completely buys into Napadow’s narrative:
Recall that if you were to throw out the objective measure’s—the fMRI and nerve conductivity tests—Napadow’s study looks like a dud, because patients expressed equal levels of pain reduction whether they experienced real acupuncture or sham acupuncture. The whole point of a placebo is that it’s inert. It doesn’t actually have an effect on the body, making it an excellent control. But physical interventions aren’t quite the same as sugar pills: even in sham acupuncture, there is some pressure or sensation being inflicted on the patient’s body. In fact, some cases of “sham” acupuncture even involve the insertion a needle, though Napadow’s study did not. “There’s a controversy as to what sham acupuncture is,” said Napadow, “you still have a tactile sensation and a somatosensory input as a result of sham acupuncture.”
No, there really isn’t a controversy over what sham acupuncture is. At least, there shouldn’t be. The idea behind a placebo is to isolate the aspect of the treatment that has a specific physiologic effect, which sham acupuncture does in studies of acupuncture. Napadow failed to do that in his carpal tunnel syndrome study. The way his study was designed, whether you believe the results or not, all it could do was to isolate the electricity, not the “true” acupuncture, as the part of the treatment modality that causes a physiologic effect. His study shows nothing about acupuncture. Again, repeat after me: It doesn’t matter where you stick the needles. It doesn’t even matter if you stick the needles in.
In his commentary, MacPherson argues that acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis was given a bum rap by NICE, that NICE applied a double standard. He points out that the evidence for surgical interventions for this condition, such as arthroscopic debridement and lavage, is not very strong and that these interventions don’t reach the threshold for effect size required by NICE, even though NICE still recommends these procedures. Like so many alternative medicine apologists, he frames it in terms of the opioid epidemic:
As news of these questionable recommendations spreads, many people will be misled, such that acupuncture services may be commissioned less often, conventional medical practitioners may refer their patients less, and patients might find access to acupuncture more difficult. Moreover, misleading guidance related to chronic pain may inadvertently drive up the utilization of opioids, which is already emerging as an epidemic in the United States.
Birch et al. go even further, using the NICE recommendations as an excuse to advocate pragmatic trials:
If NICE were to apply the same criteria to OA [osteoarthritis] treatments, only opioids would be left and with their adverse events profile that may not be acceptable to some patients suffering from OA of the knee. Furthermore, in agreement with other authors, it is time to stop performing sham acupuncture as a control treatment in acupuncture studies.
Just a reminder: No sham acupuncture control = pragmatic study.
So basically, Birch et al. and MacPherson are arguing that the new NICE criteria are too strict and exclude acupuncture without excluding conventional surgical treatments that don’t reach the designated effect size and are not superior to sham surgery. They use these observations to argue that acupuncture should be included in NICE recommendations for osteoarthritis, too.
Pierre-Louis then asks the right question, but implies the wrong answer:
The researchers ask a simple question: if most of the recommended treatments fail to meet this threshold, why is acupuncture excluded while arguably more invasive procedures are included? But as patients, we should perhaps be asking a different question. Why are we being recommended procedures that don’t work?
An excellent question, actually. Unfortunately, the answer given by Birch et al. and MacPherson—for NICE to start recommending acupuncture for osteoarthritis—is the wrong answer. The correct answer is that, if surgical interventions for osteoarthritis truly don’t reach the new NICE threshold for MID, then the answer is not to include acupuncture in NICE recommendations for osteoarthritis, but rather to stop including those surgical interventions. That’s not how alternative medicine practitioners and apologists see the world, though. When conventional therapies don’t reach a given standard of evidence for efficacy and safety, instead of advocating that those treatments be abandoned, as those of us who advocate for science-based medicine do, they use that as a reason for accepting their quackery as valid treatments too. If it requires weakening the standards of evidence to let their quackery stand “integrated” with science-based medicine, so much the better.Mother Accidentally Starts Successful Twitch Channel When Attempting to Message Son on Facebook
ROSELLE, Ill. — Local mother Olivia Mooney accidentally downloaded Overwatch, created a Twitch account, joined a team, launched her webcam, won multiple matches, and garnered a large following of devoted fans, all while simply trying to message her son at college via Facebook.
“I just kept clicking hoping I would find the right little tabby thingy,” Mooney said to her legion of loyal Twitch fans, hoping one of them was her son. “My son Aaron usually shows me the computer stuff but he’s away at school. Suddenly all these shoot-em-up videos started. I didn’t realize I was playing.”
Read More From Hard Drive, The Only Ethical Gaming Journalism Site on The Internet:
According to Twitch users, while Mooney annihilated the competition, she kept typing “Aaron are you coming home for Christmas?” repeatedly into the chat log. Within minutes of the channel starting, Mooney’s stream went viral and she had over a hundred thousand viewers.
“It was the best thing I have ever seen,” Twitch user XxXGoutFoot81XxX said. “She was the perfect combination of funny and talented. Even with her constantly telling us to watch our language, it’s the greatest stream on Twitch.”
Mooney, who accidentally went with the username Facebook.Com and plays with D.Va, beat the competition when no player was able to understand her strategy or predict her movements. She has also become, unknowingly, a major celebrity in Japan.
“We call her Kirāmazārobotto or Killer Mother Cyborg,” one Japanese blogger said via a translator. “Many people cosplay as her at conventions and an anime series about her adventures is currently in development.”
Mooney’s Twitch channel has already spawned multiple parody accounts, a /r/TwitchMom SubReddit, and Conan O’Brien has asked her to appear on his Clueless Gamer segment. Despite the potential to monetize the hugely successful endeavor, Mooney appears to be staying true to her initial inspiration.
“I still can’t get onto Facebook,” she said, when asked how fame has changed her life. “Do any of you know my son Aaron?”
Sources are also reporting that Corsair Keyboards has sponsored Mooney and eLeague teams 3lit3 and h0pskotch are both scouting her for their CS:GO 2018 season.Facebook’s new Town Hall project allows users to connect with their representatives. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Prykhodov/Thinkstock and Facebook.
As CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out in a sizable manifesto earlier this year, Facebook has grand ambitions to create a platform that goes beyond just connecting family and friends. More than social media, it wants to create the social infrastructure that powers communities from niche interest groups to nations. But can tools to improve civic engagement from a clickbait-driven company really be good for democracy?
As part of its new Town Hall project, Facebook recently unveiled three new features aimed at linking government representatives with the citizens they’re elected to serve. The first, constituent badges, enables users to voluntarily identify themselves (via address verification) as residents of a particular district. Politicians will then be able to see these badges, allowing them to determine whether, say, a commenter on their page resides in the area they represent. The second, district targeting, will allow elected officials to create posts and polls soliciting feedback that will only be visible to their constituents. Finally, there’s constituent insights, which will permit politicians to view and comment on news stories that are popular in their political districts.
This all sounds nice on the surface. After all, it seems like Facebook finally is beginning to acknowledge its political influence, a role it initially rejected in the aftermath of the 2016 election. And it’s seemingly channeling that power for public benefit by making it easier for constituents to engage with elusive politicians.
Yet, there’s reason to stop short of lauding the social media network’s attempts to better our representative government. Not only is it unclear whether these tools will actually foster meaningful engagement, it’s also questionable whether private companies like Facebook—even if they’re well-meaning—should be trusted to keep democracies’ best interests at heart.
For starters, whether by intention or accident, Facebook seems to be designing democracy in its own clickbait-driven image. The Town Hall tools all revolve around attention: They encourage both politicians and users to find ways to better grab one another’s eyeballs (to use the social media term of art). But the kind of attention Facebook demands from us—incessantly chasing what’s trending, viral, getting clicks—rarely works in favor of the long-term public interest. Think of Donald Trump, obsessively monitoring his ratings and flitting to whatever message gets a rise from his base. Such messaging may get attention, but it’s not what’s best for the American people. Yet this kind of frenetic attention baiting is essential to Facebook’s business model. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which these new tools end up pushing politicians to primarily focus on the whims or dank memes of the day, instead of heeding to the more substantial issues.
I’m also concerned about the assumptions about human behavior and demographics that Facebook appears to be making with these features. For one, the Town Hall tools assume that what people read and share on the social media platform makes for a reasonably good representation of what they want their politicians to be concerned about. But there’s little reason to believe this is true. Users often post articles that they dislike, disagree with, find hilariously stupid—I certainly do. But it’s unlikely that Facebook will be successfully categorizing these posts as such before they share them with politicians. Does what you read when you’re slacking off at work actually represent the big issues you’re concerned about, or is it just what happens to catch your eye at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday? Is a news story important just because it happens to be trending?
What’s more, we don’t actually control what we see in our Facebook feed; Facebook does. Unlike a newspaper or magazine that shows readers stories the editorial board deems significant, Facebook’s algorithm is designed to show stories it thinks an individual user wants to view. The website simply isn’t that motivated to get you to eat your vegetables (if vegetables are “dry foreign affairs stories with large words”). Its interests lie in keeping you scrolling endlessly through your feed. Research has shown that this filtering distorts the content that people see, possibly creating damaging filter bubbles and further polarizing politics. It also gives Facebook outsize control over what media it chooses to promote—a state of affairs that benefits the company but may not always benefit you.
This distortion isn’t just coming from the company, either. As Facebook itself admitted, governments and other actors have exploited the platform to spread misinformation. The company’s efforts to eradicate this issue are still at an early stage, and from the limited information provided, it’s not hard to imagine these propaganda bots and digital information warriors gaming the address-verification system and pretending to be constituents.
The second big assumption that the Town Hall tools idea makes is that Facebook users are reasonably representative of the actual opinions of the population. Except this isn’t a sure thing: There’s ample evidence that privileged groups are more “visible” in big data sets (for example, people with regular internet access are more likely to be engaged in social media than those without). While 68 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook—making it the most widely used social media platform in the country—these users are more likely to be young, low-income, and female.
Bias may also impact who actually uses and engages with Facebook’s Town Hall tools. Just 9 percent of social media users say that they regularly discuss or comment on politics, and only 25 percent of social media users follow political figures. Users concerned with privacy may not feel comfortable handing over sensitive information like their home address to the company (with good reason), even if it means they can’t be verified as a constituent. Others may feel pressured to disclose their private information as a prerequisite for interacting with their representatives. While Facebook likely could correct for these biases, it might not want to; after all, the company directly benefits from more users and more user data.
Finally, Facebook makes a third problematic assumption: that elected officials and their teams are capable of sifting out important, policy-actionable items from a constant, minimally curated stream of what their constituents are reading and posting. It’s a worldview with an exceptionally optimistic perspective on the filtering abilities of most people—let alone politicians. It’s not just the barrage of data that’s the issue, but the fact that it’s also essentially meaningless if it can’t be properly analyzed. Considering there are entire industries of highly trained professionals who spend their careers trying to do this—and still regularly get things wrong—what makes Facebook think these tools will be anything but a distraction for elected officials?
Beyond thinking about how these tools might influence the responsiveness of politicians to their constituents, it’s also worth considering the motivations of the politicians themselves. During the 2016 election, for example, the Trump campaign worked to dissuade potential Clinton supporters from turning out through something called “dark posts”—in this case, targeted negative ads that were invisible to anyone but the recipient, obscuring them from public scrutiny. It remains unclear how much of a difference, if any, these posts made on the outcome. But the tactic is unlikely to go away—and may be made more powerful by leveraging the social media platform’s Town Hall tools by enabling politicians to better tailor their messaging to constituents’ particular pain points. Elected officials might also be able to gain an advantage over potential electoral challengers, as it doesn’t appear that Facebook offers similar tools to candidates yet. Has the company gamed out these unpleasant but realistic possibilities?
We don’t know because Facebook isn’t transparent about its processes or about its overarching goals with these recent forays into democracy building. And it’s important to remember that it doesn’t have to be. It’s a publicly held company whose primary responsibility is to its shareholders. It’s not a representative government. Nor is it a public utility. Though it may be using lofty press releases and Zuckerberg’s not-so-subtle appearances at Iowa truck stops to promote a new, civic-minded image, it has no obligation to be inclusive or representative, or to do what’s best for citizens.
This does not mean Facebook is evil or ill-intentioned; it simply means that Facebook can only be what it is. As Donald Trump is proving, you can’t run government like a real estate business. We shouldn’t run government like a social media company, either.
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Image caption In the undercover investigation, a senior manager demanded staff work six days a week
Some workers at a cosmetics chain in major London shopping sites, including Westfield, are getting paid as little as £2.05 an hour, a BBC investigation has found.
The month-long undercover investigation found people were made to sign up as self-employed when legally they should have been classified as employees.
Soap and Co. said it was "extremely concerned" about the allegations.
It said it planned to review the employment status of workers.
The company describes its products as "an ideal balance between beauty, health and simple indulgence".
During the BBC London-Newsnight investigation, an undercover reporter spent one month working for the company, documenting the treatment of staff and their employment conditions.
They were made to be at work for a minimum of six days per week, for around 60 hours, at the firm's stores.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC filmed undercover for this investigation. Watch Guy Lynn's report for BBC Newsnight
Workers are paid by commission based on their sales. Some earned better under the arrangement than others.
The BBC's undercover reporter was paid £199 in commission for 97 hours' work - equivalent to an hourly rate of £2.05.
The national minimum wage ranges from £4.05 for under-18s to £7.50 for someone aged over 25.
The BBC also asked |
(Facebook/Jolie Khduoor)
The daughter of a Syrian brigadier general killed in 2011 vented her anger over the Homs Baath Party chief in one of the protests held over the weekend.
Jolie Khadour said that Subhi Harb had failed to secure her family's living conditions, even though they had received paperwork certifying her father's status as a "martyr."
"When dad was martyred, Subhi Harb gave us a piece of paper to say that he was a martyr," she explained in a tearful speech delivered during a sit-in over the weekend.
"For four years, my mother and I have been unemployed with no allowance."
"When they gave me the paper my mother went to apply for a job. They took the paper and threw it away."
She further blasted local officials, saying they have not responded to the "impoverished people" of Zahraa.
"They've been holding their sit-in for a week in the cold and the officials still haven't moved."Dwight Jones, a power forward and center whose ejection from the 1972 Olympic basketball championship game in Munich contributed to the United States team’s controversial 51-50 loss to the Soviet Union, died on Monday in The Woodlands, Tex. He was 64.
The cause was cardiac arrest, his daughter Keesha Jones said.
At more than 6 feet 9 inches and around 200 pounds, Jones was a versatile big man who was picked by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the 1973 N.B.A. draft.
He also played for the Houston Rockets, the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, amassing N.B.A. career totals of 6,230 points, 4,513 rebounds, 911 assists and 397 blocks. But for the rest of his life he remained frustrated by the loss at the Olympics, where he had been the top scorer for the Americans going into the championship game.
“For some of the guys, it’s eased over the years,” he was quoted as having said by The Houston Chronicle in 2002. “But for most of us,” he added, “we’re not that way.”Is Obesity A Disease?
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto iStockphoto
Last year the American Medical Association voted to recognize obesity as a disease. In a June 18, 2013, press release, AMA board member Dr. Patrice Harris explained:
"Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans."
This may seem like a simple matter of nomenclature, but a new paper confirms that how obesity is described can have important implications for people's judgments and decisions.
Three experiments by Crystal Hoyt and colleagues, recently published in Psychological Science, found that presenting obese people with a passage that described obesity as a disease decreased the dissatisfaction they reported about their own bodies, but also made them more likely to select a high-calorie sandwich from a list of options.
As the researchers explain in their paper:
"The term disease suggests that bodies, physiology, and genes are malfunctioning. By invoking physiological explanations for obesity, the disease label encourages the perception that weight is unchangeable."
Consistent with these ideas, other studies have found that describing obesity in biological terms can decrease the perception that people have control over their weight, and it can also influence behavior: reading a fictional news story about "obesity genes," for example, led participants to eat more cookies in a subsequent task.
Other findings confirm that biological explanations for complex human characteristics can be a double-edged sword, decreasing feelings of control and responsibility for better and for worse. Biomedical explanations for depressive symptoms, for instance, decrease the tendency to blame affected persons, but can also make people less optimistic about the prospects for recovery.
So can we get the best of both worlds, a way to talk about obesity that reduces blame and dissatisfaction (and the kind of fat-shaming that Barbara King wrote about last month), but that doesn't encourage fatalism?
In an article on people's understanding of genetic explanations for traits like gender and obesity, Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Steven J. Heine suggest that one way to counteract the negative consequences of biological explanations is with more biology. The fact is, complex human characteristics tend to have complex etiologies that involve a range of interacting biological and environmental components. Understanding the biology means appreciating this complexity and rejecting the idea that "biological" means "predetermined." As Dar-Nimrod and Heine sum up:
"People rarely appreciate that the expressions of genes are probabilistic, and governed by experiences and interactions with other genes, nor do they generally consider how genes can influence the ways we interact with, and are thus shaped by, our environments (e.g., Johnson, 2007). Likewise, most people are probably not aware of the role that epigenetic factors play in the development of complex traits and diseases (e.g., Petronis, 2010). Perhaps if the relations between genes and outcomes were conveyed in all their intricate richness people would respond to genetic accounts in less deterministic ways."
To take just one example from a review article of gene-environment interactions affecting obesity, the Nurses' Health Study found a significant relationship between total fat intake and BMI for women with one gene (the PPARG Pro / Pro genotype), but not for those with another (the 12Ala variant).
The important lesson, though, isn't just that biological influences are complex and non-deterministic. It's that we can't equate the biological with the uncontrollable (= that for which we're not responsible), and the non-biological with the controllable (= that for which we are). This cuts both ways: there are some aspects of biology we can control, but also many aspects of our environment that we can't. For example, poor access to fresh fruits and vegetables is a good environmental predictor of obesity, but one over which people have only limited control.
Calling obesity a disease may be useful today, if only as a counterweight to the idea that obesity results exclusively from lifestyle choices: factors over which we assume people have real control. After all, reducing blame and shame is a good thing. But giving up hope when it comes to those things we can control is not. So unless the connotations of "disease" begin to change to better reflect the complexity of biological causation, we may need a new vote from the American Medical Association before too long.
You can keep up with more of what Tania Lombrozo is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozoRafsanjani to face Tehran mayor
Iran goes to presidential runoff
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will face Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a runoff election for the Iranian presidency, the Ministry of Interior said.
With all ballots counted, conservative Rafsanjani had more than 6.1 million votes, while the harder-line conservative Ahmadinejad had 5.7 million, Iranian state-run radio and television announced Saturday. The top two candidates face each other Friday.
Reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi trailed in third place with nearly 5.1 million votes.
The conservative former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and reformist Mostafa Moin followed in fourth and fifth respectively with more than 4 million votes.
About 31 million people -- nearly two-thirds of eligible voters -- took part in Friday's election. Of their ballots, 1.2 million were thrown out because they were "spoiled," the government said.
While Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif called the turnout "better than expected," it was lower than in previous presidential elections.
When Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad face each other Friday, they'll offer Iranian voters two strikingly different perspectives.
Rafsanjani, a conservative, has taken softer stances in recent months. He's expressed a desire to improve Iran's strained ties with the West -- including the United States, which has had no formal diplomatic ties with Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 2002 President Bush termed Iran part of an "axis of evil," along with North Korea and Iraq, then under Saddam Hussein.
Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative, has called for embracing the principles of the revolution. He has much support among vigilantes and popular militias, as well as poor people. He wants to turn some cultural institutions, created in recent years, back into mosques.
The outcome of the election is not expected to change Iran's theocratic government. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameinei still has the last word in matters of state.
Many of President Mohammed Khatami's initiatives were blocked by clerical hard-liners who hold vast power under Iran's Islamic government.
The reform-minded cleric is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.Pete Seeger, the iconoclastic American singer, songwriter and social activist who did battle with injustice in America armed with a banjo, a guitar and the transformative power of song, has died. He was 94.
Seeger died Monday at New York Presbyterian Hospital, his grandson Kitama Cahill-Jackson told the Associated Press.
A veteran of the labor, peace and civil rights movements, Seeger remained relevant as an activist into his 90s. He was equally musician and revolutionary, playing a major role in the folk music revival that began in the late 1950s while helping to craft the soundtrack of 1960s protests through such songs as "We Shall Overcome," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
"He'd be a living archive of America's music and conscience, a testament to the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards a more humane and justified ends," said Springsteen, who had performed Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" with Seeger at the Lincoln Memorial concert marking President Obama's 2008 inauguration. "At some point, Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history," Bruce Springsteen said at the all-star Madison Square Garden concert marking Seeger's 90th birthday in 2009.
Gifted at connecting with audiences, Seeger called his ability to inspire regular folks to sing along his "cultural guerrilla tactic." "There's no such thing as a wrong note as long as you're singing it," he told the 15,000-strong crowd at his birthday celebration.
Seeger's life of music and political activism could be summed up in "The Hammer Song," the enduring anthem he wrote more than 60 years ago with his good friend Lee Hays to support the progressive political movement in the U.S.:
If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land/ I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.
Popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary in the 1960s, the song embodied the heart of Seeger: his musicality, his activism, his optimism and his lifelong belief that songs could and should be used to build a sense of community to make the world a better place.
"I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears," he said.
Seeger inspired a generation of folk singers and musicians that included the Kingston Trio and Joan Baez, who once said: "We all owe our careers to Pete Seeger."
VIDEO: 'This Land Is Your Land' with Arlo Guthrie
As a member of two influential folk groups, the Almanac Singers and the Weavers, Seeger wrote or co-wrote "We Shall Overcome," the anthem of the civil rights movement based on an early 20th century gospel song; "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," which became an anti-Vietnam War protest song; and another political anthem, "Turn! Turn! Turn!," which turned to a passage from the Bible — "to everything there is a season" — for the lyrics.What Is Peak Oil?
A Peak Oil Scenario
Oil Prices And Inflation
Can This Scenario Be Avoided?
Positioning Your Portfolio
Positioning Your Spending
In hot or cold climates, a large house will generally have a much higher energy footprint than a small house. Think carefully about long-term trends in utility costs before buying a McMansion.
Cars are a major energy sink, and are damaging for personal finances. In addition to the energy used when filling up the tank, there is a massive amount of energy embedded in their manufacture. The full costs of a lengthy commute are impressive once you add in the depreciation of the automobile.
A useful hobby like having a home garden will use less energy - and provides what may be an increasingly important skill - than something like driving to a golf course and spending the morning tormenting some innocent golf ball.
Resource limits hang over the long-term outlook for societies - often summarised as "Peak Oil" or "Peak Food". In order to make a personal finance plan, it is a factor that ought to be taken into account. Unlike other macroeconomic trends, how you structure your portfolio probably matters less than how you structure your spending. This article provide a high level summary of my views on this topic, which will filled out in later posts. Correspondingly, I will give the justification for these arguments in later article.As a quick summary, Peak Oil is a heavily studied and argued over topic. The worry is not that we will not run out of oil, rather that the rate of oil extraction will slow, after growing for decades. As we go the other side of the peak, there will be less energy to fuel our economies, which are highly dependent upon fossil fuels.Additionally, there is the related problem of "Peak Food": our ability to provide food for a still-growing global population is under increasing strain. Part of the problem is the heavy dependence upon fossil fuels in modern industrial farming - which is the only way achieve the high yields needed. But many countries are also hitting limits on their fresh water supplies.If we are looking at long horizon, it appears that we are facing two regimes for the economies of the developed world under a Peak Oil scenario. At first, we will be muddling through, and the-growth period sets in.Developed economies will continue to grow, even though the amount of energy consumed will probably shrink. There is considerable controversy over the forecast for energy production (most Peak Oil theorists are unsurprisingly pessimistic about growth). But using mainstream forecasts,energy production will continue to grow until 2030. However, the amount of energy available to the developed economies will probably drop, as the emerging markets will bid away more and more of the production.Some Peak Oil theorists have been too pessimistic about this period, to the point of arguing that economic growth is impossible in an environment of shrinking energy supplies. I discussed in a somewhat technical article why this is not the case ; very simply, Gross Domestic Product is not a measure of well being, and so it can continue to grow even standards of living are falling. Although I do not dispute the broad "Peak Oil story" (although there are fairly dubious arguments on the fringes), I appear more optimistic about the prospects for economic growth than many Peak Oil theorists.Note that although I expect growth to continue, we will of course continue to have recessions. As energy supplies get tighter, there is a greater risk of disruptive oil spikes which will cause recessions. But it should be noted that frequent recessions were a feature of other periods, even in the 1950s which featured strong average growth and cheap oil.The "de-growth" phase is more worrisome. The reason why the economy can continue to grow during the "muddling through" phase is that it will be possible to substitute away from energy-intensive activities. They will get too expensive, and so people will do something else. However, this can only go so far. There are no substitutes for some activities, such as growing food. If energy availability fell far enough, there would need to be a reversal of urbanisation, as muscle power would be needed to grow crops instead of fossil fuels. This would represent a collapse in productivity, and force fairly radical changes upon society.I would not hazard a guess to the timing of such a shift. My view is that there is a lot of excesses that can be worked out of existing energy use, that allows such an event to be pushed far outside my usual forecast horizon (1-3 years). If I am in an optimistic mood, I would guess it could be more than 50 years in the future. As a result, I would mainly focus on the "muddling through" phase, but the possibility of the transition to de-growth cannot be ignored.There is no reason to expect oil prices to rise in a persistent, steady fashion. Instead, it will probably follow its previous post-1970s trajectory of spiking upwards quickly, then retracing until the next spike. This is the most pernicious path, as the spikes cause a disruption in activity, but then the falling prices later disrupt conservation efforts. Car sizes in the United States fell after the 1970s oil shock, but crept right back up in later decades.But it probably seems safe to expect that the trend in oil prices will be rising faster than the broad inflation rate.In terms of the overall CPI inflation rate, it will be entirely possible that it will remain around the 2% average that has been the target for central banks. If energy and food prices rise more than 2% per year, the other components can get squeezed and they end up with lower inflation rates. (Note: in the short term, an oil price spike will cause overall CPI to rise by more than 2%, but this tends to get retraced as the economy contracts in response to the energy spike. What I am referring to here is a multi-year average rate.)One thing to keep in mind - the CPI is not a "cost of living index". Over time, the consumption basket for consumers will change, and declining energy supplies mean that by definition the volume of energy consumption will fall. In other words, your "cost of living" will rise faster than the CPI index if you have a higher weight of energy consumption in your personal spending than that used to calculate the index. In particular, if you intend to keep an energy-intensive lifestyle in a Peak Oil world, your personal cost of living will be rising much faster than CPI inflation.The Peak Oil community disparages the easily observed tendency for people to wish that energy supplies will rise forever. There have been a large number of schemes that have been proposed to provide future energy needs, and they have all essentially failed. Renewable energy sources - such as solar, wind, hydro - will become increasingly important, but it appears that they can only provide a fraction of current energy consumption.I cannot rule out a fix that makes these concerns go away, but it is a bad idea to assume that things will happen just because it is convenient.The gradual nature of the changes in the economy make it hard to position for this scenario. Doing things like buying oil companies is not an obvious win - the whole point is that it will be harder and more expensive for them to produce oil, and so they may not benefit from higher prices. (Companies with large easily-extracted reserves will benefit, but that may already be in the price.)I worked as a macro interest rates analyst, so picking companies is not in my skill set. But I am somewhat skeptical about the bias of equity analysts - they tend to want to "pick winners". In this case, that may be dangerous; the correct course of action is "avoid losers". Since there is a well-documented tendency for people to want to believe in quick fixes to avoid thinking about resource limits, they may be easy targets for dubious get-rich-quick energy schemes.And if the inflation rate is stable around 2%, there is no reason to believe that bond yields will explode higher based on the analogy of what happened in the 1970s.Although it is unclear that portfolios need to be changed in response to this scenario, thinking how you spend your money is a much more important topic. Moreover, the changes you make are probably sensible even if a new source of energy miraculously appears.Energy costs are embedded in most consumer goods. Being careful how you structure your spending habits will make you less exposed to a rise in energy or food prices. And at the same time, it would help you hit retirement savings targets. Since consumption habits are followed for a long time, it makes sense to avoid creating self-defeating habits, even if the shocks associated with Peak Oil hit after a long delay. Some simple examples:As I noted above, this article is just a sketch of my thoughts, and I expect to cover these topics in further detail as time passes.(c) Brian Romanchuk 2014Header illustration courtesy of Square-Enix
On its surface, Romancing SaGa looks like any other game from its era. Open world RPGs were nothing new by 1992 and series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had allowed players to wander, explore, and build their party for years. Though its shared DNA with Final Fantasy makes Romancing SaGa appear indistinguishable at first, closer examination shows that in the end, it it would ultimately influence RPGs in a major way. The problem, though, is that Romancing SaGa just isn't very good.
Romancing SaGa was the fourth game in the SaGa series, developed and published by Square, coming after three Game Boy games that were localized in North America as the Final Fantasy Legend series. Released on January 28, 1992 in Japan, it wouldn't come out in North America for 13 years—and like that 13 year length, the story behind Romancing SaGa is a long saga; a tale of two games, one of incredible innovations and great ideas, and one of intense frustration and poor execution.
The SaGa games approached character progression in a much less linear manner than their parent series did, and didn't contain many traditional Final Fantasy elements. But for the most part, the label made sense: The SaGa games felt very much like spinoffs that benefitted from the Final Fantasy branding. Romancing SaGa, though, departed radically from the previous SaGa games, marking it as a fitting transition into what became a truly different series.
All Romancing SaGa screenshots by author
If Romancing SaGa has any analog in the Final Fantasy series, it's Final Fantasy II, one of the series' lesser known and least liked games. They have designer Akitoshi Kawazu in common, and while his urge to radicalize the Dungeons & Dragons inspired RPG framework was visible in Final Fantasy II, it was fully realized with Romancing SaGa.
You're tasked with stopping the rise of the evil demon Saruin and retrieving ten powerful objects called Fatestones—a solid (if standard) setup for a JRPG. But immediately, Romancing SaGa finds a way to differentiate. The game begins with a choice of which class to play, but you'll quickly realize that you aren't only choosing a character type, you're choosing a unique character. Each of the eight selectable characters have entirely different stories, play styles, regions, and party members. For me, as a first time player, this realization was freeing and exciting, promising narrative depth and incredibly different experiences: "Romancing SaGa offere not only one or two unique scenarios (which other games had done by 1992), but eight!" I told myself. It's an incredibly epic idea—in the literal sense, similar to the the tradition of great interwoven stories and myths.
Unfortunately, Romancing SaGa is unable to live up to this ambition. While choosing a different character at the onset provides a different opening scenes, the path to the end of the game beyond that is a pretty similar one, devoid of compelling plot points or exciting events to guide progress. And even if the end goal of the game was clear (it's not, and this may be its largest fault), the journey to complete it isn't a particularly emotionally satisfying one, and finding out how to go about it is a monumental task unto itself.
It also fails to weave together the stories of the various selectable characters. While the characters you didn't choose do make their way into your story, they only serve as mechanical additions, never really changing how the story unfolds. Their individual stories don't become interwoven; instead, your chosen character overrides the others', rendering their potential personality into mute servitude.
Romancing SaGa's greatest weakness is its lack of direction, but it's also the game's greatest strength. Players can choose locations from a world map, each with their own climates, people, and quests, and there's an incredible number of places to travel to. Once a character's unique opening sequence is over, the world opens, and players are free to figure out how to save it... Or to find some fairies, climb the top of a mountain to find a legendary feather, or just generally wander.
That's not immediately obvious, though: Exploring most of the areas available at the start can lead to the perception that there's just not that much to do. But in actuality, obtuse conversations, which are triggered by finding the other playable characters in any number of potential city inns they may or may not be in or completing a task for another character somewhere else, will actually lead to more locations being unlocked. It's a strange system that, yet again, is not explained or made clear. It leads to a lot of frustration, too, as a quest can require you to travel somewhere that's not yet accessible.
All of this unneeded opacity breaks down the sheer novelty of exploring world into a chore, and the final reward isn't exciting. So even in its most novel idea, in allowing a truly free world full of diverse towns and characters, Romancing SaGa shoots itself in the foot by limiting its scope.
If I sound conflicted, it's because I am. The world of Romancing SaGa is impressively reactive, especially for 1992. The game is based on triggers, whether it be a conversation, quest completion, or leveling status, but you never know what will change or where. At best, it gives you a sense of there being much more out there while you work on the task at hand. At worst, you have no idea of where to go and what to do. Quests you might have been able to tackle can mysteriously disappear because your character is too high a level, instead of scaling. When an RPG doesn't encourage grinding, I'm lost.
In fact, even leveling is a mix of fascinating and frustrating in Romancing SaGa. Characters don't steadily gain experience like they do in Final Fantasy; in fact, there isn't an experience system at all. Instead, characters just sporadically receive stat boosts after completing battles, and the logic isn't routine. The same applies to learning new spells and abilities. There isn't a concrete system explained anywhere in the game (or accompanying materials); there must be an algorithm in place somewhere, but the message is just that good things will come to those who fight. It's so unique, but it's so unpredictable that it gets in the way.
When Romancing SaGa was eventually localized into English in 2005's PS2 remake, it provided the developers an opportunity to clean up all their past mistakes and do the original game's great ideas justice. Instead, they made it all the more confusing. The PS2 remake created a fleshed out, 3D world, but failed to streamline the game in a way that underscored its most admirable and unique qualities.
It added more story scenarios to make the characters a little more likable and motivated, but nothing in the game's guidance (or lack thereof) does the same. Skills needed to progress through dungeons are hard to track down, and not having one led me to being stuck in a dungeon, with no way forward or back. No concessions were made for the modern player, and frankly, that's what remakes should do, especially ones built from the ground up like Romancing SaGa.
A massive playable cast, a world that didn't just funnel players from area to area but was truly open, and a twist on the traditional leveling scheme are all things that should have set Romancing SaGa apart. But it didn't go the extra mile to make its sense of freedom accessible, or even interesting on a more structural or narrative level. Because of that, Romancing SaGa's innovations didn't make their way into the gaming landscape as they should have.
In spite of its missteps, Romancing Saga represented a shift in game design, shaping the idea of the "immersive" and expansive games that foster stories created by the players. Unfortunately, because of those missteps, not many people realized it. It may have received greater recognition in Japan, but its inability to execute its great ideas consistently may have kept it from release in North America. Therefore, we don't necessarily attribute many of modern video gaming's most familiar elements—interwoven stories, free roaming exploration, progress based on play style—to Romancing Saga. And I'm still not sure we should, but at the very least, we can recognize it for laying some of the groundwork.A roll of pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) office tape in a dispenser
Adhesive tape refers to any one of a variety of combinations of backing materials coated with an adhesive. Different backing materials and adhesives can be used depending on the intended use.
History [ edit ]
Pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA), a key component of some adhesive tapes, was first developed in 1845 by Dr. Horace Day, a surgeon.[1] In 1901, the German Oscar Troplowitz invented an adhesive patch called Leukoplast for the German company Beiersdorf AG. In 1936, German company Beiersdorf AG invented a transparent adhesive patch called Tesa.[2]
Types [ edit ]
Pressure-sensitive tape [ edit ]
Pressure-sensitive tape, PSA tape, self-stick tape or sticky tape consists of a pressure-sensitive adhesive coated onto a backing material such as paper, plastic film, cloth, or metal foil. It is sticky (tacky) without any heat or solvent for activation and adheres with light pressure. These tapes usually require a release agent on their backing or a release liner to cover the adhesive. Sometimes, the term "adhesive tape" is used for these tapes.
Many pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes exhibit triboluminescence, observable in a dark room, when peeled off a dispenser roll or other surface.[3][4]
Dependence of adhesive strength on the shape [ edit ]
The adhesiveness of the tape does depend not only on the type of the tape but also on its macroscopic shape. Tapes with sharp corners start to detach at pointed corners[5]. The adhesive strength can be sufficiently improved by cutting the edges as shown in the film[6]
Water activated tape [ edit ]
Water activated tape, gummed paper tape or gummed tape is starch- or sometimes animal glue-based adhesive on a kraft paper backing which becomes sticky when moistened.
A specific type of gummed tape is called reinforced gummed tape (RGT). The backing of this reinforced tape consists of two layers of paper with a cross-pattern of fiberglass filaments laminated between. The laminating adhesive had previously been asphalt but now is more commonly a hot-melt atactic polypropylene.
Gummed tapes are described in ASTM D5749-01(2006)[7] Standard Specification for Reinforced and Plain gummed Tape for Sealing and Securing.
Water-activated tape is used for closing and sealing boxes. Before closing corrugated fiberboard boxes, the tape is wetted or remoistened, activated by water. The tape is mostly 3 inches (7.5 cm) wide.
Heat sensitive tape [ edit ]
Heat activated tape is usually tack-free until it is activated by a heat source. It is sometimes used in packaging, for example, a tear strip tape for cigarette packs. Conversely, thermal release tape, such as REVALPHA by Nitto Denko, loses its tack and fully releases when heated to a certain temperature. This type of tape is used often in the semiconductor industry.[citation needed]
Drywall tape [ edit ]
Drywall tape is paper, cloth, or mesh, sometimes with a gummed or pressure-sensitive adhesive. It is used to make the joints between sheets of drywall materials.[8]
See also [ edit ]Combining architecture, advertising and technology, this car dealership lets users punch in numbers to bring their vehicle of choice down a 15-story showroom looming above in full view. The tall lit-up facade of Autobahn Motors acts as a billboard and show space, letting fans scope out a Lamborghini from a distance then take it out for a test drive on the streets below.
The design responds in part to the lack of surface real estate in this space-crunched island city-state of Singapore, but it also serves as great marketing for the business. While not the first such automobile-vending tower in the world, it is the largest, and it works quickly: a user-selected vehicle can be brought down in just two minutes from the floors far above. Given land scarcity in cities, this unusual-looking typology makes a lot of sense, and could start to spring up in other places as well.
Meanwhile, for those in the United States: Carvana has smaller versions located in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. These are less a response to density issues and more driven by marketing and novelty.
And while the towers aren’t quite as tall the effect is still pretty neat – modular platforms provide vehicles on demand from an array of sports cars, hatchbacks, minivans and trucks.
As a bonus for fans of quirky interactivity: their system operates even more like a vending machine – users are given a giant coin to insert, which lets them bring down the vehicle of their choice from the display racks above.The Park City Sunrise Rotary Club's Second Annual Shot Ski blew away expectations on Saturday, bringing more than a thousand people downtown to witness Park City reclaim the title of "world's longest shot ski" from Breckenridge, Colorado.
Breckenridge took the title away in January, when the fellow ski town did 1,234 shots during its Norse-themed Ullr Fest. In 2016, the Sunrise Rotary set the initial record at 1,000 shots.
The records are not adjudicated by Guinness World Records, which "no longer considers applications for records involving the rapid consumption of alcohol," according to its website.
Back in Park City, 1,250 people took their places and threw back half of a cup of Wasatch Brewery beer, raising a total of more than $10,000 for the Park City Sunrise Rotary Club.
Mike Luers, a Rotarian who led the engineering effort on the shot ski, said donors supplied 476 skis for use in the event. The skis ran 2,225 feet down Main Street in a "U" shape, which allowed the shot ski to cover twice the distance without closing down more of the thoroughfare. Luers' team rounded out the U with a series of hinges built to tip backwards simultaneously and supply beer to the 1,250 shot takers. The mechanism ran from the top of Main Street to the Post Office, with gloves and hats adorning cups where people were saving their spots before the event.
Tickets for the event, running from $20 for an unreserved spot on the ski to $500 for VIP placement, went toward the Sunrise Rotary's funds and will be used for community grants. Rotary fundraising director Connie Nelson said the event's turnout surpassed gloomy initial expectations, which took into account a morning snowfall.
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"We were afraid there'd be a lot of attrition … there was so much snow, and we were short 388 [tickets] two days ago," Nelson said. "We had people who wanted to get on the shot and we didn't have room for them."
The afterparty consisted of a beer garden, yard games, a taco truck and live music with Salt Lake-based bluegrass band Pixie and the Partygrass Boys in the Wasatch Brewpub parking lot. In the midst of the party, Justin Morgan, a participant in the event and a Park City resident, said he thinks he knows why Park City triumphed over its Colorado rival: Parkites are just better at drinking.
"If you really think about it, this year we barely made it but I really want to smash it next year to a point where Breckenridge can't do it, because I think there are more people in Park City that are willing to do a shot ski," Morgan said. "That's what it comes down to for a world record, right there."
Applications for grants from the Park City Sunrise Rotary Club are open until Oct. 31. Apply online here.At this week’s Urban Land Institute forum in Detroit, a panel of some of the biggest names in Detroit development talked about their predictions for the future of Detroit. Curbed was there and here’s what we took away from the panel.
Peter Cummings, co-founder of The Platform (whose work is mainly in New Center, Brightmoor, Live6, and Islandview right now) thinks the quality of new developments will increase due to more competition. He thinks that the Tech Center area will flourish with the QLINE starting soon.
Richard Broder, CEO of Broder & Sachse Real Estate Services, said that he sees residential growth in the city and more mixed income opportunities in the neighborhoods. He thinks the QLINE will be a big success, and that Detroit will fare better in the next recession.
Matt Cullen, principal at Rock Ventures LLC, made a bold statement, saying that the Pistons will be downtown soon, Major League Soccer will be in Detroit, and that a new stadium will be built at the jail site (the county says they’re moving forward with the jail). He also said the Riverfront would be open from bridge to bridge and that the QLINE will be a catalyst for more economic development and transit is key for the area.
Sue Mosey from Midtown Detroit Inc consulted a magic 8 ball for her predictions, but two stuck out. She said that New Center would become the next Midtown, and that it could be possible that we could see a 20-story building at Woodward and Warren.
Hmmmm.This dark comedy explores the lost universes of disgraced idol Dylan Greenyears. Dylan had always wanted to live as many lives as he could—that was the appeal of being an actor. But at the end of a brief, bright stint as a Hollywood heartthrob, Dylan loses the lead in Titanic and exiles himself and his wife to a recently settled exoplanet called New Taiwan.
For a while, life beyond Earth seems uncannily un-wondrous. Dylan teaches at an American prep school, raises a family with his high school sweetheart, and lives out his restlessness through literature. But then a box of old fan mail (and the hint of a galaxy-wide conspiracy) offers Dylan a chance to recapture the past. As he tries to balance this transdimensional midlife crisis against family life, Dylan encounters a cast of extraordinary characters: a supercomputer with aspirations of godhood; a Mormon-fundamentalist superfan; an android Frank Sinatra; a sampling of his alternate selves; and, once again, the love of his lives.
A singularly mind-blowing, genre-bending performance, King of the Worlds is a literary take on science fiction that throws |
Ask your immediate circle what they think of your idea, and find out what local support there is for your business, too. Here at Inventshift we found that it was difficult to find all of the information we need, so we created our own knowledge base, filled with all the answers to the questions we had when we were just starting out. But most of all, we’ve realised that it’s important that you believe in your idea. Setting up a social enterprise is not always easy, and like with any business, it will have it’s own setbacks and challenges. Believe in yourself and you will go far.
Financing your social enterprise When it comes to securing funding for your social enterprise, many people look towards family and friends or personal funds as their first port of call. Bootstrapping your business is something that many social entrepreneurs do. Bootstrapping is essentially starting your business with your own limited capital. The benefits of this means that you don’t need to give shares to potential investors; you keep 100% of the business and can grow it in a lean way. Beyond that, there are plenty of awards or grants you can apply for. A few of our favourites are The Big Lottery Fund, CAN Invest, and Community Foundations. You can also apply for ethical angel investors to help you with your business. One of our favourite places for this is Angel.co. Crowdfunding is another way you can raise capital. Use the power of a passionate crowd to build your business! We love this informative webinar from Unltd on crowdfunding. Make sure you have enough capital to ‘weather the storms’ - every business has it’s financial ‘winter’, and it’s important you have enough cash reserves to keep you going throughout quiet periods. Business plan This is an area that many people feel daunted about - but please don’t be! It’s not that difficult when you get going. Writing a business plan for your social enterprise is a way you can get investors to sit up and take notice of your new venture. It will also help you clarify in your mind what steps to take. It should be no more than 20 pages maximum, and should help you clarify the following questions: Your vision: How will society change from your business?
Your mission: What are you aiming to achieve?
Your goals: What are the aims of the business, and where do you see it in the future? Your business plan shouldn’t be like a large 20 page report, but instead should be a clear and simple guide for yourself, or anyone else to understand your business aims and objectives. Include your projections for the first three years of your business; aim to be realistic with both money earned and impact made. Your venture will hopefully be a long-term commitment, so think global, but act local! There’s lots of online support that can help you write an awesome business plan that’s sure to knock potential investors socks off.
Deciding on your business structure You may be surprised to know that you can’t register your business legally as a social enterprise, but by defining yourself as a social enterprise, it focuses your ambitions for the business. Most social enterprises either start off as charities, non profits or small businesses. Your immediate and future funding and income generating opportunities will have a major impact on the structure you choose.
Social enterprise business models You may have heard of one of the most famous social enterprises, Tom’s. Their ‘one for one’ approach is becoming a common way for social enterprises to do business, with every purchase helping someone in need. When you buy a pair of Tom’s shoes, one pair goes to a person in need. There are also ‘pay it forward’ methods that are becoming popular; like the Canvas Cafe’s pop up restaurant events that allow you to have a meal, and also fund a meal for the homeless. Finally, there are also models that contribute a certain element to a cause. This is the model we have adopted with the Inventshift Fund. We give 5% of all bookings towards the site to our fund, which is an impact resource designed to help charities and social enterprises in need. Who’s onboard? Finding your team Working with like-minded people can help if you’re a solo social entrepreneur. Having just one extra person will allow you both to bounce ideas off each other, and help you feel less alone in this crazy journey. If you haven’t got that option;consider mentoring and being a part of an incubator if you feel you need more support. Although you want to work with people with similar values, and aiming for the same vision, it’s important that your skillsets are different. Getting a rational thinker to work on your business when you’re a visionary may not be a bad idea! You’ll find that if you seek out people that are quite different to you, you’ll find a complementary set of strengths and weaknesses to your own. If you’ve got passion and enthusiasm, that’s a great first step. Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses, and where you might need help in business. This will help you decide where you might need some extra help. For example, one person in your team may focus on the big picture and the strategy, whilst the other takes charge of the organisational details and making it happen. Additionally, you’ve got two aspects to your business - the financial or ‘business’ aspect, and the social enterprise side. Surround yourself with social entrepreneurs (you can find a whole host of likeminded peeps on our site), and people that can give you ideas, and that you can bounce off other ideas. These may be very different from those who can provide you with business support. The social entrepreneur community is thriving and strong; and one really great thing about it is that you’ll find that everyone is willing to help each other. There’s no competition between social entrepreneurs; our aim is the same!
Defining your product or service So, now all of your background work is out the way, it’s time to get down to the details of your product or service. You may want to start with one or two income streams at first, to see how well they do before trying to do too much at once. The next step is to think about these elements when creating the proposition for your social enterprise: Product: What are you offering to the customer?
Price: What do you need to charge to supply the product or service?
Place: Where is the customer going to ‘shop’ for your product?
Promotion: How are you going to encourage customers to buy your products? Many people perceive ethical or social good products as potentially expensive; but they don’t have to be. Even though a large percentage of your customer base may buy from you because you’re creating positive change, that isn’t always the case. Focusing on the quality of your product or service will ensure you compete with other for-profit companies in your space, and take a bigger share of your target market. Your product or service will generate your income, so ensure you’ve road tested it thoroughly to ensure you’ve got a viable business idea that can turn a profit.
Support and mentoring So you’ve got your business up and running; but you need that little bit of extra help. A social impact accelerator and incubator could help you. An accelerator is a growth program that helps enterprises when they are already established. An incubator is often used when in the early stages of a business; and will usually involve support or mentoring for much longer, to help your business get off the ground. A great resource to help is the Social Enterprise Greenhouse. This resource will give you access to a network of 400+ social enterprises and 300+ business and community leaders who contribute time, expertise, and money to support them to grow and achieve social and economic impact.
Online marketing We could easily write another separate guide to online marketing; but whether you’ve got physical products or an online marketplace, selling yourself well online is vital. It’s crucial to make sure that you have a strong brand, and that this is executed well throughout everything you do online. It’s not just about the logo and the typeface on your website; it’s about making sure that you demonstrate a particular style and tone of voice that is consistent throughout all your channels and activity. To get the right eyes on your business, SEO is also vitally important when you’re setting up your site. It’s no secret that link building is one of the best ways to boost SEO, and attract traffic naturally and organically. Also, make sure you choose the right keywords that are relevant to your target market and service or product offering. Once you have the keywords, these form the building blocks of your business, and you can use them in your articles, your social media content, and anything else you do online.
Getting PR Getting the right PR can be fantastic for your business. Fortunately, there is more media interest for social enterprises worldwide, so if you tell your story in the right way, you may secure some local or even national press attention. PR doesn’t have to be expensive; there are many different and cost-effective ways to get publicity for your startup. There are plenty of helpful tips we’ve found, like searching for #journorequest or #prrequest in Twitter, that are quick to do and could make all the difference to boosting your site rankings. When coming up with a press release, ask yourself the following questions: 1. Is there anything "new" in my story? 2. Is there anything unusual or unexpected about it? 3. Would this be of interest to anyone outside my business? 4. Will anyone actually care? Write as if you were talking to a friend, not a journalist. But at the same time, consider the journalist’s point of view. The launch of your business may not be newsworthy material; but something else about your business might be. In the email headline, use the words ‘STORY IDEA:’ and then your angle, to highlight your prospective story and get attention from the journalists. Contact alternative media sources such as Positive News and Conscious Magazine to further ramp up your PR efforts. When you get PR; it doesn’t stop there. Make sure you get a ‘As featured in’ banner to your website, along with the logos of the publications you’ve been featured in. Retweet and share your coverage; and mention that you’d like others to read, too. Making your business futureproof When it comes to building your business for the future, we’ve found that one positive approach to a social enterprise is to adopt the lean method; that is, closely monitoring what is working every step of the way, and constantly refining the business as it takes shape. You don’t just ‘startup’ and start earning; you’re constantly in the process of refining your proposition and your offerings, learning from your target market and adapting your messaging to suit.
Advice from other social entrepreneurs Here at Inventshift, we’re fortunate to have interviewed social entrepreneurs from all over the world. We’ve gained some excellent advice from the likes of Project Rockit, Good Will Wine and Fighting Chance, as well as lots of others! Hannah Parris, founder of Mighty Good Undies, gives her most valuable tip: ‘I probably have three pieces of advice. It is quite a rollercoaster and on top of all that you got a lot of boring stuff to do. There’s lots of boring elements in running a business. Accounting is not fun, and managing your receipts or dealing with purchase orders, all that sort of stuff that is pretty boring unless you are in love with the why you are going to get really sick of it. The next thing is have a really good team around you, build a great team that have shared values and shared why. That was a big lesson for me. You really can’t be doing it all by yourself, it’s too hard and take too long as well. So, have a good team with complementary skills but all with a shared vision of what you are trying to achieve. The last one is, make sure you can pay all your bills. There is no shame in saying I have got rent to pay, or a food bill because you need to be able to support yourself.’ Case studies: Successful social enterprises Social enterprises have been successful all around the world and are continuing to grow. An example of a social enterprise in India is Seva Cafe in Mumbai, where there are no prices on the restaurant menu. Each meal is funded by a ‘pay it forward’ scheme. Their note on your ‘bill’ reads: "Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. To keep the chain of gifts alive, we invite you to pay it forward for those dine after you." Clean Bites is a social enterprise in Malaysia that is doing really well. Most Malaysian food is greasy, oily and unhealthy, so Clean Bites established itself as an organisation that encourages the Malay people to make healthier food choices, by offering them fresh, sustainable and tasty meals. We offer a list of social enterprises on Inventshift - check out our directory with over 3,000 social enterprises!SONY has finally admitted outside hackers are responsible for a major PlayStation Network disruption.
The network outage, which began four days ago, is affecting more than 70 million users worldwide, who use it to play video games against friends online, stream movies and shop online.
Players can still play games offline, but are unable to challenge others over the internet, one of the console's key features.
"An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services," Sony senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold said in an online post, confirming for the first time that hackers had played a part in the shutdown.
"We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience," the statement added.
Sony said that it had shut the network down voluntarily "in order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward."
No information was given on when users could expect the service to be restored.
Hacker group Anonymous was originally suspected of causing the disruption as it had previously vowed retribution against the Japanese electronics giant after it took legal action against two hackers.
However, in a message on its website Friday entitled "For Once We Didn't Do It," the group denied responsibility, saying that while it was possible that individual hackers had targeted the network, Sony wasn't an official target.
The message went on to accuse Sony of "taking advantage of Anonymous' previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company's servers."
The outage came during a heavy playing week in the United States, with many public schools closed for spring break and an Easter holiday providing an opportunity for an extended weekend.Image copyright Tobba Agustsdottir Image caption The University of Cambridge is monitoring the area with 70 seismometers
A volcanic system close to Iceland's Bardarbunga's volcano was hit by a magnitude 4.5 earthquake in the early hours of Wednesday.
It adds to concerns that magma from Bardarbunga could feed into the nearby Askja volcano.
British and Icelandic scientists say that 50 million cubic metres of molten rock has moved in a 24 hour period.
If it continues to head north, it could link up with the Askja system and trigger a large eruption.
Scientists working in the area have said that they will be withdrawing from the exclusion zone on Wednesday after they have deployed some more instruments.
Prof Bob White, from the University of Cambridge, said "It's headed straight for it."
But he cautioned that volcanoes were hard to predict.
"It's moving at about 4km a day towards Askja, and if it keeps going it could get there in a few days," he told BBC News.
"We know there is a lot of molten rock sitting under the ground beneath Askja, which is a major volcanic system. If this molten rock hits that, we know it is likely to trigger it to erupt.
"But who knows, it may just stop. It is still at 5km-depth, and it is possible it could freeze there and not a lot more will happen. That is perfectly plausible."
Image copyright Tim Greenfield Image caption The dots show how quakes located by the Icelandic Meteorological Office have been travelling north
The Cambridge seismology group and researchers from Iceland have been monitoring volcanoes in the area since 2006 with more than 70 seismometers.
It is a huge amount of magma, creating an enormous subterranean channel of molten rock Prof Simon Redfern, University of Cambridge
Over the last 10 days, they have detected large numbers of earthquakes, which have been moving north over a distance of about 40km. They are caused as magma flows beneath the ground, cracking the rocks as it moves.
On Tuesday morning the Bardarbunga volcano was hit by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, the largest since tremors began in the area last week.
About 350 million cubic metres of magma have moved in this period, which is about twice the amount of molten rock that was blasted into the air during Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010.
Prof Simon Redfern, an earth scientist from the University of Cambridge, said: "It is a huge amount of magma, creating an enormous subterranean channel of molten rock."
He said that the dyke - the underground "plumbing system" that carries the molten rock - could join up with other underground fissures, creating a large network of magma.
Prof White added that several scenarios were possible.
"One is that it erupts under the glacier," he said.
"That is bad news because this kind of eruption can drive the big ash clouds that can go up 35,000-40,000ft, and that is what happened in 2010 with Eyjafjallajokull."
Image copyright AP Image caption The ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010 created a major disruption for air travel
However that scenario is looking less likely because the magma is moving beyond the thick ice of the glacier into shallower terrain beyond.
If it erupts in this region, with less ice-cover, it could create "fire-fountains" - spectacular plumes of lava, which can be dangerous, but carry less ash.
Prof White said: "The third scenario is that it keeps going north, it keeps feeding molten rock and it hits the Askja system and triggers that - then goodness knows what will happen. It could make a lot of disruptive ash all over Iceland."
The last time that the Askja volcano had a major eruption was in 1875. The ash-fall caused crops to fail and killed livestock, triggering a wave of migration away from the north east of Iceland.
'Curtain of fire'
Commenting on the team's findings Prof David Rothery, from the Open University, said that while the magma could head for Askja, it may also change its route.
"Magma could be heading along a dyke towards Askja, which last erupted in 1961, or it might bypass it and be injected northwards along a fissure that passes to the east of Askja, where there have been several earthquakes in the past week," he told BBC News.
"In neither case is an eruption inevitable. Many dykes never reach the surface.
"An eruption along a dyke could be a spectacular affair, beginning as a 'curtain of fire' feeding an expanding lava field. That sort of eruption is most unlikely to produce a column of fine ash that would get high enough to be a hazard to more than a local aviation.
"I would anticipate a bigger problem if an eruption of stored, gas-rich magma were to begin at Bardarbunga itself, but even that would cause major disruption to air travel only if it was powerful enough to reach about 20 km high and if the wind carried the ash southeast over the UK and mainland Europe."
On Saturday, Iceland raised its level of alert to the aviation industry to red, warning of an imminent eruption, but then lowered it on Sunday to its second-highest level, orange.
Airspace over the site has been closed, but all Icelandic airports currently remain open, authorities say.
The Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010 caused the largest closure of European airspace since World War Two, with losses estimated at between 1.5bn and 2.5bn euros (£1.3bn-2.2bn).
However since the eruption, the Civil Aviation Authority has relaxed its rules to allow planes to fly in areas with a low density of volcanic ash.
Follow Rebecca on TwitterThe figures were used in the UN's four-yearly National Report on conservation, EPA section leader Nina Holst told newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad.
“It is unfortunately correct that, in the previous period, from approximately 2005 to 2013, a figure of 6,000 protected areas was used, which is unfortunately too high,” Holst said.
“It was unfortunately not possible to remove the figures everywhere, and they have made their way into the UN's 2014 national report,” she said.
The error was discovered by author Kjeld Hansen, who reported it in his book “Det Store Svigt” (approximately, “The Great Deception”).
The figures were still present on the EPA's website as recently as November 2016, according to Hansen.
Holst told Kristeligt Dagblad that, although that was possible, the figures had now been removed.
The actual number of protected areas remains unclear.
While EPA states that it is around 5,000, Hansen arrives at a figure of 1,843, claiming that the agency's figure was inflated by including expired and rejected protected areas.
“That means that 1,787 churches and parking areas at beaches have been included, as well as removed advertising boards,” Hansen told news agency Ritzau.
The Danish Society for Nature Conservation criticised the agency's use of the figures.
“Not knowing whether large areas are protected, why they are protected, and where they are means that we cannot obtain reliable information from the agency. That is highly criticisable,” the organisation's president Ella Maria Bisschop-Larsen told Ritzau.
Holst told Kristeligt Dagblad that the figures were not an attempt by the agency to misrepresent the status of nature protection in Denmark.
READ ALSO: Copenhagen mayor puts on hold plans to develop natural areaUpcoming Performances
Pete the Cat This groovy blue cat is on his way to stay with a new family and he’s excited, but Jimmy Biddle is nervous about how their houseguest is going to shake things up. When Jimmy draws a blank in art class on the last day of school, it turns out Pete is the perfect friend to help him out.
Currents ‘Currents’ is a spectacular show that inspired by the historical Battle of Currents between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla in their quest to find energy sources for the world.
Dailey & Vincent Inducted as members of the Grand Ole Opry in 2017 and dubbed by CMT as “The Rock Stars of Bluegrass,” the Dailey & Vincent duo is hailed throughout the music industry as one of the most exciting, reputable, and elite Bluegrass bands in America.Will Buckley has joined the Owls on a season-long loan from Sunderland.
The Premier League winger is eligible to feature on Sunday as Wednesday host Aston Villa in their Championship curtain raiser.
The 26-year-old began his career at Rochdale, rising through the youth system at Spotland before making his senior bow in February 2008.
Buckley scored 13 goals from 42 appearances for the League Two outfit and his impressive form earned him a move to the Championship with Watford in January 2010.
After spending 18 months at Vicarage Road, making 39 Championship appearances and chipping in with five goals, Buckley was back on the move and joined Brighton in summer 2011, who had been promoted as champions from League 1 the previous season.
During the midfielder’s three-year spell on the South Coast, where Buckley scored 19 goals in 64 league starts for Brighton, he moved to the Premier League with Sunderland for a reported fee in the region of £2.5m.
Buckley has made 24 appearances for the Black Cats in all competitions, during which time he has enjoyed loan spells with Leeds and Birmingham.
He will wear squad number 38 at Hillsborough.CHICAGO (CBS) — Donald Trump has chosen Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate, sources told CBS News.
Trump called all Pence Thursday afternoon, and Pence departed Indianapolis on Thursday afternoon as was to meet with Trump in New York.
However, after the attack in Nice, France, Trump said he was delaying the announcement
In light of the horrible attack in Nice, France, I have postponed tomorrow's news conference concerning my Vice Presidential announcement. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2016
Heading to NYC from Indy @GovPenceIN – to arrive on private jet about 6 pm. Due to have meetings tonight with @realDonaldTrump — Major Garrett (@MajorCBS) July 14, 2016
In Northwest Indiana, GOP officials there welcomed the news. Pence brings religious conservatives into the fold and also knows his way around Washington, having served as congressman.
“I think he will help with evangelicals,” said Andy Qunell, treasurer of the Lake County Republican Party. “I think he has a big support base there.”
Some social conservatives haven’t looked favorably on Trump’s multiple marriages and one-time support of abortion rights.
Pence is a born-again Christian, who signed a religious freedom bill into law that some said legalized discrimination against gays, before it was amended.
And, Pence provides Trump with something else, someone who knows his way around Washington.
“Trump has great business experience,” Qunell said. “You see that with Trump Tower, but there’s not much government experience. Mike Pence brings that.”
Earlier Thursday, Pence deputy campaign manager Marc Lotter was on a flight to New York. Trump has said he will formally announce his pick on Friday morning at an event in Manhattan.
#veepstakes mania watch 2 — Marc Lotter, deputy campaign manager for @GovPenceIN on my flight from Indy to NYC. I'm sure just coincidence — Major Garrett (@MajorCBS) July 14, 2016
Pence and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were considered the top finalists for the job.
Both met with Trump in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
Gingrich told Garrett that he expected Trump to notify him of his decision later Thursday.
#Veepstakes mania watch: @newtgingrich to me: expects to hear after 1-2 pm (meaning not before). Says: "All real men take out the garbage" — Major Garrett (@MajorCBS) July 14, 2016
For his part, Pence was in Indianapolis on Thursday, announcing a $1 billion investment in innovation and economic development for the state.
Pence also reserved campaign ad time for his run for governor should be be passed over for the VP job. He faces a Friday noon deadline to withdraw from the governor’s race.Alliance Council statement – call out to MLS
1 November 2017
By Martin Buckley and Stephanie Steiner
As the Alliance Council, representing Alliance Members and fans of Seattle Sounders FC, we recognize and celebrate the diversity of our communities.
Alliance Council and Supporter Groups have worked closely with the Sounders FC throughout the years around the fan experience inside and outside of the stadium. We gave our strong opinions back in September following a series of incidents. We know that Community is important to all of us, and we continue to have a regular face-to-face engagement to advocate for and represent all fans.
We have seen how Alliance members and fellow fans have not been treated as expected – both at home and last weekend in Vancouver, BC. As fans we have been left frustrated, angry and confused at the vacuum in communication around these serious issues. We encourage all Sounders fans to respect and support each other as a community.
Alliance Council recognize our Club Ownership and Front Office for their continued support – both visible and otherwise. We applaud our Ownership in issuing a jointly signed, though delayed, statement of values: “At a human level, we believe these values to be non-political. Speaking up for equality is simply the right thing to do.” We believe their statement was originally intended to be stronger, and we believe the dilution and the delay to be caused by MLS decision-makers.
Alliance Council look beyond our Club to Major League Soccer to provide a clear statement of values that recognizes the diversity of the fan base. The silence in this matter is deafening, disappointing and cowardly. The decision made to eject our fans last Sunday was wrong, and the silence surrounding the decision is wrong.
Soccer is a global platform of inclusion and unity, and even a common language. Soccer is love, passion, and lifelong devotion. It is these commitments that create the very foundations of Clubs around the world that have existed for more than a century. Fans first, MLS. Fans first.
Thanks to Jeff Williams and Roberta King for their content and for reviewing this statement.
Statement from Sounders FC was posted here – http://soundersalliance.org/2017/10/31/statement-from-club/Greetings everyone!
It has been a long time since my last post. So far, we have emphasised more on the Introduction of some of the very cool Java features. We also tried to understand the concepts with the help of example code. Moving ahead in the same train, in this Java Tutorial we will check out a yet another exciting Java 8 Feature and that is JSR 310 a new Java Date and Time API.
The New Java Date and Time API (a. k. a JSR 310 or ThreeTen) was originally planed to ship with Java SE 7. But because of the delays in the progress of the project ThreeTen (project JSR 310), the plan changed to Java SE 8 and further changed to Java SE 9. Very recently, it has been officially declared that, the Java Date and Time API progress is in a good shape and it will be able to safely catch the Java SE 8 train.
A Date and Time mechanism is very critical in any programming language. The existing Java Date and Time API has lot of problems and a non-unified structure. The JSR 310 aims to enhance the current Java Date and Time support by introducing a new package called as ‘java.time’. Before we move ahead, we will have a look at the problems with existing API.
Existing Java Date and Time API:
The Java Date and Time support exists since the beginning of Java. It has been evolved during this time with the addition of new classes and modification of the existing ones. Because of this, many classes have their own constructs and they do not follow a common structure with the other Date and Time classes. This ends up giving a bunch of classes with their independent behaviour and set of their own limitations.
The very basic problem with the Date class is that, it is mutable.
private Date dateOfJoining; public Date getDateOfJoining() { return dateOfJoining; }
The getDateOfJoining method above returns a Date object. But the client is still able to call a setter method on dateOfJoining. This makes it very unsafe to be used in the multithreaded environments. If we print the dateOfJoining it returns.
Mon Mar 25 11:21:45 GMT+05:30 2013
The intention is to capture the date when the student actually joined the institute, but the Date class unnecessarily captures the time as well, which we do not need and can be misleading when the Date is shared along with the clients. In Java Date and Time Mechanism, there is no possibility of storing only Date without Time and Only time without Date. To represent only Date, we usually put default time of 12 mid-night. This may introduce a new problem, as in some regions there is no mid-night once in a year, because of DST changes.
In Java’s date class the epoch is considered as 1st January 1900, which too far, and hence results in larger calculation. Also it is not able to deal with a time unit smaller than millisecond. Java is a faster language and it is impossible to calculate statement execution times with the help of milliseconds.
Another interesting problem with the existing Java Date and Time mechanism is its month calculation begins with a zero. January is a 0th month and December is 11th. This makes it error prone when a month is set from outside with the help of integer. It was very complicated with Java Date class to develop a system that can works in different time zones across the world, as Java Date class doesn’t support Timezones.
The lately introduced Calendar class is little smarter and also supports TimeZone, but it also has its own set of problems. The Calendar considers the epoch from 1 January 1970. As the respective methods in Java Date have been deprecated, this is the class which we need to use when we want to set Months, Day, Year separately. The Java Calendar is also mutable, and hence unsafe in multithreaded environments.
When we want formatted Date, we can use SimpleDateFormat. Calendar dates can not be formatted with the help of SimpleDateFormat. To format a Calendar date we first need to convert it to Date and then format it. Calendar has lots of performance issues as it calculates time difference in milliseconds since the epoch multiple times for internal processing.
Another big problem with the Java Date and Time is, it break the rule of equality. See the following code.
Date date = new Date(); Timestamp timeStamp = new Timestamp(date.getTime()); System.out.println("date.equals(timeStamp) => "+date.equals(timeStamp)); System.out.println("timeStamp.equals(date) => "+timeStamp.equals(date));
The output is:
date.equals(timeStamp) => true timeStamp.equals(date) => false
According to the symmetric rule of equality, both the of answers should have been true. But this is not true in this case.
Also the Java Date and Time mechanism doesn’t have a control over the Day Light Saving. It can’t be turned OFF or ON depending upon the need.
So far we have seen the problems with the traditional Java Date and Time mechanism. In the next section, we will have a brief look at the JODA Time API, which is used as an alternative to overcome the shortcomings of the default Java Date and Time API and then we will move in detail with the new Java Date and Time API (JSR 310) in the next section.I have to admit, I didn’t believe the hype about Victoria & Albert’s Restaurant at the Grand Floridian Hotel. When we were making honeymoon plans several years ago, I completely glossed over it and deemed it likely stuffy and way too extravagant for us. At the time, it probably was. Having “matured and endured” and honestly desiring an experience that would offer us a respite from the hordes of people and screaming children in the parks, I made a reservation on Disney’s dining system four months in advance for the Queen Victoria Room at “Vicky & Al’s.” This is a sacrifice I was willing to make for the benefit of the blog on our most recent trip to Disney, ahem. I also could not secure a reservation in the main room because it was already booked solid. So I booked the Queen Victoria Room, not completely understanding what we were getting into, but knowing that it had a set tasting menu and that it would likely cost us the same amount as a brand new couch. I was prepared to dislike it, deem it uptight and overrated, and then move on to sampling the fine culinary offerings of the world.
I could not have been more WRONG.
There…I admit it.
The Queen Victoria Room at Victoria & Albert’s is a small wood-paneled room with a fireplace, a portrait of Victoria and Albert, and four well-appointed tables, all set apart from the main dining room. It offers a more intimate dining experience and a select ten-course tasting menu that is set each night by the chef. The lighting in the room was subdued, our table was covered with soft linens, and we immediately felt relaxed and at ease. I could have actually sat there all night. But the star of the show that evening was the food.
Our first course was an amuse-bouche: Cauliflower Panna Cotta. It was AMAZING. Just a few bites to tickle the palette, I could have eaten an entire plate of this for dinner and called it a night. There were three crispy little potato chips embedded in the panna cotta that played off the taste of the vegetable and made the cauliflower sing. And yes, that’s a nice mound of American caviar too.
Our second course was roulade of smoked salmon with alaskan king crab. I am a big fan of smoked salmon, so I was delighted by this. LOML does not love seafood, but even he was enchanted by it.
By the third course we were getting excited. If these were appetizer to tickle our palates, what on earth would the main courses bring?
The third course was one of several fish courses: Alaskan Sablefish with Baby Bok Choy. This was served with a soy glaze and an accompaniment of freshly grated wasabi which made this dish burst with warmth and flavor.
The fourth course was a favorite of the night: Scottish Langoustine with Nage Crema. It was salty and bright, like a delicate lobster with the most delicious sea of sauce to swim in.
At various points on the menu, you are permitted to “buy up” and sample a rare culinary delight that is not included with the ten-course tasting. LOML and I decided that I would try the first “buy up” of the evening: Wild Turbot with Toasted Capers and Preserved Lemon.
This dish was a masterpiece. The fish was rich and moist and perfectly cooked and the sauce was the essence of lemon with a buttery finish. It melted in my mouth. I still think about this dish daily. It is one of the five most delicious plates I have ever enjoyed and there is no way I could ever reproduce it in my own kitchen…which to me is the mark of a culinary masterpiece.
Course number five was Truffled Bell & Evans Chicken with Blue Foot Mushrooms. I am sorry, I do not have a picture of this course because by now we were a bit tipsy from the wine pairing. This might be a good time to discuss the wine pairing. If you love learning about wine and can handle a nice amount of liquor in one evening, this wine pairing will be a treat. However, if you are lightweight like myself, you will get hammered in a fine dining establishment and forget your chicken course. Note to everyone: second guess the wine pairing. Even though they are small pours, 9 different glasses of anything will sweep you off your feet. There. You have been warned.
Our sixth course was a more memorable smoky Berkshire Porchetta with Sherry Vinaigrette. We also loved the brightly-colored beets that accompanied this dish.
The seventh dish was Australian Kobe Beef with Petite Potatoes with the option to buy up and have an additional sampling of Miyazaki Japanese Beef. LOML elected to try the Miyazaki and he raved about it beyond belief. He loves rare steak and this fit the bill. Evidently the Miyazaki Japanese Beef is a type of wagyu that has only been imported into the states since 2012. It extremely tender due to its feed of corn and wheat. It is a myth that is the |
set of two cameras on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. For more than a decade, they’ve photographed nearly the entire earth twice a day, so it’s a wealth of data. The problem is that if you stitch a day of MODIS images together, you get something like this:
MODIS Terra composite for March 28th, 2013. Images: NASA LANCE-MODIS.
It’s lovely as a work of art, but it wouldn’t make a very good base layer for a map about anything other than weather. Besides clouds, it has black zones of missing data between satellite passes and in the polar night, plus sun-glints across the equator.
The traditional approach to de-clouding would be to find each region’s clearest days in a large set of images, by hand or automatically, and quilt them together. Unfortunately, this leaves seams — adjacent images may clash (for example, if they’re from different seasons) and draw attention to the base layer in a way that a mapper rarely wants.
We’ve been working on code that takes many years of images at once, looks at individual pixels instead of large regions, and outputs the average of all their clearest days. I could talk your ear off about the technical details, but the upshot is simple — we get cloudless images without seams!
We’ve put more than two terapixels of MODIS data into this processing pipeline so far, and we’ve just started getting useful output. It’s even more attractive than we’d expected, and we want to give you a sneak peek.
Adelaide, Australia (latitude −34.9, longitude 138.6) with Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf to the west, the dry bed of Lake Gairdner to the northwest, and cropland and the Danggali Wilderness Area to the northeast.
The eastern end of the Black Sea (latitude 42, longitude 40). The southern shore is Turkey; to the east are Armenia and Georgia. To the north, past the Caucasus mountains, is Russia — including the resort town of Sochi, which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. The ring-like pattern in the sea is the Batumi Eddy, a circulating current rich in phytoplankton.
Baffin Island, in the Canadian arctic (latitude 67, longitude −75). The marsh in the central south of this view is Dewey Soper Migratory Bird Sanctuary, the largest goose colony in the world.
On the left is Manaus, Brazil (latitude −3, longitude −60), the economic capital of the central Amazon basin. To its north and east, on the north side of the Amazon, the small orange patches are the exposed soil of bauxite (aluminum) mines. On the south side of the Amazon are networks of logging roads.
Winnipeg, Canada (latitude 49.9, longitude −91.1), south of lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba. The faint transition parallel to the bottom edge of this image near the left side is the US–Canada border, with different mixes of crops popular on either side. To the north and east, agriculture fades out as the Canadian Shield’s landscape becomes less hospitable.
This is all still work in progress — we can’t wait to release the finished layer.The FBI has revealed that three Palm Beach County men have been arrested and charged with offering support to ISIS. Local10 reports:
Gregory Hubbard, 52, Darren Jackson, 50, both of West Palm Beach, and Dayne Christian, 31, of Lake Park, were named in a federal criminal complaint as being ISIS sympathizers. According to the complaint, Hubbard expressed support for ISIS, described as ISIL, and told an FBI confidential informant that he wanted to travel to Syria and join ISIS to engage in a “violent jihad.”… “Christian stated that he was in contact with a Syrian national inside Syria who was a member of ISIL,” the complaint said.
The complaint also describes Hubbard’s reaction to seeing news of the San Bernardino shooting on television. It says he, “grew upset, stood up suddenly and loudly exclaimed that he did not care how many Americans and infidels were killed.”
Hubbard apparently bought a ticket to Germany and planned to travel from there to Turkey by train. He would then try to enter Syria. He was arrested at the airport in Miami on Thursday. If convicted the three men could each face up to 20 years in jail.Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday that Russia is preparing "the battlefield" to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections
"They are going to stretch the envelope as far as they can to collect information and I think largely if I can use the military phrase, prep the battlefield for 2018 elections," Clapper said on CNN.
Also on Thursday, CNN published a report citing current and former U.S. officials, that said Russia is ramping up its spying efforts against the U.S.
Clapper's comments came before the start of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where President Trump plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Republicans and Democrats have urged Trump to discuss the 2016 election interference by the Russians at the meeting.
"I think they are here to reconnoiter and collect as much as they possibly can on the United States who they consider as their prime adversary," Clapper said.tool name close tool goes here Doctor remembers Hanford's 'Atomic Man'
This story was published Friday April 25th 2008
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Dr. Bryce Breitenstein speaks with admiration for the patient at the center of his most famous case -- the Prosser man who came to be called "Atomic Man" after surviving the nation's worst radiological accident. Harold McCluskey was tough, intelligent and endlessly patient during the months of treatment he endured to save his life after an explosion at Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant Aug. 30, 1976, Breitenstein said. "He was a remarkable man," the doctor said. Breitenstein delivered the Herbert M. Parker Foundation spring lecture at Washington State University Tri-Cities on McCluskey's care Thursday. About 175 people attended. Breitenstein now practices in Placentia, Calif., but in 1976 he was the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation physician who headed the team that cared for McCluskey. On Aug. 30, McCluskey, a 64-year-old chemical operator, was working to restart a glove box at the Plutonium Finishing Plant where work had been stopped for four months due to a strike. He was on top of a ladder outside the glove box when he saw smoke and turned to leave. But the window of the glove box blew out, the result of resin degrading and reacting with nitric acid. McCluskey was sprayed on the right side of his face by radioactive americium, concentrated nitric acid, resin and pieces of glass and plastic, Breitenstein said. The acid burned his face and neck and the americium was embedded in his skin. Workers helped him out of the building and decontaminated him as well as they could until he was taken by ambulance to the Hanford Emergency Decontamination Facility, which until recently was near Kadlec hospital in Richland. He spent much of the next five months at the windowless building or a travel trailer parked just outside it. When he arrived, health care workers gave him a chelating agent that grabbed onto americium in his blood and allowed the isotope to be excreted in his urine. They also started an aggressive effort to decontaminate him by repeatedly washing his skin. Breitenstein's extensive slide collection shows three workers crowded around a decontamination tank washing McCluskey's upper body. In another, a nurse wearing a respirator and full radiation protection clothing stands by his bed placed in the center of the decontamination facility. In one of the earliest pictures, showing his face red and raw, his eyes remain closed. The light was painful to his eyes, which had been splashed with nitric acid. Breitenstein worried that McCluskey would die during the initial days of treatment. "I told him very early that you are one of a kind," Breitenstein said. "But every day you go along OK is a big plus." In the early weeks, McCluskey endured frequent scrubbings, washing his face himself with a soft rag because he knew what he could withstand. His skin then was burned red and freckled with embedded material. He was scanned before and after each scrubbing to determine how much radioactive material had been removed. He also continued chelation, receiving more than 500 injected treatments that continued at least occasionally for years. Blood tests showed a drop in his lymphocytes and doctors were concerned about what the americium might be doing to his bone marrow. However, a bone marrow biopsy turned up no abnormality. "It was comforting," Breintenstein said. By early November, his face still was flaking and losing scabs with radioactive contamination, the doctor said. But weeks earlier the airborne americium in the room had decreased enough for health care workers to stop using respirators. In the early weeks, McCluskey remained in isolation, with his family and co-workers only allowed to talk to him from the door of the decontamination facility. But his mood remained "excellent," Breitenstein said, showing a slide of McCluskey sitting alone by his bed, smoking a pipe and looking calm. "He was stoic." Eventually the government moved a travel trailer next door to the decontamination building for McCluskey, his wife and his dog. After McCluskey began to spend nights in the trailer, the only radioactive contamination detected was on his pillow. By Thanksgiving, McCluskey was allowed to leave for dinner with family and friends. He began going home to Prosser during the day, returning to sleep in the trailer until he was discharged in January. The majority of the americium removed through chelation was measured in the first 60 days of treatment, Breitenstein said. Although abnormalities in his blood had been detected, it never was evident in his general health. However, an ulceration near his eye, the area that had received the most americium, did not heal until January 1978, McCluskey was plagued with vision problems. He suffered from blurred vision and required cataract extractions in 1978 and 1979 and a cornea transplant in one eye. "He was a real outdoorsman before the accident. He hunted and fished," the doctor said. "But his body strength never fully recovered." Before the accident McCluskey had heart problems, including a heart attack, and in the 1980s his heart problems grew worse. He died of congestive heart failure 11 years after the explosion at the age of 75. An autopsy found no evidence of cancer. If the explosion contributed to his ill health in his 70s, there is no way to measure it, Breitenstein said. Although McCluskey did not return to work at Hanford after the accident, he sometimes accompanied Breitenstein to give joint talks on his treatment. The doctor remembers McCluskey addressing his labor union and promoting the union during his talk, then talking to a church group and giving witness to his faith. "He was quite a talented guy," Breitenstein said. "He was very strong."Three incidents of rape and an attempt to rape were reported from the capital over the past two days. In Rajouri Garden, an autorickshaw driver was arrested for allegedly attempting to rape a 17-year-old girl in his house.
According to police, the girl had gone to Raju's house and at the time of the incident, his wife was away. Raju attempted to rape the girl who managed to escape and inform her family, police said.
One Aman was arrested from Khayala in West Delhi for allegedly raping his 16-year-old neighbour after promising to marry her. Aman, police said, took the girl to Haryana and raped her. In her statement to police, the girl said Aman also raped her in various parts of the capital over the past four months.
A man, identified as Prant, was arrested for raping an 18-year-old who was his neighbour. The incident was reported from Khayala. He had promised to marry her. Prant, police said, is married and has two children. The victim alleged that Prant had been raping her for the past three months in Shimla.
A Class VIII student was raped in Ranhola, and the accused, Anil, allegedly threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the incident. Police said Anil, a relative of the girl, has been arrested.
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Please read our terms of use before posting commentsGambling911.com has learned exclusively from a very reliable source that Lock Poker, one of the largest rooms on the Internet, will be taking over the Cake Poker Network.
Lock, which is widely believed to be one of the top three largest rooms on the Merge Network, will be leaving that network to take control of Cake.
It was explained that as part of the deal, Cake and its current marquee brand, Intertops Poker, are believed to be continuing to operate as separate rooms and there are no plans to integrate them.
According to Gambling911.com sources familiar with the deal, Lock will be re-branding the network, driving technology, marketing, player rewards, implementing a more aggressive tournament schedule and incorporating a new company philosophy, essentially restructuring the entire Cake Poker Network.
Our sources also advise that the popular rakeback program previously offered by Lock Poker will be returning with an even higher percentage rate, though few other specifics were given.
Our source also advised that the Lock Pros will remain a pivotal feature of the network with others likely to come on board during the summer. Lock Poker recently signed on the first ever World Series of Poker Europe Main Event winner, Annette Obrestad.
It was not immediately known if or when the LockOPs Lock Poker Series will be reintroduced after abruptly being cancelled by the Merge Gaming Network late last month, though our source indicates this Series could be re-introduced over the coming months.
Series 2012 qualifiers and the Turbo Gold cards currently offered on Cake are expected to continue.
As Lock has their own stand-alone cashier, the move is expected to have no impact on players.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com PublisherLegal Advice UK Wide from Solicitors and Lawyers.
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Ask lawyers and solicitors online for Legal Advice. Legal advice from qualified and verified solicitors online. Expert Answers changing the way you getin the UKlawyers answering your legal questions. Know your legal rights, get legal help to understand them and know what steps you need to take to resolve the issue.*Unlimited free legal advice after you have received and viewed your initial answer from your Expert. (*subject to fair use policy please see T&Cs for details).If you are in any doubt about our services please read what our previous users have to say about us on review platform Trust Pilot.Amos Dudley had a predicament. He hated his crooked teeth and needed braces, but was a "broke" college student. So, he turned to technology and 3D-printed his own braces. http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/16/technology/homemade-invisalign/ amosdudley.com
Dudley is a 23-year-old digital design student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He told BuzzFeed News he originally had braces in junior high, but neglected the upkeep. "I felt bad about my teeth- in part because they were crooked, but also because they were a reminder that I had neglected them," he said. "I felt like I had wasted the money my parents spent on my braces." He wrote on his blog that he had realized he had become self-conscious about his teeth and had stopped smiling as much. "I wasn't smiling, and it was because I was unhappy with my teeth," he wrote on his blog.
Dudley began researching clear braces online to fix his teeth when he noticed something: The braces he was looking at looked like something that could be made with a 3D printer, which he has access to as a digital design student. amosdudley.com
"What is to stop someone, who has access to a 3D printer, from making their own orthodontic aligners?" he said he wondered. Dudley said his motivations weren't completely financial, because he knew he could probably afford braces a few years from now after he graduated college. He said it was the mix of money and trying a cool experiment that intrigued him. "When I realized that I could do something that was a little bit culturally disruptive, while demonstrating my skills as a designer and a maker, and fixing something that was making me self-conscious for virtually free, I felt it was more than worth the risk," he said.
After a ton of research, Dudley created his own set of 12 plastic braces. He documented the whole process on his blog, and noted he made the braces as part of a portfolio project for school. amosdudley.com
The project cost under $60, far less than the up to $8,000 that clear braces normally cost, CNN Money reported. Dudley added that he did the project with the support of his friends and family. "I told my friends and family, they thought it was wonderful," he said. "I have a very supportive family."
So, do they work? After 16 weeks of wear, Dudley has a significantly straighter smile. amosdudley.com amosdudley.comImage copyright Reuters Image caption Protesters clashed with police after the pardon was announced
Peru's culture minister, Salvador del Solar, has resigned amid continuing controversy over the president's decision to pardon the country's former leader, Alberto Fujimori.
Mr Fujimori was jailed for corruption and human rights abuses before he was pardoned on Sunday on health grounds.
The move sparked riots in Lima earlier this week, and two other resignations by government politicians.
Mr Del Solar, a film director, has not publicly stated why he is quitting.
In a Twitter post [in Spanish] on Wednesday, he thanked the president for "the opportunity to serve the country".
In a press conference on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mercedes Aráoz has denied that the government did a deal with the opposition to free Fujimori in exchange for safeguarding the current president.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski narrowly escaped impeachment last week.
Fujimori, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses and corruption, has severe health problems but his critics think he should have served his term in full.
They called for more protests on Thursday.
Image copyright Facebook Image caption The video shows Alberto Fujimori in a hospital bed
In a video published on Facebook on Tuesday, Fujimori thanked President Kuczynski, saying he was "deeply grateful".
"I'm aware that the results produced by my government were well received by some," he said
"But I recognise that I have let down others. Those I ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart."
He said that he fully backed President Kuczynski's call for reconciliation.
What was Fujimori convicted of?
Image copyright EPA Image caption Protesters held up photographs of people killed during Fujimori's time in power
In 2007, he was sentenced to six years in jail for bribery and abuse of power, but two years later was sentenced to another 25 years for human rights abuses committed while in office.
He was convicted of authorising killings carried out by death squads.
Why was he pardoned?
A statement from President Kuczynski's office said he had granted a "humanitarian pardon to Mr Alberto Fujimori and seven other people in similar condition", without naming the others.
Doctors, the statement added, had determined Fujimori had "a progressive, degenerative and incurable illness".
Mr Kuczynski later said: "I am convinced that those of us who consider ourselves democrats cannot allow Alberto Fujimori to die in prison. Justice is not vengeance...
"My decision is especially complex and difficult, but it is my decision."
Why is the decision controversial?
Protests erupted soon after news of the pardon came to light on Sunday, with many demonstrators waving pictures of victims of the counter-insurgency campaign.
"We believe the pardon was carried out in an illegal manner," one protester told Reuters.
"The reality is that this sadly was a political agreement between the Fujimorists and the current government."
Was a deal done?
Image copyright AFP Image caption Pedro Pablo Kuczynski beat Keiko Fujimori to the presidency but did he do a deal with her brother?
The conservative Popular Force party, led by the former president's daughter Keiko Fujimori, controls Congress and on Thursday tried to impeach President Kuczynski over a corruption scandal.
However, her brother Kenji split the conservative vote, allowing the president to stay in power and prompting the accusation that Fujimori's release had been promised in exchange.
"To save his own skin he [President Kuczynski] cut a deal with Fujimori's supporters," said leftist politician Veronika Mendoza, labelling the president's decision as treason.Nintendo is back with the continuation of the Squid Sisters Stories for Splatoon 2. This new initiative intends to tell the tale of Callie and Marie following the final Splatfest.
Read up on the next addition to the story below. For previous entries, head on over here.
Marie was home alone. She’d gotten a day off, but with theater rehearsals starting up next month, she knew life would be returning quickly to its frantic pace. Chances to relax at home like this would soon become few and far between. Knowing work would keep Callie out late, Marie busied herself with the chores that always seemed to pile up and waited for her friend to return home.
At times like this, Marie’s thoughts always seemed to drift…
“How had Callie truly felt when the results of the final Splatfest had been announced? She seemed disappointed, of course, but that was just because she’d lost…right? Or was she actually jealous of my rising popularity? Could she still be holding it against me after all this time?”
“Just listen to yourself, Marie—you’re overthinking this. You know Callie would never feel that way. Maybe all this worrying has actually given you some sort of superiority complex. Maybe winning that final Splatfest has made you full of yourself.”
The very idea stung Marie with a twinge of self-loathing…Ukraine has four years at most to get its house in order and get the economy on some kind of solvent basis, before the gas through Ukraine is shut off and $3 Billion in transit fees disappear from GDP
Anyone who has not sleepwalked through the gas-price squabble between Russia and Ukraine since the Great Freedom Jubilee known as EuroMaidan is aware that Russia has grown fed up with Ukraine’s posturing and loose grip on reality – neither being a quality that is endearing or inspirational of confidence in its reliability as a gas-transit country for Europe.
Russia has had projects underway for some time to gradually reduce its reliance on Ukraine as a gas-transit corridor for Russian gas since the stand-off in 2009, in which Ukraine was siphoning off gas intended for Europe for its own use free of charge, while Russia was expected to just make up the difference – Ukraine was confident Russia was without alternatives, since it would not dare shut off Europe’s gas.
Which it did, of course, initiating a panic and a lasting reputation for Russia as an unreliable energy partner. Nothing much was ever said about Ukraine stealing gas; Europe made a few comments to the effect that there was wrong on both sides, and left it at that, and ever afterward the narrative was that they knew Russia accused Ukraine of stealing gas, but where was the evidence?
Russia constructed the Nord Stream pipeline, and partially completed South Stream, the two of which together would handle the entirety of gas shipped to Europe, without going through Ukraine.
The EU dug in its heels, and went on about how everyone needs rules and Russia would have to abide by the Third Energy Package which said the same company cannot own both the gas and the pipeline, and lots of other twaddle although it simply hands out exemptions to its own suppliers, and Russia canceled South Stream. The EU was jubilant – it had put those Russkies in their place, by God!
Which brings us, skipping over many other details which are of great import but not germane to the gas situation, to where we are now. Russia has announced it will construct Turkish Stream instead, delivering the same amount forecast for South Stream – 63 BCm – to the Turkish/Greek border. If Europe wants gas, it can build pipeline infrastructure to take it from that point. If not, fine – start busting up Granny’s piano for firewood. And none – as of 2019 at the latest but probably around 2017 – will go through Ukraine.
Just before we get started on what the future might look like for Ukraine if (when, actually) it loses its status as a gas-transit hub for Europe, not to mention if the current civil war drags on – there was a practical reason of some immediacy for the construction of South Stream, and it makes Europe’s behavior look even stupider and more short-sighted in the short to medium term.
Ukraine’s Gas Transit System (GTS) was constructed between the 1960’s and 1980’s, and has had no serious overhauls or maintenance in more than 25 years. Gazprom estimated the cost of upgrading and conducting maintenance on the GTS at $19.5 Billion. Where would that come from? Has Ukraine got $19.5 Billion lying around, collecting dust? Ha, ha. Has Europe? Hardly. Where would these funds come from? I suspect you know.
Ukraine earns around $3 Billion a year from gas transit fees. How is the loss of this income going to impact Ukraine, in view of its medium-term economic forecast?
The currency has fallen off a cliff, averaging 7.29 to the U.S. dollar between 2002 and 2015, spiking to a record low value of 33.5 to the dollar in February of 2015 and currently at a ruinous 20.44
As a starting point, it would be hard to envision a more dramatically effective program of economic ruin than what has been done to Ukraine by its western friends. The currency has fallen off a cliff, averaging 7.29 to the U.S. dollar between 2002 and 2015, spiking to a record low value of 33.5 to the dollar in February of 2015 and currently at a ruinous 20.44.
Whoever wrote the summary apparently wanted to camouflage the moment of disaster by averaging the value of the hryvnia from 2002 to 2015, because the value declined steadily throughout 2014 and can be traced almost to the minute to the Euromaidan demonstrations, accelerating to a screaming power dive after they turned violent and cratering with the collapse of the Debaltseve cauldron.
The stock market has fallen to a quarter of its value in 2008. The most recent GDP Growth Rate is a contraction of 3.8% in the final quarter of 2014 – certainly worsening since then – and annually is a jaw-dropping contraction of 17.6%. Helpfully – I meant that sarcastically – the official unemployment rate has soared to 9.7% over 2013’s low of 7.6%, and has been over 9% since the beginning of 2014, while inflation has bulleted its way up to 60.9%. All these are figures the state statistics service will admit to. Meanwhile, its hapless government merrily enacts a debt moratorium, authorizing itself to put a hold on payments to its creditors, even as it doubles “defense spending”.
Anyway, on to the sometimes comical dynamics of the European gas business. I think my favourite is the smirking strut executed by various countries as they claim to be “weaning themselves off of Russian gas” by importing gas from some other European country that is a net importer of Russian gas. Like Poland, for example. Kiev was quite proud of itself when, in 2012, it reduced its imports of Russian gas by taking delivery of gas from RWE in Poland on a trial basis.
These imports continued into 2013 – a year in which Poland (which is also “weaning itself off of Russian gas”) took 60% of its gas from Russia. They’ve wised up now, though, and plan to import significantly more gas from Germany…which gets 38% of its gas from Russia.
Oh, and they’re building an LNG terminal into which they plan to import LNG from Qatar via tankers. More expensive than pipeline gas, of course, which is just good economics by European standards, but at least they can fly a Polish flag on the LNG terminal. You just can’t put a price on national pride, can you? And they’ll be able – in their dreams – to say goodbye to gas imports someday from that evil undemocratic Stalin dictatorship of Russia in favour of freedom gas from the smiling Qataris, ruled through a constitutional monarchy in which the Emir exercises absolute power and whose heirs come from the male branch of the al-Thani family.
Meanwhile, Ukraine itself remains the fifth-heaviest consumer of natural gas in Europe, at some 55 BCm annually. Mind you, it should realize significant savings in consumption by the almost-complete loss of its heavy industry sector, most of which is in the east – every cloud has a silver lining, what? But Ukraine’s domestic production peaked at 68 BCm forty years back, has been in decline since then and now amounts to about 20 BCm – less than half its current consumption.
So in order for Ukraine to wean itself off of Russian gas, it is going to have to either cut its consumption in half or buy reverse-flowed gas from other European countries – using mostly handout money, since it is going to lose $3 Billion off the top of its GDP which is currently contracting at a rate of more than 17% per year. Put that way, it doesn’t sound too hopeful, does it? Mind you, the EU is doing its bit to help by insisting on reforms which have doubled the price of gas for household use, even as the currency has shrunk to about a third of its previous value.
In 2014, Gazprom sent 146.6 BCm of gas to Europe, 62 BCm of it through Ukraine. Through existing pipelines Nord Stream, Blue Stream and Yamal Europe, Gazprom is capable of delivering 104 BCm of gas to Europe without a whiff of it going through Ukraine. South Stream would have upped that by 62 BCm. Its replacement, Turkish Stream, will deliver the same amount to the Turkish border with Greece, some 47 BCm of which could be available to Europe.
The way I see it, Ukraine has – at the outside – four years to get its house in order and get the economy on some kind of solvent basis, before the gas through Ukraine is shut off and $3 Billion in transit fees disappear from the GDP. At the same time the country will be left with a transit system that, even if it is used only to move gas around the country for domestic use, has not been upgraded or maintained in 25 years and needs almost $20 Billion spent on it. That’s not even figuring in the Billions upon Billions in war damages, the loss of nearly a third of its tax base through secession and the almost complete depletion of its currency and gold reserves.
Europe made it clear recently that admission to the European Union is not in the cards for Ukraine, which is reassuring, in a way, because it means at least a few people in Europe are still capable of thinking beyond the weekend. Ukraine’s economy is being preserved on life support to save the dirty, messy embarrassment of a public default, because the west is entirely and totally to blame for Ukraine’s economic disaster.
The west hand-picked the government, and then encouraged it to re-take its eastern regions by military force. Ukraine faces a future in which it will be broke and friendless, drifting aimlessly at the whim of whoever will lend it money.
And when you think about it, the Maidanite zealots and the fascist strutters are a minority, coming mostly from the west of Ukraine and Kiev. That still leaves a lot – millions – of Ukrainians who did nothing to bring this calamity upon themselves, but who will nonetheless suffer the consequences of their leaders’ idiocy and greed and the meddling of western interventionists who will accept ruining Ukraine so Russia can’t have it if they cannot win it.A group of 12-year-olds were caught by police after they tried to sell goods they'd stolen from a Hamilton house.
A group of child burglars have been caught after they tried to sell the stolen property via Facebook.
Hamilton city area commander Inspector Hywel Jones said the discovery came during their investigation into a burglary at a Patterson St house over the December 13 to 16 period.
"Our staff discovered that a group of 12-year-olds had carried out the burglary and, thanks to a member of the public drawing it to our attention, electronics stolen from the home were being sold on a Facebook page," Jones said.
"Progressing our inquiries, we discovered some property had been taken back to the victims by the parents of one offender."
Two others allegedly involved had now been referred to Youth Aid.
Jones said it was good that the parents of one of the children had intervened and returned the stolen goods, but there were a number of things that could be learnt from the incident.
"First up, particularly over the holiday period where young people find themselves with too much time on their hands, we're urging parents to ensure their children have adequate supervision and you know who they are spending time with," Jones said.
"Secondly, we're asking parents to be vigilant in terms of any electronics or other property their child may turn up with, ask the hard questions like where they got it from and make the effort to be aware of their internet activity."
Such intervention from the parents could help curb further offending, Jones said.Note: Also available in Portuguese.
Over a year ago, Donald Trump was elected as the latest US president, in a surprise result which hit the mainstream media (MSM) hard. The problem was that the biggest media players in the US, and indeed worldwide, had nearly completely (and mostly unofficially) endorsed his competitor, Hillary Clinton. The MSM suddenly was faced with the unpalatable truth, that they had failed to adequately influence the outcome of the US presidential election, despite their gargantuan efforts to the contrary. The somewhat surprising result was that the public thought for themselves and the MSM was left with the knowledge that its potential to manipulate public perception on important issues was not as great as it had hoped or thought.
A consequence of this, is that it shone light on the media’s attempt to manipulate democracy to push their ideological position, which usually aligns with their financially advantageous goals.
In an age where newspaper circulation is down and alternative media influence is up, newspapers need to maintain a business model which is realistic and profitable, while retaining their dwindling relevancy. They achieve this mostly through advertising – and they are increasingly desperate to increase their online advertising revenue as hard copy sales take a hit. Companies pay newspapers to advertise their products so as to reach their target demographic. Interestingly, many people fail to realise that most companies’ preferred target demographic is women.
Wordlwide, 80% of all purchases are made by women. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Men may make more money than women, by working longer hours, engaged in more dangerous careers and entering professions which are more difficult but pay better, such as engineering – but women still spend more money that men do. If you want to sell your product, even if that product is aimed at men, you also target women, as they usually control the purse strings in relationships and the family unit. So when advertisers want to sell something, they know their best chance of capitalizing their return on advertising investment (ROI), is to reach out to the main decision maker in financial matters, which is usually women.
So, in their desperate quest to maintain profit margins, newspapers need to deliver the female demographic to potential advertisers. Doing so gives good ROI to the advertisers and makes strong business sense to the publisher.
So how do newspapers deliver the female demographic to their advertisers? The answer is ruthless manipulation, for which longterm exposure is damaging to women, men, and society as a whole. Before explaining how this manipulation works, there are some facts which need to be stated.
The first fact was already included above, in that 80% of purchases are made by women.
Secondly, women hold a disproportionate amount of wealth compared to what they earn. In the US for example, women own 60% of the wealth, yet earn only 40% of it through salaried or self-employment.
By 2020, one report states that women worldwide will spend the equivalent of 28 Trillion US dollars, yet earn only 18 Trillion of that themselves. One can easily speculate where the shortfall of 10 Trillion is coming from.
Additionally, when in a position of power, women are roughly 4-5 times more likely to exhibit positive sexism to their own gender, than men. This means that a female CEO is 4-5 times more likely to promote equivalently capable/qualified women over men, than a man is to promote men over women. One needs only look to Yahoo’s female CEO to see the changes she implemented to the company management and the consequent legal cases brought against her as she changed the gender ratio from 80% men to 80% women in a matter of 18 months.
Thirdly, women, enjoy seeing men fail. A controversial statement, but backed up with various studies. Whatever the reason, research shows that women are more likely to buy products when men are painted in a negative light, and women in a positive one. This creates a feel-good factor among women, and encourages them to buy products where this misandristic power-dynamic mechanism is in play. Television adverts and comedy shows have been exploiting this effective technique for a long time now.
Where the MSM comes in, is taking this mechanism one step further. By disseminating material which makes women feel good, they grab a slice of the female demographic and offer value to their advertisers. Women will consistently come back to read publications which make them feel good in some way. We are currently experiencing a race to the bottom to see which media publishers dive lowest to cater to the latest fad which boosts women’s self esteem, usually at men’s expense.
Fact-based journalism |
've traditionally taken in Australia and that is to be coherently strategic about science and its growth and development and have the Prime Minister on side.
EMMA ALBERICI: How can you be coherent in an approach without someone specifically driving it?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I'm hoping that's the Prime Minister's role. I think it's a whole-of-government issue, basically and I think that I hope to be able to persuade the Prime Minister that the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, which has existed now since 1984 - some time around there - that it would actually take on the role, a different role from the one that it's traditionally had, but it would take on the role of providing that whole-of-government overall strategic vision and development of science in Australia.
EMMA ALBERICI: Australia's already trailing its Asian neighbours in the area of study in terms of science, technology, engineering and maths - and that's at a tertiary level, I mean. Three times as many graduates in China, close to four times as many in Japan. Is that something the new Government needs to be paying particular attention to?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I think that they need to be very much aware of it and to work out what to do about it and I think that one of the issues for us is: how do we make those areas of study so compellingly interesting that more people want to do them? We've tended, I think, to take it a bit for granted. We've assumed that somehow there's some market that will dictate what study options students choose, but people who argue that forget to tell you which market they're talking about: the market today when students are making a choice in Year 10 of school; the market that's operating in two or three years' time when they go to university; the markets that are operating four or five years after that, that is prevailing when they're going into the workforce.
So I think we've got to take a much more strategic, arguably interventionist approach, try to make it compellingly interesting, try to teach science, try to teach engineering innovation as it's practiced, rather than as you might learn about it if you just read from a textbook.
EMMA ALBERICI: There's also not going to be a climate change ministry in the Abbott Government. In fact, one of the first areas of the Canberra bureaucracy slated to be cut are the Climate Change Commission, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and you're in fact a member of the Climate Change Authority which is also to be scrapped. Has there been a value in these bodies that will be lost in your view?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I think there has been a value. I think that the reality is when you bring the different perspectives to bear to look at the evidence, to tease out the evidence, to put it back together and give advice, then I think there's value in that. I mean, these sorts of issues are not going to go away just because we ignore them. They are things that we're going to have to deal with and grapple with and understand better and then make informed choices, rather than go out there sometime and guess at what we might do or worry about what we didn't do when we had the opportunity and we have to make decisions on the basis of less knowledge than we would otherwise have.
So I think those bodies - I mean I can't speak for them all, I was only on one of them - but the one I was on I thought diligently, constructively, coherently did good work and will produce good advice.
EMMA ALBERICI: So will it be a loss to have that removed from the Government?
IAN CHUBB: Well, yes, it will, in my view, but it will doubtless be compensated for by other bodies and groups and, doubtless, individuals who will be offering advice. The one advantage the Climate Change Authority had or has is that the advice that it gives will be made public and I think that a public disclosure of the sorts of advice you're giving and the reasons you're giving that advice, the evidence on which the advice is based - regardless of which side of the argument it goes - but the evidence that you're presenting is out there for people to have a look at and doubtless argue about.
EMMA ALBERICI: Well, specifically, Tony Abbott has previously signalled that he intends to sack Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery. What's your view on Professor Flannery's contribution to the country's understanding and responses to climate change?
IAN CHUBB: Well, Emma, he's been one of those people who's been out there and been vocal about it for quite some time and I think all of those contributions are valuable. I think that people will bring their different perspectives to bear, they will bring their perspectives to bear on the basis of their own background, their own information, the work they do, the research they do and they will make commentary about that and I think all of that commentary, whichever side of the argument you happen to fall on, but all of that commentary is valuable.
EMMA ALBERICI: As Chief Scientist, what did you make of the 'Australian' newspaper's front page yesterday attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and claiming they drastically overestimated rising temperatures?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I'm a scientist, or I used to be a scientist. I'd like to think that I base my arguments on evidence. I haven't seen the leaked report, the leaked draft report. I don't know as a consequence what it says and I don't know how the final report, when it's eventually released, will compare with the draft report. Draft reports are put out there for people to comment on, to make comments on, to add evidence to or to argue about evidence as presented. And they change. So I wouldn't comment on a newspaper report that's on a leaked draft report when I haven't seen the leaked draft report and I know that draft reports change.
EMMA ALBERICI: But I understand that the new IPCC report due out Friday week will confirm that, while there has been an unprecedented surge in the level of human generated heat-trapping gases like CO2, temperatures have been roughly steady for the past 15 years. Does that give you cause to doubt the science of longer-term warming?
IAN CHUBB: No, it just means that the system is very complex and there are many factors involved and many reasons why certain things might happen at certain times and I'll need to have a look at the report to find out what they believe the explanation is. But atmospheric temperature is one measure. Ocean temperature is another measure. There are all sorts of things going on in this extraordinarily complex system and we need to take them all into account before we draw really hard conclusions, firm conclusions, dogmatic conclusions.
EMMA ALBERICI: The Coalition has previously promised to cut carbon emissions by five per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. But the PM-elect Tony Abbott now says that if his $3.2 billion Direct Action policy doesn't manage to reduce emissions by the five per cent, there'll be no more money poured into that particular scheme. What do you think about that?
IAN CHUBB: Well, a very personal view and I can't speak for the climate scientists and so on around the country or around the world for that matter, but a very personal view is that we do have to do something about mitigating carbon dioxide emissions without destroying the place. So the real question is: how do we do that sensibly? How do we make the case to do that sensibly? How do we bring forward the evidence that's persuasive, that says we do have to do something and we do have to do it sensibly? And by sensible, I mean at an appropriate level and by reducing it by an appropriate amount. And I think all of those factors have to be put on the table and politicians will make their decisions and that's where politics intrudes into the science and they will make a political decision.
But the scientist's role is to put all the evidence that they can compile, the pros and the cons, the pluses and the minuses, the whatevers - put it on the table so debate can be informed. And it will also involve what the rest of the world is doing. I mean we're not acting alone. Not everybody is acting. So in five years' time I wouldn't speculate what the rest of the world will be doing because I think there are quite substantial changes afoot.
EMMA ALBERICI: Many scientists and climate change mitigation experts now believe that direct action can't work to bring down emissions by five per cent by 2020. How damaging for Australia will it be if we don't meet that target?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I think one of the things for us is that we have to play a part in the global attempts to reduce CO2 emissions or to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And it's important for a country like Australia, in my view, it's important for a country like Australia to play a role in that and indeed to play a leading role in that. Now, I don't think we should expose ourselves to dramatically negative consequences simply to say we're leading, but I do think that it's important that we don't put our head under our wing and pretend that there's not an issue simply because we're not looking at it anymore.
EMMA ALBERICI: As Australia's Chief Scientist and someone who believes the science in this area of climate change is settled, what do you make of the PM-elect's chief business adviser Maurice Newman today describing climate change as a myth?
IAN CHUBB: I think it's a silly comment.
EMMA ALBERICI: He goes onto say that the money spent on agencies and subsidies pursuing these myths has been wasted.
IAN CHUBB: Well, he still uses the word "myth" so it's still a silly comment.
EMMA ALBERICI: Well, presumably one of the agencies considered to be wasting taxpayers' money was the Climate Change Authority of which you were or are a member. I understand the Authority was due to release a draft report next month on whether five per cent was, in fact, ambitious enough a target. Are you clear on whether the Government intends that report to be completed?
IAN CHUBB: No, I'm not. You'd have to ask the people who run the Climate Change Authority and that's not me.
EMMA ALBERICI: You are a member of it though?
IAN CHUBB: I am, but I don't know where it's up to today.
EMMA ALBERICI: How important is it that that work is continued, in your view?
IAN CHUBB: Well, I think it's important work. I think that it's carefully analytical, very rigorously done, very carefully done and it will present a view and I think it's then up to people to judge it. It's up to politicians to respond to it one way or the other, but I think it's important work to put out there so again, the debate is informed rather than toss words around like "myth".
EMMA ALBERICI: Finally, former Prime Minister John Howard's been booked to deliver this year's Global Warming Policy Foundation lecture in November. The title of his address is One Religion Is Enough.
IAN CHUBB: (chuckles) Oh, yeah.
EMMA ALBERICI: Is it helpful to the debate to paint climate change science as a quasi-religion with believers and nonbelievers?
IAN CHUBB: Well, Emma, there are believers and nonbelievers, I suppose. Personally I'm not a believer, I just look at evidence and I see where the balance of the evidence is going. I think one of the unfortunate things in this area is that it's turned out to be a sort of belief, you know, do you believe in or do you not believe in. I don't, as I said, I don't subscribe to that view of belief. I think that it's important that we put all of the evidence that we can gather on the table. Some of it will be strongly on one side of the argument, there may well be stuff strongly on the other side of an argument. It's always like that in science. And scientists will work out what the balance of probabilities are.
And I think that when we understand that we are talking about the balance of probabilities, we put that evidence out there, we argue that point, people can then turn that into a belief system if they want to. But I don't think scientists do. I think scientists base their argument on evidence rigorously analysed, hotly debated, allowing for as many sides of the argument as you can that are legitimate and legitimately put forward, based on evidence, and they draw some conclusions from it on the balance of probabilities.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We do that for most of the things in our lives. We work out the balance of probability when we get on an aeroplane or when we cross the road. It's our life and science is based on evidence designed to increase the level of probability that allows us to draw certain conclusions from which we can make, take certain actions. And I think that's the important part of it. And I don't think about this as, you know, "I believe". I mean, what would that tell you? I mean, it doesn't tell you very much. It just is a waste of your time and mine for me to do that, quite frankly. I think that it's much better for me to say: I think the evidence is heading in this particular direction and if you want to know about it I'll get as much of it to you as I possibly can.
EMMA ALBERICI: Professor Chubb, I appreciate the time you've taken to speak to us this evening. Thank you.
IAN CHUBB: Okay, Emma, thank you.
EDITOR'S NOTE (25 September): Lateline would like to clarify a comment referring to an article written by businessman Maurice Newman. It should have more clearly specified that he regards anthropogenic climate change as a myth.Bleeding Cool told you that Tom King was planning an upcoming “The War Of Jokes And Riddles”.
You know, by reading the comic and seeing what the characters in it said to each other. And then looking up catalogue solicitations online.
…The War Of Jokes And Riddles by Tom King and Mikel Janin. Taking place in the aftermath of Year Zero, when The Riddler controlled Gotham for a whole year. It will run from Batman #25 to #32.
And at the Dallas Fan Expo, Tom King talked a lot. Batman News got a full report. Here are a few snippets interspersed with artwork that Ton King has been tweeting out.
“Brilliant Mikel Janin cover for The War of Jokes and Riddles.”
Batman #24 will be a sort of recap and wrap-up of the run so far, with a cliffhanger that leads into “The War of Jokes and Riddles.” He says the last page will be shared and talked about for decades.
“Coming in Batman: The War of Jokes and Riddles, a story of the past that will shape the future of the DCU.”
It begins in Batman #25, which is a deluxe sized anniversary issue, and is an eight-part story arc.
“A year after he began, Batman thinks he understands the pain and power of Gotham. And the war comes, and he learns he knows nothing.”
The basic premise: the Joker and the Riddler clash, as neither one wants the other to destroy Batman and rob them of the satisfaction. This causes a “gang war” to erupt with people taking sides, all while Batman is caught in the middle trying to keep the city safe.
“Joker vs. Riddler, a war that divides and destroys his city. In the midst of the carnage, will the Dark Knight rise again or finally fall?”
We’ll see some cool fights, like Deadshot vs. Deathstroke and Solomon Grundy vs. Killer Croc.
“The Riddler is tired of jokes.”
The arc will be broken up into acts, after a fashion: issues 25-26, 28-29, and 31-32 will be part of the main story, with art by Mikel Janín.
“The Joker is tired of riddles.”
Issues 27 and 30 will feature a guest artist he couldn’t announce at the time, and they will take a look at what it means be a bottom-tier villain during one of these big wars. It may or may not focus on Kite-Man.
War of Jokes and Riddles is an 8 part epic starting in Batman 25. Scripts by me. Art by my genius brother, Mikel Janin/
Look for more in DC’s July solicits.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundCHENNAI: Three fishermen at Ponneri near Chennai have recovered two unidentified objects from the seas, police said.Dhanapal, Sarkarai and Raj Kumar, hailing from the Arangam Kuppam and Light House Kuppam near Ponneri, ventured into the sea for fishing a few days ago. They went up to the seas off the Sriharikota coast in Andhra Pradesh and returned with their catch on Wednesday.They pulled out the fishing net and found two cylindrical objects caught in it. They removed the objects and found a small working LED lamp on both of them. The panicked fishermen informed the Thirupalaivanam police. The police recovered the objects and informed their seniors.The police found some inscriptions -- C-02-15821 -- on the objects and they were orange in colour.The Thirupalaivanam police registered a case and informed the Army about the seizure to find out whether the objects belonged to the armed forces.Warning: food wrapped in newspapers could be slow poison
Using newspapers to wrap, pack or serve food is a safety hazard, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India declared this week. Newspapers are often used by roadside vendors, small hotels and even in homes in lieu of absorbent papers. The food regulatory body has warned that cancer-causing agent and microbes could be slowly poisoning consumers of much food that has been in contact with newspapers.
Foods contaminated by newspaper ink could be dangerous because ink has multiple bioactive materials that are known to have negative health effects, the FSSAI said in its advisory on the subject. Printing inks may also contain harmful colours, pigments, binders, additives and preservatives. Newspapers could also harbor pathogenic microorganisms that could contaminate food. Newspapers, paper or cardboard boxes made of recycled paper may be contaminated with metallic contaminants, mineral oils and harmful chemicals like the phthalates which can cause digestive problems and also lead to severe toxicity.
Eating food from newspapers could be particularly harmful to vulnerable people like older people, teenagers, children and people with compromised vital organs and immune systems. The FSSAI directed all state commissioners of food safety carry out campaigns to generate awareness against the practice.
Are fewer infants dying in Madhya Pradesh?
Even though Madhya Pradesh has the highest infant mortality rate among states in India, it has shown remarkable progress in countering infant deaths, according to UNICEF health specialist Dr Gagan Gupta.
Speaking at a neo-natal conference at Indore last week, Gupta pointed out that Madhya Pradesh has seen a reduction of 30% in the infant mortality or IMR rate between the years 2009 and 2014 as against nationwide fall of 25% during the same period. According to the 2014 sample registration system, the state records 52 deaths of children less than one year of age per 1,000 live births.
Gupta also said that the state needed to take several collective measures to further improve its situation.
Mortality of female newborns in Madhya Pradesh is 17% higher than males. UNICEF and the National Neo-natal Forum have declared 2017 as the year of female newborn to ensure that the focus of health care shifts towards them with an emphasis on admitting the newborns to special care newborn unites so that they receive adequate care.
More heart disease in Kerala
The Cardiological Society of India has found that cardiac disease is much higher in Kerala compared to the rest of India. Among the adult population of 20-79 years of age in Kerala, 12% are afflicted with heart diseases while in the towns in the rest of India, the rate between 7% and -9% and only between 3% and 4% in villages, according to a new study from the society.
Thirty percent of this adult population in Kerala has high blood pressure. Only half of this group is aware of their condition and only one-third take medicines to manage it. Furthermore, only one out of six people have their blood pressure under reasonable control while the rest remain at risk of heart disease and heart attacks.The visiting Canadian Minister for International Development and La Francophonie, Global Affairs Marie-Claude Bibeau today assured her country's full support to Bangladesh on Rohingya issue.
The assurance came when she called on State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam at State Guest House Padma this afternoon following her two-day visit to different Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar.
During the meeting, the Canadian minister shared her experience with the state minister when Shahriar Alam sought Canada's continuous political support for ensuring smooth repatriation of the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.
Over 622,000 Rohingyas have crossed the border and taken shelter in Cox's Bazar district since August 25 amid persecution by Myanmar military in their Rakhine State.
Shahriar recalled with deep gratitude the continuous development assistance from Canada for rebuilding the war ravaged economy of Bangladesh immediately after the War of Independence in 1971.
He underlined that Bangladesh is looking forward to immediate repatriation of Rohingya people to Myanmar in line with the five-point proposal given by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly.
The Canadian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Benoit Préfontaine, High Commissioner of Bangladesh to Canada Mizanur Rahman and senior officials of the ministry were present.
The meeting was followed by a lunch hosted by Planning Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal, in honour of the visiting Canadian Minister for International Development and La Francophonie.
Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed, Chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dr. Dipu Moni, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam, State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Meher Afroz Chumki joined the lunch.
They highlighted the socioeconomic achievements of Bangladesh and discussed in detail the issues of bilateral interest.We recently completed a year-long project to migrate Groupon’s U.S. web traffic from a monolithic Ruby on Rails application to a new Node.js stack with substantial results.
Groupon’s entire U.S. web frontend has been a single Rails codebase from its inception. The frontend codebase quickly grew large, which made it difficult to maintain and challenging to ship new features. As a solution to this gigantic monolith, we decided to re-architect the frontend by splitting it into small, independent and more manageable pieces. At the center of this project, we rebuilt each major section of the website as an independent Node.js application. We also rebuilt the infrastructure to make all the independent apps work together. Interaction Tier (I-Tier) was the result.
Some of the highlights of this great architecture migration include the following:
Page loads are significantly faster across the site
Our development teams can develop and ship features faster and with fewer dependencies on other teams
We can eliminate redundant implementations of the same features in different countries where Groupon is available
This post is the first in a series about how we re-architected the site and the great benefits we’re seeing that will be key to driving Groupon business forward. Read on for the full story.
A Little History
Groupon started as a single web page that showed one deal each day to people in Chicago. An example of a typical deal might be something like a discount to a local restaurant or a ticket to a local event. Each deal had a “tipping point” – the minimum number of people that had to buy the deal for it to be valid. If enough people bought the deal reaching the tipping point, everyone got the discount. Otherwise, no one got the discount.
The site was originally built as a Ruby on Rails application. Rails was a great choice in the beginning as it was one of the easiest ways for the very small development team we had to get our site up and running quickly. It was also easy to implement new features on Rails; this was a huge asset for us in the early days as the feature set was constantly evolving.
The original Rails architecture was very simple:
However, we quickly outgrew being able to serve all of our traffic through a single Rails application pointing to a single database cluster. We added more frontend servers and database replicas and put everything behind a CDN, but that only worked only until the database writes became a bottleneck. Processing orders caused a number of database writes; as a result, we decided to move that code out of our Rails app and into a new service with its own database cluster.
We kept with following this pattern of breaking out existing backend functionality into new services, but the rest of the website (views, controllers, assets, etc) remained part of the original Rails application:
This architecture change bought us time but we knew it would only be temporary. The codebase was still manageable for the small development team we had at that time and it allowed for us to keep the site from falling over during peak traffic.
Going Global
Around this time, Groupon began expanding internationally. Over a short period, we went from operating just in the U.S. to expanded operations in 48 different countries. Along the way, we also acquired several international companies such as CityDeal. Each acquisition came with its own pre-existing software stack.
The CityDeal architecture was similar to Groupon architecture, but it was a totally separate implementation built by a different team. As a result there were differences in design and technology—Java instead of Ruby, Apache instead of nginx, PostgreSQL instead of MySQL.
As we see with fast-growing companies, we had to choose between slowing down to integrate the different stacks or keep both systems, knowing that we were taking on technical debt we would have to repay later. We made an intentional decision to keep the U.S. and European implementations separate at first in exchange for growing the business faster. And as more acquisitions followed, more complexity was added to the architecture.
Mobile
We also built mobile clients for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile; we definitely did not want to build a different mobile app for each country where Groupon operated. Instead, we decided to build an API layer on top of each of our backend software platforms; our mobile clients connected to whichever API endpoint matched the user’s country:
This worked well for our mobile team. They were able to build a single mobile app that worked across all of our countries.
But there was still a catch. Whenever we built a new product or feature, we built it first for the web and then later built an API so that the feature could be implemented on mobile. We were repeating our efforts.
Now that nearly half of our business is mobile in the U.S., we need to build with a mindset of mobile first. Accordingly, we want an architecture where a single backend could serve mobile and web clients with minimal development effort.
Multiple Monoliths
As Groupon continued to evolve and new products were launched, the frontend Ruby codebase grew larger. There were too many developers working in the same codebase. It got to the point where it was difficult for developers to run the application locally. Test suites slowed down and flakey tests became a real problem. And since it was a single codebase, the entire application had to be deployed at once. When a production issue required a rollback, everyone’s changes would get rolled back instead of just the broken feature. In short, we had all the problems of a monolithic codebase that had grown too large.
But we had this problem multiple times over. Not only did we have to deal with the U.S. codebase, but we had many of the same problems with the European codebase. We needed to totally re-architect the frontend.
Rewrite Everything!
Rebuilding the entire frontend is a risky endeavor. It takes a lot of time involving a lot of different people and there’s a real chance that you won’t come up with anything that’s any better than the old system. Or worse — it takes too long and you give up halfway through with no results to show for the effort.
But we had great success in the past rearchitecting smaller pieces of our infrastructure. For example, both our mobile website and our merchant-facing website had been rebuilt with great results. This experience gave us a good starting point and from it we set out clear goals for this project.
Goal 1: Unify our frontends
With multiple software stacks implementing the same features in different countries, we weren’t able to move as fast as we wanted. We needed to eliminate redundancy in our software stack.
Goal 2: Put mobile on the same level as web
Since nearly half of our business in the U.S. is mobile, we couldn’t afford to build a web version and a mobile version. We needed an architecture where web was just another client using the same APIs as our mobile apps.
Goal 3: Make the site faster
Our site was slower than we wanted. In the rush to handle the growth of the site, the U.S. frontend had accumulated tech debt which made it challenging to optimize. We wanted a solution that didn’t require so much code to serve a request. We wanted something simple.
Goal 4: Let teams move independently
When Groupon was first launched, the site was indeed simple. But since then, we’ve added many new product lines with supported development teams located around the world. We wanted each team to be able to build and deploy their features independently and quickly. We needed to break the interdependency between product teams that existed because everything was in a single codebase.
Approach
First, we decided to split each major feature of the website into a separate web application:
We built a web application framework in Node.js that included common features needed by each application to make it easy for our teams to build out these individual web apps.
Sidebar: Why Node.js?
Before building our new frontend layer, we evaluated several different software stacks to see which would be the best fit for us.
We were looking for a solution to a very specific problem – efficiently handling many incoming HTTP requests, making parallel API requests to service each of those HTTP requests, and rendering the results into HTML. We also wanted something that we could confidently monitor, deploy and support.
We wrote prototypes using several software stacks and tested them. We’ll post a more detailed follow-up with the specifics, but overall we found Node.js to be a good fit for this very specific problem.
Approach, continued…
Next, we added a routing layer on top that forwarded users to the appropriate application based on the page they were visiting:
We built the Groupon routing service (which we call Grout) as an nginx module. It allows us to do lots of cool things like conduct A/B tests between different implementations of the same app on different servers.
And to make all of these independent web apps work smoothly together, we’ve built separate services for sharing layouts and style, maintaining shared configuration and managing A/B test treatments. We’ll post more details on these services in the future.
All of this sits in front of our API and nothing in the frontend layer is allowed to talk to a database or backend service directly. This allows us to build a single federated API layer that serves both our web and mobile apps:
We are working on unifying our backend systems, but for the short term we still need to support our U.S. and European backends. So we designed our frontend to work for both backends at the same time:
Results
We’ve just finished migrating our U.S. frontend from Ruby to our new Node.js infrastructure. The old monolithic frontend was split up into approximately 20 separate web apps, each of which was a clean rewrite. We’re currently serving 50k rpm off of these servers on an average day, but we expect multiples of that traffic during the holiday season. And that number will increase greatly as we migrate over traffic from our other 48 countries.
These are the benefits we’ve seen so far:
Page loads are faster across the board—typically by 50%. Part of this is due to technology changes and part of this is because we had a chance to rewrite all of our web pages to be much slimmer. And we still expect to make significant gains here as we roll out additional changes.
We’re serving the same amount of traffic with less hardware compared to the old stack.
Teams are able to deploy changes to their applications independently.
We’ve been able to make site-wide feature and design changes much more quickly than we would have been able to with our old architecture.
Overall, this migration has made it possible for our development teams to ship pages more quickly with fewer interdependencies and removed some of the performance limitations of our old platform. But we have many more improvements planned for the future and we’ll be posting details soon.and help her up
The crowd shriek in horror as two others drag the bull
A bull fight took a horrible turn when the beast began mounting the female bullfighter.
Disturbing video footage shows the bull knocking the woman down in the middle of a fight before lying on top of her and thrusting.
The bull fight took place in Spain and initially the woman - a dwarf - proves a match for the animal as she wields a brown cape.
The bull fight took place in Spain and initially the woman bests the animal as she wields a brown cape
When he slows to a standstill she stamps in front of him, goading him on. However, he suddenly springs into action and charges at her and trips her up
When he slows to a standstill she stamps in front of him, goading him on.
However, he suddenly springs into action and charges at her and trips her up.
She falls to the ground and the bull instantly mounts her from behind and begins thrusting, visibly aroused by the presence of a female.
She falls to the ground and without a moment's delay the bull mounts her from behind
The beast begins thrusting on top of her body, visibly aroused by the presence of a female
Shrieks of horror can be heard from the crowd, before two others rush to the woman's help
Shrieks of horror can be heard from the crowd, before two others rush to the woman's help.
One forcibly drags the bull away while another helps the bullfighter to her feet.The entire concept of a "slump" hardly seems to apply to the Toronto Maple Leafs any more.
A slump in the NHL is a rough 10 or 15 games, when star players' sticks go cold, or a goalie struggles, or injuries strike. They happen to everyone.
But, in Toronto, it's been 40 games with only eight wins – or three full months of futility. And it's been much, much more than one thing that's gone pear-shaped.
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Because of their history, the Leafs always invite a lot of cynicism every fall, but few forecasted a season as disastrous as this. An 84-point team a year ago, Toronto is now on pace for only 69 – the franchise's lowest total relative to the NHL average since 1990-91 and one of the lowest by that measure in the franchise's nearly 100-year history.
Given how poorly they've played of late, there's also little chance they even get to 69.
The strangest thing about the Leafs slide is how complete it's been.
Toronto was, until 40 games ago, the definition of a slightly less than middling team. This was a roster with obvious flaws but also some talent, one that got by on timely goals from its top players such as Phil Kessel and strong goaltending from Jonathan Bernier or James Reimer.
The Leafs were never very good, but they were also never this terrible.
What's changed since mid-December has been the total disappearance of those key strengths, leaving only the struggling shell of a team that will take the ice on Thursday against San Jose.
Maple Leafs by the numbers
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The 40-game collapse Previous 113 games Goals for 1.93 2.91 Goals against 3.43 2.99 Shots for 28.4 28.6 Shots against 32.5 35.3 Shooting percentage 6.8% 10.2% Save percentage 0.895 0.915 Scoring chance share 45.2% 43.5% Possession rating 47.2% 43.6%
If you look back at the Leafs since the start of last season, the most alarming change in this nosedive has been their inability to score.
And, more specifically, Phil Kessel's inability to score.
During the past 40 games, the Leafs have fallen off by about a goal a game, dropping to a Buffalo-like 1.9 goals per 60 minutes. Statistically speaking, they haven't been shooting less or getting fewer scoring chances; they've simply received very little offence from their top players.
In the 113 games from the start of 2013-14 to the beginning of the collapse, Toronto's top line of Kessel, Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk scored a combined 128 goals, or 1.13 a game.
In the 40 games since, that line has only 0.62 goals a game, which means that trio has accounted for half of the Leafs lost offence despite continuing to get top unit power-play duty.
Kessel alone has fallen from a 39-goal pace to a 14-goal one, a crippling drop-off, much of which has been at even strength.
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He has been on the ice for only 12 five-on-five goals in the past 40 games (0.3 a game), down from 0.8 a game.
The other dagger in the Leafs season has been their goaltending woes.
Prior to these past 40 games, Toronto had enjoyed pretty spectacular success from Bernier since acquiring him from the Kings in the summer of 2013. Between the start of his first season until the falloff, the Leafs as a team had the fifth-best even strength save percentage in the NHL, trailing only Boston, Los Angeles, Montreal and the Rangers – four clubs with very strong starters.
By mid-December of his second year, it appeared Bernier was going to lead the Leafs to a much better record than they otherwise deserved.
Instead, they have posted an.895 save percentage that is better than only the Edmonton Oilers ever since, the equivalent of allowing an extra two goals every three games.
Like Kessel, Bernier has struggled, taking the team down with him.
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Because of the timing of the Leafs coaching change, interim coach Peter Horachek has been saddled with a lot of the blame for what's happened in Toronto. But it's really been the disappearance of |
that Americans have not thought about the broader implications of trade with China. As Harris correctly writes, “If the United States is to check Beijing’s expansionism, it will need to make China bear the economic costs of its growing bellicosity.”
So far, Washington policymakers have been reluctant to impose costs beyond the occasional punitive tariff for particularly egregious conduct regarding, say, tires or solar panels.
The lack of strategic thinking looks like an American trait. Most Americans view the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a deficient trade deal instead of a means to bind the economies of 11 Pacific nations to the U.S., as the free-trade pact was conceived by President Obama.
As the debate about TPP suggests, Americans these days judge trade deals for their economic impact only.
Not so the Chinese. China’s policymakers think of trade primarily as an instrument of geopolitics, which is why they promote their “Silk Road Economic Belt,” announced in September 2013, and their “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” unveiled a month later.
The “One Belt, One Road” project, which contemplates the building of transportation links between China and both Europe and Africa, is sold as an economic development plan, but it is uneconomic at its core. For decades, the expensive OBOR, as it is now called, will reap political influence, not cash. Beijing plans to sink at least one trillion dollars into this infrastructure.
The Philippines, once the home of Scarborough Shoal, would like some of China’s largesse. Duterte even once said he would “shut up” to get it, but it’s unlikely he will ever agree to give away territory for cash. He can’t part with an uninhabited rock like Scarborough because his country is nothing more than a series of rocks, reefs, shoals, specks, and islands.
As a result, his archipelago and China are locked in a zero-sum contest for Scarborough and Second Thomas Shoal and other features scattered in the South China Sea. Beijing, unfortunately, has made conquest of portions of the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam as well as all of Taiwan and some of the waters belonging to Indonesia a “sacred and inviolable” duty.
“We want to trade, do commerce with everybody,” Duterte said Friday. “We have plenty to sell, plenty to ship. I hope that there would not be a time that we have to make crucial decisions in our national life.”
If there are in fact barges at Scarborough, the Philippine president will have to make those decisions soon.
Follow me on Twitter @GordonGChang and on Forbes. And find much more here.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Health Secretary Andrew Lansley: "We have to have something that measures genuine quality and outcomes"
A target requiring ambulances in England to attend non life-threatening 999 calls within 19 minutes is being scrapped by the government.
In its place, a measure of the "time to treatment" will be introduced.
But the eight-minute response target for life-threatening emergencies will stay.
The GMB union said the changes suggested a "shocking scaling back" of ambulance services, but ministers say they want to focus on quality of care.
The move forms part of a review into the way emergency health services in England are assessed.
A new way of monitoring A&E performance is also to be introduced in April next year to improve the quality of care.
Mr Lansley's statements about timeliness of care, without a target time for ambulance crews to arrive on the scene is a euphemism for get there when you can Justin Bowden, GMB union Have Your Say: Are health targets necessary?
Ministers say the four-hour waiting limit for A&E will be replaced with a set of eight new clinical indicators "that promote quality and patient safety", rather than focus solely on speed.
Time will still be measured as part of the new indicators, but the government stresses that it will "no longer be the only factor".
New indicators will include the number of unplanned re-attendances to A&E and how patients are prioritised for treatment.
The steps are part of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's drive to move away from what he considers to be the blunt system of targets which have been used in recent years.
Mr Lansley said: "The new measures will focus on quality of care and what matters most to patients - giving a better indication of patient care than the previous process-led targets ever could."
'Not only factor'
He has already relaxed the rules around the 18-week hospital waiting time target and the 48-hour limit to see a GP.
This is an opportunity to transform emergency care to ensure it becomes the jewel in the crown of the NHS. John Heyworth, College of Emergency Medicine
He said he still wanted A&E units to see patients within the four-hour deadline, but added time was not the only factor on which they should be judged.
In total there are eight measures which A&E units will be monitored on from April.
One of those will be to record how long patients have to wait until initial assessment.
Category A ambulance calls, which include the most serious life-threatening conditions, will still need to be responded to in eight minutes.
But the 19-minute target for less serious cases will be changed.
Category B will be replaced with a range of indicators and "time to treatment" times will be published online.
Justin Bowden, national officer of the GMB union, said: "The announcement to scrap the 19-minute response time for ambulances is a shocking scaling back of the service currently provided to the public.
"Andrew Lansley says he knows what matters most to patients but misses what matters most to the public when they dial 999 - that an ambulance arrives, and arrives quickly.
NEW A&E INDICATORS 1. Percentage of patients with certain ambulatory care conditions admitted 2. Unplanned re-attendance rate 3. Total time spent in the A&E department 4. Left without being seen rate 5. Service experience 6. Time to initial assessment 7. Time to treatment 8. Consultant sign-off Source: Department of Health
But an NHS spokeswoman said what was actually important in non-emergency cases was how long it took for people to get treated.
The move has been welcomed by doctors who had often complained that the sole focus on the four-hour target distorted priorities.
The coalition had already reduced the threshold for meeting it from 98% to 95% and the hope is that this new focus on other measures will create a new stress on quality.
John Heyworth, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said: "This is an opportunity to transform emergency care to ensure it becomes the jewel in the crown of the NHS."
Nose bleed
The Patients Association said it was important to look at other measures, but added care should be taken to ensure the four-hour limit did not slip too often.
A spokeswoman said: "We do not want to go back to a situation where people are left on trolleys in A&E for days on end."
Professor Matthew Cooke, the NHS's national clinical director for urgent and emergency care, said in reality 90% of what are initially classed as category A calls did not in fact require an emergency response.
But he said the system would err on the side of caution and told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you need an ambulance it will still arrive in a reasonable time, it's just that they won't be rushing to get there in 19 minutes for the nose bleed.
"The other issue behind that is that ambulances rushing through the streets sometimes have accidents and we want to prevent that as well."Less than a month into his presidency, Trump declared at a White House press conference how eager he was to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I actually thought I had a meeting with Congressman Cummings, and he was all excited,”
Cummings soon after explained that Trump
The following week, Trump and Cummings did meet, and according to the congressman, Cummings
Reflecting on the conversation, Trump seems to remember the meeting very differently. Before we get into what Donald Trump said yesterday about Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), some context is in order.Less than a month into his presidency, Trump declared at a White House press conference how eager he was to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I actually thought I had a meeting with Congressman Cummings, and he was all excited,” Trump claimed. “And then he said, ‘Well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.”Cummings soon after explained that Trump simply made all of this up. “I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today,” the Maryland Democrat said.The following week, Trump and Cummings did meet, and according to the congressman, Cummings told the president some things he didn’t want to hear Reflecting on the conversation, Trump seems to remember the meeting very differently. Here’s what he told the New York Times yesterday:
TRUMP: Elijah Cummings [a Democratic representative from Maryland] was in my office and he said, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.”
NYT: Really.
TRUMP: And then he went out and I watched him on television yesterday and I said, “Was that the same man?”
Effective liars learn early on that falsehoods are more likely to be believed if they’re somewhat plausible. Trump’s claim about Elijah Cummings is not.
If you’re not familiar with Cummings’ work, he’s a widely respected progressive champion and a fierce critic of the Trump White House. The idea that he’d tell the president, in any setting, for any reason, that he believes Trump “will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country” is about as likely as Cummings growing wings and flying around the Oval Office. Trump’s claim is plainly ridiculous.
So what did the congressman say? The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake Moments later, the president thought it’d be a good idea to repeat the exact same anecdote for emphasis. “[Cummings] said, in a group of people, ‘You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.’ And then I watched him on television and I said, ‘Is that the same man that said that to me?’”Effective liars learn early on that falsehoods are more likely to be believed if they’re somewhat plausible. Trump’s claim about Elijah Cummings is not.If you’re not familiar with Cummings’ work, he’s a widely respected progressive champion and a fierce critic of the Trump White House. The idea that he’d tell the president, in any setting, for any reason, that he believes Trump “will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country” is about as likely as Cummings growing wings and flying around the Oval Office. Trump’s claim is plainly ridiculous.So what did the congressman say? The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reported
[Cummings] explained in a statement to [the Washington Post]: “During my meeting with the president and on several occasions since then, I have said repeatedly that he could be a great president if … if … he takes steps to truly represent all Americans rather than continuing on the divisive and harmful path he is currently on.”
This is Trump’s fabulism in action. He hears a comment like that, lops off the all-important “if” part, and takes it as a compliment. And then he takes that perceived compliment and amplifies it by a factor of about four; “great president” becomes “great presidents in the history of the country.”
The question, as with all of Trump’s falsehoods, is whether it’s subconscious or deliberate – the “Stupid or Liar” theory. Either he doesn’t comprehend what Cummings was saying to him – which is a big problem in a president – or he chooses to completely misrepresent it – which is a big problem in a president.
For those concerned about Trump’s ability to see the world as it is exists, and not through a lens that exaggerates his own sense of worth, anecdotes like these are not at all reassuring.A couple of years ago, people started talking about the notion of “bimodal IT,” sometimes known as “ambidextrous IT.” The formal definition, according to Gartner, is “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility.”
The idea was that an organization with legacy products would have parallel developments—one for continued enhancement to legacy systems and a second agile one to develop products quickly to take advantage of new technologies. To a certain extent, it’s a way to deal with the issue of Shadow IT, where business organizations set up unapproved parallel IT organizations because they don’t find traditional IT responsive enough.
In fact, bimodal IT even represents the two types of IT organizations, beyond just development, writes Dave Michels in No Jitter. “Mode 1 represents the IT department that we love to hate,” he writes. “It’s the mode that ensures things are reliable and secure. It’s the mode that says ‘no’ to just about every request, usually due to limitations (of staffing, budgets, testing, etc.) or concerns (related to security, support, experience, integration, compatibility, etc.).”
In contrast, “Mode 2 is the innovative and friendly IT,” Michels continues. “Its charter is exploration and responsiveness. In this mode, IT says ‘yes’ to most requests because the request itself is indicative that an unmet need exists. Speed and agility are king, and mode 1 simply can’t respond quickly enough. Mode 2 enables the company to benefit from newer technologies while they are still new.”
Bimodal problems
But the concept of bimodal IT is starting to get some pushback.
The theory behind bimodal is, “Disrupt thyself, before someone else disrupts you.” But that’s the wrong way to look at it, writes Laurence Hart in Word of Pie.
“Going bimodal is an unnatural way to run a team, group, or product,” Hart writes. “Running a more rapid, innovative set of teams alongside separate teams that are essentially keeping the lights just doesn’t work long term in a healthy organization.”
Part of the problem is that dividing IT into two groups creates conflict, writes Bernard Golden in CIO. “It’s likely that these two different IT groups will joust with one another for power,” he warns. “More importantly, despite the neat separation implied by the model, the fact is that they will need to cooperate. Setting up two organizations won’t necessarily resolve the tension, and may, in fact, exacerbate it as the two groups vie for resources and influence.”
Moreover, bimodal IT promotes the same sort of silos that the industry has been trying to get rid of, writes Mark A. Campbell in CIO Insight. “This is the opposite direction of every IT and organizational health trend since the term ‘functional silo syndrome’ was coined by Phil Ensor in 1988,” he writes. “Bimodal IT’s reliance on silos is simply muddle-headed thinking as proven out by countless studies over the past four decades.”
Worst of all, it isn’t clear how bimodal development would work over time. “I’ve seen two party systems in the past that have degenerated into ‘them’ vs ‘us’ and with no consideration of how things evolve they are not sustainable,” writes Simon Wardley in the Gardeviance blog.“There is no effective process for how the new (i.e. tomorrow’s industrialized components) become industrialized. The idea that somehow the two groups will work together in a ‘dance’ is fanciful. Brawl would be more like it.”
Even Gartner, which is one of the big proponents of bimodal IT, notes that it is fraught: While it predicted that 75 percent of enterprises would have a bimodal capability by 2017, it also predicted that half of them would make a mess of it.
Bimodal and beyond
So if bimodal IT doesn’t work, what should companies do instead?
What’s really needed is not bimodal IT, but trimodal IT, Michels writes. “Trimodal IT is the trick to making mode 2 sustainable and successful,” he writes. “IT must recognize the transitioning of new services into stable and scalable solutions as a separate, strategic function. It must assign a distinct group, even by selection of ambassadors from the other two modes, and specifically charter that group to integrate and adapt practices for ensuring operational success.”
Wardley also agrees with the trimodal concept. He postulates three teams: Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners. Basically, Pioneers are the innovators, Settlers turn innovations into products (like Michels’ transition team), and Town Planners turn the products into commodities or utilities. “If you want to create a bimodal / dual operating system structure out of this then you really have to give up on one part,” he warns.
And perhaps even trimodal isn’t enough, Campbell writes. “The agility vs. stability postulate is a false dichotomy,” he writes. “Bimodal is too trivial–the real-world is multi-modal. You need as many solution approaches as you have business drivers. It is not as simple as an ‘either-or’ bifurcation.”
Ultimately, bimodal IT can hurt the organization by cutting legacy apps off from technology that could improve them, warns Steven Murray in Computer Business Review. “Companies have decades of high value IP wrapped up in their legacy IT and mainframe applications making it critical for them to become more agile to remain relevant in today’s digital world,” he writes. “Those that don’t adopt a widespread agile approach will miss a major opportunity to fully enrich the customer experience and drive unprecedented value for the business.”
“Everyone in IT should be given the freedom to look into new technologies that might improve either system efficiency or provide possible value to the users,” Hart agrees. “Everyone in IT should be working with the business to learn what the business needs to be more effective.”
Get more information on the top trends affecting today’s workplace – including cloud, mobility and workflow automation – in this exclusive IDC research, “The Future of ECM: Code-Free Integrations and Anywhere Access.”The U.S. Air Force is pushing to more than double the life of its stalwart F-15 Eagles with a series of upgrades.
“About two and a half years ago, the U.S. Air Force wanted fatigue tests on C models,” says Brad Jones, F-15 mission systems director for Boeing, which makes the aircraft.
As the F-15 fleet aircraft approached their life expectancies for total flight hours, the Air Force wanted see how far the service could delay fleet retirements, Jones said during a recent briefing with reporters.
The design service life for the aircraft is 8,000 flight hours and the lead-the-fleet aircraft have flown more than 10,000 actual flight hours and counting, Boeing says.
Boeing is now working on full-scale fatigue test certifications to push F-15C/D models to 18,000 equivalent flight hours (EFHs) and F-15E models to 32,000 EHFs. “Structural fatigue improvements in current-production F-15s provide longer life and reduced maintenance requirements,” Boeing says.
“We do not have an end date for the F-15,” Jones says. Indeed, he says, there are several programs to make U.S. and international models better with age.
The F-15 radar modernization program proposes to retrofit all F-15Es by 2021 with APG-82(V)1 suites with APG-79 processors, which will offer a fivefold improvement over the APG-63(V)3 equipment in reliability and effectiveness. The initial operational capability for the radar work is early 2014.
The Advanced Display/Core Processor II (ADCP II) program will replace all the computers in U.S. F-15Es and serve as the baseline computer for all future aircraft sales. The new computers increase computing power, adding additional gigabit Ethernet and fiber channel connections, with a Milestone B decision scheduled in November. “The U.S. Air Force has a display upgrade working team up now,” Jones says.
Boeing also is offering an advanced cockpit system that includes a large-area display, low-profile head-up display, reference standby display and low-profile engine fuel hydraulics display, all of which replace 23 existing displays, instruments and indicators.
“It’s more for situational awareness,” Jones says, adding the improvements significantly lower the cost of the aircraft, for both purchase price and life cycle costs.
The proposed new Digital Electronic Warfare System (DEWS) replaces several legacy systems, such as the radar warning receiver, jammer internal countermeasures set, countermeasures dispenser and interface blanker.
With DEWS, there is no need for a waveguide or nitrogen pressurization, Boeing says, and the digital system provides more than 200% throughput and memory growth reserve as well as better operation with wideband agile radars and other RF systems.Σ�ντομος Βιογ�αφία του Ζωγ�άφου και Ποιητή (1907-1985) 1907
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Υπη�ετεί τη θητεία του ως στ�ατι�της ακ�οβολιστής στο 1ο Σ�νταγμα Πεζικο�. 1928-1930
Ξ•Ο�γάζεται ως μεταφΟ�αστής σε Ξ¤Ο�άπεζα ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ ως Ξ³Ο�Ξ±Ο†ΞΞ±Ο‚ στο Πανεπιστήμιο. Ξ Ξ±Ο�άλληλα πηγαίνει στο νυχτεΟ�ΞΉΞ½Ο� Γυμνάσιο του ΨυΟ�Ο�Ξ® Ξ³ΞΉΞ± Ξ½Ξ± αποκτήσει ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ ελληνικΟ� ΑπολυτήΟ�ΞΉΞΏ. 1930 (Ξ�ΞΊΟ„Ο�Ξ²Ο�ΞΉΞΏΟ‚) - 1933 (Ξ�Ξ¬Ο�τιος)
Ε�γάζεται ως ημε�ομίσθιος σχεδιαστής στη Διε�θυνση Σχεδίων Π�λεων του Υπου�γείου Δημοσίων ��γων. 1932
Ξ“Ο�άφεται στην Ανωτάτη Σχολή Ξ�Ξ±Ξ»Ο�Ξ½ ΤεχνΟ�Ξ½ ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ γίνεται μαθητής του Ξ�ωνσταντίνου Ξ Ξ±Ο�ΞΈΞΞ½Ξ·. Ξ Ξ±Ο�άλληλα φοιτά στο ΞµΟ�γαστήΟ�ΞΉΞΏ του Ξ¦Ο�τη Ξ�Ο�ντογλου Ο�που ΞΞ½Ξ± Ο‡Ο�Ο�Ξ½ΞΏ Ο€Ο�ΞΉΞ½ είχε ξεκινήσει ΞΏ Γιάννης ΤσαΟ�ΞΏΟ�χης. Ξ�ΞΉ Ξ΄Ο�ΞΏ ΞΌΞ±ΞΈΞ·Ο„ΞΟ‚ ΞΈΞ± βοηθήσουν τον Ξ�Ο�ντογλου στις τοιχογΟ�αφίες του σπιτιοΟ� του. 1934
«ΕγγονΟ�πουλος ΦαναΟ�ΞΉΟ�της», ποΟ�Ο„Ο�Ξτο «δια χειΟ�Ο�Ο‚ Φωτίου Ξ�Ο�ντογλου». (ΑυγΟ� σε ΞΎΟ�λο 25,5 x 20 ΞµΞΊ. Συλλογή Ξ΅. Ξ�ΞΏΟ�ίδη). Ξ�Ξ±Ο�ΞΏΟ‚
ΔιοΟ�ίζεται στην ΤοπογΟ�αφική ΥπηΟ�εσία του ΥπουΟ�Ξ³ΞµΞ―ΞΏΟ… Δημοσίων Ξ�Ο�γων ως Ξ·ΞΌΞµΟ�ομίσθιος υπάλληλος. Ξ�ετά ΞΞΎΞΉ Ο‡Ο�Ο�Ξ½ΞΉΞ± Ξ±ΞΊΟ�ΞΉΞ²Ο�Ο‚, τον Ξ�Ξ±Ο�ΞΏ του 1940, μονιμοποιείται (Σχεδιαστής Α΄ Τάξεως). 1937
Ξ ΞµΞΈΞ±Ξ―Ξ½ΞµΞΉ ΞΏ πατΞΟ�Ξ±Ο‚ του στην Ξ�ωνσταντινοΟ�πολη. 1938
Ιανουά�ιος
[Ξ�ΞΉ «ακαδημαΟ�ΞΊΞΏΞ― ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ Ξ· Ξ¤Ξχνη»] απάντηση σε ΞΟ�ΞµΟ…Ξ½Ξ± του πεΟ�. Ξ�εοελληνική Λογοτεχνία (τεΟ�χος 3). Ξ� Ξ�Ξ―ΞΊΞΏΟ‚ ΕγγονΟ�πουλος παΟ�ουσιάζει Ξ³ΞΉΞ± Ο€Ο�Ο�τη φοΟ�Ξ¬ ΞΟ�Ξ³Ξ± του, Ο„ΞμπεΟ�ΞµΟ‚ σε χαΟ�τί που εικονίζουν παλιά σπίτια Ο€Ο�λεων της Ξ”. Ξ�ακεδονίας, στην Ξ�κθεση «ΤΞχνη της Ξ�εοελληνικής Ξ Ξ±Ο�Ξ±Ξ΄Ο�σεως», ΞΏΟ�γανωμΞΞ½Ξ· Ξ±Ο€Ο� το ΟƒΟ�λλογο «Ελληνική ΛαΟ�ΞΊΞ® Ξ¤Ξχνη» στην Αίθουσα ΣτΟ�ατηγοποΟ�λου. ΣυνεΟ�γάζεται Ξ±ΞΊΟ�ΞΌΞ· στις ΞΌΞ±ΞΊΞτες των Ξ±Ο�χοντικΟ�Ξ½ που κατασκευάζει Ξ”. Ξ ΞΉΞΊΞΉΟ�Ξ½Ξ·Ο‚ ΞΌΞµ χοΟ�Ξ·Ξ³Ξ―Ξ± του ΥφυπουΟ�Ξ³ΞΏΟ� ΤουΟ�ισμοΟ�. ΦεβΟ�ΞΏΟ…Ξ¬Ο�ΞΉΞΏΟ‚
�εταφ�άζει ποιήματα του Tristan Tzara που δημοσιε�ονται στο τε�χος Υπε�(�)εαλισμ�ς Α'.
[Τα ίδια ποιήματα αναδημοσιε�ονται στο βιβλίο Tristan Tzara, Υπε��εαλισμ�ς και μεταπ�λεμος, «��ιλον/βιβλία», 1979].
Τελει�νει τ |
a set of short, simple rules. In such cases, it can be possible to prove with certainty that the program contains no bugs. Even straightforward techniques like looping and recursion can complicate the analysis significantly, though, so it is best if the program under test is as simple as possible.
Why am I droning on and on about all this? Putting these thoughts together, it would seem that the best way to write smart contracts might involve: 1) keeping them as short and as simple as possible; 2) delegating the core business logic to library contracts that can be updated if necessary; and 3) reusing libraries that have been thoroughly vetted, so as to keep the amount of new code to a minimum. If the second of these points requires that users trust the contract’s author to some degree, as is often the case, then contracts designed according to these three guidelines start to look a lot like Ardor’s smart transactions: bits of stable, thoroughly tested code that expose the most commonly needed functionality, which developers can assemble into more complex programs.
Trade-offs between Security and Flexibility
I am not suggesting that Ardor’s smart transactions can accomplish all of what Ethereum’s smart contracts can securely accomplish, nor am I even arguing that combinations of smart transactions can always emulate smart contracts. What I am saying, though, is that I think there is a natural tension between the flexibility that a platform offers and the security of the code that developers inevitably write for it.
In this view, blockchain platforms can be located on a security-flexibility continuum. Near the “security” extreme is Bitcoin, whose scripting language is deliberately quite limited in order to prevent users from locking their coins with vulnerable scripts (though this is still possible, of course). Nxt and Ardor occupy a position somewhere toward the middle of the spectrum, limiting developers to a set of predefined transaction types but including an awful lot of functionality in those types.
Ethereum’s smart contracts, on the other hand, occupy the entire spectrum. It is possible to write extremely simple, trivially secure scripts on Ethereum, and it is also possible to write more complicated scripts that contain very subtle vulnerabilities. Perhaps just as importantly, it is difficult for users to tell the difference between these cases–and unreasonable, in any event, to expect them to try. Using Ethereum safely necessarily means avoiding the “flexibility” end of the spectrum, even if it comes at the cost of introducing some extra trust between users and developers.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Ardor offers a new feature, not previously available in Nxt, that helps it inch towards the “flexibility” end of the continuum: the ability to combine phasing conditions using Boolean AND, OR, and NOT operators to achieve primitive smart-contract-like behavior.
Briefly, phased transactions allow users to condition an underlying transaction on some event, such as approval by a certain number of specific accounts (m-of-n multisig), a vote by accounts holding a particular asset, the expiration of some amount of time (timelock), or the revelation of a secret (e.g., a hashlock). On Ardor, combinations of these phasing types can encode more complex conditions, such as, “transaction X is valid if a majority of ABC Corp.’s asset holders approve of it by date Y, unless it is vetoed by a supermajority of ABC Corp.’s board members.”
It will no doubt be possible to combine phasing conditions in ways that allow for unexpected outcomes, possibly including theft or loss of funds. But the advantage over smart contracts in terms of security is still there, I would argue, since developers can focus on making sure the business logic of the transaction is sound, without having to worry about low-level bugs like race conditions. And of course, the drawback of offering less flexibility than a smart contract is still there, too.
Conclusion
With a protocol defined by a set of prepackaged smart transactions instead of a low-level scripting language, Ardor will probably never be able to offer developers as wide a range of possibilities as Ethereum does, at least in cases where everything must be done on-chain for minimal trust between parties. On the other hand, writing nontrivial contracts that follow security best practices might well require additional trust between users and developers anyway. And of course, Ethereum users ultimately have to trust the authors of smart contracts not to have made any mistakes and to have duly scrutinized and tested their code in order to make sure of it.
Naturally, you might say the same thing about any software, including Ardor’s smart transactions, but there is a key difference: there is simply so much more code running on Ethereum. Nxt has been open-source since its inception, providing ample opportunity for peer review, and Ardor’s code, which builds on the Nxt codebase, will be opened soon. Moreover, each new change to the protocol has been vetted thoroughly on a public testnet before being officially released. The same ought to be true of each and every smart contract, but with so much code being written, it seems like there are inevitably more opportunities for bugs to slip through into production.
In any event, I suspect that the degree to which most successful Dapps will rely on immutable code is still an open question. If access to an immutable database and a handful of simple operations on that data are sufficient for most applications, then Ardor’s smart transactions seem to me to have an obvious advantage over smart contracts. If, in contrast, the notion that “code is law” turns out to be essential to the viability of most Dapps, with each Dapp requiring most of its unique code to be recorded on the blockchain in order to be truly trustless, then Ethereum’s approach is probably superior.
I expect that there will be real-world applications that suit each platform. But I also wonder whether it will eventually become clear that one of the two approaches best handles a sizable majority of applications. Which approach will ultimately “win” is not at all clear to me, but I suspect that the deciding factor will be users’ judgments of the degree of trust that each case requires. And since the entire appeal of blockchain technology is that it allows users to transact with minimal trust, I’d say that outcome would be quite appropriate.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, be sure to read the next part of the series, which compares the ways that Ardor and Ethereum cope with blockchain bloat.
Try Ardor on testnet
About the latest Ardor testnet version
View this in: 简体中文 EspañolI do not hate you, and I believe you when you say you do not hate me. But growing up in your religion made me hate myself and believe that god either hated me or didn’t even notice me. You didn’t have the same experience as I did, and I am glad for you. Really, sincerely, truly glad for you.
I agree that to know someone else is to love them. That’s why I wish I could show you a real, first-person view — without your own beliefs and assumptions to shield you from it — of what so many on the other side have felt. When you know what it’s like to have the stones thrown at you, you’re a lot less likely to throw the same stones yourself. But you’re also less likely to hold the coats of those who continue to throw the stones.
When I left the LDS church, it was because I could no longer bear the weight of holding that church’s coats as it threw its many stones.
One example from before my time: for over 100 years, they kept black people out of heaven (not just the priesthood — it was a temple ban) for what the LDS church now admits was a man sustained as a prophet who was speaking as a racist man.
Already, that church’s stance on one of today’s greatest civil rights struggles, homosexuality, has changed drastically from where it was 50 years ago. Back then, doctrine held that it was a choice, and a perverse one, to be homosexual. Now, they admit that it is not a choice. When they admit, in 50 more years, that they were also wrong about many more of their teachings and policies about homosexuality, what damage will already have been done?
The LDS leaders have spoken evil of people who did not choose their sexuality. And they have fought against the civil liberties of homosexual people and lied about the nature of their involvement in that fight. And they continue to mingle hurtful rhetoric into current messages, but perhaps worst of all they have done nothing to correct the mistaken impressions they themselves spread in the past.
As a result, many families and friends and church leaders believe — today, in 2017 — that they are following their God when they reject and despise people who come out to them as homosexual. The blood of hundreds of gay youth, especially in the Mountain West, is on their hands. Period.
Those lives can’t be given back. Those families can’t be healed of the loss and the part they played in the loss. The blood continues to flow. That blood drenches the coats of the leaders of the LDS church. And anyone who holds their coats while they throw their stones is going to get a little on them, too.
I care about you, though I don’t know you. I care about my many friends who are aware of many of the issues with their church but who find that the costs of leaving are too great, and after all, “it works for [them]”. I hope that you and they will one day have a moment on the metaphorical road to Damascus. Whether you meet a god there, or your own moral sense as a human being, I hope it leads you to better paths.Yes, up to three million. That was the conclusion reached in the 2009 annual report on the Spanish property market prepared by Madrid-based real estate analysts R. R. de Acuña & Asociados. The report is described by Sunday Times Spanish Property Doctor columnist Mark Stucklin as one of the most influential annual reports on the sector, so the conclusions are hardly to be sneezed at, indeed the assumptions made in the calculations appear on the surface to be entirely plausible. In fact, having read the summary of the report in this article here, Variant Perception’s Jonthan Tepper wrote to me to ask whether I thought we were being “dire enough”. Yep. Sufficient unto the day is the direness thereof.
So where does the 3 million number come from? Well, according to the estimates of R. R. de Acu̱a & Asociados Рas outlined in the Expansion article Рthere are currently 1.67 millon flats and houses on the market and looking for a buyer in Spain. Roughly 1.1 million of these are new, while a further 518,000 second hand residential properties are now estimated to be languishing on the market. To this number we then need to add the 327,350 properties under construction but still unfinished Рthese will either need to be completed or knocked down, but in either case they represent a problem.
Finally we come to the 1.098 millon housing units for which planning permision has already been granted together with an allocated credit line of 52.947 billion euros courtesy of the Spanish banking sector. Of course maybe may say, well these properties will never be buit, and this may be true, but deciding whether or not to build them is a much more difficult decision to take than it seems, since any such decision would be equivalent to throwing the towel in on Spain’s construction industry, and would constitute an implicit recognition that the policy pursued so far by the Zapatero administration of trying to soldier on through to 2011 had been a failure. Construction activity is still only down some 30% from peak, and if we think it will need to fall from nearly 12% of GDP to around 4% then it still has at least another third (or fifty percent of current output) to come down, and this is where all the issues start.
Deciding not to go ahead with these houses would basically mean very little construction activity in Spain during the next couple of years or more. Evidently this would push up unemployment even further, and here is where the problem comes, since this deterioration in the general economic situation would make it even harder for the property market to recover.
Any kind of bubble like the one we have had requires that everything feeds on itself, the moment this stops happening everything starts to deflate, and this is what is happening now. Simply not building – which I obviously think is what they have to decide – would mean another vicious twist in the screw, more construction company bankruptcies, and hence more bad loans for the banks.
Faced with this, and crazy as it seems, there is a certain logic in continuing to fund zombie builders to build houses that evidently no one needs, since money is cheap from the ECB, and this way the bad-loan book looks, well if not good, at least not so bad. And who knows – so the thinking goes – maybe one day we will find a use for all these houses. And this is where the pre-funding issue comes in, since the builders have had to demonstrate in order to get the permission that they have the financial resources to see the projects through, and the banks accordingly have had to set aside the 50 billion euros or so in anticipation of this, which is why, as Madrid University Professor Daniel Villaba pointed out earlier in the year, keeping funding the zombie builders means effectively starving Spain’s Pymes (or small businesses) of much needed working capital. But the banks can’t simply tell the builders to go to hell, and not to build, since if they do the builders will declare themselves insolvent, with the evident consequences that that much cultivated non-Performing Loans rate would suddenly shoot up.
So adding everything up, we find that between them Spanish estate agents, banks, savings banks and private investors are now either owning or holding the tab on a grand total of something like 3.1 million properties, all of them looking for, or about to be looking for, that ever so elusive thing in Spain, the potential homebuyer.
Another interesting conclusion is that 75% of existing builders will simply go out of business in the next five years – since which everway you look at it, building now or building later – Spain’s construction sector is hopelessly overpopulated.
Fortunately Mark Stucklin has – on his Spanish property buff blog – given us what he calls a a “bulleted summary” of the main points in the report, and these I reproduce below. To his summary I would only add two further points of my own.
Firstly the estimate of 25% unemployment by the end of next year contained in the report may well be on the low side, especially if the Spanish government is running out of funding for the stimulus programmes. Spanish INEM employment department officials have already leaked estimates that if the Plan E type projects are not renewed, then we could see something like 700,000 additional unemployed in October and November of this year alone. If these warnings turn out to be realistic then my feeling is that we will hit 25% unemployment around Easter, and then start heading up towards 30%. We should break through the 30% level around the turn of 2010/11 or by the spring of 2011, depending on a lot of factors which are still hard to see at this point. And where will we stop? No idea at all, since this simply depends on when the Spanish citizenry decide they have had enough and a package of emergency measures are put in place. It is hard, given the way the eurosystem works, to see how a “short sharp shock” may be administered, but something of the kind will be needed, or the patient will simply arrive moribund on the operating table.
My second observation is merely anecdotal, but the Acuña & Asociados report places a lot of emphasis on the coastal situation, which has, to some extent, already been “factored in” by most participants, however quite by chance I have talked with a number of people in recent days who have stressed with me just how serious the situation is in the satellite towns around Madrid, built as they have been for Ecuadorians who never arrived, or Romanians who have already left. I think this element is yet awaiting a proper accounting, and the cost is unlikely to be small.
Summary by Mark Stucklin of R. R. de Acuña & Asociados 2009 Annual Report On The Spanish Property Market
– “There are no green shoots around here,†said Fernando RodrÃguez y RodrÃguez de Acuña, president of the company, describing the state of the Spanish property market during a press conference introducing the report.
– At end of 2008 the supply of property for sale or under construction was 1,623,042, of which roughly 580,000 were resales, 500,000 newly built but unsold, and 470,000 under construction and nearing completion.
– Annual demand estimated as follows: 233,000 in 2008, and 218,000 in 2009.
– That means there are some 1,6 million homes on the market, whilst demand in the next few years is expected to run at around 220,000 homes. At current levels of demand it will take 6 to 7 years for the real estate sector to recover. So it could take until 2016 for the market to digest the current property glut.
– Looking at the market for holiday homes on the coast, local demand was estimated at 42,000 in 2008, expected to fall to 40,000 in 2009, whilst foreign demand for holiday homes on the coast was 21,000 in 2008, falling to 20,000 in 2009.
– The report singles out the coast as one of the areas with the biggest glut of property, and therefore the biggest problem that will take the longest to resolve.
– Higher priced market segments are also a problem; more expensive market segments are expected to take more than 6 years to clear, compared to 3 years or less at the cheaper end.
– The only way developers and banks will get rid of the glut of property in the medium term is selling at a loss.
– After falling 1.83% in 2008, overall prices will fall 9.55% in 2009, 9.32% in 2010, and 4.81% in 2011, a cumulative fall of just under 25.5% in nominal terms.
– After falling 3.32% in 2008, coastal prices will fall 11.28% in 2009, 7.98% in 2010, and 4.31% in 2011, a cumulative fall of 27% in nominal terms.
– Housing starts will fall to between 50,000 and 75,000 a year in the next few years, down from more than 700,000 in 2005. “The market situation doesn’t justify more building, and anyway the banks won’t lend money to build something that won’t sell,†said Fernando RodrÃguez y RodrÃguez de Acuña.
– Thanks to long lead times in the construction business, the full economic impact of the collapse in residential construction is yet to be felt. The darkest hour for the Spanish economy will come in the second half of 2010, when unemployment could reach 25%.
– Developers will go out of business in greatest numbers during 2010 and 2011. “It gets increasingly harder for developers to refinance with assets they either can’t sell or which are already mortgaged, and are increasingly devalued,†said Fernando RodrÃguez y RodrÃguez de Acuña, who predicts that 75% of developers will be wiped out in the next 5 years by a combination of too much debt, the market slump, and “bad managementâ€.
– Recovery won’t come until 2013, by which time the sector will be just half the size it used to be, if that.c c: The Executives of the Ralph Lauren Company
Ralph Lauren – CEO
Scott Myers – Marketing Director
Michael Morelli – VP of Advertising
David Lauren – SVP of Advertising
Laura Johnson- Public Relations Manager
Trecia Laird- Senior Marketing Manager
Hello Mr. Lauren,
Let me preface this entire letter by saying that I’m truly sorry that we have to meet under these terms and conditions. I would rather have met you at the Four Seasons Hotel and had a juice and pretzels with you, because I’m sure you’re a really interesting guy. And I assure you, I’m a really nice guy as well.
Fortunately for me, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting tens of thousands of young girls while promoting my documentary “America the Beautiful.” To look in the eyes of over 100,000 college women and hear their pain (body image, self-esteem) has been an experience that I will never forget. I’ve also heard from over 80,000 parents that are in pain because they have to hear from their sons and daughters in pain. It does truly become a generational cycle.
I’m sure that you’re fully aware that a lot of the American population feels that the unhealthy ads in magazines are damaging to women. The damage comes in various forms; body image problems, low self-esteem and for some of the women, they get a full blown eating disorder like your niece Jenny.
I had a professional in the eating disorders world tell me last night that images like yours don’t cause eating disorders in every girl that sees it – What happens is girls that end up with an eating disorder had a 50-80% predisposition for getting an eating disorder in the first place and the negative magazine fashion ads and other factors are the gun that pulls the trigger. For the millions of other girls that don’t get an eating disorder, they’re left feeling fat, ugly and worthless.
Ralph, there is no turning back for me. When I met these women traveling from city to city and country to country, I looked them in the eye and promised them that I would do whatever I could to make the world a better place for them.
In my last letter to you, I mentioned that I would never buy anything with the RL (Ralph Lauren) label on it. Well, over 100,000 people emailed me and said they were joining me. They said they wouldn’t buy anything with the RL label on it as well until you promised to stop the very harmful kind of marketing and advertising for which you’ve been accused. Some of their emails are below.
In case you’re wondering “what harmful marketing and advertising?” – I have exhibits A, B and C of your advertising below.
Most of the emails that I’ve received are from adults. They’re fed up with it Ralph.
Believe it or not, they get hurt as much as the young girls that read the magazines and look at the ads. “How? You wonder.” When a young girl reads these ridiculous fashion magazines and gets triggered into a full blown eating disorder, who do you think gets left holding the bag for the $30,000 a month treatment? I’ve met parents that have had their entire savings wiped out and some have taken out second mortgages on their homes to pay for the treatment of their young daughters. Trust me Mr. Lauren, they’re sick of it.
To be clear, this isn’t just an issue of eating disorders. In my film, “America the Beautiful,” I interviewed a 7 year old girl and a 12 year old girl, both of whom insisted that they were ugly. They couldn’t tell me specifically why they were ugly. They could only reference celebrities and ads of models as references of how they’re supposed to look.
And you know what was funny about the whole thing, neither one of them were ugly. They were quite attractive girls actually.
Their self-esteems have been assaulted by —- I’m sure you get the picture by now.
Mr. Lauren, women live in a very toxic culture. Men as well now that I think about it.
For the record, I’m letting you know that exactly 112,489 of us will no longer buy anything that you’re associated with until you give us a committment that you will no longer use droconian advertising like the ads below. We don’t want any money from you, nor do we want any free clothes. We just want young girls that read fashion magazines to be safe.
Also for the record, ANAD, the largest eating disorders awareness organization in the US is supporting me with my boycott. You can read about them at www.anad.org
I’ll be in Washington, DC tomorrow meeting with the CEO of the YWCA to get them to support me with my boycott as well.
There are YWCA locations in 122 countries around the world, 300 locations in the US working in 9 regions – 25 million women strong. You can read about them at www.ywca.org
I’m going to talk to the press, arrange demonstrations, basically anything I can do to help women that suffer from these ludicrous ads.
I plan on having over 1 million people that agree with my position to not purchase any RL products as well until you agree to advertise to women in a way that respects and values them.
For clarity sake, this boycott isn’t just about your company. It’s about the entire fashion / beauty industry that advertises in a way that’s harmful for women. We’re hoping they will see that people are fed up and change their advertising practices as well. We picked you because you went waaaaay over the top with the 3 ads below.
If and when you send a formal announcement agreeing to stop with your draconian advertising, the boycott will be over and I’m sure some parents will forgive you and start buying your bedding products again.
Remember we’re doing this for the safety of young girls Mr. Lauren, including your niece Jenny.
So, what’s it going to be Ralph? It’s your conscience. Your decision. We await your answer. Until then, I’m off to do my Christmas shopping with your competitors.
Respectfully yours,
Darryl Roberts
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AWESOME!!!! Can I sign or should I copy and send to?
Let me know!
XXXXXXXXX
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Darryl,
Thank you for sending me this letter to Ralph Lauren. I know what I can do which is boycott his products from bedding to clothes to fragrance. It sickens me that I have 2 sets of Ralph Lauren bedding in my home right now.
For the sake of my daughter a recovering from anorexia/bulimia I will never purchase anything by RL again and will tell my friends so. We can make a difference by getting the word out there. I will forward this to women I know. I have
given your DVD to a friend of mine who is a highschool counselor. She is anxious to watch it and I am sure will do something positive with this information.
Thank you again for your tireless work in this arena, trying to save our children.
XXXXXXX
If you agree in principal with this letter and would like to be put on a list to receive ongoing updates with my/our Ralph Lauren boycott – Click here and leave your email address (please forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to sign up as well):if the above link doesn’t work, you can sign up at: boycottralph@americathebeautifuldoc.com- RALPH LAUREN BOYCOTT – Join Us!
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D,
Great letter. Great public stance on what is a horrible ad campaign and a horrible message to send to young women. You will eventually affect change by taking these kinds of stands. Nice work.
XXXXXXXX
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Thank you Darryl! Writing these types of letters is very empowering and I encourage the women in my support group to do this. I know I do!
I will NOT buy any Ralph Lauren products and I will encourage others to bypass his products. I will also forward this to all of the women in my group and I’m sure that they, too, will boycott.
We have already begun boycotting Panera Bread because they are posting calories and fat counts on their overhead menus. Several of us wrote letters to them. Their response didn’t matter as much as the empowerment of the exercise of making ourselves heard.
Have you considered taking this Ralph Lauren BS to ANAD? They can really get on a roll and call national attention to ludicrous and sick things like this. I’m an Indiana volunteer with them and they’re really awesome about this.
Keep speaking Darryl! Thanks for all you do!
XXXXXXX
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Great Letter Darryl! I, too, have walked past everything Ralph Lauren (and I was a big fan of their stuff before) and I am telling everyone else to do the same. And I know my friends and family will because they have seen what a horror my family has been going thru as we try to help my daughter get thru her eating disorders (yes, she has had both, God help us, anorexia and bulimia).
Thank you for your good work and God Bless.
mount laurel, nj
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Until you do, I won’t buy anything with the RL logo on it. You can take that to the bank.
I’m with you on that!
XXXXXXXX
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Hi Darryl
Well said! I applaud all of your efforts and hope that Ralph Lauren does something positive with this letter. It has to start somewhere in their industry. Maybe he could be the leader in helping promote a healthy ideal for fashion. That would be powerful. Thanks for sharing.
University of Alabama
Staff Psychologist
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Mr. Roberts,
I attended the showing of your documentary in Downers Grove at the fundraiser for the Arabella House. I was in tears as I watched and thought about the women (and some men) that suffer from eating disorders and low self esteem. The energy and dedication that you have brought to this cause is incredible. Your work lets girls know that someone really does care and is willing to stand up for them.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you have done for me and my comtemporaries.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX
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Thank you,
I am so glad that SOMEONE uses their voice. I want to use mine!
XXXXXXX
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You Go Darryl,
Thanks for all the great work you are doing to help empower girls and women.
Best,
XXXX
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What a beautiful courageous letter! I wish there was some way for me to sign it, too! I want him to know that I have told everyone I know about his ads and to stop wearing anything he makes. I would sign a petition to boycott in a second! I bought your DVD the day it was available and spent my Thanksgiving holiday making all of my family watch it: my 3 sisters, my daughter, my mom, etc. I also plan on showing it to all of my friends. This is important work at the perfect time.
Thank you!
Franklin, TN
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Darrel, you are the absolute best ever!!!!! You go guy. xxxooo
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Whooooaaaaa!!! POWERFUL! You go Darryl!!! Behind you 100%!!
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I hope he gets it, that miserable asshole..
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Darryl- I watched your movie (FINALLY) with my 15 year old daughter and the rest of our mother-daughter group on Saturday night. Since then there’ve been emails exchanged showing how it affected the girls. How they went holiday shopping and saw what was being sold and how girls presented themselves in a different light.
This morning I got your Ralph Lauren email and forwarded to the moms in the group and asked that they send it to their daughters. One mom wrote back to ask if there’s an online campaign of email letter writing to Ralph Lauren the girls could write to.
Is there?
Thanks for all you’re doing,
XXXXXXXX
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Very powerful letter Darryl!!! Thank you for being who you are…
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wow. you’re so amazing.
Something is definitely amiss over there. He’s possible relinquished too much responsibility to someone who doesn’t really grasp the dangers.
XXXXXX
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REASON #1 FOR THE BOYCOTT -METRO DETROIT, MI — A suspected serial rapist believed to be responsible for sexual assaults and home invasions dating back to 2011 in at least eight jurisdictions has been arrested, the Dearborn Police Department said in a news release Thursday.
The suspect's name hasn't been released pending the authorization of charges, expected by week's end. Authorities expect to discuss the case in a news conference Friday.
The arrest came after a multi-agency investigation that involved Dearborn police, Michigan State Police, the FBI, the Livonia Police Department and other neighboring departments.
The investigation is ongoing and authorities are pursuing leads that may link the suspect to similar crimes in other communities, police said.
"The arrest of this suspect will hopefully provide closure to our victims and it is important to note that all members of this Task Force have expended an enormous amount of resources and energy into this investigation," Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad said in the news release. "This collaborative effort along with citizen cooperation has resulted in a very dangerous predator being taken off the streets."
Police said last fall they had begun to see a pattern in crimes across Metro Detroit. In an Ocober news release, authorities said the suspect "enters occupied homes through unsecured first floor access points" and that police were "analyzing recovered evidence to develop a suspect."
In November, Dearborn police said they were working with authorities in "Allen Park, Dearborn Heights, Inkster, Redford and Garden City... to identify and arrest the suspect," who was described a male about 6 feet tall with a medium build.
That release followed a report of a Garden City woman was raped by an intruder while her husband slept in another room.
Last month, police released surveillance photos and video of the suspect.
Photo and video via Dearborn Police DepartmentOn February 15, ISRO will put 104 satellites in space using the PSLV rocket. It will be a world record.
Highlights ISRO will try to put 104 satellites in space using PSLV rocket on Feb 15 Three satellites are from India, the rest from other countries A maiden mission to Venus and second mission to Mars also on the cards
India will boldly go to Venus for the first time and re-visit the Red Planet very soon. Buried and hidden in the hundreds of pages of the new-format electronic budget documents, is the first formal acknowledgement by the government about these two new bold inter-planetary sojourns to Earth's immediate neighbours. This uplifting news comes ahead of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempting to undertake its mega launch where it will place not five, ten or twenty, but a record 104 satellites in space in a single mission. No other country has ever tried to hit a century in a single mission.If all goes according to plan, on the morning of February 15, ISRO will put 104 satellites in space using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Three satellites will be from India and a 101 other satellites of different countries.India's ISRO, considered a leading space organisation globally, is one of the best and most competitive in the multi-billion-dollar space launch market. It hopes to set an enviable benchmark for other nations.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made science and technology, research and space programmes as one of his government's top priorities. To give it a boost, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has given the Department of Space a massive 23 per cent increase in this year's budget. Under the space sciences section, the budget mentions provisions for "Mars Orbiter Mission II and Mission to Venus".The second mission to Mars is tentatively slated for 2021-2022 and as per existing plans it might even involve putting a robot (rover) on the surface of the Red Planet. While India's first mission to Mars undertaken in 2013 was a purely Indian mission, the French space agency has shown keenness to collaborate in making the Mars rover for the second mission.During a visit to India this month, Michael M Watkins, Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said they would be keen to at least put a telematics module so that NASA's rovers and the Indian satellites are able to communicate with each other.The second Indian mission to Mars will aim at exploring the planet in detail from its surface as the first mission - the Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM - is performing well from while orbiting the planet.India's maiden mission to Venus, the second planet in our solar system, is likely to be an orbiter mission, similar to the first mission to mars. Mr Watkins said a mission to Venus is very-very worthwhile as so little is understood about that planet and NASA would definitely be willing to partner in India's maiden voyage to Venus. Towards that, NASA and ISRO have already initiated talks this month on trying to jointly undertake studies on using electrical propulsion for powering this mission.India's visionary in inter-planetary exploration K Kasturirangan, who was the former chairman of ISRO, says, "India should be part of this global adventure and exploring Venus and Mars is very worthwhile."On February 15 India's workhorse rocket - the PSLV - will make its 39th launch, carrying 1378 kg of satellites to be deployed in space. The first to be let off will be India's high resolution Cartosat-2 series satellite made especially to monitor the south Asian region at a resolution of less than one metre. Though this earth imaging capability is not unusual but the rest of the satellites on board are unique. Two other small Indian satellites, each weighing less than 10 kg are forerunners of a new class of satellites called ISRO Nano Satellites which the engineers seek to master. What will follow next is a trailblazing performance by the PSLV, when, at an altitude of over 500 km above Earth, it will release 101 satellites. These include one each from Israel, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the UAE and a whopping 96 from the United States.Eighty-eight of the American satellites belong to a San Francisco based start-up company Planet Inc which is sending a swarm of small satellites - 4.7 kg each, which it calls 'Doves'. This constellation will image earth like never before and with a high repeat rate providing satellite imagery at an affordable cost. This suite of 101 small satellites, whose combined weight is 664 kg, will be released in space in a manner akin to a typical school bus which drops off children at their respective bus stops in a sequential manner. From previous launches, ISRO has mastered the art of ensuring that no collisions take place. In less than 600 seconds all 101 satellites will be released into space each travelling at a velocity of over 27,000 km per hour or at 40 times the speed of an average passenger airliner.(Updates with confirmation, adds quotes, color, details throughout)
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, Dec |
Dhillon, then got another from Colin Jacques in the 41st to lead 2-0 at the half. Carlo Basso tallied in the 52nd minute, before Alex Kleefeldt in the 84th and Jovan Blagojevic in the 85th rounded out the onslaught of the Rangers (14-4-1).
“When we score, the guys get confidence and they feed off it, but today it was more about the way we defended,” continued Koch, whose team was solid in support of keeper Brandon Watson (14-2-2), who made three saves en route to a shutout. “They all defended for each other and that is what allows us to have success on offence. It was a two-edged performance. The strength of the attack came from how we defended.”
Case in point was the job Swedish import defender Johannes Hallman did on Regis’ top scorer, 14-goal man Mark Kelly, who was held without a shot on the day.
Like last season, the Clan will return home to Burnaby Mountain this week before heading out to the Final Four. SFU will open play in Evans, Georgia against the Carson Newman Eagles of Jackson City, Tenn., in one of two national semifinals on Dec. 5. The other will feature Southern New Hampshire and Rockhurst of Kansas City, Missouri. The national final is scheduled for Dec. 7.
Last season, amidst the excitement of making its first Final Four trip, the Clan were eliminated in the national semifinals, losing 3-1 to Saginaw Valley State.
“Last year we went to the Final Four, but this year we’re going to the semifinals,” Koch said, talking of one and the same, but stressing the point that this season’s edition understands more than ever that nothing else matters but the first game.
“It was all glitz-and-glamour last year,” continued Koch of the fact that the team was previewed in the New York Times on the day of its match with Saginaw as the lone international school in the NCAA. “This year, we’re getting ready for the next match.”The United States was founded to be a Christian nation. Kids can’t pray in public schools. The Founding Fathers did not support separation of church and state.
These statements are articles of faith to the Religious Right. There is one problem with them, however: They’re all false.
Myths about separation of church and state and its role in American history abound. Over the years, Religious Right groups have constructed an entire false narrative to compete with the real story of religious freedom in America.
Under this faux-history, church-state separation was never the intention of the Founders, who yearned for an officially Christian America. The separation principle, the Religious Right argues, was imposed on the nation some years later by either the Supreme Court, “radical secularists” or communists – take your pick.
Many scholars have debunked this line of thinking over the years, yet it persists. Why?
For people involved with Religious Right groups, the phony “Christian nation” version of history fills a psychological need. It lets them know that they were right all along. It provides a comforting myth of religious supremacism to combat the multi-faith, multi-philosophy America that so many of them find troubling.
Followers of the Religious Right are probably a lost cause on this issue. Like creationists who find a way to ignore every piece of evidence for evolution, the “Christian nation” crowd will never be persuaded by facts.
Many more Americans probably haven’t given the matter much thought. They may have dim memories of history class where Pilgrims and Puritans were discussed, and they may know that the theocratic systems favored by those groups didn’t prevail. What they don’t know is how we got from there to where we are now – a nation with a secular constitution and complete religious freedom for all.
Some of these people are, unfortunately, susceptible to Religious Right propaganda. Not knowing the whole story of how church-state separation evolved and how it has been applied by the courts, they might fall for Religious Right distortions.
In a sound bite age, it’s important to make arguments as succinct as possible. In 1993, Americans United published a list of 10 common myths about separation of church and state. It proved to be a popular article that was reprinted as a brochure.
Now, 22 years later, Americans United has decided to revisit those myths. The following compilation contains some that were on the 1993 list, but others have been tweaked or are new.
Our goal remains the same: Religious Right groups tell lies about the separation of church and state. This is the information you need to combat them.
Myth One: Separation of church and state isn’t found in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, it is a modern invention of the Supreme Court, a communist idea, something Nazis concocted, etc.
It’s hard to believe that some of these claims are taken seriously, but they are. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, for example, has taken to claiming that Adolf Hitler invented separation of church and state! (Even a casual student of the history of Nazi Germany knows why this is false.)
Separation of church and state came about in America because during the colonial period there often was no separation, and this violated fundamental liberties. The system the Religious Right favors – church-state union – was tried in many colonies and found wanting.
Virginia led the way. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison worked together to disestablish the Anglican Church and pass legislation that extended true religious freedom to all. Some years later, it was Jefferson who penned the metaphor of the First Amendment erecting a “wall of separation between church and state.”
Jefferson’s metaphor resonated with the public and the courts. Thus, the phrase “separation of church and state” came into being as a short-hand way of describing the First Amendment’s religion clauses. As the eminent church-state scholar Leo Pfeffer once wrote, “[I]t was inevitable that some convenient term should come into existence to verbalize a principle so widely held by the American people.”
Key Founders backed the concept. Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution” and a primary drafter of the Bill of Rights, used similar language. In Virginia, Madison noted that he and Jefferson had created the “total separation of the church from the state.” As president, Madison was a strict advocate of this principle. He vetoed legislation that would have given a church in Washington, D.C., a symbolic charter to care for the poor, and he vetoed legislation giving a federal land grant to a church. In both cases, Madison issued veto messages citing the First Amendment.
When Religious Right advocates attack church-state separation, their beef is not with Supreme Court justices, Joseph Stalin or Hitler. It is with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Myth Two: The United States was founded to be a Christian nation.
This claim is easily debunked by referring to the text of the U.S. Constitution. If an officially Christian nation had been the Founders’ intent, the Constitution would say that explicitly. It doesn’t. In fact, it says the opposite.
Religion is referred to twice in the Constitution. The First Amendment bars laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and prohibiting “the free exercise thereof.” The first portion of this statement, which scholars call the Establishment Clause, cuts strongly against the notion of an officially Christian nation.
The second reference is often overlooked but is very important. Article VI contains language stating that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” What the Founders did here was ban religious qualifications for federal office – that is, they made it illegal to require that a person hold certain religious beliefs as a qualification for public office.
Article VI ensures that all people – Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, etc. – can hold office at the federal level. It is impossible to square this language with the “Christian nation” concept.
Many conservative pastors of the post-Revolution era were well aware of the secular nature of the Constitution. They knew that the document did not establish an officially Christian nation. This angered them and led to a round of pulpit attacks on the “godless” Constitution.
Myth Three: Separation of church and state was originally intended to merely bar the creation of a national church.
The text of the First Amendment goes way beyond simply banning a national church. The amendment prohibits all laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” James Madison, one of the chief drafters of the amendment, interpreted it broadly. Madison believed that tax funding of churches was unconstitutional and even concluded, later in his life, that official White House proclamations calling for days of prayer were a violation.
It is true that some colonies had official churches. But it’s worth noting that the religion enshrined in law varied from colony to colony. There was no agreement. Thus, a single established church was never a serious threat in the United States because there was great disagreement, mostly among the dominant Protestant sects, over which one was to be favored. Congregationalism reigned in New England, while the Anglican Church tended to dominate in the South. Maryland was a haven for Roman Catholics, and Pennsylvania vowed religious freedom for all (as did Rhode Island). This “multiplicity of sects,” as Thomas Jefferson called it, ensured an effective check on an officially established national church.
Myth Four: Most of the Founders were evangelical Christians and supported government promulgation of that mode of faith.
Evangelicalism did take hold in the colonies in the post-Revolutionary era, but it was never embraced by key Founders. Rather, they tended to align with a rival school that sought to merge certain ethical principles of Christianity with the tenets of the Enlightenment, which stressed the primacy of science and reason.
Thomas Jefferson is a good example of a Founder who was greatly influenced by Enlightenment principles. Jefferson admired the moral teachings of Jesus but rejected his claims to divinity and the miracle stories of the New Testament. Jefferson created his own personal version of the scriptures by cutting away these portions of the Gospels and pasting up what was left with his own commentary.
Many Founders are identified as Deists, a theological school of thought that is less popular today. Deists believed in God but didn’t interpret the Bible in a literal fashion. They were skeptical of miraculous claims and sought to find a way to bring religion into alignment with the emerging scientific view of the world.
Some of the signers of the Constitution did undoubtedly hold traditional Christian beliefs. But this does not mean they supported merging church and state.
Myth Five: Mottos like “In God We Trust” on currency and “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are evidence that separation of church and state was never intended.
Both of these phrases are of much more recent origin than many people believe.
“In God We Trust” is familiar to most Americans because it appears on U.S. currency. But early American money did not carry this phrase. The Fugio cent, a penny authorized by Congress in 1787 and reportedly designed by Benjamin Franklin, contained the mottos “Mind Your Business” and “We Are One” – a reference to the 13 colonies.
“In God We Trust” didn’t appear on coins until the Civil War, when it was authorized for use on some coins minted in the North. The use of the phrase was sporadic on currency and was not codified until the 1950s. Around the same time, the phrase was adopted as the national motto. (“E Pluribus Unum” had been serving as an unofficial motto until then.) Many scholars believe that the adoption of these religious phrases was a reaction to the fight against “godless communism” during the Cold War.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a minister and a socialist. Bellamy wrote the Pledge to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Bellamy’s Pledge, which did not include the phrase “under God,” appeared in a magazine called Youth’s Companion. After a lobbying campaign by the magazine (which, incidentally, made money selling American flags to schools), it was adopted for use in public schools as part of a daily flag-salute ritual. Congress added the words “under God” to the Pledge in 1954, again as a reaction to the fight against communism.
In short, the Founders had nothing to do with these religious mottos or their adoption.
Myth Six: Thanks to separation of church and state, kids can’t pray in public schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1962 and 1963 banned programs of government-sponsored, compulsory prayer and Bible reading in public schools. The high court did not invalidate truly voluntary prayer and hasn’t done so since then.
It’s important to realize what was going on in many public schools prior to these rulings: Children were forced to take part in daily religious rituals. In New York, a state body known as the Board of Regents drafted an official prayer and urged local school districts to adopt it. In Pennsylvania, a law required that the school day begin with readings from the “Holy Bible” – generally interpreted to mean the King James Version.
These practices were not voluntary; they were imposed on everyone – Christian and non-Christian. Thus, they amounted to a significant violation of parental rights.
Young people in public schools today may pray and read religious books in a non-disruptive way – but the choice is now theirs. No students can be compelled to take part in religious worship in a public school or singled out for refusing to do so.
Public school students can engage in a variety of voluntary religious activities. Most secondary schools must abide by the federal Equal Access Act. This legislation allows students to form and run a variety of clubs that meet during “non-instructional” time. Some of these clubs are religious in nature. All are voluntary; no one has to attend.
In addition, the Supreme Court has made it clear that public schools can teach about religion in an objective manner. Religion can be discussed in classes like history, art, literature and others. The Bible and other religious texts can even be read as part of a comparative religion course. As long as the approach has legitimate educational goals, public school officials will not get into trouble for teaching about religion.
To sum up, there is plenty of room for religion in public schools, but it must be voluntarily chosen.
Myth Seven: Separation of church and state fosters secularism, which drains religion of its vitality.
Official government secularism is not the enemy of faith; it is the defender of it. A secular state is one that is neutral on matters of theology. An official policy of government neutrality toward religion is a positive thing for faith communities.
Think of government secularism as a platform. The principles of religious freedom and the right of conscience rest on that platform. Because the government has no official theology, all faiths on the platform are free to spread their doctrines and seek adherents among the population. They do so vigorously, but they must rely on private channels, not government assistance, to spread their doctrines.
The United States is a perfect example of how an official doctrine of secularism helps religion. In this country, the government long ago adopted a hands-off attitude toward religion. As a result, hundreds (if not thousands) of specific faith groups have sprung up on our shores. Religious groups remain vital, and most Americans claim a religious affiliation.
Other Western nations have either established churches or some form of government aid to religion. Ironically, it is in these nations where religion is withering away. It would seem that the official tie between church and state and the rejection of secularism as a legal principle sap faith of its vitality. In the end, religion becomes a mere creature of the state and a tool for promoting whatever policies government leaders decide are appropriate. This is not what people want, and they turn away from religion.
Myth Eight: Separation of church and state means that government must be hostile to religion.
In some countries, houses of worship are shuttered by government mandate, and religious people are persecuted. Nothing like that has occurred in the United States, which operates under the separation of church and state.
The separation principle contains two key parts: The government is to refrain from promoting, sponsoring or advocating for any faith. Yet at the same time, the government is required not to meddle in the internal affairs of religious groups or impose undue regulations and oversight on them. Church-state separation protects religion by placing it beyond the reach of government.
American history is replete with examples of religious groups that used the First Amendment to protect their rights. If the United States had not adopted separation, these groups would have been left unprotected and subjected to state control.
Religious groups in America receive many benefits. They are wholly tax exempt and are often free from the regulatory oversight that is imposed on similarly situated secular groups. They are free to lobby and speak out on political issues. They often receive special exemptions and preferential treatment in secular law. Far from experiencing hostility, the place of religion in this nation where we separate church and state is in many ways exalted.
Myth Nine: Most religious leaders don’t support separation of church and state.
Some of the earliest proponents of separation of church and state were religious leaders. Roger Williams, a Puritan clergyman and the founder of Rhode Island, strongly advocated for separation during the colonial era. Years later, clerics like John Leland and Isaac Backus demanded separation as the best vehicle to protect the right of conscience for all.
In colonial Virginia and elsewhere, clergy from Baptist, Presbyterian and other traditions worked alongside Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to secure church-state separation. These religious leaders knew that only separation could protect their faith and enable it to prosper.
In the modern era, many members of the clergy continue this proud tradition of support for church-state separation. Many religious denominations are on record as officially supporting the concept.
A minority of religious leaders disagree. Most of them belong to fundamentalist denominations that seek to use the power of government to control other people and impose their regressive dogma.
Myth Ten: Separation of church and state stifles the public voice and presence of religion.
Anyone who believes this hasn’t been paying attention. The United States operates under separation of church and state, yet religious groups have a loud and robust public voice. They speak out – from the left, right and center – on any number of political issues. As tax-exempt entities, houses of worship are not permitted under federal law to endorse or oppose candidates for public office, but there is nothing to stop them from addressing issues. Many do. Consider just one issue that has been prominent lately: marriage equality. Houses of worship have been vocal on both sides of the debate. Many people have strong opinions about this issue, and religious denominations that oppose same-sex marriage have certainly encountered spirited opposition – but no one has tried to sanction or punish them for their views.
Nor does separation of church and state result in what one foe of the principle called a “naked public square.” It’s true that government may not post or erect religious symbols, but private religious groups are often able to use public space to display them with their own money and on their own time. All that is required is that the government must treat all religious and secular groups equally; if access to public space is extended to one group, it must be extended to all. This is a simple matter of fair play, and it usually results in a vibrant public square full of many symbols, not a naked one.
In a 1787 letter to Madison, Jefferson urged his protégé, “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people….They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”
Jefferson’s words are a reminder that our religious liberty is only as secure as we make it. If the American people don’t understand the origins of the principle and how it has been applied – if they buy into Religious Right mythology instead of historical reality – religious freedom and its corollary, separation of church and state, will be very insecure indeed.Loyalists to join Sinn Fein event BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Loyalist bandsmen are to take part in the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis for the first time. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/loyalists-to-join-sinn-fein-event-31034217.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article31034216.ece/bfdd7/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_P-cbb03455-50ff-4abc-8cc2-a97f8888b95c_I1.jpg
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Loyalist bandsmen are to take part in the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis for the first time.
The Loyalist Londonderry Bands Forum is to make a presentation during a fringe event at the annual conference in the city this weekend.
Derek Moore, forum co-ordinator, said: "We are taking the opportunity to speak for ourselves and to raise issues that are important to bands.
"We are not sure whether or not anybody will turn up to hear us."
The two-day Ard Fheis is being held in the Millennium Forum.
It is only the second time Sinn Fein's annual conference has been held in Northern Ireland. In 2011, the Rev David Latimer, a former army chaplain from Londonderry who served in Afghanistan, was guest speaker when it was held in Belfast's Waterfront Hall.
The bandsmen are expected to highlight the educational underachievement among young working-class protestant men.
The decision to participate in the Ard Fheis was taken after two months of deliberation and separate meetings with Education Minister John O'Dowd as well as Culture Minister Caral Ni Chuilin.
Mr Moore added: "We are speaking at one of the eight fringe events so we are not addressing the main conference. It is not the parting of the Red Sea.
"We will be speaking about the educational under-achievements of young protestants. Only 20% of them are leaving school with enough qualifications to get an interview. It is a big issue."
Speaking during Question Time at the Assembly, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness welcomed the forthcoming loyalist contribution.
He told MLAs: "I warmly welcome the fact that the Loyalist Londonderry Bands Forum will this weekend make a presentation to the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in the city.
"I think that leadership has been shown in the city of Derry is something that could be followed everywhere."One Israeli cabinet member suggested that Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, had warned his counterpart ahead of time about the possible cancelation. When asked for a reason why Netanyahu would cancel a meeting with his country’s most important ally, one Israeli official offered this rationale: “It’s a tumultuous primary season in the United States... we don’t want to inject ourselves into that tumultuous process.”
Over at The Washington Post, Daniel Drezner isn’t buying it:
The claim that Netanyahu is super-concerned about influencing American domestic politics is absurd on its face. Four years ago, any such concerns did not stop Netanyahu from meeting with Obama and addressing AIPAC in person. Oh, and just a quick FYI: That speech happened on March 5, 2012, which just happened to be the day before Super Tuesday, so it’s not like the GOP nomination was completely settled at that point.
And this time last year, Netanyahu traveled to Washington to bash the U.S.-led negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program in front of Congress, a visit the White House hadn’t approved.
Following Monday’s report, some in the Israeli media were’t so forgiving either.
Netanyahu’s cancelation is unprecedented, writes Raphael Ahren at The Times of Israel. “There is no public record of an Israeli prime minister ever previously rejecting an invite to meet a president at the White House,” he says.
Ahren also quotes a befuddled Israeli expert on the U.S.-Israel relationship, who pours this glass of cold water on Netanyahu: “When an American president invites you, you have to go. Sometimes you invite yourself even when the president doesn’t want to see you. But when he invites you, you can’t say no.”
What’s at the heart of this snub isn’t clear. Residual bitter grapes from the Iran deal? Residual bitter grapes in general? Israel, still wary of and smarting from last year’s nuclear accord, is also in the midst of negotiating a military aid package with the United States.
This latest episode comes just as Vice President Joe Biden was touching down in Israel for a visit amid a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis. As we noted in October 2014, both Netanyahu’s previous visit to the White House and Biden’s previous visit to Israel were marred by the announcement of settlement expansions.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday brushed aside speculation that the White House was insulted by Netanyahu’s decision, but said Israel should have notified the U.S. directly, because “it’s just good manners.”
“I’m merely suggesting that if they weren’t able to make the meeting, they should have just told us before they told a reporter,” he told reporters.TOKYO, Japan — What was once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, filed for bankruptcy protection in February this year after disclosing that a half-billion dollars worth of virtual currency had disappeared into the blue, allegedly hacked.
A Japanese police investigation was launched in late July to try to find where the money went and how the bitcoins were swallowed, or if other crimes had been committed. An independent group of IT specialists living in Tokyo, headed by Jason Maurice of Wiz Technologies, began its own independent probe. Now the race for the truth is picking up speed.
The bitcoin community and press have vilified Mark Karpeles, the CEO of Mt. Gox, as a clown and a con man. The Japanese tabloid magazines have portrayed him as a “beast” hiding in his “dungeon” in Tokyo’s Meguro City.
But who is he really?
A source close to the police investigation says the case is being looked at as one in which “Mt. Gox is the victim of a crime, rather than perpetrator of a crime.”
“We are receiving complete cooperation from them,” says this source. “However, we have also received criminal complaints from customers alleging fraud or embezzlement, and we have to investigate those allegations as well.”
Certainly the bitcoin community continues to treat Karpeles as a pariah. When he began tweeting anew as @MagicalTux, writing about daily life, snacks, and Japanese sunsets, the response was vehemently hostile. There were even death threats: “I am planning to hire someone to murder you. Watch out your back because your life will be fucked up asap!”
It’s not surprising Karpeles feels his life is at risk, and, indeed, he anticipated this. One of the reasons that Karpeles was the only director of Mt. Gox, he says, was because he knew perfectly well the risks of doing the job and he wanted to protect his employees from those potential risks. “I wanted to be as much as possible the only ‘sekininsha,’ or ‘responsible person’ in this job,” he explained before sitting down for an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, his first since the police investigation began.
Following are excerpts from the transcript of our conversation, which was conducted in French and is here translated into English. (A full original transcript is available here.)
Stucky: Everybody in the Tokyo bitcoin community talks about you. Who are you and where do you come from?
Karpeles: I’m a 29-year-old French geek, an entrepreneur, and mostly, I’m curious. In other words, when I see something, I like to know how it works. My main activities are coding and sending emails. I think coding is a bit of an art form. You code the same way a writer writes his book and the painter paints his picture. When you are inspired, you can’t stop doing it. And sometimes, even if you force yourself as much as you can, it just won’t come.
I was born in Dijon, France. When I was 3, I started to do basic programming. I did not get a complete high school. In fact I was not very good at school. I was put in a literature class and that was not necessarily the best environment for me. I used to dismantle a calculator to understand how it works. I’m purely a math and science guy. I have a memory that is very much based on numbers.
I left France for Israel, where I lived nine months. In Israel, the war in Gaza started. Somebody blew up the power plant in a terrorist attack, and we had half a day with the power shut down. For an IT company, that’s the worst thing that can happen. That day, it blew all my plans. What I was trying to create there did not happen, so I returned to France. The French company I worked for bought several companies abroad, including some in Japan, so I did everything in order to be transferred here. I arrived in Japan in 2009 and I founded a company called Tibanne on October 29, 2009. Tibanne does web hosting and development. I did web hosting and different services all by myself.
What is it that especially attracted you to Japan?
Well, I like the standard of living that we have in Japan. I have forgotten my laptop on a park bench numerous times, and each time someone brought it back to me. In the subway train in Japan, when people are not necessarily in a good mood, they will nevertheless be courteous. It inspires you to do the same. Once I was in Shibuya in a parking lot with some of my employees, and we found a fat wallet on the floor, so we went to bring it to the closest koban or police box. In Japan, reciprocity is important. It’s good.
How did you get into bitcoins? Is it because you have a great understanding of finance and the banking systems?
Basically I am more of a geek. I’m a computer guy, more than a politician or a finance person. It all started in 2010, when a French client asked me, “Could I pay in bitcoin?” I said, “Sure.” And I started to look into it. What interested me in bitcoin was the technological aspects. In other words, the fact of maintaining a global database in a secured way. The fact that each client has a secured private wallet. To have an entirely decentralized system. Also, bitcoin allows you to have a database that is public. Bitcoin requires an extremely rapid communication between all the parties concerned. And the joint database—or the account book of bitcoin—is made in a way that everybody can look into it and at any time. There are a lot of technical problems that are very interesting challenges to meet as an engineer in the network or as a programmer. What are the five things you like the most and hate the most?
I like computers, courtesy, Japan, apple pies, and cooking, and also driving around in a car, or traveling. I can’t really take an airplane at the moment. I am more secure in Japan, and if I want to travel abroad I have to get a permit from the Japanese court that put Mt. Gox into bankruptcy. And unless there is a strong reason for me to travel, it is very unlikely that they would say yes. Otherwise, I love dismantling old computers or electronic devices and try to make them work. I also love cooking my grandmother’s apple pie, a family recipe from Burgundy.I hate mushrooms, fish, except tuna and salmon in sushi. Otherwise, I hate press conferences. I had only one experience in giving a press conference. If it is possible, I would like to avoid doing another one ever.
Who is your hero?
Putting all the good things in one person is something difficult. I admire Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and author of Space Chronicles and Inexplicable Universe. My hero is Iron Man (laughs.) I like the action of inventing and innovating.
What do you think life gave you? And what did people give you?
Until now, I think I was really lucky, because not many people can have the same things. And at the same time, I think I am unlucky when I look at how it all ended. It’s actually quite horrible. And I really hope we are going to find out what really happened. Maybe in the near future we will be able to say that we were part of an economic revolution. Bitcoiners are making history. But among bitcoiners, there are some who are quite extremist, I would say, but that is an important thing in a way. You always have to aim for the moon. Because if you can’t reach the moon, you will never reach the stars. Never hesitate to achieve your dream.
Who are the people you saw the most these last years?
The last five years, and especially when I had Mt. Gox, it was house/work, work/house. Mt. Gox used my entire energy. I didn’t really have the choice. As of 2012, we started to encounter problems with governments, and then I had no time to go out on my own time. I feel somehow better now than then, because I spend less time at work and because I didn’t really know how I could improve the situation anyway. That said, I still have a lot of things to sort out, and most of all, it leaves a bad aftertaste to be pirated and to have so many bitcoins stolen.
Some believe that bitcoin is the future of finance. Some say that governments will always find ways to enforce new laws to criminalize bitcoin, because bitcoin is not a concept that goes along with central banks and the very existence of governments. Tell us about your views.
At the moment, the worst enemies of bitcoin are the people who love bitcoin. Particularly the pirates and all these sorts of people, who spend their entire time trying to attack the services that are trying to make a bitcoin user friendly, like Mt. Gox, for example. As I am speaking to you, I do not think that it is possible to have a bitcoin exchange service unless you have a team that works 24/7 to detect attacks and maintain security. It requires a budget that not many people have access to. I think we will see another Mt. Gox next year, and the next year. And my opinion is that each time we will see that, the losses will increase. In 2012, you had the collapse of Bitcoinica [after a massive hacking incident]. After that you had Mt. Gox. The next collapse could be even worse. However, if bitcoin works, it can be extremely interesting. Those who are enthusiastic about bitcoin should be more careful about making sure they avoid harm.
You said you felt liberated that everything is over with Mt. Gox. Do you still think about it?
Maybe it’s too strong to use that word, but being pirated—having someone entering your server without you knowing it—is close to being violated, like a virtual rape. It might not be the appropriate word, pardon me, but that’s how I feel. I think I spent too much of my time dealing with the governments and the banks. All the precious time I should have spent coding and maintaining the system, I was spending it at meetings with lawyers, bankers, and lobbyists. That is finally a lot of time wasted in dealing with regulations and stuff that oppose what we do, whereas my time could have been more efficiently spent.
Banks are typically the first to be worried about bitcoin, because their international banking system is threatened by it. Despite some problems like high-risk loans, and all the stories we hear with the mafia passing their money through the normal banking system, you see banks that have to pay impressive amounts because of that. But globally, their system works. So they don’t welcome someone like Satoshi Nakamoto, who forces them to re-learn what they are doing. With bitcoin, they suddenly have a banking system that’s not up to date. It represents a huge change and a lot of cost if all the banks in the world have to learn how to do their job from scratch.
After the bankruptcy of Mt. Gox, the Japanese police opened an investigation into this case. Many believe that the Japanese police haven’t got the skills to solve this issue. Some Mt. Gox creditors launched an independent probe on their own. What do you think of this initiative?
I think that the people who launched this initiative slightly underestimate the Japanese police if they think that they are not advancing. I don’t have all the details, but I have more details than most people. So I have seen things that others won’t ever see. And based on that, I think the Japanese police are quite efficient. But I totally support the idea that several people start their own independent investigations. It is generally a good idea to have different people having different ways of looking into the same problem. The police do not report into details on what they are doing. That’s why it might seem like they are not doing anything, but they are actually working on this. It is, however, a recurrent problem and a fact that the Japanese police arrest innocent people and make them confess to crimes that that they didn’t commit. So I simply hope that they won’t do anything crazy. That is something that is not guaranteed, though.
Personally, I support their efforts to find the culprit or the culprits. The method used is less important to me than the result.
Have you read the collected writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin?
No. I haven’t read “the” book. These days I read more books like, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe. And I try to imagine all possibilities to frame a problem.
What is a question that you wished a reporter would have asked you and that no one ever asked you?
That’s a good question. Well, I wished that someone had asked me how I’m doing. I think everyone sees me as “Mr. Mt. Gox,” and not enough like a human being, or just a person. Although I don’t always agree with what human beings think, or the way they react, it’s sometimes disappointing. Everyone needs human interaction.
— Jake Adelstein contributed to this article.Swiss hostage Lorenzo Vinciguerra (Picture: AP)
A Swiss hostage has escaped from Islamic extremists in a scene reminiscent of a Rambo movie after spending more than two years in captivity.
Lorenzo Vinciguerra, 49, made a run for it while government forces in southern Philippines were firing artillery rounds near the jungle forest where he was being held.
He reportedly grabbed a long knife and hacked a commander from Abu Sayyaf to death before running from the scene in the mountainous Patikul town in Sulu province.
He was shot by another militant as he made his escape.
MORE: Smoking could be responsible for killing Y chromosome in men
He was kidnapped two years ago (Picture: EPA)
Philippine army scout rangers later found him and escorted him to safety.
Mr Vinciguerra thanked the military and said he was happy because he could finally spend Christmas with his family, but worried about his companion, Ewold Horn, who was still in Abu Sayyaf custody.
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, will probably be the greatest quarterback of all time. That doesn't mean Wilson isn't special. Or worth the contract. Both can be true, and are.
What I love about the people in the Seattle front office is that they're not solely metrics geeks. There is an element of hardcore football scouting to them. The grinding. The eye test. The value they put on players who burn to win and want to be the best—two things that are not easily measured.
They gave Wilson Rodgers-type money because, while Wilson's talent level is high, his uncanny ability to win is almost unmatched. Yes, he has help. But to deny that he isn't sitting at the head of the Seahawks' winning table is asinine. This is a quarterback league, and Wilson is, you know, a quarterback.
The Elias Sports Bureau says he was the youngest quarterback to start two Super Bowls. In three years in the league, he has six playoff wins and is a stupid play call away from being 2-0 in the Super Bowl.
Running back Marshawn Lynch deserves a great deal of credit for what will be remembered as a dynastic run for the Seahawks, but many get it wrong when they say Lynch makes Wilson. In four seasons before Wilson came into his life, Lynch averaged 63.1 yards rushing a game and was 24-35. Since he began playing with Wilson, Lynch has averaged 86.5 yards a game and is 42-14. Wilson's stellar play at the position allows the offense to open up for Lynch.
Brynn Anderson/Associated Press
The numbers are staggering, actually. Fieldgulls.com put together a full list, but a lot of the stuff you already know. He is the only quarterback in history to throw for at least 300 yards and rush for 100 yards in a game. No quarterback has more fourth-quarter comebacks (10) or game-winning drives (15) in his first three years.
The biggest criticism of Wilson is that he can't throw the football accurately. Yet he's the first thrower in history with a passer rating of at least 95 in each of his first three years.
But I want to give you another metric that demonstrates Wilson's incredible value. It's the police blotter. He'll likely never be on it.
Yes, this counts. Think about the players who won't be on the field this year because they can't stay out of trouble. The list of players suspended for all or part of the season—guys like Josh Gordon, LaRon Landry, LeGarrette Blount, Le'Veon Bell, Greg Hardy, Tom Brady, Antonio Gates, Rolando McClain—reads like a Pro Bowl roster. These are not just scrubs. There are Hall of Famers on that list.
This week, John Mara, the classy co-owner of the Giants, said in a press conference that he doesn't know how many fingers one of his star players has, thanks to a fireworks accident over the Fourth of July. My guess: Wilson will never blow off a finger. Or two. Or however many. The only fireworks he'll make are with Ciara. One day.
No, this isn't about X's and O's. But in this, one of the saddest eras in NFL history, where seemingly every day a player is busted for crimes against man, woman, child or dog, Wilson's ambassadorship is still vital. The Seahawks don't have to give Wilson the Dez Bryant treatment, handing over the cash, crossing their fingers and hoping he doesn't implode.
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
The Seahawks know they can trust Wilson. That is huge in today's sport. It cannot be overstated.
Because of his new contract, you will see the argument heat up again on if Wilson is worth it. Only the people who don't understand the true value of winning don't get it.
On the field, he is one of the top five most valuable players in the sport.
Off of it, his value as a good citizen, at a time when so many players aren't, is almost priceless.
Yeah, Russell Wilson is worth it. And then some.
Mike Freeman covers the NFL for Bleacher Report.click to enlarge Photo by Jarred Gastreich
Robin Wheeler
Pumpkin spice bourbon punch... yum.
What do you call the idea of paying for a seven-course dinner when the organizer won't tell you the location? You could call it tempting fate — but that might be a bit overly skeptical on your part. After all, the chef is very much a known entity.Robin Wheeler has written about food for bothand theShe does recipe development at Larder & Cupboard, cooking demonstrations on Fox-2 and classes everywhere from Dierberg's to Dabble. She also has a history of hosting underground dinners (her first, a six-course vegan affair for 60 people, was in a garden in Dogtown, and used mostly ingredients that were grown right there).She's calling this one Tempt Fate, and it will be held November 13 somewhere in Metro East. Your $75 entry will cover seven courses and drinks, plus four bands — which Wheeler found by putting out a call for "murder balladeers." Featured performers: The Idea Men, Kat and Casey, Billy Croghan of Les Gruff and the Billy Goats, and Marc Chechik.And even if the location is a secret for now, the menu isn't. Wheeler is promising these seven courses, all served family-style:Pork liver pate, country-style mustard with Perennial Artisan Ales Hopfentea Sour Ale, jasmine-scented fruit pickles, French bread.Smoked chicken bone broth with crispy rice.Yellow grits, crispy rabbit and lamb liver drizzled with barrel-aged salsa verde and honey, burning tallow candle.Ginger pickled green tomatoes with tiny cornmeal hush puppies, bread and butter sweet pumpkin pickles.Espresso stout-braised beef with roasted marrow bones on wild mushrooms and chestnuts.Whiskey-butter roasted butternut squash with handmade goat milk ricotta mousse.Autumn fruit lard-crust galette with sorghum black walnut ice cream.Wheeler notes, "The beverage flights are still being developed, but there will be pumpkin spice bourbon punch (so basic!), a variety of shrub-based drinks (leaded and unleaded), an autumn sangria, and hopefully a coffee course from one of my favorite local roasters."To reserve your seat at the table, visit Brown Paper Tickets. Wheeler plans to cap the party at 70 guests, so don't wait too long to make your rez.[ Update: It might be a Honor 7X represented like the V10 instead as a it has the Front Facing Camera is in the left & a new leaked hands-on image of the V10 has the Front Facing Camera on the Right. But, we can’t be a 100% sure about that right now. ]
The Honor V10 is no doubt the third most hyped Huawei device after the Mate 10 & Mate 10 Pro. With the same Kirin 970 inside, the V10 will have some AI capabilities as well & that has already been confirmed in a Media Invite from the company. But, none of us has actually seen even a single Real Life photo of the device in any of the leaks that came our way. But, finally a leaked real life image has appeared & this is how the Honor V10 looks like…
So, we have a 18:9 Display as expected with the resolution of 2160 x 1080 & 2.5D Curved Glass on the top. Though, in this picture a super shiny tempered glass is applied on the top of the device. Oh and if you were expecting a dual Front Facing Camera setup, that’s not the case here. But, dual Rear Facing Cameras will definitely be there that’s expected to be again a Regular + Monochrome sensor setup.
RELATED : New Honor V10 Leak Suggests A 5.99 Inch 1080 18:9 Display!
As far the Specifications go, we’ve already talked about the Kirin 970 SOC & alongside that there can be upto 6GB RAM & 128 GB ROM option available. The pricing as many of you may already know, is expected to be a lot less compared to the Mate 10 Pro. So, We’re really exited to see what Huawei has in stock for us with the Honor V10 that’ll be unveiled on 28th November in China.
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Thunderbolt 3 Usability Explained – Do You Really Need It On Your Laptop?Oh dear. Over the weekend, the Guardian ran an editorial on the EU referendum entitled ‘this campaign must show more respect for both facts and voters’. In the article — published on Saturday — the paper criticised the Vote Leave campaign for ‘recklessness’. They called on the Brexit camp to put an end to ‘deceptions’ such as the claim that we send the EU £350m a week:
‘It is now more than a fortnight since Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage began chugging around Britain in search of photo opportunities in their Vote Leave campaign battle bus. From day one in Truro, the bright red double-decker, which was built in Poland by a German company, has been festooned with a slogan which, to put it politely, may deceive those who see it. “We send the EU £350m a week,” the slogan reads. “Let’s fund our NHS instead.” Back in April, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot, had already censured the £350m a week claim as “potentially misleading”, after a complaint from the Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb. A few weeks later, the bus entered the campaign with the claim unchanged. It is still there today. It is still misleading. And it ought to be removed.’
However, for all the preaching about the importance of facts, there’s a problem. The editorial begins by stating that both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have been touring the UK ‘in their Vote Leave campaign battle bus’. Alas Farage has done no such thing as he is part of the rival Grassroots Out campaign. Given the well-documented feud between GO and Vote Leave, even the most basic of research would have highlighted that it would be unlikely at best for Farage to be travelling through Britain on a Vote Leave vehicle.
This error means that the Guardian have now had to issue a correction:
Mr S hopes that the Guardian will learn to practise what it preaches and ‘show some respect for truth’ in the future.The best boxers may be clinically cool, but they evoke hot, emotional responses (Ecksel)
Miguel Cotto has handled himself with consistent grace through an 11-year professional career. He never talks smack, and only answers when provoked. He enters every fight in shape, ready to work 12 busy rounds. He is respectful in victory. And there’s a gravity to Miguel Cotto that speaks of maturity, of reason and of a strength deeper than the strength it takes to beat a man. When Cotto enters a press conference, in suit and tie, speaking seriously and thoughtfully, he projects the image of a man who understands that his life’s work is work. Some criticized Cotto’s honest answer before the Margarito rematch where, when asked if he’d fight to the death, he explicitly stated, “For what?” But I thought his response was refreshing. Miguel Cotto doesn’t need to resort to easy hyperbole. He’s a husband and a father and a man who appreciates life. He’s wise enough to understand that there’s no need to make foolish, thoughtless declarations about dying in the ring for the entertainment of the masses who, when the fight is over, will go back to their lives, lives far removed from the precipice of danger. And as for his actual behavior in the ring, no one can question Cotto’s heart. The two times Miguel Cotto “went out,” he went out on his shield.
Clearly, I’m a Cotto fan. When Miguel Cotto fights Floyd Mayweather for the WBA’s version of the light-middleweight belt, I’ll be rooting, loudly, for the man from Caguas, Puerto Rico. My biased eyes will probably add speed and power to Cotto’s punches. My biased ears will probably hear Mayweather swinging and missing even when he connects. And my biased heart will elect Cotto the ring general as he pushes the fight forward.
Objectivity might be the foundation of good reporting, but perhaps writing about boxing calls for something else. Baseball box scores, always accurate, separate winners and losers. Football stats, yards gained, touchdowns scored, do the same. Much of boxing’s corruption thrives in the subjective, but its beauty blossoms there too. Punch stats may be antiseptically accurate, but they certainly don’t tell everything. The interpretation of ring generalship can sometimes be as nuanced as a discussion about realistic vs. abstract art. And when we watch a fight, we watch one fighter more than another. It’s as if our very eyes refuse objectivity. Robert Frost talked about two eyes made one in sight where vocation and avocation merge, and in the ring, when a fight is relatively close, our vision of the fighter we admire is similarly unified—the fighter who gives us the most joy is the fighter we perceive as doing the best work. In a sense, our biased eyes complete our favorite fighters. We zoom in on his skills. We forgive his missteps. We cheer too loudly when he does something that warrants a quieter reaction. We push the scales with biased fingers until the dish tips in the direction we wish. here are times I’ve sat at press row, credentials around my neck, knowing I should keep up the pretense of impartiality, understanding I’m there to write not root, but when the fighter I admire lands a beautiful combination, I can’t keep silent. The best boxers may be clinically cool, but they evoke hot, emotional responses.
So with rose colored glasses, or perhaps glasses tinted with a darker, bloodier shade of red, these are the reasons I believe Miguel Cotto has a chance against Floyd Mayweather.
First the Objective Downside
I’ll start with the counterargument to get that out of the way, to take the wind out of the naysayer’s (perhaps the truth sayer’s) sails.
When Miguel Cotto fights Floyd Mayweather on May 5, he’ll be 31 years old. For a light-middleweight, that’s not over the hill, but it’s pushing up the slope. And while Floyd will be four years older come fight time, with five more fighting years under his glitzy belt, Pretty Boy will be the fresher man when round one begins. Aside from receiving a number of blistering shots from Jose Luis Castillo, a few flush punches from Zab Judah, and a single blow delivered by Shane Mosley that buckled his knees for a moment (and raised my legs to a standing position), Floyd Mayweather has remained unscathed, an impressive feat for a 15-year veteran. Miguel Cotto has taken more shots and more damaging shots. He’s been bloodied and bruised and stopped. He will be the shopworn man going in.
Mayweather, a master at gaining any advantage, psychological and physical, in every fight, called out Pacquiao after Pac Man’s less-than-stellar performance against Juan Manuel Marquez (since I’m showing my biases, I was rooting for the underdog Marquez that night and had him winning nine rounds). Against Marquez, Pacquiao was a drained fighter. Beyond having a hard time figuring out the Mexican’s slashing style, there was something missing in Pacquiao—his legs had no spring, his demeanor was less than supremely confident. Even his corner seemed clumsy. Mayweather believed the time was ripe to fight Manny and, this time around, it seemed Team Pacquiao was stalling. The truth is, Mayweather will never sign for a fight he doesn’t think he’ll easily win and his safety-first attitude has increased with time. Look at his last five fights: De La Hoya was old. Hatton was small. Marquez was small. Mosley was old. Ortiz was green. There’s a reason Mayweather agreed to the Cotto fight. He believes Cotto is past his prime. He recognizes Cotto has taken some beatings. Mayweather may not be the bigger man going in, but he’s certainly not the smaller man, and his speed and five-inch reach advantage will pose a serious hurdle for Cotto. And the odds makers, rarely wrong, have posted early odds that are about 5 to 1 for Money May. I’m guessing the late money will tighten these odds, but Mayweather will definitely remain a heavy favorite.
Now the Subjective Upside
Cotto is not what he was, but he’s still a lot. He may not be undefeated like his May 5th rival, but he’s beaten everyone he’s faced except Pacquiao. Styles make fights and Pac Man was destined to demolish Cotto. Cotto is a stalker. But Pacquiao doesn’t merely present subtle angles; he explodes across great distances and disappears. And he rarely seems to tire.
Yes, Pac Man struggled against Marquez and, yes, Mayweather dominated Marquez, but this common-opponent litmus test doesn’t apply here. Marquez has Pacquaio’s number, plain and simple. Against Mayweather’s longer arms, Marquez couldn’t deliver the slashing shots, thrown from outside, that made Pacquiao vulnerable. (Pacquiao like Marquez like Cotto has a 67-inch reach). But unlike Pac Man, Mayweather never punches in bunches. Instead, he’s the king of the one-punch. Always ready to counter, Mayweather is an expert at landing and moving enough to make his opponent miss. Cotto knows this. He will train for this. And he won’t get discouraged. I see Cotto losing the early rounds, but then finding his range. And when he does, he’ll start to win rounds because he’ll be the busier fighter. That’s the blueprint for beating Mayweather—Castillo drew it, but, so far, no one has followed the plan for 12 rounds. Cotto could be the first. Mayweather is a supremely fit athlete, and he’ll be able to stick and move for a while, but Cotto will pursue and punch for 12 rounds.
Miguel Cotto’s other edge: His last fight, the fight most vivid in his mind, gave him a psychological boost. He avenged a brutal loss, probably a plaster-tainted loss, bloodying and stopping the man who bloodied and stopped him in 2008. A loss like the one Cotto suffered against Antonio Margarito can damage a fighter’s career, sometimes permanently. In that fight, Cotto’s will to win was broken. When he took a knee, in this case the matador succumbing to the bull, Cotto admitted his weakness. Once that happens, once a man’s sense of himself as invulnerable is broken, it’s like cracking a motorcycle helmet—it’s just never as strong. Notice the number of fighters who, once they lose their first fight, go on to lose a second very quickly. It was with this vulnerable mindset that Cotto faced Pacquiao 16 months later. Pacquiao would probably have won this fight regardless, but I doubt the fight would have been so brutally one-sided. To his great credit, Cotto faced the rematch with Margarito head-on. Spurred by photos of Margarito’s illegal wraps, Cotto trained hard and entered the ring ready to challenge his personal doubts. He may not have been ready to die for victory—and no wonder, since he faced death, quite literally, in their first fight in the guise of loaded gloves—but he was ready to avenge his loss and, far more important, to prove he’d taken a knee not from fists, but from weapons.
Margarito, even with unloaded gloves, is a dangerous man. He’s four inches taller than Cotto and has a six-inch reach advantage (one more than Mayweather will have), but Cotto reached him easily and often. Of course, next to Mayweather, Margarito’s knowledge of ring geography is crude. But again, Cotto is a veteran who will eventually gauge the distance and find the rangier Mayweather. And Cotto, his sense of self regained, his resolve healed if not completely intact, will be mentally ready for this fight, far more ready than he was against Pacquiao when Margarito was still on Cotto’s mind. Miguel Cotto is a persistent and well-schooled puncher. When he starts to land combinations, Mayweather, who hates getting hit, will have to hit back, and with more than one punch at a time if he’s to win. Out of his comfort zone, Mayweather will weaken while Cotto thrives.
The last fight fought is the first remembered. Cotto’s fresh memories are about unadulterated victory. Mayweather’s are not. Money May talks cocky about his bout with Ortiz, but that sucker punch suggests doubt. Joe Cortez’s incompetence facilitated the shot. Ortiz’s stupidity facilitated the shot. And Mayweather’s win-at-all-costs attitude, admirable from a Darwinian standpoint, even if it defied good sportsmanship, insured the bout ended before it fully began. It’s impossible to know how the rest of this fight might have gone, but I sensed a shift in the action. Ortiz was coming on. He was showing no fear and no respect for Mayweather. And I believe Mayweather, attuned to everything ring-related, sensed Ortiz’s surge—Mayweather is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve and he didn’t look happy. An exit presented itself, and, sensing fire, he punched the unprotected head apologizing in front of him and left the building quickly. Cotto fears no man. He’s as willful as any fighter today. And after his last fight, his self-confidence is high. He won’t strike a silent deal with Mayweather, as most of Mayweather’s opponents have done, and get lulled into a slow-paced fight where punches are thrown sparingly. Cotto will come to fight. That’s his job. That’s his man’s work and he’ll do it.
Finally, and I’ve said this before (and been wrong), I see Mayweather’s corner as a disadvantage. The day will come when Floyd Jr. will need some sage advice when he sits on his stool. I just don’t see Roger helping his nephew if things get truly rough. So far, Mayweather has been able to rely on his mastery. And he is indeed a master of the squared circle. But a good corner doesn’t simply provide water and first aid. I’ve always sensed a disconnect between Floyd and Roger no matter how much they protest that all’s in-synch with the family. If Cotto starts to build a points lead, Floyd Mayweather will feel very alone. Cotto is in better hands. When he returns to his corner, he’ll have Pedro Luis Diaz waiting for him, the same man who got him fight-ready for Margarito, the same man who kept his charge cool and helped him exact the coldest revenge.
Some fans are still disappointed that Pacquaio and Mayweather won’t be filling the Cinco de Mayo dance card, but I’m not. After all the back and forth about drugs and money, after all the false stops and starts, frankly, I don’t give a damn. This fight will happen or it won’t.
The fight I want to see is Cotto/Mayweather. I’ll put on my biased glasses and root for quiet wisdom to stifle brash ego, for confidence to trump arrogance, for a man who never protests (even when he has the right) to defeat a man who protests too much and too often. I want to see Miguel Cotto beat Floyd Mayweather.
So this is what I see: I see Cotto starting his surge around the fourth round, the same round Ortiz hunkered down with his head. I see Cotto moving forward, cutting the ring, deciphering Mayweather’s angles, landing punches in bunches. I see Mayweather having to fight, winning some exchanges, but losing many. I see Mayweather returning to his corner, a little flustered, a little lost. I see Miguel Cotto’s hand getting raised to the rafters.
Possibility lies mostly in the realm of the subjective, the same place boxing’s beauty resides. Will Miguel Cotto beat Floyd Mayweather? In my biased eyes, it’s more than possible.Tyne Talk
Mike Ashley Bans Newcastle Fans For Asking Difficult Questions
This morning has brought the depressing news that following Mike Ashley’s decision to ban the local newspapers because he didn’t like what they printed, the Newcastle owner has now banned the only elected Newcastle United fans body from contact and interaction with the club.
Newcastle United launched their Fans Forum in September and the Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) were offered a permanent place for an NUST board member to attend and represent the Trust’s membership.
That place has now been snatched away because NUST asked the questions that Mike Ashley didn’t like and then broadcast the questions and answers for all Newcastle fans to read, having agreed with the club beforehand that this would happen.
Yet another sad day for Newcastle United fans as the current set-up see no value in interacting with Newcastle fans in any kind of meaningful way, unfortunately making their Fans Forum initiative dead in the water,
This is the NUST statement;
‘As the only elected body representing fans, the board of Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) welcomed the invitation to take up a permanent position on the Fans Forum organised by Newcastle United.
The Trust looked forward to the chance to interact with club officials on behalf of our members, with the opportunity to ask pertinent questions and report back to the membership afterwards.
The inaugural meeting of the Forum took place in September and little were we to suspect that the NUST permanent position would last only one night.
The Trust made clear that we reserved the right to report back to our members as to what went on at the Fans Forum, the club confirming via their Fans Liaison Officer that they accepted this.
Questions were duly asked (many supplied by our members following an online survey) at the Forum by the NUST representative, Peter Fanning, and a lively meeting produced many interesting topics of discussion.
Two days later, NUST published Peter Fanning’s overview of the meeting and it attracted a lot of publicity, due mainly to the nature of the topics covered but also the fact the Newcastle United minutes didn’t appear until 24 hours after they’d been advertised to be released.
When the club minutes did belatedly appear, nothing of substance that had been reported by NUST was contradicted in Newcastle United’s official feedback.
However, the spirit of openness has dramatically ended and NUST have been informed by Newcastle United that their ‘permanent’ place at the Fans Forum has now been withdrawn, the only democratically elected organisation open to the whole of the NUFC fanbase, barred from attending the next meeting in December and all subsequent Fan Forums.
So, in the same week that the Trust organised a successful conference on fan engagement at Newcastle University Business School, covered by the BBC and attended by delegates from all over the country, the club have barred the local press and the only elected fans’ body from interacting with Newcastle United.
At the same time at a national level, the Government’s Culture Media and Sports Select Committee have recommended that football clubs develop meaningful and structured relationships with supporters.
They say the first casualty of war is the truth. The fans and local media don’t want to be at war with our football club, we just want a well run Newcastle United that values all of its supporters and the integral part NUFC plays at the heart of the local community.’
For more information on the Trust click HERE, while to join and help NUST achieve its objectives click HERE
25 years and 2 months of giving you unbiased credible coverage of Newcastle United, new issue of our magazine on sale in all Tyneside newsagents, or order now online for only £3 (plus postage) for Worldwide delivery straight to your door, or why not start a subscription – prices from only £23.
[latest_issue]The White House has avoided taking a clear position on the sanctions legislation all week. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Congress sends Russia sanctions to Trump's desk, daring a veto
The Senate on Thursday delivered Donald Trump the first big bipartisan rebuke of his presidency, giving final approval to a package of sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea that constrains his bid to defrost relations with Moscow.
The Senate voted 98-2 to approve the sanctions bill that cleared the House earlier this week. Trump must now decide whether to sign a measure that allows Congress to block any attempt to ease or end penalties against Vladimir Putin's government and imposes new sanctions in response to a Russian electoral disruption campaign that the president continues to dispute.
Story Continued Below
The House passed the sanctions package on Tuesday in an overwhelming 419-3 vote, and an intra-GOP squabble that threatened to delay its passage was quickly resolved Wednesday night.
The White House has avoided taking a clear position on the sanctions legislation all week, with communications director Anthony Scaramucci telling CNN on Thursday that Trump "may sign the sanctions exactly the way they are, or he may veto the sanctions and negotiate an even tougher deal against the Russians."
If Trump does decide to veto the bill, Congress has shown it could easily override him.
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In stark contrast to the partisan warfare that has marked the health care debate, senior Republicans and Democrats paid tribute to their counterparts across the aisle Thursday for cooperation on the sanctions bill.
"This bill has taken passion, tenacity and all of us working together to bring out the best in this body," Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee said on the floor before the bill's final passage.
The only no votes on the bill were Kentucky Republican Rand Paul and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders.
Corker also hailed the congressional oversight language that the White House had resisted as a bid by lawmakers to grow "more and more relevant, to garner back the powers we have given to the executive branch."
Corker, a longtime ally of the Trump administration, said he has talked to both the president and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about the sanctions bill in recent days and "gotten no indication from them that they plan to veto it."
"It's just not a good way to start a presidency to veto something and then be soundly overridden," Corker told reporters. "It wouldn't be something I would do, but they may choose to do it."We were so excited when we learned that Game of Thrones' Gwendoline Christie had a role in The Force Awakens. We were even more excited when we saw the awesome chrome armor she would sport, and that she had the equally awesome name of Captain Phasma.
As you might imagine, we were a little disappointed when Captain Phasma didn't get a hell of a lot to do in that movie, and apparently ended her days in the Starkiller Base trash compactor.
Wait...no she didn't!
Marvel Comics will release Star Wars: Captain Phasma later this year, a four issue mini-series set in the days after The Force Awakens. So yes, we'll find out how she got out of that trash compactor. But more importantly, we'll get the story of one of the most intriguing new Star Wars characters fleshed out. Kelley Thompson and Marco Checchetto are the creative team on this one.
(courtesy of StarWars.com)
But that's not all. Del Rey Books will also release a novel, Phasma, by Delilah S. Dawson on September 1st. We're looking forward to both of these, and hope to see more of the mysterious Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. when that film opens on December 15th.Samsung released kernel sources for the Exynos-powered Galaxy S7 edge nearly 10 months ago, but with the recent Nougat update rollout for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, the demand for Nougat mandates a new kernel release for the new operating system update. The same Exynos-powered Galaxy S7 edge, bearing model number SM-G935F, now has new firmware containing Google’s new update with Samsung’s own tweaks included.
As always, these new kernel source releases are designed to help developers take advantage of the new software additions and allow them to create ROMs that the more tech-hungry among us can download onto their handsets. If you want to take advantage of these new kernel sources, feel free to download them through the Open Source Release Center (OSRC) by hitting up the link below.The Ramadan stalls are in full swing and there is all manner of food to buy. Here is a list of unusual fare at several bazaars in the Klang Valley.
AT THE SECTION 17 RAMADAN BAZAAR with JULIE WONG
Jalan 17/1A, Section 17, Petaling Jaya
Great Spiral Fries
Stick it to kebab and satay fans with these great sticks of potato chips. A whole potato is given a paper-thin, spiral-cut, stretched out naked on a stick, and deep-fried. It’s then doused with not one, but three types of moreish sauces: mayonnaise, black pepper and chilli. RM2 each from Ali’s Ayam Goreng stall.
Paella Kampung
So it’s not Bomba rice piled mountain high on the gigantic flat black paella pans lined up in a row, commanding our attention. But piled up on paella pans, the nasi goreng kampung, bihun goreng Singapore and kway teow goreng somehow look more appetising. Like Paella Valencia, they are studded with seafood – salted fish, fried shrimps – and ayam masak kicap. Just a silly question about those pans – were they sunken sea treasures from the great Spanish Armadas that used to ply the Straits of Malacca, washed up on the shores and found by a plucky fisherman who sold them for a few kupang? Find it at the Selera Kita 2 stall.
Murtabak Cinta
Got no skills to make a great murtabak? No worries, beat the competition with smarts. This stall draws the crowd with a huge message of love. Toss up some instant noodles, slap them on a hot murtabak grill packed in a heart-shaped ring, stir in some beaten eggs, and after a few loving pats, you have – drum roll, please – Murtabak Cinta! Choice of two flavours: Ayam or Daging. RM3 each.
Holy Chicka-rones
Chickarones is, of course, the halal half-sister of chicharron, Spanish pork crackling. While you can find these popular crispy-fried chicky skin at most pasar malam and Taiwanese snack stalls, these are really ace – fresh, super crispy, with not a drop of grease on them. We absolutely vote this one of the best bites in the world. RM2 from the PPPKM M/P Cawangan Sg Besi stall.
Does my butt look big in this?
Still hungry for nasty, tasty bits? How about some chicken butts? If you stand a bit further away, they actually look like slightly blackened, succulent red strawberries. They are delicious. Strung up four butts to a bamboo skewer, they are massaged with a secret red sauce and grilled until hot, sticky and sweaty. We don’t want to be anal about this folks, butt, seriously, don’t give these the butt. Bird butts are storehouses of pheromones as the uropygial gland is located right there. Need we say more? RM1 per stick of Tongkeng Ayam, Section 17, PJ.
Pulut Panggang Branded, brother
For a bit of retro cool, head to this branded pulut panggang stall. Remember, not any pulut panggang stall. I mean, there are guys in chilli red polos, MIB dark glasses and Ah Pek white towels slung around the neck here. And the sticky rice sticks have value added: not just rempah udang filling, but also daging and ayam. Retro is so old, it’s bold, and gold. So stylish are these, it’s not unbecoming to have a few sticking out of your Gucci bag. RM1-RM2 each at the Pulut Panggang Retro stall.
AT THE KELANA JAYA RAMADAN BAZAAR with SHARMILA NAIR
Jalan SS6/1, Kelana Jaya
Open 4pm-8pm
Nasi Everything & The Kitchen Sink aka Nasi Ambeng
Confused by the wide variety of food on offer? Keep calm and have the Nasi Ambeng. The Spesial version even has noodles thrown in. Nasi Ambeng comes from the Javanese who settled in Malaysia, mostly in Johor, Selangor and Perak. Similar to rijsttafel, it’s a sumptuous and scrumptious all-in-one platter: rice, a choice of chicken dish (ayam goreng berempah or ayam kicap), rendang daging, fried noodles, stir-fried beans and ulam. RM10 at the Nasi Ambeng Warisan stall.
Crunchy Fried Canai-wich (Roti Goreng)
Looks like an oversized springroll, but it’s a sandwich with crunch. The bun is stuffed with chicken or beef filling, before being wrapped in a thin layer of roti canai dough and deep fried until crisp. It’s an original Malaysian canai-sandwich hybrid – just missing a catchy name. It’s actually quite yummy – once you’ve tried it, you will seek it out again. RM2.50 each at the only Roti Goreng stall.
Durian fish?
The stall owner claims that this is the best grilled Ikan Patin Masak Tempoyak you’ll have in your life – and judging by the way folks crowd around his stall, he may be right. The patin fish is slathered with a thick paste of tempoyak (fermented durian condiment) on both sides before being grilled to perfection. Ask for siakap if cat fish is not your thing. RM12 for half a fish, to RM25.
Genius Ayam Tempayan
What started as a way to cook during camping trips turned out to be a money maker for a bunch of friends. Whole chickens are marinated in a secret sauce and left in the fridge overnight before being cooked in the gigantic clay pot – originally used for storing water or as a planter – for about 45 minutes. Hot coals placed at the bottom of the pot creates hot, dry heat similar to an oven and the high earthenware wall keeps the heat in – essentially |
double-edged scandal" at a press conference in the Indian capital, adding that "excess nutrition now kills more than hunger".
Food prices
The problem of hunger existed not because there was a lack of food globally, he stressed, but because of poor distribution, wastage and rising prices that made food unaffordable.
Food prices have spiked globally in 2011, raising fears of a re-run of the crisis seen in 2008 which led to riots and political instability in many countries.
The rise in food prices, which the IFRC blamed on speculative commodity trading and climate change, among other factors, is seen as having contributed to the unrest witnessed in north Africa and the Middle East this year.
"A new round of food inflation... is plunging many of the world's poorest people into deeper poverty and situations of severe hunger and malnourishment," the organisation said.
The World Disasters Report is an annual publication by the group seeking to highlight an area of global concern. Last year's study focused on urbanisation, while 2009's was on HIV and health.Description
This plugins/script dynamically changes the pilot point of view to demontrate the forces acting on the pilot, trying to pass the feeling of be inside in an aircraft. These changes are based on the G forces vectors, then when the plane acelerate the cockpit camera view goes back, when desacelerate goes to front, and it occurs in all directions, it is like be seatting on a tied spring chair in the aircraft.
This plugin was developed searching for a way to create a feedback for the pilot when flying the plane, for example, when you change the pitch of the plane at a lower airspeed, the airplane lift will be lower than at a higher speed, with the plugin the camera offset will be proportionaly bigger on pitch changes with more airspeed, if the view change too much its because the flgiht is not so comfortable for passengers. Another thing to try is apply control inputs proportionaly with the desired forces, an example of this situaition is when you are near to land and are descending too fast, you´ll need an extra lift to not do a hard landing, with this plugin you could feel if your control input changes were enough to reduce the descent rate.
Another intention of this plugins is allow the user to notice the difference between several aircrafts and give the possibility to see the particularities on the flying experience.
Features
* Have more feeling of the aircraft
* See better the differences between various types of aircraft
* Touchdown effects on hard and soft landings
* Better camera effect on turbulent air and over rugged surfaces
* 3 Presets with different behaviors of camera changes
Installation
This plugin was tested on X-Plane 10.45 and 10.50, it requieres the flyWithLua 2.4.3 available at:
To install you need put this 2 files:
gForceFeel.lua
gForceFeel_settings.txt
on the folder:
<X-Plane instalation path>\Resources\plugins\FlyWithLua\Scripts...
For additional information check the included User Manual.Netflix said Thursday that it's raising the prices of its U.S.-based streaming plans — a move that could disappoint some fans even as it helps support the costly original programming that's made the service so popular in recent years.
The cost of the streaming video giant's basic plan, at $8 a month, will remain unchanged. But its standard plan will now cost $11 a month, up from $10, and the premium tier will rise from $12 a month to $14. The prices are already in effect for new sign-ups and will be rolling out to existing customers later this month, Netflix said.
“From time to time, Netflix plans and pricing are adjusted as we add more exclusive TV shows and movies, introduce new product features and improve the overall Netflix experience,” the company said in a statement.
[In loss for Netflix, Star Wars and Marvel films will move to Disney’s new streaming service]
But beyond its immediate impact on subscribers, the price hike foreshadows a future in which the streaming video market is dominated by a handful of players that have captured the majority of a family's limited entertainment budget.
The streaming video market is ripe with competition. Companies like Apple and Viacom appear poised to enter the ring with their own Internet-based television programming, and advances in video quality — such as high dynamic range and 4K Ultra High Definition — are taking the viewer experience to new levels. Meanwhile, companies keep adding features and original video; Netflix is likely to spend $6 billion this year on content costs.
There's some evidence that consumers are willing to pay for more than one streaming video service, according to Glenn Hower, a senior analyst at Parks Associates, an industry research firm. He said that "2017 was really the first time we've seen the percentage of households subscribing to two or more services outnumbering the households subscribing to a single service.”
[Freedom from cable isn’t free: Flood of streaming services will make cutting the cord more complicated]
The question is whether there's an upper limit to this number. Some video die-hards already pay for three or even four streaming services at once, said Hower, but these consumers tend to spend a significant amount to begin with on cable TV, media devices like Blu-ray and DVDs, and video rentals. And while there are notable shifts happening in the way that consumers allocate their TV dollars, the overall amount of consumer spending on video entertainment hasn't changed much over time, he said.
Some may hope that consumers add more and more paid streaming services to their lineup, but undermining that idea is the cord-cutter's dilemma. This is the logic that prevents some consumers from ditching cable: At a certain point, the cost of an Internet plan plus various streaming services equals the price of the traditional TV bundle, or at least is competitive enough that it's mostly a wash.
[The new Apple TV 4K finally catches up to its competitors]
The proliferation of streaming services threatens to force consumers to be more selective about which video products they choose. Although smaller, newer or niche services with less TV content could act as supplements to behemoths like Netflix, Hower said, it's plausible that the ecosystem for streaming video may only be able to support large, consolidated packages of content that appeals to wide audiences.
“We might be approaching that point where either services can't sustain themselves on the subscribers that they have, or they're being muscled out of the market by the bigger guys,” he said.
If the typical American household is only willing to spend an average of roughly $100 a month on television, then it would make sense for Netflix (or Amazon, or Hulu, or whomever) to try to capture as much of that $100 as it can. One way to do that is by fleshing out its service, adding content and features, and then charging more in exchange — which appears to be exactly what Netflix is doing.
The other alternative for streaming services may be a “cable-ification” of online video, in which some companies act as a one-stop shop for multiple streaming services. Amazon Channels is one example, where Amazon Prime members may use Amazon's payment system to choose access to HBO, Showtime, PBS and other programming, which users then pay for on an a la carte basis. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
But even then, the number of streaming services that consumers ultimately subscribe to may be limited by the same economic constraints that pushed some viewers to consider cutting the cord in the first place.The day Jonathan Haas arrived on campus to join the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School 30 summers ago, he had a memorable message waiting for him in the administration building.
"Somebody said, 'Frank Zappa just called for you'," Haas said. "I thought this was a joke."
Haas had written a letter to the rock-music innovator and prolific composer after hearing his album "The Perfect Stranger" — a collaboration with the French conductor Pierre Boulez. Haas had offered to put together a contemporary ensemble arrangement of Zappa's work for a concert in New York City. Zappa was unconvinced of the notion, Haas found, when he returned Zappa's call.
"I know what you want to do," Zappa said. "You want to produce a concert and play one of my pieces and have a bunch of contemporary music composers and lots of people will be coming because of my one piece and it absolutely won't happen!"
Haas then explained that he felt "The Perfect Stranger" was written in response to Edgar Varese's "Deserts," because of its blend of instrumentals and electronics, and that he wanted to play the pieces together.
"Then there was silence on the phone," Haas said. "'Mr. Zappa, are you there?' And he said, 'That's a very good idea Mr. Haas, I think we should do it.'"
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Thus began a collaboration and professional friendship that continued through Zappa's death from prostate cancer in late 1993. Months earlier, Zappa and Haas finally had staged the Varese-Zappa concert at Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan, New York. Haas also played percussion on 1993's "Zappa's Universe" with Zappa's bandmates, taking over for longtime Zappa percussionist Ed Mann after he and Zappa had a falling out. Haas lobbied Zappa to write him a timpani concerto, which Zappa was unable to undertake due to his illness (Philip Glass proved a suitable second choice).
Haas also put together a percussion ensemble of Zappa's "The Black Page."
"I thought since percussion was such an important and integral part of his rock band, why not throw the nets out a little bit further?" Haas said. "He looked at my arrangement and said, 'Yes, I approve this.'"
That arrangement, along with several others, and pieces by Varese, will be center stage at Belly Up tonight, with a tribute to Zappa performed by the Music Festival and School's Percussion Ensemble, of which Haas is director.
The show will include Varese's "Ionization," along with Zappa's "The Black Page," "RDNZL," "We Are Not Alone," "Let's Make the Water Turn Black," "Regyptian Strut," "G-Spot Tornado," and "Peaches En Regalia."
This spring, Haas learned that another composer, Mike Myers, also had collaborated with Zappa on percussion ensembles. The Belly Up concert will include Myers' arrangements, along with those by Haas, alongside the Varese.
"You've gotta have Varese if you have Zappa, and I think Frank would have agreed," said Haas, adding, "Though, I think if you put any other composer's piece on, he'd be very unhappy."
Haas' ensemble for the performance includes 19 musicians in all, playing five marimbas, two timpani sets, two xylophones, two vibraphones, two glockenspiels, one drum kit "and a million percussion instruments." It'll be a tight squeeze on the music club's stage. To prepare, the ensemble has been practicing in a marked-off space of the Belly Up stage dimensions in the practice room at the Music School's percussion building.
Haas' students came to Aspen early for the summer season to begin practicing the pieces in the hopes of meeting Zappa's notoriously high standards for musicianship.
Between pieces tonight, actor David Ledingham will perform Zappa monologues, excerpted from interviews and from Zappa's incisive testimony at the 1985 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings on music censorship.
"For people who don't know what Frank Zappa was all about, it'll ground it," Haas said. "And for Zappa fans it'll just be trip through nostalgia."
Long before their collaborations, Haas, at age 13, saw Zappa perform with the Mothers of Invention at the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago. He recalled seeing drummer Ainsley Duncan and Zappa's band running up and down the aisles.
"Nobody had any idea what was going on, and I said, 'This is the greatest thing in the world. I want to do this.'"
Haas, who founded the percussion ensemble with performances at the Wheeler Opera House in the mid-80s that were off the official Music Festival calendar, also came here as a student for three summers in the '70s.
The Zappa performance comes in addition to the percussion ensemble's Harris Hall concert on Aug. 4. His students were eager to put in the extra effort for the chance to play Zappa, Haas said.
"It's a tremendous amount of work," he said, "but it means they're getting their money's worth. When I was a student here you could never give me enough parts and enough music to satisfy my desire for the experience. So I assume these students have that same spirit, so let's do a lot of music."
Zappa's chamber-music compositions number over one-thousand, Haas noted — an output equal to Mozart's. Along with continuing Zappa's compositional legacy with tonight's performance, Haas is championing an opera and a Broadway musical, both written by Zappa but never produced, to get an audience someday.
Zappa deserves a place in the classical tradition beside Varese, Haas argues.
"There are naysayers, who say, 'Well, this isn't on the level of Schoenberg or somebody like that,'" he said. "But he wasn't trying to be any of those composers. Varese was a great iconoclast, and he saw himself the same way. Tonality was really important to him. He wrote some of the great melodies."
Tonight's performance is the first at Belly Up for the Music Festival. Haas said he was inspired to bring the percussion ensemble to the club last summer, when he saw the Michael Jackson tribute, Foreverland, led by Music Festival vice president of development Alex Brose, in the club.
Brose will join the ensemble at tomorrow's show to sing "The Idiot Bastard Son."MIAMI, Fla. - During the 2013-14 season, Kyrie Irving's third year in the league, the then 21-year-old was averaging 20.8 points, 3.6 rebounds and 6.1 assists.
For a while, the young Cavaliers were fighting for a playoff berth until their talent and chemistry caught up to them. On the surface, Irving had an impressive campaign, but the numbers don't always tell the true story.
"I'll just say that last year was a learning experience," Irving told Northeast Ohio Media Group in a lengthy sit-down interview.
This is an account of how Irving transformed his mental and physical makeup after enduring such a tumultuous year - setting the stage for a season that has seen him post a couple of 50-point games, score 22.0 points per game and shoot a career-high 42 percent on 3-pointers.
Last year was a season he would prefer to forget, one in which he didn't have much fun. It was a chaotic and problematic year for the point guard, not like one he had ever experienced. And unknowingly at the time, he initiated the conflict from the onset.
"Saying that I wanted to be the best player in the league at [2013] Media Day wasn't a good idea," he said. "I didn't realize how much pressure I was putting on myself and on my teammates."
With that type of faith and self-confidence comes expectations. His own words would be used against him when pundits came to the conclusion that he wasn't playing up to par. The verdict early on was that his game didn't match his bark, which led to stories bashing his commitment to be great and questioning if he had what it took.
It genuinely disturbed him.
"That was the first time it actually hit me," he said. "The attention that it got, I wasn't necessarily prepared for it and didn't know how to prepare for it. I was young. I'm still young, but that was a crazy position to put myself in. You can believe it and you can do it, but that's something I should have just kept to myself."
Reports of him being a bad teammate, not sharing the ball, having a beef with Dion Waiters and not wanting to remain in Cleveland when his contract was up all caused anguish for the three-time All-Star. It was too much to handle.
"It really got to me," Irving said. "I'm not a big Twitter person and I don't Tweet a lot of my emotions, but last year I was clarifying because there were so many sources," he said. "I'm dealing with people coming at my character. Saying I'm detrimental to my teammates and I'm like, 'Man, that's not even close to who I am at all.'
"It started to get to me because once people start to question the things that you're doing, and you know you're not doing them, then it starts to get to you."
After the season, he took about three weeks off from basketball to clear his mind and recharge. He was drained. All he wanted to do was play basketball, but he found out that in a business such as the NBA, it's not all about dribbling a ball.
"You can tell that all of it bothered him," Tristan Thompson said. "We saw it and tried to help. That was a crazy year. All types of things were being said or reported."
Sometimes things are out of your control and you're not aware who's for you and who's against you. But Irving would get a shot at the closest thing to purity at the highest level of basketball: playing for his country.
After signing his five-year extension with the Cavaliers, he was looking forward to writing a new chapter, starting with playing for Team USA in the World Basketball Championships. Competing among the best players in the world and reuniting with coach Mike Krzyzewski was the first step.
He averaged 12.1 points, 2.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals in 24.4 minutes per game to help lead Team USA to a 9-0 record and a gold medal in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid, Spain. For his efforts, he was awarded the 2014 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year.
Irving was at a comfort level. It was all about basketball, but most importantly about winning and sacrificing. He proved that he could do both. Suddenly, he was able to put last season in the rear-view mirror.
"It gave me the platform for me to mature and to be with other great players," Irving said. "But also at the same time, have the confidence in myself to go out there and be who I am and to be who I wanted to be. I did that and it was kind of easy coming into this season."
Which brings us to now.
Irving is on a tear. He has scored 90 points in the last two games and is 32-of-47 from the field and 11-of-12 from downtown in that span. He has arguably been the Cavaliers' most consistent player from the start of the season to now.
Those who speculated that his game wouldn't mesh well with LeBron James have some rethinking to do. No matter the adjustment or the assignment, Irving has continued to display his versatility in doing whatever it takes to put his team in the best possible position to succeed.
Before the season even began, he knew he was ready for this Big Three era.
"Everybody was putting pressure on what me and 'Bron were going to do," Irving said. "How was I going to have to adjust? How was I going to have to be a more pure point guard? Be this, be that. How me and K-Love were going to have to give ourselves up to the team.
"For me, I was just like God blessed me with a lot of talent that I'm thankful for and I really worked my tail off to have that ability to be one of the best players on any floor at any given time. That's just the confidence that I have in myself."
Irving is a student of the game. The film room is a second home. Reading about the greats that have come before him is a treasure for the kid. He's soaked up the art form and has a better understanding of what it takes to elevate his game.
Even though he admitted that he shouldn't have said what he said at Media Day 2014, the point he was trying to make was that he wanted to be one of the greatest. And he was challenging himself to back it up by going public with it.
Now he's keeping his list of goals close to the vest. He figures what he doesn't tell the media can't be thrown in his face down the road.
As for the naysayers who ridiculed him for not being a team player and a bad locker room guy, well, he's not overly concerned about them.
"My sole reason for me playing this game has never been for attention, it's never been for approval. The only thing I command is respect," Irving said. "I just let the proof be in the pudding. I don't say I'm going to do something; I just go out and do it and then I feel like it just ends up hitting them in the face when it actually happens because they're like, 'Well we said this about him but he completely did the opposite and did it way more than we expected.'
"I have a confidence in myself that whether you like me or not, I really don't care because I'm going to command your respect, especially out there on the floor where you can't deny me. I was that guy on the cusp trying to fight my way up and I still am. I still feel that way. I'm always going to have that attitude, but in terms of what everybody else thinks, I really don't care."
For what he went through last year, Irving said he has developed tougher skin and is better prepared for negative reports. However, with that new, tough skin comes a wall. It's a protective covering that keeps people from entering his small circle. He's never been the open type in the first place, but he's much more secluded.
In the meantime, he's sticking to the script. After all, it has gotten him this far.
"As long as I'm doing my due diligence and that's representing my family well in the community, impacting the youth as best I can and inspiring my younger generation - anything else, I'm not worried about," he said.
"What really goes on in my life, that's why I keep it guarded. Because when they really find out, it's like a huge surprise. 'Oh he did that?' I like to keep it that way because I don't know where their motives are. All they see is me as a product that they're just using to propel themselves to wherever. My focus is basketball and that's it."A Formula 1 racing hovercraft
A US Army LACV-30 (Lighter Air Cushion Vehicle - 30 Ton) hovercraft transports ground support equipment to shore in 1986
A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces.
Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull (air cushion) that is slightly above atmospheric pressure. The pressure difference between the higher pressure air below the hull and lower pressure ambient air above it produces lift, which causes the hull to float above the running surface. For stability reasons, the air is typically blown through slots or holes around the outside of a disk- or oval-shaped platform, giving most hovercraft a characteristic rounded-rectangle shape. Typically this cushion is contained within a flexible "skirt", which allows the vehicle to travel over small obstructions without damage.
The same hovercraft with engine on and skirt inflated
The first practical design for hovercraft was derived from a British invention in the 1950s to 1960s. They are now used throughout the world as specialised transports in disaster relief, coastguard, military and survey applications, as well as for sport or passenger service. Very large versions have been used to transport hundreds of people and vehicles across the English Channel, whilst others have military applications used to transport tanks, soldiers and large equipment in hostile environments and terrain.
Although now a generic term for the type of craft, the name Hovercraft itself was a trademark owned by Saunders-Roe (later British Hovercraft Corporation (BHC), then Westland), hence other manufacturers' use of alternative names to describe the vehicles.
History [ edit ]
Early efforts [ edit ]
There have been many attempts to understand the principles of high air pressure below hulls and wings. Hovercrafts are unique in that they can lift themselves while still, differing from ground effect vehicles and hydrofoils which require forward motion to create lift.
The first mention in the historical record of the concepts behind surface-effect vehicles that used the term hovering was by Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg in 1716.[1]
The shipbuilder Sir John Isaac Thornycroft patented an early design for an air cushion ship / hovercraft in the 1870s, but suitable, powerful, engines were not available until the 20th century.[2]
In 1915, the Austrian Dagobert Müller von Thomamühl (1880–1956) built the world's first "air cushion" boat (Luftkissengleitboot). Shaped like a section of a large aerofoil (this creates a low pressure area above the wing much like an aircraft), the craft was propelled by four aero engines driving two submerged marine propellers, with a fifth engine that blew air under the front of the craft to increase the air pressure under it. Only when in motion could the craft trap air under the front, increasing lift. The vessel also required a depth of water to operate and could not transition to land or other surfaces. Designed as a fast torpedo boat, the Versuchsgleitboot had a top speed over 32 knots (59 km/h). It was thoroughly tested and even armed with torpedoes and machine guns for operation in the Adriatic. It never saw actual combat, however, and as the war progressed it was eventually scrapped due to the lack of interest and perceived need, and its engines returned to the Air Force.[3]
The theoretical grounds for motion over an air layer were constructed by Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii in 1926 and 1927.[4][5]
In 1929, Andrew Kucher of Ford began experimenting with the "Levapad" concept, metal disks with pressurized air blown through a hole in the center. Levapads do not offer stability on their own. Several must be used together to support a load above them. Lacking a skirt, the pads had to remain very close to the running surface. He initially imagined these being used in place of casters and wheels in factories and warehouses, where the concrete floors offered the smoothness required for operation. By the 1950s, Ford showed a number of toy models of cars using the system, but mainly proposed its use as a replacement for wheels on trains, with the Levapads running close to the surface of existing rails.[6]
In 1931, Finnish aero engineer Toivo J. Kaario began designing a developed version of a vessel using an air cushion and built a prototype Pintaliitäjä (Surface Soarer), in 1937.[7] Kaario's design included the modern features of a lift engine blowing air into a flexible envelope for lift. Kaario never received funding to build his design, however.[citation needed] Kaario's efforts were followed closely in the Soviet Union by Vladimir Levkov, who returned to the solid-sided design of the Versuchsgleitboot. Levkov designed and built a number of similar craft during the 1930s, and his L-5 fast-attack boat reached 70 knots (130 km/h) in testing. However, the start of World War II put an end to Levkov's development work.[8][9]
During World War II, an American engineer, Charles Fletcher, invented a walled air cushion vehicle, the Glidemobile. Because the project was classified by the U.S. government, Fletcher could not file a patent.[10]
Christopher Cockerell [ edit ]
The idea of the modern hovercraft is most often associated with a British mechanical engineer Sir Christopher Cockerell. Cockerell's group was the first to develop the use of a ring of air for maintaining the cushion, the first to develop a successful skirt, and the first to demonstrate a practical vehicle in continued use.
Cockerell came across the key concept in his design when studying the ring of airflow when high-pressure air was blown into the annular area between two concentric tin cans, one coffee and the other from cat food and a hair dryer. This produced a ring of airflow, as expected, but he noticed an unexpected benefit as well; the sheet of fast moving air presented a sort of physical barrier to the air on either side of it. This effect, which he called the "momentum curtain", could be used to trap high-pressure air in the area inside the curtain, producing a high-pressure plenum that earlier examples had to build up with considerably more airflow. In theory, only a small amount of active airflow would be needed to create lift and much less than a design that relied only on the momentum of the air to provide lift, like a helicopter. In terms of power, a hovercraft would only need between one quarter to one half of the power required by a helicopter.
Cockerell built several models of his hovercraft design in the early 1950s, featuring an engine mounted to blow from the front of the craft into a space below it, combining both lift and propulsion. He demonstrated the model flying over many Whitehall carpets in front of various government experts and ministers, and the design was subsequently put on the secret list. In spite of tireless efforts to arrange funding, no branch of the military was interested, as he later joked, "the navy said it was a plane not a boat; the air force said it was a boat not a plane; and the army was 'plain not interested.'"[11]
This lack of military interest meant that there was no reason to keep the concept secret, and it was declassified. Cockerell was finally able to convince the National Research Development Corporation to fund development of a full-scale model. In 1958, the NRDC placed a contract with Saunders-Roe for the development of what would become the SR.N1, short for "Saunders-Roe, Nautical 1".
The SR.N1 was powered by a 450 hp Alvis Leonides engine powering a vertical fan in the middle of the craft. In addition to providing the lift air, a portion of the airflow was bled off into two channels on either side of the craft, which could be directed to provide thrust. In normal operation this extra airflow was directed rearward for forward thrust, and blew over two large vertical rudders that provided directional control. For low-speed maneuverability, the extra thrust could be directed fore or aft, differentially for rotation.
The SR.N1 made its first hover on 11 June 1959, and made its famed successful crossing of the English Channel on 25 July 1959. In December 1959, the Duke of Edinburgh visited Saunders-Roe at East Cowes and persuaded the chief test-pilot, Commander Peter Lamb, to allow him to take over the SR.N1's controls. He flew the SR.N1 so fast that he was asked to slow down a little. On examination of the craft afterwards, it was found that she had been dished in the bow due to excessive speed, damage that was never allowed to be repaired, and was from then on affectionately referred to as the 'Royal Dent'.[12]
Skirts and other improvements [ edit ]
Testing quickly demonstrated that the idea of using a single engine to provide air for both the lift curtain and forward flight required too many trade-offs. A Blackburn Marboré for forward thrust and two large vertical rudders for directional control were added, producing the SR.N1 Mk II. A further upgrade with the Armstrong Siddeley Viper produced the Mk III. Further modifications, especially the addition of pointed nose and stern areas, produced the Mk IV.
Although the SR.N1 was successful as a testbed, the design hovered too close to the surface to be practical; at 9 inches (23 cm) even small waves would hit the bow. The solution was offered by Cecil Latimer-Needham, following a suggestion made by his business partner Arthur Ord-Hume. In 1958, he suggested the use of two rings of rubber to produce a double-walled extension of the vents in the lower fuselage. When air was blown into the space between the sheets it exited the bottom of the skirt in the same way it formerly exited the bottom of the fuselage, re-creating the same momentum curtain, but this time at some distance from the bottom of the craft.
Latimer-Needham and Cockerell devised a 4 feet (1.2 m) high skirt design, which was fitted to the SR.N1 to produce the Mk V,[13] displaying hugely improved performance, with the ability to climb over obstacles almost as high as the skirt. In October 1961, Latimer-Needham sold his skirt patents to Westland, who had recently taken over Saunders Roe's interest in the hovercraft. Experiments with the skirt design demonstrated a problem; it was originally expected that pressure applied to the outside of the skirt would bend it inward, and the now-displaced airflow would cause it to pop back out. What actually happened is that the slight narrowing of the distance between the walls resulted in less airflow, which in turn led to more air loss under that section of the skirt. The fuselage above this area would drop due to the loss of lift at that point, and this led to further pressure on the skirt.
After considerable experimentation, Denys Bliss at Hovercraft Development Ltd. found the solution to this problem. Instead of using two separate rubber sheets to form the skirt, a single sheet of rubber was bent into a U shape to provide both sides, with slots cut into the bottom of the U forming the annular vent. When deforming pressure was applied to the outside of this design, air pressure in the rest of the skirt forced the inner wall to move in as well, keeping the channel open. Although there was some deformation of the curtain, the airflow within the skirt was maintained and the lift remained relatively steady. Over time, this design evolved into individual extensions over the bottom of the slots in the skirt, known as "fingers".
Commercialization [ edit ]
Through these improvements, the hovercraft became an effective transport system for high-speed service on water and land, leading to widespread developments for military vehicles, search and rescue, and commercial operations. By 1962, many UK aviation and ship building firms were working on hovercraft designs, including Saunders Roe/Westland, Vickers-Armstrong, William Denny, Britten-Norman and Folland.[14] Small-scale ferry service started as early as 1962 with the launch of the Vickers-Armstrong VA-3. With the introduction of the 254 passenger and 30 car carrying SR.N4 cross-channel ferry by Hoverlloyd and Seaspeed in 1968, hovercraft had developed into useful commercial craft.
Hovercraft in the Netherlands, newsreel from 1976
Another major pioneering effort of the early hovercraft era was carried out by Jean Bertin's firm in France. Bertin was an advocate of the "multi-skirt" approach, which used a number of smaller cylindrical skirts instead of one large one in order to avoid the problems noted above. During the early 1960s he developed a series of prototype designs, which he called "terraplanes" if they were aimed for land use, and "naviplanes" for water. The best known of these designs was the N500 Naviplane, built for Seaspeed by the Société d'Etude et de Développement des Aéroglisseurs Marins (SEDAM). The N500 could carry 400 passengers, 55 cars and five buses. It set a speed record between Boulogne and Dover of 74 kn (137 km/h). It was rejected by its operators, who claimed that it was unreliable.[15]
Another discovery was that the total amount of air needed to lift the craft was a function of the roughness of the surface it traveled over. On flat surfaces, like pavement, the needed air pressure was so low that hovercraft were able to compete in energy terms with conventional systems like steel wheels. However, as the hovercraft lift system acted as both a lift and very effective suspension, it naturally lent itself to high-speed use where conventional suspension systems were considered too complex. This led to a variety of "hovertrain" proposals during the 1960s, including England's Tracked Hovercraft and France's Aérotrain. In the U.S., Rohr Inc. and Garrett both took out licenses to develop local versions of the Aérotrain. These designs competed with maglev systems in the high-speed arena, where their primary advantage was the very "low tech" tracks they needed. On the downside, the air blowing dirt and trash out from under the trains presented a unique problem in stations, and interest in them waned in the 1970s.
Propellers Air Fan Flexible skirt
By the early 1970s, the basic concept had been well developed, and the hovercraft had found a number of niche roles where its combination of features were advantageous. Today, they are found primarily in military use for amphibious operations, search and rescue vehicles in shallow water, and sporting vehicles.
Design [ edit ]
Hovercraft can be powered by one or more engines. Small craft, such as the SR.N6, usually have one engine with the drive split through a gearbox. On vehicles with several engines, one usually drives the fan (or impeller), which is responsible for lifting the vehicle by forcing high pressure air under the craft. The air inflates the "skirt" under the vehicle, causing it to rise above the surface. Additional engines provide thrust in order to propel the craft. Some hovercraft use ducting to allow one engine to perform both tasks by directing some of the air to the skirt, the rest of the air passing out of the back to push the craft forward.
Uses [ edit ]
Commercial [ edit ]
The British aircraft and marine engineering company Saunders-Roe built the first practical human-carrying hovercraft for the National Research Development Corporation, the SR.N1, which carried out several test programmes in 1959 to 1961 (the first public demonstration was in 1959), including a cross-channel test run in July 1959, piloted by Peter "Sheepy" Lamb, an ex-naval test pilot and the chief test pilot at Saunders Roe. Christopher Cockerell was on board, and the flight took place on the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's first aerial crossing.[16]
The SR.N1 was powered by a single piston engine, driven by expelled air. Demonstrated at the Farnborough Air |
In a series of tweets posted Tuesday morning, Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted that “Al Qaeda has been experimenting with sophisticated explosives that can be brought on planes, avoiding X-Ray detection, for some time.” Joscelyn described the failed attack on the Somali jet as “part of an [Al Qaeda] effort across its regional branches” to experiment with “sophisticated explosives.”
Nelson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that “building a portable bomb and getting it to explode at the right time with the right force and impact is actually a difficult thing to do,” adding: “The best way to control an explosion is to actually have your hands on your device to be able to detonate it.”
Why are phones exempt from the ban?
Banned devices include cameras, tablets, e-readers, portable DVD players, game units, travel printers, and scanners. Smartphones are still allowed, though there is some confusion around the government’s definition of a smartphone. An FAQ posted on the DHS website today does not specify the maximum size of smartphones that will be allowed on planes, stating only: “Smartphones are commonly available around the world and their size is well understood by most passengers who fly internationally. Please check with your airline if you are not sure whether your smartphone is impacted.” In other words, you know it when you see it.
Nelson says he doesn’t know the specifics of the technology that the government is currently concerned about, but that the decision to exempt smartphones could have been a question of size: “You need mass to have a larger explosion.”
Are there economic motivations to the device ban?
Writing in The Washington Post, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, professors at George Washington University, suggest that the ban may have more to do with economic protectionism than national security.
“Three of the airlines that have been targeted for these measures — Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways — have long been accused by their US competitors of receiving massive effective subsidies from their governments,” they write. “These airlines have been quietly worried for months that President Trump was going to retaliate. This may be the retaliation.” Banning in-flight electronics, they add, could push valuable business class customers to US airlines.
“These airlines have been quietly worried for months that President Trump was going to retaliate. This may be the retaliation.”
Okay, but what about connecting flights?
Officials have said that the electronics ban only applies to direct flights to the US from select airports, meaning terrorists could circumvent the restriction through connecting flights, Baum says. According to Nelson, travelers with connecting flights through Europe are typically re-screened before flying to the US, and American officials may have more confidence in screening technology and information sharing there than in the countries targeted by the order.
It is, however, a strange distinction. As The New York Times notes, US-bound passengers flying through the Abu Dhabi airport are already screened by US customs officials; it is one of 15 airports under the DHS’s preclearance program, which stations more than 600 customs officials at airports across the world.
There’s also still some confusion about carry-on restrictions for so-called “second freedom” and “fifth-freedom” flights, which can stop in third countries to refuel, let off, and pick up new passengers. CNN’s Jon Ostrower pointed out:
Emirates: DXB passengers flying to ATH-EWR & MXP-JFK must check their electronics. Still unclear for pickup Europe-US pax. (via @Zahraa1) — Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) March 21, 2017
Is this an extension of Trump’s executive order ban from Muslim-majority countries?
The order doesn’t impact any of the countries affected by Trump’s travel ban executive order. That said, civil liberties activists have raised concerns over racial profiling. “The administration hasn’t provided a security rationale that makes sense for this measure targeting travelers from Muslim-majority countries,” Hina Shamsi, national security project director at the ACLU, said in an email. “Given the administration’s already poor track record, this measure sends another signal of discriminatory targeting.”
And other organizations are concerned by how the directive could impact personal data. In a statement to The Verge, Electronic Frontier Foundation International Director Danny O'Brien said that, “While we are still reviewing reports about the ban on carry-on electronics, the rule is troubling on several fronts. Devices are vulnerable to being stolen or damaged, which is why people don't check them. They may also be searched without travelers' knowledge. The government should be more transparent about the need for the new rule, which affects the privacy of our data.”
Whether or not the device ban can be considered an extension of Trump’s previous orders, its impact follows the same line of reasoning: make it more difficult and inconvenient for those in the Middle East to travel to the United States. As one former administration official told BuzzFeed News, “It appears to be a Muslim ban by a thousand cuts.”
Update: This piece has been updated with a comment from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.The first episode of Being: Liverpool, the six-part documentary providing an all-access look at the club and the lives of everyone involved, debuted on American television over the weekend (and before that, all over the Internet). Though it is essentially a long advertisement for the club, it was surprisingly enjoyable and included a number of great moments that should bring fans of all clubs back for episode two.
Here are some of the choice cuts from the first installment (in order of appearance)...
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1. Brendan Rodgers isn't great at math
The episode starts with new Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers' pep talk just before the club's Premier League opener at West Brom (which Liverpool lost 3-0).
"The thing to remember before we start this campaign is one thing," said Rodgers before counting to three with his fingers. "You can only trust yourselves. No one else. You trust the supporters, because they're the best. You trust your family at home." Either Rodgers is getting really deep and saying that we're all a part of a single, shared consciousness or he's saying that his players actually should trust more than just themselves.
2. The Explanation for sacking King Kenny
When the documentary was first announced, Fox Sports chairmain David Hill said, ''We probably will have to do a tad of captioning for Kenny [Dalglish]." But they actually found an even simpler way around his Scottish accent by reducing him to a non-speaking role.
Though they started filming before last season's FA Cup final loss to Chelsea, they only showed that match from the perspective of fans in a Liverpool pub, followed by a lowlight reel of Liverpool's "three-year lull of mediocrity."
Story continues
Chairman Tom Werner and owner John W. Henry then explain that, "When we first talked with Kenny about coming in, he understood, we understood that at some point there was going to be a time where he was going to step aside when we found the right person for the long term. And he said that to me in the first conversation we had that he would be ready for that." It would be interesting to hear if Dalglish remembers it the same way, but we don't. Narrator Clive Owen then seems to contradict Henry's timeline by saying the club hired Rodgers "after a month-long search for a replacement" (Dalglish was sacked two weeks before Rodgers signed on).
3. Brendan Rodgers walks alone
"On this his first day," Owen breathes. "Rodgers lingers. And takes a solitary lap around one of the most famed pitches in the world." And he definitely didn't just do it because the film crew told him to.
4. Monopoly party!
Lucas Leiva has South American teammates/friends Sebastian Coates and Luis Suarez along with their WAGs and kids over to his house for a get together. They all play Monopoly. This game should have been the entire first episode.
5. Brendan Rodgers' house
This is the large portrait of Brendan Rodgers in Brendan Rodgers' house.
6. The introduction of Theo
This is Theo. Rodgers introduces him as his 16-year-old daughter's "special friend." Theo is/was a model for Hollister. He is also the son of Colin Pascoe, Rodgers' assistant manager. That last fact will not save Theo from mysteriously disappearing any day now.
7. Awkward conversation staring Charlie Adam and Cody Ross
In Boston for their preseason USA tour, the team visits their owners' other club -- the Boston Red Sox. Both teams met in the Red Sox' locker room at Fenway Park, which is where the following exchange between Charlie Adam and Red Sox left fielder Cody Ross took place.
Ross: Do you play cricket? You ever play cricket?
Adam: (in the least interested tone of voice humanly possible) No, I never play cricket. No.
Ross: (shakes his head, hoping to force out something else to say) Just soccer...
Adam: Yeah, just football. Yeah.
Ross: Er, football. Yeah...
It would have been such a fantastic way to end the episode if they just cut to black right there. But then we wouldn't have gotten Daniel Pacheco learning what a baseball is...
8. Daniel Pacheco learns what a baseball is
He is told it is "a ball." He then proceeds to gaze upon it like he couldn't wait to have sex with it.
And that's when it should have cut to black.Indonesian workers shout slogans during a protest against the alleged abuse of Sumiati, an Indonesian worker in Saudi Arabia, outside the Parliament in Jakarta on Nov. 23, 2010. (Tatan Syuflana/AP)
As leader of Indonesia’s — and the world’s — largest Muslim organization, Said Aqil Siraj used to get pelted with angry e-mails and text messages whenever he questioned Saudi Arabia’s rigid, ultra-puritanical take on Islam.
But the often menacing messages recently stopped — cut off by a single stroke from a Saudi executioner’s sword to the neck of an Indonesian maid in Mecca.
“Now I don’t get sent anything,” Siraj said. He is glad to be out of the firing line, at least for the moment, but is appalled that it took the beheading of a 54-year-old Indonesian grandmother to quiet abuse by supporters of Saudi-style Islam.
The beheading of Ruyati binti Satubi — executed in June for the killing of an allegedly abusive Saudi employer — stirred such revulsion here that even the most strictly observant Indonesian Muslims now ask how the guardians of Islam’s most sacred sites can be so heedless of their faith’s call for compassion.
At least 20 Indonesians, nearly all women, are on death row in the Persian Gulf kingdom.
Een Nuraeni, the daughter of Indonesian housemaid Ruyati who was beheaded in Saudi Arabia, cries during a protest outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, 21 June 2011. (MAST IRHAM/EPA)
While few doubt that Satubi stabbed her boss, the mother of three is widely viewed as a martyr — the victim of a harsh and often xenophobic justice and social system rooted in Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi creed, a highly dogmatic and intolerant strand of Islam that, in its most extreme forms, helped provide the theological underpinnings for jihadi militants.
“Some Indonesians began to think that Wahhabism is the true teaching of Islam, but thanks to God, there has been a change of thinking,” said Siraj, who heads Nahdlatul Ulama, an organization with about 50 million members and 28,000 Islamic boarding schools.
The beheading, which triggered protests outside the Saudi Embassy and elsewhere, “has had a good influence” by accelerating a backlash against harsh imported strains of Islam, Siraj said.
“Mecca is a holy place, but the people who live there are very uncivilized,” said the executed maid’s daughter, Een Nuraeni, who prays regularly and wears a veil pulled tightly over her hair. “There is nothing in Islamic law that says you can torture or rape your housemaid.”
Her mother, desperate for money, had worked for three families in Saudi Arabia since taking her first job there in 1998. On trips home, Nuraeni said, she complained of being spat at in the face, beaten, deprived of food and other mistreatment, but kept going back “for the sake of her children.”
Migrant Care, an Indonesian group that lobbies on behalf of workers abroad, said it has this year already received 6,500 reports of violence, sexual harassment, rape and other abuses against Indonesians in Saudi Arabia. Eighty percent of the more than 1.2 million Indonesians working there are women, mostly maids.
Indonesia’s government, complaining that it received no advance notice of Satubi’s execution, recalled its ambassador from Riyadh and announced a moratorium from Aug. 1 on labor exports to the Gulf kingdom. Police set up a special unit at Jakarta’s main airport to enforce the order.
An Indonesian migrant worker prepared to be sent to Saudi Arabia, covers her face during an inspection by the police after a raid at a shelter in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, 22 June 2011. (MAST IRHAM/EPA)
The acrimonious rift between the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad and Indonesia, home to the largest community of his followers, even led to calls for a boycott of Mecca by hajj pilgrims.
The mood became so testy that when Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa announced that he had received an apology over the beheading from the Saudi ambassador in Jakarta, the kingdom’s usually mute embassy promptly issued a statement that accused the minister of lying.
Indonesia has traditionally embraced mostly relaxed forms of Islam. But starting in the 1970s under then-dictator Suharto, a flood of money from Saudi Arabia to fund mosques and other ventures helped boost a Wahhabi-tinged form of Islam known as Salafism, which sometimes veered into violent extremism.
The Bali bombings in 2002 and subsequent attacks in Jakarta were carried out by militants inspired by Salafi extremists such as Osama bin Laden. Nonviolent Salafis, meanwhile, emerged as a political force, helping to found the Islamist Justice and Prosperity Party, or PKS, which won nearly 8 percent of the vote in 2009.
Both strands are now in trouble. A wave of arrests and killings by security forces has largely uprooted the organizational foundations of Salafi jihad ideology, although it lives on thanks to the Internet. Abubakar Baasyir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, was sentenced in June to five years in prison for terrorism.
Meanwhile, the PKS, part of the governing coalition, has been tainted by allegations of corruption and has been torn by internal strife between purists and moderates. Some of its more hard-line members have been purged. “We threw them out” because they “always wanted 100 percent pure values of Islam” and couldn’t compromise, said Fahri Hamzah, a PKS member of parliament.
Siraj, the leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama organization, studied in Saudi Arabia for 13 years and came to despise the kingdom’s religious and political order, which he describes as “jahiliyyah” — the period of ignorance and hypocrisy that, according to the Koran, prevailed there before the arrival of the prophet Muhammad.
Salafis, he said, are by no means all violent and many eschew politics, but they “are very hard in the way they think.” He recently wrote the foreword to a new book, “The Bloody History of the Salafi-Wahhabi Sect.”
Hizb ut-Tahir, a nonviolent organization that wants an Islamic state or caliphate, defended the beheading as legal under Islamic law but called for an investigation into whether Satubi committed murder in self-defense. Ismail Yusanto, the group’s spokesman, said the problem is not strict Islamic justice but the poverty that drives women to work abroad when “their main place is the home.”
Saudi Arabia, worried by the spread of extremist thinking at home and damage to its reputation abroad since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has tried in recent years to check the export of militant Salafi ideas.
But what the Saudi government now condemns as mutant strains have nonetheless put down thin but tenacious roots on the margins in Indonesia, shielded in the past by a reluctance by many to criticize views supposedly rooted in the land of Muhammad’s birth.
“Saudi Arabia is the holy land, so people always used to make excuses for it,” said Wahyu Susilo, a policy analyst for Migrant Care. “They now realize that Saudi Islam is not the right image of Islam.” To protest the June beheading, his group printed thousands of posters saying: “Saudi Arabia — the killing fields for Indonesian women migrant workers.”
The Indonesian government, under fire for not doing enough to protect its citizens, last month secured the release of an Indonesian maid on death row in Saudi Arabia. It did this by paying compensation of $538,000 to the family of her employer, whom she killed after he allegedly tried to rape her.
Arab News, a newspaper based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, reported last week that Saudi authorities have agreed to spare two more Indonesian maids from beheading, including one convicted of using black magic to hurt her employer.
At her family’s village near Bekasi, east of Jakarta, Nuraeni, the daughter of the beheaded maid, has received a procession of visitors offering condolences and angry views on Saudi Arabia. Scores of women in the village have spent time working in the kingdom and shared stories of their travails there.
Even Nuraeni’s elderly grandfather, a sternly devout Muslim who has memorized the Koran and made a hajj trip to Mecca, wants nothing to do with the kingdom. “He now hates Saudi Arabia,” Nuraeni said.
For our complete coverage of foreign news, visit the world page.Fighting the Euroskeptics
The EU elections will be shadowed by paradox. Almost everyone agrees that the continent’s establishment parties will lose ground to insurgent ‘Euroskeptics’ on both the Right and Left, making it harder to conduct business as usual in Strasbourg and Brussels. If this happens, millions of people will have voted to devalue future exercises in supranational polling.
That is why both the European Union itself and the national parties that support it have mounted such an extensive get-out-the-vote campaign.
Worried that turnout will be low — it has been dropping steadily since the first Parliament was elected in 1979 — and therefore magnify the power of malcontents, Europe’s political establishment has been implying in not-so-subtle ways that people who refuse to participate in this week’s elections will be putting the continent at risk.
“Stop the Nazis!” exclaims a poster from Germany’s Pirate Party. That term may not be as specific as it once was, but it still has the power to invoke the collapse of the Weimar Republic. While the onset of the Great Depression was the most important factor in the rise of radical parties intent on that government’s destruction, the ease with which they secured electoral legitimacy surely didn’t help.
The danger of populism, both then and now, is that it can undermine the political and economic elites that “know best.” But that’s also what makes it so attractive to voters who feel shut out of the decision-making process. The National Socialist Party rose to prominence by exploiting the resentments of Germans who lived far from the capital, winning provincial elections in small states like Brunswick before transitioning to the national stage.
In contemporary Europe, a similar scenario is playing out on a larger scale, with some of the continent’s most troubled nations, such as Greece, serving as the proving ground for a supranational assault on the idea of supranationalism. But even in the continent’s wealthiest and most powerful states, such as Germany, more and more people are asking why they should sustain their investment in the idea of Europe.
Different versions of this dynamic have been playing out throughout the developed world, as animus from the periphery targets a center depicted as simultaneously remote and intrusive. Even in Japan, with a populace regarded as unusually homogeneous and averse to conflict, frustration at the pace of post-tsunami reconstruction has been high. And in the United States, the seeming demise of bipartisan sentiment has powerfully reinforced the conviction that Washington is out of touch.
This problem is worse still in the European Union, where differences of language and culture continually chip away at feelings of continental solidarity. Germany’s Social Democratic Party advocates for a “Europe of people, not money.” But the fact remains that the Euro is the main thing binding its citizens together. Or at least that’s what the Euroskeptics would have you believe.
Perhaps the most poignant of the pro-Europe campaign posters comes from the Green Party. A young woman of indeterminate, but most likely “southern” origin stares plaintively at the viewer above the slogan “I have a dream. I’m a refugee. I’m Europe.” While this language is clearly meant to invoke Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech during the 1963 March on Washington, the vagueness in the wording is vexing.
Does that dream persist in spite of her status as a refugee? Or is it, rather, a dream of dispossession? And what would it mean for someone on the margins like this to assume the identity of Europe? For many of the voters who wish to reduce or even eliminate the power of supranational authority, this figure of the outsider is precisely what they fear.
In a way, this girl serves as a stand-in for the European Union itself, which is derided both for not having a true home and for spending more time dreaming than it does awake. While she may be easier to identify with than a faceless bureaucrat in some Brussels office, the emphasis on her otherness ultimately exacerbates the impression that the Europe she represents is at odds with the national identities promoted by many Euroskeptics.
Commentary by Charlie Bertsch. Photographs courtesy of Joel Schalit.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Amazon Germany has listed Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, seemingly confirming long-running rumors that MachineGames is developing a sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order.
Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC versions of the game appeared on the retailer's website, with an October 27 release date. The listings were all taken down, but not before screenshots were taken and posted on NeoGAF.
Although Wolfenstein publisher Bethesda hasn't officially announced the game, it has teased it on numerous occasions. In February, for example, marketing executive Pete Hines said "MachineGames has been hard at work on something" that is "f**king bananas."
A mock cmd.exe screen flashed on-screen during Bethesda's E3 2016 briefing that showed an unknown property called "The New Colossus," with a release date listed as only **-**-**.
"New Colossus" may refer to a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, which, in addition to appearing on the base of the Statue of Liberty, was also recited by Wolfenstein protagonist BJ Blazkowicz at the end of The New Order.
In September 2015, Alicja Bachleda-Curus, who played Anya Oliwa in The New Order, said she's working on a "second one" that could launch in 2017. In October last year, B.J. Blazkowicz voice actor Brian Bloom strongly suggested that a new Wolfenstein game is on the way.
Bethesda is expected to announce its new games during its E3 press conference on June 11 at 9 PM PT / 12 AM ET / 5 AM GMT. GameSpot will be at hand to provide all the latest news as it breaks.Donald Trump's decor inspired by French king Louis XIV and the palace of Versailles
Updated
The moment Donald Trump moved into the Oval Office, he replaced the subdued maroon draping with gaudy gold curtains, in keeping with his longstanding preference for the kind of gilded decor that exudes opulence.
A Canberra scholar has been studying the parallels between with the interior styling of Mr Trump and that of Louis XIV, the French king who built Versailles.
The seat of power for the French nobility from Louis XIV's accession in 1661 until the French Revolution in 1789, the 700-room palace is a study in ostentatious wealth.
Many original items from the palace are on display at the NGA as part of its current exhibition.
Dr Robert Wellington, a scholar of Versailles style and a lecturer in art history at the Australian National University, said the US President's penchant for glittering decor in the aristocratic French style was all part of the Trump brand.
"If you make the right deal, if you do well in business, you can live like a king," he said.
Dr Wellington will present his work at a conference at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) this weekend.
Experts from around the world have come to the NGA to discuss the art of the Ancien Regime (French for "old regime"), as part of the gallery's exhibition on Versailles.
The US President has long been disposed to glittering decor. His Manhattan apartment is decked out in golden furniture, and he reportedly spent $7 million on gilding in the ballroom at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
But while the decor references Versailles, it's more style than substance.
"Whereas in the past in the 19th century in America the rich industrialists bought antiques — they loved French Ancien Regime antiques — Donald Trump isn't buying antiques," Dr Wellington said.
"He's not buying the real thing, but he's spending a lot of money," he said.
"It is kitsch... our traditional definition of kitsch is 'high art bought low' and in a sense it's bought low, it's not very good taste, but it is handmade and very expensive," he says.
The golden touch
Dr Wellington says President Trump's pattern of using gold throughout his properties is part of a long tradition of people copying the style of the French aristocracy.
"People who are trying to create social position for themselves through the display of opulent things," he said.
"They don't have family history [of wealth] but they try and create a sense of history for themselves by quoting the style of the French nobles, that is, the style of aristocracy."
President Trump is not alone in choosing to decorate in the style of Versailles.
There's a 'Chateau de Louis XIV' built in France by a Saudi-born property developer.
There's also an American copy of Versailles built in Florida by businessman David Siegal.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a fan of palatial decor including gold leaf, and Muammar Gaddafi favoured gilded chairs.
Protectionism and self-promotion
Dr Wellington points out that while President Trump is inspired by the luxury of Versailles, comparisons between him and King Louis XIV are unwise.
"Louis XIV was far from a 20th century capitalist - he wasn't promoting himself," he said.
"He was a representation of France."
The so-called Sun King built Versailles in a way that would benefit the French economy.
Dr Wellington points out that Trump doesn't use an American style to promote himself.
"He's spending a lot of money for display but perhaps without an understanding of the histories of design that he's quoting," he said.
Of course the absolute power of the Ancien Regime ended in bloody revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy.
But many objects and even phrases associated with power in our time stem from the era of Versailles.
For instance, the term 'bigwig', meaning someone who is powerful or even pompous, has its origins in the court of Louis XIV.
A somewhat contemptuous term today, it entered common parlance because French aristocrats literally wore large wigs.
Fashion historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is presenting her research on dress at the Court of Louis XIV at the NGA's conference.
"Big hair went along with big power," she said.
"To have long locks like Louis was like driving a red Ferrari.
"Hair made men and women difficult to ignore."
From his golden locks to his golden decor, the US President's showy style adheres to a long tradition of expressing privilege and power through all that glimmers.
Topics: donald-trump, design, history, person, canberra-2600, act, australia, united-states
First postednews The National Broadband Network has taken the extraordinary step of hiring one of the most senior executives of media organisation News Corp Australia to be its new chief financial officer, in a move which appears destined to bolster theories about the Coalition’s close connections with the Murdoch publishing empire.
This morning NBN Co announced the appointment of Stephen Rue to the position of chief financial officer. In a statement, NBN Co’s new chief executive Bill Morrow said:“Stephen is a well-credentialed senior finance executive who has managed a business through a complex and high profile transformation. His transparent approach is welcome at a time NBN Co continues to accelerate on its delivery. Stephen is an enthusiastic and engaging executive and I look forward to working with him.”
Rue will report directly to Morrow as a member of NBN Co’s Executive Committee and will join the team on 1 July.
Rue is well known in Australia’s media landscape as one of the most senior executives at News Corp Australia, the local division of global media organisation News Corp. His LinkedIn profile shows that he served the publisher as chief financial officer from June 2003 through September 2013. He held other senior roles at News Corp dating back to 1998, and served as a director of the company’s joint venture Foxtel for a year until September 2013.
The executive was also chairman of the Melbourne Storm for three years from mid-2010, and has a history as a senior audit manager at accounting firm Arthur Anderson through the 1980’s and 1990’s.
He will replace previous NBN Co chief financial officer Robin Payne, a respected executive who joined NBN Co in 2009 as general manager of Planning & Development and was eventually appointed chief financial officer. Payne was outed from NBN Co as part of an extensive management reshuffle in April that also saw the company’s head of commercial Kevin Brown, chief technology officer Gary McLaren and master network architect Peter Ferris leave the company.
The news of Rue’s appointment will be interpreted by much of Australia’s telecommunications sector as confirming what had previously been seen as speculation or even conspiracy theory that the current Coalition Federal Government was seeking to water down Labor’s ambitious FTTP NBN project to protect the existing interests of industry giants such as News Corp, especially the company’s Foxtel cable television joint venture with Telstra.
In his biography published last week, former independent MP Rob Oakeshott explicitly claimed there was a connection between the Coalition’s broadband policies and News Corp.
The Coalition’s policy has the “potential to return millions and millions of dollars in future profits” to News Limited and Telstra through Foxtel, Oakeshott reportedly wrote in the book. “As much as I have personal regard for Malcolm Turnbull, I think his telecommunications policy is wholly owned by Telstra and News Limited. It does nothing for consumers, and is a massive win for a couple of corporate boards.”
A comprehensive study of public attitudes towards Labor’s National Broadband Network project published in February by the University of Melbourne found the initiative enjoyed very high levels of widespread public support from ordinary Australians, despite what the study described as an “overwhelmingly negative” approach to the project by print media such as newspapers, including News Corp newspapers such as The Australian and the Daily Telegraph, which have run consistent campaigns against the NBN project.
Under the Coalition’s current broadband policy, which has been modified drastically since the Federal Election, NBN Co is likely to acquire the HFC cable networks owned by both Telstra and Optus, entrenching the strength of those networks and making them the default mode of network access in much of Australia’s metropolitan area. Foxtel uses Telstra’s cable network currently, as well as satellite access in rural areas, to distribute its content to customers.
Rue’s appointment runs directly contrary to comments made by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull prior to the election that he would seek new management for NBN Co which had direct experience with the telecommunications sector, with Rue appearing to lack such experience. In addition, Rue’s appointment also comes as a number of executives who have had close links to Turnbull or the Coalition have been appointed to senior positions at NBN Co.
opinion/analysis
Wow. Just wow. The message being sent here couldn’t possibly be clearer. And I think at this point we can all see what it is. I am sure Stephen Rue is a highly competent and respected executive in his field. But just wow.
Image credit: NBN CoIn Brazil you can find all of the First World attractions we have back in Europe, but it has the pace and attitude of a developing country, which I’m attracted to.
Editor's note: With the eurozone experiencing deflation for the first time since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009, and its unemployment rate unchanged at 11.5% for November, we thought it relevant to bring back this story, first published last October, on why young Spaniards are moving to Latin America.
Twenty-five percent unemployment, a dismal economic outlook and faith in the government at an all-time low. If it sounds like a recipe for failure for anyone with aspirations of building a career and a life, for Spaniards, that’s exactly what it is.
But rather than grit their teeth and hope to stretch their money and career prospects until the crisis wanes, some are taking matters into their own hands, leaving Spain and heading not just to Europe, but to Latin America, where language barriers are few and opportunities are plenty.
There, they are prized for their European education and background, and they are wooed with big salaries and the promise of moving quickly up the corporate ladder. Many Spaniards who’ve made the move find themselves surprised by the mix of modernity, opportunity and comforts of home in countries like Peru, Chile and Brazil.
Some 700,000 Spaniards left Spain between 2008 and 2012, according to research from Fundacion Alternativas. Figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute show that another 547,890 people left in 2013, although officials say just 79,306 of them were Spanish nationals born in Spain. They’re following a wave of Latin Americans who themselves migrated to Spain in the late 1990s but went back home as Spain’s recession lingered on and on. Those returnees have, in large part, spurred a wave of migration from Spaniards who had no connection to the American continent before.
While their numbers are “still very modest… immigration of Spaniards going to Latin America has risen a lot,” said Jesus Fernandez-Huertas Moraga, a Spanish researcher at the independent academic think tank Fedea.
From unpaid intern to head of media
Angel Lopez, 26, is one of them. The Alicante native arrived in Lima, Peru, in March, 2012, and went from an unpaid internship at Spain’s former Canal 9 TV station to a job as the head of media for a large educational company in Peru two years later. He’s now a regular fixture in televised debates, and frequently tours Peru as a keynote speaker on issues related to advertising and marketing.
“I left Spain earlier than many people of my generation, but I was working in a…television station that everyone knew was closing, I had almost completed my studies, and I thought, if I stay, I’ll be lucky to be a paid intern or trainee at 30,” he said.
It took Lopez a few months to adapt to a different culture, but the common language helped and Lopez said his life has “turned around 360 degrees in terms of opportunities and professional growth.”
Both family and friends were initially leery of the move. Lopez said there was “widespread ignorance” in Spain of what Peru was really like several years ago, with plenty of Spaniards viewing the country as a simple place of “mountains, traditional costumes and tacky TV shows.” He believes that vision has changed dramatically as the number of Spaniards in the country increases.
“If a few years ago we numbered in the hundreds, now there are thousands like me, and there are many Spanish companies bringing their business to Peru every day,” Lopez said.
That could be in part because Peru, and other parts of Latin America, sits squarely on an upward growth curve. While the International Monetary Fund projects Spain’s economy to grow in 2014 at 1.2%, it predicts Peru’s economy will grow at 5.5%, Mexico’s at 3%, Chile’s at 3.6% and Panama’s at 7.2%. Toss in a lower cost of living and the opportunity to leapfrog up the corporate ladder, and the attraction for Spaniards is even clearer.
The Spaniards are coming!
In several Latin American cities, locals commonly joke that not since the colonial days have so many Spaniards turned up with one ticket, two bags and the dream of a better life.
For 38-year-old Ana Bobo, that dream was birthed from a nightmare — near bankruptcy and the loss of her marketing agency in Madrid when her core market (public administration) saw a 50% decline.
“By the beginning of 2013 I was counting my days,” she recalled. “I just kept thinking about my future and as I began talking with people in Spain I realised there was no longer a place for me.” Bobo, who speaks Spanish and English, set her eyes on England, Peru, Colombia and Chile.
“There were not many opportunities [in England], so I focused on Latin America where there are more opportunities not only for jobs but for quicker growth,” she said.
Bobo flew to Santiago, Chile, last November to see if its economic prosperity and reputation as a safe city for expats and locals was real. Impressed (and wooed by several job offers) she returned in January to take a job as the marketing and development manager of a financial and operational leasing company. She’s encountered less cultural challenge than she’d imagined, said she hasn’t sacrificed her quality of life and earns a salary that’s two- to three-times what she thinks she could make in Spain these days.
“The European brand is still a huge advantage here,” she noted. “If you have the skills, you have the advantage.”
Government statistics show that immigration into Chile, Latin America’s wealthiest country, more than doubled last year with 5,739 Spaniards obtaining either temporary or permanent residency. By comparison, in 2005 only 3,700 Spaniards moved to the whole of Latin America, according to statistics compiled by The Economist.
One foot in each door
Javier García-Ramos had always wanted to live in South America, so when the economic slowdown in Spain stifled his professional growth, the Madrid-native made “a bold move” and relocated to São Paulo. The 44-year-old serves as director of mergers and acquisitions at a boutique Brazilian advisory firm.
That was two and a half years ago, and García-Ramos |
"genes" and that those "genes" allow the parents to influence the child. They prove this by pointing out two poodles will get poodle puppies and two cats will get kittens. While this sounds very convincing, it is not even close how it really works.As always, the real answers are in the Holy Bible. Genesis 30:37-39 to be exact: "Please note what happens here. By showing animals spots while they were mating, their offspring got spots. By showing animals stripes while they were mating, their offspring got stripes! Things are always easy with God. When scientists claim things are complicated, they are always lying. Usually to steal our money.So, by changing what animals look at while they are mating, you can completely control their offspring. Just like Jacob did in Genesis 30:37-39 The scientists got the poodles making poodles and cats making cats part right. But they got the reasons all wrong. The reason why poodles make poodles is not "genes" or "DNA". It is because they are looking at a poodle while they are having sex. The reason cats are making cats is because they see cats while they are having sex!This also explains why retarded parents get retarded children. It is because they are looking at a retard while they are having sex! Just go to the nearest trailer park to see how this works.Isn't it amazing how the Bible always contains an explanation that really explains everything? Unlike science where theories last a few weeks before a new theory is needed to fix the errors of the previous one!First of all you have to determine what kind of child you want to have. Let's say you want your child to become a great American football player. For this you would need a lot of large pictures of naked American football players in your bedroom. It is important that they are naked to prevent the child from getting weird spots and stripes. Make sure both you and your wife look intensively at these pictures of naked American football players while you are having sex. That's all you need to do to get a child that will become a great American football player!This could be your child if you ignored "genetics" and followed the Holy Bible:
CANCER is a state of mind! Time to stop ALL healthcare!!!
Down syndrome is a lifestyle choice!
10 Reasons why GOD HATES SOCCER!
Only Sluts Get Raped! (1st Timothy 2:9)
Protect your family the Christian way! Get your daughter raped! Follow me on Twitter or burn in Hell for all eternity!
To most "Christians" The Bible is like a license agreement. They just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree". All those "Christians" will burn in Hell!
James 2:10 "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." Follow me onor burn infor all eternity! Last edited by Cranky Old Man; 01-28-2011 at 09:30 AM. Last edited by Cranky Old Man; 01-28-2011 atSetting foot right on Amazon can be quite difficult. It has a current market cap of $390 billion which apparently is even more than the giant brick and mortar stores like Walmart; Best buy etc.
As these brick and mortar struggles, Amazon simultaneously is growing leaps and bounds. It comes as a no surprise that retailers are flocking towards Amazon to sell their products. However, as an Amazon sellers, there are thousands of thoughts that crosses your mind at least once a day.
Let’s admit it, as sellers these things does bother you-
Is my listed item optimized and the pricing associated with it any better than my competitors.
Is anyone complaining to Amazon about my fulfillment process or the quality of my product
Am I missing out on something, suddenly it seems my opponents knows everything better than me?
The best part about this anxiety is its awareness. Whether you are an FBA seller (Check the step by step guide for Amazon FBA here), an FBM, a multi-channel seller or a millionaire seller on Amazon optimizing your parts of the business will give you an edge. However while doing so, keep in mind these five things that will help you from sinking.
The devil is in the details: Tax issues
Whether you collect state and local tax or not on your Amazon sale, do not forget you still get the tax liability. While Amazon does let you collect state tax on your sale, there have been cases where sellers do not collect them only to learn that now they are liable for paying
At such instances, it does not matter if you are a big seller or not, what is important is that such blunders do mess up your margins. Hence it is crucial to go through the options for automating the sales tax collection within the Amazon Sellers Central tax setting. However, it’s not easy to comprehend the complex structure of the same; adhering to guidelines. So, these are commonly observed mistakes you should look out for.
What seller thinks VS Amazon Does
What Amazon says: “The tax settings that you specify determine the amount of tax charged on each order. It is the responsibility of the merchant to report and remit these taxes to the appropriate state taxing authority. Amazon Payments simply collects the calculated tax amount from the purchaser and deposits that amount, along with the other credits for the item price and the shipping & handling fees, to the merchant account.”
How to Fix it?
Whenever you sign up for, do not miss out on filing “Tax Settings” in Seller Central even before making a sale. That way, you would be able to focus more on the productive part of the business without any year-end tax surprise. Also, remember you are expected to remit your sales tax payments, not Amazon.
Buying Very Low-Cost Products
It is but obvious that any seller that has just started off will always go for products with lower cost. The logic goes like this,
Selling an item for $o.50, you lose only $0.50 if it fails. It’s selling on Amazon for $6.50! That’s like thirteen times of what you pay
The only issue with the logic is that you are forgetting the additional aspects of selling on Amazon. Selling anything less than $10.0 isn’t advisable, as it doesn’t gain you anything due to factors such as
Amazon Fees- The Amazon commission fees work on the percentage of sales price, though they do have a minimum fee policy. This minimum fee system hits your logic hard. If you are selling an item with the fewer selling price, the minimum charge will affect your most of sales price.
How to Fix it?
Also, if you are up for being FBA seller, you’re going to pay to Amazon for finding your product to shipping it. Though this services to come with the fixed prices, it won’t matter how you price your item. To cover up this, you need to have steady sales. Do not get sell products of less than $10. It might happen that the sale of a low-cost product, you won’t earn a penny and end up paying Amazon a lot.
Winning Amazon Buy BoX
The Amazon Buy Box is the white box seen on the right side of the detailed product page where customers can add products for buying directly to cart. However, not every seller is eligible for the buy box due to an immense competition. The seller with excellent seller metrics is likely to win this Box.
Now, let me tell you why is it so important for you? 82% of Amazon’ sales pass through the Amazon Buy Box, and it’s even higher for Mobile purchases.
It is crucial to comprehend the way Amazon’s algorithm functions and how will it let you increase your performance on relevant variables, thereby increasing your chance to win Buy Box.
However, there is a common misconception that having low product price increases your chance of winning Buy box. While it can’t be overlooked that low prices give you a competitive advantage, it is also true that it doesn’t offer great sales result. The art is in pricing your product keeping in mind other seller’s performance.
How to Fix it?
Sadly, no particular formula can land you buy a box. Amazon never spills beans on Buy Box Guidelines. But below are few things that can get you buy box
An actual product listing with all minute details
Keep your price Lower
Seller Performance
Customer experience
Time and expertise on Amazon
Available inventory
Amazon FBA seller
Do not overlook your Customer Reviews
Amazon is an extensively customer centric platform. It offers an open platform to customers where they can voice out their opinion strongly which may at times adversely affect your product.
Poor reviews can send out all sort of wrong signals leading to mistrust and loss of sales for you.
However, the fear of poor reviews shouldn’t stop you from asking them for feedback. More and More buyers are now turning to each other for honest feedback. 92% of consumers now read online reviews vs. 88% in 2014. It’s part of how customers buy. Even now if you are not leveraging the customer review, you are missing out on a very insightful data about purchasing decision.
How do you Fix it?
The best way to make the most of this feature is to ask for it directly. Amazon takes it customer’s pretty seriously, and they too know it. If at anytime you get feedback that is irrelevant or unfair, Amazon will help you out by removing it from you. So drop your worries for that!
Always remind your customer to leave feedback once they get their order. Do your best to be proactive with their clients, and do everything you can to manage disagreements and complaints.
And take a pledge,
Final Thoughts
Not every seller sells best or ranks high on Amazon. It’s a marketplace loaded with complexity and uncertainties. Even the best would fall at times. So, if you have just begun the situation can be little difficult to cope up
Hence, for minimum risk mitigation keep above suggestions in mind and take whatever proactive steps you can for your business and customer satisfaction. Getting your sales operation as automated and smoothly-running as possible should be priority one for every seller.Elsa, Anna, Rapunzel, and Kairi make up four of the new Princesses of Heart. Come theorise who the last three Princesses will be!
Details Published on August 8, 2012 @ 09:11 pm Written by Cecily
As I'm sure everyone is aware, Kingdom Hearts will be 10 years old on September 17th, 2012. To celebrate, a fan selection music collection has currently been in the works, and just today, series composer Yoko Shimomura has just reported on her twitter that the Master Discs for the collection has just been completed! The track listing will be revealed shortly, but she has reported that the original Dearly Beloved featured in the first game has made the cut and expresses her joy in response to it.
Drop by to discuss the fan selection and everything else pertaining to the music within the KH series in our music thread!Marines who fought Somali pirate gangs barred from wearing their medals... because their missions weren't risky enough
Hundreds of marines confronted Somali pirates - armed with AK-47s
Seized lethal weapons and destroyed their boats in series of raids
Were awarded a Nato medal on their return to the UK
But top brass have ruled they cannot wear the gong on their uniforms
The Nato medal awarded to marines during their daring anti-pirate missions
Hundreds of Royal Marines who tackled gangs of gun-toting Somali pirates on the high seas have been barred from wearing their medals after defence chiefs ruled that their missions were not risky enough.
The Marines confronted pirates armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in a series of daring engagements, blowing up their boats and seizing lethal weapons.
The brave squaddies spent months on patrol before returning to the UK, where they received a Nato medal recognising the success of their counter-piracy operations. But top brass have ruled they cannot wear the gong on their uniforms.
When they complained, the Marines were shocked to learn their battles fell foul of the ‘Risk and Rigour Principle’ which states the risk to life and limb should exceed what might normally be expected of UK Service personnel.
Last night, furious Lance Corporal Arron Welch, of the Royal Marines’ Fleet Contingency Troop, said: ‘I believe that boarding a dhow [pirate ship] harbouring pirates who have been seen with weapons and have refused to stop even after we’ve fired at them constitutes a risk.
‘This case does not just concern me and my group of 30 [Marines] but a large number of Service personnel who have worked to protect innocent people and the world’s economy from piracy.
'At a time when morale in the Forces is low and with even more cuts to come, this ruling is another instance of the efforts of our Forces being overlooked and under-appreciated.’
More than 250 Royal Marines, members of the Special Boat Service (SBS) and the crew of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Fort Victoria served for three months at a time on Operational Capri, a multinational mission to defeat pirates sailing off Somalia.
From 2009 to 2013 the Marines faced heavily armed Somalis. UK forces captured 108 pirates and destroyed 17 vessels.
Royal Navy sailors and SBS troopers also secured the release of 43 seafarers taken hostage – yet they are barred from displaying the Nato medal they were awarded.
The authors connected the rise of piracy and maritime violence in Somalia to battles over fishing rights. Pictured is a'skiff', a small boat frequently used by pirates, off the Somalia coast
The Nato medal, cast in bronze with a blue and white ribbon and the clasp ‘Africa’, was also awarded to troops from the US, the Netherlands, Canada and Italy. They are entitled to wear the medal.
An MoD spokesman said: ‘It is only right the highest standards are set when medals are awarded to recognise the risk and rigour our people face on operations.Story highlights This March 6 marks the 15th anniversary of "The Big Lebowski's" release
The flick, which opened to mixed reviews, is now considered a cult hit
Bridges: "Your 12-year-old, or your teeny bopper, or most grandparents just won't get it"
He's played singers, sailors and serial killers, but there's one role that die-hard fans of Jeff Bridges can't get enough of: The stoner.
"Who knows? Mystery of the unknown," the Academy-Award winning actor tells CNN about the enduring legacy of "The Big Lebowski."
"Maybe it has to do with turning someone on to something you dig; it is like turning your younger brother on to Led Zeppelin, when he's ready to get it."
Sprinkle a healthy dose of "mans" and f-bombs into that quote and it could have been uttered by The Dude himself. "It's something that entertains people on a whole other level than most films," Bridges says, "and once they've enjoyed it, they have to share with someone."
The sharing is certainly growing for "Lebowski." This March 6 marks the 15th anniversary of the movie's release. Hard to believe that the Southern Californian odyssey that opened to mixed reviews (The New Yorker called it an "irritatingly antic caper") is now considered among the best in the Coen Brothers canon and a bona fide cultural phenomenon.
The appreciation goes way beyond the silver screen. Books are written about "The Big Lebowski," including one by Bridges himself. There are "Lebowski Fests" held nationwide where fans gather, often dressed as their favorite characters.
The "Lebowski Fest" slated for Los Angeles March 22-23 features the actors who played Woo, The Malibu Sheriff and the Ralph's check-out girl who watched The Dude write a 69 cent check for a carton of milk. This past weekend, the now iconic bathrobe worn by Bridges throughout the movie was auctioned off for $22,755, according to Premiere Props in Los Angeles.
There's even the "Little Lebowski Shop" in New York that sells merchandise ranging from shirts and mugs to action figures and a life-size cutout of The Dude.
"Business has been good," says Roy Preston, the owner of the store. "I have customers coming in ranging in age from 8 to 70 and from all over the world. There's something universal about it that speaks to people."
What's so universal about an unemployed slacker who wears bathrobes, loves White Russians and hates the Eagles? "He's the unlikely hero of our times," says Brian Balthazar, editor of the entertainment site popgoestheweek.com. "There are a lot of people that oddly enough want to be like him, to be completely intent in his apathy in life. And then have this guy embark on a crazy journey? It is literally the ultimate dude movie."
A dude movie filled with memorable performances. There's John Goodman as the Vietnam veteran whose observance to the Jewish sabbath prevents him from bowling on Saturdays. ("I don't roll on Shabbos" he bellows from the lanes.) John Turturro is the rival bowler named Jesus, who also happens to be a convicted sex offender.
Peter Stormare, who played both a porn star and German nihilist in "Lebowski" laughs when talking about the film's cult-like following. "I'm amazed because it's bigger than "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," he says. "I've been to two or three Lebowski fests and it's pretty bizarre to see 20 Karl Hunguses walking around. It's an honor and at the same time it's a little strange."
Stormare is also surprised by the film's continued success. "None of us really thought the movie would do well because they didn't do anything big for it when it came out," he tells CNN. "They didn't really promote it, and then it caught on like a sleeper and came just roaring as the years went by."
Bridges cautions that "Lebowski" may not be for everyone. "Your 12-year-old, or your teeny bopper, or most grandparents just won't get it," he says while making it clear it may be more of a "guy" thing.
"I can just imagine how many older brothers wait for their younger bros to turn 16 or whatever perfect age for them to truly be able to soak in all of the pointless amazingness that the "Big Lebowski" has to offer! All the Dude ever wanted was his rug back!"
The Dude abides, and 15 years later, so does the actor.
"I don't see this ever stopping or slowing down," says Bridges.This post may contain referral/affiliate links. If you buy something, MSA may earn a commission. Read the full disclosure
GlossyBox is a monthly beauty subscription box. They have the best packaging in the business, their products are usually deluxe size or full size, and the value is usually good too.
This box was sent to us for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).
FYI: GlossyBox sends out multiple variations of the box during some months. So, there may be some variation between what I review and what you receive.
The Subscription Box: GLOSSYBOX
The Cost: $21 a month (save more with 6-month or annual subscription)
DEAL: For a limited time, use coupon code EYEADORE to get this mascara for free with your first month of Glossybox!
The Products: Deluxe and full-size beauty products.
Check out all of my GlossyBox reviews and the list of the best beauty and makeup subscription boxes!
Ships to: US and Canada
Each box comes with a fold out card detailing the items included:
I love that they are now showing all item variations in this card!
Now, onto the items:
The Estee Edit Pink Peony Overnight Water Pack –.24 oz Value $7
(This item is in all boxes.)
This is a hydrating gel/cream mask that you wear overnight. It is scented with perfume, but it was subtle enough not to bother me. The formula is hydrating and my skin felt softer the next day. (I can’t say I noticed any difference between putting this on at night vs putting on a super hydrating moisturizer.)
Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat – FULL SIZE! Value $30
(This item is in all boxes.)
This is such an awesome item that I’m surprised GlossyBox didn’t use it as a spoiler! This gel coat helps strengthen nails, and it also provides an instant shine and pink hue that makes nails look healthier. (And it dries almost instantly, too.)
Jeanne Arthes L’Eau De Rose Perfume – Value $26
(This item is in all boxes. No product link because this item was made exclusively for Glossybox.)
This is a great sized perfume to get in a subscription box. If you like rose scented products, I think you will love this perfume. If like me, rose scents are not your favorite, this perfume will be a miss.
BC Repair Rescue Deep Nourishing Treatment – 1 oz Value $2.25
(Subscribers will receive this treatment or BC Excellium Taming Treatment, BC Smooth Perfect Smoothing Cream, or BC Moisture Kick Beauty Balm.)
This mask is designed to be applied to towel-dried hair and rinsed out after 5-10 min. I like a quick hair mask, so this one worked well for me and made my hair noticeably softer.
Eve by Eve’s Mattifying HD Loose Powder – FULL SIZE! Value $58
(Subscribers will receive this item or the Eve by Eve’s Cream Blush, Gel Eyeliner, Drama Luxe Conditioning Gel Mascara, Lip Definer, or Eyebrow Definer.)
This powder did an excellent job of absorbing shine and leaving a matte, blurred finish.
Verdict: This box has a value of about $123. I lucked out getting got the highest-value Eve by Eve’s product so the value of this box isn’t going to be this high for all subscribers. For comparison, the lowest value combination of products would be about $84. I think this is a great box for February. My favorite items are the Pink Gel Coat and the Mattifying Powder, but I’ll use everything besides the perfume.
Oh, and how gorgeous is the box this month?
What do you think of the February 2017 GlossyBox?
Liz is the founder of My Subscription Addiction. She’s been hooked on subscription boxes since 2011 thanks to Birchbox, and she now subscribes to over 100 boxes. Her favorites include POPSUGAR Must Have FabFitFun, and any box that features natural beauty products!Robin Williams' widow explains how his rare brain disease left the couple struggling to understand his symptoms, in a new essay published in the medical journal Neurology.
In the moving piece, Susan Schneider Williams says her late husband was initially diagnosed with Parkinson's, until the autopsy revealed the actor was more specifically suffering from Lewy body disease, a little-known and severe form of dementia.
Symptoms went unexplained
"Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it," she wrote in the essay published this week. "Can you imagine the pain he felt as he experienced himself disintegrating?"
Schneider Williams, a graphic designer and on the American Brain Foundation's board of directors, said she has spent the last year researching the disease since finding out the results three months after the comedian died.
She said in the year prior to her late husband's suicide in 2014, the Patch Adams star was experiencing paranoia, anxiety, depression, insomnia and memory impairment.
'I just want to reboot my brain'
"Robin was having trouble remembering even one line for his scenes," Schneider wrote about Williams' experience on set of Night at the Museum 3, which was shot in Vancouver.
Actor Robin Williams poses for a portrait in 2011. He did not know before killing himself in 2014 that he was suffering from a severe form of dementia called Lewy body disease. (Dan Steinberg/Associated Press)
She compared it with his memory "just three years prior" when he starred for five months in a Broadway production, with "hundreds of lines" and "not one mistake."
"This loss of memory and inability to control his anxiety was devastating to him," she said, later adding: "He kept saying, 'I just want to reboot my brain.'"
Negative test results confusing
Despite "countless blood tests, urine tests, plus rechecks of cortisol levels and lymph nodes" among other tests including a brain scan, all the results came back negative, she said.
She said the late comedian remained clean and sober, turning to psychotherapy, meditation, self-hypnosis and yoga to try to alleviate the symptoms and remove the "terrorist within his brain."
"Robin was growing weary. The Parkinsonian mask was ever present and his voice was weakened. His left hand tremor was continuous now and he had a slow, shuffling gait. He hated that he could not find the words he wanted in conversations."
Williams was found dead after he hanged himself at his Tiburon, Calif., home on Aug. 11, 2014.
Last words
His widow said she believes he was likely experiencing symptoms far worse and painful than he let on, exacerbated by the fact that the couple couldn't get an accurate diagnosis.
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"How I wish he could have known why he was struggling, that it was not a weakness in his heart, spirit or character."
Schneider Williams also shared the final words exchanged with her husband the night before he died, saying she believed at the time he was getting better after the pair had spent "one long date" together.
"When we retired for sleep, in our customary way, my husband said to me, 'Goodnight, my love,' and waited for my familiar reply: 'Goodnight, my love,'" she wrote. "His words still echo through my heart today."Over the last few days, since Kate published the list of Sad Puppies recommends, we’ve been inundated both in email and in social media by people requesting, clamoring and whining to be removed from the list. The eructations from these special snow flakes vary in levels of self-delusion and insanity and at least one was very polite.
The prize MUST go to Damien Walter of Grauniad fame for tweeting that he hopes Kate Paulk has deep pockets, to withstand all the lawsuits resultant from putting people on the list without asking their permission.
I know that poor Damien probably was born with rocks for brain (I apologize to any rocks I might be maligning) before he filled it with Marxist excrement, but seriously, kid, DO pull your socks up and try to keep up with those of normal intelligence. What Kate did was collect recommendations for an AWARD — you know, something that publishers and writers in the past have shown they covet? — from fans of the writer and then use arithmetic — you know, that thing you slept through in first grade while collecting grievances and how people told you to pull your socks up? — to collate a list of recommended reading for those intending to nominate for the award.
If that’s actionable in your world, then your tweet is a walking libel case, and the things you grace the pages of Teh Grauniad with should see you flogged at Charing Cross — at least in more vigorous times.
And no, little Damien, this is not actionable either. This is merely a statement of your actions and an inference of your intellectual capacity.
When you tell people who have actually been slandered in mainstream media and called racists, sexists and homophobes not only with no evidence but with contrary evidence, that RECOMMENDING SOMEONE FOR AN AWARD without “asking their permission” is actionable, you are suffering levels of delusion that most people are medicated for. Either that or you lack the intellectual capacity G-d gave a goose.
Speaking of which, all of you, even the polite ones, who send me purple prose about how badly Brad Torgersen ran Sad Puppies IV and how he created an evil slate also make me doubt your mental capacity. Seriously, guys? A slate? If you’d bothered to look at the numbers and had a minimum of arithmetic ability (did you also sleep through it in first grade, while dreaming of little Damien’s slights and grievances? — Seriously, he really should pull his socks up) you’d have realized the only real slate was “no award.” Sad puppies nominations and votes were not only not lockstep but all over the place. Because, you know, they were reading what was suggested and making up their own minds, instead of — like the other side — taking marching orders from their betters who told them to not even read and just vote no-award.
Also, and btw, if you’d bothered to read the definition of slate, you’d stop thinking it was some uber evil thing:
Slate:
noun
1.
a fine-grained rock formed by the metamorphosis of clay, shale, etc., that tends to split along parallel cleavage planes, usually at an angle to the planes of stratification.
2.
a thin piece or plate of this rock or a similar material, used especially for roofing or as a writing surface.
3.
a dull, dark bluish gray.
4.
a list of candidates, officers, etc., to be considered for nomination, appointment, election, or the like.
A list of candidates TO BE CONSIDERED. I.e., in book terms, read them and vote for what you like.
In other words, what Locus publishes when it does its list of recommendation? Slate. What various names in SF publish every year? Slate. And by this I don’t mean a dull dark bluish gray, except in the case of the lists published by some writers, which do tend to the grey goo.
So, where is that evil evil “vote lockstep” meaning in it? Nowhere. Were you so sure your “thought leaders” (who apparently have your thoughts on a little chain) were correct you never bothered to check the dictionary.com definition? And you call yourself thinking adults?
Oh, well done.
A list, which Brad also compiled in public from recommendations suddenly became a magical and somehow evil “slate” that must be stopped at all costs, because some loudmouths with vested interests thought so.
And speaking of vested interests darling brainless ones: HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER?
Over and over in the media — much of it the sort of mass media only a mainstream publisher can reach through their contacts — you talked about a cabal of powerful white, straight men trying to keep women and minorities from science fiction or at least from recognition in science fiction.
This took the sort of faith that used to lead people to convince themselves they’d seen street-corner sorcerers perform magic. Seriously.
First if you’d bother to look at that evil recommends list, you’d have seen plenty of women and some minorities. At least before you browbeat some of them into public denunciations of the list and self-deleting. Most of this in public, btw. Second, if you’d bothered thinking for two minutes, you’d have realized the Sad Puppies cohort consisted mainly of fairly new writers. Yes, one is a bestseller, but he’s fairly new. He also publishes only with Baen, the publisher none of you wants into.
I think I’m the longest published there, and I’m a midlister, which in this field means I have no power of any kind, save the power to scream when I’m cut from a publisher’s list. Also, last I checked I’m a woman and the federal government insists I’m Latina (at least some departments, but even for the census I fall in under Galician since Galicia extends to Portugal and the area my family comes from. And while that’s not a race group but a culture group let me assure you if I am out in the sun and mildly well as opposed to as ill as I’ve been the last few years, I can still spot melanin to your entire side while remaining darker than average.)
Two other women on our side are INDIE published only (except for short stories) even though one of them makes a living at it. Oh, and while I’ve never looked up close and personal (we’re not that kind of friends) I have it on fairly good authority that they’re both women. One of them gave birth to a kid, after all.
So tell me by what feat of insanity you think any of us — if we wanted to do that, which none of us do — could keep women or minorities out of the field?
I tell you who could: a major publisher, which can decide who gets published and not, and which can spend to buy memberships for its people so that they can vote lockstep for the awards. (They probably expense it. And they probably have some under-secretary deputized to make sure all the ballots are absolutely alike.)
You know, the same people who have been accusing us — people with no power in the field — of distorting and perverting the awards. Those people. The people with all the power.
But they told you that you were speaking truth to power and you believed them. Or perhaps worse, you know they were lying, but you are so desirous of the benefits that power can confer on you that you’ll slander, lie and attack on command, knowing its a lie and wishing only to receive the benefits of that lie commanded by evil and self-interested people.
I can’t tell which is which: whether you’re dumb or conniving. I’ll leave that for you to decide in front of your mirror every morning of the rest of your life.
I’ll only note you’re worse than the Soviets who condemned the Kulaks during holodomor, worse than the people on the street who mouthed the Nazi lies about Jews during WWII. Why worse? Because those people lived in fear of their lives. They had to say what they did because they feared being next on the kill list.
But you? You willingly go along with slanders and destroy reputations and attempt to destroy livelihoods for the sake of a plastic rocket. To coin a phrase: It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Wales, Richard?
One of you I knew to be insane since an unprovoked orchestrated attack years ago, but the rest of you (Damien excepted. Damien is just funny) I had some respect for, ranging from lots of it to residues. Now I don’t.
Depart from us in peace. Go lick your chains and cavort before your masters at their command. Relish the slavery you purchased so dearly.
As for us, we shall make some note you requested removal, in some way that YOU insult the fans who went through so much trouble to nominate you and who up-voted your work enough times to get it on our list. We won’t insult them for you.
Until Kate returns from Lunacon that’s the only answer I’m willing to give you. And it’s more than courtesy demands, since I know you’ll take no answer but what comes from those who hold your thoughts captive.
Someday maybe you’ll wake up and realize what you’ve done. On that day may you be able to forgive yourselves.Isis fighters have shot and killed nine children close to the ancient city of Palmyra, a Syrian monitoring group has claimed.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said government workers were among those killed by militants rapidly advancing on the Unesco world heritage site.
The SOHR said Isis launched attacks on Tadmur, which is close to Palmyra, on Thursday, leading Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria's director-general of antiquities and museums, to call for help in protecting the 2,000-year-old city from falling into its clutches.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Rami Abdel Rahman, the Observatory’s director, told The Independent 23 people were shot dead on Friday morning, including nine children.
“The children’s fathers were working in the Syrian government, not in intelligence or anything like that but as office workers,” Mr Rahmen said. “We heard that they were shot yesterday morning and we had it confirmed from people there in the evening.
“There was a lot of attention internationally on the situation yesterday; Isis probably wanted to change the focus onto them.”
Palmyra, “an oasis in the Syrian desert”, lies north-east of Damascus and is known for its Roman-era architecture, described by Unesco as a marriage of Graeco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences. It was once a tourist hotspot before civil war broke out in Syria and contains a famous colonnaded main street and the temple of Baal.
Syrian troops are battling to repel Isis on the ground and are being supported by government war planes attacking their positions, according to the SOHR.
Shape Created with Sketch. Western fighters join Kurds in battle against Isis Show all 9 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Western fighters join Kurds in battle against Isis 1/9 Foreign Fighters A 67-year old foreign fighter from Canada, nick-named by Kurdish fighters as Hewal Zinar, poses for a photo on April 19, 2015 Uygar Onder Simsek / AFP 2/9 Foreign Fighters A 23-year old fighter and ex-US marine from the US, nick-named by Kurdish fighters as Hewal Agir, guards a look out point during clashes with Islamic State (IS) group fighters on April 17, 2015, in the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr AFP 3/9 Foreign Fighters A 26-year old from the US, nick-named by Kurdish fighters as Hewal Dilsad, shows a picture of his wife and son as he poses for a photo on April 14, 2015, in the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr 4/9 Foreign Fighters Ex-US marines aged 23 and 24 from the US, nick-named by Kurdish fighters as Hewal Agir (R) and Hewal Agit, guard a position during clashes with Islamic State (IS) group fighters on April 17, 2015, in the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr AFP 5/9 Foreign Fighters A group of international foreign fighters pose for a photo on April 16, 2015, in the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr AFP/ Getty Images 6/9 Foreign Fighters A foreign fighter poses for a photo with a machine gun on April 19, 2015, in the outskirts of Tal Tamr AFP 7/9 Foreign Fighters A 28-year old foreign fighter from the UK, nick-named by Kurdish fighters as Hewal Baran, poses for a photo on April 19, 2015, in the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr, north of Hasakeh AFP/ Getty Images 8/9 Foreign Fighters A 21-year old from the UK and 23 year-old from the US nick-named by Kurdish |
Processor sequences.To show the performance impact let’s take a few threads each updating their own independent counters. These counters will bes so the world can see their progress.Running the above code while ramping the number of threads and adding/removing the cache line padding, I get the results depicted in Figure 2. below. This is measuring the duration of test runs on my 4-core Nehalem.The impact of false sharing can clearly be seen by the increased execution time required to complete the test. Without the cache line contention we achieve near linear scale up with threads.This is not a perfect test because we cannot be sure where thewill be laid out in memory. They are independent objects. However experience shows that objects allocated at the same time tend to be co-located.So there you have it. False sharing can be a silent performance killer.Please read my further adventures with false sharing in this follow on blogBrighton is one of the most diverse places in the country where dozens of different faiths and nationalities live side by side. And yet the city keeps its English seaside feel too, thanks in part to some amazing pieces of architecture, such as the pier, the grand hotel and the Royal Pavilion. The Pavilion attracts 300,000 visitors a year, all taking in the Regency folly and grandeur of the place.
But 100 years ago the Pavilion was quite a different place. From 1914 to 1918, the prestigious Royal Pavilion estate was used as a military hospital for wounded Indian soldiers. A total of 724 beds were available and by the end of the war, more than 4,000 Indians and Gurkhas had been treated here.
Brighton had three hospitals for Indian soldiers at the time, the others were the York Place schools that were converted into a hospital for the more heavily wounded, and the Elm Grove workhouse, which was renamed the Kitchener Hospital and treated less serious casualties. The Kitchener was the largest and held 2,000 beds, but the Royal Pavilion became the most famous.
The makeshift hospital and its patients were photographed for postcards; over 120,000 of these were sold in Brighton alone. Some of them were published in a remembrance book, written in English, Urdu and Gurmukhi (Indian Punjabi). Copies of the work (20,000) were also distributed in India. Paintings and a short film were also produced.
Little is known about the contribution of Indian troops to the World Wars, namely, they fought with the British and made up the largest volunteer armies: 1.5 million in World War One and 2.5 million in World War Two.
Location: The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, Sussex BN1 1EE
Image shows soldiers recuperating in Ward 5 (the Music Room) inside the Pavilion
Image courtesy of the Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove
Presented by Davinder DhillonEl Paso Police department get some feedback Wednesday night on the possibility of a pub crawler roaming the streets of downtown.
If you’re not familiar with what a pub crawler is, it’s a large peddle bike where a group of people can ‘bar hop’ from one pub to another. People help peddle the bike while the driver steers it.
Some people at the meeting are trying to bring the pub crawler to El Paso. Before that can happen, police have to develop an ordinance for the pub crawler.
The pub crawler can be a “bring your own beer” type of transportation and that raised some concerns for people.
A lot of people attending the meeting do not like the idea of people getting drunk and using the pub crawler as a means of transportation. Some even called it “dangerous.”
But others argued that’s not what it is used for.
“Well a lot of people think that the pub crawler is a party bus,” said Lilia Amaya. “It’s not just focused on bringing in alcohol. It’s safe because it’s very low speed, it doesn’t go at a fast rate. You’re not going to be speeding with other cars.”
Law enforcement officials said at the meeting the bike can go around 5 mph. Some people had concerns with how fast it goes and how it would affect traffic in downtown El Paso.
Some people at the meeting want a strict ordinance for the pub crawler.
“Well I think a strong ordinance is the way to go, and I’m talking about regulations,” said Gary Hoff. “Making sure there’s liability insurance on these things, and making sure the driver is liable just like he was a bartender.”
Once EPPD and the city attorney come up with an ordinance, it will be brought to the City Council for approval. No date is set on when that will be.* From Normington, Petts and Associates…
To: Interested Parties
From: Jill Normington
Date: August 8, 2016
MEMORANDUM
The following is a summary of findings from a live interview telephone survey conducted among 800 likely voters in Illinois. Respondents were reached on both landlines and mobile phones. Interviews were conducted August 1-4, 2016. The sampling error for this survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Summary
• After the recent television exchange, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth has expanded her lead over Senator Mark Kirk to 44% to 37%.
• Duckworth clearly won the recent television exchange that has strengthened her position and drained him of resources.
• These improvements for Duckworth took place without any commensurate advantage in the presidential race.
Over the course of the last three weeks, despite national polls showing a convention bounce for Hillary Clinton, our polling indicates that Illinois is unaffected. Our July 11-14 poll showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump 51%-32%. The current August 1-4 poll shows Clinton besting Trump 51%-32%. Partisan identification is actually net two points more Republican over that span. While there is stasis at the top of the ticket, what has changed is the Senate race.
In late June, Republican incumbent Senator Mark Kirk began an advertising campaign in the Chicago media market focused on distancing himself from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. From June 23-July 28, Kirk spent more than a million dollars on two television ads that sought to establish his independence from his Republican party and attacked Tammy Duckworth on her commitment to Veterans, using the IDVA lawsuit as his primary evidence. According to his most recent FEC filing, Kirk’s million-dollar television expenditure was roughly one-third of his total cash on hand of $3.1M.
From July 14-29, Duckworth spent just $620,00 defending herself and reacquainting voters with her record. The net effect of this exchange, despite getting outspent, is that Duckworth increased her lead over Kirk. As the chart below indicates, our July poll showed Duckworth leading Kirk by just two points, 40%-38% in the wake of more than $500,000 worth of advertising from Kirk to which Duckworth had yet to respond. This most recent poll shows Duckworth leading Kirk by seven, 44%-37%, after airing her rebuttal ad.
Duckworth made gains among constituencies critical to Kirk’s success in November. She pulled ahead among Independents and grew her vote among white voters downstate, among whites without a college degree and among Veteran households. Moreover, she continues to hold substantial leads among the core Democratic constituencies of African American (71%-12%), Hispanic (69%-17%), women (48%-31%) and millennial (46%-32%) voters.
It is clear that when Duckworth has adequate resources to compete in a television exchange, that she can win it. Moreover, Kirk expenditures only served to increase Duckworth’s already sizeable cash on hand advantage over him. While there are still three months to go until Election Day, Tammy Duckworth has emerged from the initial round of paid communication with Mark Kirk in better electoral and fiscal shape than when it began.The Lollipop update for the Galaxy Note 4 may be getting slowed down by Gear VR support, but the Galaxy Note Edge has yet to receive Android 5.0 too (the Gear VR is not compatible with the Edge). An XDA-Developers member has a beta version of an official Android 5.0.1 build and has shared it with the community.
It's a build number XXU1BOA2 and is very recent from January 27 but it has issues to be ironed out. One user reports a deep sleep bug, so it's recommended that you set the minimum CPU frequency to 300MHz to mitigate the issue.
Beta version of Android 5.0.1 Lollipop on Samsung Galaxy Note Edge
You'll also need to backup your device, one user had success with flashing the ROM without a full wipe, but there are no guarantees. The ROM can be flashed with Odin 3.09 and you can also throw in CWM and root (with SuperSU).
The Android Lollipop ROM is reportedly smoother than the KitKat software that currently powers the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge. You can find more details about the ROM and how it behaves - not to mention the download links - by following the source link. This ROM isnt officially released for a reason, so flash it at your own risk.
SourceFC Ingolstadt – Borussia Dortmund 4:0
Another 4 goals, another Bundesliga victory as Tuchel took his side to the top of the Bundesliga with a dominant win over newly-promoted Ingolstadt.
Again BVB set themselves out in their 4-2-3-1 cross 4-1-4-1 formation with just two changes from their opening day demolition of Gladbach as Ginter came in for Piszczek and Subotic returned from injury to take Sokratis’ position,. Roman Burki reclaimed his spot as Dortmund’s number 1 and was near-completely untested behind a back 4 of Schmelzer, Hummels, the newly-returned Subotic and Ginter who scored the opener in the second half.
Julian Weigl deservedly kept Bender out of the side as he again started as Dortmund’s 6 after an excellent league debut at home to Gladbach whilst Gundogan also featured for the 2nd consecutive league game to his right as their 8.
Shinji Kagawa formed the top of the triangle in his role as Dortmund’s 10, scoring their third goal to top off another good performance. To his left sat Mkhitaryan who has been one of Dortmund’s best players so far now under new manager Tuchel. The Armenian attacking midfielder has featured on the left of Dortmund’s midfield and plays a key role in their penetrations down the left – something which has been a common feature of their possession game so far. Marco Reus returned on the right after being rested from travelling to play Norweigan side Odd Ballklubb in the Europe League, whilst Aubameyang scored again as the lone striker.
Hectic Opening
The first 15 minutes of the game were somewhat frantic and most of it was spent in transition as both sides struggled to maintain any possession. Ingolstadt in particular were pressing aggressively and made themselves known to the likes of Weigl and Mkhitaryan who were both the target of some strong challenges. Likewise Dortmund were pressing without the ball though, especially considering Ingolstadt’s direct passing, not with the same level of intensity.
As a result of this, it took a while for Dortmund to get properly settled into their possession game without the supporting influence of Weigl and the more possession-oriented Mkhitaryan. It was during these moments where the home side created a couple of dangerous situations through regaining the ball high however the following attacks lacked co-ordination whilst Dortmund’s counterpressing has to be given some credit too
Some of Dortmund’s issues in possession were as a result of their own doing, with little influence from the Ingolstadt defence. Both collectively and individually there were a number of cases of poor decision making, such as a tendency to move the ball into wide areas early in possession despite no decisive pressure from the opposition. During this period of the game there were a number of occassions where Dortmund looked to make a quick break after regaining possession but didn’t have a good structure for doing so and ultimately they broke down. The result was at times a near-tennis match of long balls where accuracy was a rarity.
In this situation we can see a lack of presence in the centre as Aubameyang has strangely decided to move to the area with the weakest strategical value considering the situation and ball position. One could also critique Gundogan’s choice of pass instead of a more stable shorter pass to better build through combination. That being said there is a lack of support with both Mkhitaryan and Reus moving away leaving Kagawa the only realistic option to provide benefit to the counter.
Ingolstadt Pressing
The home side defended with intensity, especially early on, and through their use of a man-marking pressing scheme were able to target specific players who are key to Dortmund’s early possession. They in particular looked to target the likes of Weigl, who showed his importance last week as he aids the connections to progress the ball upfield securely and effectively and Mkhitaryan who is key in possession down the left where he aids in combinations with Schmelzer and Kagawa.
Their forward Hinterseer was relatively loose in his marking responsibilties and would press the ball-near centre-back as well as situationally the goalkeeper Burki. Behind him however the marking was much more strict with the 2nd and at times the 3rd lines covered with Weigl in particular the recipient of aggressive challenges.
Throughout the game, Ingolstadt severely lacked stability in their press, especially once the 1st line had been passed and this was exposed the moment that they lost defensive access. Their loss of access happened commonly enough on its own though it was encouraged by some intelligent horizontal ball circulation from Dortmund as they waited for the inevitable. The most common occurence of this however came through a failure in a 1v1 challenge as the whole defensive strategy crumbled in just one of man-marking’s many disadvantages.
Because of one player losing out in the battle with his marking assignment, the whole structure loses its stability as the ball-carrier now is entirely free with central space to move into. The fact that the scheme is so reliant on the actions of one player is a significant deficiency especially coming up against an opposition who possess the intelligence to exploit it; Tuchel’s Dortmund have little issue in that.
This happened on a few cases during the game, such as the moment both – with needle players such as Kagawa and Mkhitaryan it was somewhat inevitable. With Mkhitaryan dropping to support the connections in early possession, he receives the ball from Hummels and neatly dribbles through two Ingolstadt midfielders. Through this the defensive security disappears as massive spaces in the centre open up whilst the ball-near part of the defensive line is completely occupied by Dortmund players already.
After Reus’ penalty to make it 2-0, there was a reaction by Ingolstadt as they increased the intensity of their pressing, looking to fight their way back into the side. This was done rather recklessly considering the game state and as a result wasn’t very effective – there was a distinct lack of preparation in the press and thus it lacked security as Dortmund passed through it with relative ease.
Dortmund’s Attacking Strategy
Through the opening period of the game it was difficult to decipher the exact strategy of Dortmund in possession due to the scrappy nature of the game. A lot of the first 15 minutes was spent in transitions with the ball not really being controlled by either team which was executed partially by Ingolstadt curtailing the influence of a few of Dortmund’s key players in early possession. However as soon as Dortmund broke the lines of Ingolstadt pressure the away side penetrated well and create a number of threatening attacks early on.
Soon enough it unsurprisingly emerged to be a similar left-sided focus which has also been central to their possession game in the past two matches. This will definitely have been influenced by the two most threatening breakthroughs of the opening 30 minutes coming from diagonals to the left flank, firstly through Schmelzer and later Reus who both played cutbacks to set teammates up with clear chances.
As the game developed and Dortmund became more settled in possession, they kept looking towards this side of the pitch and benefited well from it. Diagonal passing again played an important role and was the means of quite a lot of the attacks down the left in a similar fashion to their performances against Gladbach and Odd BK.
There was another tactic which was more prevalent however in comparison to the past two performances as against Ingolstadt, Tuchel’s side also looked to penetrate the left through overloads also. Reus made frequent ball-oriented movements and would travel far away from his right-wing position whilst Kagawa made small shifts to the left half-space where Mkhitaryan also was situated. This was then supported by the tilting movements of Weigl and Hummels also shifting slightly to the flank whilst Schmelzer’s aggressive positioning maintained the width as well as partially occupying the defensive line to some extent.
From these moments, switches to the right wing were also quite effective with one resulting in the opening goal through a nice 1v1 success by Ginter. In the Europe League this was attempted occasionally but was generally ineffective due to connection issues as well as individual weaknesses. Seemingly it was more successful against Ingolstadt as the prior overloads were more effective, causing more focus from the opposition whilst Gundogan supported the spacing much more effectively. These switches weren’t always from half-space to half-space either and at times would stop at Gundogan. With the 3 of Reus, Kagawa and Mkhitaryan all shifted to the left half-space, at times they attracted the attention of the whole Ingolstadt midfield which opened the central channel for Gundogan to drive into with the ball.
Another more general tactic of Dortmund’s was set to exploit the man-marking scheme of Ingolstadt. Even at 0-0 with many chances squandered, they were still relatively content and patient in their build-up as they used horizontal ball circulation to move the opposition block. Using this as a tool in their strategy they would do this to disorganise the Ingolstadt scheme and then use these moments to penetrate through vertical and more direct diagonal passing into the defensive block. Because of the issues with Ingolstadt’s pressing which I mentioned above, their loss of access and/or stability occurred commonly enough for this to be utilised as a reliable and sustainable tactic in opening up the defensive block.
Conclusion
It was yet another dominating performance from Tuchel’s Dortmund, as the great Michael Caley’s expected goal map displays how superior the away side were over the opposition.
Expected goals is a relatively new stat in football which works to find the value of a shot (how many goals it is worth) through analysing the situation it was taken in – such as shot position, speed of attack and assist type. In the above map, the bigger the square the more value the shot has.
Although of course it is early, Tuchel has seemingly progressed the side well from where they finished last year and deservedly end the 2nd match day at the top of the Bundesliga. They came up against some weak opposition as Ingolstadt have just been promoted into the German top flight and this showed. Credit must be given to BVB though for a performance in which they controlled the game for the large majority of the match through the possession game which has developed well since Tuchel’s arrival.4 Things Atheists Should Be Doing
Atheism is on the rise in America and yet we are constantly discriminated against and marginalized because of our lack of belief in imaginary friends. For atheists who value reason, logic, and the scientific method, it sometimes seems like the inmates have taken over the asylum. But it shouldn’t have to be like this. Atheists make up a larger percentage of the American population than Jews, Muslims, and every other non-Christian religion in America combines. If we want to be less marginalized, there are things we can and should be doing.
1. Atheists need to be vocal about our atheism. We shouldn’t hide our lack of belief in deities. I know, I know, atheism doesn’t define us as people. Yes, yes, I get it. However, when people bring up religion (and they always do), we shouldn’t have to silently sit there feeling uncomfortable. We should be vocal and point out that not everyone believes in deities and that we do not in fact believe in deities. We can be vocal politely or we can be vocal in a more confrontational manner, but we shouldn’t just sit there silently.
When people begin to realize that they actually know atheists and that we aren’t the Satan worshipping, baby eating, immoral monsters that their church told them we are, then they will be less likely to discriminate against us. Plus, the more atheists that are vocal about their atheism, the more religious believers will have to watch what they say because the person next to them just might be a vocal atheist who just might call them out when they say something religious.
There are more atheists in America than most religious believers realize. We just don’t generally wear our atheism around our necks or knock on people’s doors on Saturday morning, but we are here and we have to make our presence known. So be vocal!
2. Atheists need to support each other’s efforts to spread reason, logic, critical thinking, etc. Just like other minority and marginalized group, we have to support each other. Atheists tend to be creative people. Many atheists have YouTube channels, blogs, podcasts, etc. We do this stuff because we want to spread our memes and make the world a better place. However, while religious believers use fear of eternal torture and bribes of eternal paradise to get followers to pony up lots of cash, atheists tend not to support our interests financially and are even critical of fellow atheists even asking for money.
Religious organizations are not only tax exempt, but they also have a huge money advantage to start out with. They have been around a long time and their followers actually fund their groups and endeavors. Ask a Christian how much money they “donated” to their church last year. Then ask an atheist how much they spent in support of an atheist organization. That is the heart of the problem.
But it isn’t just funding organizations. It is funding each other. Back in the day I met a Christian podcaster who told me that he received $20,000 in donations for his show which had far less listeners than the podcast I was doing at the time. My donations were in the double digits. I don’t even think I received $100. That’s a problem. Atheist need funding! But fortunately, we live in the age of Google Ads and Amazon Affiliate links. You can support your favorite atheists even if you don’t have money to spare. So next time you are on a blog (including this one), YouTube channel, Podcast, etc. don’t forget to help your fellow atheists out by clinking a link or checking out an ad. Donations are also important.
3. We need to rally around fellow atheists politically! Yes, we need to form a voting bloc. The criticism I always get is that not all atheists share the same values. Sure, sure. In theory that is certainly true; Ayn Rand was a Libertarian Republican and Karl Rove is an atheist… but, in practicality, most atheists in America today tend to be liberal. I don’t mean just a little liberal either. We tend to be pretty far left progressive type liberals.
There may be a handful of Libertarians (who are socially liberal) and maybe a few wacky Republicans (who are also probably socially liberal), but for the most part if someone is an open atheist, they will nine times out of ten by a progressive. They will share your main values.
Keep in mind that the only thing gay people have in common with other gay people is that they are attracted to the same gender and yet the gay lobby is incredibly strong and incredibly liberal. Yet, there is no rule that says all gays must be liberal and yet most are because the Republican Party hates them!!! Why do the Republicans hate gays? Because Republicans tend to be religious and the Bible says that gays are an abomination. Guess that the Bible says about atheists?
In theory not all atheists are liberal, but in actually most are. We need to support atheists who run for office (who also share our values). If there are two equally qualified candidates with similar values and one is an atheist, then that is the one we should vote for and strongly support no matter where in the country they may be living.
4. We should keep our internal squabbling internally and politely. I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize each other or that atheists must always agree with each other on every issue, but what I am saying is that if you meet someone who shares your value of reason, logic, critical thinking, and the scientific method and you disagree with them on some issue, give them the benefit of the doubt and argue with them respectfully using reason, logic, critical thinking, and the scientific method. DON’T insult them, call them names, or write them off with a slur or “ism.”
Before writing a scathing blog post, ranting on YouTube, or on a podcast, it might be better to try to talk to them privately about your point of view first. Decide whether your difference of opinion is major or minor and treat it appropriately. Reasonable people can disagree on the finer points of any particular issue and we should certainly debate those finer points vigorously, but we should recognize that they just might be finer points.
If we can do these four things, we can start to really gain ground and be less marginalized as a group. We will gain more political power to steer this country in a more reason based direction, and we will become better people and a stronger community of people.
Related articlesTACOMA, Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee stunned supporters of the new distracted-driving law on Tuesday.
Instead of taking effect 20 months from now, you'll have to give up holding a cell phone while driving in just 90 days.
The governor says the new cell phone law (SB 5289) just can't wait. He stood near a crashed car that took the life of a young woman who was texting.
"I am vetoing section 5," said Inslee to the crowd. A stunning surprise for the victims' families who thought the law wouldn't take effect until Jan 1, 2019. "The effect of this action is that the bill becomes effective 90 days from today." Cheers went up. "Obviously you agree with that."
The families say it was hard enough to get this bill through after several years of trying and now this new development. "I was shocked and thrilled beyond belief that he vetoed that portion of the bill," said Theresa Fawcett, who lost her sister Jody Bagnariol and her friend Lis Rudolph in a distracted-driving crash.
The new law says you can't hold your cell phone in your hand while you drive. It has to be in a holder or on a console. You can touch the screen, but not write anything or watch a video.
Families pushed hard for this with emotional testimony. Tina Meyers held up her son's photo. "This is our son, Cody. On Dec. 15 this contributed to his death," she said then holding up a cell phone. He was killed by a distracted driver as he worked as a flagger along the roadway.
Lawmakers heard story after story. "There will always be an empty chair at our table and an ache in our hearts," said Lavera Thompson who's grandson Sam was killed in a distracted-driving crash.
The governor also signed the new Felony DUI Law (SB 5037) which makes a drunken-driving conviction a felony on the fourth conviction. Right now it's the fifth that triggers a felony. The governor says it sends a strong message, "That we will no longer accept multiple impaired drivers without a felony conviction."
The governor chose the State Patrol district headquarters in Tacoma for this saying the troopers need more tools to keep all of us safer on the roads.
Not only will the distracted driving ticket cost you $136, it will also be reported to your insurance company. The new law takes effect the middle of August.ADVERTISEMENTS
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LOOMIA, a New York-based technology company bonding intelligence to textiles for apparel, soft goods, consumer and industrial applications, has today announced its upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE) for an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token called TILE. The token crowdsale is expected to commence this fall.
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LOOMIA intends to use the proceeds from the TGE to progress the development of the LOOMIA Platform, making its LOOMIA Electronic Layer, LOOMIA Tile, and LOOMIA Data Exchange available to consumers and brands alike. LOOMIA’s technology has been integrated by clients such as Google, The North Face, Zac Posen, and Calvin Klein.
The LOOMIA Electronic Layer, LOOMIA Tile, and LOOMIA Data Exchange will be designed to operate concurrently in an ecosystem that allows users to collect data and sell it to brands and consumer research firms.
The LOOMIA Electronic Layer is a thin layer of circuitry bonded to everyday objects such as clothing, car interiors, handbags, and office furnishing. It brings functionality to everyday objects by collecting data from consumer habits, including frequency of wear, location, level of activity, and temperature. It then stores this information on a hardware component called the LOOMIA Tile.
Through LOOMIA’s innovative use of Blockchain and integration of biometric security, consumers will be able to control access and profit from data they generate and build a secure, anonymous digital identity on the LOOMIA Data Exchange.
LOOMIA CEO Janett Liriano said:
“LOOMIA is creating a bridge between digital intelligence and the physical materials that we interact with every day. The LOOMIA Platform would shift the consumer data paradigm so that individuals, not corporations, own their personal data and profit from it if they choose.”
LOOMIA is led by Liriano and Founder and Technical Lead Madison Maxey. Maxey has been featured on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list and was recognized as a 2013 Thiel Fellow, a coveted two-year program for entrepreneurs.
Liriano is a technical and creative expert who has previously served as a master electrician and production lead at the Lincoln Center, and an engineer for simulation centers at international medical schools.
LOOMIA’s core team members and advisors include Ezgi Ucar, Director of Product Development; Marco Paúl, VP of Operations and Supply Chain; Paul Raffin, a former executive at J. Crew and The Frye Company; and Solomon Lederer, a former software developer at Morgan Stanley and an advisor to Ethereum.
LOOMIA Founder and Technical Lead Madison Maxey said:
“Consumers are increasingly spending time on and around connected devices such as the phones in their pockets or the appliances in their homes. LOOMIA set out to network the products we love, giving power to users for the data they create, as well as an opportunity to earn value. LOOMIA envisions a world in which these once ‘dumb’ materials — consumer goods — actually work for the consumer, and that vision will now become a reality with the LOOMIA Platform.” “Together with our Blockchain partners and advisors, we are building an end-to-end solution to bring Blockchain to mainstream consumers. We see this revolutionary technology offering a widespread solution to day-to-day inconveniences we all experience. This is an application of the Blockchain that can seamlessly and securely connect consumers’ digital identity to their physical counterparts,” added Liriano.For a chapter of his 2002 personal-essay collection Songbook, the author Nick Hornby tries to make sense of “Frontier Psychiatrist”, the quintessential track by the Avalanches. “Just as robots cannot feel love,” he inhales, “music that has been produced from this number of samples cannot yet induce any recognition of mood in the listener.” He keeps spinning: “Maybe we’ll become used to it, and learn how to translate and interpret songs drawn from a bewildering number of sources; or maybe collagistes like the Avalanches will be able to refine their art, and make the music they make fit the moods we know.”
Or, maybe, the Avalanches wouldn’t refine anything because this would be the last thing that anyone would hear from the Avalanches — for a long while, anyway. But it’s tough to blame Hornby for overlooking that possibility. In 2000, with our sweat barely dry from an apocalypse scare, the Melbourne outfit came out of nowhere, blew minds, and saved souls with a whole new strain of feel-good music synthesized with hundreds of beautiful micro-fragments of forgotten vinyl, which they smashed and artfully glued back together for one manic, untouchable LP by the name of Since I Left You, and then promptly disappeared. It promised everything, even though they had never actually promised anyone anything.
That their second album Wildflower eventually arrived is almost beside the point by now. If the Avalanches were capable of holding out for a span of time encompassing four Olympics ceremonies without ever calling it an official split or putting out new material, then surely there’s a not-too-distant reality where it never did. It’s alright if you’re not quite ready to let go of the one-and-done Avalanches; Since I Left You is their album, the following 16-year echo chamber was their performance of it, and Wildflower is the encore.
Hornby may have wrestled mightily with these composite moods that Since I Left You stirred, but he was on to something in wondering where this medium was taking us. Since then, our understanding of sampling’s legal and ethical implications has developed substantially (and still remains hopelessly lost). Hip-hop brought it all the way to the front; EMI went after Danger Mouse over it; the mash-up flash grenade thrown by Girl Talk detonated and died; Donuts happened. And meanwhile, the Avalanches’ inconsistent performance life and occasional overambitious updates created a self-inflating anticipation bubble around a follow-up album, when for all we know — which is still very little — they were angling for the opposite. But that’s not how it works. After a layover like that, the mark is permanent.
And the very first offshoot of it on Wildflower is that these are not exactly the same Avalanches as before. Darren Seltmann, a founding member and the closest thing they had to a frontman, officially departed at some point in the last ten years. DJ Dexter Fabay, another seemingly essential presence and turntablist-in-chief, was out as early as 2003. That leaves the two remaining co-founders, Tony Di Blasi and Robbie Chater, and, in a more on-and-off capacity, James Dela Cruz. The three show up ready to prove that for all the messing around they do with time — whether reviving old sounds or waiting a full human adolescence between albums — they are in touch with the times.
Since I Left You was a confusing listen because that’s how it was designed: many small parts, many different tonal makeups, one new song that matches the singularity of each. On Wildflower, the Avalanches trade in much of that “vaguely familiar” delightfulness in favor of the completely familiar, acknowledging their newfound esteem and resources by enlisting other esteemed names for guest spots all over the album. On top of some huge faces in rap, Ariel Pink, Father John Misty, and Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick make cameos, as do a pair of journeymen musicians in Warren Ellis (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Grinderman) and Jonathan Donahue (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev).
The Avalanches also do it by just copping the melody off an extremely well-known song. In the case of lead single “Frankie Sinatra” — the first new music to finally emerge — it’s both. Danny Brown, practically the emcee of the band’s welcome-back party, channels the slap-happy, “crazy-in-the-coconut” spirit of “Frontier Psychiatrist” with MF DOOM as they rhyme over a cartoonishly nutty beat lifted from the 1930s calypso singer Wilmoth Houdini, which then flips the switch to “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, unaccompanied, for a four-measure bridge. They flagrantly blow it all out once again on the self-defeating and still-must-listen “The Noisy Eater”, which features Biz Markie shilling Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, and Cap’n Crunch over his own munching sounds. He’s then interrupted by the iconic first verse of The Beatles’ “Come Together”, personally cleared by Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. The message is clear: These are sounds that we are now able to play around with, and so we must.
Still, this is an album that Di Blasi and Chater spent 16 years — efficiently or not — making sure they got right, and the level of obsession in its fine-tuning demands respect. Wildflower comes out swinging. “Because I’m Me” leans heavily on the 1971 number-one Honey Cone single “Want Ads” and two career-making verses from Camp Lo for another gleeful joyride. “Colours”, on the other hand, might not contain a single sample, but still comes away as among the album’s few strongest; though a backtracked voice sings the hook, it’s still lyrical. And there are also plenty of fine moments that are lyric-less, namely the obsessively textured “Livin’ Underwater (Is Something Wild)”.
On “Stepkids”, a late highlight featuring Royal Trux’s Jennifer Herrema that apparently dates back to 2006, the Avalanches push nostalgia into full throttle. The song gallops as Herrema delivers the album’s biggest non-rap vocal cameo, sneering lines that evoke, of all ages, 16: “Light firecrackers while we crack cans of beer/ And if the boys aren’t skating there/ Maybe we can paint pentagrams and pot leafs on the wall.” There’s no lyric quite as succinct as “Since I! Left! You!/ I’ve found a world so new!” to be found this time — and that might be Wildflower‘s worst shortcoming — but more importantly, the Avalanches’ freakishly thorough commitment to concept is still alive.
Like so many other recent case studies of an ultimate “second coming” event in pop music, Wildflower also materialized in unspectacular fashion: “[Artist] to debut new music on Beats 1 Radio this evening,” “Stream [artist’s] new album one week early via Apple Music,” a comeback festival set that did not quite go as planned. But if all this contextual noise sounds like it’s drowning out the music, Wildflower comes prepared with its own response. The fact that there even is this strange context to talk about at all is a gift, and a cause for celebration. For that, there are no composite moods necessary.
Essential Tracks: “Because I’m Me”, “Livin’ Underwater (Is Something Wild)”, |
obooks, Audible is triple the cost of a library’s late fee – but it’s a modernized step in the right direction.
Audible’s flagship “Gold” account runs about $14.95 (per month) and provides users with one book (per month) in addition to a free daily audio-edition of The New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Unlike, say, Netflix – Audible subscribers actually own their audiobooks rather than renting them, but the subscription isn’t unlimited. If users want more than one book per month they receive a 30% discount towards their next purchase.
Unfortunately, as a “subsidiary” of Amazon, there is no love for Amazon Prime members but there are some perks to having an annual membership. But when you compare that to an iTunes audiobook edition of something like Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” ($17.95), it’s a pretty decent deal.
But what about audiobooks on Spotify?
At $9.99 a month for a premium subscription and mobile access, Spotify is one of the greatest things to happen to man-kind. With an enormous international library and user friendly interface, Spotify has single-handedly supplanted the need for musical piracy and its share-oriented social integration is slowly chipping away at the expensive musical prison of its #1 competitor: iTunes.
So, where are the audiobooks, podcasts, and audio-edition newspapers? Here is Spotify’s answer:
“This is an interesting idea but at the moment we need to focus on building a music service with the biggest music-library out there…”
If this sounds like a business oriented sidestep, it is. The red-tape and pitfalls involved in transforming the audiobook industry are different than those of the audio industry. While authors and musicians share many of the same financial plights, the pro’s and con’s of the streaming revolution affect both parties very differently. In addition, not everyone is a big fan of Spotify’s artist payout percentages so it may be a while before we see Spotify in audiobook competition with Amazon and iTunes.
Fortunately for those of us who use Spotify (and skimmed or Cliff Note’d our way through English classes) there a few audiobooks available thanks to Public Domain.
Perhaps now some of us can actually catch up on the books we say we’ve “read.”
Read next: Apple updates iBooks Author to clarify that you own created contentPhoto credit: Dmitriy Cherevko | Dreamstime
A dangerous liaison is always a bit of a risk, a dangerous liaison at work ever more so, but if your work is a coroner’s office, it becomes downright creepy.
The coroner’s office in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains allegedly has been the scene of just that, if two lawsuits are to be believed. The claims at stake speak of (hold on tight): stealing drugs from a deceased corpse, sex between a coroner and a police officer at a death scene, an extramarital affair in the woods, an extramarital affair during working hours and, last but not least, showing your co-workers mobile phone pictures of a lover’s male genitalia.
Of course the local press is quite interested in the juicy details of the case, but the County Detective Eric Kerchner is very reserved in his comments: “Right now, it’s just an investigation into some allegations, that’s all.” He said the goal is “to get an overall view of what’s been happening in the past.”
If the lawsuits are to be believed, the couple that runs the coroner’s office is at the heart of the matter: Bob and Kathleen “Traci” Allen.
Bob is the County Corner for Monroe County, he’s held the job as coroner for 25 years and is up for re-election in November. According to Bob, all these stories about his wife are “all false, false allegations” and are simply timed to stop him from getting re-elected.
“Anything to make sure I don’t win the election,” Bob Allen said.
His wife allegedly is not too happy in the marriage, and has been trying to get into sexual relationships with multiple of the present deputy coroners at the station. When a pretty other female deputy coroner showed up, Lauren Fizz, the game is on of course.
Traci ups the stakes and starts, according to the lawsuit, sexually harassing everyone in the office, showing the personnel obscene photos of one of her lovers, telling them about her “friends with benefits” relationships and stating that later that day she will be “leaving work early for a liaison in the woods.”
Fizz’s lawsuit claims that Traci started a false rumour that she “had had a sexual encounter with a police officer at a death scene in April 2016.”
Because of all this, Lauren Fizz left the coroner’s office and is now seeking damages.
Whether she will get them, we will surely let you know.
Source:
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/09/18/monroe-county-coroners-lawsuit/Winner: 2013’s Blog of the Year: #3 Last night I heard the replay of an interview with some scholar on Michael Enright’s program, The Sunday Edition. He claimed that the very last answer Albert Einstein gave in life was to the question: If you were to start your life over again, is there anything you would do differently? And supposedly the greatest scientist known to modern man replied, “I would study more Talmud.” There are debates about whether this actually happened, but supposing it did: what would it teach us?
For those unfamiliar with it, think of the Talmud as essentially a Jewish holy book. Interesting. A noted scientist wishing he would have read more of a religious text would have a lot of people recoiling, and yet many scientists are religious. It is true that religious belief was at the heart of many an ugly deed done by mankind. But what people believe and what was intended can easily be lost in translation.
This is why spiritual love needs to be shared directly with others and the world around us. Writing it down is helpful—as hopefully this itself is—but it cannot hope to substitute for the effects generated by people actually turning these words into verbs in the everyday world. Loving, compassionate verbs.
Every holy book and every prophet has talked about love. Love has been paramount. Yes, it is a shame that people of all walks of life can be convinced to use religion as a cudgel to strike others with, but most of us can easily see that it would be quite easy for loving people of different religions to share the Earth in peace and productive harmony.
But why would Einstein want more Talmud? The word itself basically means instruction, or learning. Rather than books about physical miracles etc, religious texts are best seen as basic lessons on the discovery of love. The Talmud or Torah, the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao te Ching etc. etc. are not lessons on being judgmental, dismissive, disrespectful, offended, angry, or violent.
Yes, I know it’s possible to interpret them that way, but if they’re not really about love, isn’t a bit odd that 100% of these books could be interpreted that way? Read with a clear head and a happy, healthy heart, they are in fact all lessons on love, compassion and connection. And those who have seen behind the veil of existence all agree on this.
Forget that the two worlds every got separated; the prophets weren’t sharing religious information. They were telling people about how to live a rewarding life. They had come to understand enlightenment and they were trying to share the secret to living in the moment. Because that is the same moment in which it is possible to love every aspect of your existence—including the fact that you and all others are truly One.
The Talmud:
“The highest form of wisdom is kindness.”
The Bible:
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
The Koran:
“All God’s creatures are His family; and he or she is the most beloved of God who tries to do the most good to God’s creatures.”
The Bhagavad Gita:
“Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. Do your work with the welfare of others always in mind.”
The Tao te Ching:
“See others as yourself. See families as your family. See towns as your town. See countries as your country. See worlds as your world.”
The Buddha: “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
And it goes on and on and on. Again, can people scurry around looking for/creating uglier ideas from these texts? Yes. We see them on the news every night. But we must remember the news is selling us soap. But since we wouldn’t stay sitting there for soap ads, they have to scare us into not leaving our seats.
They do that by using the few people who take ugly interpretations of those texts and then they magnify their actions. But there really aren’t many of those sorts of people. The vast majority of people are readily able to access their fundamentally loving nature. They are fundamentally kind. And most people who enter into religious practice sincerely do so as a way of increasing their sense of belonging and love for both themselves and others.
It is easy to present differences as obstacles, but I would urge you to see the different religions as different routes up one mountain. And regardless of which road-map you use, so long as your basic direction is loving, then you are surely ascending, and you are sure to attain the beautiful perspective that goes along with your rise in wisdom.
Keep love in your heart. Yes it’s good for others. But you are us and we are you, so it is good for you as well. And so it is with love. All who engage with it are victorious. This is why I love you.
peace and a loving embrace. s
PS Attached is a follow up article that stemmed from the controversy this one generated:
Science and Spirituality
Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.
Following a childhood accident should have left him dead, Scott McPherson spent his life meditating on thought, consciousness, reality and the self. Seeing the emotional damage done by ego-based overthinking he began dedicating a part of his life to guiding students toward more peaceful and rewarding lives. He is currently a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, Canada.Where did the Club Bahia mural go?
The exterior of Echo Park-adjacent Club Bahia had not changed much since giant concert promoter Live Nation started booking acts at the Sunset Boulevard club long-known for Latin music and dancing. But on Friday the sprawling, color mural that covered the front of Club Bahia was being covered with a coat of gray paint. Kathleen Klein-Wakefield took photos as she drove by.
What will replace the mural? Stay tuned.
The Eastsider’s Daily email digest includes all new content published on The Eastsider during the last 24 hours. Expect the digest to land in your in email in box around 7 p.m. It’s free to sign up! The Eastsider’s Daily email digest includes all new content published on The Eastsider during the last 24 hours. Expect the digest to land in your in email in box around 7 p.m. It’s free to sign up! Once you submit your information, please check your email box to confirm your subscription.Celtic are ready to launch an improved fourth bid in their quest to secure the services of Scott Sinclair this summer.
According to the Birmingham Mail, Celtic are set to launch an improved fourth bid of around £4 million to help push through the transfer from the Championship side.
The winger would link up with former Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers and former Manchester City team-mate Kolo Toure, who signed a one-year deal earlier this week.
The 27-year-old excelled for Swansea during their promotion to the Premier League in 2010/2011 under the Carnlough man, and scored 27 goals in 50 appearances.
However, since his £8 million transfer from Swansea to Manchester City, Sinclair struggled to get into the team, making just 19 appearances in total and was loaned to West Brom and their Midland rivals, Aston Villa.
Sinclair made 45 appearances for Villa scoring nine goals during an 18-month period at the club, including his six-month loan spell in 2015.
Villans boss Roberto Di Matteo did previously express a desire to trim his squad and could be set to let one of his best players leave in order to reach that goal.
The 27-year-old winger would become Rodgers third signing of the transfer window, after the arrival of Moussa Dembele and Kolo Toure earlier this summer.
Would you be happy with this transfer?Not to be confused with Heliconia
Helliconia Spring; Helliconia Summer; Helliconia Winter Author Brian W. Aldiss Country United Kingdom Language English Genre Science fiction Published 1982; 1983; 1985 Media type Print
The Helliconia trilogy is a series of science fiction books by British writer Brian W. Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilisation over more than a thousand years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for centuries.
The trilogy consists of the books Helliconia Spring (published in 1982), Helliconia Summer (1983), and Helliconia Winter (1985).
Synopsis [ edit ]
The central character is not any person but the planet itself and its science, particularly in the light of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. The books describe realistic and credible details of the planet from the perspectives of a great variety of fields of study – astronomy, geology, climatology, geobiology, microbiology, religion, society, and many others – for which Aldiss gained the help of many Oxford academics. Connections are drawn which show numerous ways in which these aspects of life affect each other.
The books are set some six thousand years in the future. A space station from Earth, the Avernus, is orbiting Helliconia and closely observing the planet,[1] including the activities of its intelligent inhabitants. The temptation to interfere in Helliconian affairs is a recurring dilemma for the inhabitants of Avernus.
Helliconia has a very long year (called the "great year"), equivalent to some 2500 Earth years, and global temperatures vary greatly over this period. A major theme of the trilogy is the fragility of human civilisation in the context of environmental changes, and the ability of humanity to preserve and recreate civilisation. Phenomena related to the changing of the seasons of the Great Year provide a deus ex machina plot device in the climax of each of the three books (the exploding trees at the end of Spring which allow the heroes to escape a phagor attack, the migrating fish at the end of Summer which allow the heroes to escape from an invading army, and the marauding phagors at the end of Winter which allow Luterin to escape from his captors).
Helliconia is populated by two intelligent races, humans and phagors. Helliconian humans are not the same species as Earth humans, having evolved entirely independently, but are remarkably similar in appearance, intellect, behaviour, and culture.
Earth [ edit ]
Since the present day, the humans of Earth have been through an era of space exploration. This proved to be largely disappointing: faster than light travel was proven to be impossible, and few planets were found with life beyond the microbial stage. The one great success was the discovery of Helliconia. The Avernus was dispatched to monitor but not interfere with Helliconia, providing the Earth with scientific data and the entertainment of an epic reality show.[2]
Somewhat later, the human race destroyed itself and most other life on Earth with a nuclear war. After a thousand years or so, the Earth's Gaian repair mechanisms repopulated the world with new life, including a small number of humans, who now live a simple nomadic life and have no interest in technology.
Avernus [ edit ]
The massive space station Avernus is visible from the surface of Helliconia as a bright, fast-moving "star". There are also thousands of probes and other monitoring devices on the planet, providing scientific readings, video pictures, etc., which Avernus collects and transmits to Earth.
Six thousand people, the descendants of the original crew, live on Avernus in a small but comfortable high-technology environment. After the nuclear war, transmissions from Earth stop suddenly for no reason apparent to the residents of Avernus. The space station continues with its work for many centuries, but eventually its isolated people descend into madness and sexual perversion (a common theme in Aldiss's works, which he treats with revulsion rather than salaciousness). By the end of the trilogy, Avernus is a lifeless, empty shell.
Helliconia [ edit ]
Astronomy [ edit ]
Helliconia lies in a loose binary star system, which consists of a yellow-orange dwarf similar to our sun, Batalix (spectral class G4[3]), and a hotter and brighter white star, Freyr (Type A supergiant). Helliconia orbits Batalix, which in turn orbits Freyr. The Batalix-Freyr system is supposedly in the constellation of Ophiuchus, about a thousand light years from Earth. In real life, the closest system similar to Helliconia may be Wolf 1061c.
Helliconia orbits Batalix in 480 days; this is called the "small year". Each day of the small year comprises 25 hours, each of 40 minutes, which in turn are each 100 seconds long. Helliconia and Batalix's orbit around Freyr, the "great year", is highly elliptical and takes approximately 1,825 small years, equating to some 2,592 Earth years.[4] At periastron Batalix is 236 astronomical units from Freyr, whilst at apastron is 710 AU distant.[5] A Helliconian week is eight days. There are six weeks in a tenner, and ten tenners in a Helliconian small year.[6] While seasonal changes in the small year are slighter than those of Earth, the long seasons of the great year are much more marked. When distant from Freyr, Batalix's illumination is sufficient only to maintain ice-age conditions. However, Freyr's output is many times greater than Batalix's, so as Helliconia approaches Freyr, the tropics of Helliconia become hotter even than the tropics of Earth.
Previously Helliconia only orbited Batalix, but the Helliconia-Batalix system was captured by Freyr's gravitational pull about eight million Earth-years ago[7](i.e., very recently by astronomical and evolutionary standards). The Freyr stellar system originally consisted of two stars, but during the encounter by Batalix, the sister-star of Freyr was thrown out of the system, along with one of Batalix's original planets and Helliconia's moon.[8]
Geography [ edit ]
Helliconia is 1.28 Earth masses in size, making it somewhat larger than Earth and with a bigger axial tilt of 35 degrees. This means that small-year seasons are harsher, but the planet still has huge polar ice caps, capable of surviving even the great summer, and the human-habitable surface area is comparable to that of Earth.
There are three continents, a tropical continent (Campannlat), a northern continent (Sibornal) and a southern continent (Hespagorat). Helliconia Spring and Helliconia Summer mainly take place in Campannlat, with its rich vitality; Helliconia Winter focuses on Sibornal, where the harsher environment encourages technological progress. The southern continent features only briefly in the books.
Biology [ edit ]
The trilogy describes a variety of imagined plants and animals, and how they cope with the extremes of the climate. The most memorable is Wutra's Worm, an immense creature whose life span matches the great year, the Helliconia equivalent of a dragon. In the summer the young worms fly in the air, and in the winter the now-wingless mature worms live in a great network of tunnels beneath the surface.
Phagors [ edit ]
Phagors, also called ancipitals (meaning "double-edged", in reference to their horns), are white-furred humanoid beings, roughly the size of humans but with features resembling the mythical minotaur. They are intelligent, with their own language and culture, but their civilisation has never advanced beyond a hunter-gatherer level. Having evolved during Helliconia's earlier cold period, phagors are very different from humans in many ways: their blood is golden rather than red, their guts are located above their lungs, and they have an utterly alien intellect and psychology. They are described as hardy and long-lived, though not tolerant of warm conditions and water. If a phagor reaches great age, it begins to shrink and gradually becomes keratinised, so that it eventually resembles a small totem showing no outward signs of life. Living phagors continue to be able to commune with the spirits of these keratinised ancestors by assuming a mental state called tether. When in tether, they perceive their ancestors as small quadrupedal sprites. These sprites, as ancestral spirits able to be contacted, fulfil the same role as the human "gossies" and "fessups".
Since the capture of the Helliconia system by Freyr and the subsequent evolution of humans, the two species have been in constant conflict, with the phagors dominant during the great winter and the humans dominant during the great summer. The slow swings in fortune between the two species are governed by the planet's climatic and biological cycles, rendering military conflicts between them essentially irrelevant. In a reversal of their original relationship, phagors are sometimes employed as soldiers or kept as slaves by humans, and humans are sometimes kept as slaves by phagors, during both seasons.
Humans [ edit ]
Phagors were the dominant race on Helliconia before the Helliconia-Batalix system was captured by Freyr. The increased temperatures caused by the new stellar configuration, it is implied, kick-started the evolution of humans on Helliconia. Before this, the ancestors of humans had been ape-like creatures sometimes kept as pets by the phagors. Because humans emerged after the solar system's capture by Freyr, the phagors call them "Sons of Freyr". Remnants of human evolution can be seen in the continued existence of several sub-human and semi-human species on Helliconia. The humans of Helliconia and those of Earth are therefore unrelated despite their apparent near-identity, products of convergent evolution.
By the end of each great autumn, humans have developed levels of civilization comparable at their most advanced to Renaissance Europe. However, each time the thousand-year great winter returns, human civilization inevitably regresses and has to be rebuilt again the next spring. The books hint that humans in some regions are becoming more competent at preserving knowledge and social structures through the winter, and that over the next few great years they may develop a scientific-industrial civilization capable of surviving throughout the great year, and thus completely dominating Helliconia.
Bone Fever and Fat Death [ edit ]
Bone Fever is a human disease characterized by an extreme form of anorexia, an epidemic of which sweeps the world early in the great spring. Fat Death is a disease characterized by an extreme form of binge eating, an epidemic of which sweeps the world late in the great autumn.
These two diseases cause great suffering and have very high mortality rates. However, the survivors are left with bodies which are respectively much thinner or fatter (and metabolically altered in other ways), and are therefore better adapted to the coming conditions of summer or winter respectively. The two diseases are caused by the same virus, which is carried by ticks and is triggered by seasonal changes in the environment. The humans therefore have a symbiotic relationship with the virus and — unknowingly — with the phagors, who carry the ticks and hence the virus. Some rare people in remote areas are immune to the virus; these are considered ugly pariahs by the majority of the population, as they are horribly fat or thin compared to the prevailing standard.
The virus, while essential for human survival on Helliconia, is fatal year-round to the Earth-humans aboard Avernus, who have no natural defenses against it. Nonetheless, many inhabitants of Avernus choose to enter a lottery in which they can win the chance to visit the planet's surface and interact with the population, knowing that the deadly disease will kill them within a matter of days.
The Original Beholder [ edit ]
Just as Earth in the novels is sustained by Gaia, the Earth-mother force, Helliconia is tended by a similar yet separate entity referred to as the "Original Beholder" (or in Helliconia Spring the "Original Boulder"). A striking difference between Earth-humans and Helliconian humans (and phagors) is the latter's ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead as their life force is slowly returned to the Original Beholder. Both humans and phagors can enter a sort of shamanistic trance allowing this direct communication, a state which the humans call pauk and the phagors call tether. Recently deceased human spirits are called "gossies"; those of more ancient demise are "fessups".
A plot point in the trilogy (first described in Helliconia Spring, and explained in detail in Helliconia Winter) is the changing character of the pauk experience for the Helliconian humans. The spirits of the dead are described as extremely emotional, and constantly bitter and angry toward the visiting spirits of the living. After humans on Earth become interested in Helliconian civilization, a planet-wide effort is made on Earth to psychically transmit empathic energy from Gaia to the Original Beholder, in order to lend support to the humans on Helliconia. This effort has a positive effect on the spirits of the dead Helliconians, making them happier and more nurturing toward the living.
Plot summaries [ edit ]
Helliconia Spring [ edit ]
Helliconia Spring is set in the central region of the tropical continent, Campannlat. It is divided into two parts. The "prelude", entitled Yuli, is set during the Great Winter and follows the story of one man from youth into adulthood; this takes up about a quarter of the book. The remainder of the story, Embruddock, spans nearly 30 Helliconian years (about 40 Earth years) and documents the coming of the Great Spring. This narrative traces the intertwined lives of many people and the changes in their society as the climate warms, setting these events within the overarching framework of the planet's natural cycles.
Prelude: Yuli [ edit ]
The prelude takes place about a century before the end of the Great Winter. While on a hunting expedition, a youth named Yuli and his father are ambushed by phagors. His father is taken as a slave, and Yuli is forced to head south in search of food and shelter. He makes his way to Pannoval, a city built within a vast cavern system. Pannoval is ruled despotically by an alliance of the priesthood and militia, who keep the citizens oppressed in the name of the god Akha. Yuli is converted to the religion of Akha and is initiated into the priesthood, which involves years of work and study as an acolyte.
As a newly ordained priest, he is sent to work with imprisoned criminals, who are used as slaves to excavate new living areas for the city until they are either executed or worked to death. His main task is to conduct interrogations and extract confessions from the prisoners. Yuli comes to realise just how corrupt the ruling class of Pannoval is, loses his faith, and becomes determined to return to the outside world. He seizes his chance when the prisoners' excavation work causes a cave-in. In the confusion, he escapes along with two prisoners and the former girlfriend of one of them. After a long and terrifying journey through underground passages, they finally emerge some distance to the south.
Yuli and his companions find a small, primitive settlement near a frozen lake, and soon come to rule it thanks to their superior knowledge and bold authority. Soon afterwards they extend their rule to a neighbouring tribe. Yuli spends the rest of his life as a revered priest-ruler in this area, which he names Oldorando.
Embruddock [ edit ]
Yuli's tribe continues to live in the area near the lake for two generations until, having been warned of an impending phagor raid, the entire tribe flees south. To their amazement, they discover a relatively advanced town called Embruddock, the remnant of what had been the capital of an empire during the previous Great Summer (although this history is long forgotten). This place has the advantage of being situated in a geothermally active area, which has provided just enough warmth throughout the Great Winter that Embruddock has retained some fragments of its former culture (mainly in the skills and records of the craftsmens' guilds).
Yuli's tribe attacks Embruddock and takes it over, renaming it Oldorando, and Yuli's family line is established as the local lords. A few years after this event, the town is attacked by a company of phagors. The phagor captain, a noble of his kind, is captured and executed. Some thirteen years (about nineteen Earth years) after that, the grandson of the phagor captain assembles a huge army which begins marching on Oldorando intent on revenge, a journey which will take a further thirteen years.
About ten years after the execution of the phagor captain, the Great Spring has begun and Helliconia has warmed enough that changes are beginning to be noticeable. Waterways are thawing, plants sprout in sheltered areas, and the weather becomes damp and unpredictable. Master hunter Aoz Roon, an Embruddock native, secretly murders the Oldorandan rulers and becomes the new lord of the city. Laintal Ay, the last of the Oldorandan lineage, witnesses the murders but keeps quiet out of fear; he becomes one of Aoz Roon's lieutenants.
A strong-minded woman named Shay Tal argues for increased rights for women. She also begins to realise that the population is slowly recovering from some ancient catastrophe. She exhorts the people to seek knowledge and sets up an academy, originally for women only. Aoz Roon, who is a brutal and unimaginative man, opposes this. A guildmaster, defying the guild laws of secrecy, reveals to Shay Tal that the guilds have kept records for centuries, although many books have been destroyed. These records reveal that the climate was once much colder, and hint at a warm period even longer ago, a tale widely regarded as myth.
Shay Tal realises that vast amounts of knowledge have been lost over the generations. As she continues her research into the history of Embruddock, she discovers that during the hardest depths of the Great Winter, phagors ruled the area and enslaved humanity. Humans came to worship their oppressors, and their god Wutra is nothing but a distorted image of a phagor chief. Shay Tal's main disciple, a woman named Vry, disagrees with this obsession with history and urges the academy to study the movements of the stars and think more about the future than the past. She and other students begin mapping the sky and determining the movements of the heavenly bodies. They calculate that the two suns, Batalix and Freyr, will soon begin a series of eclipses, an event noted in old records as an evil omen.
Helliconia continues to grow warmer. New plant and animal species are appearing, human populations are growing and spreading, and phagor populations are retreating to colder regions – except for the great phagor army which continues its march towards Oldorando. The population of the city continues to increase. As the work of survival becomes easier, the people begin to take an interest in leisure and luxury, and the town's defences grow weak. The first eclipse occurs, indicating the astronomical beginning of the Great Spring and causing widespread panic. The people of Oldorando learn to domesticate and breed hoxneys, horse-like animals which have emerged with the coming of the Great Spring. The ability to ride hoxneys and use them to power simple machinery triggers a great societal revolution, and Oldorando expands rapidly. As the climate improves and people begin to travel more widely, the city's location makes it an attractive hub, and it develops into a trading centre.
Observers from Earth, orbiting Helliconia in the space station Avernus, watch the coming of the Great Spring with interest. Among other phenomena, they follow the spread of the viral disease called bone fever, which inevitably strikes the human population at about the time of the spring eclipses, spread by the bite of phagor ticks. Although the disease causes severe suffering and death across the planet, it is necessary for the human species, because it causes its survivors to become adapted to the new warmer climate.
Oldorando has now grown into a wealthy, bustling bazaar city, attracting traders and travellers from far across the continent. Its old culture, dating from the Great Winter and simple tribal survival, is no longer suitable for this new, more sophisticated society. Political stresses become evident as the city is forced to adopt new customs such as the use of money. Shay Tal leaves to seek a "great wheel" in the northern continent of Sibornal, which she believes holds supreme knowledge. Aoz Roon escorts her out of Oldorandan territory, and on the way back is ambushed by phagors. While he fights one of the phagors hand to hand, they are swept into a flooded river and stranded together on an island. There he contracts bone fever.
Meanwhile, the bone fever epidemic has reached Oldorando, brought by incoming traders. Aoz Roon remains absent for many months, and two of his lieutenants try to seize power. Between the political wrangling and the terrors of the epidemic, Oldorandan society begins to fall apart. Laintal Ay leaves, ostensibly to search for Aoz Roon but actually because he can no longer stand life in the city. He makes his way north and encounters a town settled by people who have migrated south from Sibornal. They have learned to coexist with phagors by trading captive slaves in return for safe passage.
Laintal Ay, who by this time has contracted and survived bone fever, is accepted into the town and given work overseeing the prisoner-slaves. He discovers that Shay Tal was previously captured and sold on, and then learns of the massive phagor army, which by now is almost upon them. He arranges with a disaffected Sibornalan guard to flee the town and return to Oldorando, hoping to get there in time to warn them of the phagors. Just as they prepare to leave, Aoz Roon is brought into the city as a captive; he joins the escaping group. Approaching Oldorando, they meet a handful of refugees fleeing for their lives. As the suns rise in a day-long eclipse, the phagor army attacks Oldorando and burns the city to the ground.
Helliconia Summer [ edit ]
Set during high summer in the tropical continent, Campannlat. Yuli's settlement is now the capital city of a great empire. Meanwhile, the residents of Avernus are holding occasional lotteries to ameliorate their ennui, the winners being allowed to go down to Helliconia and experience a short period of "real life" before succumbing to the Bone Fever/Fat Death virus. Despite the fatal consequences, the chance of visiting the planet's surface and interacting with its people is considered a great adventure, and the lotteries are popular. One winner, Billy Xiao Pin, gets involved in high politics, with messy consequences.
Helliconia Winter [ edit ]
Set during late autumn in the northern continent, Sibornal. The book's protagonist, Luterin Shokerandit, is the son of the Keeper of the Wheel of Kharnabar, located above the far north of Helliconia. The Wheel is an extraordinary revolving monastery/prison built into a ring-shaped tunnel with a single entrance and exit, powered entirely by the efforts of the prisoners pulling it along by means of chains set into the outer wall. Once a prisoner enters a cell of the Wheel, it is impossible for him to leave until its full ten-year rotation has passed.
Luterin joins the army, where he gains renown by killing the commandant of an enemy battalion, taking his widow Toress Lahl as a slave. Soon, however, the first cases of Fat Death begin to appear in the Sibornalese army. The Oligarch, autocratic ruler of Sibornal, orders other troops to destroy this army in an attempt to halt the spread of the epidemic. Luterin is warned by Captain Fashnalgid in time for the two of them to escape with Toress Lahl and a foreign trader who has arranged for a ship to flee the area. While the ship is at sea, the Fat Death spreads among those aboard; however, thanks to the skills of Toress Lahl, who was trained as a doctor, the major characters survive. It is during this voyage that a great deal of information is discovered about the deep past of the Helliconia-Batalix solar system, its capture by Freyr, and the intertwined fates of humans and phagors.
After the ship lands, the Oligarch's army continues to pursue the deserters. They go on the run again, hiring a dog-sledge with a semi-human driver and his phagor slave in order to cross the mountains. Fashnalgid mortally offends their driver by sleeping with his wife, and the driver retaliates by arranging for his phagor to push Fashnalgid off the sledge while they are travelling through a dangerous tunnel. Luterin tries to save Fashnalgid, but also falls from the sledge. He is forced to walk for miles through the polar cold until he eventually rejoins the sledge and is able to travel the rest of the way to his father's estate.
Once home, Luterin proclaims that he wishes to marry Toress Lahl rather than his arranged noble bride, and gives Toress the key to an ancient shrine. A few days later, he expresses hatred for the Oligarch who ordered his army to be destroyed. From his father's reactions, he realises that his father is in fact the Oligarch. Luterin kills his father and flees to the Wheel of Kharnabar; he enters the Wheel and therefore remains in solitary confinement for ten years. When he at last emerges, he finds that the |
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and Jewish Home chief Naftali Bennett held talks Monday afternoon but failed to break through on a number of issues holding up the signing of a coalition deal.
Gaps still remain between the sides on who will hold the Education and Interior ministry posts and on how many ministers there will be, Channel 2 reported.
The sides are set to meet again Monday night.
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After a weekend of marathon negotiations potential coalition partners agreed on Sunday on a general outline of “severe personal sanctions” against Haredim who fail to sign up for IDF or national service, Ma’ariv reported. Reportedly, those who do not enlist will not face criminal charges, but will be prohibited from leaving the country and won’t be eligible for welfare and tax benefits (including social security payments for large families), among other penalties.
In addition, religious educational institutions that encourage their students to dodge the draft, like some ultra-Orthodox yeshivas, will face a “significant” reduction in funding from the state.
The party leaders met for almost two hours on Sunday, but Yesh Atid said large gaps still remained, and Likud-Beytenu accused Lapid of stalling talks over demands for new universal draft legislation.
Netanyahu has until March 16 to form a governing coalition. If he fails, President Shimon Peres could ask another party leader to try to form a government, or call for new general elections.
While most issues were said to have been resolved, the sides still needed to work out the final distribution of ministerial posts, among other issues, with Yesh Atid and Likud both apparently aiming to hold the education portfolio.
Likud was reportedly determined to see party member and current Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar maintain his position, while Yesh Atid would like the post to go to MK Rabbi Shai Piron.
Hopes have run high in the last several days for a new government to be sworn in by mid-week.
Speaking to members of his Yisrael Beytenu faction Sunday afternoon, MK Avigdor Liberman said he was certain a new government would be sworn in by week’s end.
Another of the final sticking points appeared to be a disagreement between the largely secular Yesh Atid and the religious-hardline Jewish Home regarding an initiative to provide public transportation on Saturday. One more issue that was holding up a deal was said to be Bennett’s demand for the Public Diplomacy Ministry in addition to the position of industry, trade and labor minister.
Lapid, who had hoped to become foreign minister, will instead serve as finance minister. The Foreign Ministry post will be kept open for former FM Liberman, who resigned in December to fight corruption charges and hopes to clear his name and return quickly to the post.
The defense minister will likely be former IDF chief of the General Staff Moshe Ya’alon (Likud); Housing could well go to Jewish Home’s Uri Ariel, while the same party’s Eli Ben Dahan could take Religious Affairs; and Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz could become minister of welfare.
The coalition will likely comprise Netanyahu’s Likud-Beytenu (31 seats), Yesh Atid (19), Jewish Home (12), Hatnua (6) and Kadima (2), for a total of 70. Labor (15) will lead an opposition that will also include the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas (11) and United Torah Judaism (7).Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UK Chancellor George Osborne: "I think that shows our economic plan is working"
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has trimmed its forecast for global economic growth at the same time as lifting its UK growth projection.
It now expects global growth of 2.9% this year, a cut of 0.3% from July's estimate. In 2014 it expects global growth of 3.6%, down 0.2%.
It cited weakness in emerging economies for the cut.
The forecast for UK growth this year received a significant upgrade to 1.4%, up from July's estimate of 0.9%.
And for next year the IMF expects UK growth of 1.9%, up from July's projection of 1.5%.
The IMF's upgrades for its outlook on the UK are larger than those it made for any other country in its World Economic Outlook - its twice-yearly assessment of the global economy.
It credited recent data indicating higher consumer and business confidence, for the increase.
However, it warned that it would still take years for the UK economy to recover fully from the 2008 financial crisis. It suggested that the government could help boost growth by bringing forward planned public infrastructure spending, such as building new homes.
The UK Treasury said the IMF upgrade showed the government's economic strategy was working.
"But risks to the global economy remain high, and the recovery cannot be taken for granted. That is why the government will not let up in implementing its economic plan," a spokesman added.
World growth slows
Despite the improvement in growth in advanced economies such as the UK and US, the IMF warned that a slower pace of expansion in emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India, was holding back global expansion.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption IMF economic counsellor Olivier Blanchard says failure to lift the US debt ceiling would lead to "potentially major disruptions "
It expects growth in Russia, China, India and Mexico to be slower than it forecast in July.
In part, it says this is due to expectations of a change in policy by US central bank the Federal Reserve. Simply the expectation that the US could trim back its efforts to stimulate the US economy has already had an impact on interest rates in emerging economies, the IMF said.
It said an increasing belief that China's growth rate would slow would also hit global growth.
US fears
The IMF expects the US to drive global growth.
But it warns that the political standoff over raising the US government's borrowing limit, if it results in the US defaulting on its debt payments, "could seriously damage the global economy".
It expects growth of 1.6% in the US this year and 2.6% next year, down 0.1% and 0.2% from its July forecast.
In the US capital on Tuesday, Republicans in Congress and Democratic President Barack Obama remained at an impasse over a shutdown of the US government and legislation to increase the US borrowing limit.
At a news conference, Mr Obama stressed that failing to raise America's so-called 'debt ceiling' would undermine the world's confidence in the United States and might permanently increase borrowing costs.
Mr Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, leader of opposition Republicans who have demanded major policy concessions from the Democrats in exchange for approving a government budget and allowing debt limit increase, spoke on the telephone on Tuesday but failed to reach a resolution.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the world's largest container ship tells an economic story
Mr Boehner's office criticised the president for what it described as his unwillingness to negotiate, while the White House said Mr Obama was happy to negotiate with the Republicans but only after the US government was reopened and the borrowing limit raised.
The impasse continued as the US sold one-month bonds at its highest interest rate in five years on Tuesday as investor fears rose over whether the government would reach a deal to avert a default on its debt payments.
Eurozone stabilises
In the euro area, the IMF says business confidence indicators suggest activity is close to stabilising in peripheral economies, such as Italy and Spain, and already recovering in core economies such as Germany.
Overall, it predicts growth will fall 0.4% this year, an improvement of 0.1% on its July prediction, and grow 1% next year.
"In short, the recovery from the crisis continues, albeit too slowly," said Olivier Blanchard, economic counsellor at the IMF.
"The architecture of the financial system is evolving, and its future shape is still unclear. These issues will continue to shape the evolution of the world economy for many years to come,"New England Patriots wide receiver Austin Carr (84) dodges a tackle by New England Patriots safety Nat Berhe (29) on a 14-yard touchdown in the second quarter of a preseason game at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., on August 31, 2017. A new poll finds three-quarters of American football fans believe head injuries are a major issue in professional football. File photo by Matthew Healey/UPI | License Photo
Sept. 6 (UPI) -- A recent poll from the University of Massachusetts Lowell found that three-quarters of Americans believe head injuries in football are a major problem.
The poll of 1,000 Americans found 77 percent of respondents who consider themselves professional football fans say head injuries that cause long-term health issues for players is a major problem, 15 percent said they are a minor issue and just 6 percent did not consider the injuries a problem at all.
The long-term effects of head injuries in professional football players have been the subject of debate and media coverage in recent years due to concerns that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, occurs more in National Football League players.
CTE is a neurological condition that comes from multiple concussions with symptoms that mimic Alzheimer's disease.
RELATED More evidence contact sports can affect the brain
A recent study revealed that 110 out of 111 brains of former NFL players donated for research showed evidence of CTE.
The new poll showed that 83 percent of respondents believe that there is settled science that football causes brain injuries, 45 percent said it certainly causes brain injuries and 37 percent said it probably causes brain injuries. Roughly 52 percent of respondents said CTE is a serious public health issue.
Researchers also found that 61 percent of sports fans see domestic violence, and 60 percent see general violence, as major problems committed by players.
RELATED Nearly all NFL players in study show evidence of brain disorder CTE
Still, 60 percent of Americans polled say they are fans of professional football despite the controversy.
"There is a growing ambivalence among pro football fans that puts their love of the game in conflict with their views on concussions and head injuries," Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass Lowell's Center for Public Opinion, said in a press release.
"The survey indicates that football fans are very concerned about the problems related to concussions and half think the league has not done enough to address the issue. However, there is no evidence in this survey that NFL fans have started voting with their feet and remote controls by turning away and tuning out."After much speculation by many writers on Rant Sports including me, it is clear to all those who have a pulse that the outfield is the area the New York Mets need to worry about most this off season.
Looking at the Mets outfield of late, you can sense chaos. Jason Bay has agreed to terminate his contract a year early. Lucas Duda has a fractured wrist and it’s rumored he will be moving to first base anyway. Scott Hairston, one of the better hitters in last year’s outfield, is a free agent and so far hasn’t been one of New York’s main focuses. That leaves the Mets with the familiar rotation of Andres Torres, Mike Baxter, and Jordany Valdespin. These three men had a mean batting average of.244 in 2012 and produced a total of 14 HR between them. The majority of their stats from this past season are similarly mediocre.
There is no telling what these players will be able to accomplish next season. All that can be said is that they haven’t produced nearly enough at the plate up until this point. Therefore, it’s safe to say picking up some additional man power in this area is a good option going forward.
The league is teeming with well-tested free agents this off season. The New York Yankees alone have six free agents including Ichiro Suzuki and Nick Swisher. There are many options available that would fit well in the Mets system and could definitely produce. Though one name stands out from the rest: Josh Hamilton.
The 31-year-old All-Star is an offensive weapon of the highest caliber and has proven his worth in the last few years with the Texas Rangers. It would be incredible if New York could manage to pick up Hamilton, but the money he is worth is certainly disheartening. It would be a long-shot indeed.
More plausible options for the Mets that could prove helpful are Cody Ross and Delmon Young. Both of these players posted a batting avergae of.267 last season. Ross hit 22 HR and had a SLG. of.481 in 2012. Young hit 18 HR.
I really like Ross in the Mets system. He gets on base well; he can slug the ball, and he bats people home. These are three qualities that are not present enough in New York. He also is a relatively affordable option considering he made $3 million in 2012. I’d like to see him in New York next season.
Regardless, it is clear there are several options available this off season that make a good deal of sense.Man holds alleged car prowler at gunpoint Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Chester Friday faces 3 counts of unlawful entry into a motor vehicle and 3rd-degree theft. (WCSO) [ + - ] Video
Cole Miller and KOIN 6 News Staff - TUALATIN, Ore. (KOIN) --- A 24-year-old suspected car prowler who ran when the victim fired a warning shot into the ground is now behind bars in Washington County Jail.
Just after midnight Monday, police were called to the 17900 block of SW Sioux Court in Tualatin. The victim told authorities he woke up to someone rummaging through cars on his cul-de-sac when he jumped into action.
"The homeowner went outside with the firearm and held the suspect at gunpoint while his wife called the police," Tualatin Police Lt. Greg Pickering said.
According to Lt. Pickering, that's when the suspect, Chester Friday, reportedly charged the homeowner.
"At which point the homeowner fired one round into the ground as what he described as a warning shot," Lt. Pickering explained.
Friday took off, but was later tracked down by a Tigard police K-9.
The homeowner told KOIN 6 News he expected to take some heat for his decision to fire the warning shot. Lt. Pickering said he didn't think it was the best move, but acknowledged the couple's call to 911.
"We want citizens to report the crimes and allow the police officers to take care of situations," he said.
Another resident said Friday was in her backyard and had also gone through her car. She said just last week, another neighbor had their car broken into.
Friday faces 3 counts of unlawful entry into a motor vehicle and third-degree theft.
It is unclear if the homeowner will face charges for firing the warning shot.We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 50+ Promising Collection Of Resources And Inspirations For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.
You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of April which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
You may be interested in these older posts
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7 More Useful Tips To Help Your Site ConvertSEATTLE—Eliciting a standing ovation for the longtime Seahawk’s cornerback as he gripped his walker and slowly hobbled to midfield, the NFL conducted a pregame ceremony to honor 52-year-old Ronald Dutton as the league’s oldest living former player. “Ever since my father retired in 2002, he has missed being out on the field, and he would like you all to know how thrilled and excited he is to be honored by you all today,” said Dutton’s 22-year-old daughter Kayla as the hunched and visibly confused former Pro Bowler was directed to look into the camera for a photo-op with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell before gingerly attempting to lift his arm and wave to the roaring crowd. “We would like to thank the NFL for taking the time to salute their alumni, especially when those like my father have so little time left. Though as happy as he is today, I just know he wishes all of his teammates were still alive to be here with him.” Following the ceremony, Dutton’s family reportedly returned him to his assisted living home after the Seahawk’s great drifted to sleep in the stands during the first quarter.
AdvertisementThe Secretary-General is particularly concerned about reports of intense airstrikes in residential areas and on civilian buildings in Sana’a, including the Chamber of Commerce, a wedding hall and a center for the blind. He also has received troubling reports of the use of cluster munitions in attacks on Sana’a on 6 January in several locations. The use of cluster munitions in populated areas may amount to a war crime due to their indiscriminate nature.
The Secretary-General reminds all parties of the utmost necessity to respect their obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The Secretary-General calls on all parties to the conflict in Yemen to engage in good faith with his Special Envoy for Yemen in order to convene a new round of peace talks as soon as possible.
HR/PRThere's a caveat because this is complicated.
But multiple NBA sources confirmed to the Miami Herald today that Joe Johnson has decided he wants to play for the Heat -- and two even said that the deal is done, pending Johnson clearing waivers this weekend, as expected.
Johnson, who is known as extremely loyal and was initially reluctant to accept a buyout from the Nets, apparently narrowed his long list of choices to Miami, Oklahoma City and Atlanta, based on the chance to play a prominent role. There was an extra advantage in Miami; he's friendly with several players, notably Dwyane Wade, who told me more than a week ago that he would be "blowing up" Johnson's phone if the 34-year-old swingman took a buyout.
Johnson, a seven-time All-Star, struggled for the first two months of the season, but played well in January, averaging 13.5 points in 33.9 minutes while shooting 47 percent from three-point range. He's shooting 44.1 percent from deep in February. While he earned the name "ISO Joe" during his time in Atlanta, he's a good spot-up shooter and excellent post-up player.
If this finalizes, he figures to start at the small forward spot, next to Wade, especially if Chris Bosh doesn't return from a blood clot. That would leave Luol Deng at the power forward position.
The question now -- and the cause of the caveat -- is when Johnson would arrive. The Heat has made it clear publicly and privately that it doesn't want to pay luxury tax this season, so that it can avoid the penalties that come with being a repeater tax team. But, even if just offering Johnson the pro-rated minimum (he's made $174 million prior to his $24 million salary this season), the Heat would have to wait until roughly March 10 to officially add him without exceeding the tax line.
More as it comes...NEW YORK ― President-elect Donald Trump has yet to name his pick to lead the Department of the Interior, the agency that oversees the National Park System.
But Bill Nye, the science guy, wants whomever Trump chooses to keep oil, gas and mining companies from drilling in any more of the 83 million acres of land set aside for the nature preserves. Oil and gas companies operate in about a dozen sites in national parks.
“When you go extracting coal, oil and minerals from national parks, you just degrade them,” Nye told The Huffington Post during an event in Manhattan on Tuesday for the nonpartisan National Parks Foundation, which was celebrating the park system’s centennial. “That’s why they’re national parks ― they’re set aside.”
The possibilities for interior secretary thus far don’t inspire a lot of confidence. Among the names that have emerged are oil executive Forrest Lucas, oil and natural gas magnate Harold Hamm and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), whose calls to extract fossil fuels from protected lands popularized the phrase “drill, baby, drill.”
The next interior secretary could reopen Arctic waters or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling ― something environmental groups prevented President George W. Bush from doing in 2001.
Nye, who has become a high-profile advocate against the climate science denialism that grips the Republican Party, said Trump’s proposed $1 trillion infrastructure plan should include support for renewable energy projects.
“If you want to invest in infrastructure, if you want energy independence, [which] I think we all do, renewable energy sources ― wind, solar, a little bit of geothermal and a little bit of tidal energy ― is how the United States could be the world leader,” Nye said. “Exporting these ideas, and not being dependent on oil and other fossil fuels from other nations.”
Joshua Roberts / Reuters Yosemite Falls, a mainstay of Yosemite National Park.
Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax” and “a bunch of bunk,” has staked out dubious positions on renewable energy. He has railed against solar for being too costly and decried wind turbines for killing “too many eagles.” Last month, he even renewed his long-simmering fight against an offshore wind farm in Scotland, where he owns a luxury golf resort.
“What a legacy it would be for any administration to promote renewable energy and get away from extractive energies,” Nye said. “What a fantastic legacy that would be.”
The Republican Party platform called for turning over some public lands to states. However, Trump told Field & Stream magazine in January that he wants “to keep the lands great,” suggesting he may not be committed to that particular plank.
“If you interview anybody, any citizen in the U.S., they want Yellowstone National Park to always be there,” Nye said. “Everybody does.”
One possible way to achieve that is to earmark some infrastructure spending to help the parks dig out of their $12 billion maintenance backlog. But that could be a tough sell. The cost of fixing all the roads, bridges, public transit, railroads, energy systems, schools ports, airports, dams and other facilities could climb to $3.6 trillion, according to new estimates from the American Society of Civil Engineers ― nearly four times the amount Trump has already proposed.
As an alternative, Nye suggested taking the money being spent to keep U.S. troops protecting overseas oil fields, and using it instead to rebuild the parks.
“If we did not have to have an army or military on the other side of the world preserving our extractive industries and fossil fuel burning, that would free up billions of U.S. dollars for other purposes,” Nye said. “The national parks could certainly be first in line if you went that route.”Here's a recently completed illustration of a scene from A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones to people who've seen the TV show). I absolutely adore the series so jumped at the chance to do this for someone.Here's a brief description that covers what's happening:
"After enduring captivity and forced marriage, Sansa finally gets a way out in her fifth chapter in A Storm of Swords. Ser Dontos the Red has promised that he has a friend with a ship who will assist in their escape, but the little bird soon learns that going home is never quite so simple or innocent as it might appear..."
I was asked to complete this for thestrangerskiss.tumblr.com/ and you can see the original post here: thestrangerskiss.tumblr.com/po…
(Also I've been asked to inform you guys that the preceding link is for people who want to reblog on tumblr and no reposting or unauthorised use of the painting is allowed).Carry on Scrolling
If you’ve used the Material Design Components library (formerly known as the design support library), and specifically its scrolling components such as AppBarLayout, you probably noticed that flinging can sometimes stop quite abruptly. You can see a quick animation comparing the issue and new fixed version above.
As you can see, the scrolling gesture is seamless while the user scrolls up, but on v25.x, the fluidity breaks when the user flings down. What you really want is for the app bar to get dragged down too as you can see in v26.x.
The main reason for this is due to limitations in a set of Android APIs called nested scrolling. They were added in Android Lollipop (API 21) to enable the sort of scrolling gestures which Material Design formalizes on its ‘Scrolling techniques’ patterns page. The primary goal of the APIs is to allow listening & interception of scrolling events by any of its parent views.
This has now been augmented in 26.0.0-beta2 of the support libraries with some improvements to the nested scrolling APIs. So if you’re just interested in the behavior, please go update and give it a try!
The rest of this post is going to be a deep-dive on how we actually implemented it.
Nested scrolling — a recap
So let’s quickly cover the current nested scrolling APIs. There are two main parts to the API, scrolling and flinging, but it’s easiest to think about the API from the timeline of a scroll gesture. From here on, whenever I refer to view, I’m talking about the scrolling view which the user is touching (i.e. ScrollView, RecyclerView, etc).
👇 User touches screen. On the ACTION_DOWN event, the view will call startNestedScroll() on each of its parents until one returns true. Returning true means that the parent is interested in this scroll gesture. If none of the parents return true, the nested scroll is cancelled and the view goes about its normal business. For the rest of this post we’ll assume that a parent has returned true.
👋 User moves finger. On each and every ACTION_MOVE event, the view will call dispatchNestedPreScroll() to send events to the parent allowing it to consume some/all/none of the distance travelled by the user’s finger. If the parent does not consume all of the movement, the view then consumes the remainder itself (by moving position, etc) and sends a dispatchNestedScroll() event with the value which it consumed.
👆 User lifts finger. On the ACTION_UP event, the view will calculate whether it needs to continue the movement by flinging itself. If it deems that there is enough velocity left in the gesture to continue, it will call dispatchNestedPreFling() to allow the parent to consume the velocity. If the parent returns true and consumes it, the view has then finished its work. Otherwise the view will start a fling and then immediately call dispatchNestedFling(). The view will immediately call stopNestedScroll() marking the nested scroll as finished, even though the view may actually be flinging itself.
That last sentence is the crux of the issue here. The parent probably does not want to consume the entire fling gesture, it likely just wants to react to the fling just like it reacts to a scroll. Unfortunately that isn’t supported by the current API though (as of v25.3.1).
Nested Scrolling++
In 26.0.0-beta2 of the support libraries, we have released some improvements to the nested scrolling APIs, to help fix that very issue.
If you look at the new API, all we’ve actually done is added a new parameter called type to the existing methods. The type passed to the method tells you what kind of input is driving that specific scroll event, and is one of two options currently: ViewCompat.TYPE_TOUCH and ViewCompat.TYPE_NON_TOUCH.
TYPE_TOUCH is passed when the event is directly triggered from the user touching the screen. TYPE_NON_TOUCH is triggered when the user is not touching the screen. Currently this is only used in the fling scenario but it might be utilized in other areas such as keyboard navigation in the future.
To maintain API compatibility, we assume TYPE_TOUCH when not specified. For example, here’s the startNestedScroll() declarations:
@Override public void startNestedScroll ( int axes ) { startNestedScroll ( axes, ViewCompat. TYPE_TOUCH ); } @Override public void startNestedScroll ( int axes, int type ) { // Do something }
In practice
So, it’s great that we have these new methods but how do you actually use them in practice? Well for the most part you probably won’t need to look at the type parameter at all. You should just process each event the same regardless of how it was triggered.
So why have we even added the parameter? Remember the original issue? To fix that we’ve had to change some of the characteristics of how the API is called from the scrolling view, specifically around flinging.
Now let’s step through the same scenario as before:
👇 User touches screen. Exactly same as above, but this time the TYPE_TOUCH parameter is passed through to startNestedScroll(TYPE_TOUCH).
👋 User moves finger. Ditto, same story.
👆 User lifts finger. Ditto. stopNestedScroll(TYPE_TOUCH) is called and ‘touch’ nested scrolling has finished.
🎢 View starts flinging. Finally, the interesting bit! If the view starts flinging itself, we will now start a whole new round of nested scrolling, but this time with the TYPE_NON_TOUCH type. That means: startNestedScroll(TYPE_NON_TOUCH), followed by dispatchNestedPreScroll(TYPE_NON_TOUCH) + dispatchNestedScroll(TYPE_NON_TOUCH), with a final touch of stopNestedScroll(TYPE_NON_TOUCH). This time everything is driven from the view’s fling (usually a Scroller) rather than touch events.
That’s great, but earlier you told me to ignore the type parameter!?!
Indeed I did. The type parameter has been mostly added to maintain the current API and its runtime characteristics. For 99% of usage, you should treat both types of events exactly the same, and that’s exactly what AppBarLayout does by ignoring the type.
How do I use it?
The new APIs and functionality are for the moment a support-library only feature.
If you are just using AppBarLayout and friends, and not explicitly using the nested scrolling APIs, you can just update to 26.0.0-beta2 and enjoy.
However if you are explicitly implementing the nested scrolling APIs, you will need to make some changes to benefit*. The new methods have been added to NestedScrollingChild2 and NestedScrollingParent2, so just switch the appropriate interface to implement. They have also been added to CoordinatorLayout.Behavior so you should be able to just add, int type to the end to any of your relevant method declarations and it will just work™.
* To be clear: if you make no changes, your app’s behavior should not change. If you see differently, please raise a bug.
Final result
Just because, here’s another video showing a flinger slightly slower:With the problematic rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges over the past few months, there has been some hand wringing in the media about whether or not the new health plans will be sustainable. ACA opponents are no doubt hoping that premiums will spiral out of control. Even supporters of the ACA have expressed concern that if the newly insured population ends up being smaller, older or sicker than projected, premiums could climb significantly in 2015.
As with much of the anecdotal accounts and media reports regarding the ACA, there may be some validity to the worries about the increased risk presented by the newly insured population in 2014, but there is also plenty of hyperbole and spin.
Sarah Kliff addressed the “death spiral” concerns in an excellent Washington Post article recently, noting that even if young adults end up being 25 percent less likely to enroll than older |
running!Be on the lookout for our advent calendar too! It'll be starting really soon!Howdy Wolfhome!Due to userbase feedback, the Wolfhome administration has brought up a current rule for a possible revision.You can vote and join in on the discussion for a possible rule revision here! The discussion/voting will end one week from November 13th, so make sure to give us your thoughts soon!We are happy to announce the start of Wolfhome's annual Howl-o-ween! This month we celebrate not only the spookiest month of the year, but Wolfhome's birthday!The administration has put on lots of events this year, so be sure to check out the Bulletin Board to see what's going on.Let's make this Howl-o-ween the spookiest yet!Admin applications are now OPEN! You can find the application by clicking here Know someone you think would be a good administrator? Don't forget that you can also nominate Heya Wolfhome!The administration is happy to announce that a few changes have been made to the site! You may notice in chat that username colors have changed. The colors have been chosen as they go a little bit more of the color theme of Wolfhome.We have also made an update to our ART FAQ! We will now be allowing larger sized poses! We are working on updating the size of our pose sets, so please give us a little time to get this done, but please enjoy your new sizing freedoms!!You'll also notice that the forum banner has been updated! Big thank you and congratulations to PUGHT for the beautiful banner!If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to contact any administrator!Hey There Wolfhome! The administration would like to make you all aware that there will be some temporary downtime for the forum starting on Wednesday, April 4th at 6pm Eastern Time. This is so we can work on a few updates. An announcement will be made shortly beforehand as a reminder. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.Spring is just around the corner, and with it comes a new banner for the forum! Got ideas for one? Enter your idea for the forum banner in our contest, first place will win 25 deltas and have their art at the top of the forum for 2 seasons!The Event Committee is currently hosting weekly events where you can win deltas. Check out the Rotating Weekly Contests for your chance to win!The winners for the 2018 Wolfhome awards have also been posted!You asked, and we heard! The Wolfhome administration is taking requests for new forum titles. Once we receive a collection, we will open up for voting.The Administration would also like to remind everyone that we're still open and raising money for site beautification. Stop on by, we have everything from pose coloring, shading, and lining to full custom artwork, characters, and YCHs! Check out the topic here. With the HOWLidays just around the corner, Eventful and the Event Committee have put out the Wolfhome Advent Calendar!! Be sure to check out the The Bulletin Board for more fun and exciting events where you can win prizes like poses and deltas!!In celebration of Howl-o-ween and Wolfhome's Birthday, subscriptions have now been set to free!!October is upon us and Howl-o-ween is just around the corner. The Administration as well as the Event Committee have busted out some special Halloween themed contests and events for you, located in The Wolfhome Bulletin Board. Here are a few events happening now and lasting throughout October!Contests ending October 31st: The Pose Mod & Custom Pose Contest with prizes up to 'Guess How Many' Candy Contest with prizes up to Pumpkin Carving Contest with prizes up to Caption & Screenshot Contest with prizes up to Sniff Trivia with prizes up toAlong with a few other events such as The catch me outside event, where you take a 'Nature' photo (yes! you DO have to go outside for this!) So get out there and hone your photography skills for a chance at winning a prize of up to- This ends Oct 20th!On October 29th Bedagi and Rhea will be hosting a Trick or Treat Event at. Find out more by clicking the link! Oh and be on the lookout for Celebria and Fayete, they seem to be doing a lot of TRICK or TREATing around chat! They will be riddling you silly so have your wits about you!It is that time already!? Howloween, Wolfhome's Halloween and anniversary celebration, will be starting in a few weeks! We would like your input on what types of events you would like to see. Please give your feedback here! Within the past month, Epilepsy and Voidrae joined the Art Review Team! If you have any pose related questions, let them know! And we would also like to welcome Sidekick, our newest gamma, to the staff! Welcome aboard! Lastly, a bit welcome back to Wolfhome Administration, Coyote!Voidrae, Ravi and Basil were promoted to Gamma! While Kuvi, Blackbird, Epilepsy and Affliction were promoted to Beta! Be sure to say congratulations if you see them around the chat or forum!The Event Committee has a few events going on currently, such as: Summer Scavenger Hunt and The Tale of Wolfhome, a short story and comic event! Click the links for more details.Applications for the Wolfhome Administration, the Wolfhome Event Committee, and Wolfhome Relations Team are currently closed.The administration is holding a fundraiser for the community! All proceeds from the fundraiser will go toward updating pose sets, rooms, and other aesthetics for Wolfhome. With contributions from several of the administration, we are happy to offer a wide range of art and services. Check out the thread here and help us give Wolfhome some new art!The Administration would like to make you aware of a change in our chat rules regarding death threats. Role-play death threats are now acceptable in private rooms and private settings designated for role-play only.However, if the threat is deemed serious/ too graphic enough, or if it is unclear if the threat is role-play related, you will still be subject to a ban. Furthermore, role-play death threats in public settings (this includes sniffs, away messages in a public room and private room rules) and any other type of death threat (not role-play) still follow our normal protocols.Please click here for our updated version of this rule change (rule number 4). Feel free to contact any on duty administrator if you have any questions or concerns about this rule change.Lunar Phases, which is Wolfhome's newsletter, has come out with a new update! To read more about Lunar Phases or contribute to the newsletter, please see here and to read the newsletter, please see here This DOES NOT apply to those who made accounts BEFORE 2nd March 2013. Anyone joining Wolfhome after 2nd March 2013 must be at least 13 years of age. All current users under the age of 13, whether having a paid account or a free account will not be affected. =) see this forum topic if you have any questions. Head on over to this forum topic to see how you can help make a difference to WolfHome by filling in our survey questions!As always, we are taking nominations from users for who they think should be an admin. For more information on how to nominate someone please click here! Visit the Wolfhome banner page (sign in with your Chatlands™ user name) and add one to your web page to promote this site! Thanks!Wolfhome has a Facebook page, and here's a hint... It would be ato "LIKE" the page and then keep an eye out for Delta giveaway promotions! These promotions are only available on Facebook. We've been running promotionsand we will run more. So, keep an eye on the Wolfhome Facebook page for your chance to win a Chatlands™ Delta.These aid societies did more than provide relief from doctors’ bills, lost wages or funeral expenses. They also divided the “deserving” poor from miscreants who suffered through their own fault. Their bylaws stressed “thrift, leadership skills, self-government, self-control and good moral character,” the historian David Beito has written. Lodges required members to hold an “honorable” job, banned women of “immoral or questionable behavior,” and limited the use of alcohol and drugs.
Today, Medi-Share requires members to “live by biblical standards:” no tobacco or illegal drugs and no sex “outside of traditional Christian marriage.” Samaritan Ministries, with headquarters in Peoria, Ill., requires a pastor’s approval of medical expenses (and refuses to cover treatment for S.T.D.s unless “contracted innocently”). Liberty HealthShare, based in Independence, Ohio, is the only Affordable Care Act-exempt ministry open to people of many faiths. It asks them to affirm that “it is my spiritual duty to God and my ethical duty to others to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
Members say these rules are marks of the kind of community that government programs undermine. “This is a solution for those of us who see the A.C.A. as a problem,” said Daniel Alders, 28, a Samaritan member who lives in Nacogdoches, Tex., and has turned to the ministry to pay for the births of his two children. Samaritan members send their monthly share directly to another member with medical expenses. “When we receive money, nine times out of 10 there’s a note attached saying they’re praying for us and the health of the baby,” he told me.
“A community is an organically grown organism, so it can’t succeed if it’s pushed and enforced from the top level down,” he said. “You have to have a moral foundation, a reason to trust those whose needs you’re sharing.”
In a recent interview with NPR, President Obama acknowledged that many white working-class voters felt no such trust in the government. “They think: ‘I’m being left out. Nobody seems to be thinking about how tough it is for me right now,’ ” he said.
He’s not the first liberal to hope that publicly funded health insurance could win that trust. More than a century ago, the Progressive reformer Jane Addams admired the parades of mutual aid societies in Chicago’s Italian quarter, where members marched “with a brave showing of banners, celebrating their achievement in having surrounded themselves by at least a thin wall of protection against disaster.” She longed “to pour into the government of their adopted country all this affection and zeal, this real patriotism. A system of State insurance would be a very simple device and secure a large return.”
In fact, mutual aid societies fought compulsory insurance legislation that Progressive activists proposed in the World War I era, fearing that such laws would endanger Americans’ “spirit of self-reliance.” The legislation failed, but the societies’ days were numbered, too. The financial burdens of their aging membership sometimes became crushing. And they were no match for the growing political power of commercial insurance companies and organized medicine, or the I.R.S.’s ruling in 1943 to grant tax breaks to employers who paid for workers’ insurance.As thousands of civil rights and labor groups marched in New York City against Koch brothers funded and GOP-led efforts to suppress voting rights, the U.S. Senate scheduled January hearings on the issue.
The hearings of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights will take place in the key swing state of Florida on January 27th. The hearings were requested by Florida Senator Bill Nelson. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin chairs the committee.
Florida has new election laws that restrict early voting from 14 days to eight. In Florida, writes USA Today quoting NAACP leader Ryan Hagood,”54 percent of African-American voters cast their ballots early in the 2008 general election, and blacks made up nearly a third of statewide turnout the Sunday before Election Day.”
The hearing will occur just before the state’s presidential primary.
Some Florida counties must have federal approval of voting law changes under the Voting Rights Act. “Hillsborough County is one of five Florida counties where changes to state voting laws must be cleared by the Justice Department because of past racial conditions that could have undermined voting rights.” says a Saint Petersburg blog.
Across the country laws restricting voting are attempted in 37 states. House Democrats have also called for Washington hearings to investigate what they term “Jim Crow like measures.”
Six states have taken aim at early voting: Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine, Tennessee, Georgia, and West Virginia.
Ohio election officials on Friday certified a November 2012 ballot initiative that would nullify the restrictions, thereby delaying their pending implementation.
Over 5 million people could be affected by the GOP attempts to limit ballot access which include requiring voter identification cards, eliminating same-day registration on voting day, prohibiting ex-felons from ballot access, restricting early voting and requiring proof of citizenship.
A recent study by Republican lawyers themselves shows no need for voter identification cards. “The data shows that during the entire 10 year period, 21 states had only one or two convictions for some form of voter irregularity. And some of these 21 states have the strictest form of voter ID laws, based on a finding of 2 or less convictions in ten years. Five states had a total of three convictions over a ten-year period. Rhode Island had 4 convictions for the same 10 years. Taking a close look at the RNLA data shows 30 states, including the District of Columbia, had 3 or less voter fraud convictions for a 10 year period.”
Photo: Gabe Falsetta/PWBOSTON – In a corner of America’s oldest public common, some 200 anti-Israel demonstrators held a so-called “die-in” Saturday to protest Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
For the third time in eight days, Boston police were forced to intervene when a small group of student Israel supporters was swarmed by demonstrators screaming anti-Semitic epithets and initiating physical contact, said students involved in the incident.
The two-hour “die-in” on the Boston Common climaxed when protest leaders read the names of Palestinians killed in Gaza since the fighting started. Holding signs printed with each victim’s name and age, demonstrators fell to the concrete as each corresponding name was read.
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On Friday, the day before the “die-in,” more than 1,000 Israel supporters gathered in the same spot of the Boston Common to support the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. Organized by the Israeli American Council, the Friday rally featured speeches from Jewish leaders and calls to defend Israel on social media.
Staged across from the gold-domed Massachusetts State House, Saturday’s “die-in” kicked off with an hour of anti-Israel speeches. Most speakers condemned the US government’s support of Israel and the Jewish state’s alleged “war crimes” against Palestinians.
Demonstrators’ signs and T-shirts pointed to participation from a slew of “peace action” committees, local unions, international socialist and women’s groups, and far-left activist group Jewish Voice for Peace. At various points during the gathering, activists called for boycotts of Israeli products and for the US government to “defund” Israel.
During the half-hour “die-in” segment of the rally, some of the sprawled out protesters were observed smoking cigarettes and using cellphones. Others took advantage of the lull to distribute fliers ranging from “The Socialist Alternative” to “Boston Remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
For the third time since last week, a handful of Jewish students with Israeli flags was surrounded by demonstrators shouting anti-Semitic epithets and – according to two of the students – a tense minute of “pushing and shoving.”
Soon after the “die-in” ended, Brett Loewenstern — a Berklee College of Music student and pro-Israel activist – entered the fray with his boyfriend, Israeli-born Avi Levi.
According to Loewenstern, he and his boyfriend’s combining of an Israeli flag with a rainbow flag – the symbol for gay rights – set off a hailstorm of insults from demonstrators.
Among other things, the shouts included “Jews back to Birkenau” and “Drop dead, you Zionazi whores,” said Loewenstern and other witnesses.
“We started to get pushed and shoved by the Israel haters, and the police came in to extract us from them,” said Loewenstern, a former contestant on American Idol who sings Israel’s national anthem at communal events.
“The policewoman was very nice and said that we were allowed to make our point but we have to do it separately from the Israel haters,” Loewenstern told the Times of Israel.
Last night, Boston’s Fox affiliate aired a clip of Loewenstern talking about “13 years of rocket attacks on Israel” and the use of Gaza schools and hospitals by Hamas to hide terror weapons.
Another media-savvy activist is Chloe Valdary, the New Orleans-based student assaulted during a protest outside Boston’s Israeli consulate last Friday. Valdary pressed assault and battery charges against her assailant with the Boston Police Department, which sent a detective from its civil rights unit to her apartment.
“Because the Anti-Defamation League filed a report, the detective came and admitted to me that the police dropped the ball,” said Valdary. “[The detective] said that the protesters should not have been allowed to swarm us like that,” she said.
According to Valdary, even one or two vocal Israel supporters “really make a difference when they come to anti-Israel rallies,” she said.
“We really do manage to disrupt them and distract them when we show up,” Valdary said. “We show up and it’s in the media, so the public sees how hate-filled and incredibly deluded these Hamas supporters are,” she said.
Several large anti-Israel gatherings have been held in Boston since Valdary’s assault outside the Israeli consulate last week. During a gathering outside the Boston Public Library on Thursday evening, police had to protect Valdary and student activist Daniel Mael from what Valdary called “hundreds of people shouting ‘Allah is great.’”
On Tuesday evening, anti-Israel demonstrators will gather in Copley Square for a “mass march” against Israel’s “collective punishment of Palestinians,” according to fliers handed out on Saturday. Joining veteran groups opposed to “Israel’s impunity” will be several chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s choice of billionaire Betsy DeVos to be education secretary was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, but only after Vice President Mike Pence was called in to break a tie that threatened to defeat her.
The tie-breaking vote, which Senate officials said was unprecedented to confirm a Cabinet nominee, followed an all-night debate on DeVos as Senate Democrats tried to pressure at least one more Republican to oppose her and defeat the nomination.
Only two Republicans joined the 46 Democrats and two independents in opposition to DeVos. Critics have called her unprepared to lead the Department of Education after a rocky Senate confirmation hearing.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer immediately derided the proceeding.
“This cabinet nom is so unqualified, so divisive, that @MikePenceVP had to drive down Pennsylvania Ave to cast the deciding vote,” he wrote in a Twitter post after the vote.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, with the power to cast votes only when there are ties on nominations or legislation.
Republican Trump tweeted his congratulations to the nominee and Pence praised her. “Today’s vote to confirm Education Secretary @BetsyDeVos was a vote for every child having a chance at a world-class education,” the vice president wrote in a Twitter post.
Ultimately, only Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined the Democrats and two independents in opposition to DeVos. That left 50 Republicans supporting her in the 100-member chamber.
Historically, Cabinet nominees with weak support in the Senate ask the president to withdraw their nomination, which DeVos did not do.
DeVos is married to the heir and former chief executive of Amway, which sells household and personal care items. She is also the daughter of the founders of Prince Corp, a Michigan car parts supplier, and sister of Erik Prince, the founder of the security company formerly known as Blackwater USA, now called Academi.
As Monday night’s debate wound down, Schumer said of DeVos: “She disdains public education where 90 percent of our students are.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging her confirmation, said it was time to “end the unprecedented delay by Democrats” on the Cabinet nominations by Trump, who took office on Jan. 20.
DeVos has been an advocate of charter schools, which operate independently of school districts and frequently are run by corporations. Democrats are concerned she will promote charter schools in a way that would undercut public schools, which have long been the anchor of the U.S. education system.
Teachers unions, a major constituency for the Democratic Party, roundly opposed DeVos, a philanthropist and investor, to lead the department, which sets education policy for younger children and universities and also administers a college financial aid program of $1 trillion.
The Consumer Federation of America urged DeVos to confront the problem of millions of Americans in default on student loans. “The new secretary needs to put borrowers and taxpayers first, rather than focusing on helping the student loan and for-profit college industries pump up their profits,” it said.
Following the cliffhanger vote on DeVos, the Senate promptly limited debate on Trump’s choice of Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. A final vote on Sessions’ nomination is expected sometime this week.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (R) swears in Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (L), joined by her husband Dick DeVos (2nd L), at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington, U.S. February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Also up for Senate debate soon are Trump’s nominations of Representative Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services and ex-banker Steve Mnuchin to be Treasury secretary.
All three face opposition from Senate Democrats.
Also facing a rough ride is Trump’s choice of Andrew Puzder to be secretary of labor. Puzder, the chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc, has admitted to employing an undocumented immigrant as a house cleaner.After serenading the country in song and on his guitar, pumping iron in a gym, DJing and finishing first in car and horse races galore, Turkmenistan’s unconventional president has showcased another of his many talents.
State media has broadcast footage of Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, dressed in a commando outfit and sunglasses, firing at targets with an automatic rifle and pistol and throwing knives – all with predictable pin-point accuracy.
After winning the admiring applause of a row of military personnel, the president – who, against eight other candidates, won 98% of the popular vote in this year’s election – was then shown calling in a helicopter airstrike.
“Picking up one of the weapons presented to him, the head of state demonstrated the precision of his aim, which served as evidence of his high level of military preparedness,” the state news agency said, according to independent local media.
“After that, the president demonstrated his mastery of target-shooting with a pistol,” the agency said, “then demonstrated his skills in the artful handling of knives by precisely casting daggers at a distant target.”
An opposition website, Chronicles of Turkmenistan, edited the footage together with clips and music from the 1985 action movie Commando showing Arnold Schwarzenegger lacing his boots, snapping shut his ammunition belt, applying camouflage and thrusting his knife into its sheath.
Play Video 2:42 Turkmenistan president mocked in footage originally designed to show off his military skills
The Eurasianet website said the original footage was filmed during an inspection of troops at a border station south of the capital, Ashgabat, on Tuesday. The president’s audience – dressed as ordinary soldiers – was in fact the heads of the military, police, security services, prosecutor’s office and customs service.
Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, became health minister under the country’s previous president, Saparmurat Niyazov, who was known for renaming the months of the year after himself and his mother.
After taking over the presidency following Niyazov’s death, the head of state dismantled his predecessor’s personality cult, but then soon began building his own. Turkmenistan has no free media and is widely described as the world’s second-most isolated state after North Korea.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Berdymukhamedov in another still from the footage. Photograph: Chronicles of Turkmenistan
In 2015 a 21-metre high statue of Berdymukhamedov mounted on a horse, cast in bronze and covered in 24-carat gold leaf, was unveiled in Ashgabat. But not all of his stunts succeed: in 2013, during the country’s annual Day of the Horse celebrations, the president fell off his horse mid-race.
While he was not seriously injured, security personnel searched the crowd at the exit to prevent video of the fall from being shared. They were unsuccessful, and footage that surfaced online has since been viewed tens of thousands of times.
Last year a commission led by the president rewrote the constitution to extend the presidential term to seven years from five and remove the upper age limit on candidates, paving the way for Berdymukhamedov to rule for life.Progressive groups are protesting outside of Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Des Moines and Waterloo offices Tuesday evening because of a comment he made related to the estate tax.
Grassley told The Des Moines Register scaling back the estate tax would recognize people who are investing as opposed to "those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies." The comment went viral on social media.
In a call with reporters Tuesday, Grassley said the story was fair.
"I think the people that are commenting think that I’m making bad comments about people that live from paycheck to paycheck. Not at all," Grassley says.
Grassley says he was trying to make the point that the estate tax, which only affects multi-million-dollar estates, unfairly punishes people who save and invest.
Asked if he regrets the comment, Grassley said, "Well, I suppose I could’ve said buying new cars and going to the movies, and it would be the same thing."
A news release from the Iowa Citizen Action Network says, "Not only is his comment sexist and elitist, it shows just how far removed he has become from the hardworking Iowans he is supposed to represent."
The scaling-back of the estate tax is included in the GOP plan to change the tax code. The House and Senate still have to reconcile the differences between their tax bills, and Grassley says they should have a bill on the president's desk before Dec. 25.BUFFALO—The Maple Leafs will be without defenceman Jake Gardiner for Wednesday night’s game against the Buffalo Sabres. Gardiner, who practised Tuesday, did not accompany the team to Buffalo for the game. Coach Mike Babcock said the defenceman was injured, but did not expand.
Jake Gardiner is out of the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup with an undisclosed injury. ( Paul Vernon / AP FILE PHOTO )
“I don’t know how serious it is,” said Babcock. “Day-to-day. That usually means 10 days. I don’t know the answers.” Gardiner had points in two straight games (one goal, one assist). Defenceman Martin Marincin will return to the lineup in Gardiner’s place. The Leafs are also without centre Tyler Bozak, who’ll miss his second straight game with an undisclosed upper-body injury. Mark Arcobello will replace Bozak.
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“Any time guys are out of your lineup, especially pieces like that, it’s an opportunity for guys to step up,” said captain Dion Phaneuf. “Injuries happen to all teams. We’re no different. It’s a chance for guys to step up and fill those holes.” It is the Leafs’ 100th regular-season visit to Buffalo. The Leafs have a record of 27-61-11 in Buffalo.BEIJING (Reuters) - Hospitals and schools run by China’s government-owned firms will be revamped, closed or transferred to local authorities by the end of next year, regulators said late on Friday, as part of efforts to reform the country’s state sector.
The State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) said in a notice that hospitals and schools operated by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should be transferred to local authorities by the end of 2018.
Stripping SOEs of the services would help “lighten the social burden of SOEs” as well as increase efficiency of China’s education and medical services, SASAC said.
Normal schools from pre-school to universities should be transferred to local authorities to be run, and schools facing difficulties should be merged, the notice said.
Vocational schools could still be run by SOEs and the establishment of an education group to organize the management of these schools would be encouraged.
Hospitals should also be transferred to local governments unless they are uncompetitive, in which case they should be closed; any hospitals continued to be run by SOEs should be operated as non-profits, SASAC said.
The country’s heavily indebted state-owned firms, most of which have been carved out of state bureaus, have been under pressure to ditch schools, hospitals, retirement homes, firefighting services and other “social functions” in order to cut costs and focus on their core businesses.
China’s state firms have traditionally been obliged to provide lifelong employment and cradle-to-grave social welfare as part of the “iron rice bowl” system.
But with thousands of companies tottering on the brink of bankruptcy in the 1990s, the government embarked on reforms in order to reduce their burden.
Reform of SOEs to reduce inefficiencies and create a competitive state sector remains a central part of the current administration’s efforts to upgrade and rebalance China’s economy.
But progress has been hindered by concerns that trimming operations of SOEs will disgruntle thousands of workers who expected their positions to set them up to receive healthcare, pensions and schooling for them and their families for life.Wednesday on MSNBC, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Breitbart News against network host Stephanie Ruhle’s charges of racism.
Partial transcript as follows:
RUHLE: I’ve also never seen the hate and the racism out of so many people who are saying we’re going to—
GIULIANI: There’s no racism.
RUHLE: You don’t think Breitbart News —
GIULIANI: Breitbart News is not running for office.
RUHLE: But Steven Bannon is the architect of Donald Trump’s campaign. What do you believe Breitbart represents?
GIULIANI: Nobody runs Donald Trump’s campaign but Donald Trump. For all the stuff you’re throwing around, racist, the last thing in the world Donald Trump is a racist. I’ve known him for 28 years. The man likes white people, he likes black people, he likes Hispanic people, he plays golf with them. He opened up the first club in Palm Beach that allowed Jewish people, Italian people like me who couldn’t get into those clubs.
RUHLE: Can you say that Steven Bannon doesn’t run his campaign?
GIULIANI: Donald Trump runs Donald Trump’s campaign.
RUHLE: What is he doing paying Steven Bannon?
GIULIANI: There are a lot of people who do different things. To say Donald Trump is a racist is outrageous. To call anybody a racist is outrageous.
RUHLE: Hold on, there are people you can call racist.
GIULIANI: You can’t call him racist. The man has done more for minorities over the last 30 years in terms of opening facilities for them, hiring them, promoting them, promoting the first woman to be the head of a construction company.
RUHLE: Can you say then —
GIULIANI: Taking a guy who began as a caddy who’s now making a couple million dollars a year running his technology. I mean, this is a guy who has helped people, black people, white people. He doesn’t see people that way. It’s Hillary Clinton who says to us we all have implicit bias who I believe has a problem. She should look in the mirror if she thinks we all have implicit bias. Hillary, I have news for you. I don’t. Maybe you do, I have no racial guilt. Not a single bit of it, which is why I’m willing to tell the truth about black crime and what has to be done about it. There is no mayor in the history of the city to save more black lives than me, nobody even close.
RUHLE: Can you say that Breitbart News doesn’t have racist views and the CEO of Breitbart News is currently running Donald Trump’s campaign?
GIULIANI: Donald Trump is running Donald Trump’s campaign.
RUHLE: Then what is Steven Bannon doing?
GIULIANI: Breitbart News has its own point of view. Look, your station has its own point of view. Do you want me to tell you what that is? You don’t really want to know.
RUHLE: Of course I want to know.
GIULIANI: Your station is completely left wing and totally anti-Trump and totally anti-Republican with one or two exceptions. I’m one of the few Republicans that will come on here because we don’t think we get anywhere near fair treatment on this station.
RUHLE: Do you think I’ve treated you fairly?
GIULIANI: I believe that this station is completely left wing oriented and very, very anti-Republican.
RUHLE: Do you think that I have treated you fairly?
GIULIANI: I say there are exceptions. You gave me a chance to answer the question. I appreciate that. You have some people on this station that are flying off the wall.
RUHLE: You don’t think there are some people who are flying off the wall over at Fox?
GIULIANI: Not as bad as this.
RUHLE: All right.FORT BRAGG, NC – As the 2012 Presidential election race heats up, both candidates have engaged in a political firefight for the votes of military service-members and veterans.
While President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney regularly wear flag lapel pins, they are also trying to differentiate themselves to appeal to potential supporters in uniform.
President Obama hopes to capitalize on his experiences as commander-in-chief. In fact, political operatives within the Democratic National Committee announced that Fort Bragg Army base would be host to their upcoming convention.
A DNC spokesman cited budget concerns as the primary reason for the short move away from Charlotte, NC.
“Unfortunately the DNC has a 26 million dollar fundraising shortfall,” said Brad Woodhouse. “But we feel it is also a great way to be closer to our troops and save some money by holding it at Fort Bragg’s Pike Field.”
David Axelrod, the President’s campaign advisor, was skeptical of the venue change due to the President’s lack of military credentials.
The commander-in-chief, however, calmed his fears by reminding him of “his ‘gutsy call’ to nab bin Laden, the recent killing of three Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and frequent military-like salutes to Marines after he departs from his helicopter.”
“Not to mention his occasional Saddam Hussein-esque firing of a rifle from the White House balcony,” Axelrod added.
The move comes as both candidates seek the approval of the nation’s uniformed men and women in an election where neither candidate has prior military experience.
The Romney campaign blasted the use of a military base for political purposes as unconstitutional, while also talking about their candidate’s service in uniform.
“Mitt Romney has selflessly served our nation since April 1965 when he enlisted in the elite ranks of the Selective Service,” said campaign manager Matt Rhoades. “Furthermore, while deployed on missions to France in the seventies, he fought tirelessly against communist aggression in Vietnam.”
Rhoades also added that Romney ate “a ton of freedom fries to show his support for the troops during the Iraq war.”
Despite objections from the right, the Democratic National Convention activities will include a demonstration by
Rendering of the ‘Cool Guys Don’t Look At Explosions’ campaign ad that the DNC hopes to achieve
the U.S. Army parachute team, a military parade with pass-in-review of the President, and a special trip out to a demolitions range.
“We don’t need to do polling to know the American people love to see big-ass explosions,” said Axelrod. “So for the big finale, we’re going to have the President set some C-4 out on a building and slowly walk away as it explodes. The photos are going to be phenomenal!”
The Republican National Convention, held at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, will also feature Mitt Romney rappelling into the arena and onto the stage, where it is rumored he’ll perform “America, Fuck Yeah!” as troops from the nearby MacDill Air Force base dance in the background.
Duffel Blog investigative journalist Paul also contributed to this report.Share. Spartan gameplay Spartan gameplay
Without the Halo name and sound effects, Spartan Assault would be a colorful but otherwise barely remarkable twin-stick shooter. Aside from some annoying stability problems and dumb microtransactions, it’s competently made, but rarely memorable unless you’re playing the online-only co-op.
Exit Theatre Mode
The top-down perspective turns the distinctive Halo arsenal into a bunch of pretty boring guns. Only the heat-seeking Needler has any real complexity to it beyond point and shoot, so most of them handle too similarly to make you play differently. Most of the variety comes from the armor abilities, like health regen.
A few of the 30 single-player missions get ambitious, allowing you to drive a Scorpion tank or hijack a Covenant vehicle. It could’ve used more of that kind of freedom, because the typical search-and-destroy and timed holdouts against waves of enemies get old pretty quick.
The Xbox One-exclusive two-player co-op is much better designed. Its five missions against The Flood are faster paced and have objectives that require teamwork, like lowering force fields to let the other guy through, and they’re quick to run through in just a few minutes. It’s the kind of thing that would’ve been great to play with a buddy on the couch, but Spartan Assault needs a second Xbox One to make it happen.
The plot that ties it all together is flatly presented with a few animatic cutscenes and occasional voiceovers, but mostly it’s big blocks of text that precede each mission. It feels low budget, and leaning forward to read the tale of two Spartan soldiers defending an Earth colony between Halo 3 and Halo 4 didn’t hold my interest for long.
Spartan Assault isn’t a difficult game, but the scoring element gives it some replay value beyond the five hours it took to beat. I like that earning a high score is about pacing yourself - you have to string together as many kills as possible within four seconds of each other to maximize it. Optional modifiers, like one that depletes your shield as you fire |
we'd be saying, 'You the man, Tom...' Born for this race; the fastest sprinter likely to get to the track in the front group. He's the defending champion, and likely to add another victory in this event to his palmar�s.
Cons: There's always a weight of expectation that may be heavy on his shoulders; they are pretty broad shoulders, however.
Cyclingnews rating: Stijn Devolder - Quick Step Can Stijn Devolder do the double?
Photo �: Sirotti P-R History: Not much history here. Has only finished inside the time limit once in a lowly 18th place last year. He's worth mentioning though because anyone who can win the Ronde has a chance here.
RVV Performance: Took a second consecutive Ronde crown in similar fashion to last year's victory. In better form than 2008, if that's possible, and very capable of taking the Flanders-Roubaix double.
Mud or Dust? He's proven himself in either, and he's Belgian, so the tougher the better.
Pros: If you can win the Ronde, you can win Roubaix; Part of super strong Quick Step team.
Cons: Boonen will be Quick Step's number one; Devolder hasn't been on the Roubaix podium before.
Cyclingnews rating: Martijn Maaskant - Garmin-Slipstream
P-R History: Total surprise packet - one participation, one fourth place. Impressive stuff from this young Dutchman.
RVV Performance: After a quiet buildup to the Classics season, Maaskant burst into reckoning for a Roubaix crown by finishing fourth in rainy, windy and generally disagreeable conditions.
Mud or Dust? Like his 'predecessor', Magnus Backstedt, Garmin-Slipstream's Classics man can handle both
Pros: Seemingly fearless and uninimidated by the occasion, Maaskant has smarts beyong his years and the legs to match.
Cons: Hasn't proven himself over a longer period, which is necessary when it comes to this race, although he proved otherwise last year.
Cyclingnews rating: Fabian Cancellara - Team CSC P-R History: Winner in 2006 by nearly two minutes, which by modern standards is an absolute age. A podium spot in last year's edition increased interest in the Swiss strongman before the Spring had even begun. This year's campaign hasn't gone to plan, however.
RVV Performance: A broken chain on the Koppenberg meant the Saxo Bank star registered a DNF.
Mud or Dust? His fourth place finish in 2004 was in a less-than-dry race, and his win in 2006 came in a dusty duel. If it's dry, he's still a smart money bet for at least a podium.
Pros: Pedigree, strength, teamwork and character. The reigning Olympic TT champion is capable of massive bursts of speed, and his run of bad luck may have ended.
Cons: He's definitely not in premium condition, and doesn't seem to be able to avoid misfortune in '09.
Cyclingnews rating: Juan Antonio Flecha - Rabobank Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank) has good cards
Photo �: Tim Van Wichelen P-R History: After an anonymous 23rd in 2002, the Spaniard has been right up there every year without actually managing to win it. His second place in 2007 improves on his previous bests of third in 2005 and fourth in 2006, and you wouldn't put it past him to improve on that this year. His Achilles heel may be his sprint, though.
RVV Performance: No love for the Spaniard on a tough day in Flanders, and he finished well down in 30th.
Mud or Dust? Dust would suit him better, as he proved in the 2007 edition.
Pros: Rabobank is banking on the affable Spaniard to come through on Sunday, and the conditions should favour him. A lack of spectacular form means he may slip under the radar, which will suit him well.
Cons: Mixed form thus far in 2009 may mean he won' be at his peak.
Cyclingnews rating: Heinrich Haussler - Cerv�lo TestTeam Heinrich Haussler (Cerv�lo TestTeam) had an exceptional spring
Photo �: Sirotti P-R History:This will be his first.
RVV Performance: Couldn't match up against Quick Step and Devolder, but escaped at the end of a long and gruelling race for second place.
Mud or Dust? He doesn't mind adverse weather, because he has the mind to handle it. The Australia-born can obviosuly deal with the sun, too.
Pros: Had a fantastic spring with second places in Milano-Sanremo and the Ronde, plus three wins so far.
Cons: Starting to get tired. He admitted that in the Ronde he didn't have the same legs he had in the weeks before.
Cyclingnews rating: Sylvain Chvanel - Quick Step P-R History: Never really featured in this race, although given his form this year that may change on Sunday.
RVV Performance: Incredible team work could have see him win rather than his 31st place finish if the final would have developed differently.
Mud or Dust? Maybe the toughest French rider going round at the moment, Chavanel can handle the cold and wet, and is fast enough to stay with the rapid pace when the roads are dry. Like Nuyens, look out for a gutsy move from him in either conditions.
Pros: Great form, a move to Quick Step and under the watchful eye of Patrick Lefevere, the former Cofidis rider will be one to watch.
Cons: Hasn't got the Roubaix pedigree as such; unproven by virtue of his palmares.
Cyclingnews rating: Filippo Pozzato - Katusha Filippo Pozzato is always a factor
Photo �: Gregor Brown P-R History: Pretty unspectacular, although like Nuyens he has worked for Boonen in previous editions. A 15th place in 2006 is the high point of his Roubaix experience so far.
RVV Performance: Having shadowed Tom Boonen all day (much to the Belgian's understandable chagrin), Pozzato finished fifth.
Mud or Dust? Hmm, well�this is a toughie. The mud might mess up his pretty shoes, but then the dust could ruin his beautiful golden locks. Seriously though, despite appearances, Pippo isn't afraid of a bit of rain or dirt.
Pros: Harder than he looks; has had good form all spring and would do well in a sprint in the velodrome.
Cons: Lack of aggressiveness to initiate the decisive move.
Cyclingnews rating: George Hincapie - Columbia-Highroad Can George Hincapie (Columbia-Highroad) overcome bad luck from recent Paris-Roubaix races?
Photo �: Sirotti P-R History: You name it, George has done it here�except win, that is. He's rarely outside the top 10, but has only been on the podium once: second behind an unstoppable Tom Boonen in 2005. Luck doesn't follow George to this race, and he's been cruelly denied on many occasions. The most memorable times have been his exhausted tumble into a ditch in the closing stages of the 2002 race, and a broken steerer tube causing him to fall and break his shoulder in 2006.
RVV Performance: After a tough day at the office, Hincapie crashed in the group sprint for second, ending the day in 34th. It was a game of chance last Sunday, and the American didn't get a slice of the good stuff.
Mud or Dust? Either. Both. Whatever. George doesn't care; he'd race through boiling oil to get hold of that cobblestone trophy.
Pros: No one knows this race better than him; can go well in the predicted muddy conditions; Columbia-Highroad wants him to secure this crown and it'll move heaven and earth to help give it to him.
Cons: Bad luck seems to follow him to this race every year; years aren't on his side, although beware the experienced American with nothing to lose.
Cyclingnews rating: Leif Hoste - Silence-Lotto P-R History: Not too bad, but nothing spectacular. His only real threat in the race came in 2006 when he was second across the line behind Fabian Cancellara, but was later disqualified (along with Peter Van Petegem and Vladimir Gusev) for going through a railway crossing when the gates were down. Otherwise he's just failed to get into the top 10.
RVV Performance: Having suffered several setbacks this season, Flanders was a bit of a turnaround. He was in a promising move, but Quick Step reduced the quietly-spoken Belgian to finishing in a larger group behind Devolder, in 27th place.
Mud or Dust? Has gone well in the dust, but this guy's from Flanders so the mud should be no problem.
Pros: Silence-Lotto has been criticised for lack of results, and this strong rider has a point to prove to many.
Cons: A lack of form could hold him back, unfortunately.
Cyclingnews rating: Wild Cards - the best of the rest No review of the likely contenders would be complete without mentioning the last Frenchman to win in Roubaix: Frederic Guesdon (Fran�aise des Jeux). That win was way back in 1997, but Fred has the invaluable experience for any challenge from his teammates - but who they might be, we couldn't say. Other names worth a mention include former winner Servais Knaven (Milram) and � barring team tactics � the Columbia-Highroads Edvald Boasson Hagen and Marcus Burghardt. Also watch out for Bj�rn Leukemans (Vacansoleil), who may create a surprise. Photography For a thumbnail gallery of these images, click here Images by Sirotti/www.sirotti.it Stijn Devolder (Quick Step) wants the double has been in the business of winning for decades.
George Hincapie (Columbia-Highroad) has finished second in Roubaix and he really wants that win.
Heinrich Haussler (Cerv�lo TestTeam) had an exceptional spring but is starting to get tired. Images by Roberto Bettini/www.bettiniphoto.net It's hell � rain or shine Images by Gregor Brown/Cyclingnews Filippo Pozzato will look for a win in hell in 2009. Images by Tim Van Wichelen /www.cyclingview.be Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank) has good cards to play on Sunday.
Tom Boonen (Quick Step) would love to add a third cobble stone to his collection. More Cyclingnews featuresYemen says UPS planes never take off or land in it [30/October/2010]
SANA'A, Oct. 30 (Saba) – No UPS cargo planes left Yemen to other countries in the last days and there are no direct flights from Yemen to the United Kingdom or the United States, a Yemeni official said, after allegations that British and U.S. officials had found suspicious packages on planes that originated in Yemen.
The official wondered how the media mentioned the name of Yemen reporting that an explosive device was found onboard a cargo plane that landed in London coming from Yemen.
UPS planes never land or take off in Yemen, the official made clear.
The security measures at Yemeni airports are tightened and the authorities search passengers and luggage well, the official said, adding that Yemen has recently installed modern checking systems that can detect dangerous or suspicious materials to the safety of passengers and planes.
We urge the media not to make hasty judgments about sensitive issues and the media should wait until investigations reveal the truth, the official said, as he pointed out that Yemen has launched an investigation into the allegations and planned to coordinate with the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the U.S. over the issue.
Yemen is determined to continue the war on terror in cooperation with the international community until it roots out all terrorists who pose threat to all, the official concluded.
FR
SabaSINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Investment banks already under fire for risky lending practices in Western markets face another barrage of criticism over selling a raft of currency and commodity derivatives that have now turned toxic.
Companies from Chinese power generators to Mexican tortilla makers, some already reeling from the global financial crisis, are being hit a second time by these trades, including complex products that seemed to offer easy money or zero-cost hedges.
Now that many of those deals are coming back to bite them, some companies are lashing out at their bankers. Such attacks may be unfair, but the reputational damage to an industry already a scapegoat for global woes may not be easy to undo.
At the core of the issue is the companies’ intent: Were these firms lured into instruments they thought would effectively protect them against downside risks? Or did company executives take a punt on the market by exploiting the gray area between a hedge and a speculative bet, circumventing risk controls?
Caveat emptor — buyer beware — goes only so far, and some experts say this may only be the beginning of a parade of a accusations, and potential lawsuits, as volatile forex markets and a sharp dive in commodities roil corporate trades.
Still, investment bankers point out that many buyers were perfectly aware of what they were getting into.
“If people were not properly informed of the risks they were taking by a person selling the product, then I think the seller should be responsible,” said Beijing-based Philip Partnow, a managing director at UBS.
“If people were properly informed then the buyer made a decision made on appropriate information and the buyer has to be responsible.”
BIG HITS
When done right, the complex derivatives now coming into the spotlight can be a proper hedge against exposure to a certain market or currency. When done wrong, they’re speculative bets that can go terribly and quickly bad when the markets move against them.
In South Korea, nearly 100 smaller firms filed a class action lawsuit this week against over a dozen banks — including Citi (C.N), Standard Chartered’s (STAN.L) local unit and HSBC (HSBA.L), as well as a number of local banks — seeking to nullify currency deals that threaten to sink them.
The “knock-in, knock-out” currency trades they bought allowed them to sell dollars at a fixed rate as long as the won remained in a set range. But in late September, the won fell as much as 30 percent, forcing them to sell dollars below the market rate.
In a more extreme case, Hong Kong-listed CITIC Pacific (0267.HK) racked up losses of up to $1.9 billion tied to a forex derivative called an “accumulator,” which in simple form allowed the buyer to collect a premium if currency rates remained steady — “money for nothing,” according to brokerage
CLSA.
But the Australian dollar dove sharply, exposing CITIC to deepening losses. The company blamed executives and its internal controls, not its bank, but bankers may find it increasingly difficult to sell accumulator products in the near term.
Related Coverage FACTBOX: Largest derivative trading losses
In Mexico, where companies including tortilla maker Gruma (GRUMAB.MX) GMK.N are reeling from forex hedging losses as the peso sinks, the central bank has said irresponsible bankers are partly to blame for selling unsuitable instruments.
“The investment banks, which accepted as a counterpart a company that has nothing to do with the kind of products they were dealing, well, it seems to me there was a lack of professionalism, to put it lightly,” Mexican Central Bank Governor Guilllermo Ortiz said in a radio interview last month.On stage there’s just a comedian and a mic. But behind the scenes, directors such as John Gordillo and Phil Nichol can make or break the show. What exactly do they do?
It’s one of the great secrets of standup: that behind almost every successful comic is a director you’ve never heard of.
It seems absurd that, in the age of the superstar comedian, the person directing the shows is anonymous – but then, there’s no way of knowing they’re there. The only time you’ll see a director’s name on the poster is when they’re more famous than the comedian: Noel Fielding directing Paul Foot, for example. Directing in comedy works differently to other art forms. A Martin Scorsese film or a Rupert Goold theatre show has got their fingerprints all over it. In comedy, however much input the director has, the show always belongs to the performer. The comic employs the director, not the other way round.
Yet a comedy director can make or break a show. So what exactly do they do? Those I speak to on the subject offer various suggestions: puppet master, glorified script editor, therapist, cheerleader, builder, a sort of comedy grouter, sounding board, support worker, blue-sky thinker and shepherd.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I came to comedy trained as an actor, so I’m a big believer in collaboration’... Phil Nichol. Photograph: Steve Ullathorne
The standup Phil Nichol, who won the Perrier award in Edinburgh in 2006, is a top comedy director himself. “I came to comedy trained as an actor, so I’m a big believer in collaboration, and the same applies to comedy,” he says. “The best comics I know sit around in a lounge and talk ideas through – it may just appear to be a conversation, but it’s an important part of getting better.
“Comics aren’t just mad geniuses who come up with stuff all on their own, feed it to an audience and it works first time.”
One of the comics Nichol has been working with recently is Eunice Olumide, who is new to standup, so Nichol has to be a teacher as much as a mentor. Olumide is already a DJ, rapper and model, so getting up in front of people is no problem. But it’s down to Nichol to alert her to some universal truths– for example, that even your best joke won’t get a laugh every time, so when it doesn’t, don’t let it throw you.
He adds: “There’s a basic formula for writing a joke that new comedians might not be aware of. It starts with a simple observation that needs to be humorous in itself, then you need a twist on it, then at the third level you heighten it, or shrink it. That’s basically it. How you play with that formula is what makes you either Jerry Seinfeld or Eddie Izzard, but in essence you’re doing the same thing.”
Nichol is passing down the wisdom acquired from years of being a standup. So, you might reasonably ask how Paul Byrne has carved a career directing award-winning live acts such as Brendon Burns, Roisin Conaty and Andrew Maxwell, despite having never been a standup himself. As it happens, Byrne believes this is precisely why he’s in a privileged position to give feedback – he is staunchly coming from the audience’s point of view. By dint of being brother of comic Ed Byrne, and living with Burns and Maxwell in London, Paul became enmeshed in the comedy world, and eventually went from being informal adviser to official “director” when Burns started paying for his knowhow.
Comedy: the best standup gigs and tours in autumn 2015 Read more
John Gordillo has worked with Michael McIntyre, Reginald D Hunter, Eddie Izzard, Josh Widdicombe and Dylan Moran, and is regarded as an oracle of comedy directing. He’s been working with Luke Toulson on Toulson’s new show Grandpa, Hitler and Me about the wartime romance between his grandmother and grandfather, who was posted to the Middle East, France and North Africa. Toulson sent home around 200 heartfelt letters home to his wife, and that correspondence is central to the show, which Toulson took to the Edinburgh festival last month.
One of the first obstacles Gordillo identified was that Toulson is “up against the pitch of his show. It’s an epic romance that took place in the war; the whole idea pushes you towards sentimentalism. So how do you play with that expectation, and make it funny?” Gordillo was also concerned with finding Toulson’s “authentic contact” with the show – how he actually feels about what he’s talking about.
Toulson came to the show from a different direction. For 11 months a year, he earns his money in weekend comedy clubs such as Jongleurs and Glee. He’s in the habit of producing Edinburgh shows that are not only funny in their own right, but also contain ready-made chunks of standup he can add to his club set. However, that bundle of letters and the wartime romance were crying out to be turned into a “narrative” comedy show – something he hadn’t done since 2010. And in Edinburgh, a good narrative comedy show can suddenly open doors, so there’s much at stake.
An early draft of Grandpa, Hitler and Me was indeed more “clubby”, with more time devoted to comparing Toulson’s and his grandparents’ relationship, the letters more of a sideshow. But Gordillo says he was adamant the show wasn’t just “a vehicle for contemporary standup about Luke’s life. It had to mean something.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Gordillo is regarded as an oracle of comedy directing. Photograph: Steve Ullathorne
The letters were duly brought front and centre. Also, the show was made less strictly chronological, initially because they “forced funny things apart”. The start of the show was made more explanatory, with Toulson preparing the ground for the story (and his reaction to it), before actually telling it. Such preparation pays off later in the show. The pair would meet in Gordillo’s kitchen for a conversation-cum-interrogation. That would in turn inadvertently generate new material.
But it’s Toulson who will stand in the spotlight, every night, making people laugh and taking the applause at the end.
So how can a comic take the back seat as a director? Isn’t being onstage, getting laughs, the most intoxicating bit of being a standup? For Gordillo, this isn’t an issue. “I get all the attention I want as a performer. If I’m taking my own show [to Edinburgh], I usually don’t get involved with anyone else’s, but if you’re directing a standup, you don’t care about any adulation they’re getting and overwhelmingly neither do they. For me, the fun in directing is I’m not in it, so I can think straight.”
A joke starts with a simple humorous observation, then you need a twist, then you heighten it, or shrink it Phil Nichol
One trick of the trade is to decide on the show’s ending first. Normally that means identifying the part of your story with “the most vulnerability or the most jeopardy, or the biggest revelation”. Once you’ve got your ending, work backwards. This method is espoused by Tom Parry of sketch group Pappy’s, who directs sketch acts such as Max and Ivan.
It’s exactly what Pappy’s Fun Club (as they were then known) did with their magnificent 2009 show. They were performing in their biggest venue to date, and wanted a suitably big finish. Their chosen ending was to get the audience to stand up and join Pappy’s in doing a choreographed quaker dance, while Parry lobbed oats at everyone. He says: “The challenge then became, how do we earn that and build up to it? How does it come as a surprise? It became a huge exercise in back-engineering; you really have to turn the cogs and hide things.”
Yet Parry takes just as much pride in an intervention he made to Max and Ivan’s 2013 show The Reunion – which was nominated for the Fosters Best Comedy award. In the show, about a school reunion, tension builds between the nerd, the nerd’s sweetheart and the bully. It’s the same dynamic that leads to a famous screen punch in Back to the Future.
“I said quite specifically, this needs a ‘Back to the Future punch’ moment,” he says. “They nearly did it, nearly, and I said just do it – it’ll get a round of applause every night. I’m very proud of that as I had to push for it. But even so, I just gave the example. They went away and wrote their own ‘moment’. It wouldn’t have been theirs otherwise.”Vice Adm. Michelle Howard has been nominated to serve the second in command of the U.S. Navy, making her the first African American female to be nominated for the rank of admiral, the service told USNI News on Friday.
Howard, if confirmed, will replace current Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO), Adm. Mark E. Ferguson, for the position serving directly under CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert.
Ferguson, in turn, has been nominated to command the U.S. Navy’s forces in Europe, Africa and lead Allied Joint Forces Command in Naples, Italy.
Howard is a 1982 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and was the first African American woman to command a U.S. Navy ship — USS Rushmore (LSD-47) — in 1999.
She has also commanded the Amphibious Squadron Seven, Expeditionary Strike Group Two and Task Force 151 — the U.S. led multi-national anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia.
Howard is currently the Deputy CNO for Operations, Plans and Strategy (N3/N5).
If confirmed by the Senate, Howard will be the first female four star in the Navy. In 2008 U.S. Army Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody became the first female officer in U.S. military history to earn a fourth star.
Howard’s nomination is following a trend from the Obama administration to place more women in higher defense positions.
Earlier this month the administration nominated Christine Fox as the acting deputy secretary of defense — the Pentagon’s number two civilian official.RICHMOND, Va. -- When sixth-round draft pick Bacarri Rambo first looked at the Washington Redskins' defensive playbook this spring, he was surprised how familiar it looked to him. The Redskins' rookie safety saw a lot of similarities between the Redskins' defense and the defense in which he played at the University of Georgia.
"A lot similar," Rambo said after one of the Redskins' practices Friday. "We run the same 3-4, a lot of the blitz patterns and the coverages are the same, and also we had a linebackers coach from here that was at Georgia the last couple of years I was there, and he taught me a lot."
That coach was Kirk Olivadotti, who left the Redskins after the 2010 season and got the job as linebackers coach at Georgia. The experience of working with Olivadotti is one of several factors that have contributed to a surprisingly high comfort level for Rambo as he's run with the first-team defense here in the early days of training camp.
Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said he's taken notice of rookie safety Baccari Rambo's comfort level within the team's defensive scheme. AP Photo/Ron Sachs
"Once I got drafted and got here during the rookie minicamp, I looked over the playobook and saw there were a lot of the same things, just different terms," Rambo said. "It helps me play a whole lot faster."
Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said of Rambo, "you can see he's really relaxed back there," and that's part of the reason he's getting this early chance with the first team. But Shanahan also offered high praise for his other rookie safety, fourth-rounder Phillip Thomas. He's obviously a long way from deciding whether either of these guys can start at free safety for him once the regular season starts, but the team's need at the position is such that the rookies are definitely in the mix.
"I think we've got a chance to get better in the secondary," Shanahan said after Saturday morning's walkthrough. "We've got some good young guys with a lot of talent, and now it's how quick they learn it. But I like what I've seen."
Safety is one of the positions Shanahan always says is impossible to evaluate until the pads go on and the preseason games start. So it'll be a while before any final evaluations get made. He also has reliable veteran Reed Doughty, whom he knows can start if none of the younger guys is ready in time. The Redskins hope Brandon Meriweather is healthy and able to man the strong safety position, but free safety is wide open, which means opportunity for the youngsters.
So, since Rambo's the guy out there right now, let's quickly examine his case. He's a good instinctive player and a sure tackler, which bode well for his ability to handle a last-line-of-defense, center-field type role in the Redskins' defense. Pre-draft evaluations questioned his sideline-to-sideline speed, which could be an issue, and the Redskins don't know yet how he'll play if asked to move up in the box and play the run. Since they like to be able to interchange their safeties, this is something Rambo, Thomas or anyone else with designs on that spot will have to show.
The Redskins are likely to keep at least four safeties -- Meriweather, Doughty, Rambo and Thomas -- and holdovers Jordan Pugh and DeJon Gomes are in the mix for roster spots as well. They're likely to keep at least four cornerbacks -- DeAngelo Hall, Josh Wilson, David Amerson and E.J. Biggers -- with Richard Crawford and Chase Minnifield in the mix there. So there's still lots to sort out in the secondary, even beyond picking starters. Could Amerson play his way into a starter's role and make Wilson expendable? Can they count on Minnifield to hold up physically? Do they have to keep Crawford on the team as a return man?
Secondary is the position of greatest uncertainty for the 2013 Redskins, which is why it's no surprise to find them mulling the very real possibility of going with a rookie as their starting free safety.Thinktank says chancellor must specify how he will reach targets announced in the budget, given that the poor had been hardest hit by benefit changes
George Osborne is under pressure from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to specify how he planned to cut welfare spending by £12bn in the next parliament, and warned the poor had lost most from the coalition’s benefit changes of the past five years.
Britain’s leading experts on tax and spending also said the pickup in living standards hailed by the chancellor in his budget was the slowest in modern history and “no cause for celebration” – although the IFS did suggest living standards on current projections would be higher in 2015 than 2010, a finding that was hailed by Osborne.
The IFS director, Paul Johnson, said Osborne’s defence against claims that cuts in Whitehall departmental spending will be even bigger after the election than in the current parliament was that he would raise £12bn from welfare savings and £5bn from a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance.
“But it is now almost two years since he announced his intention of cutting welfare spending by £12bn. Since then the main announcement has been the plan not to cut anything from the main pensioner benefits,” Johnson said.
“We have been told about no more than £2bn of the planned cuts to working-age benefits. And, remember, apparently the ‘plan’ is to have those £12bn of cuts in place by 2017-18. It is time we knew more about what they might actually involve.”
Budget 2015: beneath George Osborne’s performance was a party on the defensive | Jonathan Freedland Read more
Earlier in the day, a senior Conservative minister said the party would not spell out all its welfare cuts until after the general election. David Gauke, the Treasury secretary, was pressed repeatedly on the BBC’s Daily Politics to explain if the Tories would detail their planned welfare cuts beyond the £3bn previously specified.
He replied: “We will set it out nearer the time which will be after the election.” He said such cuts were normally agreed as part of a wider spending review.
The current coalition plans would involve a cut of £30bn in public spending in the first three years of the next parliament. Analysis by the IFS showed that this would mean a cumulative cut of 7.2% in departmental spending by 2017-18. But on the assumption that the NHS, overseas aid and schools would continue to be ringfenced, the cuts for unprotected departments, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence, would be 15.7%.
Johnson continued: “The chancellor argues that because he is committed to £12bn of welfare cuts and £5bn of anti-tax-avoidance measures the required cuts to public service spending are much more modest. But if he really wants us to believe that, then he needs to be more explicit about how he actually thinks he can cut welfare spending and raise substantial additional sums from clamping down on tax avoidance.”
Osborne will need unprecedented cuts in welfare to meet targets, said the IFS.
Osborne will need unprecedented cuts in welfare to meet targets, says IFS Read more
After the three-year squeeze up until 2017-18, the plans published in the budget show a sharp increase in spending in the final year of the next parliament. This is a significant deviation from the blueprint in the autumn statement just three months ago, which saw the size of the state as a percentage of the economy in 2020 at its lowest level since the 1930s. Johnson said “the apparent change in economic philosophy in the three months since the autumn statement is pretty remarkable”.
The IFS also challenged Osborne’s claim in the budget that “we are all in it together”, in its assessment of winners and losers from the benefit changes introduced by the coalition. Johnson said that while those on middle- and upper-middle income benefits had been left “remarkably insulated” on average, benefit cuts had hit those at the bottom of the income distribution, while tax increases had hit hardest those at the top.
Looking at the entire period of tax increases and spending cuts since deficit reduction began under the last Labour government in early 2010, the richest had been the biggest losers. “Looking only at changes implemented by the coalition the poorest have seen the biggest proportionate losses,” Johnson said.
The IFS also adjudicated in the row between the Conservatives and Labour over whether living standards are higher or lower than they were in 2010. Johnson said Osborne and Ed Miliband were looking at different things, with the chancellor able to say that on his measure of household incomes, living standards should be higher by the end of this year than when the coalition came to power. The Labour leader was looking at earnings, he said.
He added average household incomes had just about regained their pre-recession levels. “They are finally rising and probably will be higher in 2015 than they were in 2010, and possibly higher than their 2009 peak. But that still represents by far the slowest recovery in incomes in modern history. Having household incomes crawl back up above pre-recession levels six or seven years after the recession hit is no cause for celebration.”
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: “This proves government’s changes have hit the poorest hardest of all. If the Tories want to spend the election campaign telling people they’ve never had it so good, they’re even more out of touch than I thought.”
Conservative sources insisted “the steady-as-she-goes budget” had struck the right note, and predicted Labour would now chase a fantasy that the cuts meant the NHS was under threat.
“It is pure core vote stuff, and will not work because no one believes David Cameron wants to wreck the NHS,” one government source said.If Facebook likes were votes, Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE would be on track to beat Hillary 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 by a margin of 3 to 1, according to a new interactive map that tracks Facebook likes.
Sanders gets 23 percent of the likes of all candidates, according to the data collected by the social media company, published in association with FiveThirtyEight.
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That compares to just 8 percent for Clinton.
Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE tops likes for Republicans, and gets 23 percent of all likes in the country.
That’s well ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE (R-Texas), who comes in with 8 percent.
The data isn’t necessarily indicative of who the most popular candidates are in the country.
Facebook users are disproportionally younger than the overall population, and tend to be low-income and female.
But the data does give a glimpse into the massive support of young voters both Sanders and Trump have been garnering.
“The data isn’t predictive of the election, but it is a revealing look at the preferences of many people who use Facebook and like the candidates’ pages,” said managing editor David Firestone.This weekend, I read a bunch of articles about something that made me really happy. According to a 2015 survey by the International Game Developers Association, we have a lot more female game designers than we used to. In fact, the number has doubled in the past seven years. Women are enrolling in video game design courses in large numbers. Girls are being encouraged to take on coding. Marvel has been hosting contests for female inventors. The number of female gamers has just surpassed the number of male gamers. (Go ahead and make the argument that they’re mobile games. Tell me that as I’m killing it in “Call of Duty” or raiding in “World of Warcraft.”)
I’m someone who was personally affected by Gamergate, enduring constant harassment about how “girls don’t play video games” and how we would all make games with “unicorns and puppies and shopping.” (These are actual quotes from messages I received.) So I find these changes interesting. It made me think about what the Gamergate campaign was actually trying to accomplish — and how it actually did the opposite. They didn’t scare women away from the gaming community; in fact, they made us more determined to be a part of |
family-friendly version of the answer Keane gave me first. Another pause and he's adding more, still sounding aggrieved: "It affected me for three weeks... I missed a week's training."
In four seasons with L.A., Robbie Keane has scored 53 regular-season goals and added eight more in the playoffs.
I remind him that the last time I'd sat down with him, he'd just flown back 5,000 miles and 14 hours from an Ireland international in Kazakhstan, arrived at 4 p.m. in the afternoon and played in a Galaxy game that night, so I'm probably not going to be questioning his commitment.
Before I almost derailed the conversation, we had been talking about his team's CONCACAF Champions League exit against Tijuana at the start of the season and the second leg -- on turf -- in Tijuana.
I'd watched that game from high in the press box as the bounce repeatedly deceived the Galaxy players -- even leading directly to a goal on one occasion -- and the question about the Seattle absence had mainly come out of remembering that series and knowing that this weekend will also see the deciding legs of both MLS conference championships played on artificial turf in Seattle and New England.
And Keane is nothing if not damning about those surfaces:
"I've said it before and said it so many times. If this league wants to progress -- or any league in the world -- turf has to go. It's very simple. Very, very simple. It's not good enough. In this day and age, playing on turf, it's not good enough. It's completely different to play on. I don't care what anybody says, I've played on it. It's completely different -- it's not good for you. So if this league wants to progress, the turf 100 percent has to go."
I ask him if he has sympathy for the top women's players involved with the legal case against the World Cup being held on turf next year.
"Yeah I do, because it's a different game. Completely different than playing on grass. Should never play on it. Doesn't happen in Europe. Maybe the odd team in Switzerland or somewhere would have it but of course I feel sorry for [the women's players], because I hate it, and I think no one likes to play on turf -- completely different game."
We go back to that Champions League exit to Tijuana in March. Aside from the surface, Keane is generally ambivalent at best about the virtues of a team caught between its 2013 and 2014 identities competing in a competition the 2012 side earned the right to play in:
"Yeah, it's difficult. How can you play a Champions League in two seasons? Players come and go, and stuff like that, so it's not a fair run for the teams. The Champions League is good, but it's only good if you win it. When you're playing all these games, and you're traveling and so on, it can be a hindrance to be honest with you. It reminds me of the UEFA Cup. The UEFA Cup's great if you win it, but if you don't win it, it's a bit of a nightmare, you know?"
We talk a little about how that Galaxy side was still a team very much in transition, after the limitations of the 2013 side had finally been definitively exposed in the playoff series defeat vs. Real Salt Lake.
"Yeah, you look at the games last year, we'd nobody really to call upon to come off the bench when you're losing the game," says Keane. "We like to play as much as we can, but you know, the best teams in the world, when they're losing, sometimes just get the ball and kick it forward to a big man.
"Last year, me and Landon [Donovan] were playing up front and we were never going to win a header against the two lads at the back. That's why I was saying with the players we've brought in, we've got different dimensions -- Alan Gordon coming on for the last 15-20 minutes just gives us something different to give the opposition something to think about, rather than always knowing me and Landon are going to get it to feet and try and play around them."
Not that the physical aspect was what made the difference in the 5-0 aggregate win against Salt Lake this year.
By the time we'd gone from the Tijuana exit, where the physical presences of Rob Friend and Samuel had been shoehorned into the Galaxy team as an approximation of that physical "dimension" Keane (and coach Bruce Arena) felt the team needed, to the StubHub Center demolition of RSL in the second leg of the conference semifinal, the Galaxy had grown back into a team doing what they did best.
Donovan and Keane remain the attacking inspiration for the Galaxy, which is chasing its third championship in four seasons.
That is to say that, while they had a more physical weapon in Gordon when needed, they were generally passing and moving the ball at pace and at will; the midfield duo of Juninho and Marcelo Sarvas were pressuring high up the field and the forward trio of Keane, Donovan and Gyasi Zardes were bewildering defenses with their movement.
The latter in particular has added an overloading element to the ball-playing attack that has been missing since Mike Magee departed for Chicago in May 2013. I ask Keane about Zardes' progress this year and what it has meant:
"He's learning, you know. If you look at it this year compared to last year, he's a completely different player. Instead of last year, trying to do tricks and stuff like that, when he was playing on the wing and doing all these stepovers. I said to him, 'I never see [Lionel] Messi doing stepovers -- or [Cristiano] Ronaldo even.'
"Ronaldo does it now and again, but when Ronaldo's running one-on-one with someone, he doesn't really do many stepovers, but he's running at pace, shoulder-to-shoulder, getting at you. I know he does it now and again, when he's winning the game and he gets in the corner and he does that little thing that he does, but that's only just for show but, for running at people one by one, I told [Zardes]... "
At this point, Keane's on a roll, as he tends to be when discussing how players go about their trade...
"... This year it's different because he's playing on the shoulder of the defenders and I'm always saying to him, 'Listen to me, as soon as I get the ball always look in behind and I'll find you. Nine times out of 10 I'll look for you, anyway -- I might not find you but I'll keep trying to get you in.'
"And I think in that respect he's learning and he's listening. He's a good lad and he's only going to get better and better and this year was a prime example of that. From last year Gyasi's quick, he's strong, and now he's adding goals to his game, which is obviously very very important for a striker."
I remind him that last time we spoke he'd described himself, at a similar age to Zardes, as a "cheeky chappy" who was always getting "slaughtered" by senior pros when he'd nutmeg them in training. I ask him if the memory of what he had needed at that age was behind his treatment of young players like Zardes:
"You need to let them know, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to mollycoddle players, you know? I've been through it myself and I know what it takes to become a top player. I've played at the highest level all my life and have continued to do that. And to stay at the highest level and have that hunger, and that desire. You get that from experience and from understanding the game. And you never stop learning, no matter how old you are, but Gyasi's at a stage now where it's critical in his career that he listens to people.
After scoring four goals in his first season with the Galaxy, Gyasi Zardes scored 16 in 2014.
"Whether he likes to hear it, he's going to get it. Whether it's me being positive towards him or me hammering him and being on his case about doing things properly. You have to have that balance. You have to have a goal for it. My goal is to try and help them, not to try and belittle them and take the piss out of them in front of other players -- I'm trying to make them better players.
"If you look at this year and the difference in Gyasi, I wouldn't say it was down to me, but I've definitely had a hand in it in terms of trying to help him as a striker in terms of movement and stuff like that."
The talk of how best to develop young American players turns to the college system. Keane is not a fan:
"Of course it was different for me because I was closer to England and stuff like that, and the opportunity is a little bit different over there because people watch you from 15 years of age or whatever.
"Over here, the college system -- I don't think it helps the players to be honest with you. If you look at top players in the world they started off [as pro players] at 16 years of age and stuff like that, or have been in academies. That's a problem, I think, over here.
"If you look at how big the country is you'd think you'd be guaranteed of getting a world beater, because you have the facilities, you have everything, but the problem is you're developing too late. They develop when they're 22 -- when I'd had five years playing in England behind me already -- before these lads even get a chance to play for the first team over here. It's a huge difference."
We touch on Jurgen Klinsmann's comments on key national team players returning to MLS and their standards dropping and I point out that Keane's performances have been something of a rebuttal to that logic, in that while he has been in the league and winning titles with L.A., he's also continued to play and score goals at a prodigious rate on the international stage.
Before I even get a question out about the reason for this, Keane is jumping in to cut me off emphatically:
"Hunger. Hunger. Hunger and desire to still play. Just love what you do. Fairly simple. But you have to have it in you. I love what I do. I could easily just finish up and pack it in tomorrow and live a good life. I've been very fortunate in my career in earning a decent amount of money where I could go home and chill out, but for me it's not about the money.
"It's about playing. I love playing. I'd play for free. And having that desire and that hunger. If you want to succeed, of course you have to have the ability as well, but you have to have that hunger. You have to have it. I don't care who you are."
He's Robbie Keane. He'll be playing on turf on Sunday night in Seattle. Don't question his commitment.
Keane on...
His best goal this year:
"I think I'd say the Chivas one."
His fellow MVP nominees, Lee Nguyen and Obafemi Martins:
"I respect every player in this league, and with the three of us up against each other all you can do is respect them and look how well they've done this year... two obviously fantastic players who've proven this year how important they were to their respective teams"
His own candidacy for MVP:
"If you look at it every season since I've been here, I've done better every year, you know? So for me that's how I look at it. For me, it's about being consistent. You can have one good season and then fall by the wayside, but for me it's about being consistent and continuing to do well every season and I've done that so far. This year's obviously been an exception with the amount of goals and amount of assists that I've got... and I'm fairly happy with what I've achieved this season."
His MVP pick on his own team and on other teams:
"Someone on my team? I think looking at the way Landon's played recently, probably Landon. On the other teams, I think if you look at the goals [Bradley] Wright-Phillips has scored -- he's scored a lot of goals. So probably him."
Graham Parker writes for ESPN FC, FourFourTwo and Howler. He covers MLS and the U.S. national teams. Follow him on Twitter @grahamparkerfc.On June 20th, when Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired over an accusation that he grabbed and bruised a reporter, Trump was tweeting a clarification of his argument on how the day could have been saved at the Pulse nightclub shooting. Because that's what everyone looks for in a tragedy: retroactive finger-pointing from our leaders.
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At least it wasn't "Tragic news! Many great homos support me! Sad!"
And on March 11th, when Trump University was in the news for being terrible again, Trump was randomly insulting Politico and The New York Daily News.
Twitter
I'm going to stop there, because you're probably sick of seeing Trump's scandals recapped for what feels like the thousandth time, god knows I'm sick of reading his Twitter account, and by this point, you either get the idea or have jumped down to the comments to call me something you think is clever and which will make your parents just super proud of you. But whenever you see Trump tweet something stupid, which is often, put aside the knee-jerk reaction to gawk and remember that there's probably something far more important but much more boring going on. And even worse, we all might have to read more than 140 characters to get the gist of it.
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It's tempting to get mad at Trump for all of this, but remember the timeless expression "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me several dozen times, oops, we elected a rambling demagogue." Trump's the one saying the words, but he's not clicking on the headlines about nothing and gossiping on social media. Or, to put it another way, if we're all more concerned about who laughed at our tweets about Trump meeting Kayne than we are about who's being put in charge of the government, maybe we shouldn't be so shocked that he got elected.
Follow Mark on Twitter to read his amazing jokes about Trump and Kayne, or buy his book.
For more insane Trump secrets check out 8 Less Known Trump Stories That'd Derail Any Other Campaign and find out how we all got into this nightmare mess in How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see what other kinds of trouble Trump's brain-worms have gotten up to in A Brief History Of Donald Trump's Many, Many, Many Lawsuits, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!
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More BlogsA La Jolla man is suing the city of San Diego, claiming police officers colluded with private investigators and falsely stopped him on suspicion of drunken driving in 2007 so his wife could use the arrest against him in a child-custody battle.
The 34-page complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, includes allegations of false arrest, negligence, battery, excessive force and conspiracy.
John F. Steel IV, a 50-year-old Type 1 diabetic, also alleges that a police officer denied him urgent medical care when his diabetes flared up during the arrest.
Steel was taken to an emergency room several hours later, after a nurse at the jail noticed that his blood-glucose levels were four to five times the normal level, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also names Confidential Research Co., a Fallbrook-based, private-investigations firm owned by Lori Brown, and two law firms representing Steel's wife in the divorce and custody battle.
Steel, former CEO of San Diego biomed company MicroIslit, is asking for the amount in damages to be decided during trial. The City Attorney's Office declined to comment on the pending litigation, spokeswoman Gina Coburn said yesterday.
According to court documents, private investigators hired by Steel's wife were shadowing Steel on Aug. 11, 2007, as he was socializing at various La Jolla bars.
At one point, one of the investigators, Rick Bronold, called a friend and neighbor, San Diego police Sgt. Michael McCollough, and asked for his help.
McCollough, who was on duty, then asked Officer Gilbert Ninness to leave Pacific Beach and meet the private investigators in La Jolla about a possible drunken driver.
Ninness was instructed to wait in the area for Steel to leave the bar, according to the complaint.
Nearly three hours later, shortly before 1 a.m., Steel injected himself with insulin and started driving his black BMW home near La Jolla Shores.
The officer stopped Steel near his home, saying Steel failed to completely stop at an intersection with a flashing red light. As Ninness conducted field sobriety tests on Steel in the street, Steel told him several times that he was having problems related to his diabetes and asked to be taken to a hospital or fire station, the lawsuit states.
He was finally dropped off at an emergency room several hours later. Steel says his health was seriously damaged during the incident.
Phone records and testimony at a later DMV hearing to decide whether Steel's driver's license should be revoked show that the investigators and police officers were in phone contact several times the night of the arrest.
A spokeswoman for the San Diego Police Department said she could not disclose whether the incident has been reviewed internally. Both officers involved have since retired.
Brown, head of the investigations firm, said yesterday that she had seen Steel drinking and driving recklessly earlier that night and called 911 to report him. She said she then lost him on the road, so Bronold called McCollough asking for help.
Brown said she also saw Steel run red lights after a night of drinking a week earlier.
“We talked about it that night and said: ‘If he's like this again and under surveillance, we need to get a hot stop on him. We can't knowingly let someone go out and possibly kill someone,’ ” Brown said.
She added that the arresting officer didn't wait in front of the bar for three hours, but had told the investigators to give him a call when Steel left the bar and that he would respond if he was in the area.
Ninness testified at the DMV hearing that Steel “blew” 0.1 percent on a Breathalyzer, just over the 0.08 limit.
Steel filed a claim against the city in February 2008, and three weeks later the City Attorney's Office filed the DUI charges against him.
The city has since rejected the claim. The DUI case is awaiting trial.“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every day Angel and I work with coaching clients who say all the right things and then do the exact opposite. They hope to experience growth, but they resist change. They want less stress, yet they indulge in drama. They long for better relationships, and then they refuse to trust anyone.
In other words, what they say they want and what they do with their time are hopelessly disconnected. And the two will never meet without intervention.
It’s important to note, though, that I get it. I understand where they’re coming from. I used to make the same mistakes. Change is hard to deal with. Needless drama can be addictive. Relationships take a lot of work. I’m sure you can relate.
In a nutshell, when it comes to working hard to achieve a substantial life goal of any kind – earning a degree, building a business, fostering a relationship, raising a family, becoming more mindful, or any other personal achievement that takes time and commitment – one thing you have to ask yourself is:
“Am I willing to spend a little time every day like many people won’t, so I can spend the better part of my life like many people can’t?”
Think about it. We ultimately become what we repeatedly do. The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean you’re growing – growing happens when what you know changes how you live.
And isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different? That’s the power of daily rituals.
Here are twelve daily rituals for long-term happiness and success:
1. Exercise your integrity.
Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you are capable of. Communicating clearly and asking for what you want and need from people. Speaking your truth, even when others judge you for it. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your morals and values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe. And, of course, always doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, and even when nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.
2. Steer clear of drama and those who create it.
There comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the needless drama and the people who create it. Staying out of other people’s drama is an incredibly effective way to stress less and smile more.
A good rule of thumb: If you can’t say it to their face, you shouldn’t say it behind their back. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.” Life is much too short to waste time talking about people, gossiping, and stirring up drama that has no substance. If you don’t know, ask. If you don’t agree, say so. If you don’t like it, speak up. But never judge people behind their back. (Read The Four Agreements.)
3. Replace judgment with encouragement.
No one truly knows what they will do in a certain situation until they are actually in it. Yes, it’s very easy to judge someone else’s actions by what you assume your own actions would be if you were in their shoes. But you only know what you THINK you would do, not what you WOULD do.
The truth is, we tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our ideals. So do your best to catch yourself when this happens. Remember that when we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person, and everything about our own need to be critical.
Bottom line: We have enough critics in this world. Be an encourager. You’ll see why.
4. Be positive and spend time with positive people.
Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them. Raise your awareness to your own inner strength and positivity. You are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life, or you can choose to be positive instead by focusing on the great things that are truly important. So talk about your blessings more than you talk about your problems. Just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing. Every great success requires some kind of worthy struggle to get there.
In addition, do your best to spend more time with positive people and less time with negative ones. People that deliberately doubt, judge and disrespect you are not worth your long-term time and attention.
5. Make new choices as needed, rather than letting old ones make you.
You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who and what hurts you. After all, who we ultimately become depends, in part, on who and what we let into our lives. So don’t just settle for relationships and situations that have proven to be unworthy. Exercise your right to choose differently.
Be the hero of your life, not the victim. You may not control all the circumstances that happen to you, but you can decide not to be continuously reduced by the same ones.
6. Simplify whatever you can, whenever you can.
As E.F. Schumacher once said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
Simplifying is not seeing how little you can get by with – that’s poverty – but how efficiently you can put first things first, and use your time accordingly to pursue the things that make a lasting difference in your life. Less really is more. Instead of adding, improve your life by subtracting. Get rid of unnecessary clutter, negative influences and toxic relationships. There is a big difference between what you want and what you need – between what’s excessive and what’s essential.
7. Uphold your truth.
Too many of us prefer gentle lies to hard truths. But make no mistake, in the end it’s better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie. Especially if this lie is tied to your identity in any way. Because you can pretend for a while, but you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see and feel yourself anymore. You can’t decide to turn off the noise in your head and be someone else entirely.
Don’t try to be what “they” like – be who you are. The people worth spending time with are interested in others who are confident enough to be themselves. And that works out well, because you won’t be happy being anyone else. (Read The Gifts of Imperfection.)
8. Express your love without reservations.
Love is a verb. Act on it. Today, be the reason someone feels incredibly loved and needed. Give your love away like your life depends on it.
Many moons from now, people won’t remember what clothes you wore, the car you drove, and maybe not even your name. But they will remember how you made them feel and the positive memories you gave them. The true impact you make on people will depend on the time and attention you give to teaching those who know less, caring for those who have less, supporting those who are striving, and tolerating those who are different than you. All of which represent the full expression of your love.
9. Nurture your relationship with your significant other.
Intimate love is not just about finding the right person, but working with them to create the right relationship. It’s not about how much love you have in the beginning, but how much love you build and nurture until the end. A relationship should be healthy, caring, loving, kind, upbeat and positive. It should make your smile a little wider and your life a little brighter in the long run.
A relationship like this sounds great, but it isn’t easy. It takes time and attention, and two people who are willing to work together every day to build something special.
10. Loosen your grip on what’s not meant to fit in to your life.
Things will happen that you will not always understand, but maybe you’re not supposed to understand everything. Maybe you’re just supposed to have faith, accept it and let it happen.
So never force anything. Give it your best shot, and then let it be.
Most negative circumstances are only a part of your life because you keep thinking about them. Positive things happen in your life when you emotionally distance yourself from the negative things. So stop holding on to what hurts, and make room for what feels right. Don’t let what is out of your control interfere with all the things you can control.
11. Embrace your humanness.
“Human” is the only real label we are born with. Yet we forget so easily.
To become attached to an opinionated label of depressed, divorced, diseased, rejected, or poor, is to be like the rain, that doesn’t know it is also the clouds… or the ice, that forgets it is water. For we are far more than the shape we’re currently in. And we, like the wind, water, and sky, will change forms many times in our lives, while forever remaining beautifully human.
12. Ask yourself the right questions.
Voltaire once said, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” This is such sound advice, because if you keep asking yourself the wrong questions, you will never get an answer you like.
What questions are you asking yourself? Are they helping you better understand your purpose? Or do they have your mind spinning in circles?
Truth be told, the questions you’re regularly exposed to act as guideposts that have a powerful influence on the direction of your life. And, not surprisingly, the questions you hear most often come directly from YOU. So instead of looking outside yourself for answers, start asking yourself the right questions. For instance…
“Who am I?”
“What do I need?”
“How do I function best?”
“What do I have to give?”
“What’s the next step I can take right now?”
It’s all about self-inquiries that help you stay true to your principles, pursue your desires, grow through adversity, and add value to the world around you. (Angel and I cover hundreds of important life questions as a theme that radiates through every chapter of our book, 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
Your turn…
What would you add to the list? What’s one daily ritual that has helped you find more happiness and success in life? Leave us a comment below and let us know.
Photo by: ePi Longo“If we don’t get help, a no-fly zone, heavy weapons, we will do worse [than I did]. You’ve seen nothing yet.”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
July 9, 2013
The Syrian rebel fighter who infamously cut out and bit into the heart of a dead soldier has threatened to commit even worse atrocities if the Obama administration doesn’t send the FSA heavy weaponry and impose a no fly zone over Syria.
In an interview with the BBC, FSA fighter Abu Sakkar, who prompted international condemnation back in May when video emerged of him cutting off and eating the internal organ of a Syrian Army soldier as his comrades chanted “Allahu Akbar,” is unrepentant and actually threatens to commit more gruesome acts unless the Obama administration sends the rebels heavy weapons.
Pillorying the west for doing nothing to help the rebels, Sakkar complains, “If we don’t get help, a no-fly zone, heavy weapons, we will do worse [than I did]. You’ve seen nothing yet.”
Sakkar’s act of cannibalism served to confirm that both Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron were seeking to arm some of the most violent and extreme jihadists in the region, prompting Vladimir Putin to remark, “These are people who don’t just kill their enemies, they open up their bodies, and eat their intestines in front of the public and the cameras. Are these the people you want to… supply with weapons?”
Despite FSA leaders promising to bring him to justice, Sakkar is still a free man months later giving interviews with major international media organizations, again illustrating how rebel promises to expunge their ranks of extremists are nothing more than hot air. The BBC’s Paul Wood goes a long way to pardoning Sakkar for his heart-eating antics, fixating on unproven claims that the victim was a rapist and that Sakkar had a tough life.
The comments of the heart-eating cannibal again underscores the lunacy of the policy recently embarked upon by the Obama administration – sending heavy weaponry to militant jihadists who commit atrocities in Syria on a routine basis.
Last week we reported on the FSA fighter who vowed to attack the US and Europe once he is finished in Syria, expressing his desire to kill all Jews and Christians.
As we have exhaustively documented, the western-backed FSA rebels have now firmly joined forces with Al-Qaeda terrorists who killed U.S. troops in Iraq and who continue to commit vile acts of barbarity – the latest example being the serial rape and slaughter of a 15-year-old Christian girlnamed Mariam.
– Immediately after the State Department declared Jabhat al-Nusra (the primary fighting force in Syria attempting to topple Assad) a terrorist organization, 29 different FSA rebel outfits pledged allegiance to the Al-Qaeda group, which previously killed U.S. troops in Iraq.
– A top FSA General recently told Al-Jazeera that the FSA is co-operating with Al-Nusra.
– FSA rebels are defecting to Jabhat al-Nusra in droves.
– FSA rebels have vowed to “fight the U.S.” once they finish with Bashar Al-Assad.
– FSA rebels have been filmed burning US and Israeli flags on more than one occasion.
– FSA rebels have been filmed on previous occasions singing songs that glorify Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.
– One FSA group even calls its fighting unit the “Osama Bin Laden” brigade.
– Another video shows FSA rebels chanting, “We are all with Osama bin Laden!”
– FSA rebels have voiced their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House once the rebels are victorious across the region.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 10:39 am
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Comment on this articleAccording to a New Richmond Police Department press release issued at 5:30 p.m., two black men entered the store, showed a handgun, demanded money and ordered store employees to the floor before fleeing through the back door. It is unknown whether a vehicle was involved.
One man was described as about 5 feet, 8 inches tall wearing a red hooded jacket, tan pants and a baseball cap with a white brim, according to the release. The other was described as about 5 feet, 6 inches tall wearing a black hooded jacket with a light colored design on the front and a Chicago Blackhawks baseball cap with red on the front and brim. The second man also appeared to be wearing black and white striped gloves.
Nearby businesses Table 65 and Blue Ribbon Feed & Garden Center were advised by police to lock their doors as New Richmond police officers, county deputies and at least one state trooper rushed to the area to establish a perimeter. A K-9 was said to be on the way to assist in the search.
Table 65 chef Brent Mullan said he didn't see the robbery suspects, and didn't know about the incident until police arrived.
"He pulled up and then stuck his head in and said to stay inside for a minute. Then he stuck his head inside again and said we needed to lock it up," Mullan said. "That's when we saw him put his bulletproof vest on and grab his [rifle]. He was walking back and forth out front and watching toward the cash store."
Mullan said two customers were in the restaurant during the commotion who were eager to find out what was going on.
Representives from Advance America declined to comment on the incident and deferred to local law enforcement officials.
The incident robbery remains under investigation. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call St. Croix County Dispatch at 715-246-6131.U.K. Independence Party leader Paul Nuttall speaks to supporters on May 20 as he campaigns with the party’s parliamentary candidate in Clacton-on-Sea, in eastern England. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/AFP/Getty Images)
It was a night beyond all compare.
Less than a year ago, Britain voted to get out of the European Union. And as the country’s new destiny dawned in the early hours of June 24, veteran activists of the U.K. Independence Party — an anti-E.U. movement long derided as extremist — felt the sweet satisfaction of having forced the referendum and steered the national debate with their anti-immigration rhetoric.
“Twenty-one years of being called a closet racist or a swivel-eyed loon,” said Tony Finnegan-Butler, a party activist since UKIP was born in the mid-1990s who is now the party’s chair in Clacton-on-Sea, a pro-Brexit stronghold. “And one night you learn that more than half the population thought you were right in the first place.”
But if the vote brought vindication, it has not ushered UKIP any closer to political power. In fact, exactly the opposite.
(Sarah Parnass,Griff Witte/The Washington Post)
What happens to far-right populist movements when their fondest dreams come true? If the experience of UKIP is any guide, the answer is that they fall apart.
A year after achieving its most sacred ambition, the party long led by President Trump’s favorite European politician, Nigel Farage, is in disarray, scarred by prominent defections and by vicious feuding — some of it physical — among its remaining members. An election on June 8 in which the party’s share of the vote is expected to crater may be UKIP’s death blow.
[Macron’s strong finish in French election shows populist wave may be ebbing]
The arc of UKIP’s story — years of obscurity followed by one astonishing success and now a rapid and possibly terminal decline — illustrates one way of blunting the appeal of populist movements: Give them exactly what they want.
“We’re suffering for our success,” said Finnegan-Butler, 73, who acknowledged that even he is wavering on whether to continue backing the party.
But UKIP’s sudden decline also demonstrates the degree to which right-wing populists have shifted the European policy debate toward their turf. If UKIP is losing support, it is not because the party’s ideas have lost favor. It is because mainstream parties have co-opted their causes and adopted their rhetoric.
“We’re happy that the UKIP vote is going down. But we’re not celebrating,” said Nick Lowles, chief executive of the London-based anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. “If anything, it’s the worst of all outcomes, because we’ve seen the mainstreaming of these views that were once considered beyond the pale.”
It’s not just in Britain, where Prime Minister Theresa May, a Conservative, sounds every inch the die-hard Brexiteer with her pledges to carry out a hard break with Europe.
Across the continent, mainstream politicians are attempting to beat back the far-right wave by mimicking the language and policies of the populists on hot-button issues such as immigration, cultural identity and Islam.
In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte fended off a challenge from anti-Muslim leader Geert Wilders this spring using the slogan “Act normal or go away” — a phrase widely seen as a firm line on Dutch tolerance toward newcomers.
In Austria, both major mainstream parties have sharpened their tone on immigration ahead of elections this fall that the far-right Freedom Party could win.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — a favored boogeyman of the far right because of her welcoming policies toward refugees — has endorsed a ban on burqas “wherever legally possible” as she confront |
experience," Cohn says. "I could imagine actually using that."
And best of all, at least to open-source nerds: Tamlyn says all of the technologies they used to build the app are available for free.
Now the bad news: The app isn't publicly available on the web, at least not yet. "We have all jumped back into our incredibly busy lives but we plan to put something together that we can share with the public," Tamlyn says. "We do plan on researching the viability of a full-scale version of the application. We honestly wonder how insurance companies would react to a tool like this — it just may level the playing field too much."
But before they shake up Vermont's health insurance landscape, the Galenerds are enjoying a few well-earned nights of sleep.
Other winning apps included a site to visualize historic photos from around Vermont, a local music player and a visualization of crime data. Click here to see the results.
October is turning out to be Vermont's hackiest month ever. This weekend is the first StoryhackVT competition, which melds the 24-hour hackathon format with creative digital storytelling. And on October 26 and 27, "civic hackers" will work on digital projects for local nonprofits at the Fletcher Free Library as part of Code for BTV's Hack the Stacks event (which, full disclosure, I'm helping to organize).
If you want to congratulate the Galenerds, stop by and see them at their booth at the Vermont Tech Jam, Friday and Saturday, October 18 and 19, at Memorial Auditorium in Burlington. And if you want to join their team, so to speak, you're in luck — they’re hiring.48. If looks could kill
The ATP World Tour saved some of its greatest drama for the closing moments of the season. In the best match of a largely dull World Tour Finals, Federer defeated an inspired Wawrinka 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(6) to reach the final - but the match left Federer unable to play the final due to a back injury sustained in the closing moments, as well as a cloud of doubt around the Wawrinka-Federer relationship after tense moments during the match and an alleged confrontation afterwards. Both players proved themselves able to put aside the incident when they teamed up a few days later against the French in the Davis Cup final, but it certainly spiced up the run-up to the last big event of the season., or life after the Millennium Development Goals. With that understanding, I eagerly awaited today to hear about how the concept of climate change and disasters would be woven into some of the panels and presentations, and more importantly, how it would be cemented in the bedrock of the charter from which the global development community would derive its strategic direction for the next 15 years.
Al Gore kicked off the climate change portion of the day with an impassioned call to arms around climate action and introduced presentations like: We're already paying the cost of Carbon, Today's Solutions Tomorrow's Future, and Millennials Leading the Way. While very interesting, I was ultimately disappointed that disasters were only talked about as an outcome of unchecked carbon emissions rather than a topic within the broader conversation with it's own panel/presentation.
I know that I shouldn't be surprised by this given that it was Al Gore leading the afternoon, but I feel that it was short-sighted. For the purposes of today's discussion at the Social Good Summit, Climate Change and the solutions proposed were economically based. Provide incentives to business to reduce carbon emissions by levying taxes or a financial tariff and bam! bottom-line thinking that gets at the root of the problem in a language business can understand. Talking in those terms however does not address the secondary and tertiary issues that arise from the fact that disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity, and ultimately affecting millions of people across the world annually.
There was no talk of creating more resilient communities better prepared to deal with the cycle of drought, flooding, and famine in Africa, nor how vulnerable populations are addressing the challenges of flooding in cities like Manila. And there was certainly no talk of innovative technological solutions addressing the lack of coordination within OCHA's cluster system, nor how emergent groups are giving early recovery a facelift thanks to innovative social technologies. When looking at disasters through the lens of carbon emission, you're not talking about how to address the ongoing impacts of this augmented climate reality all of us are living in. Of course addressing the root of the problem is critical, but the conversation can and should be about so much more.
There was a bright spot however, Maggie Fox, CEO of the Climate Reality Project talked about climate change in the context of current events, i.e. the flooding in Colorado. She contextualized the issue by talking about how the impacts of this new climate reality are already unfolding in communities across the world and left the door open to continue to broaden the conversation as we move towards 2015.
I realize that this summit is about expanding how we approach the unfinished business of the MDGs with new tech and fresh ideas, but I also thought it was about expanding upon what was built 13 years ago to encompass the new reality we face, the progress made, and the challenges we've encountered.
Indonesian President Yudhoyono...aka: STUDI was highly critical of Stefan Rahmstorf’s 2007 attempt to scare the world about sea level rise. He claimed that any temperature rise would result in an increase in the sea level rise rate that would take a millenium to dampen out. I pointed out at the time that this claim was contradicted by the very data that he used.
Now, Martin Vermeer and Rahmstorf (referred to as “VR2009” for the rest of this article) have given it another try in their 2009 PNAS paper, “Global sea level linked to global temperature” (referred to as “VR2009” in this series of posts). They have added another term, dT/dt which they say “corresponds to a sea-level response that can be regarded as ‘instantaneous.'”
This series of posts considers some of the bizarre consequences that would result if VR2009 were correct. These unrealistic results necessarily lead to the rejection of VR2009
Part 1, The basic problem.
Part 2, A little more detail on the math.
Part 3, A few examples that show some bizarre consequences that would result if Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s model were correct.
Part 4, Improbable parallel universes.
Part 5, Variation of gamma. Fast increasing temperatures cause sea level rise rate to drop, while slowly increasing temperatures cause sea level rise rates to increase.
A look at Church and White sea level data. This is the sea level data that is the foundation of VR2009.
Response to RealClimate comments. A few poorly considered comments concerning this series about VR2009 showed up at RealClimate. This is my response.
Chao’s artificial reservoir “correction” to sea level. This “correction” to Church and White’s sea level data leads to a (supposed) larger sea level rise during the 20th century. But this “correction” has some critical flaws.
Part 6, Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s model is applied to satellite sea level data and fails the test.
Part 6.5, the gory mathematical details from part 6.
Part 7 What does Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s model imply for a constant sea level rise rate of 3 mm/year?
Part 8, My reproduction of Vermeer’s and Rahmstor’s results
25% of sea level rise rate is due to groundwater depletion, not global warming. Yet Vermeer and Rahmstorf did not correct their model for this effect.
Part 9, What happens when Vermeer’s and Rahmstof’s model is applied to the updated Church and White sea level data with a Wada groundwater depletion correction? The effect is huge
Part 10, Vermeer and Rahmstorf used out-dated sea level data from Church and White, and did not correct for groundwater depletion. When Church’s and White’s updated sea level data is used and a groundwater depletion correction is incorporated, then their model yields 21st century sea level rises that are only half of what Vermeer and Rahmstorf reported.
Part 11. Here is Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s Matlab source code.
Part 12. Vermeer and Rahmstorf claimed to apply a sea level correction based on Chao’s artificial reservoir data. Instead, they use an inverse tangent function that hardly resembles Chao’s data.
Part 13. Vermeer and Rahmstorf applied their model to IPCC temperature scenarios for the 21st century. But here are some hypothetical 21st century temperature scenarios the bring out the bizarre effects of VR2009.
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SAN FRANCISCO, April 2, 2017 — Pollution created by making and dyeing clothes has pitted the fashion industry and environmentalists against each other. Now, the advent of “fast fashion” — trendy clothing affordable enough to be disposable — has strained that relationship even more. But what if we could recycle clothes like we recycle paper, or even upcycle them? Scientists report today new progress toward that goal.
The team will present the work at the 253rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 14,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.
“People don’t want to spend much money on textiles anymore, but poor-quality garments don’t last,” Simone Haslinger explains. “A small amount might be recycled as cleaning rags, but the rest ends up in landfills, where it degrades and releases carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Also, there isn’t much arable land anymore for cotton fields, as we also have to produce food for a growing population.”
All these reasons amount to a big incentive to recycle clothing, and some efforts are already underway, such as take-back programs. But even industry representatives admit in news reports that only a small percentage gets recycled. Other initiatives shred used clothing and incorporate the fibers into carpets or other products. But Haslinger, a doctoral candidate at Aalto University in Finland, notes that this approach isn’t ideal since the carpets will ultimately end up in landfills, too.
A better strategy, says Herbert Sixta, Ph.D., who heads the biorefineries research group at Aalto University, is to upcycle worn-out garments: “We want to not only recycle garments, but we want to really produce the best possible textiles, so that recycled fibers are even better than native fibers.” But achieving this goal isn’t simple. Cotton and other fibers are often blended with polyester in fabrics such as “cotton-polyester blends,” which complicates processing.
Previous research showed that many ionic liquids can dissolve cellulose. But the resulting material couldn’t then be re-used to make new fibers. Then about five years ago, Sixta’s team found an ionic liquid — 1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-ene acetate — that could dissolve cellulose from wood pulp, producing a material that could be spun into fibers. Later testing showed that these fibers are stronger than commercially available viscose and feel similar to lyocell. Lyocell is also known by the brand name Tencel, which is a fiber favored by eco-conscious designers because it’s made of wood pulp.
Building on this process, the researchers wanted to see if they could apply the same ionic liquid to cotton-polyester blends. In this case, the different properties of polyester and cellulose worked in their favor, Haslinger says. They were able to dissolve the cotton into a cellulose solution without affecting the polyester.
“I could filter the polyester out after the cotton had dissolved,” Haslinger says. “Then it was possible without any more processing steps to spin fibers out of the cellulose solution, which could then be used to make clothes.”
To move their method closer to commercialization, Sixta’s team is testing whether the recovered polyester can also be spun back into usable fibers. In addition, the researchers are working to scale up the whole process and are investigating how to reuse dyes from discarded clothing.
But, Sixta notes, after a certain point, commercializing the process doesn’t just require chemical know-how. “We can handle the science, but we might not know what dye was used, for example, because it’s not labeled,” he says. “You can’t just feed all the material into the same process. Industry and policymakers have to work on the logistics. With all the rubbish piling up, it is in everyone’s best interest to find a solution.”
The researchers received funding support from the European Union’s Trash-2-Cash project and the Finnish government.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.On December 5, 23-year-old Canadian adult film star August Ames (born Mercedes Grabowski) hanged herself in a public park after a day of being viciously attacked on Twitter. While Ames had battled depression and did not mention the online bullying in her suicide note, it likely played a role: Ames’s final tweet, hours before her death, said “fuck y’all.”
This tragedy has once again shone a spotlight on the problem of internet abuse — but with a twist. The harassers were not far-right extremists or misogynist trolls; they were progressives who believed they were “calling out” a bigot.
Ames’s offense was a tweet that mentioned bowing out of a shoot with an actor who had done gay male porn and warned other “lady” performers about this:
whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you’re shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say??♀️ Do agents really not care about who they’re representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body?✏️?— August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 3, 2017
Despite explaining that her concern was HIV exposure, Ames, who was bisexual, was promptly branded a homophobe — even though, according to Daily Beast writer and former adult performer Aurora Snow, the opinion she expressed “had until very recently been standard among industry performers.”
The reaction was brutal: Ames was called vile names and told to kill herself. Gay male porn star Jaxton Wheeler tweeted, “The world is awaiting your apology or for you to swallow a cyanide pill.”
Even after her suicide, Ames’s tormentors were unapologetic: “I sleep just fine, I stood up for the Gay and Bisexual community,” Wheeler assured his critics. Another actor who had mocked Ames’s distress suggested that she had been a hater getting a taste of her own medicine. “On Monday I called out a homophobic performer for her ignorance and uneducated bias,” he wrote. “She allegedly chose to end her own life when she was exposed to the same vitriol that gay people have been exposed to globally for decades.”
No one can say with certainty that the bullies drove Ames to take her own life. But the ugliness of her hate-mobbing, even in death, is beyond dispute.
Internet harassment has received much attention in the past several years, with a particular focus on the abuse of women — especially feminists — as well as racial minorities and LGBTQ people. More recently, people have begun to notice anti-Semitic harassment by white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The concern is warranted, even if provocative speech often gets conflated with harassment. But this conversation usually ignores the social justice bullies, whose behavior can have devastating effects.
In 2015, artist Paige Paz, then 20, was hospitalized for an apparent suicide attempt after months of abuse by Tumblr bloggers over her “problematic” art featuring television cartoon characters. (Her crimes included making a fat character thinner and replacing an alien character’s afro-style hair with straight blond hair.) Paz’s detractors not only bashed her work but also continuously policed her online conversations for lapses from politically correct language.
Two years ago, YouTube personality and gaming critic John Bain (aka “TotalBiscuit”) talked emotionally about being bombarded with hate-tweets, including ones wishing for his death, while undergoing cancer treatment. Bain had disparaged the work of feminist videogame critic Anita Sarkeesian and was seen as too sympathetic to GamerGate, the videogame community’s anti-PC revolt that was itself widely blamed for anti-feminist harassment. Recently, after the British website of the videogame blog Kotaku ran an interview with Bain in a series on dealing with online abuse, the website and writer Laura Kate Dale were subjected to harassment and threats.
While Bain was an ideological adversary, some of the worst “progressive” cyber-abuse is directed at errant progressives. Take the “#StopClymer” mob that went after feminist and social justice blogger Charles Clymer (who later adopted a genderqueer identity and now goes by Charlotte) in 2014. Clymer’s alleged offenses ranged from “malesplanation” to “white supremacy” (due to arguing too aggressively with a black blogger) to sexual predation (such as complimenting a young woman on her writing and adding, “I’m not hitting on you”). When Clymer took a break from the internet due to an apparent post-traumatic stress disorder relapse, one #StopClymer participant proclaimed this “a cause for celebration.”
Compared to far-right harassers, social justice bullies are probably less prone to overtly threatening tactics. (Not always, of course: Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai, an Indian American, has been subjected to both racial slurs and threats because of his stance opposing net neutrality regulations.) But their self-righteous abuse may in some ways be more dangerous. If you’re a feminist blogger getting rape threats or a Jewish journalist getting gas-chamber memes, you will find overwhelming public support; you can also ignore the abuse if you’re thick-skinned enough (unless it escalates to credible threats). If you’re an accused bigot — let alone an accused sexual predator — people will be far more hesitant to defend you, and ignoring the accusations may not be an option if your reputation is at stake.
I speak from experience. Last year I was among the targets of anti-Semitic abuse on Twitter after criticizing the “alt-right” — at much lower levels than other Jewish journalists and pundits, such as Ben Shapiro or Bethany Mandel, but enough for me to occasionally turn off my Twitter notifications and to contact the police about a harassing voicemail. It was unpleasant but manageable, and I often found a dark humor in the eagerness of the “alt-right” to show its true colors.
In some ways, this episode was far less stressful than my brush with “social justice bullying” nearly 15 years ago, when I was active on fan forums for the cult TV hit “Xena: Warrior Princess.” The title character’s sexual ambiguity and lesbian icon status made the “Xena” fandom a battlefield for conflicts that often foreshadowed today’s social media wars over gender and sexuality. At one point, my outspoken preference for a heterosexual pairing on the show got me targeted as a homophobe. For months, a clique of zealots scoured every post made by me or my friends for coded bigotry — such as “arthouse film” in reference to the lesbian-themed film “The Hours” — and demanded a response. Even on a fairly small forum where conversation was snail-paced in comparison with Twitter, having to fend off constant accusations could feel overwhelming. (The attacks were not only poisoning a beloved hobby, but also had the potential to do professional damage, since I had written for a fan website under my real name.)
Today, social justice bullying has grown into an often-destructive outrage machine. To be sure, some right-wingers who deplore this are hypocrites with their own history of condoning or even encouraging harassment. (Both Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos’s new website vociferously blamed Ames’s harassers for her death.) But their hypocrisy is matched by that of progressives who deny or minimize the problem.
When Jon Ronson wrote about the Twitter shaming of Justine Sacco, who lost her job and spent months in hiding because of a misunderstood joke meant to mock racism, Emory University scholar Patrick Blanchfield chided him for making Sacco the “poster child” for online bullying. After all, Blanchfield argued, Sacco was a white woman attacked for racial insensitivity, and she eventually got another job — making her a far less worthy victim than feminist or black writers and activists pestered by reactionary trolls.
Meanwhile, vicious trolls who cloak themselves in progressivism can easily find forgiveness. In 2014, the science fiction/fantasy community was shaken by the revelation that an award-nominated young Thai writer, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, was a notorious online harasser with multiple identities. Her main persona was that of a “rageblogger” known as “Requires Hate,” who specialized in assailing other authors for alleged racist, homophobic or misogynist sins, often in shockingly sadistic language. (“Her hands should be cut off so she can never write another Asian character” was a mild example.) She intimidated reviewers, sabotaged book promotions, and terrorized online groups whose moderators kept quiet for fear of silencing the “marginalized.” She apparently drove one writer to attempt suicide and nearly caused another to stop writing.
An exposé of Sriduangkaew’s trolling by blogger Laura Mixon had such resonance in sci-fi/fantasy circles that it won a Hugo award. (Tellingly, Mixon had to justify this takedown by noting that “Required Hate” often targeted female, gay or minority victims.) Sriduangkaew posted a brief apology calling her behavior “inexcusable” while also downplaying it, then followed up with a litany of excuses.
Yet, to the dismay of those familiar with Sriduangkaew’s track record, her rehabilitation has been swift. Last February, Apex, a leading sci-fi/fantasy magazine, included her in an “intersectional roundtable.” It was removed after complaints, including claims of more recent harassment by Sriduangkaew; however, Apex is still publishing her novella “Winterglass” this month. While it has received mediocre reviews, none of them have mentioned the author’s noxious past.
In her semi-apology, Sriduangkaew said that she had thought she was “punching up.” It seems that much liberal culture still sees social justice bullying that way, as well-intentioned anger gone too far.
It’s time to see it simply as bullying.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine and is the author of “Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood.” Follow her on Twitter, @CathyYoung63
This story "Porn Star Commits Suicide After Social Justice Bullying" was written by Cathy Young.Digital currencies were deemed a “low” risk for money laundering and terrorism financing in a report published last month by the UK government.
In a National Risk Assessment released 15th October by HM Treasury, the government said that digital currencies present the lowest risk rating among money laundering vehicles, a list that also includes cash, banks and accountancy services.
“The money laundering risk associated with digital currencies is low, though if the use of digital currencies was to become more prevalent in the UK this risk could rise,” the report states. It goes on to acknowledge that, at present, instances of observed money laundering involving the technology are relatively few, whereas the majority of the criminal use has been in transactions to illicit online markets.
According to the report:
“There are a limited number of case studies upon which any solid conclusions could be drawn that digital currencies are used for money laundering. There are concerns around anonymity, faster payments, and ability to provide cross border remittances and facilitate international trade. These issues are similar to issues identified with many other financial instruments, such as cash and e-money.”
The evidence that does exist, the report said, relates to occasions in which law enforcement reportedly observed money laundering taking place at the exchange level.
“Law enforcement agencies have identified, in a limited number of cases, criminals using large franchised [money services businesses] MSBs to purchase digital currencies from exchangers,” the report states. “This method, law enforcement agencies believe, has been developed to avoid the retail banking sector.”
Further, there appears to be few indications that digital currencies are being used by money laundering specialists working on behalf of ‘traditional’ criminal groups.
The report also suggests that there isn’t much in the way of proof that terrorists are using digital currencies to move money and fund operations, adding:
“There is little evidence to indicate that the use of digital currencies has been adopted by criminals involved in terrorist financing, whether as a means by which to raise funds (crowd funding etc.), to pay for infrastructure (e.g. server rental), or to transfer funds.”
The full National Risk Assessment can be found below:
UK NRA October 2015 Final WebGuests: Andy Wood Andy Wood
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Renee tells us about Sally the Basset Hound in Dogs We Met This Week. We also talk about our individual petting techniques, something we can’t believe we haven’t talked about before! We have a special Mutt Minute on Judy the POW dog that you won’t want to miss! Andy Wood from the great podcast Probably Science joins us to chat about the dogs of his childhood. Plus, we’ve got a Pinned Post of the week about dog confessions!
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Too much pressure leaving a voicemail? We get it. Send us an email instead at canipetyourdogpodcast@gmail.com!Senior, Disabled Tax Exemption Increased The City Council approved an increase to the property tax exemption for disabled individuals and senior citizens (age 65 or older) from $85,000 to $100,000.
Week In Review, Feb. 22, 2019 City Council Election candidates announced, Main Street infrastructure project moving forward and "Best Real Estate Deals" finalists are part of the latest edition of Week In Review.
City Secretary Certifies Candidates For May City Council Election City Secretary has certified candidates for May election. The filing period for candidates ended on Feb. 15, 2019 at 5 p.m.
Inaugural Storyteller Festival held in Richardson Award-winning writer, educator and oral historian Decee Cornish shared his life experiences from around the world as part of the Richardson Storytelling Festival.
Mayor's Summer Internship Program Prepares For Second Year The 2019 Richardson Mayor’s Summer Internship Program (RMSIP) was featured at a Valentine’s Day luncheon yesterday, held to solicit participation and show appreciation for area business leaders interested in getting involved with local schools.
Richardson’s Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival Announces Headline Performances Tickets are on sale for the 2019 Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival.
Week In Review, Feb. 15, 2019 Wildflower! Festival headliners are announced, Mayor's Internship Program promoted and DART approves second track for Cotton Belt line are part of the latest edition of Week In Review.
DART Board Votes to Add Second Track to Cotton Belt Rail Line DART's section of the Cotton Belt Rail Line will feature a second track after a unanimous vote by the agency’s board of directors. The decision to add a second track will allow two-way traffic and allow trains to run more efficiently while reducing wait times for passengers.
Neighbors at Crowley Park organize cleanup event Crowley Park neighbors are working together to not only clean part of the community, but also the environment. The event recently held was like a scavenger hunt, but organizers said instead of treasure volunteers looked for garbage.
Richardson Public Library extends hours of operation Starting Monday, February 11th the Richardson Public Library will have new extended hours of operation.
Week In Review, Feb. 8, 2019 Library hours extended, applications for Mayor’s Summer Internship Program and RISD book fair are part of the latest edition of Week In Review.
50th Anniversary of Cottonwood Art Festival Since 1969, Cottonwood Art Festival has become a favorite tradition for the community.
Tips To Avoid Coyote Run-Ins It’s common to see wildlife animals like coyotes and bobcats in north Texas. In the early part of the year, during mating season, is when experts say these animals can be spotted more frequently and people should know what to do if you can encounter one.
Seniors Benefit From Area Educational Institutions When it comes to retirement, long-time Richardson resident Janet Fein is nowhere near slowing down. At the age of 84, she is celebrating another milestone: her graduation from the University of Texas at Dallas.
New Environmental Resources Newsletter Published Each month the City of Richardson publishes an Environmental Resources Newsletter designed to keep Richardson residents informed of environmental-oriented events, news and activities.
Week In Review, Feb. 1, 2019 State of the City is presented, City prepares for bond sale and RichardsonToday.com debuts are part of the latest edition of Week In Review.
Mayor Delivers State of the City Address Highlights Richardson's compelling value proposition, community services and noteworthy 2018 successes.
Week In Review, Jan. 25, 2019 State of the City Address is Jan. 30, property taxes due Jan. 31 and AARP tax assistance begins are part of the latest edition of Week In Review.PITTSBURGH -- Tom Brady brings his 135.5 passer rating to Pittsburgh at a time the Pittsburgh Steelers have been playing without three recent first-round draft picks on defense.
The one eligible to return, linebacker Ryan Shazier, says he's progressing well coming off a sprained MCL that cost him three games.
The Steelers already sorely miss the run-stuffing Cam Heyward, a first-round pick from 2011 whose hamstring injury broke his streak of 85 straight games.
Ryan Shazier has missed three games due to a sprained MCL but could return to face the Patriots. Brian Kunst/Zuma Press/Icon Sportswire
At least Shazier's quickness would give the Steelers another option to combat the Patriots' two-man TE party: Rob Gronkowski and Martellus Bennett.
"I definitely feel pretty good out there," said Shazier, who was limited Wednesday. "We'll just have to see what the trainers and coaching staff say."
The Steelers have drafted five defensive players in the first round of the last six NFL drafts, and only Jarvis Jones and Artie Burns have remained healthy. Bud Dupree, the top pick in 2015, won't be ready to return by Week 9, his first eligible week coming off injured reserve. Dupree said he's going to return some time later than that.
Shazier's presence wouldn't be a cure-all, but his versatility as a blitzer or zone-coverage tackler alleviates pressure on Lawrence Timmons to play every pass-defense snap. The Steelers have had success in the past with Shazier and safety Robert Golden as nickel linebackers.
The Steelers want to avoid a repeat of Gronkowski's three-touchdown performance in the 2015 season opener, where miscommunication on defense led to big plays from Gronkowski after he was left alone downfield. The Steelers had planned on jamming Gronkowski and that plan failed.
Golden said the Steelers must clean that up. Shazier said the addition of Bennett allows the Patriots to play "more honest," forcing the Steelers to respect every playmaker on the field.
"They are just tough matchups," Brady said. "They are 275-, 285-pound guys who can run. That's a hard matchup for any safety or linebacker."
It's not just the tight end matchups that should concern the Steelers, who gave up 222 rushing yards to the Dolphins. The Steelers' plan is always this -- stop the run, then deal with the rest. If they can't stop LeGarrette Blount and James White, Sunday will be painful.
And it wouldn't matter what Landry Jones does.Hal-Con comes and goes in a flash
Fans drawn to the energy and the community of sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention
By the time Hal-Con opened Saturday morning, the lineup stretched from the doors of Halifax’s World Trade and Convention Centre into the Scotia Square food court across the street.
But this year, organizers managed to keep the lines moving, unlike last year when hundreds of fans, including those with tickets, were left shivering outside for hours.
Hal-Con is a three-day convention with the purpose of celebrating gaming, fantasy, comics, pop culture and sci-fi.
“It’s just so great seeing everyone all together” said Ava Leahy. “You get some really cool stuff you don’t get to see in regular stores.”
Guests such as Mark Sheppard, Dan Parent and Gisèle Lagacé were there, and there were events such as a costume contest, lightsaber fight and gaming tournaments.
Thanos wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Maxwell from (Scribblenauts) Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Wolverine (from X-Men). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Sith lords (from StarWars). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Committed cosplayers were glad to show off their complex outfits. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
The Mad Hatter. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Twisty the Clown (from American Horror Story). Photo:Nikki Jamieson
Steampunk. Photo: Nikki Jamieson
Security checks cosplayer's weapons. Photo: Nikki Jamieson
The Witch-king seeks the one ring. Photo: Nikki Jamieson
On Saturday, the line-up left flowed into Scotia Square. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Rorschach (from The Watchmen). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Donatello (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Patsy and King Arthur (from Monty Python). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Steve Urkel (from Family Matters). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Envy (Full Metal Alchemist), Ruby Rose and Pyrrha Nikos (Ruby). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
The Queen of Hearts. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are here for a birthday. Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
Obi-wan Kenobi. Photo; Sergio Gonzalez
Bob (from Reboot), Sailor Wench and Dot Matrix (from Reboot). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
The Great Saiyaman (from Dragon Ball Z). Photo: Sergio Gonzalez
*insert battle cry here* The Great Lightsaber battle of Hal-con 2014. Photo: Nikki Jamieson
Darth Vader meets his match. Photo: Nikki Jamieson
Many attendees came in groups and cosplayed, which is the art of dressing up as a character from a TV show, movie, comic or book.
Grace Farella came down from New Brunswick with her friend Bente Van Ingen from Holland for her birthday in corresponding costumes.
“I recently got really into comics, so I thought I would cosplay as [DC Comics character] Harley Quinn,” said Ingen.
“We wanted to go as something that corresponds together also,” said Farella. “So Poison Ivy just came to my mind because they’re really good friends.”
Comic conventions are growing in popularity due to the spread of nerd culture.
“I love the energy that everybody gives off,” says Eric Larter, who also attended the event. “And the sense of community everybody has, not just at this con, but other cons as well. It’s the same thing.”
Hal-Con first started in 2010 with 1,500 attendees. Last year the event went over capacity due to increased popularity and turnout. There were 6,000 people at the convention this year.
Tweets by @halcon_scificonA full computer operating system
An 1895 French movie "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat"
A $50 Amazon gift card
A computer virus
A Pioneer plaque
A 1948 study by information theorist Claude Shannon
But How Did the Researchers Store Digital Data on DNA?
"Two weeks later, they received a vial holding a speck of DNA molecules. To retrieve their files, they used modern sequencing technology to read the DNA strands, followed by software to translate the genetic code back into binary. They recovered their files with zero errors," the journal reads.
'Highest-Density Data-Storage Device Ever Created'
Do you know — 1 Gram of DNA Can Store 1,000,000,000 Terabyte of Data for 1000+ Years.Just last year, Microsoft purchased 10 Million strands of synthetic DNA from San Francisco DNA synthesis startup called Twist Bioscience and collaborated with researchers from the University of Washington to focus on using DNA as a data storage medium.However, in the latest experiments, a pair of researchers from Columbia University and the New York Genome Center (NYGC) have come up with a new technique to store massive amounts of data on DNA, and the results are marvelous.The duo successfully stored around 2mb in data, encoding a total number of six files, which include:The new research, which comes courtesy of Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski, has been published in the journal Science.Calling their process a "," the researchers first compressed all the data into a single master archive and split it into short strings of binary digits, made up of ones and zeros.Next, the duo used anto randomly packaged the strings into droplets. Each droplet contains a barcode in the sequence that helped the researchers reassembling the file.The researchers thenand ended up with a digital list of 72,000 DNA strands that contained the encoded data.This code was then sent in a text file to Twist Biosciences, the same DNA synthesis startup from which Microsoft purchased 10 Million strands of synthetic DNA last year, that then turned that digital information into biological DNA.The researchers believe that DNA is the perfect storage medium – as it is ultra-compact and can last hundreds of thousands of years if kept cool and dry – and suggests this is theSince the digital universe is large and by 2020 containing nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the universe, the data will reach 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion gigabytes.So, DNA data storage could help big organizations store an enormous amount of information in a way that one can |
38 Degrees Action Group, campaigning in the city to help raise awareness of TTIP and to try and save our NHS.
M: Aside from that, why are you the best person to represent the residents of your area?
A: We have a Labour led Council in Coventry, and they’ve approved £5.2 million pounds in hard-hitting cuts to services across the city. On top of this, they’ve put us into the West Midlands Combined Authority, ignoring the residents wishes; we called for a referendum, and they refused. It is obvious that they don’t listen to Coventry residents. Surely it’s time for change? I’ve lived in Coventry, in the Lower Stoke ward, and I know that these cuts will deeply affect many families. I can listen to the people of Lower Stoke and make sure I’m standing up for them.
M: Well, the problem is that lots of people are really disenfranchised with the local government system at the moment and doubt if their vote counts. In a Labour led council, how do you plan to make an impact?
A: The issue we have at the moment is that the council faces very little scrutiny. If Lower Stoke elect a Green councillor they will be electing someone who can hold the council to account. I can point out when the council are contradicting themselves. I will be able to give the residents of Lower Stoke a genuine voice.
M: On the topic of giving the residents a voice, how are you hoping to best communicate with your constituents?
A: Ward Forums are key, but also in the modern era so is keeping active on Social Media. So anyone can contact me via twitter or Facebook as well as by email. I really want people to be able to feel that they can reach out to me with any local issues that the council can help with, so that I can try my utmost to solve them.
M: Can you give an example of three key issues that you aim to target in the area?
A: Lower Stoke seems to have been looked over recently, there is lots going on in other wards, but we’ve just been left out and I want to change that. Coventry wide we still have the chance to push against the budget cuts which will affect so many. Finally, Coventry is in the midst of a housing crisis. Over 600 families are homeless, twice the national rate. 14k are waiting for social housing. We desperately need investment in affordable and social homes, linked to local amenities and transport, not large, expensive properties destroying the Greenbelt.
M: Why do you stand out from the other candidates?
A: Coventry Labour recently approved £5m in cuts, Tories are imposing Austerity on us on a Nationwide level, and the Lib Dems and UKIP are fine with this. The Green Party is the only anti-austerity, anti-cuts party in this election.
I also stand out because of my age, hopefully people will be able to see the good that young people can do in politics, and vote for a fresh voice for Lower Stoke.
M: Is there anything else you want to say to the people of Lower Stoke?
A: On the 11th of February, people in Lower Stoke will get the opportunity to vote for a different kind of politics, a politics that listens to people, the kind of politics that pushes for the Common Good. On the 11th of February people can say no more to the politics of the past, and bring in the politics of the future. There is a real opportunity for a fairer Coventry, so please use your vote wisely and vote Green.
M: Thank you for letting me interview you today, Aimee, and best of luck for your election campaign.
A: Thanks Molly, it was a real pleasure.
Interested in helping Aimee with her campaign? Details of her action day on the 7th of February can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/912677562161027/The Osprey Tavern will open in Baldwin Park at 4899 New Broad Street, Orlando, Florida 32814 this fall, according to sources.
It will be run by the owners of the sleek Seito Sushi, the wildly popular Japanese restaurant, also in Baldwin Park.
Jason Chin, owner, tells us, “The place will be featuring seasonal new American cuisine, a raw bar, charcuterie and cheese, craft beer, fine wine and scratch cocktails featuring small batch spirits. The chefs will be announced soon and we hope to be opening around October of this year.”
The restaurant will take over the place once occupied by Bullfish, a merchandise and post office store on the corner. There have been quite a few closings along the New Broad Street corridor in Baldwin Park these past few years, but Seito Sushi has been one of the few restaurants able to remain very popular with the local residents for its quality sushi and sophisticated atmosphere.
You can follow The Osprey Tavern on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Osprey-Tavern/459200480850163.
This is a developing story. Check back for more details.Jun 15 – St Vitus (martyred c. 303) patron saint of dancing
15 June, 2012
St Vitus was the son of a pagan Sicilian senator who became a Christian under the influence of his Christian tutor Modestus and his Christian nurse Crescentia and suffered martyrdom along with them (See image). He is an example of how certain themes strangely become associated with the lives of saints. Patrick Duffy tells what is […]
St Vitus was the son of a pagan Sicilian senator who became a Christian under the influence of his Christian tutor Modestus and his Christian nurse Crescentia and suffered martyrdom along with them (See image). He is an example of how certain themes strangely become associated with the lives of saints. Patrick Duffy tells what is known about the him and how he became the patron of dancing.
St Vitus’s Dance
Vitus is best known as the saint to invoke for those suffering from epilepsy and nervous diseases. St Vitus’s Dance – also called Sydenham’s chorea (= dance) and Huntington’s chorea – is one of a series of abnormal movement disorders known as diskinesias. The saint is also invoked for similar diseases that come from the bites of mad dogs and snakes. By transference he has also come to be the patron saint of dancers.
Legend of his martyrdom
The tradition is that Vitus was the son of a pagan Sicilian senator called Hylas. He was given to a tutor called Modestus and a nurse called Crescentia, who brought him up as a Christian. His father tried to re-convert him to paganism, but was unsuccessful and then had the three of them arrested and scourged. They escaped to Lucania in mainland Italy and reached Rome. Here Vitus healed the emperor Diocletian’s son, who suffered from an evil spirit. But the cure was regarded as sorcery and all three became martyrs. It is not possible to say how true any of this is.
The Gelasian Sacramentary and dancing for health
However, by the sixth or seventh century, Vitus is associated with bodily health in one of the earliest versions of the Roman Misssal, The Gelasian Sacramentary. By the 16th century Germans believed they could get a year’s good health by dancing before the statue of Saint Vitus on his feast day. This dancing developed almost into a mania, and was confused with the nervous disease with the saint being invoked against it. But that connection with such manic “dancing” led on to his patronage of dancers, and later of entertainers in general.
Among the Fourteen Holy Helpers
St Vitus is also grouped among the Fourteen Holy Helpers – among them, Barbara, Blaise, Catherine of Alexandria, Christopher, George, and others – that enjoyed a collective cult in the Rhineland from the 14th century.Every January, many people will pledge to make healthier food choices a priority for the upcoming year—swapping out that slice of chocolate cake for a bag of carrot sticks. But, keeping that healthy eating resolution isn’t so easy when we’re actually faced with choosing between rich, delicious cake and crunchy carrots.
A new study from Caltech psychological scientists Nicolette Sullivan, Cendri Hutcherson, Alison Harris, and Antonio Rangel may help shed some light on exactly why that decision can be so hard.
The study, published in Psychological Science, shows that tiny differences in brain processing speed may account for big differences in our ability to stave off temptation and opt for the healthier snack.
When choosing between cake and carrots, our brains have to process the various aspects of the food: whether it’s going to taste good, how many calories it contains, or whether it’s high in sodium content. Sullivan and colleagues hypothesized that the brain is able to process factors that are concrete, such as tastiness, more quickly than factors that are relatively abstract, such as healthfulness.
“We found that subjects’ ability to factor health into their decisions was related to the speed with which taste, versus health, began to influence their choice process,” says Sullivan. “That is, the larger the ‘head start’ taste had in the decision process, the more likely subjects were to make a poor choice.”
To test this theory, Sullivan and colleagues developed a novel technique that allowed them to evaluate exactly when the factors for tastiness and healthfulness came into play during the decision making process.
By tracking the movement of a computer mouse as a person made a choice between two foods, the researchers were able to evaluate decision making processes on a scale of milliseconds.
In the experiment, 28 students who had been fasting for 4 hours were asked to rate 160 foods for healthfulness, tastiness, and how much the subject would like to eat that food after the experiment was over. They were then presented with nearly 300 random pairings of these same fruits, candies, chips, and granola bars. After two randomly selected foods came up on a computer screen, the participants used a computer mouse to select which of the two foods they preferred.
By using statistical tools to analyze each subject’s cursor movements, the researchers could observe how quickly health and taste came into play during the decision making process.
The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that on average taste information began influencing the choice process earlier than health information by about 200 milliseconds. Interestingly, health information didn’t influence food choice at all for around 30 percent of the subjects; the movement of their mouse cursor was driven by taste every single time.
The researchers found that participants who demonstrated high self-control, frequently picking the healthy items that were presented, began to factor health information into their choices 323 milliseconds sooner than those with low self-control.
“This suggests,” says Sullivan, “that the more quickly someone begins to consider a food’s health benefits, the more likely they are to exert self-control by ultimately choosing the healthier food.”
Sullivan and colleagues are interested in extending this research to see how their findings could be applied to other arenas of self-control, such as saving money versus spending money, or deciding between an act of altruism versus an act of selfishness.
“Our findings suggest that adding a waiting period before choice may allow health information a chance to ‘catch up’ in the comparison process,” says Sullivan. “Techniques that may prompt faster processing of health information, such as posting calorie counts prominently on menus, may encourage better choices through this timing mechanism.”
Reference
Sullivan N., Hutcherson C., Harris A., & Rangel A. (2014). Dietary Self-Control Is Related to the Speed With Which Attributes of Healthfulness and Tastiness Are Processed. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797614559543Nintendo Amiibo Figure from the Super Smash Bros Collection – Number 19: Rosalina.
Connect with the game
Introducing amiibo characters – designed to connect and interact with compatible games. By holding the amiibo figurine over your Wii U GamePad, you'll open up new experiences within each corresponding game.
Your amiibo will store data as you play, making it your very own, one-of-a-kind amiibo.
The first amiibo series will be for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Send your amiibo character in to fight and grow stronger!
In the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U game, you'll be able to scan your amiibo into the game. You'll then be able to fight against your amiibo, team up with it in battle or watch it battle other in-game characters. Your amiibo will be able to increase its attack and defense stats and even learn new fighting tactics.
In addition to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, a variety of other games will offer amiibo compatibility. How they interact will vary from game to game.
Wii U games with planned amiibo functionality include:A ceremony is held at the construction site of Baihetan project, which is located downstream of the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze, in Ningnan county of southwest China's Sichuan Province and Qiaojia county of neighboring Yunnan Province, on Aug. 3, 2017. Building work on what will be the world's second largest hydropower station started Thursday. (Xinhua)
China on Thursday began construction on the world's second-largest hydropower station on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, amid environmentalists' concerns over river pollution and geological damage.
Located on the downstream Jinsha River where Ningnan county of Southwest China's Sichuan Province borders Qiaojia county of Yunnan Province, the Baihetan Hydropower Project (Baihetan), with a planned capacity of 16 gigawatts, began the construction of the dam after over 16 years of survey and preparation, according to a statement sent by China Three Gorges Corporation on Thursday.
Following the construction of Xiluodu, the world's third-largest hydropower station, and Xiangjiaba, China's third-largest hydropower station, the construction of Baihetan marks another milestone in China's energy development, said the statement.
According to the statement, Baihetan has a normal impounding level of 820 meters and a corresponding reservoir capacity of 17.9 billion cubic meters. The station could generate an average of 62.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which is equal to two-thirds of Beijing's electricity consumption in 2015.
However, the dam, located in a seismic fracture zone, has triggered grave concerns among Chinese environmentalists and geologists.
Wang Yongchen, a 62-year-old journalist-turned-environmentalist, said that her team, consisting of several environmental journalists and experts, conducted some research on the dam in 2015 and found that along with the water storage and blow-off, the reservoir sediments and fragile geological elements (such as mud rock flows) may cause tremendous damage to the land.
The decision to build the dam has also spurred frantic exploration of local mines. Some of the mining is led by small factories which have no awareness of environmental protection, therefore, a large amount of heavy metal material has been dumped into the Jinsha River's tributary, eventually moved into the Jinsha River, seriously polluting the water, said Wang.
But China Three Gorges Corporation said in the Thursday statement that the station will play an important role in restoring the eco-environment of the Yangtze River. "It could help reduce consumption of coal for 19.68 million tons as well as emissions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide," according to the statement.
In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed on ecological protection and "green development" in boosting the growth of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Restoring its ecological environment will be an overwhelming task and no large-scale development will be allowed along the river at present and for a rather long period to come, Xi said.
Aerial photo taken on July 27, 2017 shows the construction site of Baihetan project, which is located downstream of the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze, in Ningnan county of southwest China's Sichuan Province and Qiaojia county of neighboring Yunnan Province. Building work on what will be the world's second largest hydropower station started on Aug. 3, 2017. (Xinhua)
Photo taken on July 27, 2017 shows the construction site of Baihetan project, which is located downstream of the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze, in Ningnan county of southwest China's Sichuan Province and Qiaojia county of neighboring Yunnan Province. Building work on what will be the world's second largest hydropower station started on Aug. 3, 2017. (Xinhua)
Photo taken on July 27, 2017 shows the construction site of Baihetan project, which is located downstream of the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze, in Ningnan county of southwest China's Sichuan Province and Qiaojia county of neighboring Yunnan Province. Building work on what will be the world's second largest hydropower station started on Aug. 3, 2017. (Xinhua)The mercury has risen where I live, which is welcome after our harsh winter that seemed to last forever. And finally, summer is officially here.
With summer, though, comes some dangers for our pets. For the last few weeks, my Facebook feed has been sprinkled with posts warning friends about the risk of “dry drowning” in children, and this got me thinking about the same condition in pets.
I will never forget the first case of “dry drowning” or “secondary drowning” that I ever saw. I was a fourth year student in veterinary school, working my clinical rotations. A very nice young couple came in to our emergency service with their 9-month-old Golden Retriever pup. It seems their pup found his way into their pool while they were out.
How to recognize dry drowning signs in dogs
Dogs love swimming, and we know that most dogs can instinctively swim. They’ll eagerly jump in the pool for some real doggy paddling, but the trouble comes in getting out. By instinct, dogs tend to approach the side of the pool to exit, only to find themselves unable to climb out.
Like most dogs, the Golden Retriever pup could not get out of the pool. His owners had not taught him how to find and use the steps yet. These owners were very lucky to get home in time to see his accident; they were able to rescue him from the pool before he became so exhausted that he could no longer swim.
But their dog wasn’t out of the woods yet. That’s because the pool water he may have aspirated (or inhaled) while struggling to keep his muzzle above sea level was acting as an irritant in his lungs. This irritation was causing pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs) to occur. As fluid built up inside his lungs, his ability to breathe became hampered.
This, dear readers, is dry drowning. It can happen hours – or even days – after a near drowning accident, and it is heart breaking because even though you rescued your pet from the immediate danger of drowning, you could still lose her later due to complications.
My story has a good outcome—the pup pulled through, much to everyone’s relief. But many stories do not turn out as well.
If you have to rescue your pet from a near drowning episode, keep a very, very close eye on him or her in the hours after the accident. To be safe, you may want to think about just taking her to the vet for observation, especially if the accident happens in the evening hours and you need someone to watch her overnight.
This summer, make sure your pets know how to get out of the pool. Teach them where the steps are and how to use them. And go one step further—never let your pet have access to the pool without supervision. It’s just not worth the risk!Thoughts on the upcoming Gwent Positioning Patch
SHOGUN Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 14, 2017
Yesterday’s official Gwent stream brought with it a host of new information about the upcoming positioning patch (but no ETA), showcasing how the new mechanic will work with existing cards, and revealing a whole bunch of balance changes. You can view the list of changes here.
Being able to choose where you place your units, and having it define the interaction with positioning-focused cards, is set to add a significant new dynamic to Gwent and fundamentally change the game as we know it.
While we cannot know for sure how heavily the game will be impacted by this mechanic’s introduction until the patch goes live, it is a forgone conclusion that decks focusing on ‘row stacking’ — that is, building up a ton of strength on one row with buffing cards — will no longer be competitive. Cards that are essential in Swim’s Dorfs deck and to some extent Lifecoach’s Skellige deck will be severely nerfed: Hawker Healer and Clan Heymaey Skald will only buff adjacent units, capping their overall strength at 10, Mahakam Defender will stay on the board for one more round like other resilient units, and Commander’s Horn will buff a maximum of 5 adjacent targets, capping its strength at 20. Put simply, these decks will no longer be able to pump out the kind of power that has taken them to the top tiers of the current meta.
“Oh my!”
Speaking in broad terms, how else can we expect the meta to change? With row buffing out of the equation, it appears the meta will shift in favour of control-oriented decks. This is backed up by the second most significant change coming in the positioning patch: locking. Following the revelation that locked cards will remain locked in the graveyard, I predict that Cleaver (whose strength will be increased to 7) and Dimeritium Shackles, which now locks a non-Gold unit, will be auto-includes in any control deck. They will just be too valuable not to include, as they will counter Morkvarg and Roach, both of whom are staples in Skellige decks, and they will also be able to unlock cards on your side.
Some additional high-priority targets for locking are Villentretenmerth, Kambi and possibly Ciri after being Dimeritium Bombed. Players will be desperate for an an ‘answer’ to these high-pressure cards, now that Gold cards can’t be targeted by Triss Merigold, Iorveth, Vernon Roche or Radovid. As such we should expect to see a lot more of these three indirectly buffed cards, even though they are already very strong; a dubious side effect of what I consider to be some dubious nerfs.
Spot the difference
Those aren’t the only balance changes I have reservations with. Radovid’s new ability seems to be grossly underpowered; it is weaker than Cleaver, dealing a measly 4 damage to a non-gold unit and locking it. This makes no sense if we compare him to Eredin, who provides an 11 strength body with weather immunity to boot. Keeping in mind that silver cards are designed to provide an average of 10 strength, the average strength of a leader ability should be slightly more than a silver, which Radovid’s clearly isn’t.
I also dislike the change to Wild Boar of the Sea, which had an interesting ability that could have been buffed in some way, but instead it was replaced with some boring damage dealing. Then there is the change to Draug which introduces an RNG element (deal 1 strength to a random non-Gold enemy 7 times), something I am averse to as an ex-Hearthstone player. Hopefully we won’t be seeing more of this in the future.
On a more positive note, I am pleased with most of the other balance changes. Nearly all of the cards I listed as overpowered or borderline one month ago in my previous post will be getting nerfs, however negligible, although in the case of Cahir and Rot Tosser it’s hard to say if they were actually nerfed because they will still be very strong after the changes, in my opinion. The cards I listed that won’t be getting changes, but worryingly are getting indirect buffs are Kambi and Madman Lugos, which I feel may be an oversight by the developers.
The new game board looks cleaner while showing more information
Emissary got its RNG element reduced which I am happy about, but the buff to Impera Brigade seems unnecessary and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets nerfed somewhere down the line. The changes that most impressed me are the new look Philippa Eilhart and Dijkstra; two previously overlooked cards that have been given useful and fair abilities, which are also consistent with their faction’s identity (deck thinning and gold power). I’m actually looking forward to trying them out (Keira Metz not so much…)
All in all, it’s hard to say whether the positioning patch will be good or bad for the game. But barring a few small exceptions, Gwent’s next major development looks promising.
Predictions
As a little bonus I will make some predictions for the meta after the patch. Manticore Venom and Thunderbolt Potion will be the new go-to spells (we don’t know what will happen to Lacerate yet), guaranteeing 12 points as long as there are 3 targets on a row; I expect control decks to rise to the top, most likely Scoia’tael and Nilfgaard, as well as Monsters weather. I think Jan Calveit spy and Kambi decks will be Tier 1 or 2, but Skellige will suffer in general due to so many of its important cards getting nerfed. Consume Monsters will still be viable but nowhere near as meta-defining as it is now.6 years ago
Washington (CNN) - New poll numbers out Wednesday from three key battleground states underscore the danger of that leaked fundraising video for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
According to fresh New York Times/CBS News/Quinnipiac polling, majorities of likely voters in Wisconsin, Virginia and Colorado say that Romney's policies favor the rich.
- Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
In Wisconsin, 55% of likely voters say a Romney administration would benefit wealthy people. In Virginia, 56% say the same. In Colorado, the number is 54%.
The number of voters in those swing states who think Romney's policies would favor the middle class? Just about 10%.
Contrast that with President Barack Obama's numbers on the same question.
In all three states, a plurality say Obama's policies favor the middle class. Only a sliver of voters say the president favors the rich, while roughly a quarter say he favors the poor.
-Check out more CNN Polls at the CNN Polling Center.
The new polls were taken before video surfaced of Romney privately telling a group of rich donors that nearly half the country is "dependent on the government" - and that's precisely the problem.
The Romney video reinforces what people already think about the candidate, and that only helps the Obama campaign push the now-familiar narrative that Romney is a rich plutocrat who is of touch with the concerns of regular people.
Also see:
– In new tape, Romney casts doubt on peace in Israel
– Obama camp wastes no time highlighting Romney tapes
– Hatch might 'die before his term' ends, opponent charges
– Biden on Romney tape: 'words speak for themselves'(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Norma McCorvey, who was 22, unwed, mired in addiction and poverty, and desperate for a way out of an unwanted pregnancy when she became Jane Roe, the pseudonymous plaintiff in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, died Feb. 18 at an assisted-living facility in Katy, Tex. She was 69.
Her death was confirmed by Joshua Prager, a journalist working on a book about Roe v. Wade. The cause was a heart ailment.
Ms. McCorvey was a complicated protagonist in a legal case that became a touchstone in the culture wars, celebrated by champions as an affirmation of women’s freedom and denounced by opponents as the nationwide legalization of murder of the unborn.
When she filed suit in 1970, she was looking not for a sweeping ruling for all women from the highest court in the land, but rather, simply, the right to legally and safely end a pregnancy that she did not wish to carry forward. In her home state of Texas, as in most other states, abortion was prohibited except when the mother’s life was at stake.
On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its historic 7-to-2 ruling, written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, articulating a constitutional right to privacy that included the choice to terminate a pregnancy.
The ruling established the trimester framework, designed to balance a woman’s right to control her body and a state’s compelling interest in protecting unborn life. Although later modified, it was a landmark of American jurisprudence and made Jane Roe a figurehead — championed or reviled — in the battle over reproductive rights that continued into the 21st century.
Ms. McCorvey fully shed her courtroom pseudonym in the 1980s, lending her name first to supporters of abortion rights and then, in a stunning reversal, to the cause’s fiercest critics as a born-again Christian. But even after two memoirs, she remained an enigma, as difficult to know as when she shielded her identity behind the name Jane Roe.
[‘Jane Roe’ made abortion legal. Then a minister made her repent.]
She admitted that she peddled misinformation about herself, lying about even the most crucial juncture in her life: For years, she claimed that the Roe pregnancy was the result of a rape. In 1987, she recanted, saying that she had become pregnant “through what I thought was love.” Although the details of her account were legally unimportant, abortion foes pointed to the lie to discredit Ms. McCorvey and her case.
Ms. McCorvey, shown here at 35, worked for a period as a house painter. (Bill Janscha/Associated Press)
According to the most sympathetic tellings of her story, she was a victim of abuse, financial hardship, drug and alcohol addiction, and personal frailty. For much of her life, she subsisted at the margins of society, making ends meet, according to various accounts, as a bartender, a maid, a roller-skating carhop and a house painter. She found a measure of stability with a lesbian partner, Connie Gonzalez, but even that relationship reportedly ended in bitterness after 35 years.
Harsher judgments presented Ms. McCorvey as a user who trolled for attention and cash. Abortion rights activists questioned her motives when she decamped in 1995, after years on their side, and was baptized in a swimming pool by the evangelical minister at the helm of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue.
The minister, Flip Benham, told Prager, who profiled Ms. McCorvey in Vanity Fair magazine in 2013, that he had come to see her as someone who “just fishes for money.”
By her own description, she was “a simple woman with a ninth-grade education.” She presented herself as the victim of her attorneys, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, whom she accused of exploiting the predicament of her unwanted pregnancy to score a victory for the abortion rights cause.
Roe v. Wade, which became a class-action suit, was a watershed for women in general but irrelevant for Ms. McCorvey in particular. After an initial court victory for her, Texas mounted an appeal that dragged on long past Ms. McCorvey’s due date. By the time the Supreme Court announced its decision, her baby was 2½ years old. She had given the child up for adoption and learned of the ruling in a newspaper article.
A difficult start
Norma Nelson — her middle name was variously spelled Lea, Leah and Leigh — was born in Simmesport, La., on Sept. 22, 1947. Her father, a television repairman, was largely absent from her life.
She grew up in Texas, spending part of her adolescence in a Catholic boarding school and at a reform school for delinquents. Her mother told Prager that she beat her daughter in fits of rage over the “wild” behavior that included sexual promiscuity with men and women.
In her teens, Norma began a short-lived marriage to a sheet-metal worker, Elwood “Woody” McCorvey. Her mother raised their daughter, Melissa. Ms. McCorvey’s second baby, born out of wedlock, was adopted by another family.
She said she became pregnant with the Roe baby during a relationship in Dallas. An adoption lawyer referred her to Coffee who, like Weddington, was a recent law school graduate seeking a plaintiff to test the constitutionality of the Texas abortion law.
At the time, many well-to-do women seeking abortions traveled to states or countries where the procedure was legal or easily available, according to Leslie J. Reagan, a historian and the author of the volume “When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973.”
Women like Ms. McCorvey, who did not have money to travel, had several undesirable options. They could entrust themselves to abortion providers who were not medical professionals or attempt to perform abortions on themselves — decisions that frequently resulted in infection or death — or they could obtain no abortion at all.
Ms. McCorvey was not the first plaintiff to challenge a state abortion law, but Roe v. Wade was the first such case to work its way through the appeals process to the Supreme Court. She used the pseudonym Jane Roe to protect her privacy. The defendant, Wade, was the Dallas County district attorney, Henry Wade, an official responsible for enforcing Texas abortion laws.
(Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
Years later, Ms. McCorvey expressed bitterness at what she described as her attorneys’ unwillingness to help her find what she needed — an abortion, even an illegal one.
“Sarah sat right across the table from me at Columbo’s pizza parlor, and I didn’t know until two years ago that she had had an abortion herself,” Ms. McCorvey told the New York Times in 1994. “When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn’t because she needed me to be pregnant for her case.”
“Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying,” she continued, “the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn’t go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life.”
‘I wasn’t good enough’
After the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. McCorvey did not live in total anonymity, as has been erroneously reported, but lived a mainly private existence before revealing herself in interviews and then in a memoir written with Andy Meisler, “I Am Roe” (1994). She worked in abortion clinics, “trying to please everyone and trying to be hardcore pro-choice,” she told Time magazine.
“That is a very heavy burden,” she said. Moreover, she said that her social background as a poor high school dropout made her ill at ease among the largely upper-class and well-educated activists who helped make abortion a matter of urgent national importance in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I wasn’t good enough for them,” she once said. “... I’m a street kid.”
Her conversion came about when Benham, the head of Operation Rescue, opened an office near one of Ms. McCorvey’s clinics and befriended her. She announced that she opposed abortion rights except in the first trimester — a position that put her in fundamental conflict with other antiabortion activists who opposed abortion in all circumstances. Nevertheless, her defection was hailed as a victory for their cause.
Weddington looked suspiciously on Ms. McCorvey’s conversion and once described her former client as a person who “really craved and sought attention.” Ms. McCorvey attributed her philosophical reversal to her being “worried about salvation.”
She wrote another memoir, “Won By Love” (1997), with co-
author Gary Thomas, founded the Dallas-based Roe No More ministry and reportedly became a Catholic. She participated in antiabortion protests and was arrested in 2009 for disrupting the Senate confirmation hearings on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Ms. McCorvey participates in a protest at Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings in 2009. (Alexandra Garcia/The Washington Post)
Gloria Allred, the women’s rights lawyer who for a period represented Ms. McCorvey, told the Times in 1995 that Ms. McCorvey was justified in feeling abandoned by the women’s movement.
“She was shut out of many national pro-choice celebrations. She attended but for the most part she was not invited and it was a very hurtful experience,” Allred said. “When she did speak... she was really very eloquent, not well-educated but speaking from the heart, and I think she had a lot of common sense in what she was saying about choice.”
But neither did Ms. McCorvey find a comfortable home among conservatives in the antiabortion movement, many of whom regarded lesbianism as immoral.
“Neither side was ever willing to accept her for who she was,” the historian David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and the author of “Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade,” said in an interview.
Ms. McCorvey supported herself in part through honoraria, book royalties and other income she generated from her role in the abortion debate. By 2013, according to Prager’s article in Vanity Fair, Ms. McCorvey was relying on “free room and board from strangers.”
Survivors include her daughter Melissa and two grandchildren. Nothing is publicly known of the two children Ms. McCorvey gave up for adoption, according to Prager.
“I don’t require that much in my life,” Ms. McCorvey told the Times in 1994. “... I just never had the privilege to go into an abortion clinic, lay down and have an abortion. That’s the only thing I never had.”Whether they like it or not, nearly everyone in the United States reaps the benefits of government.
When asked about participating in specific government social programs, 97 percent of Republicans and 98 percent of Democrats say they have taken part in a government program of some kind, according to a 2008 survey run by the Cornell Survey Research Institute. Not just one or two either; the survey found that people had used around five social policies on average.
The thing is, more than half the country denies having used a government program at all.
Those findings are of particular interest now, after a Mitt Romney fundraising video leaked, one in which he called the 47 percent of Americans who don |
NBC, but continued his announcing duties on 'SNL' every week during the season, pre-taping his segments from his home studio in Arizona.
It's hard to imagine an episode of 'SNL' without Pardo's sonorous voice announcing the cast members and each week's host and musical guest. Although the cast lineup has changed over the years, Pardo -- along with creator Lorne Michaels -- has always been a constant presence. The show may change, but that voice always remained the same.Facing up to uncertainty in climate-change economics
Geoffrey Heal, Antony Millner
Uncertainty is intrinsic in climate-change economics. This column argues that it’s here to stay. There will be no accurate predictive tool for predicting economic growth, the emergence of clean-energy technology, or economic vulnerability in light of climate change in the near future. But this is not an excuse not to think about climate economics. Research and policy would do well to be more explicit about what we don’t know. We should avoid subjective guesses, and focus more on credible forecasts from empirically sound, if uncertain, models.
Uncertainty is intrinsic in climate change economics. We know that increases in greenhouse gas concentrations are causing shifts in the climate, but not precisely how large these shifts will be, nor when and where they will occur. Neither do we understand fully the social and economic consequences of these changes, or the options that will be available for coping with them in the future. Characterising our knowledge of these uncertainties, and finding decision tools that are appropriate to our state of knowledge, is a vital part of sensible evaluations of climate-policy options.
It is helpful to decompose uncertainty about the climate problem into scientific and socioeconomic components. Scientific uncertainty in turn has three components. In the short to medium run, i.e. over the next 20-60 years (depending on the spatial resolution of the prediction), uncertainty in climate predictions is dominated by ‘initial condition’ uncertainty and ‘model uncertainty’ (Hawkins and Sutton 2009). Initial condition uncertainty arises from the properties of chaotic systems, of which the climate system is an archetypal example. These systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions – predictions of the evolution of the system that start out very close to one another can diverge rapidly over time. Thus small errors in the initial specifications of climate models can lead to widely divergent predictions over time. Climate scientists capture this uncertainty by running their models with many initial configurations, leading to a distribution of predictions at each lead-time.
Climate model uncertainty
But this is only part of the story. We are also uncertain about the structure of climate models – both the values of their many parameters, and the detailed forms of some of the equations used to model physical, chemical, and biological processes – cloud formation being a prominent example. These uncertainties are collectively called ‘model uncertainty’, and are captured by running many climate models with different structures and parameter values. Because these climate models share some components, and are calibrated on common datasets, we cannot view their predictions as independent estimates, and it is not possible to combine them into a unique probabilistic prediction without making strong subjective judgements about how to weight different models (Knutti et. al. 2010). Thus model uncertainty has quite a different character to initial condition uncertainty. Finally, in the long run, the dominant uncertainty in climate predictions derives from our own actions – we don’t know how much more CO 2 we will put into the atmosphere over the coming century, and this largely determines the trajectory of the global climate in the long run.
All of these uncertainties are at play in scientific predictions of changes in globally averaged climate variables. But the effects of climate change will be local, not global. There is much spatial heterogeneity in central estimates of predicted changes, the uncertainty around them, and the factors that contribute to this uncertainty. In general, the larger the spatial scale of the prediction, the more credible it is, and the lower the uncertainty. However, as we magnify down to scales relevant to individual countries or districts, uncertainties increase, often dramatically (Masson and Knutti 2011).
While the uncertainties in climate predictions are large, they are derived from well-confirmed physical principles with long track records of making credible predictions. When it comes to characterising the socioeconomic uncertainties associated with the climate problem, we seldom have this luxury. These uncertainties have both empirical and normative components. Empirical uncertainties arise from our inability to predict the evolution of the global economy (how rich we will be), the future costs of CO 2 abatement (which technologies will be available), how damaging climate change will be to future economies, and how we will adapt to its effects. All of these factors are crucial inputs to designing ‘optimal’ climate policies, yet the tools we use to forecast them are educated guesses at best.
Normative uncertainties are not really uncertainties at all, but rather disagreements. There are wide divergences of opinion as to the appropriate ethical framework for welfare analysis of climate policy. Any such policies will have important distributive effects, both within and across generations. Ethical parameters such as the pure rate of time preference (how much we value our own welfare relative to the next generation’s) and the elasticity of marginal utility (how much we care about inequality in consumption) have been shown to be crucial determinants of the timing and intensity of optimal policy responses (Nordhaus 2008). A democratic approach to this ethical heterogeneity requires a social choice based approach to welfare analysis – we need to aggregate the ethical preferences of diverse individuals. This aggregation process can lead to frameworks for welfare analysis that are quite different from those that are prevalent in the literature today (Heal and Millner 2013a).
Deep uncertainty
Taking all the empirical factors together, it is clear that our uncertainty about climate policy is ‘deep’. There are many models that make predictions of the relevant empirical factors, but we don’t know how to combine them, or indeed, in the case of the economic models, whether they are credible predictive tools. We are thus forced to make strong subjective judgments if we wish to define a unique probability distribution over future outcomes. Whose subjective beliefs about the level of World GDP in 2100, or the economic damages to future societies from four degrees of temperature change, should enter climate-policy analyses? While there are many models that provide estimates of these effects, none can claim to be a gold standard predictive tool.
This implies that when it comes to making policy choices concerning climate, we need to find ways of incorporating information of varying and uncertain quality into our decisions. We argue that the traditional tool of expected utility maximisation is not well suited to the nature of our knowledge about the climate problem (Heal and Millner 2013b). Because this criterion describes our knowledge with a unique probability distribution, which is treated no differently from the uncertainty in the roll of a die or the toss of a coin, it neglects the fact that in many cases we are ‘uncertain about our uncertainty’. Decision theorists have long been aware of this difficulty, and have developed powerful alternatives to expected utility theory that are designed for use when our information is incomplete, inconsistent, or non-existent (see e.g. Gilboa 2009). It is time for these methods to be applied to the climate problem.
Alternatives theories
Alternatives to expected utility theory come in several flavours. The simplest models do not require any likelihood information at all – policy options are evaluated based purely on outcomes, and not the likelihood of outcomes. Most of these methods tend to advocate an avoidance of ‘worst-case’ outcomes, whether by maximising the minimum payoff, or minimising the maximum ‘regret’ of a policy option. These methods may be appropriate in situations where we have little or no information (e.g. in some very local adaptation decisions), but in many cases the scientific literature provides us with much more detail. It is often the case that we have many competing probabilistic forecasts from different models – the trouble is that we cannot meaningfully compare the models’ performance in order to arrive at an objective weighting scheme for these forecasts. The decision theorists have provided tools that are suited to this case too. These methods rely on there being multiple probability distributions over possible future states, which cannot be reduced to a single composite distribution. In this case, the decision criteria tend to emphasise the more pessimistic distributions (not outcomes), and advocate policies that avoid the worst expected welfare losses. There are thus several competing decision criteria in the literature, each with its strengths and weaknesses. We advocate an exploration of these approaches in economic analysis of climate policy (Heal and Millner 2013b).
Conclusions
There are three broad conclusions that can be reached from this discussion.
First, uncertainty is here to stay;
While we are making incremental progress in characterising the uncertainty in climate predictions, as well as how climate change impacts current economies and ecosystems, big parts of the picture are likely to remain obscured. We have no ‘magic bullet’ predictive tool that credibly forecasts the pace of economic growth over the coming centuries, the emergence of new clean energy technologies, or how vulnerable future economies will be to climate change.
Second, although there are some tough problems in quantitative modeling of the effects of climate policies, this is not an excuse for not thinking about these policies at all;
The problem is very real, even if aspects of it are not well described by conventional probabilistic tools. We do have an enormous amount of useful information about the perils of climate change, certainly more than enough to recognise that it is an issue requiring immediate policy attention.
Third, if economic models are to provide genuinely useful inputs to the policy selection process, they must account for the nature of our knowledge about the climate problem, be explicit about what we know and what we don’t, and base their recommendations on decision tools that recognise the difference between subjective guesses and credible forecasts from empirically sound models;
These decision tools tend to place more weight on ‘bad’ states of the world. Since the downside risk from ignoring the climate problem is likely to be far worse than the downside risk from aggressive mitigation policy, it is likely that decision tools that account for deep uncertainty will advocate more aggressive mitigation policies than those that do not (Millner et al. 2013).
References
Gilboa, I (2009), Theory of Decision under Uncertainty, Cambridge University Press.
Hawkins, E and R Sutton (2009), “The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional climate predictions', Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 90:1095-1107.
Heal, G and A Millner (2013a), “Discounting under disagreement”, NBER Working paper No. 18999.
Heal, G and A Millner (2013b), “Uncertainty and decision in climate change economics”, NBER Working paper No. 18929.
Knutti, R et al. (2010), “Challenges in Combining Projections from Multiple Climate Models”, Journal of Climate 23(10), 2739-2758.
Masson, D and R Knutti (2011), “Spatial-Scale Dependence of Climate Model Performance in the CMIP3 Ensemble”, Journal of Climate 24(11), 2680-2692.
Millner, A et al. (2013), “Scientific ambiguity and climate policy”, Environmental and Resource Economics 55(1), 21-46.
Nordhaus, W (2008), A question of balance, Yale University Press.[systemd-devel] [RFC 00/12] Bugfixes for CONFIG_VT=n
Hi So booting without VTs is still a horrible experience on desktop-linux. If anyone tried, they were presumably running away in tears. This series is a new attempt to fix that. The first 4 patches are just small fixes/helpers. Patch 5 to 8 introduce sd-gfx and patch 9-11 add tests/examples for sd-gfx. The final patch adds a first user of sd-gfx to replace the kernel-internal terminal-emulator. The commit-msgs should explain each change at length so I won't repeat it here. To anyone interested in testing: If you apply this series, you can run "./test-kbd" to test keyboard handling, "./test-gfx" to test graphics rendering and "./systemd-consoled" to run the terminal-emulator. Note that you must run all these from *within* an existing logind-session. That usually means from a TEXT-VT. Also note that all these programs currently ignore the underlying VT entirely (in case you run with CONFIG_VT=y). This has the side-effect, that all keystrokes go to both, the VT and the application. This will obviously be changed in later versions, but I wanted to avoid any VT calls in these helpers. I currently work on logind to fix that. I had to strip the font-patches due to ML size-constraints. The full series is always available on the-often-rebased-console-branch at: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~dvdhrm/systemd/log/?h=console Notes on where this is going, and *why*, below.. Happy Testing! David What is wrong with CONFIG_VT? ============================= The VT layer in the kernel implements a rather complex keyboard layer (similar to XKB, but less powerful), implements hard-coded device hotplug filters, input handling, graphics-pipeline handling, font-rendering, terminal-emulation, cursor handling and more. All this is used to render a basic text-UI *in the kernel*! However, moving UI handling into the kernel has a lot of disadvantages (the same reason why user-space exists.. look it up). For completeness, some rather obvious reasons are: - non-swappable memory (even if you have no swap-partition, user-space apps can avoid loading all fonts/keymaps into memory, which kernel-space cannot) - security critical (any bug in the UI layer may allow *kernel-level* privileges to attackers) - stability (user-space apps can be easily restarted on failure; in kernel-space, all kinds of memory may get overwritten..) - code-duplication (we already have all this code in user-space, why copy it into kernel-space?) - simplicity (we wanna keep the kernel simple and slim, which prevents adding more complex features like fully internationalized fonts and keymaps, which are *required* for emergency consoles with given keyboards) - configurability/controllability (ever tried assigning more/less CPU-time to a given VT?) -... So what reasons exist to have a UI layer in kernel-space? I only found 3 reasons, if someone knows more, let me know. I highly doubt there's more.. 1) Early boot debugging 2) Panic/Oops screen 3) kdb kernel debugging For 1) and 2) we have an experimental fblog/drmlog kernel module which just prints the kernel log to all screens. This only requires ASCII glyphs and raw access to DRM FBs. All the VT cruft can be dropped.. For 3): You're welcome to enable CONFIG_VT if you need a terminal-emulator for kernel-debugging. My experience is that a serial-console is far more helpful and reliable and avoids calling DRM modesetting in atomic-context (ugh? This fact really makes me doubt anyone uses kdb.. Use kgdb!). Long-term plan ============== So the long-term plan for this series is to set CONFIG_VT=n. This actually already works and you can boot your machine and start sessions like kmscon. Even Xorg works if you apply a one-line patch. However, without VTs, legacy sessions like Xorg will run in exclusive mode. To allow session switching, you need systemd-logind. But even session-switching is already implemented. Though, no real application uses that, yet (except for weston and some example code). So most of the work is to fix all these applications to support VT-less mode. This is already ongoing and will work soon (hopefully..). So what does this series implement? Well, if you run without VTs, you lack any kind of fallback console or fallback login-screen. To guarantee that even without VTs there's a system-console and login-screen, this series adds the most basic implementations of those to systemd. This will *never* turn into a full-blown full-featured console. No eye-candy, no useless features, NO BACKGROUND IMAGES!!! The idea is to provide a fallback in systemd. If you want a fancy console with more features, install kmscon and it will simply replace the systemd-fallback. However, that means more memory-footprint, more CPU-requirements and a lot more dependencies. sd-gfx is a helper library in systemd to unify all the graphics, screen and font handling. All following applications will use it, including: (daemon-names are subject to change!) - systemd-consoled: A systemd console (basic terminal emulator) used as fallback session/console. - systemd-splashd: A boot-splash for initrds. This will not include eye-candy but is only required to accept password-input for encrypted root-partitions. Use Plymouth if you want eye-candy! - systemd-welcomed: A login-screen to spawn sessions. This basically replaces /sbin/agetty and /bin/login on a VT. After login it spawns systemd-consoled. - systemd-er: The emergency-room helper. Basically an even-more stripped down systemd-consoled designed for developers. It avoids session-management, seat-assignments, privilege-separation and is just an hopefully-always-working-emergency-console. It's not enabled by default. Think of it as a userspace-variant of "magic sysrq". This is stupid, why do you.. ============================..add so many dependencies and code to systemd? You should consider that currently all that code is part of the *kernel*. All this does is moving it out of the kernel. The first place that comes to mind is systemd (and I couldn't imagine a better place, can you?). Knowing that systemd already depends on the kernel, technically this doesn't increase the codebase of systemd at all...kill my beloved kernel-console / linux-console? I don't. Just set CONFIG_VT=y...duplicate kmscon? Well, I wrote that and I consider it a successfull research project. Now it's time to write something useful based on the lessons learned with kmscon. No first attempt ever succeeds, right?..miss the fact that a kernel-console is more reliable than user-space? It's not. Why do you think that? You need a running shell to do anything useful with a console. Where do you think this shell runs? (Hint: it's not kernel-space.. and not outer space.. I wonder what "space" is left? Oh, none, because your in-kernel fonts are non-swappable!)..kill my panic/oops screen? I don't. See above. I wrote fblog/drmlog for that...change a running system? To make it better!..add useful features like full-BMP-range Unicode-fonts, properly internationalized keymaps, readable fonts on high-DPI displays, access-separation, accessibility helpers and more to the system console? Wait.. that's obvious, isn't it? Besides, coding is fun! David David Herrmann (12): event: allow EPOLLET as event flag ring: add basic ring-buffer helper bus: add two new bus_*_map_*_properties() helpers build: add target to link binary sources gfx: add sd-gfx library with unifont section gfx: add keyboard layer gfx: add graphics layer gfx: add monitor gfx: add kbd test gfx: add graphics test gfx: add unbuilt GL test console: add systemd-consoled.gitignore | 4 + Makefile.am | 129 + configure.ac | 38 + make-unifont.py | 138 + src/console/Makefile | 1 + src/console/consoled-pty.c | 391 + src/console/consoled-screen.c | 170 + src/console/consoled-terminal.c | 371 + src/console/consoled.c | 278 + src/console/consoled.h | 128 + src/libsystemd-bus/bus-util.c | 87 +- src/libsystemd-bus/bus-util.h | 6 + src/libsystemd-bus/sd-event.c | 4 +- src/libsystemd-gfx/.gitignore | 1 + src/libsystemd-gfx/Makefile | 1 + src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-drm.c | 2551 ++ src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-kbd.c | 629 + src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-monitor.c | 1767 ++ src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-unifont.c | 273 + src/libsystemd-gfx/test-gfx.c | 302 + src/libsystemd-gfx/test-gl.c | 342 + src/libsystemd-gfx/test-kbd.c | 314 + src/libsystemd-gfx/unifont.bin | Bin 0 -> 2162688 bytes src/libsystemd-gfx/unifont.hex | 63488 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ src/shared/ring.c | 213 + src/shared/ring.h | 54 + src/systemd/sd-gfx.h | 405 + 27 files changed, 72058 insertions(+), 27 deletions(-) create mode 100755 make-unifont.py create mode 120000 src/console/Makefile create mode 100644 src/console/consoled-pty.c create mode 100644 src/console/consoled-screen.c create mode 100644 src/console/consoled-terminal.c create mode 100644 src/console/consoled.c create mode 100644 src/console/consoled.h create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/.gitignore create mode 120000 src/libsystemd-gfx/Makefile create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-drm.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-kbd.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-monitor.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/gfx-unifont.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/test-gfx.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/test-gl.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/test-kbd.c create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/unifont.bin create mode 100644 src/libsystemd-gfx/unifont.hex create mode 100644 src/shared/ring.c create mode 100644 src/shared/ring.h create mode 100644 src/systemd/sd-gfx.h -- 1.8.4.2Documentary Description
We Are the Aliens (2006)
Horizon explores the fascinating science of panspermia, the idea that life on earth came from another planet. A group of scientists are part of a groundswell of opinion who claim that there is a good chance that life on earth began when alien microbes first fell to earth about 3.8 billion years ago. If this is correct, then all creatures on earth evolved from alien life forms. In effect, even homo sapiens are descended from aliens: we are the aliens.
Clouds of alien life forms are sweeping through outer space and infecting planets with life – it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.
The idea that life on Earth came from another planet has been around as a modern scientific theory since the 1960s when it was proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. At the time they were ridiculed for their idea – known as panspermia. But now, with growing evidence, it's back in vogue and even being studied by NASA.
We meet the scientists on a mission to get to the bottom of the beginnings of life on Earth - from the team in Texas who are lovingly building a robotic submarine called DEPTHX to explore a moon of Jupiter, to Southern India where they are investigating a mysterious red rain which fell for two months in 2001. According to local scientist Godfrey Louis, the rain contains biological cells unlike any he had seen before – with no DNA and the ability to replicate at 300°C. Louis has come to the conclusion that the cells are extra-terrestrial in origin.
Could all this really be proof that We are the aliens?
Did You Know?
The first known mention of the idea of panspermia was in the writings of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th Century BC.
In the 1960s, scientists Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe first came up with the remarkable theory of panspermia, that clouds of alien life forms sweeping through outer space could ‘infect’ planets with life. At the time they were ridiculed but over the last decade the field of panspermia has turned into a reputable science. NASA now has many departments developed to investigating the possibility of life on other planets and how it could get to earth. Other scientists explore remarkable earth bacteria that survive in extremely hostile conditions – as bad if not worse than they would encounter out in space – even those hardy bacteria that can thrive inside nuclear reactors.
In England, scientist Emma Taylor is discovering whether bacteria can actually survive the enormous accelerations and decelerations necessary from alien microbes as they travel from planet to planet by meteorites. Her technique is straightforward – she fires the microbes out of an enormous gun at speeds approaching a mile a second. Her result: some microbes actually survive!
Together these scientists are part of a groundswell of opinion who claim that there is a good chance that life on earth began when alien microbes first fell to earth about 3.8 billion years ago. If this is correct then all creatures on earth evolved from alien life forms. In effect even homo sapiens are descended from aliens: we are the aliens.
In July 2001 a mysterious red rain fell over parts of southern India. Was this coloured rain merely caused by dust blown in from Arabia? When local scientist Godfrey Louis looked at samples of the rain under an electron microscope he found biological cells, but cells like no others he’d ever seen. They contained no DNA and even more remarkable the cells could replicate at 300 degrees centigrade. He became convinced the cells were alien creatures that had come from a meteorite that had broken up in the earth’s atmosphere. It sounds like science fiction but incredibly scientists around the world are taking careful note of Louis’s ideas.
Now groups of scientists in the UK (including Chandra’s laboratory) and America are doing further tests to find out whether the organisms from the red rain really could have really come from another planet. And perhaps most interested of all is Chandra Wickramsinghe who has flown out to India to meet Godfrey Louis for the very first time.
Producer: Andrew Thompson
Series Editor: Andrew CohenMy game last weekend was pretty average; I had the group escorting a caravan from one place to another. The cargo consisted of many things including two special ‘items’. First was an evil magic item on its way to being destroyed and the other was an unconscious high priestess of the church that had sent the party out in the first place. The final encounter was with a group of cultists that wanted to steal the item, like I said this was pretty straight forward and average. The action actually culminated at a point in which one of the cultists was in a situation where she was threatening the helpless priestess. Being evil the cultist made the following threat, “Hand over the artefact or I kill her.” At first the party didn’t know what to do; they had to make a decision that they did not want to have to make. However after a little bit of talking one of the PCs said the phrase that has motivated me to write this; “It’s not like death really matters, the church will just bring her back….” and with that sentence a life or death situation lost all of its direness.
As the PC said the, no pun intended, fatal phase I knew he had forgotten the one house rule I have always used in my campaign world; although death is not final right away, it can only happen so many times and there are side effects. I’ve always felt that the idea of death needs to be one that cannot be taken lightly, if a decision has to be made concerning life or death it should be one that needs to be thought through. It can’t be AS final as it is in the real world because that makes the game a little too serious but it should still mean something to die.
It was with this thought in mind that I made up my death rule so many years ago in my first campaign. In my game any person, be they level 1 or level 20 may only be brought back to life three times, after that its borderline impossible to be raised as normal means of resurrection no longer work. Each time a person is brought back to life they are branded with a death mark, usually in the form of a tattoo like marking that is somehow related to the way the character died. Finally the resurrected person suffers from a lingering death effect connected in some way to how they lost their life. I once had a PC who was killed by a former party member who was a cleric of a sun god who had struck her down with his sword, when we brought the PC back she had the cleric’s god’s emblem on her chest where she had been stabbed and she was unable to go in direct sunlight without the aid of magic.
This is just one example of how death might affect anyone, be they PC or NPC, in my world. I don’t know if it’s an unfair rule that makes some people find the game less fun, it very well might be, however I do know that in the last few years the ability to use death as a real threat, and not just something they can expensively recover from has made for some very exciting and rewarding role play experiences. Sometimes the best moments to have are the ones that make the PCs face a really hard question that doesn’t have an easy answer. On that note I can’t wait until next game to see the look on my players faces when I tell them they indirectly caused the final death of the high priestess, it should make for one of those exceptional role play moments where the party realizes how evil a Dungeon Mistress I really am, but that’s a tale for another time.
[tags]Dungeons and Dragons, Gming, Role Playing Games, Death[/tags]Laura Kuenssberg for the BBC, reporting on his speech after the London Bridge attacks, tells us that Jeremy Corbyn has ‘tried to counter perceptions that he is soft on security, including his earlier stance on shoot to kill, which he questioned days after the Paris attack at the Bataclan’. We’re familiar with the claim by now, that the loony lefty hippy was flatly opposed to any lethal force by police under any circumstances, including during such ongoing terrorist atrocities. But at last, Kuenssberg would now have us believe, he’s turned his back on such lunacy.
Corbyn, of course, never took any such position from which to turn, U or any other letter. We know that this was not what Corbyn said because the BBC Trust itself – not Momentum, not Angry Twitter – ruled, less than five months ago, that the BBC report implying this was inaccurate, and ‘misrepresented the Labour leader’s position on the use of lethal force in the event of such an attack in the UK’. It achieved this by mendacious editing, stitching questions and answers together into some misshapen thing. In the BBC Trust’s words, the BBC ‘was wrong in this case to present an answer Mr Corbyn had given to a question about “shoot to kill” as though it were his answer to a question he had not in fact been asked’.
For the BBC now, nearly half a year later, just before an election of staggering importance, to continue disseminating the same unreconstructed insinuation about some pre-existing Corbynite allergy to police protecting civilians is deplorable.
To do so to construct ex nihilo a supposed Labour U-Turn – a sign of weakness – is tawdry.
For the person constructing this schmaltzy narrative of Corbyn’s painful growth, to be the same Laura Kuenssberg who purveyed the original smear? For her to herald Corbyn’s consistent position as, now, a ‘change of mind’ on the grounds that it is different from the position her own superiors denounced her for inventing in her own head for him? That is neck of the finest and heaviest brass.SAN DIEGO -- Slugger Matt Kemp has joined the Padres after San Diego and the Los Angeles Dodgers finalized a five-player trade Thursday night.
The teams agreed to the trade last week during the winter meetings in San Diego. It was the first of three big deals by new Padres general manager A.J. Preller, who also has added outfielder Wil Myers, the 2013 AL Rookie of the Year, from Tampa Bay and All-Star catcher Derek Norris from Oakland.
The Padres, desperate to pump up the worst offense in the majors, also get $32 million from the Dodgers to help offset the $107 million remaining on Kemp's contract. The Padres' obligation of $75 million to Kemp over five years becomes the biggest deal in club history.
Kemp twice made the All-Star team during his time in L.A., as well as winning two Gold Glove and two Silver Slugger awards. His 182 homers rank fourth in Los Angeles Dodgers history.
Kemp weighed in on the deal via social media, penning a "goodbye to the city and the fans who have been there since the beginning of my career."
It is with a lot of emotion that I say goodbye to the city and the fans who have been there since the... http://t.co/IbyhZWQ55B — Matt Kemp (@TheRealMattKemp) December 11, 2014
San Diego also gets catcher Tim Federowicz. The Dodgers receive catcher Yasmani Grandal and right-handers Joe Wieland and Zach Eflin.
In a deal finalized Friday morning, the Dodgers traded Eflin and pitching prospect Tom Windle to the Philadelphia Phillies for shortstop Jimmy Rollins.
Padres president Mike Dee declined to comment on reports that the team was concerned with certain aspects of Kemp's physical.
"It was a process that played out in a way that was, I think, consistent with what we thought going into it," Dee told The Associated Press. "We had a player that had some prior injures and we wanted to make sure we did a full exam. A.J. and his team did their due diligence, conferred with our medical team and ultimately were comfortable moving forward."
The deal was completed despite some possible lingering ill will between the Dodgers' front office and Preller because of the belief that Kemp's physical results were leaked to help San Diego pry further concessions out of its NL West foes, sources told ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne. The Padres did ask for additional compensation from the Dodgers after Kemp's physical, but Los Angeles refused.
The deal was cast into some doubt after USA Today reported Thursday that Kemp's physical with the Padres revealed arthritis in both hips. The Dodgers were upset that Kemp's medical information leaked publicly, sources said, though one Dodgers source told ESPNLosAngeles.com's Mark Saxon that the team never felt the deal was seriously jeopardized.
Matt Kemp, 30, had a strong second half in 2014. He finished the season with a.287 average, 25 home runs and 89 RBIs, hitting 17 of those homers after the All-Star break while driving in 54 runs. Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
Former Dodgers scouting director Logan White, who now works in San Diego, was viewed as one of the driving forces behind the deal's completion.
Kemp has had shoulder and ankle operations in recent years. Last May, he was groomed to play left field because the Dodgers weren't confident he could handle the defensive demands of playing center field after undergoing ankle surgery the previous offseason.
The Padres had a historically awful offense in the first half of 2014 before pulling out of it to finish third in the NL West. Still, they were at the bottom of the majors with a.226 average,.292 on-base percentage and 535 runs. Their 109 homers were the second-fewest in the bigs.
The 30-year-old Kemp had a strong second half in 2014 for the NL West champion Dodgers. He finished the season with a.287 average, 25 home runs and 89 RBIs, hitting 17 of those homers after the All-Star break while driving in 54 runs. He led the major leagues in slugging percentage during that span.
Kemp was the runner-up for the National League MVP in 2011, but he has dealt with a long string of injuries since April 2012. He underwent two shoulder surgeries and a major operation on his right ankle and had three hamstring strains. Until now, he had never been diagnosed with a hip ailment.
The Dodgers had been looking to trade an expensive veteran outfielder -- either Kemp, Andre Ethier or Carl Crawford -- for more than a year. They still will listen to offers for Ethier and Crawford since they are intent on giving prospect Joc Pederson an everyday opportunity and are content with Scott Van Slyke as their fourth outfielder.
Grandal, 26, led the Padres with 15 homers last season while hitting.225.
He was suspended for the first 50 games of 2013 after testing positive for testosterone and then tore up his right knee in a collision at the plate that July. He's also played first base.
Also Thursday, the Padres acquired Norris, right-hander Seth Streich and an international signing slot from the Oakland Athletics for right-handers Jesse Hahn and R.J. Alvarez. They also are nearing a deal for right-hander Josh Johnson, and have agreed to an 11-player, three-team trade that will bring them Myers in a swap completed Friday afternoon.
Norris, 25, batted.270 with 10 home runs and 55 RBIs in 127 games for the A's, who lost the wild-card game at Kansas City.
Information from ESPNLosAngeles.com's Mark Saxon and The Associated Press was used in this report.The commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott H. Swift, said last month that he would retire after being notified that he was no longer in the running to take charge of the Pentagon’s overall Pacific Command, which would oversee any military operations against North Korea.
Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, the former head of the Seventh Fleet, which is based in Japan and is the Navy’s largest overseas fleet, was removed in August in connection with the accidents. And the Navy’s top officer for ships worldwide, Vice Adm. Thomas S. Rowden, has said he would retire early.
In its initial response to the accidents, and after collecting lessons learned from a 24-hour suspension of ship operations to review safety and other standards, the Navy last month ordered a series of immediate changes in how its ships do business. They were seemingly obvious fixes that suggested why the Seventh Fleet believes the John S. McCain crash was avoidable.
Navy officials ordered more sleep for crews and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors. Ships steaming in crowded waters, like those near Singapore and Tokyo, will now broadcast their positions, as do other vessels. And ships on which crews lack basic seamanship certification will probably stay in port until the problems are fixed.
Navy |
hopes more will follow.
“Cedrick Cooper and David Johnson are there. We have a 2017 player named Jahlil Weeks that I hope can join us, too. He’s about 6-foot-3, 210 pounds. He’s an inside linebacker. We have some other guys coming up too.”
Smith ranks as the nation’s No. 24 weak side defensive end and the No. 25 player in the state of Georgia’s class of 2016 according to the 247Sports Composite Rankings. Lorenzo Ward is Smith’s recruiter of record for the Gamecocks.
South Carolina Commitment ListDespite receiving more than $885 million in federal economic stimulus funds since 2009, the D.C. government — whose residents face one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — cannot say how many jobs it actually created for those who live in the District.
Most of the money has been spent, and data suggest that overall regional job growth did occur as a result of the massive infusion of capital. But a review by The Washington Times of figures provided by D.C. officials shows that the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars without being able to demonstrate any significant improvement in the city’s jobs outlook.
If anything, the employment picture has worsened in the District. At the end of 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the city’s unemployment rate was 10.4 percent, ahead of only three states: Nevada (12.6 percent), California (11.1 percent) and Rhode Island (10.8 percent).
That figure contrasts sharply with a 5.5 percent unemployment rate in the metropolitan D.C. area, which includes parts of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.
In the District, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has increased by 8 percent since 2009, as the D.C. government was receiving historic levels of federal stimulus funding via contracts, grants, loans, tax benefits and entitlements.
News reports in recent weeks also showed that, according to a study by the nonprofit investigative journalism site ProPublica, the District ranks highest in the nation in terms of per-capita receipt of federal stimulus funds. Yet the city’s own numbers show that it has a long way to go to demonstrate tangible results for its own residents.
According to the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer, the best estimate of federal stimulus funds received by the D.C. government from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2011 is $885.6 million.
To keep track of how that money translates to job creation, the city administrator must file quarterly reports to the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, said Tony Robinson, director of public affairs. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Times, Mr. Robinson disclosed eight quarterly reports that the District filed under the act, showing the creation of more than 9,500 jobs.
Of those jobs, more than half — 5,961 — were created by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, according to an analysis by The Times. But according to the office, which received approximately $224 million in federal stimulus since 2009 through the end of last year, and which says it “created or retained” 7,007 jobs since the stimulus began, it’s anyone’s guess how many D.C. residents were hired.
“Each grant is unique, some lead to job creation more than others,” said Vanessa Carlo-Miranda, director of grants management. “We can only require local hiring to the extent the federal government requires it, and generally the only requirement is to track the number of jobs created or saved.
“It’s just not our mandate, even though we do a lot of training to ensure compliance with the reporting requirement,” she said. “I’m sure there are people who collect such information in D.C., but I don’t know who.”
The D.C. Department of Transportation, which says it created 1,253 jobs in the city’s eight quarterly reports reviewed by The Times, and which says it has created some 700 more since the data were disclosed, struck a similar tone.
“Local hiring requirements don’t generally apply on federally funded programs,” spokesman John Lisle said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t encourage local hiring whenever possible, but there’s a difference between that and what we can require under the law.”
When asked how many jobs the Department of Transportation has created for D.C. residents with the use of more than $123 million in federal stimulus funds, Mr. Lisle replied, “I don’t know. We don’t track D.C. hires.”
The D.C. Department of the Environment, which says it has received $57 million in federal stimulus funds, created 516 jobs, according to the eight quarterly reports reviewed by The Times. Department officials couldn’t say how many D.C. residents received those jobs.
“We definitely did not collect data on D.C. residents,” said spokeswoman Donna Henry, who noted that additional jobs may have been created apart from the data reviewed by The Times. “There’s also a lot of subcontractors involved.”
D.C. officials said that tracking jobs is not as easy as it sounds. One official, who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak for the agency, said each department that receives federal stimulus funds reports its expenditures to the city administrator on a quarterly basis. That office takes the total expenditures and runs them through a formula to come up with the theoretical number of jobs created or retained for budgetary purposes, the official said.
“It doesn’t count actual full-time employees,” the official said of the formula.
At a recent D.C. Council retreat, a frequent theme among the council members was the need to encourage local business development and local hiring. Mayor Vincent C. Gray has made job creation one of his top three priorities.
Yet according to the data reviewed by The Times, the state superintendent’s office and the departments of transportation and environment accounted for almost half of the District’s receipt of federal stimulus funds and reported creating roughly 80 percent of its new jobs through those funds, but could not demonstrate the creation of actual jobs for D.C. residents.
The stimulus jobs-creation vacuum predates the Gray administration. Officials said they hesitated to alter the methodology of the previous administration, but The Times has been requesting base-line data from the District for more than six months.
The city administrator’s office said the District reported to the federal government that it created 12,709 jobs as of the end of the most recent reporting period, but officials concede that the figure is derived from a formula based on expenditures and does not represent actual full-time employees who are D.C. residents.
In an emailed statement, Mr. Gray said the District used stimulus funds to help the local economy at a time when it was needed most to create jobs, spur economic activity and invest in critical infrastructure that otherwise would not have been possible.
“The stimulus funding helped create thousands of full- and part-time jobs,” he said, adding that the District is “doing everything possible to get our residents trained and working in jobs for the new, technology-driven and ‘green’ economies.”
• Luke Rosiak contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Political analysts were quick to declare victory for Hillary Clinton after the Democratic nominee’s first debate with Donald Trump on Monday night, and a new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows roughly half of likely voters agree with that assessment.
According to the survey of likely voters conducted immediately after the debate at Hofstra University, 49 percent of respondents said Clinton won the first bout with her GOP foe. About one-fourth (26 percent) thought the New York businessman edged the former secretary of State, and about the same percentage (25 percent) were undecided.
Related: POLITICO and Morning Consult Announce New Polling Partnership
Perceptions on debate performance mostly broke along partisan lines, but Republicans were more likely to declare Clinton the winner than Democrats were to state victory for her GOP counterpart. About one-fifth of Republicans (18 percent) said Clinton won the debate, compared with just 7 percent of Democrats who thought Trump was the victor. And 12 percent of Trump supporters gave Clinton the nod, whereas just 2 percent of Clinton backers named Trump the winner.
It’s a clear victory for Clinton, and it comes as both national and state polls have tightened over the past several weeks. She is off to a good start on the debate front, which Americans view as important in deciding how they will cast their vote in November. One-third of voters (34 percent) said debate performance will be a very important in how they vote, while 29 percent said it would be somewhat important, compared with 34 percent of voters said it wouldn’t be too important or not important at all.
But the impact of Monday’s debate is still small. Just 9 percent of voters said the debate changed their minds about who they will be voting for, while about eight out of 10 said it wouldn’t matter. Before the debate, Trump led Clinton by 1 point in the four-way race with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. But Clinton now leads Trump by 3 points (41 percent to 38 percent), and in a head-to-head scenario, she leads by 4 points (45 percent to 41 percent).
For two candidates who are historically unpopular, the debates represent some of their best, last chances to shape voters’ perceptions ahead of Election Day, and Trump did not fare comparatively well in that regard. Roughly four out of 10 voters (39 percent) said they viewed Clinton more favorably after the debate, compared with 30 percent for Trump.
And while the candidates can help their cases during the debates, most voters are still dismayed at their major-party choices in 2016. More than half of voters think the Republican and Democratic parties could have nominated better candidates than Clinton and Trump. About one out of four respondents (26 percent) think Trump is the best choice for Republicans, compared with one-third who think Clinton is the best Democrat for the job.
That goes some way to explaining the relatively high support for third-party candidates, who have been a factor in polls. Indeed, more than four in 10 voters thought Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein should have made the debate stage.
Nielsen declared the much-hyped event the most-watched presidential debate of all time — at roughly 84 million viewers — and a large majority of our poll respondents tuned in. Seven out of 10 (72 percent) respondents said they watched the debate, while only 27 percent did not. More than half of voters who tuned in (55 percent) said they watched all of it, with another 44 percent saying they watched most or some of it.
A plurality of voters (42 percent) thought that moderator Lester Holt — who pressed Trump repeatedly on his past stances on the Iraq War and President Obama’s birthplace — was fair and impartial. But more than one-fourth of respondents (27 percent) thought he was favorable to Clinton. Just 2 percent thought the NBC news anchor was more favorable to Trump.
The prospect of live fact-checking during the debate was a subject of vigorous argument ahead of Monday’s event, and voters found Clinton to be more correct in her claims. Almost half of voters (48 percent) thought Trump made the most factual errors in the debate, compared with one-third who said Clinton did.
The reception to the debate itself was generally positive. More than half of voters thought it was informative (55 percent) and entertaining (62 percent). Half of voters said it was something they would watch again, and more than one-third (37 percent) said it would help them make up their mind.
But given that more than one-third of voters (36 percent) called it depressing, almost one-fifth (18 percent) said it was boring, and 30 percent described it as awful, it’s clear that there’s plenty of angst among the American electorate ahead of decision day.
The national survey, fielded immediately after Monday’s debate ended, polled 1,421 registered voters and 1,253 likely voters, from Sept. 26-27 for a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Debate survey: Likely voters: toplines and crosstabs. Registered voters: toplines and crosstabs.
Trend survey: Likely voters: toplines and crosstabs. Registered voters: toplines and crosstabs.The Blue Jays just walked off against the Orioles, with Ubaldo Jimenez giving up the game-losing home run to Edwin Encarnacion in the bottom of the 11th inning. The story, though, is that the Orioles used seven pitchers in their final game of the season, and potential Cy Young winning closer Zach Britton was not one of them. The Blue Jays beat the Orioles in large part because the Orioles didn’t use their best pitcher tonight.
At this point, there are two possible explanations for Buck Showalter’s decision.
1. Zach Britton wasn’t available, or felt something off when he warmed up in the 8th inning. Given that Buck Showalter seems like a reasonable human being, this should probably be our default assumption right now. Often times, when a manager does something inexplicable with their bullpen usage, there’s information asymmetry, and they know something we don’t know. That may very well be the case here.
OR
2. The “save” stat just cost the Orioles their 2016 season. If Showalter really used Brian Duensing and Ubaldo Jimenez before Zach Britton because he was waiting to get Britton a lead so that he could earn a save, then this is the craziest managerial decision that I can remember in my baseball-watching life.
I don’t see another possibility, really. Either Britton is hurt or Buck Showalter just screwed up in an historic way. It will be interesting to find out how honest the team is about Britton’s availability in postgame comments.
Update: It was option #2. A few quotes from Showalter.
Buck: "He was available" — JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016
Buck: "You could (regret) afterwards, but we went 4 innings trying to get to that spot (of using Britton)." — JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016
Buck: "Playing on the road had something to do with it too." — JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016WayHome may not be in Toronto, but we've adopted the Oro-Medonte-area festival as our own. And if the city feels emptier than usual this upcoming weekend, it's probably because everyone's partying at the Burl's Creek Event Ground. Gates open at 3 p.m. on Thursday, July 21 so you can start setting up before the music begins, and the ferris wheel starts spinning, the next day.
If you're new to this three-day camping extravaganza, or even if you went last year, there's lots to consider before schlepping out of town. Here's your guide to the WayHome festivities - and here's a map if you get lost!
Money
WayHome is going completely cash free this year. That means you can pay for everything via your wristband instead of carrying around (and inevitably losing) cash or cards. Festival staffers recommend topping up before you arrive - if you're worried about running out of money, you can set your wristband to auto reload. But don't fret, there will be reloading stations on site.
Food
You'll probably be cooking a lot of your own food, but if you're feeling lazy and don't want to run back to your campsite for meals, there will be lots and lots of gluttonous food options available. And to keep you going throughout the festival, there will be more coffee vendors open this year, especially in the 24-hour areas between the east and west camp grounds.
So, what can you look forward to stuffing your face with? Here's a list of the food vendors.
If you decided to go all out and buy VIP passes, the food selection looks even better. Along with gaining access to the site's refurbished 1930s barn, you'll get to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at three mini restaurants created by the Drake: China Town, Sneaky Tee's and the Drake Diner.
China Town will feature snacks like pork and shrimp dumplings and sesame chicken wings; Sneaky Tee's will take a cue from Sneaky Dee's to serve up nachos and tacos; and the Drake Diner will dole out breakfast sandwiches, granola, burgers, pimento cheesy fries, avocado toast and kale Caesar salads.
Drinks
If you're going to drink, load up your wristband or come prepared with a cooler for your campsite. Expect Molson products - the big beer company is a major sponsor - as well as Somersby and Smirnoff.
But more importantly, bring a reusable water bottle because it's going to be a hot weekend and you don't want to get dehydrated. There will be two big water refill stations; one in the main concert bowl and another by the WayBold stage.
Camping
If you want to camp out, you'll have to pay for it ($129.99 plus tax and fees, to be exact). Each site fits a maximum of six people plus one car. There's currently a small chance of rain this weekend, so if you're planning on sleeping in a tent, remember to bring a ground sheet and fly - a few tarps would work too - because there's nothing worse than a sopping wet tent.
If you don't mind shelling out the big bucks, you can book a spot at the WayCamp ($499.99). You'll get a pre-set souvenir tent, two air mattresses, two sleeping bags, a lock, a light and a spot close to the festival grounds.
RV camping is also available and if you're planning to drive, you can buy a parking pass for $69.99.
Attractions
WayHome bills itself as a music and art festival, so naturally, it also showcases visual artists. You'll be able to see installations throughout the festival grounds, including pieces by Aaron Li-Hill, Angus Watt (you know, the guy band the Medieval-looking flags), Trevor Wheatley and Nathan Whitford. If you arrive before 8 p.m. on Thursday, you'll be able to participate in the Art Walk and meet some of the artists.
And like most big-ticket music festivals, WayHome will be teeming with corporate activations. Vitamin Water's giving out free Vitamin Water, Somersby's building a treehouse, Smirnoff's bring back its house party and Reebok's setting up a ferris wheel.
Yes, WayHome 2016 will feature a ferris wheel, which will really amp up its Coachella vibes.
Music
Ah music, the real reason we're all heading to WayHome. The daily lineups been out for a little bit now, so if you want to be super organized, go create your own personal, colour-coded schedule now. LCD Soundsystem is headlining on Friday, Arcade Fire's on Saturday and The Killers will close out the festival on Sunday night.
If you're not the scheduling type, be prepared to go with the flow. Last year, I had the best time hanging out at the small WayAway Stage dancing my face off (in the shade) and discovering new bands. And remember, the music doesn't stop at 11 p.m. (well, it does on Sunday) - there's music until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday night.
On Friday, Toronto's Keys N Krates are playing WayBright, Mac DeMarco, and later, Matt & Kim will take on the WayBold Stage and Unknown Mortal Orchestra will be at WayAway.
The next night, get ready to stay up late with a stellar lineup that includes Chet Faker, Vince Staples, Major Lazer and FKA twigs.
Things you'll probably forget to pack, but really should bring
Hand sanitizer
Flip flops for the shower
A rain poncho
Sunscreen
Fanny pack
Water bottle
Chapstick
Tarps
Ear plugs
Portable phone charger
But set a meeting spot for your friend because good luck getting service.
Photos by Jesse Milns, Hector Vasquez and courtesy of the Drake Hotel Properties.Fears Renault could face its own emissions scandal similar to Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” drove down shares in the French car-maker as much as 20pc.
Reports in France that anti-fraud detectives last week raided several of the company’s sites sent the shares plunging from €86.6 to €69.7 in early trading on Thursday, wiping almost €5bn off the company's market value in its worst day of trading in over 20 years.
However, the company's shares later regained some of the losses, and were off 9.4pc in afternoon dealing.
"Agents from the anti-fraud unit DGCCRF intervened in various Renault sites last Thursday," the CGT Renault union said.
The authorities targeted the sites’ engine control units, hinting that the raids could be connected to emissions from Renault vehicles.
The union said that the raids “are linked to the consequences of the Volkswagen rigged-engines affair”, and added that the computers of several directors were removed by detectives.
The union said it had been told about the raids by production staff on the shop floor and on Wednesday asked managers at the company – which is 20pc own by the French state – to give them details of the detectives’ visit.
“We yesterday questioned management about this but received no reply,” said Franck Daout, a representative of the CFDT union, told AFP.
Renault issued a statement saying that fraud investigators were looking at the way it uses exhaust emissions technology in an additional probe of parts and factories that follows an earlier investigation by the French government.
The company added investigations so far has found "no evidence of a defeat device equipping Renault vehicles".
The spectre of the dieselgate scandal spreading beyond VW to another car maker has been the source of intense speculation since the German auto maker admitted fitting “defeat devices”, which allowed vehicles to cheat pollution controls tests, into its cars.
VW has since admitted 11m cars worldwide are affected and the scandal has wiped billons off the company’s value. The business also recorded its first loss in more than a decade when it posted its most recent results, with the €6.7bn provision it took to account for the anticipated cost of the scandal driving it into the red.
However, analysts believe the true cost could be more than €30bn and US authorities have begun prosecuting the company in a case that could see the costs soar.
Questioned on Wednesday by MPs about the dieselgate scandal and the prospect of other manufacturers having used similar practices to meet pollution regulations, Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said he thought it was unlikely.
“On the evidence we have seen no other manufacturers have fitted these devices,” Mr Hawes told MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee, who were investigating air quality.
Renault said last month that it would invest €50m to bring the emissions produced by its cars when driven under real world conditions in line with those measured in official test conditions.
According to its most recent annual report, Renault is the world's fourth-largest car manufacturer, selling 2.7m vehicles worldwide in 2014, generating revenues of €41bn and a profit of €1.1bn. The bulk of the company's sales are in Europe - some 54pc - and its most popular car is Duster, which it makes under its Dacia brand, which had sales of 395,530 in the year. Worldwide the company has 117,400 staff.
Renault is in an alliance with Nissan, with a complex ownership structure that means the Japanese manufacturer owns 15pc of Renault, and Renault has 43.4pc of Nissan. The arrangement ran into difficulties recently as Paris tried to tighten its grip on the car business.
In a bid to protect French jobs, there were concerns the government could try to nationalise Renault and return production home, putting up to 7,000 UK jobs at risk. However, a truce was agreed with each company agreeing to limit its interference in the other's operations.
Worries that the emissions scandal could be spreading hit other car makers' shares, with Peugeot down 8pc and dealing in Milan-listed Fiat Chrysler temporarily suspended after dropping almost 10pc. However, traders attributed much of the drop in Fiat shares to a report about a legal claim against the company alleging it falsified sales data.
Arndt Ellinghorst, automotive head at Evercore, said: "The whole sector is under pressure and we are in a complete 'risk off' environment now, not just in the auto sectors, but across all equities. We've seen Fiat tumble today on a report about sales figures and it's no surprise to see the reaction to the Renault news. Any uncertainty causes investors to pull the trigger and get out."SURPRISE, Ariz. - The Rangers kick off the exhibition schedule Wednesday, beginning a month of evaluation as they put together the final pieces on a mostly-settled roster. But staff writer Evan Grant knows you want answers now and he jumps to the ending to present his first mock roster of the spring:
Starting pitchers (5): LHP Cole Hamels, RHP Colby Lewis, LHP Martin Perez, LHP Derek Holland, RHP Chi Chi Gonzalez
The skinny: Chi Chi Gonzalez goes into camp as the favorite for the No. 5 spot, perhaps because of a higher ceiling, but he struggled down the stretch and must show the Rangers' more trust in his stuff again. Nick Martinez has been a part of the rotation for most of the last two years and started out fast last year before fading. If he gets back to attacking the inner part of the plate, it could even or tilt the race. If both struggle, veteran Jeremy Guthrie would be looked to be this year's Wandy Rodriguez; somebody to hold down a spot until injured guys (in this case Yu Darvish) return.
Relievers (7): RHP Shawn Tolleson, LHP Jake Diekman, RHP Sam Dyson, RHP Keone Kela, RHP Tom Wilhelmsen, LHP Andrew Faulkner, RHP Tony Barnette
The skinny: Five spots are locks for what should be one of the deepest bullpens in the AL. The questions: Do the Rangers carry a second lefty (I think so) and do they carry a true long reliever (I lean against). Though LHP Sam Freeman is out of options, the Rangers have enough left-handed depth not to carry a guy who struggles vs. lefties simply out of fear of losing him. Freeman simply must show better against lefties. If the Rangers don't carry a long man, Wilhelmsen could be asked to occasionally go multiple innings. If they decide they must have a long reliever it puts Barnette on the bubble and moves Cesar Ramos (who would offer the unique option of being a multi-inning lefty) and Jeremy Guthrie into the picture.
Catchers (2): Robinson Chirinos, Chris Gimenez
The skinny: Keep an eye on stout Michael McKenry, who possesses legitimate big league power. With a strong spring, he could force the Rangers to at least have a conversation. Jeff Banister is a fan dating back to Pittsburgh days. Gimenez, however, has a meal ticket that is hard to overlook: His body of work with Cole Hamels last year (they were 10-0 together).
Infielders (6): 1B Mitch Moreland, 2B Rougned Odor, 3B Adrian Beltre, SS Elvis Andrus, UTIL Hanser Alberto, DH-1B Prince Fielder
The skinny: There are no questions or surprises here and the only ones that could arise would be injury-related. The plan is for Jurickson Profar to start the season in the minors continuing to get reps on his rebuilt shoulder and for Joey Gallo to work on improving his plate discipline. There is nothing to see here.
Outfielders (5): LF Ian Desmond, CF Delino DeShields, RF Shin-Soo Choo, OF Drew Stubbs, OF-1B Ryan Rua.
The skinny: This version doesn't include Justin Ruggiano, who was originally part of the Rangers' left field platoon, but now that that is strictly a bench position, speed and defense become bigger priorities and Stubbs superior. Ruggiano's best chance might be to show he can play an adequate first base to increase his versatility. Problem is: Rua can already play some first and is optionable, which is not so insignificant considering the possibility looms Josh Hamilton might return in early May. But even then, who knows for how long. Optionable players are nice tools for roster manipulation.The MR2 was a landmark car for Toyota that’s as popular today as it was when it launched back in 1983. Join us as we chart the Toyota MR2’s history over the course of more than two decades and three generations.
Toyota wasn’t the first manufacturer to explore the concept of a small, mass-produced sports car with a mid-engined layout – since the late Sixties, European automakers had developed various models based around this exotic-sounding formula, but none of them made much of a splash in terms of sales. The history of the Toyota MR2 can be traced all the way back to 1976 when Toyota officially commenced its landmark ‘middie’ project but the worldwide oil crisis delayed the project’s development.
In 1980, the project was revived and given a new sense of direction: Toyota would produce another affordable sports car akin to its Sports 800 of the 1960s, spurred on by a hastened desire to launch exciting new models into the rapidly-expanding market in North America. The enthusiasm within Toyota was so great that many engineers famously gave up their summer holidays to contribute to the project.
Toyota MR2: reality dawns
The next notable date in the MR2’s history was the 1983 Tokyo Motor Show when Toyota’s mid-engined SV-3 prototype first came to the attention of the public, displayed on a brightly-lit turntable. A major reworking of the previous SA-X prototype, the SV-3 was so visually close to its production form that only the front and rear spoilers were redesigned for the production model for better aerodynamic stability in crosswinds.
Named the Toyota MR2, a contraction of ‘Midship Runabout 2-seater’, the new model went on sale in Japan in June 1984 and joined the sporty Celica and Supra in Toyota’s UK range six months later. The MR2’s centralised powertrain layout required a complicated construction that contained five high-strength bulkheads, yet the car weighed only 977kg split in a ratio of 44:56 from front to back.
In the domestic Japanese market the MR2 was initially sold in three grades and with two engine options, the highlight being the iconic 122bhp 1.6-litre DOHC 16v 4A-GE engine used in the Corolla GT. Later in its life, the options expanded to include a T-bar roof panel and a new headline powerplant, the 145bhp supercharged 4A-GZE. Even so, with its 124mph top speed and ability to sprint to 60mph in just 8.2 seconds, the naturally-aspirated MR2 was faster than the majority of its competition.
The MR2 was voted Japan’s ‘Car of the Year 1984-85’ ahead of stiff competition from the new Honda CR-X and latest Nissan Laurel, confirming the findings of contemporary road test reports that unanimously praised the MR2’s lithe athleticism and overriding sense of fun.
As expected, the MR2’s racetrack handling paid dividends in the motorsport arena. One-make series for the MR2 were held in the UK and US, while Toyota Team Europe developed a wide-bodied MR2, codenamed ‘222D’, to compete against the likes of the Peugeot’s 205 T16 and the Audi Quattro in the proposed Group S category of the World Rally Championship. Unfortunately this TTE project was cancelled when the Group S proposal was scrapped.
Toyota MR2: a more mature approach
It was never in doubt that the MR2 would maintain its mid-engine layout and fun-to-drive nature for the second-generation model. But the remit of the next MR2 expanded to include a more refined and stylish design, improved ergonomics, a higher quality interior, and a range of larger, more powerful engines. For Chief Engineer Kazutoshi Arima, who had been second-in-command on the original MR2, the second-generation MR2 had to take the model further upmarket.
As was common at the time, design briefs were given to studios and teams within the Toyota organisation. Chief Designer Kunihiro Uchida (also credited with the Lexus LS400) then refined the chosen design into a car that bore more than a passing resemblance to scaled-down Italian sports car exotica.
The svelte new MR2 went on sale in Japan in October 1989, almost five-and-a-half years after the launch of the first-generation car. During its development two prototypes spent time in the UK, the MR2’s second-biggest export market, to have the new car’s suspension fine-tuned. The new model had grown in size, being 245mm longer, 30mm wider and with an 80mm longer wheelbase, but retained a sleek profile with a 10mm decrease in overall height. Again, either coupe or T-bar body styles were available.
From launch, the second-generation MR2’s engine line-up included three 2.0-litre 16v powerplants: a base 119bhp unit from the Carina (only available in the UK), the naturally aspirated 3S-GE with 165bhp, and a turbocharged 3S-GTE with 225bhp also used in the Celica GT-Four.
For the American market, a 2.2-litre 5S-FE engine was fitted instead of the mid-range 3S-GE. The improved torque of these engines compared to the previous range more than made up for an increase in the MR2’s kerb weight to between 1160 and 1285kg (depending on model). Indeed, Autocar & Motor magazine reported that the new UK GT model had not ‘forsaken the original’s intimacy and finesse’ and that it was ‘an altogether bolder assault on the senses’.
This MR2 had an incredible ten-year lifespan, reciving only minor refinements throughout. Within the enthusiast market, versions are often more clearly identified by the specific period in which they were built, from Revision 2 through to Revision 5.
In addition, Toyota’s motorsport arm, Toyota Racing Development, developed and marketed two unique versions of the car for the domestic market – in 1996, the soft-top TRD Technocraft MR Spider was released, swiftly joined by the wide-bodied TRD 2000GT model in 1997. This latter limited edition also included a gentle phase one (245bhp) tuning upgrade of the 3S-GTE engine, and was clearly inspired by the broad-shouldered stance of the MR2s competing successfully in the Japanese GT Championship.
Toyota MR2: going back to its roots
European sales of the second-generation MR2 continued into the New Millennium even though production of the car’s long-awaited replacement began in October 1999. Clues to its altered focus were revealed as far back as 1995 with the MRJ concept shown at that year’s Tokyo Motor Show. Many pundits were convinced the MRJ was the third-generation MR2 in all but name, even predicting its on-sale date and projected price tag. But Toyota surprised everybody with the debut of the MR-S (Midship Runabout-Sports) concept at the 1997 Tokyo show.
Technically an indirect replacement for the second-generation MR2, which had developed into a grand tourer, the concept was a roadster that Chief Engineer Tadashi Nakagawa commented would break “the cycle of growth”, referring to the habit of successive vehicle generations getting ever larger. Everything about the new car would be smaller – overall proportions, engine size, power, kerb weight and price. It would also be much simpler to produce, with all markets sharing a similar specification.
Market anticipation was high that the next MR2 was going to be a pure, genuinely exciting sports car geared toward a new generation and new century.
Toyota MR2: a delivered promise
The third-generation car launched in Japan a few days before the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show and in the same month that Toyota’s cumulative passenger car production reached 100 million units. It bore the same MR-S name as the earlier concept, appropriate given its new open-top construction. However, in export markets such as Europe and the States the car was respectively known as the MR2 Roadster and MR2 Spyder.
Incredibly, the new model weighed significantly less than the first-generation car (from 960kg) while also offering a substantial specification level, a feat partly achieved by deleting the rear boot and therefore the fifth bulkhead. Instead, luggage capacity was improved by adding a full width, 78-litre storage space behind the seats.
In line with Toyota’s decision to simplify production for all markets, one engine was offered throughout the world, the all-alloy 1.8-litre DOHC 16v VVT-i 1ZZ-FE unit also used in the seventh-generation Celica. With 138bhp on tap the new car was decently rapid, boasting the highest power-to-weight ratio in its class, and was particularly praised in the motoring press for dart-like responsiveness through the major control systems and its outstanding handling dynamics.
Like the previous generation car, the MR-S experienced a fair amount of attention from Toyota-affiliated tuners and the Japanese aftermarket. For instance, special editions like the Modellista Caserta, VM180 TRD, VM180 Zagato, and TOM’S W123 were produced in very limited runs.
However, the biggest official change came in 2001 when the manual gearbox was joined by an optional five-speed (and later six-speed) SMT ‘Sequential Manual Transmission’. This marked the first time that a sequential gearbox was fitted to any Japanese car, and because the clutch engaged automatically, it allowed the driver to change gear without having to lift off the accelerator.
Toyota MR2: end of the line
A global slowdown in the sports car market in the New Millennium had a clear effect on sales of the MR2. Annual sales figures that were initially counted in the tens of thousands slowly dropped to thousands and then into hundreds. Sales of the MR2 (and Celica) were concluded in the US and Australia at the end of the 2005 model year but continued in Japan, Mexico and Europe until 2007 when production finally ceased.Mark Karpales, the former CEO of scandal-hit Bitcoin trading emporium Mt. Gox, has been arrested this morning by Japanese police. They suspect he had something to do with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Kingpin Admits |
’t give many details of the games. To sum it up, our tournament went as follows:
Round 1: W
Round 2: L
Round 3: W
Round 4: W
Round 5: W
Round 6: W
Round 7: L
Round 8: W
Round 9: W
Round 10: L
Throughout the day, Linda kept apologizing for “dragging down the team” every time she lost her own match. I’m not sure what inspired this mindset. During our loss in round 2, Jeff and I flooded, while she won her match. Our loss in round 7 Jeff got run over and I punted my game, while she won hers again. Not quite what I’d call “dragging down the team”
Day 1 finished at midnight. It was an exhausting day, and the three of us battled hard to put ourselves into day 2. Of course, it meant that I had to hold up my end of the bargain…
Sunday June 9th, 9:00am
Day 2 was team drafts. We won our first team draft 2-0, but the second pod was much more difficult and we lost 0-2, despite Jeff winning his own matches. At a respectable record of 9-5, and no chance of making top 20 to cash the event, we dropped before the 3rd team draft to collect our 2 draft sets. We still had to wait for KYT, whose team was 11-3 at this point and had a real chance to finish high in the tournament. His team finished a heartbreaking 5th place, with the top 4 making the cut. With that, we had to make the drive back home, since we all had to work Monday morning. Getting back home at 2:30am was no picnic after such an intense weekend, but it was worth it.
Props
Jeffrey “Skrat” Casselman: For basically carrying the team, crushing games left right and center.
KYT: Congrats again on the sick run. 5th place!
Our round 1 opponents Eric, Brian and Andrew, who started the event 1-2, and casually went on to plow their way to a 10th place finish.
Amanda Stevens: For finding us the best emergency teammate possible. If anything gets Amanda’s seal of approval, you know it’s legit.
Michael McCliment: For showing genuine concern for Olivia, whom he doesn’t even know. (For the record, Olivia’s doing fine.)
And finally, Linda Wang: Thank you again for teaming up with us and going to battle with us in the GP. Those who thought they could get free wins off of you were in for a surprise. Keep on smiling, and don’t ever stop being you.
Slops
When we first met Linda, her confidence wasn’t the greatest. Why? Because she had been told repeatedly that she’s a bad player by local players in her community. She said that where she plays, if she makes a mistake there are people that yell at her when she makes a play error. I’m sure this is not a unique case, but is this really how our community is trying to foster growth?
Here we have a relatively new player, of course they’re going to make mistakes. It’s called gaining experience, deal with it. To those who berate others for their misplays, I’m sure you didn’t start out as good as you think you are right now. Everyone is going to miss triggers, keep sketchy hands, make bad blocks, mis-register a deck, you name it. The pros are pros because they tend to commit these errors the least.
If you see someone make a play error, there’s two ways of going about it. You can belittle them and call them a bad player and ask why they did that in a condescending manner, something Linda was on the receiving end quite a bit, to the point where I felt she might be conditioned into actually thinking she was a bad player. OR you can appeal to their intelligence and present your point of view and how you think the optimal play should have gone down. Then, if they choose to listen and learn from you or not, that’s their choice, but the decision on becoming a better player belongs to the player, not you.
The Magic community isn’t some old-boy’s-club where you snub or kick down any newcomer who’s trying to get into the game. We need to get rid of this stigma where “bad players” should just get yelled at. They want to be better players too. And if they don’t, just leave them be, but don’t foster negativity in the community, it’s not good for anybody. [/rant]
Providence was truly an amazing weekend, and it wasn’t just because of the tournament. After all, those were just games. The true gem in the weekend was the friendships that we forged so quickly with people who share a common interest. I can say that this story will trump any other Magic-related story that I have experienced to date.
Thanks for reading,
Barry HumInsurgent fighters wearing U.S. Army uniforms breached the defenses of the main British-run air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday. Firing guns and rockets and apparently triggering suicide vests, the attackers killed two U.S. Marines and damaged or destroyed several hangars and fueling facilities. Before they were all killed or captured, the insurgents also managed to destroy six U.S. Marine Corps jet fighters and "significantly" damage two others, landing a shocking blow against NATO air power in the region.
The attack on Camp Bastion, in restive Helmand province, came after the Taliban vowed to take revenge for the release by a mysterious U.S. filmmaker of an inflammatory – albeit amateurish – movie mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The insurgent group had also threatened to kill or capture the U.K.'s Prince Harry, who recently deployed to Camp Bastion as an Apache helicopter pilot. The prince "was never in any danger," NATO's International Security Assistance Force stated.
The assailants' true motives are impossible to verify, but the attack underscores the Afghan insurgency's boldness and striking power in the waning years of the U.S.-led NATO intervention.
The assault began "shortly after 10:00 p.m." when "approximately 15" insurgents – organized in three teams and wearing American uniforms – "penetrated at one point of the perimeter fence" and "executed a well-coordinated attack against the airfield," according to ISAF. The Harrier jump jets destroyed or damaged in the assault had been parked out in the open on the flightline, the alliance stated.
The Harriers reportedly belonged to Marine Attack Squadron 211, based in Yuma, Arizona. VMA-211 had shifted its Harrier jump jets to Bastion from nearby Kandahar in July, in order to better support the British troops and Marines operating from Bastion. Harrier squadrons typically deploy with 10 jets, meaning all but two of VMA-211's planes are now out of action. Despite this, ISAF unconvincingly insisted there would be "no impact to ground or air operations from Camp Bastion."
Startlingly, the six destroyed Harriers represent no less than 1/15th of the Marines' entire inventory of the versatile, vertical-landing jets. The F-35B version of the stealthy Joint Strike Fighter is slated to replace the Harrier over the next 15 years.
Nine NATO personnel – eight military and one civilian – were injured in addition to the two Marines who died. One of those killed was from VMA-211, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Base defenders killed 14 of the attackers and captured one. "This information is subject to change as new details become available," ISAF warned.
The Bastion attack is not the first time insurgents have targeted NATO aircraft. Last month a rocket damaged an Air Force C-17 cargo plane assigned to carry Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey on his Afghanistan tour. Two maintainers were injured in that strike. And in 2005 a rocket barrage aimed at Kandahar Air Field destroyed a British Harrier and damaged another.
Nor is Friday's attack the first perpetrated by insurgents disguised as U.S. troops. In 2010, following a spate of such attacks, the Pentagon ordered the Army to begin treating stocks of uniforms as "sensitive" and remove them from "pilferable" ground resupply convoys moving through Pakistan. “There is evidence that the enemy is using pilfered out-garment uniform items to gain a tactical advantage," the Pentagon warned.
It's unclear to what extent that advantage factored into the Bastion attack. In any event, the death and destruction wrought on a heavily-defended NATO base by just 15 determined attackers is a chilling reminder of the insurgency's enduring potency.An Alaska Airlines spokesperson said the bag in the video didn’t belong to a customer and was filled with magazines. Scott Budman reports. (Published Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015)
It's that time of the year again when people are paranoid about holiday travel — weather, security, flight delays, and of course, baggage.
When San Jose resident Chase Platon saw what appeared to be baggage handlers in Southwest Airlines uniforms throwing bags and cheering each other on while he was waiting for a flight at San Jose Mineta International Airport on Tuesday, he captured it on video, and like all concerned citizens, he says he informed Southwest about it.
But Southwest adamantly denied the handlers worked for the airline. In fact, the workers were wearing Alaska Airlines uniforms and the bag they were tossing around was filled with magazines and didn't belong to a passenger, an Alaska spokesperson said late Wednesday afternoon.
Platon, who was sitting between gates 25-26 in Terminal B, said the bag tossing went on for about 30 minutes, at which point he walked over to the employees manning the Southwest gate and informed them about it. "They tried to justify it by saying it may not be a customer bag," Platon said.
It turns out, it wasn't a customer bag. Nonetheless, Alaska is apologizing, saying this type of behavior is never appropriate, no matter who the bag belongs to.
"Regrettably, our employees were tossing a company rollaboard bag that was filled with magazines as part of an employee game," Alaska Airlines said in a statement. "No passenger bag was used for this activity. This game should not have been played at the airport. The optics of this video are unfortunate and we apologize for any confusion this has caused San Jose travelers or Southwest Airlines."
Platon had earlier posted the video to Southwest's Facebook page to alert the airline about it. "It seemed inappropriate … It looked like they were all having fun. An airport is not the kind of place where you'd expect something like this, especially in this day and age."
A Southwest customer rep told Platon in a private Facebook message "the agents in the video are actually not Southwest employees, but agents from another airline."
A Southwest spokesperson told NBC Bay Area that the airline reviewed the video, shared it with their local leaders and confirmed that the individuals in the video were not employed by Southwest or wearing Southwest uniforms.
"Honestly, I couldn't believe it," Platon says of the incident. "What with all the stories about the kid who snuck away on the plane to go to Hawaii — obviously the airport is having issues with security. Looks like they are not keeping up with standards."
San Jose Airport officials said they couldn't comment on the video, calling it "an airline issue, not an airport issue."After her under-four-minute press conference last night, Hillary Clinton discussed the FBI letter about potentially new emails they found, only this time she did it in, well, campaign mode.
The Florida crowd booed as soon as she mentioned it today, and Clinton followed up by saying, “If you’re like me, you probably have a few questions about it. It is pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election.”
She said this is deeply troubling, called on James Comey to provide further explanation, and said this about her opponent:
“Of course, Donald Trump is already making up lies about this. He is doing his best to confuse, mislead, and discourage the American people. I think it’s time for Donald Trump to stop fearmongering, to stop disgracing himself, to stop attacking our democracy. We can’t let him get away with this, can we?”
Trump earlier today said that there’s clearly something rotten here, called the system corrupt, and said that he’s basically been proven right on his belief that it was dangerous for a Clinton aide to be married to someone like Anthony Weiner.
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comActivist Post
E-Gov Link announced today integration of Bitcoin payments into its popular E-Gov suite of products. Bitcoin, a global digital currency, is gaining in popularity, and provides citizens and municipalities a more cost effective solution for payments.
Local governments who offer online payments can now provide their citizens with another choice of payment method. Integration with a backend payment processor provides the municipality with US Dollars that they expect. And the transaction costs are a fraction of traditional credit card purchases.
E-Gov Link was quick to react to the guidance from the US Department of the Treasury (FinCEN), which came out last week, defining the parameters for using virtual currencies. This guidance clarified the rules, and opened the door allowing municipalities to accept Bitcoin. Government entities accepting Bitcoins is a natural evolution, as Bitcoin becomes more popular.
“Credit card purchases tend to carry high transaction costs due to the middle-man and due to the high costs of fraudulent online purchases,” said Bill Nadler, president of E-Gov Link. “Fraudulent purchases typically aren’t a major issue for municipal services, and so having a payment option that doesn’t carry that heavy transactional cost is definitely a plus. It’s one more option that progressive municipalities will offer their citizens.
Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized digital currency, has a current market value of approximately $95 per Bitcoin. With nearly 11 Million Bitcoins in circulation, the Bitcoin economy is more than a billion dollars strong. The system uses advanced cryptographic mathematics to protect the money supply and to validate transactions, and peer-to-peer technology to maintain a world-wide common ledger, tracking which accounts contain Bitcoins. This means that users can transfer money world-wide nearly instantly for almost no fee, without trusting a corporation, bank, or other middle-man. It’s truly a revolutionary technology.
E-Gov Link is excited to be the first municipal software provider offering Bitcoin integration for their purchases. “We know the Bitcoin community is passionate about using Bitcoin for payments, and will be demanding it of their local governments,” said Nadler. “We’re happy to be here to answer the call, as municipalities scramble to find partners to help them with Bitcoin.”
E-Gov Link software is used by progressive municipalities in more than 60% of the states. E-Gov Link provides Citizen Request tracking, software to manage parks and recreation services, permitting, and other website products. E-Gov Link is a trade name of Electronic Commerce Link, Inc., of Cincinnati Ohio.
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Read other articles and announcements from Activist Post HereIn the words of famous Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi, Lebanon is a non-country where Christians and Muslims once lived side by side but failed to have a common vision for their homeland. In the Lebanese house of many mansions, as he calls his country, the Christians looked to Europe while the Muslims aspired to remain anchored in a wide Arab nationalist framework.
The night of the long knives in Saudi Arabia Madawi al-Rasheed Read More »
So the many mansions occasionally fought each other while the idea of Lebanon survived and even flourished under violence, sectarianism and corruption.
With the current crisis that resulted from Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation announced in Riyadh, the many mansions are once again on the verge of being shaken to their foundations.
More mansions
Writing immediately after the civil war that ravaged the country for 17 years, our dear historian did not anticipate the current Lebanese crisis in which Saudi Arabia and Iran created more mansions to be added to the historical Lebanese ones.
He did not anticipate that Iran will replace Saudi Arabia as the main regional player in a country that has been within the Saudi sphere of influence since the creation of the Arab league after World War II.
Saudiised Sunni Lebanese prime ministers - they have to be Sunni according to the constitution - have always combined their financial interests in Saudi Arabia where they made their fortunes with being prime ministers in Lebanon. They held dual nationality and operated freely in two countries.
Today Lebanese Sunnis plaster pictures of Saudi kings across streets in their neighbourhoods
From Hussein Owayni, Riyad Solh to Rafiq and Saad Harriri, there is a history of finance and politics, and sometimes marriages with senior Saudi princes, cementing a precarious relationship, often controlled by Riyadh for its own purposes, and benefiting Sunni families. The grandfather of Walid bin Talal, now detained, was Lebanese prime minister Riyad Solh.
But above all, such prime ministers were instrumental in defending Saudi political interests in Lebanon. In the 1950s Saudi Arabia feared the Hashemites gaining a hold over the minds of the Lebanese Sunnis and later Egyptian Gamal Abd al-Nasser's Arab nationalism threatening to infiltrate the minds and hearts of the many Saudis who came to study in Lebanon.
When the so-called free Saudi princes (mainly Talal and Mansour bin Abdul-Aziz) gathered at the St George Hotel on the corniche in Beirut in the early 1960s to demand a constitutional monarchy and launch attacks on King Saud and Faisal as stooges of imperialism, the Saudi regime thought that only trouble can come out of Lebanon.
An image of Beit Beirut in 1998 (Yarob Marouf)
The Saudi strategy
Today this is history but the shift towards Hezbollah is equally threatening to Saudi Arabia. The latter blamed Iran and Hezbollah for the Yemeni Houthi missile that was intercepted in the skies of Riyadh on 4 November.
Saudi Arabia accuses the two of training and arming the Houthis, whom it has been fighting since 2015. Saudi Arabia considered Lebanon as declaring war on it after the missile incident.
Lebanon is one of those places where society and its sectarian mansions has always been stronger than the state
Since the 1950s the Saudi strategy was to promote a Lebanese Sunni bourgeoisie loyal to the Saudis and determined to eradicate nationalist and leftist threats coming from the heart of Beirut.
While the Lebanese Sunni bourgeoisie was co-opted, ordinary Sunnis in Tariq al-Jadidah and Ras Beirut chanted pro-Nasserite slogans and saw themselves as the minaret of Arab nationalism.
Together with the Palestinian refugees, they became synonymous with Beirut al-Wataniyya, nationalist Beirut. When Nasser unexpectedly died in 1970, they flooded the streets and mourned their hero.
Today Lebanese Sunnis plaster pictures of Saudi kings across streets in their neighbourhoods. These counter the portraits of Khomeini, Khamenei and other Iranian figures that decorate the plasterboards and walls in the Shia neighbourhoods.
Saad Hariri's resignation? Part of Saudi's latest push to confront Iran Lina Khatib Read More »
Against this history of Saudi-Sunni connections, since the 1980s Iran began to consolidate a Shia mansion that had been ignored and marginalised by the Lebanese historical sectarian politics drawn by the French under the mandate, and ravaged by successive Israeli occupations of the south where the majority lived.
Since the 1970s there have been many violent Israeli intrusions that led to impoverishment, expulsions and destruction of towns, villages and agricultural fields. Without Iran’s support to Hezbollah, southern Lebanon would have been most probably still under Israeli occupation.
A poster of Saad Hariri in Beirut (MEE/ Ali Harb)
The collapse of the Hariri mansion
The Sunni bourgeoisie of Beirut, Sidon and Tripoli among other cities became vital to Saudi Arabia maintaining its foothold and guarding Lebanon from the excessive Iranian intrusion.
Former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri boosted the confidence of the Sunnis in Lebanon while also building his financial empire in both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Under post-war reconstruction efforts, he emerged as a financial tycoon who wiped out small traders and businessmen in favour of global capitalist intrusion.
Today the famous central Solidaire area is a dying hub of finance and entertainment beyond the means of most Lebanese.
With his assassination in 2005, his son Saad became the face of Sunni power, albeit a declining one in Lebanon. Money earned in Saudi Arabia was translated into philanthropy in Lebanon. Patron-client relations became the core of the Sunni za’amat, leadership, like other sectarian leadership.
Saudi Arabia seems to have lost its historical importance in Lebanon as Iran consolidated its presence there
But since King Salman came to power in 2015, coinciding with a sharp decline in oil prices, the Hariri financial mansion collapsed in Saudi Arabia and the political one began to show serious cracks in Lebanon.
Saudi Oger, Hariri’s flagship company, dismissed many of its employees who were left unpaid. They returned to Lebanon with no prospect of employment in a declining economy. They started selling their million-dollar apartments but there were no buyers on the horizon. The real estate boom collapsed in Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia seems to have lost its historical importance in Lebanon as Iran consolidated its presence there.
So the last card Saudi Arabia can play to snub Iran was to summon Saad Hariri, its man in Beirut, to Riyadh where he surprisingly and unexpectedly read his resignation letter on the same night that Mohammed bin Salman started his anti-corruption purge.
Saad Hariri's Saudi problem: Desperate needs, desperate deeds Peter Speetjens Read More »
The agreement that stabilised Lebanon and led to the election of a president after a vacuum of two years, and the return of Saad Hariri to the premiership is now in jeopardy.
But Lebanon is one of those places where society and its sectarian mansions have always been stronger than the state. It continues to operate without a central power since this central power has no means to provide for citizens any substantial welfare services or economic prosperity, let alone protection against successive Israeli invasions.
Like Palestinians, Lebanon has more Lebanese people in the diaspora than inside the country.
Fragile peace
If the Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry erupts into violent confrontation of some sort in Lebanon, not only the Lebanese but also thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees will be drawn into such conflict.
A new refugee crisis may be at the doorsteps of Europe again. This should deter any European country from encouraging or becoming complicit in Saudi designs to destabilise the fragile peace between the many Lebanese mansions.
Saudi Arabia will only be able to destabilise Lebanon if it works with Israel, the only country with the military capabilities to threaten Lebanon’s fragile peace
Fortunately EU ambassadors in Lebanon expressed support for the Lebanese state and showed no intention of contributing to a volatile situation by supporting Saudi claims that Lebanon declared war on it.
Saudi Arabia will only be able to destabilise Lebanon if it works with Israel, the only country with the military capabilities to threaten Lebanon’s fragile peace. Will Mohammed bin Salman go as far as striking a deal with Israel in which he offers full normalisation in return for Israel destroying Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon?
This should not be ruled out as the young prince does not seem to think of the consequences of his actions.
If his domestic repression and detention of his own cousins is something to go by, the international community, especially those who will be directly affected by his actions in Lebanon, should work to put pressure on him to restrain his illusions of becoming the master of Arab affairs from the Levant to Aden.
The international community should also show solidarity with Lebanon by pre-emptively condemning any Israel aggression on Lebanon.
- Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed is a visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at LSE. She has written extensively about the Arabian Peninsula, Arab migration, globalisation, religious transnationalism and gender. On Twitter: @MadawiDr
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo: Lebanese President Michel Aoun (C), Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (2nd-L), Caretaker Prime Minister Tamam Salam (C-R) and Hariri (L) sit during an official ceremony commemorating the country's 73rd independence day in Beirut on 22 November 2016 (AFP)
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's daughter Dr Anita Bose Pfaff wants a DNA test to be conducted to establish whether the ashes kept in a Japanese temple are her father's, but believes that the 1945 aircrash in Taipei was the "most likely cause" of his death.
"I believe that the plane crash is the most likely cause of his death," Pfaff said when asked whether she believes in the theory that her father died in an air crash near the Taihoku aerodrome in Taipei on August 18, 1945.However, she said she wants a DNA test of the ashes kept in an urn at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo to ascertain whether the remains belong to the freedom fighter. "A DNA test could provide proof, provided that the bones are not too badly charred for extracting DNA," Pfaff, the only child of Subhash Bose and Emilie Schenkl, told PTI in an interview from her home in Stadtbergen, Germany.
Bose family sources said the 73-year old German economist, who is likely to visit India next month, may urge the government here to talk to Japan for conducting DNA test of the remains kept in the Renkoji temple in Tokyo.On whether the recently declassified documents sufficiently proved Netaji's death in the aircrash, Pfaff said "while I have only looked at a few files, I get the impression that a death certificate is not contained." Asked about her opinion that Bose was not treated with as much respect as were leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Pfaff said: "That certainly seems to be the case for the official treatment.
"But the general public, the so-called man in the street, however, seem to have kept his memory alive in a very touching way. It was a shame how the Indian government treated the INA veterans for decades." To a question about Nehru's approach towards Bose, she merely said, "Since their relationship lasted over many years, it was multi-faceted, I imagine. In many aspects they held similar views, in others their views differed."
Asked about her reaction to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's recent remark that Netaji's death has been used for "petty politics", Pfaff said, "On the part of some people this is true, according to my opinion. "However, many of his relatives such as my uncles and my mother very genuinely wished that he might have survived the crash or not been in it. Their love for him made the acceptance of his death too hard to bear." Reacting to the declassification of Netaji files by the Centre and West Bengal government and whether these documents would help solve the mystery behind the legendary freedom fighter's "disappearance", she said was "indeed happy".
"It was high time. Most likely we shall find out that for 90 per cent of the files there has been no reason whatsoever not to declassify them decades ago. I rather doubt that the declassified files will reveal anything very spectacular about my father's death," she said.
She said she agreed with the view that declassification should have been done much earlier. On whether Netaji's birthday should be declared a national holiday, she said, "I believe there are better ways of keeping Netaji's memory alive than a national holiday." On whether she has any plan to pen a book on her father, she said, "I did not have the good fortune to know him personally beyond the age of four weeks. I cannot say much about him. But together with my niece and other women in our family, I have plans to write a book about my mother." Anita, a former Professor of Economics at the University of Augsburg, is married to Prof Martin Pfaff, who was a member of German Parliament Bundestag, representing the SPD or the Social Democratic Party. They have three children - Peter Arun, Thomas Krishna and Maya Carina.Barack Obama has stepped down as president and is heading off for a brief vacation as a private citizen. But that doesn’t mean he’s done working. In the hours before today’s inauguration, Obama and his team launched a new website, Obama.org. The site was created by the Obama Foundation, which is overseeing the creation of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, and its stated mission is to provide a forum for those looking to work with the Center to improve the lives of American citizens.
“The center will be based on the South Side of Chicago, but it will have projects all over the city, the country, and the world,” said Obama in the site’s announcement video. “More than a library or a museum, it will be a living, working center for citizenship. That’s why we want to hear from you.”
“We want to hear from you.”
The nonprofit Obama Foundation was founded back in 2014 to manage the creation of the site, and the center is expected to be completed by 2020. In the meantime, the now-former president and first lady plan on listening to and working with community leaders to create what the site calls “the next generation of citizens.”
While all this is fairly vague for the moment, Obama has already stated that he will be active in public life after he is done taking a break. Earlier this morning, he tweeted that he’ll continue to work beyond the White House:Now that the non-waiver trade deadline has passed, it becomes much more difficult for teams to move players. Those looking for a crash course can check out MLBTR’s August trade primer, but the quick version is that each team will place a significant amount of players on revocable trade waivers this month. If a player is claimed, his team can either force the claiming team to take the entirety of his contract, work out a trade with the claiming team (they have 48.5 hours to do so) or pull the player back off waivers. Players that clear waivers can be traded to any team. If a player is put through waivers a second time, his team loses the ability to revoke the waivers.
Bear in mind that teams will often place players they have no intention of trading on revocable trade waivers. There’s no harm in the process, it can help to mask the players they do want to trade, and it allows them a chance to gauge interest and be overwhelmed by an unexpected offer. (Again, for further detail, check out MLBTR’s full post on the process.)
All that said, the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo has provided our first batch of players that have been placed on revocable waivers. It’s not clear when each of these names was placed on waivers, so some may have already cleared or been pulled back…CLOSE Whoopi Goldberg has a new title: ganjapreneur. The comedian and host of The View announced her own official medical marijuana business, which is a joint partnership with award-winning edibles maker Maya Elisabeth. USA TODAY
In this February 2016 photo, actress Whoopi Goldberg attends the 88th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center. (Photo11: Kevork Djansezian, Getty Images)
Whoopi Goldberg is lending her name and financial backing to a new line of medical marijuana products designed specifically for women.
Goldberg, who has been public about her own marijuana use, is one of a handful of Hollywood celebrities jumping into the marijuana marketplace. Bob Marley’s family has partnered with a cannabis company to produce Marley Natural products, and Snoop Dogg backs Leafs by Snoop. Goldberg said her “Whoopi & Maya” company received financial backing from three friends and family members, and she will serve as chairwoman.
“I want to go nice and slow with this. I don’t want this to be a joke to people. It’s not a joke to women,” Goldberg told USA TODAY.
The company she's co-founded offers four products: a balm, a tincture, sipping chocolate, and a bath soak. All are infused with marijuana and aim to reduce the pain and cramps from periods. Pricing has not yet been set.
The products sold under the "Whoopi & Maya brand" will be available only in California to people with their medical marijuana cards, and they'll be on shelves in the next several weeks in at least five marijuana dispensaries around the state.
Because marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, the product today is unavailable elsewhere.
The new "Whoopi & Maya" line of marijuana products aims to offer relief to women suffering from cramps and period pain. (Photo11: Courtesy photo/Michael Osborne/Whoopi & Maya)
The marijuana industry is one of the country’s fastest growing industries, increasing annually by 31%, with a national market worth $5.7 billion, say the two research firms.
By launching in California, Goldberg and partner Maya Elisabeth are entering one of the world’s largest marijuana marketplaces, with California producing $2.7 billion in sales last year, according to the cannabis-focused data firms New Frontier and ArcView Market Research.
California voters this fall are widely expected to pass a ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana. In many cases, medical and recreational products are identical; the only difference is whether a user needs a doctor’s recommendation.
California lawmakers this summer approved series of measures formalizing the state’s medical marijuana system. Those measures lay the groundwork for a legal recreational system, and could potentially give anyone offering medical marijuana products a leg up in selling recreational products if they’re legalized this fall.
"Success at the ballot box would massively increase California’s total legal market share,” Troy Dayton, CEO of The ArcView Group, said in a statement.
Elisabeth said she and Goldberg believe their niche — if you can call 50% of the population a niche, she laughs — is ripe for success. She said women have for generations been herbal healers, and she believes the company’s marijuana products are no different.
There’s very little scientific research available about the benefits of medical marijuana use, largely because the federal government has sharply restricted it. Researchers only now are starting to conduct sophisticated trials about its potential benefits for PTSD and seizure sufferers. England's Queen Victoria is widely believed to have used a similar tincture to relieve her own cramps, Elisabeth said.
"I'm excited for people to feel comfortable using cannabis," said Elisabeth, a founder of the all-female Northern California edible marijuana products cooperative Om Edibles.
CLOSE Marijuana is rapidly becoming a big, semi-legal business across the country, with $5.7 billion in sales last year and tens of thousands of people working and paying taxes as they cultivate, package and sell cannabis. USA TODAY
Goldberg said smoking pot or drinking marijuana-infused tea has helped control her own cramps and pain, and she currently uses a "vape" pen filled with marijuana oil to combat glaucoma headaches. She said she’s not interested in creating a recreational cannabis company to sell joints to people who just want to get high. Goldberg came up with the idea for the company with a friend, and found Elisabeth to partner with.
Goldberg said that at her age, 60, she's willing to take the risk of violating federal law because she believes so strongly in the company's mission.
Another interest of the two women is in breaking what some are calling the "grass-ceiling" in the semi-legal cannabis industry, which has seen limited participation of minorities and women in leadership roles.
When it comes to starting marijuana-focused businesses, state regulators have written rules that tend to favor established small-business owners with access to capital and clean criminal records. And because marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, some would-be entrepreneurs feel unwilling to stick their heads above the water, Elisabeth said, especially those who’ve seen how police and prosecutors disproportionally punish minorities when it comes to drug use.
“A lot of white men don’t have to think about this,” said Elisabeth, who is white.
Goldberg, an actress and comedian known for films like "Ghost" and TV shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation," has been open about using marijuana, penning a column for The Cannabist and arguing for legalization on "The View". This venture into the public spotlight is different: It's her first investment in a small business like this.
“This is a nice quiet way that I can be part of this,” Goldberg said of the new company. “It had to help people if I were going to be involved."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MSzdfhDavid Aaronovitch and guests untangle the ideological threads that make up the 'Islamic State': its opposition to the west, its Sunni sectarianism, its apocalypticism and more.
David Aaronovitch and a range of experts untangle the ideological threads that make up the 'Islamic State'.
Following its attacks in Paris, debate has raged about whether the so-called Islamic State is a political movement or a religious one.
But what if it's both, and more besides? David Aaronovitch calls on testimony from journalists, historians, political scientists and philosophers to explore the complex, sometimes conflicting elements that have shaped this organisation.
He examines its place in the long tradition of Apocalyptic anti-Westernism - a tradition that has also appeared in a European Christian context, in Japan, and elsewhere. David traces the role of senior figures from Saddam Hussein's regime in its creation and thinking, and asks whether avenging the invasion of Iraq has simply given IS its opportunity to prosper, or provides its guiding mission.
He explores the role of IS in the relationship between Sunni and Shia Islam, and its use of Islamic history in its worldview and its propaganda. And finally, David asks, how unusual is the Islamic State?
Producers: Phil Tinline and Wesley Stephenson.Seven kea died after being inadvertently caught in stoat traps in the Murchison Mountains, prompting the Department of Conservation to "kea proof" hundreds of traps.
Routine checks in the area above Lake Te Anau have revealed a new level of kea damage to traps in the southern part of the takahē management area, including kea breaking into boxes resulting in seven of the at-risk species being killed in stoat traps.
DOC senior ranger George Ledgard said the traps were housed in solid wooden boxes to deter kea but some birds gouged out the lid screws and prised the lids open to get to the egg and meat bait inside.
READ MORE: Battle for the Murchison Mountains
The birds also dug up the trap footings and rolled traps downhill, sometimes over bluffs and into Lake Te Anau.
"Kea are naturally inquisitive and have meddled with traps in the Murchison Mountains before but this type of damage is new
"We've modified the traps previously but these incidents have required us to design and fit a new bracket to stop the trap boxes from being opened," Ledgard said.
During summer about 700 |
Wieters and Davis could be gone in free agency by 2015. A big chunk of the core could be gone.
No teams want to give up draft picks to sign top free agents, but if you’re one of those teams that needs to live in the here and now, you may have to. And for Baltimore, now is that time.
The Orioles reside in the American League East. The World Series champion Red Sox are in the same division. The Rays are usually very good, but they get only so far before they don’t have the resources to go farther. The Yankees have been very active this offseason after winning 85 games and finishing out of the playoffs.
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So, if you’re the Orioles, what on Earth are you doing? Apparently, nothing.
Duquette traded Johnson to Oakland, a team that is going for it, realizing their window is now. Duquette settled for Jemile Weeks and a minor leaguer in return, but the big issue was not having to pay Johnson up to $10 million in arbitration.
Then, Duquette made the right call on a cheaper but still effective closer in Grant Balfour, who had his best season in 2013 with 38 saves for the Athletics. However, once the Orioles looked at the medical reports on Balfour, they backed out because of concerns over his pitching shoulder. Balfour was lights-out last season, and going on 36 years old, of course there are going to be things in the MRIs that don’t look right. But do you just walk away from a deal because of it?
What’s suspicious is that owner Peter Angelos has a history of backing out of deals when the medicals don’t look so good, including deals for Mike Lowell, Aaron Sele, and Xavier Hernandez.
If I’m an Orioles fan, I’m not too happy. You can’t have more than a decade of losing, expect your fan base to endure that, and just when you are ready to compete you pull back the reins. Don’t you, in good conscience, extend yourself with payroll for a couple of years just to see if you can win the AL East, the pennant, and make it to the World Series? Your attendance is up, your TV deal is greater, so why the Scrooge-like behavior by an owner who should be excited to go for it?
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There are free agent pitchers out there such as Matt Garza and Ervin Santana, and deals to be made for young veterans such as Jeff Samardzija and David Price that would greatly improve the Orioles’ roster.
They are one starter, one closer, and one hitter away from competing seriously for the AL East title. So, why are they allowing this opportunity to slip away?
If I’m Showalter and Duquette, this isn’t what I signed up for. Is the owner banking on the fact that it’s difficult to repeat so the Red Sox won’t be as good? Or that Tampa Bay will fall short again? Or that the Yankees don’t have enough pitching and the Orioles could sneak in with minimum payroll upgrades?
The Orioles have been the most frustrating team to follow this offseason. They could use Kendrys Morales in the middle of their order as a designated hitter.
They could use one of the aforementioned pitchers at the head of their rotation and they could use Balfour to be their closer after the Johnson trade.
Duquette is following orders. He may have to go with what he’s got, which means Tommy Hunter, a very good setup guy, could wind up being the closer. Angelos will likely make Duquette go after a cheap hitter and settle for a middle-of-the-rotation starter.
Maybe the moon and stars will align and the Orioles will rise up and win. But if you own this franchise, don’t you have to prove to your fans that you want to win?
There’s still time, but the available inventory is starting to run low.
The Orioles, with a few fixes, could be exciting and fun to watch. But right now they’ll have no help from the person who writes the checks.
TOUGH CALLS
Hall of Fame voting full of difficult choices
Hall of Fame voting has presented new challenges this year, and likely will for the next three years as an abundance of worthy candidates, coupled with solid old candidates and PED users who some vote for and others don’t, have created a logjam and tough choices.
My ballot could have extended to 14 choices easily, but the 10 I voted for were: Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, Jack Morris, Alan Trammell, Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent, and Craig Biggio. In the future, I would like to vote for Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, Tim Raines, and Jeff Bagwell. I will vote for Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Randy Johnson next season. And Ken Griffey Jr. the year after that.
Every year there’s such criticism of the voting. It’s an election. Once you’ve met the qualifications of covering baseball for a recognized publication or website for 10 straight seasons, you earn the right to vote for whomever you want. If you want to vote for no one, that’s your right. If you want to vote for 10 every year, that’s also your right. If you feel a PED user is a Hall of Famer, and you feel he’s one of the greatest to ever play the game — as I do with Bonds and Clemens — then you vote for him.
There are 10 spots on the ballot. Since I qualified for voting in 1993, the 10-name ballot had never been an issue until now.
There’s a movement to see if the Hall of Fame would consider unlimited voting or the addition of a few more spots. But in doing that, are we simply reacting to a 2-3-year logjam? That’s what a committee of the Baseball Writers Association of America will soon begin discussing.
One thing I feel should happen is to change the voting pool a bit and allow broadcasters in. They, like many BBWAA members, watch, attend, and are around players on a daily basis. They understand the game. They should be held to the same criteria — broadcast for 10 straight years.
Apropos of nothing
1. Should the Red Sox get into the Masahiro Tanaka hunt? The 25-year-old Rakuten Golden Eagles righthander, who was 24-0 in the regular season in 2013, was posted and teams have begun to bid the new maximum $20 million fee. The Red Sox are the least mentioned big-market team, but don’t be surprised if they quietly slip into this. One American League scout suggested it’s the perfect time for the Red Sox to strike. “They have veteran pitchers in the final year or two years remaining on their deals,” he said. “They’ll be clearing out a lot of payroll soon. I know they feel they have good young pitching on the horizon, but Tanaka should be a very good No. 2 or No. 3 starter on any staff. I would think with their emphasis on pitching, they would get into it.” The Yankees, Cubs, Rangers, and Dodgers should be the most aggressive. The Angels, Phillies, Royals, and Blue Jays will get into it. Tanaka is going to get the highest contract ever given to a Japanese pitcher. Do the Red Sox take a pass because of Daisuke Matsuzaka? “I don’t think that can enter their thinking. I’m sure they would have gone after Yu Darvish in retrospect,” said one National League GM.
2. Right now, the one team I know I’m picking to go far is Oakland. Billy Beane and David Forst have been aggressive in filling in some big pieces this offseason, including Jim Johnson. They recognize that their time is now.
3. Predicting big comeback seasons for Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols. Hamilton’s overall game picked up toward the end of last season. He will also be playing left field full time, lessening the wear and tear. Pujols just needs to be healthy, and it appears he’s on his way.
4. The best center fielder you’ve even seen? The death of Paul Blair this past week reminded me that he was truly one of the greatest. He played so shallow and yet was able to gracefully go back on balls. A pleasure to watch.
5. It’s tough to repeat, but not sure the Yankees, Rays, Orioles, and Blue Jays have done enough to challenge the Red Sox.
6. Upgrades by the Angels and Mariners are going to make the AL West interesting in 2014.
Updates on nine
1. Ubaldo Jimenez, RHP, free agent — A few GMs I spoke with recently feel the Yankees may wind up with Jimenez, even if they land Masahiro Tanaka. “He had an excellent second half, has great stuff, and he has the type of personality that would fit New York,” one GM said. “He doesn’t let things get to him. He’s good at shrugging off things and turning the page.”
2. Nelson Cruz, RF, free agent — Cruz remains the best available free agent among position players, but his demand of four years at $75 million has turned off teams. While other PED guys such as Jhonny Peralta are still getting top dollar, Cruz, who more relies on his power, is of greater concern for teams who feel that being off the stuff could lessen his power numbers. “The feeling is Peralta is more of a pure hitter than a power hitter, and less risky,” said a National League GM. “Cruz hits for more power. Someone will sign him and take the chance, but Melky Cabrera is always in the back of your mind.” The Blue Jays last year signed Cabrera to a two-year deal after his PED suspension, and his game — which was hitting and not power — went south as injuries began to crop up.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff/File JOHN LACKEY: Team-friendly contract
3. John Lackey, RHP, Red Sox — Lackey’s name has come up consistently this winter, but the Red Sox aren’t motivated to deal him. There may come a point when that changes, though his contract is team-friendly with a $15.25 million outlay and only $500,000 in a team option for 2015. Yet if the Red Sox ever got involved in Tanaka, a veteran pitcher or two would likely go. Lackey could bring salary relief this season and also allow the Sox to fill another need and remain under the luxury tax.
4. A.J. Pierzynski, C, Red Sox — The Red Sox did their homework on Pierzynski since there was a reputation that preceded him. White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and his special adviser, Dennis Gilbert, swear by him. Red Sox pitching coach Juan Nieves is also a big fan. Said one former teammate, “He’ll let you know exactly how he feels. Sometimes that rubs you the wrong way. A.J. will not hold anything back. Maybe it comes off a little strong, but we’re all big boys. If you can’t take it you shouldn’t be in the big leagues. He’s passionate.”
5. Ichiro Suzuki, OF, Yankees — It’ll be interesting to see whether in the next few weeks the Yankees can move him. With Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Alfonso Soriano, and Vernon Wells also in a crowded outfield, Ichiro, who can still play defense but can’t hit at the level he used to, could be a functional player for someone. The Giants always remain a possibility.
6. Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford — The Dodgers may still deal one of them before the start of the season. As teams see where Kemp’s rehab is after shoulder and ankle surgeries, that could heat up in spring training. Ethier could also be in demand, but the Dodgers want to see what they have in Kemp before trading away their excess. Still, the Dodgers will be an intriguing trade partner for some team before all is said and done.
7. Austin Romine, C, Yankees — With Brian McCann aboard and Francisco Cervelli the backup, Romine is very much available. Romine finds himself in the same spot as the Red Sox’ Ryan Lavarnway, with really no business going back to Triple A. With Lavarnway, there’s at least light at the end of the tunnel with Pierzynski and David Ross in the last year of their contracts. Lavarnway is also being pushed by Christian Vazquez and Romine by Gary Sanchez.
8. Johan Santana, LHP, free agent — Santana is getting closer to making a decision on a minor league deal with a team. There’s been some speculation about the Twins since Santana still resides in Fort Myers, Fla., where the Twins have spring training. The Red Sox, who also train in Fort Myers, passed. But a small-market team such as the Astros could also have some interest. Santana is just trying to get back pitching and prove himself again.
9. Roy Oswalt, RHP, free agent — Oswalt would like to pitch again, but some teams remain skeptical about his commitment. “He’s an intriguing name and it wouldn’t shock me if the old Roy comes out and pitches well again, but lately everything’s been on Roy’s terms and I think teams are turned off by that,” said a National League GM. “But the pitching is at a premium, so guys like Oswalt, Johan Santana, Mark Mulder, Carl Pavano, they’ll all get looks from teams hoping they can insert a veteran like that to the back end of the rotation when injuries occur.”
Extra innings
From the Bill Chuck files — “From Aug. 1 on last season, the ERA leaders were: Zack Grienke (1.49), Andrew Cashner (1.70), Clayton Kershaw (1.73), and Ubaldo Jimenez (1.92).”... Also, “From Aug. 1 to the end of the regular season, for batters with at least 150 plate appearances, Daniel Nava led the majors with a.356 batting average.”... Tomorrow, wish A.J. Pierzynski a happy 37th birthday.
Nick Cafardo can be reached at cafardo@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickcafardo. Material from interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.The city of Vancouver has given developers $10 million in breaks on city fees through two rental housing construction incentive programs since 2009 — helping to create more than 1,300 units at a time when such housing hasn’t been built elsewhere.
But now, in an effort to make sure rental housing is more affordable for those who need it and to further drive down costs, the city is redrawing the rules to make sure developers aren’t targeting the luxury rental market.
The city has set a maximum rent developers can initially charge for studio, one and two-bedroom apartments in new dedicated rent-only buildings. Those rates — $1,443 per month for a studio, $1,517 for a one-bedroom and $2,061 for a two-bedroom apartment — are supposed to mirror the range of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s annual report on rents and not exceed 30 per cent of the renter’s income.
But they are still well above the rates many renters can afford in Vancouver’s extraordinarily tight rental market, and are even above the rates developers charge for some new buildings built under the now-closed Short-Term Incentives for Rental pilot project.
The city says the new maximum rates are geared toward people with a combined household income of between $58,000 and $82,000. Those incomes are within the range targeted by Mayor Gregor Robertson’s housing affordability task force.
The changes approved by council Tuesday alter how developers will qualify for the waiver of development cost levies under its new Rental 100 incentive program. The rules, which allow the developer to avoid the cost of installing city services in return for dedicating all of the units for rental, put a maximum average size on apartments, a limit on construction costs, and the use of modest rental-level finishings. They also remove the discretion of city manager Penny Ballem to approve individual incentive applications, instead creating a regulatory process developers say is more fair.
Council stopped short of offering developers incentives for building three-bedroom rental units because the household income required to qualify would be more than $102,000.
“Council didn’t want to be seen giving incentives or subsidies to people with that level of income,” said Coun. Raymond Louie.
Instead, the city may look at changing its regulations to require condo developers to build a certain number of those larger family-oriented units. That would be similar to regulations the city already has that require developers to provide at least 20-per-cent social housing, of which one quarter must be for families, Louie said.
The new rules are the latest attempt by the city to address Vancouver’s high cost of housing and tight rental market. More than half of all Vancouver households rent. Over the last 30 years, the average vacancy rate has been just under one per cent.
The federal government’s twin cancellations in the 1980s and ’90s of tax incentives for multiple-unit rental building construction and support for social housing construction have also helped create pressure.
Nearly 25 years ago, then-mayor Gordon Campbell tried to restart a stalled rental construction industry with a $50-million program that made city land available to what is now Concert Properties. Although the program initially worked, high land prices and construction costs have made it more profitable for developers to build strata condominiums.Reader View in Firefox makes reading articles, stories and blog posts enjoyable. It removes the noisy background ads and graphics, and gives you a clean single column optimized for your reading pleasure.
As of today’s Nightly build, you will find an extra button in the Reader View toolbar: the Narrate button. Press play in the popup, and you will have the page read out aloud. You are now free to give your eyes a rest, knit, wash dishes, work out, play Candy Crush, whatever.
At Mozilla, we believe the web must remain open and accessible. Accessibility can mean many things. In our accessibility team, we work to make Firefox usable to users with disabilities.
Disability is not a binary, it is more nuanced than that. We define our users broadly, we don’t divide them into users with and without disabilities. There can be many reasons why you would choose to click play on that Narrate popup: eye fatigue, multi-tasking, dyslexia, or Angry Birds.
With features like Narrate, we want to make the web more accessible and convenient for everybody.AKUKU-TORU, Nigeria (Reuters) - Hundreds of Nigerians stormed a crude oil facility and gas plant owned by Shell in the Niger Delta on Friday demanding jobs and infrastructure development, a Reuters witness said.
Echoing a common complaint in the impoverished swampland that produces most of Nigeria’s oil, the protesters said they were not benefiting from the region’s oil wealth and wanted an end to the oil pollution that has ruined much of the land.
Soldiers and security guards did not disperse the crowd as it entered the Belema Flow Station in Rivers State, which feeds oil into Shell’s Bonny export terminal.
The company said it had evacuated staff late on Thursday and shut the facility when it became clear the protesters were on their way there.
However, the army sent in 30 extra soldiers after protesters said they planned to stay at the facility for two weeks.
One of the protest leaders, Anthony Bouye, said: “I am a graduate for about eight years without a job. Shell won’t employ me despite us having so much wealth in our backyard.”
Shell said its “commitment to the welfare of host communities in the Niger Delta remains unshaken” and was working with authorities to resume operations at the facility.
Supplies of Bonny Light crude oil are already limited as the Trans Niger Pipeline is closed, although exports have continued using Nembe Creek Trunk Link pipeline.
Militant attacks on oil facilities have largely stopped since the government started talks with community leaders in 2016 to address locals’ grievances.
But protests still flare as residents complain they are not benefiting from the Delta’s energy wealth, the main source of Nigeria’s government revenue.
Oil exports were scheduled to hit a 17-month high in August, but fell back under 2 million barrels per day (bpd) after Shell declared force majeure on Bonny light.
Nigerian oil production fell to just over 1 million bpd at certain times last year but has recovered thanks to a steady decline in the number of attacks on pipelines.Story highlights Criticism is over resignations, uncertainty over reorganization, hiring freeze
Nauert: We have a lot of work to do here at the State Department'
(CNN) State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert acknowledged Friday that that there is a morale problem in the agency and offered this advice to workers: "Don't give up."
Asked about a spate of critical letters to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by members of Congress, as well as recent reports about high-level resignations, Nauert conceded that some staff are feeling frustrated.
"I know that times may seem tough right now," she conceded to reporters at the agency's regular news briefing. "I know that the headlines coming out of the State Department do not look good, do not look promising. We have a lot of work to do here at the State Department."
"It breaks my heart to hear that some feel that they aren't wanted or aren't needed or aren't appreciated," she went on to say. "If I can get somebody else to convey that message more convincingly than I can, I would love to do that. But I just speak for myself right now and say how fantastic they are."
Nauert did not fully answer a question about whether Tillerson is conscious of the morale issues or plans to do more personally to address them. However, she emphasized that the secretary expresses his appreciation to staff when he travels to embassies abroad.
Read MoreEmirates law on male rape need updating, relatives say
The boy, 15, testified in private against his alleged attackers, aged 36, 18 and one who is a minor.
The boy's relatives say the three, one of whom is HIV positive, took him into the desert and raped him at knifepoint.
His mother accuses the authorities of lying about the 36-year-old's HIV infection to hide the fact that Aids is present in the United Arab Emirates.
The defendants - who deny the charges - have not been identified in the case, in line with UAE law.
Veronique Robert, the mother, has been campaigning for more protection for underage rape victims in the Emirates.
Dubai officials have defended their handling of the case but have not commented on the mother's accusations.
'Official silence'
Ms Robert said her son cried during his 90-minute testimony on Wednesday, but remained "very strong".
"He looked the defendants in the eyes and gave a chance for justice to be served," she told Associated Press news agency.
He told police three men abducted him and a friend, 16, from a shopping centre in the booming Gulf emirate which is a regional tourism and business hub.
The men allegedly took turns raping him in the back seat of their car. The 16-year-old, who was told to sit behind a sand dune, also testified on Wednesday.
Ms Robert has said during a forensic examination the police doctor accused her son of being homosexual, implying the incident was consensual.
She also says official silence about the 36-year-old's positive HIV test meant her son missed out on possible treatment.
"Aids is a taboo subject here... The government played with the life of my child," she said.
The boy left Dubai fearing he would be prosecuted for homosexuality, a crime in the Emirates, but returned when the authorities said he would not be charged.
The two adult defendants could face life imprisonment or the death penalty if convicted. The third defendant could face 10 years imprisonment if convicted by a juvenile court.
The trial was adjourned until Sunday.When satellites first began taking photos of our Earth it revolutionized the way we saw our atmosphere, providing images on a grand scale from above. Now the advent of personal tech, such as smart phones, is giving us a new perspective on the sky from below.
This increased use of technology is what prompted the World Meteorological Organization to add 11 new cloud classifications to their International Cloud Atlas, a globally recognized source for meteorologists. A far cry from simple white puffs, these 11 new cloud types roll, dip, and menace their way across the skies.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, believes that this democratized access to photographing and sharing images will help create a sense of interconnectivity and appreciation for how we treat our atmosphere.
See a time-lapse of the newly classified asperitas.
"People may wonder 'Does it really matter to have these Latin names for clouds?'" said Pretor-Pinney.
"To learn the names of different recognizable characteristics is to become more in tune with the sky. It counters the pressures of the digital world because when you gaze at the sky, it distracts you from pressures on the ground."
These 11 additions are the first updates that the atlas has received in 30 years, and much of the change can be attributed to citizen scientists who can share and discuss clouds by uploading photos to the Atlas's site.
2017 is the first year that the renowned atlas will be published entirely online, but a hardbound version will follow later this year.
Asperitas, Latin for roughness, is the cloud type that has citizen scientists most excited and has been a special victory for the UK-based Cloud Appreciation Society. This photo, first spotted in 2006, captured their attention for its inability to be described by existing cloud types.
Marked by small divot-like features that create chaotic ripples across the sky, asperitas were championed by enthusiasts who noticed they did not accurately fall under existing categories. "It stood out slightly, it looked like turbulent waves, as if you're looking at the ocean from below," said Pretor, who had been vying for the new classification for nearly a decade.
Other clouds that formerly went by more colloquial names, such as the wave-like Kelvin-Helmoltz cloud, and fallstreak holes, will now be recognized with the Latin names fluctus and cavum, respectively.
The International Cloud Atlas was first created in 1896 and has been a resource of cloud types and photos that has helped train meteorologists for decades.
A paper publishing in May by the Royal Meteorological Society will look at asperitas cloud formations through photos taken by citizen scientists. They plan to reveal what sort of distinct weather patterns create these turbulent clouds.176 Shares Email
Since winning office in 2014 the only thing I’ve seen Orange County Supervisors’ Chairwoman Michelle Steel really do on her own is clear a room.
Last week, when publicly challenged by homeless advocate Mohammed Aly about the Board of Supervisors’ response to homelessness in Orange County from the public speakers podium, Steel chose to shut down the whole meeting – even apparently ordering journalists be cleared from the room, clearly violating the state’s public meeting laws in our opinion.
Reporters have the right in California to record someone being removed from a meeting. It’s there to protect both the government agency and the protestor because it allows an independent set of eyes to observe and record what is happening.
Yet that independent set of eyes is increasingly coming under attack, mainly from nervous politicians trying to insulate themselves from accountability.
For example, Orange County officials are denying public access to video of the confrontation between Sheriff’s deputies and Aly, again in flagrant violation of the state’s open meetings and public records laws as we see them.
Our reporters tried to have the Chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors explain the rationale behind having reporters threatened with arrest for doing their job on Tuesday but, as usual, Steel declined to engage.
It’s the latest in a disturbing trend amongst Orange County elected officials, one that is fueling a phantom local government, operating in the shadows — most often those cast by campaign contributions from special interests.
Today’s professional politicians, like Steel, often avoid press interaction or issuing any kind of official statements at all.
They largely stick behind county counsel secret opinions, opting to hide public records wherever and whenever possible. Their aim seems to be avoiding triggering any kind of public record at all…while collecting tons of lucrative government benefits and preaching wonderful fiscally conservative values, at least in Orange County.
In the case of Steel – who has hardly any connections to her district – the strategy should catapult her straight into Congress, where she is expected to replace Dana Rohrabacher.
Now I totally get why politicos like Steel, who is apparently very nice on a one-to-one basis but doesn’t have much to say in public, would prefer to skate by.
Yet as a local news agency, Voice of OC journalists are committed to holding our local elected officials accountable, no matter the cost, even when it means risking being arrested as our county correspondent, Nick Gerda, had to deal with last week when Steel decided to clear the room of activists, and apparently reporters.
Note that it was just a few months ago that Supervisor Todd Spitzer was trying to have county lawyers depose me in court because Voice of OC challenged an official denial of public records related to his citizens arrest of an evangelist while armed at a local Wahoos restaurant.
Judge Walter P. Schwarm effectively quashed that bullying attempt on Voice of OC and upheld the California Reporters Shield Law (which protects sources) last December when he ruled against the County of Orange.
Today, Voice of OC is headed back into Schwarm’s court to fight the County of Orange over their notion that they can conduct government in secret.
Spitzer is essentially championing the concept that politicians are like rock stars and they need to be able to riff, be creative, with county (ie: taxpayer-funded) staff and resources in private in order to produce the best policy.
Thus, Spitzer and county attorneys argue the email exchanges Spitzer had with a county public information officer – about the incident where he handcuffed an evangelist while armed – should remain totally private.
We disagree.
We believe our state constitution’s transparency protections, recently strengthened by voters through Prop. 59, stand in steadfast opposition to Spitzer’s notion.
Indeed, the preamble to the state’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, says it all.
“In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the governing bodies they have created.”
In a previous hearing on the issue, Schwarm indicated he was likely to grant a series of public records to Voice of OC but asked for more time to consider briefings on recent California Supreme Court decisions that were aimed at making politicians’ private emails accessible.
Again, the key conflict here is simple but age-old.
Politicians often want to make official policy but be shielded from public criticism.
Once again, we disagree.
County supervisors – who are paid six-figure salaries plus Cadillac-style health care plans, gold-plated retirement benefits and luxurious car bonuses – should be able to stand in front of the public that pays their salary and engage.
Yet in order to truly facilitate that engagement with the public, local government needs to offer a real inside peek at how the sausage is made, which is what the state’s open meeting laws intended.
That might often turn up ugly stuff, and offend people like Steel or Spitzer.
Yet accepting anything less is embracing phantom government.Researchers found that lethal attacks among chimps were more common in crowded communities with lots of males.
Is war a modern human invention, or does it have deep roots in biology? The age-old question has inspired theories by historians, anthropologists, and philosophers.
People have long known that chimpanzees occasionally attack and kill their own kind, and one theory holds that the violence is the result of humans’ impact on their environment.
But a new study on chimps, led by a prominent Harvard University evolutionary biologist, suggests that the origins of human violence may be found deep in evolution, and that chimps kill one another because such violent acts give them a reproductive and survival advantage, and a way of eliminating rivals.
RELATED: Sorry, dolphins aren’t uniquely intelligent
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“The value of this report is it debunks once and for all the idea that this behavior is unnatural, an artifact of human presence,” Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard not involved in the research, wrote in an e-mail. “Romantics worry that if violence is a Darwinian adaptation, that must mean that it is good, or that it’s futile to work for peace, because humans have an innate thirst for blood that has to be periodically slaked. Needless to say, I think that all this is profoundly wrongheaded.”
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The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, was led by Richard Wrangham, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, who has been working at field sites in Africa since the 1970s. The researchers examined records from chimpanzee communities in Tanzania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.
They found that human behaviors such as feeding animals or disturbing their habitat did not appear to cause more killings. Instead, lethal attacks seem to be more common in crowded communities with lots of males, suggesting that the violence may be an adaptation that helps in the competition for food and mates.
“The chimp model is a very helpful model for understanding how some of humans’ really challenging kinds of behavior have been favored by natural selection,” Wrangham said. “The aggressors can kill at incredibly low risk to themselves, and the reason is that they chose to attack only when they have an overwhelming imbalance of power.”
RELATED | Ideas: Should chimpanzees have legal rights?
Overall, the researchers chronicled 152 killings by chimpanzees that were directly observed, suspected, or inferred in 18 communities that had been followed for decades. The attackers were overwhelmingly male, and the majority were attacking other males from other groups. They attacked when they outnumbered their victims — by eight to one, on average.
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The researchers used a variety of models and statistical analyses to gauge whether the killing patterns suggested a behavior that had evolved because it provided benefits or was instead a radical new behavior spurred by environmental changes triggered by people.
The rate of killing over time presumably should increase if it is a reaction to human influence. Primatologist Jane Goodall fed her chimps bananas, for example. In communities that receive food from humans delivered in a manner not found in nature, chimps might be expected to react by killing over the resource.
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If, on the other hand, killing is an adaptive strategy, lethal attacks should increase when the group is more crowded together and has more males. Killing could have benefits, such as eliminating competitors or providing access to females for mating.
Courtesy of John Mitani Adult males from the Ngogo community in Uganda, studied since 1995, listening to vocalizations from distant members of a rival community.
That is precisely what the data revealed. At a fairly undisturbed site called Ngogo, where researchers had never fed the animals, the rate of killing was the highest. When the number of males increased or the area was more crowded, the number of killings was higher.
Brian Ferguson, director of Peace and Conflict Studies at Rutgers University at Newark, said he disagrees with the new study’s interpretation of the data, as well as the methods used to rate the role of human influence on the chimp behavior. He suggests that each killing needs to be evaluated with context about how and why it occurred, and he believes that such a study would reveal that chimps begin killing as a result of human actions.
RELATED | Ideas: Should we make animals smarter?
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“If people think that it is in our nature to go to war, that we’re somehow by evolution primed to go out and kill members of other groups, it leads to a kind of fatalism. You never can change that,” Ferguson said. Instead, he continues to believe that the evidence shows that war is a recent invention.
It can be tempting to take a dark view of the violent behavior of chimpanzees, but Joan Silk, a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, said discovering the origins of human behaviors in other animals is not the same as learning our destiny.
“How do animals resolve conflict is interesting,” Silk said. “How do animals find out ways to cooperate? Those are general principles from which we can learn a lot, but it doesn’t mean we’re expecting them to be the same across species. I study baboons, and I love them dearly, but they do all kinds of things I think are sort of uncivilized. If they were my kids, I’d be very distressed.”
Related coverage:
• First-ever evidence of a swimming, shark-eating dinosaur
• Why are ocean sunfish causing beach closures?
• Europe’s Neanderthals died out earlier than thought
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@
globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @carolynyjohnsonWhen you "emptied the recycle bin" what you actually did was delete most of the binary programs from his computer. You have basically bricked him laptop... How you did that without it asking for a password and you not wondering "hmmmm, should I be deleting files I don't know if my friend may need again" is beyond me. But I regress.
Go ahead and turn it off, it will NOT boot again but leaving it on will not help at all as there are no programs you can run that will allow you to do anything useful. What you will need to do is use a liveCD such as Ubuntu Resuce Remix which can be found here.
You could also use a normal Ubuntu liveCD as well but the rescue CD may make it a little easier. You will need some CDs, DVDs or a usb drive to put the files on while you re-install the OS and then you can restore his files. Or if he has another partition you could move all of the files there while you restore the OS. I would highly recommend you tell him what you did and get his help before you make it any worse and just flat out delete all of his data.
Good Luck!TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Nick Saban doesn't typically gush about individual players. Likewise, he doesn't go through the usual song and dance of giving out game balls. Singling out anyone like that, he explained, would go against the objective of focusing |
: I read both of the fourth books of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitian series and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (trans. Don Bartlett), although I only finished one of those (Lila forever).
John Freeman, Executive Editor
The Year of Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota: A dozen illegal immigrants living in a house in England are full of stories of love and pain, an overwhelming rebuttal to the notion that there is something less than human in the migrant.
Boy with Thorn, Rickey Laurentiis: Picture a tree on a hill, struck by lightning and set aflame: this book of poems is more beautiful, and more startling.
Paris Nocturne, Patrick Modiano (trans. Phoebe Weston-Evans): In a year full of great short books this is the greatest: a swift existential noir by the master of suggestiveness.
Negroland, Margo Jefferson: A nimble, deft and elegant memoir of a class and a time and a family, and the brilliant writer they made.
Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Vaye Watkins: A smoldering sand-blasted love-story about what happens in California when the water runs out.
Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
The Small Backs of Children, Lidia Yuknavitch: Lidia Yuknavitch is in such command of her language that she can, without fear, let it lead her into places most contemporary writing does not go. She is a writer of great power, prepared to grapple simultaneously with the lofty verities of art and the dark needs of the body, battling her way to a ceasefire with humanity. (TLDR: Houellebecq and Sontag in a fight to the death at the edge of a cliff.)
A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin: Berlin is one of a handful of all-time great American masters of the short story, full stop—and she writes about work. This collection could’ve been called The Lives of the Workers: those who work for redemption or distraction or survival, those who struggle, in jobs and out of them—common tales, yes, but told with uncommon grace and wit. It is painful to finish this collection and realize the writer we so desperately need right now, to keep telling these stories as more and more Americans are forced to live them, actually died 11 years ago.
The Folly, Ivan Vladislavic: Perhaps my favorite book of the year was written in the early 1990s, in a South Africa newly delivered from the multi-generational evil of apartheid. An odd sort of stranger moves into a grown-over vacant lot next door to a nervous, deeply middle-class couple, his intentions unclear… Rare is the dark fable built of such shimmering, perfect sentences.
Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujilia (trans. Roland Glasser): Roland Glasser’s wonderful translation, roiling and musical, delivers Mujila’s profane and teeming portrait of a semi-fictional Congolese city with all the feverish sweep of the modern African gold rush it depicts. Somehow epic, intimate, and morally complex at the same time.
Multiply/Divide, Wendy S. Walters: I would give much to see the world the way Wendy S. Walters does, even for a day, for an hour. The hybridity of this collection—essay cum poem cum fragment cum diary entry—hearkens way back to the continental feuilleton (see: Joseph Roth), a mode of impressionistic observation that can be both broadly political and deeply personal. In Walters supremely talented hands, the one is never far from the other.Lambeth Palace Libray
A highly-respected 20th century Church of England bishop was a paedophile, it was revealed today.
The shocking revelations about the late Bishop of Chichester George Bell came when the Church of England disclosed it had apologised and paid damages following a civil sex abuse claim against him.
The allegations against Bell date from the late 1940s and early 1950s and concern sexual offences against an individual who was at the time a young child.
Bishop Bell, born in 1883 and who died in 1958, became Bishop of Chichester in 1929. He was revered as a leading light on the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church and at one time was even in the running to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and was elected after that to a scholarship at Christ Church Oxford where he studied theology.
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He was a prolific author and also appeared in works of fiction by others, most notably in the best-selling novel Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch and as Francis Wood, Bishop of Cirencester in Anthony Horowitz's TV series Foyle's War. He was also a character in Alison McLeod's novel Unexploded.
The current Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, said the news had brought "a bewildering mix of deep and disturbing emotions."
In its effect on the legacy and reputation of George Bell, it "yields a bitter fruit of great sadness and a sense that we are all diminished by what we are being told," Dr Warner added. "We remain committed to listening to all allegations of abuse with an open mind. In this case, the scrutiny of the allegation has been thorough, objective, and undertaken by people who command the respect of all parties. We face with shame a story of abuse of a child; we also know that the burden of not being heard has made the experience so much worse. We apologise for the failures of the past.
"The revelation of abuse demands bravery on the part of a survivor, and we respect the courage needed to tell the truth. We also recognise that telling the truth provides a legitimate opportunity for others to come forward, sometimes to identify the same source of abuse."
Chichester has been at the centre of a number of other, more recent allegations of abuse by different clergy.
Dr Warner said: "We also believe that in the Church of England as a whole, and certainly in the diocese of Chichester, we have done all we can to ensure that our safeguarding policies reflect best practice, and are fully and evenly implemented. The statement below speaks of an earlier report of this case, in the 1990's.
"There will no doubt be some who allege a cover-up by the Church. We acknowledge that the response then would not be adequate by today's standards, although that falls far short of a cover-up. In the present context, the diocese of Chichester has worked with police and other agencies to ensure that we have sought the fullest understanding possible of what happened."
The Cinnamon Network Under Justin Welby a new culture of openness prevails
The survivor first reported the abuse to the then Bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp, in August 1995. Bishop Kemp responded to the correspondence offering pastoral support but did not refer the matter to the police or, so far as is known, investigate the matter further. It was not until contact with Lambeth Palace in 2013 that the survivor was put in touch with the safeguarding team at the Diocese of Chichester who referred the matter to the police and offered personal support and counselling to the survivor.
Tracey Emmott, the solicitor for the survivor, said: "The new culture of openness in the Church of England is genuinely refreshing and seems to represent a proper recognition of the dark secrets of its past, many of which may still not have come to light.
"While my client is glad this case is over, they remain bitter that their 1995 complaint was not properly listened to or dealt with until my client made contact with Archbishop Justin Welby's office in 2013.
"That failure to respond properly was very damaging, and combined with the abuse that was suffered has had a profound effect on my client's life. For my client, the compensation finally received does not change anything. How could any amount of money possibly compensate for childhood abuse? However, my client recognises that it represents a token of apology. What mattered to my client most and has brought more closure than anything was the personal letter my client has recently received from the Bishop of Chichester."
In his letter to the survivor Dr Warner acknowledged that the response from the Diocese of Chichester in 1995, when the survivor first came forward, "fell a long way short, not just of what is expected now, but of what we now appreciate you should have had a right to expect then."
In line with the recommendations of the Church Commissaries' report into the Diocese of Chichester in 2012, the settlement does not impose any form of "confidentiality agreement" restriction regarding public disclosure upon the individual. However the survivor has chosen to remain anonymous.
Following a meeting between the survivor and Sussex police in 2013, it was confirmed by the police that the information obtained from their enquiries would have justified, had he still been alive, Bishop Bell's arrest and interview, on suspicion of serious sexual offences, followed by release on bail, further enquiries and the subsequent submission of a police report to the CPS.
A formal claim for compensation was submitted in April 2014 and was settled in late September of this year. The settlement followed a thorough pre-litigation process during which further investigations into the claim took place including the commissioning of expert independent reports. None of those reports found any reason to doubt the veracity of the claim.Smithsonian Museum Features Bitcoin in Historical Money Exhibit
The Smithsonian Institute is currently showing its inaugural National Numismatic Collection “The Value of Money”, and Bitcoin is among the exhibits.
Also read: Bitcoin Is the Fuel We Need for the Industrial Internet of Things
Bitcoin Among the 400 Piece Smithsonian ‘Value of Money’ Collection
Just recently on Reddit, someone shared some great snapshots of Bitcoin’s role in the Smithsonian Numismatic collection. The exhibit is a tribute to how the concept of money has changed fundamentally throughout society. It starts with the earliest origins of currency and goes all the way to present time, with digital fiat and cryptocurrencies.
The phenomenon of how money has evolved has fascinated economists and social philosophers for centuries. In the beginning, primitive people traded commodities by bartering locally. Over time, civilization developed mediums of exchange such as seashells, and coined precious metals began to appear. Throughout many decades, things changed to where paper currencies represented a portion of a physical commodity.
Today, money isn’t the way it used to be. Now we have fiat currencies backed by absolutely nothing and printed on a whim. However this action has led to considerable economic booms and busts. Significant devaluation has come alongside inflation, to the point where some countries’ paper currencies are almost worthless. Then, Bitcoin appeared as the world economy was shuddering from a terrible downturn in 2008.
Numismatic Association Opened the Exhibit’s Vault Doors Last Year
The Smithsonian Numismatic showcase has a vault door marking the entrance to the exhibit hall. The presentation began last year in July with American Numismatic Association executive Jeff Garrett opening the vault doors to the institution’s “The Value of Money” exhibit. There are 400 objects in the collection, with some very rare specimens. Examples include a 1933 Double Eagle, a 1934 $100,000 note, a Yap Island stone, credit cards — and of course Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s section details a small description of what cryptocurrencies are and how the digital currency is “generated by a computer protocol.” The collection shows a picture of an exchange rate between USD and Bitcoin. Unfortunately, the chart starts in 2014 — considered one of Bitcoin’s worst years by mainstream media. The exhibit also has a physical Bitcoin Magazine from 2014, and a mobile phone which can send various digital currencies.
History Will Show Whether Cryptocurrency is a Banker’s Friend or Foe
The cryptocurrency is like no other money created before. In fact, it has changed the very way we think about trade and interact with a new medium of exchange. Many people believe Bitcoin will transform the money system in some way. Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke once said, “[Virtual Currencies] may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.”
Alongside central bankers giving cryptocurrencies praise today, many others believe Bitcoin will disrupt the existing financial system. It’s true that many people feel Satoshi created the protocol to combat the devaluation and inflation threatening world economies today. Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Pirate Party, once said, “Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to the postal industry.”
The inclusion of Bitcoin within the Smithsonian Value of Money exhibit shows the world cannot deny its history in society. The Bitcoin community hopes its impact lasts, much like the influence gold has had on trade for thousands of years. Time will tell if this happens, but so far Bitcoin sure has made its mark.
What do you think about the Smithsonian Numismatic collection? Have you visited the exhibit? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Smithsonian, and Reddit
Images via u/3xploit3h Reddit Post, and Shutterstock
Did you know Bitcoin.com is throwing a blockchain conference in London this year? Our premiere event, Blockchain: Money, features the biggest innovators and executives in the industry. The event also takes place in the beautiful surroundings of 155 Bishopsgate, London on November 6-7, 2016. Reserve your tickets today!One of the three young drifters accused of killing a hiker in Marin County and a backpacker in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park cut a deal with prosecutors Monday, pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
Sean Michael Angold, 24, changed his plea while agreeing to testify at the trial of his co-defendants, Morrison Haze Lampley and Lila Scott Alligood, in last year’s gun slayings of 67-year-old Steve Carter and 23-year-old Audrey Carey, authorities said.
Terrence Bennett, Angold’s attorney, said his client’s plea in the “cooperation agreement” pertained only to Carter’s death. A second-degree murder conviction carries a sentence of up to 15 years to life in prison, while Lampley and Alligood face potential life sentences without the possibility of parole.
“There will be no sentencing until the cooperation agreement is fully executed,” Bennett said.
Marin County District Attorney Edward Berberian, who opted not to pursue the death penalty in the case, said Angold will probably testify against Lampley and Alligood at a preliminary hearing set to begin May 9.
“This is something that has been under negotiation for a period of time,” Berberian said. “Both families of the murder victims were advised of this. They were fully informed as to what was developing and were fully aware of what was transpiring today. They have been very supportive of us moving forward in the way we need to move forward.”
Lokita Carter, the widow of Carter, said, “I trust that justice will be served to its fullest extent for these two unbearable and unforgivable murders, and that today's events will support this goal.”
Lampley, 23, Alligood, 18, and Angold were charged with the fatal shooting of Carey, a Canadian backpacker on her first solo trip, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Her body was found Oct. 3 during the second day of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.
Two days later, Carter, a respected tantra teacher, was shot multiple times on a scenic fire trail in the Loma Alta Open Space Preserve near Fairfax. He was still clutching the leash of his Doberman pinscher, which was also shot but survived.
According to the charges, prosecutors believe Lampley was the gunman in Carter’s death, but it is still unclear who pulled the trigger in Carey’s killing.
The drifters were arrested outside a soup kitchen in Portland, Ore., after authorities said they tracked the three there using the GPS in Carter’s stolen station wagon. The defendants had the Smith & Wesson handgun used in both slayings in their possession, as well as Carey’s passport, airline tickets and camping gear, police said.
The gun was allegedly stolen from a car at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf on Oct. 1.
Amy Morton, an attorney for Alligood, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chief Deputy Public Defender David Brown, who is representing Lampley, said his office had not yet been given information on Angold’s plea deal.
“We will need to review this new development in Mr. Lampley’s case,” he said.
According to social media posts, Lampley and Alligood had a romantic relationship. Residents in the San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood said that in the weeks before the killings, the three had camped out in Buena Vista Park, blending in with the area’s transient population. They quickly developed a reputation for erratic behavior and methamphetamine use.
Lampley, who went by his middle name of Haze, has past convictions for theft and weapon possession, records show.
In a Facebook post in August, he listed each letter of the alphabet with a corresponding fact about himself. Next to the letter “H,” he wrote, “Hometown: San Francisco.” Next to the letter “I,” he wrote, “In love with,” with a link to Alligood’s profile.
Next to the letter “K,” he wrote, “Killed someone? Yea long time ago.”
Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: v ho @sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHoRated 5 out of 5 by MarcieM from Perfect Tent Exactly What We Were Looking For! Before my last camping trip, I did not want to crawl out of a tent any longer. Even though we had a large tent previously, it was still low and not comfortable getting in and out of. I searched for a while to get a walk in tent (also my fiancé is 6'7") and also good quality and price. This has it all and has two rooms and should easily fit a family. But as we used it just for us and had a bedroom and front room lounging area. We had a queen bed, my fiancé could stand tall and the front room several screened windows to open and close for privacy or fresh air. Was the best purchase!
Rated 1 out of 5 by Joe11 from If you like moisture... We bought this tent because we were assured that it was waterproof. Well, we are finishing up our camping trip now and I must say I am disappointed. It only rained for about 3 hours, steady, but not a ridiculous downpour. We had several small puddles in our tent, especially near the sides. I am about to go to bed on a wet mattress - I am so excited! Nothing better than some moisture to top off a lovely day in the wilderness.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Miznettie from Good Tent So Far My sister and I are both in our fifties and we are occasional glampers. We like camping in cool weather with a lot of amenities like bathhouses and electricity. We also like big air mattresses. This tent will hold two queen size air mattresses with just a little bit of walking room leftover. When we first set it up we noticed the rain fly had a strange y-shape tie down on each side. Two strings coming from the rainfly combining into one string to stake it out. We immediately ditched this and replaced it with two separate cords. We replaced all the small stakes with bigger, beefier metal ones. We spent hours going over all the seams with sealer and then giving the whole thing a good waterproof spraying. This is our standard practice for any new tent. Our final step was to add a small zipper to one side for an electrical cord. Luckily my sister knows her stuff when it comes to sewing and it works great. So far we have camped about 5 times but only used it once during a little bit of nasty weather. It withstood the wind gusts just fine and the only water that came in was from the windows where it apparently pooled a little bit when the wind blew it against that side of the tent. It wasn't much water and we were able to blot it up with an old towel we pack for just such an occasion. Before we are ready to go to bed we toss one air mattress on top of the other in the back room and set up a table and a couple of chairs in the front room for watching videos or playing games. Plenty of room for that. Overall it appears to be a good tent so far. The adjustment to the tie downs for the rainfly insured that no water pooled on the roof of the tent. I can only think that the designers made it the way they did to save money. Big mistake. Probably left out the electrical port for the same reason. I would recommend this tent to anyone that is looking for a big tent, doesn't mind the extra weight and is willing to invest a little time an effort into waterproofing. The set up is pretty is easy. I have actually done it all by myself. Took about 20 minutes. The carry bag is roomy and the wheels are nice for transporting. We also bought this tent when it was on sale so we feel like we got a good deal.
Rated 5 out of 5 by AJK7 from Absolutely love this tent, it's a trooper! My boyfriend and I bought this tent for camping with our families and friends. This tent braved it through 3 huge storms, hard rain and gusting winds. We didn't get any rain in the tent during the storms! We love the extra room we have when it's just him and I going and we love to sit in the from room with the windows unzipped while it's raining. I highly recommend this tent to anyone. Easy put up and take down.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Karrah03 from Field & Stream Wilderness Cabin 10 person tent The tent was pretty awesome. I did leak when it rained, but was fantastic otherwise.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Mwags from Stayed dry with 2 days of torrential downpours As an avid glamper, we decided to try out tenting. I am used to a motor home but this tent was homey and dry. We put a tarp under and on the side just for extra protection and we stayed dry with 2 straight days of rain. I was so shocked! I highly recommend for those nonglampers! Loved being able to stand up and have a separate room too!!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Doug from Great for rainy days Bought ours in 2015. Have used it 6 times now, 3 times there was rain. Plenty of room inside for the 2 of us to set up a table and play cards in the front half on rainy days.. Easy setup for 2 people.posted by TobiWanKenobi
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[I]Small changes to hero selection[/I] [I]Small changes to hero selection[/I]
[B]Update:[/B] The client will be updated as normal but the heroes will be auto banned for DreamHack.There are no new heroes this week but a lot of bug fixes with the heroes released in the last patch, you can check out the full changelog below:GAMEPLAY- Added Chaos Knight, Phantom Assassin and Gyrocoptor to Captain's Mode- Alchemist: Fixed Acid Spray killing couriers.- Chaos Knight: Fixed some bugs with the Illusion spawn positions with Phantasm.- Chaos Knight: Fixed Reality Rift ignoring Linken's Sphere.- Chaos Knight: Fixed getting stuck with your illusions sometimes- Clockwerk: Fixed units not always getting sucked into Power Cogs properly.- Clockwerk: Fixed Hookshot stunning dead units.- Dark Seer: Fixed Ion Shell showing the visual connecting effect on invisible targets.- Doom Bringer: Fixed sometimes not gaining passive bonuses when devouring a neutral.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon not attacking magic immune units.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Rocket Barrage not hitting Roshan.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Homing Missle portrait name.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon not hitting ancients.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Homing Missle ignoring Linken's Sphere.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Call Down not providing vision over its area.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Homing Missile not keeping vision around the area when it impacts a unit.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Rocket Barrage not hurting mechanical units.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon not hurting Mechanical units.- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon having cast time.- Gyrocopter: Fixed creeps hurting Homing Missile.- Mirana: Fixed Leap buff being dispelled by BKB/Repel.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Phantom Strike landing position.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Coup de Grace visual effect to play only when the critical strike attack lands.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Coup de Grace working on denies and wards.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Phantom Strike facing direction after landing.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Blur showing hero name on minimap when it should be hidden.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Blink Strike not being blocked by Linken's Sphere.- Phantom Assassin: Phantom Strike now shows you a buff icon while you are attacking fast.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Stifling Dagger being dodgeable.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Phantom Strike visual and sound effect sometimes playing on targets it can't hit.- Phantom Assassin: Fixed Phantom Strike attacks sometimes being delayed.- Pugna: Fixed Nether Ward not draining mana from enemies.- Venomancer: Fixed Aghanim's Scepter not upgrading Poison Nova duration.- Fixed Hand of Midas giving too little XP when there are nearby allies around.- Fixed Hand of Midas XP bounty being halved against dominated units.- Fixed a case where a courier trying to deliver a Divine Rapier to someone without sufficient item slots could result in the Rapier disappearing.UI- Added click and drag to rotate the Hero Model in the loadout panel.- Hero-like units now draw a larger distinct icon on the minimap.- Team Names now show up on the recent games panel.- Added an "Inspect Hero" option to the right-click menu for player names in the scoreboard. This will show what items they have equipped.- Buying Aghanim's Scepter now upgrades the ability tooltip with the new information. If you find anything missing or incorrect, please report it to the tooltip forum - The store/inventory Aghanim's Scepter tooltip will now show a preview of what it does for your hero.- Fixed glitchiness in the End Game cinematic camera.HERO SELECTOR- Added an edit mode to the in-game full deck layout.- Added a concept of selection to the Grid View, and used it to implement a pick button.- Added the ability to import and export custom full deck layouts- Leaving the loadout will return you to Grid View if you were in it.- Fixed a bug where you could not see the right hero in your loadout after you picked.- Fixed legacy mode heroes being sorted differently than the learn tab/Dota 1.- Legacy full deck cards are now simply the portrait, without the card treatment.- Added Back to Browsing & Back to Loadout buttons. After you pick, you can now return to browsing to suggest / learn heroes.- Fixed suggest button not being visible in grid view, and implemented suggestion there.- Fixed grid view selection outline not updating when you clicked on a suggested hero.- No longer force the selector to switch to the turntable if you're at grid view and want to select a hero for any reason.- Having no heroes matching the filters/search bar no longer kicks you out of grid view, instead showing you the same "No Heroes" message box as turntable mode.- Fixed the grid view crashing if there were no matching heroes.- Fixed the "No Heroes" message not being centered in widescreen.DOTA 2 BOTS- Added Chaos Knight bot.- Made bots more likely to unify around a Roshan attempt.- Added bot role/laning info for all heroes, which should make for better hero and lane picks.- On Easy and Easier, bots will no longer consider whether a target is currently slowed when determining whether to slow/stun.- Bots are now more likely to push late-game when they are feeling indecisive.By Dean Bennett
EDMONTON — Former Alberta premier Alison Redford’s so-called sky palace had its grand coming out party Friday, but in its revised role as a buttoned-down meeting room.
The penthouse suite was opened to the media as part of a tour of the renovated Federal Building on the legislature grounds.
The suite, on the 11th floor, does not have furniture or all the finishings yet, but is nevertheless an impressive series of rooms done over in wood and glass with panoramic views of the city to its outskirts.
Its legacy is a public relations headache for the government, going millions of dollars over budget and years past its deadline.
Infrastructure Minister Manmeet Bhullar admitted that if the government could do it all over again, it probably wouldn’t have renovated the 1950s art-deco style Tyndal stone structure.
“The needs and priorities of the people of Alberta are schools, health infrastructure or road infrastructure. That’s where I would have made this investment,” Bhullar told reporters prior to the tour. “This is a fine building, I’m not arguing with that.
“(But) it is what it is. The prudent thing now is limit cost increases.”
Work began in 2009 with an original end date for 2012.
The original $356-million budget was immediately ratcheted back to $275 million when oil prices dropped, then crept back up again over the years to the current price of $403 million on a budget of $410 million.
Those costs secretly took another bump starting in 2012, when Redford’s office began secretly ordering up changes to the penthouse to convert it from meeting rooms into a swank apartment retreat for her and her daughter.
The “premier’s den” — modelled after the blue chip Hay Adams Hotel in Washington D.C. — was to have bedrooms, bathrooms, a dining room, lounge area, room-by-room temperature controls, a fireplace, a powder room and a butler’s pantry.
Redford had quit as premier just before the project, later dubbed sky palace, became public last March.
The government said only preliminary work had been done on the penthouse before it was secretly cancelled in January 2014 at a total cost of almost $240,000. The Opposition Wildrose has said, depending how you crunch the numbers, the actual cost could be four times higher.
Redford quit amidst an escalating spending scandal and, in the months that followed, sky palace became a symbol of self-entitlement and a focal point of black humour, public scorn and confusing government behaviour.
Two cabinet ministers, Ric McIver and Wayne Drysdale, each announced they had killed the penthouse, but at different times. That prompted the Wildrose party to rename it the zombie sky palace.
An Alberta gaming company even created an app for gamers to move an Alison Redford figure toward the sky palace while leaving behind a trail of burned taxpayer dollars.
After the penthouse was cancelled, it became a hybrid suite with meeting rooms next to showers, leaving an incongruous visual invitation to shower off after meeting with government officials.
Under Premier Jim Prentice, the showers were taken out.
Prentice has said he has never set foot in the penthouse and likely never will.
Redford has never explained what happened on her watch, except to say “mistakes were made.”To quote Ronald Reagan, there you go again, Susan Sarandon. Competing for the title of Bernie Sanders‘ most deranged Hillary Clinton attack dog, Sarandon has already suggested that a Donald Trump presidency might be preferable to Hillary winning the White House, called her a liar, and even come out against a Chelsea Clinton presidency. At a rally in Philadelphia Monday night, Sarandon was at it again, attacking Hillary with a vicious quote that carried special power because of the identity of the person she claimed to be quoting:
This is such an important election, I just wanted to read you this, a little something about Hillary Rodham Clinton. “HRC is driven by politics, not conviction. From the war, to NAFTA, to Social Security, to her choice of baseball teams, Clinton is constantly shifting, dodging and changing positions to satisfy the politics of the moment. Her penchant for secrecy and non-disclosure reflect an underlying disdain for the ‘invisible’ people for whom she claims to speak.” This was spoken by Barack Obama in 2008. So as we can see, the only thing consistent about Hillary Clinton is her inconsistency.
The quote is real, and Sarandon quotes it accurately, but it wasn’t from 2008, it was from 2007, but more importantly, it wasn’t “spoken by Barack Obama.”
That quote is from an internal memo that was compiled by then-Senator Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign, and was not made public until a few months ago. Now, I can already see the emails I’m going to get from my Bernie Sanders-supporting friends asking me how DARE I call Susan Sarandon a liar over such a “technicality” (you know who you are), I will explain the enormous difference, even though it is obvious.
A quote directly from Barack Obama slamming Hillary like this would carry a lot more weight with an undecided Democrat than one from an internal attack memo that was never intended to be made public, and was never actually used by the candidate. Much of Hillary’s appeal to Democrats is the way she has steadfastly campaigned on the Obama legacy, and her relationship with him. More to the point, though, if it’s such a technicality, why lie about it, as Sanders and his campaign staff and surrogates have done time and again?
Both of these candidates have attacked each other in ways that are distasteful, but typically, Hillary Clinton and her campaign will state something accurately, then make an absurd characterization of that, like blaming Vermont for gun crime in New York City, or that moving to single payer would be “starting all over again.”
Arguments like these can be seen as dishonest or misleading, but at least they can be evaluated on their merits. If someone’s pissing on you, you can decide that it’s not raining. Beginning with a lie, though, is different, because it poisons everything that comes after it. In Bernie Sanders’ case, it also risks damaging one of the most important keys to his appeal, his honesty and integrity.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.Wheaton College, a school of about 3,000, announced it is dropping student health insurance coverage in objection of the Obamacare contraception mandate. Photo by Henryk Sadura/Shutterstock
CHICAGO, July 30 (UPI) -- Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts school of about 3,000, announced it is dropping student health insurance coverage in objection to the Obamacare contraception mandate.
The decision, announced July 10, will halt healthcare coverage Friday for the 2015-2016 school year for about a quarter of the undergraduate and graduate students. Faculty and staff are not affected.
Wheaton College was among several Christian nonprofits that argued the Affordable Care Act mandate that requires contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. Two years ago, the Obama administration set a compromise that requires religious institutions to "self-certify" to their insurance carriers in a written statement that they object on religious grounds to providing contraception coverage. Various nonprofits, including Wheaton, said signing the form also infringes on their religious freedoms. The school's lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services is pending.
"What has brought us here is about student health insurance, but it's bigger than student health insurance," Paul Chelsen, Wheaton's vice president of student development, said. "What really breaks my heart is that there are real people that are affected by our decision. But if we don't win this case, the implications down the road in terms of what the government will tell us what we can and cannot do will be potentially more significant.
The decision by the college does not leave a lot of time for the some 700 uninsured students to scramble for coverage. In 2010, Wheaton added a requirement that students enroll in or provide proof of insurance every year.The end of the year typically is a time for the Senate to come together and clear the decks of presidential nominees that have stacked up awaiting confirmation.
This is not a typical year.
Story Continued Below
After months of bruising political battles, and ahead of a presidential election, many Republicans are in no mood to confirm President Barack Obama’s picks for lifetime judicial appointments — or even more routine executive branch nominees.
Nineteen potential judges, a half-dozen ambassadors, a terrorism financing specialist and two high-ranking State Department nominees are awaiting confirmation votes on the Senate floor, a backlog that has this GOP-led Senate on track for the lowest number of confirmations in 30 years. The Senate Banking Committee hasn’t moved on a single nominee all year.
“The American people are paying the price,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) this week.
For the GOP, there’s little political incentive to help out a lame-duck administration, especially when Republicans hope to take back the White House in 2016, and install their own picks. Overall, the caucus is united in trying to slow confirmations to a trickle: Opposing the president is often an easy way to increase party unity.
But things can turn on a dime during end-of-the-year deal making, which currently includes a massive tax package, a spending bill and the nominations imbroglio. After waiting five months for a vote, Judge Luis Restrepo is now on track to be confirmed to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in January after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote on Wednesday evening, and in a matter of minutes eight lower-tier ambassadors were confirmed.
That action came as some Republicans began joining Democrats to push McConnell to help get their preferred judges or ambassadors confirmed, in a nod to presidential prerogatives and Senate tradition. But any moves to confirm Obama’s nominees is viewed with suspicion by the party base, senators said privately, so McConnell has only used his power as leader to force a vote on one nominee: Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
McConnell’s reluctance to force votes on nominees is the primary reason for the backlog, and vacancies in the federal courts are the most glaring example. The odds-on bet is few if any will be approved by the end of the year. Without agreement between party leaders, the White House would have to completely restart the confirmation process for those nominees next year. Meanwhile, there are currently 30 so-called judicial emergencies — jurisdictions where case backlogs are stacking up because of a judge vacancy. At the beginning of the year, there were 12 such vacancies.
Republicans “want to play politics with the one branch of government that shouldn’t be political,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s outrageous, it’s hurting the country, it is hurting the independence of our country’s judiciary.”
The United States has been without an ambassador to Mexico since July, a glaring omission that’s turning into an intraparty feud on the Republican side. Roberta Jacobson enjoys broad support among Democrats and Republicans, but presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) refuses to allow a quick vote on the floor because of her work normalizing relations with Cuba, which presents a difficult |
:00pm: According to Page Six, the two rappers squabbled over the licensing of music. “Diddy claimed that Drake was using music without the proper rights,” Page Six reports, adding that Diddy could be heard saying, “You will never respect me.”
Both men were in town for Art Basel.
In 2012, Drake was involved in a similar incident with Chris Brown at a Manhattan nightclub.Comey replacement will be a 'critical' hire for Trump administration 9:05 PM ET Wed, 10 May 2017 | 02:28
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein denied on Thursday that he threatened to quit over President Donald Trump's firing of James Comey.
When asked by a Sinclair Broadcast Group reporter if he made such a threat, Rosenstein responded, "No, I'm not quitting."
The Washington Post reported late Wednesday, citing a person close to the White House, that Rosenstein threatened to resign after White House press officials repeated a narrative which painted him as the key influence that led to Comey's dismissal.
The Trump administration has said Comey was terminated because of his handling of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. The White House insists that Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions initiated the conversation about Comey and that the president simply accepted their recommendation for his removal.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing a person familiar with the conversation, that Rosenstein had urged White House counsel Don McGahn to amend the administration's portrayal of the process that led to Comey's firing.
The person told the Journal that the deputy attorney general implied he "couldn't work in an environment where facts weren't accurately reported."
The Justice Department declined to comment.At 6:30 a.m. I was blow-drying my hair, getting ready for work and accepting the demise of my two-week relationship. The nail in the coffin was that at 10 the night before I had texted him something vaguely sexual, and he hadn’t texted back.
The morning had become a quick but emotionally turbulent journey through the five stages of grief.
First: denial. It was entirely possible he hadn’t seen the text. He could have been in a deep sleep. He could have dropped his phone in the toilet. He could have died! Any of these options were comforting.
He wasn’t really a texter anyway, so his lack of response didn’t necessarily reflect the weirdness of my text. It was probably normal for non-texters to see a text and not reply to it. They saw it, found it charming (or not), but didn’t think it required a response. Totally standard.
Anyway, was the text even that weird? If you went on a date and got vaguely physical during a make-out session on a bench in a secluded area of a public park, wouldn’t it seem natural to text something vaguely sexual a few days afterward?When Mark Tilbrook politely and peacefully distributed leaflets at venues where "psychic" Sally Morgan was performing, her son and husband threatened to beat him up (and even to have him murdered), uttered homophobic and racist slurs, and, eventually, served him with a legal threat.
Mr Tilbrook writes,
As I explained in the Guardian on
7 October, 2014, I decided earlier this year to leaflet outside various
psychic stage shows, encouraging members of the audience to ask
themselves questions about psychic ability. My first three visits were
to shows by Sally Morgan, and on each occasion her husband John Morgan
approached me. I found him to be threatening and abusive.
After being threatened during my first encounter with John Morgan, I
felt it necessary to have a camera with me when leafleting, to record
events and provide evidence of the threats I faced. This footage shows
what happened on the third occasion, at the Shaw Theatre in London on
April 30, 2014. I’ve subtitled the video as accurately as I can make out,
and you can make up your mind about his behaviour after seeing it for
yourself.
None of this has stopped me from being determined to continue leafleting
at psychic stage shows. This is why I have been working with the Good
Thinking Society to hand out more leaflets at psychic shows throughout
October 2014. You can find out about 'Psychic Awareness Month' at
the Good Thinking website.$\begingroup$
I would like to examine percolation on a random lattice. To be exact, I wish to find the minimum length of a 'bond' needed such that the leftmost site can be connected to the rightmost site.
Here is an example of the lattice:
randPts = Table[RandomReal[{-10, 10}, 2], {200}]; randPlot = ListPlot[randPts, PlotStyle -> {PointSize[0.0125]}, PlotRange -> {{-10, 10}, {-10, 10}}, AspectRatio -> 1, Frame -> True]
I have tried for a while to get this but have not had success. The basic plan was:
Define a bond length $R$ Look at each site one at a time. If another site(s) is within $R$ of a site, they will be in the same cluster. Each site will be in a cluster of 1 or more (obviously the larger $R$ chosen, the larger each cluster size) Take a site. Does it bond with other sites? If so then combine the two clusters together. Repeat step 3 for all sites. At the end ask if the leftmost cite and the rightmost sites are included in the conglomerate cluster. If so, percolation has occurred. Decrease $R$ and start over again until a threshold is found.
I think I am stuck somewhere in the step 3,4 area. Here is some of what I've tried: I have defined a module to find the distance between a site, j, and its nearest neighbor. The table, t, gives distance between j and all other sites:
minD[j_] := Module[{}, t = Table[{randPts[[i]], Sqrt[(randPts[[j, 1]] - randPts[[i, 1]])^2 + (randPts[[j, 2]] - randPts[[i, 2]])^2]}, {i, 1, Length[randPts]}]; For[i = 1, i < Length[t] + 1, i++, If[t[[i, 2]] == RankedMin[t[[All, 2]], 2], coord[j] = t[[i, 1]] ]]; Return[{coord[j]}]; ];
This module takes the table of distances and picks out ones that are within the chosen bonding radius (1.5 here. the y>0 condition to so to not count the same site):
cluster[k_] := Module[{}, minD[k]; Return[ Table[Cases[t, {x_, y_} /; y < 1.5 && y > 0][[i]][[1]], {i, 1, Length[Cases[t, {x_, y_} /; y < 1.5 && y > 0]]}]]; ]
So cluster[k] gives the sites within the cluster that is centered at site k. Now combining these clusters is what I am having a problem with. My idea was to start with a site and its cluster; find out what clusters that cluster intersects with and continue. I was not able to implement this correctly.
Another way to visualize or maybe solve the problem is in terms of increasing the site radius at each site until a percolation network is achieved:Parks and Recreation is returning to NBC next Thursday night at 9:30 (8:30 Central) after The Office. To help get us ready for the fifth season premiere, Jim O’Heir (Jerry/Garry) stopped by yesterday to answer some reader questions and just be flat-out awesome and hilarious. It was a good day. Between this and Nick Offerman’s triumphant AMA, we’re getting so, so excited — and so scared.
This was a long, awesome Q&A with loads of material to treat ourselves to, resulting in this highlight reel of about 50 pictures, GIFs, and some original photoshops. I’m not saying that Jim O’Heir riding Falcor the Luckdragon is my new desktop background, but I’m also not not saying it.
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SAY HELLO TO JERRY’S LITTLE FRIEND.
SAY HELLO TO JERRY’S GIANT FRIEND [via]
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“Dong Coat” is my new band name.
Somebody get that horse a dong coat.
The scene mentioned is at the end of this gag reel. And, what the heck, how about some GIFs?
A cat ranch? I want to go to there.
I did Nazi that coming.
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Hat tip to commenter BishopLuke for part of this.
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[via]U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (C) stands surrounded by his son Eric Trump (L) daughter Ivanka and son Donald Jr. (R) ahead of a press conference in Trump Tower, Manhattan, New York, U.S., January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said pharmaceutical companies are “getting away with murder” in what they charge the government for medicines, and promised that would change.
After his remarks, the Ishares Nasdaq Biotech ETF dropped 4 percent at its session low and was on track for its largest daily percentage drop since late June. Trump has blasted other industries for charging the government too much, particularly defense companies Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, but has made only a few public statements about drug pricing since being elected.
After his promise during a news conference, the ARCA pharmaceutical index fell 2 percent as Pfizer Inc gave up 2.6 percent and Johnson & Johnson fell 1 percent. Biotech Gilead Sciences Inc fell 2.3 percent.
The drug industry has been on edge for two years about the potential for more government pressure on pricing after sharp increases in the costs of some life-saving drugs drew scrutiny in the press and among lawmakers. The government is investigating Medicaid and Medicare overspending on Mylan NV’s allergy treatment EpiPen, for instance.
Trump’s campaign platform included allowing the Medicare healthcare program to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, which the law currently prohibits, and he has also discussed making it easier to import drugs at cheaper prices.
“We are going to start bidding. We are going to save billions of dollars over time,” Trump said.
Medicare, which covers more than 55 million elderly or disabled Americans, spends hundreds of billions of dollars on drugs every year.
Industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America did not have an immediate comment.
Daniel O’Day, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, a division of Roche Holding AG, said in an interview on the sidelines of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco that the company focuses on innovation and investing in research.
Price increases over the past several years have been “responsible” and in the range of low to mid single digits, he said.
(Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York, and Deena Beasley in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)David Esparza Guerrero has released a video, showcasing a prototype fan remake of Star Wars: X-Wing in Unity Engine. According to its creator, this video shows Y-Wing Historical Mission 6: “Interception and Capture” (Rescue Admiral Ackbar).
This Star Wars: X-Wing fan remake, called XWVM, is currently in pre-alpha state and it’s missing some features. As such, the following video does not represent the final version of this fan remake. As Guerrero claimed:
“There are a few features that would better get fixed before doing a release, because the game is currently in a really rough state. It totally is a pre-alpha build, and I cannot stress that enough.”
But what exactly is XWVM? XWVM is a remake of the flight engine that reads the original XWing resources (music, graphics, missions) in your GoG XWing game folder, and uses them to play the mission, allowing for modern resolutions, input methods, and even usability improvements that were later added to TIE Fighter and XvT.
Here are the key features of the latest version of XWVM (that is not available to the public).
Mini intro with the Lucas Arts and Totally Games logos from the original games, as well as the text crawl.
Hyperspace sequences, including arrival and departure from star system.
Astronomical backdrops: local star, planets present on the mission file.
Space dust.
Engine glows and sun flares.
New models for all ships.
Sound effects for engines, weapons, instruments, hits, explosions, etc.
Functional, rotating turrets for the capital ship.
Map instrument.
Proton torpedo launcher and torpedoes.
Mission goal tracker instrument.
Full mission logic cycle working. The mission can be completed or failed. And it starts all over after dying or jumping into hyperspace.
New mouse cursor design.
Better combat AI.
More accurate ship explosions.
Time acceleration instrument.
Throttle instrument.
Enjoy!Following North Korea’s announcement that it successfully tested a thermonuclear device on Sunday, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said more diplomacy will only make matters worse regarding the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear threat to surrounding countries and America.
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“I think the only diplomatic option left is to end the regime in North Korea by effectively having the South take it over,” Bolton told “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Anybody who thinks that more diplomacy with North Korea or sanctions, whether against North Korea or an effort to apply sanctions against China, is just giving North Korea more time to increase its nuclear arsenal, increase its ballistic missile capability, increase the accuracy of its guidance systems and put us, South Korea and Japan in more jeopardy.”
The artificial earthquake caused by the test was “five to six times stronger” than tremors created by previous tests; South Korean officials put the magnitude at 5.7 and the U.S. Geological Survey said it was a magnitude 6.3, according to The Associated Press.
In addition to the threat of the country launching a thermonuclear weapon, Bolton explained that the willingness of Kim Jong Un to sell anything for money is also quite worrisome.
“They could sell these weapons, ballistic missiles and the nuclear devices themselves to Iran in a heartbeat. North Korea can sell these devices to terrorist groups around the world; they could be used as electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMPs), not necessarily hitting targets, but destroying our electric grid’s capabilities,” the former ambassador said, adding that they could also be used for nuclear blackmail.
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President Trump reacted to the news of the alleged test on Twitter saying, “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”
..North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
He also criticized South Korea for not taking a tougher stand against the communist country.
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
Bolton said the U.S. has “fooled around” with North Korea for 25 years, and if that continues, the current situation will only worsen.
“It would be a lesson to every nuclear state in the world that if you just have patience enough you can wear the United States down. The notion that we can accept North Korea or Iran with any kind of nuclear capability just means that we will forever be at their mercy,” he said.A quick google search of “Monta Ellis Bad Defender” will turn up a host of interesting web pages. The very first link sends you to 2014’s annual feature by Tim Kawakami naming the “All NBA No-Defense Teams” in which Monta lands an “Honorable Mention” spot on the dubious squad. The second link finds you reading a fascinating rebuttal on NBA Reddit titled, “Why do people think Monta Ellis is a terrible defender?”
Both posts are mostly reliant on the good old fashioned “eye test” with a few hard-to-contextualize stats thrown in, supposedly offering some measure of argumentative support. Kawakami notes that in 2014, the 37-year-old Vince Carter was statistically better defensively than Monta Ellis. The blogger on NBA Reddit argued that according to the NBA’s Player Tracking stats, Ellis was an above average defensive player in every single defensive metric he qualified for except for hand-offs and off-screen defense.
The thread underneath led to perhaps one of my favorite NBA Reddit comments ever by some Mavericks fan named sbeaty:
I love Monta and I will admit he he isn’t AS BAD as people think or say on defense. That being said Monta goes rogue way [too] much. He constantly runs to where the [ball] is or goes for steals. He throws off the defense and [puts] us into bad rotations. Monta reminds me of an A.D.D kid chasing a butterfly. He wants that butterfly so damn much. Go get your butterfly Monta!
Evaluating an individual player’s defense solely through statistics is imperfect at best. Obviously, a simple look at steals and blocks will tell very little. Even the advanced individual defensive stats are incredibly hard to quantify. Defensive win shares, Defensive Rating, and Defensive Box Plus/Minus all tell us some interesting things, and a quick look at the league leaders in those categories reveal that they have to at least be doing something right, but it’s hard to really define what those numbers actually mean. Player tracking data is useful, especially for evaluating how well big men protect the rim, but even SportVu has flaws – namely that it can’t really contextualize whether a player is competing against starters, bench players, or mop up guys.
Further, every team employs a specific defensive strategy meant to maximize it’s overall defensive output. Defensive players that are tasked with defending the other team’s best player every night will inevitably give up more points than their teammates. Other guys have larger offensive loads and are asked by their coaches to conserve some energy on the defensive end.
Indeed, our fearless leader, Jared Wade, had this to say about Individual Defensive Rating: “I honestly don’t know what individual defensive rating is. I mean, yeah, I know what it is. I just have never gained a lot of insight from it. It just doesn’t have context or much real value in and of itself to me. When someone tells me a guy’s defensive rating, it’s like saying ‘My house is 9 away from the school.’ 9 what? Miles? Blocks? Houses? Feet?”
All of these factors generally lead us to our current, flawed evaluation process that we employ when judging an individual’s defense:
EYE TEST
plus
ONE OR TWO AMBIGUOUS DEFENSIVE METRICS
divided by
GENERAL OVERALL PUBLIC PERCEPTION
equals
“REALITY”
Still, most NBA guys can generally differentiate between good and bad defensive players, and for the entirety of his career, Monta Ellis has generally been perceived as a bad defensive player. When you don’t get to watch a player every night, preconceived notions will dominate how you feel about him when you do get to watch him. Often, these presuppositions are spot on and helpful, but occasionally, they will lead to Pacers fans wondering, “Why did I hate Jordan Hill so much?” and “Is Jordan Hill actually a good player?”
With the roster turnover in Indiana this season, Pacers fans and writers at 8 points, 9 seconds have been trying to weed through these biases in order to more objectively reflect the current reality. It has often been said that “offensive reputations change a year too early because of recency bias and defensive reputations change two years too late because of confirmation bias.” This may be more true with Monta Ellis than any other player, because in 2015, Ellis has been a mediocre offensive player (where he’s supposedly great), but a surprisingly useful and above average defensive player (where he’s allegedly terrible).
In fact, through 12 games, Ellis has a total of 0.6 Defensive Win Shares, a number that would tie him for 18th in the entire league with Tyson Chandler, Ian Mahinmi, Eric Bledsoe…and Jared Sullinger. Again, who knows what these numbers mean? Certainly not me. But it seems at least kind of relevant when the only shooting guard with more DWS in the entire league is Jimmy Butler, especially when my eyes tell me that Ellis has been playing very well defensively for the Pacers.
I think trying to determine just how good of a defensive player Monta Ellis is will always be difficult, but I think one factor that often goes overlooks is the “Who does this guy play with?” factor.
For almost the entire first decade of his career, Monta Ellis played for exciting, uptempo, bad defensive teams. During this time, his backcourt contemporaries were almost always below average defensive players, or worse. In all, he never once played for a defense that was in the top half of the league in overall Defensive Rating.
Here’s a quick rundown of the teams he played for (while he was a starter) and his fellow perimeter defensive teammates.
Your eyes may have glazed over by this point, so here’s a quick recap. Over the course of nine seasons, Monta actually had the best DRtg (among perimeter players) on his team twice. He was the best defensive guard (exclude the small forward) five times. Of course, some of these examples would be akin to remarking that the second Hobbit movie was better than the first — that may be true, but they’re both terrible — but still, it seems those stats would mean something.
More significantly, the best defensive point guard he ever played with was probably Baron Davis when Monta was 21 years old. Over the past half decade, he’s spent time playing next to Brandon Jennings, Jamal Crawford, Jose Calderon, Rajon Rondo, and a young Stephen Curry.
On many of those teams, he was often asked to guard the opponent’s best perimeter player, all while carrying a pretty hefty load offensively. This year has been quite different for him. George Hill is an outstanding defensive player, one of the very best in the league at slowing down opposing point guards. Paul George is an absolute destroyer on the defensive end, challenging the opponent’s best scorer night in and night out. Ellis, in 2015, has had the privilege of defending the opponent’s weakest perimeter player every single night, and he’s actually been quite good in that role.
So what does all of this mean? It’s probably a bit of a reach to argue that Ellis has always been this good defensively. Players grow. They get better. They start focusing on the details more than they had in the past. In past years, Ellis did lose focus on defense to chase a butterfly or a steal too often. But he also played with some very poor defensive players that exacerbated his already poor defensive instincts.
It’s possible that Monta’s best years are behind him offensively, but it’s also possible that he’s starting to come into his own on the other end of the floor. He has incredible anticipation skills, he fights hard against larger players, and has made large strides in Indiana’s team defensive concept. Monta may not have it all, but he has more than enough to be an above average defensive player for the Indiana Pacers.The very fact that underground robots being used to patrol the U.S./Mexico border—a program now moving into its second decade—can be greeted with what amounts to a disinterested shrug is a good indication of how sci-fi our everyday lives have gotten. There are underground robots patrolling the edge of the country.
As the Christian Science Monitor reported last week, the diverse family of semi-autonomous vehicles used by U.S. border patrol agents remains in flux, incorporating new designs and technical capabilities. Indeed, innovations across the field of media robotics—from remote-controlled CCTV to multi-spectral cameras—will all but inevitably find their way into police work and, by extension, into the active patrolling of the nation's outer periphery.
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The specific news peg of the CSM piece was the recent deployment of a wireless camera drone—seen in the image below—that can inch forward through tunnel networks to illuminate, photograph, and film their deep interiors.
AP Photo/Brian Skoloff
"The underground gadgets add to the border's growing collection of virtual surveillance tools that the federal government has bolstered in recent years," CSM explains, "including camera towers, unmanned aerial drones, and a variety of wireless technology." The border, in a sense, is being turned into a weaponized media studio kitted out with camera gear that could make even a film student jealous.
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Not unlike hardened versions of the archaeological ground-robots we looked at here on Gizmodo last year, these little spelunking machines extend their human operators' visual powers deep underground.
More specifically, they allow officers to patrol parts of the border—otherwise dangerous subterranean passages, from storm drains and culverts to elaborate, purpose-built smuggling tunnels—without putting themselves in harm's way.
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AP Photo/Brian Skoloff
"In fact," the paper adds, "the remote-controlled robot can transform into a terrestrial drone outfitted with a 12-gauge shotgun, but [U.S. border patrol] Agent Hecht says that feature won't be activated." Yet.
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What's particularly interesting about this, however, is the notion that a broad region of the U.S. southwest is gradually being infested from below with machinery, crackling inside with semi-autonomous camera bots steered by radio through the darkness. In the process, border security is becoming indistinguishable from a weird new underground media project, as police-controlled machinery snakes and rolls its way through labyrinths of subterranean space. These tunnels are like a parallel universe accessible just behind that drain entry, or hiding beneath a few tiles in the floor.
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Photos by Sandy Huffaker, Getty Images News
Down in these self-connected mazes of whorled corridors and halls whittled from rock, excavated beneath the surface of national sovereignty, we send our cameras crawling.
In a sense, the outermost edge of the nation-state is being given over to the emerging field of border robotics, becoming an autonomous camera zone slithering inside with little imperial devices.
AdvertisementNYPD Defends Perp and Tickets Cyclists After Garbage Truck Driver Kills Neftaly Ramirez and Flees Scene Punishing potential victims after a driver kills a cyclist is routine for NYPD, but the department has never provided any evidence that this tactic makes anyone safer.
Early Saturday morning a driver believed to be operating a private sanitation truck struck and killed Neftaly Ramirez, 27, as he biked on Franklin Street in Greenpoint. The driver fled the scene and has yet to be apprehended. Nevertheless, NYPD defended the perpetrator in the press and the 94th Precinct was out ticketing people on bikes hours after the collision.
Police said Ramirez was riding on Franklin Street near Noble Street when he was hit by the driver, who was southbound on Franklin, at around 12:30 a.m. Ramirez died at the scene.
Franklin Avenue is a neighborhood commercial street and a link between the Kent Avenue protected bike lane and the Pulaski Bridge. Despite the high volume of bike traffic, it only has sharrows — stencils that offer no protection.
“The trucks — you hear them all night long, they just fly down the street,” a local resident told CBS.
A friend of Ramirez told the Daily News he was headed home to the Lower East Side from his job at a pizzeria.
“He was a good, hard-working person,” the pal said, adding he was loved animals and video games. “They need to find the person that hit him.”
Police gave inconsistent descriptions of the truck, which they don’t think was a city vehicle. Private trash haulers are known to have a high rate of fatal collisions per mile driven.
So did police launch a safety initiative focusing on an industry proven to pose an outsized public safety hazard? Nope. By Saturday afternoon officers with the 94th Precinct were out ticketing cyclists:
Punishing potential victims after a driver kills a cyclist is routine for NYPD, but the department has never provided any evidence that this tactic makes anyone safer.
No arrests were made as of this morning. In the meantime, NYPD made excuses for the person who killed Ramirez.
“Cops … said it’s possible the driver didn’t realize the truck hit a person,” the News reported.
“It was unclear Saturday morning whether the driver knew he that he had struck the bicyclist,” said the Post.
Due in part to flaws in state law that legislators have failed to fix, New York drivers who flee the scene of a fatal crash often avoid charges simply by claiming they were unaware they ran someone over. It is not unusual for NYPD to give a preemptive defense in the press while a hit-and-run killer remains at large.
Neftaly Ramirez was killed in Brooklyn Community District 1, where the community board is skeptical of bike lanes, and in the City Council district represented by Steve Levin.
Also this weekend, an MTA bus driver killed pedestrian Kevin Zeng, 25, on Union Turnpike in Queens on Friday evening. Police and the press blamed the victim. And on Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn a motorist in a BMW SUV ran over 18-year-old Alejandro Tello, killing him, and fled the scene.Could Donald Trump blow a hole in the First Amendment?
Journalists and freedom of the press experts are sufficiently concerned about the prospect that they held a panel, broadcast on C-SPAN, to consider the question on Wednesday night at the National Press Club in Washington.
The consensus: The Republican presidential nominee, who’s currently threatening a libel suit against The New York Times, would have a hard time curtailing the country’s long tradition of robust freedom of expression. But the panelists agreed the ability to fill a few Supreme Court vacancies — an opportunity that, New York Times reporter Adam Liptak noted, the next president is likely to have with the late Antonin Scalia’s post still unfilled and three of the other justices at or approaching 80 — could go a long way toward getting Trump his wish: weaker libel laws that would make it easier for public figures to bankrupt news organizations whose coverage they don’t like.
The Press Club panel was prompted by Trump’s repeated statements that he wants to revise existing libel law, which now puts the burden of proof on public figures to show “actual malice” in press coverage to win a suit. But panelists also discussed other ways the next president could restrain or intimidate journalists from providing the public with information that the next administration doesn’t want out.
There’s a sort of secrecy creep in executive branch agencies. — Katie Townsend, Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press
Anita Kumar, a White House reporter for McClatchy News Service, and Katie Townsend, a lawyer for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, both described presidential aversion to transparency as a bipartisan tendency that has tended to expand with each successive administration. “There’s a sort of secrecy creep in executive branch agencies,” said Townsend. The Reporters’ Committee was part of a media coalition that got President Barack Obama’s administration to back down from threats to prosecute reporters who published leaked information. But Townsend noted that despite Obama’s promise to provide “the most transparent administration in history,” the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests has grown under his administration.
Given that Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton has shown a penchant for secrecy (in addition to the contretemps about her use of a private email server while secretary of state, there’s the fact that as first lady, she worked to keep her health care strategy sessions from having to comply with the requirements of the open meetings law, noted Georgetown University professor Kenneth Jost), “President Obama is starting to look pretty good,” quipped Kumar. “Either candidate will be worse on press access,” she predicted. Neither Trump nor Clinton, she noted, has agreed to be accompanied by a “protective pool” of reporters, charged with covering important moments and sharing information with colleagues, as past presidential nominees have done.
But while a Clinton administration might represent more of the same, when it comes to journalists (and by extension, the public) scrambling for access to information, the panel suggested that Trump has issued a new level of threat — one that could jeopardize the very existence of some news organizations. Moderator Chuck Tobin, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, noted that one of the potential nominees Trump has hinted he’d choose for a Supreme Court vacancy is Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who helped sue the Gawker media group out of existence over stories he and wrestler Hulk Hogan didn’t like.
The horribleness of an article would have no bearing. — Kenneth Jost, Georgetown University
Trump’s latest libel threat is over a story The Times published earlier this week, quoting two women who said the candidate earlier made improper advances. In response to Trump’s statement, The Times said stood by its story, and released a scathing letter from the newspaper’s attorney to Trump’s.
Noting that US courts have gone out of their way to protect freedom of expression, even when flagrantly offensive, ever since colonial times and the famous libel suit against printer John Peter Zenger, Jost argued that Trump is proposing to overturn more than a half-century of settled law on libel. The presumption against public figures in libel cases dates back to a landmark 1964 Supreme Court case, New York Times v. Sullivan. The author of that opinion, the late Justice William Brennan, actually wanted to ban all libel suits by public figures, Jost said, but failing to win over a majority of his colleagues to that view, instead set up the now famous “actual malice” standard for public figures to prove libel.
Jost called it “a substantial obstacle that few plaintiffs can overcome,” which is why, he suggested, Trump wants to change the law. “The horribleness of an article would have no bearing,” he said, citing one of Trump’s favorite adjectives for describing coverage he doesn’t like.
Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, said he detects no appetite on the John Roberts court for revisiting the Sullivan decision. “This is one of those principles that’s settled and ingrained,” he said.
Still, Jost noted that presidents have tried to end around the First Amendment before. Barely more than a decade after the Constitution was ratified, he pointed out, Congress passed and President John Adams signed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, which led to the arrests of a number of newspaper editors, including one member of Congress. The furor led to the election of Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800 and the repeal of the law. Panelists were skeptical that a President Trump could persuade Congress to go along with restrictions on freedom of expression. “There are lots and lots of conservatives who take a very expansive view of the First Amendment,” Liptak noted.
Short of packing the Supreme Court with justices inclined to do his bidding on libel laws, a President Trump could try to curb unwelcome coverage by freezing out reporters, the panelists conceded. Kumar noted that the practice of playing favorites in the press corps is age-old (“They all do it,” she said), but added that there are ways Trump could employ the kind of blacklisting of journalists he did during the primaries: by refusing to answer questions, by excluding them from important briefings.
That kind of retaliation can be hard to combat in the courts, said Tobin. He represented The Baltimore Sun in a case where then-Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich tried to keep state officials from talking to the newspaper’s reporters. The court ruled against the press.
But, Tobin added, “The footnote is that Gov. Ehrlich was defeated shortly afterward.”
A cautionary tale that reporters and First Amendment advocates clearly hope the next president will heed.In case you hadn’t already heard, thousands of Walmart employees are expected to walk off the job before next week’s shopping extravaganza known as Black Friday. The workers are striking to protest suppressed wages, spiking health care premiums, and management retaliation against employee organizing.
This week, an Orlando Walmart store pushed union-busting beyond the limits of the law to intimidate workers from participating in the national strike. The incident involves Alex Rivera, a Walmart employee who was fired in September, two months after he joined an employee rights group called Organized United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart).
Rivera visited the store where he used to work on Wednesday to talk with some former colleagues about the Black Friday strike. While Rivera paused to sip water from a fountain, police rushed up behind him without warning, grabbed his arms, and wrested him into handcuffs, Josh Eidelson reports for The Nation. The false arrest was a direct result of Walmart management falsely reporting to police that Rivera had signed a trespassing warning preventing him from returning to the premises.
As the truth came to light, the outcome was a high-profile embarrassment for the leading U.S. retailer. Once police discovered that no such trespassing warning existed, they grimaced at being mislead by Walmart reps and released Rivera from custody. Rivera recounted his public humiliation and concerns about Walmart employee suppression to The Nation:
It was really humiliating because who would expect being handcuffed in front of a lot of [workers] and customers? [Other workers are] going to say, ‘If I join the [employee] organization and do something like that, this is what’s going to happen to me.’
Last Wednesday wasn’t the first time Rivera has been harassed by his local Walmart store. After Rivera joined the OUR Walmart group on July 20, he said Walmart management began following his every move, increased his workload, prevented him from talking to co-workers during work, and held mandatory employee meetings to bash the OUR Walmart group.
On Sept. 22, Rivera was terminated for correcting his timesheet, something he said was in accordance with company policy and completed “without incident” for three years before becoming an activist.
A Thousand Black Friday Strikes Planned
Returning to what may be the largest Walmart strike in history, a thousand store protests are planned over the upcoming week, culminating on Black Friday, says the employee rights group Making Change at Walmart. Strikes and protests are planned in Chicago; Dallas; Los Angeles; Miami; Milwaukee; Washington, D.C.; Oklahoma; Mississippi; Louisiana and Minnesota.
Since their usual union-busting tactics haven’t been enough to squash the uprising, Walmart has petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to halt what it claims are unlawful efforts to disrupt its business.
Through the decades Walmart has been in operation, the retail giant has run an aggressive anti-union campaign. Some tactics are considered legal, while some are clearly illegal, says a 2007 report titled “Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of U.S. Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association.”
Walmart’s anti-employee-organizing crackdown has included showing an anti-union video during new employee training; instituting a 24-hour hotline for managers to report any signs of union organizing activity; |
on the road.
Of course, he’s got a lot to deal with – there’s a rift between the nervous nellies of the back bench who fear electoral annihilation through sheer incompetence and own goals of a cabinet you could drive a panzer tank division through. Or drag a Trump tower. Sideways. But his latest outrageous display is insane. Of course, there’s a lot on his disordered mind.
Factor in a damaging rorting crisis with the recycling of World’s best Greg Hunt, a fan of the US Health system, as Health Minister and a perfect, scrap-Medicare patsy. Blend in a complete absence of any plan or policy to speak of beyond tax cuts for the rich. Add a dash of Narcissus Trump who doesn’t give a toss for all our diplomatic grovelling, fawning and our mindless US-Alliance fetishising.
All he cares about is the size of his inauguration crowd and throwing his weight around.
Presto! Desperation is bound to break out. You might almost feel sorry for a PM who once had to say that he and The Donald were peas in a pod with their business backgrounds and their late entry politics – even if neither of these is true. Alternative facts, rule, OK?
We have come to expect the unexpected from a government with no real plan and less demonstrated competence – beyond a genius for turning crisis into catastrophe. Yet, as the year of the Rooster dawns, everywhere is chaos and cock-up. Trump-mania afflicts his crew, the new US president turns out to be mad, bad and dangerous to know, a monster intent on proving he’s boss at all costs. No wonder Captain Mal is showing a bit of strain.
But who would have thought he’d reprise the Monty Python dead parrot sketch in his madness- his manic quest to wedge Bill Shorten on the TPP; an ex-treaty, an agreement which even Shinzo Abe, never the sharpest knife in the sushi kitchen, can tell you is deceased.
Or could it be that the dead parrot represents the Turnbull government itself that is deceased, DOA at the beginning of 2017 parliamentary year; all over bar the squawking?
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MoreAh, Ikea, the big, beautiful, boxy home to so many things we all need...
And starting in February, shoppers in US Ikea stores can add another thing to their overflowing carts: Bicycles!
The bike retails for $499, has a rust-proof frame and a belt drive, and comes with a 25-year limited warranty on the frame.
The Sladda, which is already available online, is a cargo bicycle designed for city living, which means its aluminum frame is lightweight enough to carry up and down subway steps.
The trailer is an additional $169, but is great for transporting all your stuff around town.
In a press release, Ikea described the bike as "truly a complete system that supports living a sustainable and healthy life in the city."
"With more and more people living in urban places, there’s an increased need for easy and flexible transportation," it added. "Having a car in a city is often not a practical solution." Scandinavian cities like Copenhagen, where the bicycle is already sold, are built for two-wheeled transportation, which is widely used by locals.Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson & Charlotte Gainsbourg
Review Author: Shaun
Rating: 1 / 5 melted snowmen
The Snowman is the first Scandinavian crime drama I’ve seen. I’m no stranger to director Tomas Alfredson who’s 2008 film, “Let the Right One In”, is a perfect example of crafting silent suspense. His work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is also exemplary and deserves praise. So upon seeing the trailer for The Snowman, there was a degree of interest. However, to be brutally honest, from a director that has created great, intense thrillers, The Snowman is very mellow.
Thrilling moments are derived from a story that is gripping, has characters to root for, and a satisfactory pay off. These can only be accomplished when your film leaves a good impression before the title shows. The Snowman’s introduction scene sets the bar for the rest of the film as everything seems out-of-place and scrambled. All the clues are there and yes, they should be presented in different segments of the narrative to enhance the pay off when the killer is revealed. However, there are so many clues where their importance isn’t stretched out, making for a convoluted narrative. There is a segment involving a bid for the winter sports world cup that is so confusing, audiences will be left wondering how many segments like this have anything to do with the central story of finding the killer.
The characters are somewhat likable, but they don’t have enough traits or personality for me to latch onto them let alone care. Even if the film has Michael Fassbender as the drunk, failing father, Harry Hole. Fassbender is one of the most versatile actors working today, something about him can fit a myriad of roles, but that’s just it. He can fit every role, but the actual role should be engaging and have us latched on. I won’t deny that his performance is OK at best, but the fact you have a very talented and well-known actor playing you’re leading role doesn’t make the audience instantly root for him at the snap of a finger. Instead, you need a well-written character with layers.
From the moment the title showed up, I had a gut feeling that the people around me were in for a bumpy ride. The actual film-making that went into the first scene was questionable. I’m not quite sure if it was the use of different cameras or an inconsistency with the colour correction but somehow the scene didn’t look right. The different colours seemed brighter in one shot than the following shot. While these inconsistencies can be missed by some audiences, the eagle-eyed amongst us will feel taken out of the story and instead focus on how the execution of the scene is partially disrupted by these film-making errors.
Credit where credit is due, the source material it is adapted from certainly sounds more interesting to people like me who aren’t the most up to date on Scandinavian crime dramas. The Snowman is the seventh book in Jo Nesbø’s, Harry Hole series (that brings up the question of why not adapt the first novel?), and has a cool concept for a serial killer. It makes me wonder what other mysteries the character of Harry Hole has solved before.
The location of Norway is breath-taking. The snowy setting and harsh environment could have created a lot of elements to enhance the story, but it’s wasted potential. You have an interesting calling card for the killer in the making of snowmen, you have the beautiful background of the snowy mountainous views of Norway and Oslo, however, it is as if these elements are a cloth that covers the many problems this film has.
Overall, The Snowman is a narrative mess with a story too convoluted and too complex that it’s difficult to pinpoint which part is relevant to the mystery or which parts are pointless exposition. A solid director and solid cast are squandered on a messy script that neither thrills or even captures your attention.A recent patent filing suggests that Microsoft's next console is based on the idea that it can be scaled up - or down - over time, leading to speculation that the current notion of a console lifecycle could be replaced with rolling hardware upgrades.
Application 20120159090 was submitted in December 2010 at the US Patents and Trademark Office and was published last month, subsequently unearthed by "Sonic" from the Beyond3D Forum. It describes Microsoft's attempts to patent "versions of a multimedia computer system architecture... which satisfy quality of service (QoS) guarantees for multimedia applications such as game applications while allowing platform resources, hardware resources in particular, to scale up or down over time".
Patent applications are filed all the time, but what makes this one interesting and relevant is that the system being described - and revealed in attached diagrams (go here for more easily viewable pics) - shares the same fundamental ideas as the "Yukon" system covered briefly in the now infamous Xbox 720 leak that first emerged at the beginning of May. Those documents have been confirmed by sources as genuine and date back to August 2010, and the patent application gives us further insight into Microsoft's thinking during the beginnings of the R&D work that culminated in the development of the current Project Durango.
The patent goes much, much further than the 720 leak however. While much of that doc could be dismissed due to its summer 2010 vintage, and the fact it was circulated "for discussion only", this application gives some engineering muscle to concepts that were previously only addressed from a marketing perspective. The principle inventor behind the patent application, Jeff Andrews, produced this overview of the Xbox 360 hardware and is one of the chief hardware architects at Microsoft.
"The filing is over 18 months old but it shows Microsoft's top engineers devising a core console architecture that can be improved over time. Is the fixed console concept set to be replaced by iPad-style upgrades?"
The principal image attached to the patent documentation gives an overview of the architecture for a scalable home games console - an image that has an uncanny resemblance to elements of the leaked Xbox 720 document that circulated from early May onwards.
In the same way that PCs today are built around core components like motherboards, PSUs, RAM modules, and expansion cards, Microsoft is proposing its own "base architecture" for scalable console hardware going forward. Multiple models are considered (perhaps suggesting some level of customisation between OEMs) but all are based around principles we first saw in the 720 leak. For starters, this is a multi-CPU, multi-GPU system. One CPU/GPU combo is reserved for the "platform" and handles elements such as the dashboard and video encoding/decoding. The other element is the "application" aspect - which for a console would mostly cover games.
In the Xbox 720 leak, we saw something that Microsoft called "transmedia gaming" - the idea here being that platform apps could run concurrently with games. The company came up with the notion of running a golf game simultaneously with a real-life sports transmission, with the player actually participating against the competitors. Other examples included running a TV stream while gaming, opening up strategy guides while the game itself is running, and other more basic applications such as a news ticker app running during gameplay. Microsoft's strategy is to allow these things to happen without game performance being impacted. To make this possible, the firm suggests the idea of what it calls a "communication fabric" that links all aspects of the console and ensures that there is enough bandwidth to go around without share-stealing system resources.
The principle idea behind the patent is in providing a framework for integrating "platform" and "application" processing into a single system where both systems can run concurrently, but the overriding concept is the scalable architecture that allows for more advanced hardware revisions (with improved CPUs or GPUs for example) to be rolled out over time. One diagram even adds a third CPU/GPU set-up - shared processors that can lend a hand to the other two, for reasons unknown.
"Companies like Microsoft file hundreds of patent applications, but the fact this comes from leading Xbox engineers and has much in common with the '720' leak gives it extra-special levels of interest."
Microsoft appears to be covering its bases with a range of different variations on its core design - but all of them revolve around dedicated processors for the 'platform' and for 'applications'. In the current Xbox 360, the tri core Xenon CPU does the lot, suggesting ambitious things for the console's next-gen successor.
However, there are some interesting differences between the leak and the patent, which dates from four months later: Kinect was represented with dual cameras in the vision doc, but it's back to being a more conventional single camera affair in the patent application. It also suggests that the camera will once again hook up via USB - surprising bearing in mind how much of the current system's latency is down to the USB interface.
Factoring in the oft-repeated "10-year lifecycle" associated with games machines, why is Microsoft trying to a patent a scalable platform for a potential future console? The next-gen Xbox will ship eight years after its predecessor - assuming another eight years until its successor appears, Microsoft could conceivably come up with an entirely different, better architecture. The whole notion of scalability seems to be entirely at odds with the notion of fixed console hardware. But suppose that the next-gen isn't fixed at all? Or at least, not in the medium to long term?
While the patent could be interpreted to mean that different Xbox SKUs could be released with different levels of multimedia capability, the "over time" element in the application could suggest that Microsoft is giving itself the option of opting out from the traditional fixed architecture model. Consider the iPad - advanced 3D games run over several generations' worth of hardware, but typically the more modern the processor, the better the experience you get. It helps to drive new hardware sales and helps ensure that Apple stays ahead of its competitors in terms of specs and the overall experience. Combine this model with Microsoft dipping its toes into "buy now, pay monthly" subscription territory and there's the possibility that the next Xbox could be a new type of hardware platform - one that evolves over time, subsidised via monthly payments as part of an Xbox Live sub. Processing power on consoles and desktops isn't evolving with anything like the speed of mobile parts, so yearly updates seem unlikely, and on the plus side, the backwards compatibility issue would be resolved once and for all. Suddenly, the mooted Xbox Infinity codename doesn't sound quite so bizarre.
What should be stressed is that everything we've heard about the current Project Durango points towards a more traditional console design, and that this patent application is over 18 months old. Many of these applications are often lodged simply for legal reasons and never actually turn into final products. However, the links with the existing leak are surely more than coincidental, and at the very least provides us with an intriguing glimpse into the thinking of the hardware engineers working on the Microsoft's next-gen console.GERMANTOWN, MD — Detectives with the Montgomery County Police are investigating the burglary of a Germantown residence that occurred early Sunday morning. During the burglary, the homeowner shot a 19-year-old male suspect who remains in serious condition with life-threatening injuries at a local hospital, police said.
At approximately 2:11 a.m. Saturday, officers from the 5th District responded to a burglary in progress at a home in the 11700 block of Tall Pines Drive in Germantown. Officers located a suspect in the backyard suffering from an apparent gunshot wound and they began life-saving measures while Fire and Rescue services was called, police said.
The preliminary investigation has revealed that the homeowner heard noises in the basement and believed his home was being burglarized. He armed himself with a handgun and went to investigate, police said. The man encountered two unknown suspects in the basement of his home.
One of the suspects threatened to kill the homeowner, and the homeowner discharged a firearm twice at that suspect and allegedly struck him with one of the rounds, police said. The suspect is currently being treated at a local trauma center for life threatening injuries.
The description of the second suspect remains unconfirmed.
This remains an ongoing investigation. Detectives are urging anyone with information about this event to contact the Major Crimes Division at 240-773-5070.
Patch File PhotoFrom “The Man Show” to “Crank Yankers” to his record-setting podcast, Adam Carolla has been an outspoken purveyor of he-man entertainment for almost two decades. His new book, “Not Taco Bell Material,” offers up tales not of Hollywood, but the far-less-fabulous suburb North Hollywood, where Carolla grew up impoverished, both financially and emotionally.
Before he met Jimmy Kimmel while working at an LA radio station and hosted the world’s most popular podcast — “The Adam Carolla Show” passed more than 60 million downloads last year — Carolla, 48, worked construction, coached boxing, taught at traffic school and cleaned carpets. He spoke to The Post about Tom Cruise’s cupcakes, funny women and why his parents never saw him on TV.
So Tom Cruise came to Jimmy Kimmel’s house to watch football when you were there. He brought cupcakes and his mom. Did anything about him seem like a normal guy?
He comes across as a guy who’s battling to be normal, like he’s from another planet, and he’s studying guys and saying, “What would a guy do in this situation?” Then he mimics the behavior of an American male in front of other American males. I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but he comes across as uncomfortable in his own skin.
Your stories about Kimmel make him seem pretty aggressive. He actually fought one of his writers because the guy wouldn’t take a lap dance at his own bachelor party?
We tried to hold the guy down, in a rough-housing way. He wasn’t throwing punches. But Jimmy is that way. When we were shooting “The Man Show,” if some drunk guy in the audience yelled something out, Jimmy would be like, “C’mon, we’re trying to tape.” But if that guy yelled out again, Jimmy would head out to the audience looking for him.
Is Jimmy a good fighter?
No. But that doesn’t stop him.
While working construction in LA, you once had to talk down a guy with a gun. What went through your mind?
If you don’t have that much to lose, you don’t really worry about that. Now that I have a nice house and some cars and a family, the notion of being in a situation like that is horrifying. But if you’re heading downtown to get some free government cheese, then going back to watch your black-and-white TV, and you’re an alcoholic, you don’t wanna get shot, but it’s almost a lateral move.
Is your relationship with your mom really as bad as you say?
I don’t have anything against my mom, but my family has no emotional connection to each other. Nobody hangs out, barbecues, goes to Pee-Wee [football] games. They’re not bad people, they’re just broken people.
I play with my kids [six-year-old twins Natalia and Santino] in the pool, I hug them, I dance with them. That’s not how my family is. I had two shows on basic cable for years, and my mom, at a birthday dinner, said to everyone at the table, “Can anyone give me one good reason why I should get cable?” She wasn’t trying to be a bad parent. She meant it.
The lesson you learned from a sexual harassment seminar was “Don’t hire chicks.” Do you hate working with women?
No. But they make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.”
The “are women funny” debate has grown very contentious. You’re not worried about reactions to this?
I don’t care. When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds. When it comes to comedy, of course there’s Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin — super-funny chicks. But if you’re playing the odds? No.
If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they’d be off TV. They’re not funny enough for dudes. What if Roseanne Barr was a dude? Think we’d know who she was? Honestly.Alberta saw the largest drop in average weekly earnings but still leads the country in that economic indicator, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.
Earnings in Alberta fell 3.4 per cent to $1,118.48 in February, continuing a downward trend that began last summer.
That still puts Alberta ahead of every other province, where average weekly earnings ranged from $808.83 in Prince Edward Island to $1,012.09 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Click on this interactive graph to see average earnings and how they changed, by province:
The Canadian average rose 0.4 per cent in February to $953.75.
Aside from Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador was the only province to see earnings decline in February, but they only fell by 0.4 per cent.
Statistics Canada said Alberta's marked decline was mainly due to "employment losses in the high-earning mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector."
"Earnings in the professional, scientific and technical services sector also declined markedly compared with February 2015," the federal agency noted.
The number of payroll employees in Alberta's mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sectors fell to 104,472, the lowest level since June 2010.__1859: __Egyptian workers under French engineers begin construction of the Suez Canal.
The canal was not the first to link the Mediterranean and Red seas. Egyptian pharaohs, Persian kings and Roman emperors had built small canals linking the Nile to the Great Bitter Lake and then from the lake to the Gulf of Suez. These canals periodically fell into disrepair and were eventually abandoned when Europeans first navigated around Africa.
Emperor Napoleon of France wanted to build a canal at the start of the 19th century, but his surveyors told him that the Red Sea was 30 feet higher than the Mediterranean, and that a canal would flood the Nile Delta and cause untold damage to the Mediterranean. Environmental concerns aside, they were wrong. The two seas are at the same elevation, and the surveyors, working in wartime conditions, had made too few observations and had not made them well. Napoleon scrapped the idea.
Napoleon met his Waterloo, but the idea didn't go away. A canal across the Isthmus of Suez could cut the ocean distance from Europe to Asia by up to 6,000 miles, and it could be built at sea level, without any locks. So Viscount (and diplomat) Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps founded La Campagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez (Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal) in 1858 to dig the ditch.
Amid allegations of slave labor (from the British, who didn't like the idea of the French controlling the shortest route to India), workers removed more than 2,600 million cubic feet of earth – 600 million from dry land and another 2 billion dredged from underwater. Of the 1.5 million Egyptians who worked on the canal, as many as 125,000 died of cholera. Construction was interrupted several times by economic and political problems.
The total original cost of building the canal was about $100 million (about $1.5 billion in today's money), about twice the engineers' estimate. However, about three times that sum has since been expended on repairs and improvements.
The canal opened Nov. 17, 1869, with a procession of international royalty. The partying went on for two weeks.
The effect on world trade was immediate, shortening the route between Europe and India, the East Indies, China, Japan and Australia. The canal opening came just six months after completion of the U.S. transcontinental railroad. The two wonders shrunk the globe rapidly, together enabling Jules Verne's fictional adventurers of 1873 to travel Around the World in 80 Days.
Today, the 101-mile canal is the longest in the world without locks. It's been widened from 72 feet to 200 feet. It was originally navigable to ships of 26-foot draft; now it accommodates up to 62 feet, with plans to deepen it another 10 feet by 2010 to allow supertankers to transit the canal.
The Suez Canal has just a single shipping lane for more than half its length, with several wide bays to allow northbound and southbound ships to pass. Ships take on local pilots and travel in escorted convoys.
About 15,000 ships make the 11-to-16-hour passage through the canal each year. The Egyptian government says the canal bears about 7 percent of world shipping.
De Lesseps' success of building a sea-level canal through the desert landed him the job of building the Panama Canal, but he met his own Waterloo there: The French effort to cross that isthmus was defeated by mountains and malaria.
Source: VariousA group of West Roxbury residents and students from Hampshire College and UMass Amherst briefly blocked construction of a trench up Washington Street for a high-pressure natural-gas pipeline this morning before they were cuffed, put in prisoner wagons and taken down to District E-5 for booking.
It's the third such protest against the pipeline and the largest number of protesters arrested at one time.
Starting shortly after 9 a.m., the 12 separated from about 20 other protesters on the sidewalks and walked to the trench where the 750-psi pipeline will go, on its way from Dedham to a transfer station at Grove and Centre streets, where it will connect to National Grid's local distribution system. Protesters say the pipeline will be a menace to the neighborhood, especially the transfer station.
They held hands and chanted and sang against the pipeline and against Spectra, the company building it, for about 15 minutes. Workers stopped extending the trench from the inbound side to the outbound side of Washington, just past Rockland Towers.
Then, a protest organizer who had just talked to E-5 Captain Joseph Gillespie told them police said they could only continue protesting until a second prisoner wagon showed up to join the one already stationed there. About ten minutes later, it arrived, and Gillespie gave the protesters one last chance to disperse.
When they didn't, an officer got out a cache of plastic cuffs and the protesters were put in them, taken to the wagons, pat frisked and loaded into the wagons to await their ride to the local police station.
As the last of them was put in a wagon and the doors shut, supporters chanted "We'll be back! We'll be back!"
Before the work stoppage:This article is from the archive of our partner.
John McCain's latest battle against reality and U.S. foreign policy arrived on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, with the Senator claiming that references to al Qaeda should have remained on unclassified CIA talking points used by would-be Secretary of State Susan Rice on those Sunday talk-show interviews that got him so upset in the first place. As we've pointed out, McCain and his posse of Senators Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte had previously been harping on the fact that Rice deviated from her talking points and that Rice blamed the "Innocence of Muslims" video for the Benghazi attack. In this word-for-word comparison between the CIA points and her talk-show transcripts, you can see that Rice didn't deviate so much as blame the reaction in Libya on the reaction in Cairo (which was spurred by the video).
Which means, yes, today the battle has shifted slightly and McCain is now complaining about the actual CIA talking point, and the al Qaeda references. McCain's office released the following statement:
I am somewhat surprised and frustrated to read reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was responsible for removing references to Al-Qaeda from the unclassified talking points about the Benghazi attack that Ambassador Susan Rice and other officials used in the early days after September 11, 2012...
(You can read the whole thing here.)Panasonic will embed Firefox OS in its 2015 smart TVs, and Matchstick announced a Chromecast-like Firefox OS platform, to be used by Philips/AOC and TCL.
Aside from some modest success for Mozilla’s Firefox OS, Mobile Linux operating systems not called Android haven’t gotten very far on smartphones. Yet an assortment of Linux-based OSes — of which Android is but one — increasingly dominate the smart TV market.
The latest player to jump into the Linux-based TV fray is Panasonic. This week at CES 2015, Panasonic followed up on its CES 2014 announcement that it was collaborating with Mozilla on a Firefox OS based smart TV with new plans to do just that with four new Life+Screen Smart TVs to be released this Spring.
Also at CES, Matchstick, which recently introduced a Chromecast-like, Firefox OS based Matchstick dongle for only $25, announced an open source “Flint” hardware video-streaming platform, based on the Matchstick design. Philips/AOC and TCL will be early Flint OEMs (see farther below).
Diverging Linux-based TV stacks
Before we get to the Firefox OS news, here are a few other recent Linux-based smart TV news tidbits:
Tizen TV UI Tizen-based TV — Samsung announced last week that it will use Tizen Linux in all of its 2015 Smart TVs, which will feature WiDi and BLE for content sharing and mirroring from mobile devices. The Linux-based Tizen OS project has long had a smart TV profile under development, and it seemed only a matter of time before Samsung would put Tizen to work in its popular smart TVs.
WebOS 2.0 TV UI WebOS 2.0-based TV — Prior to CES, LG announced it would double down on last year’s launch of WebOS-based smart TVs with new 4K models running WebOS 2.0. LG’s first-generation WebOS based Smart TV was one of the hits of CES 2014, and subsequently garnered rave reviews. Now, at CES 2015, the company is previewing a new line of 4K ULTRA HD TVs that run an updated 2.0 version of the Linux-based OS.
Android TV UI Android TV — Google announced in a blog post that Sony, Sharp, and TP Vision (Philips) will ship Android TV devices this year. Google offered no details, but in a separate post the company informed Google TV developers that only an unnamed “small subset” of Google TV devices will be upgraded to the Android 5.0 based Android TV. Google also noted Razer’s announcement of an Android TV based game console called Razer Forge TV. This joins Google’s Intel Atom-based Nexus Player set-top running Android TV, built by Asus.
Roku TV UI Roku TV — Also at CES this week, Roku said TCL will ship the first 4K TV with Roku’s Linux-based media player technology inside. The company also announced that standard HD Roku smart TVs will soon ship from Haier and the Best Buy brand, Insignia. At last year’s CES show, Roku announced plans to have its media player technology baked into smart TVs, starting with TCL and Hisense models, both of which began shipping this fall.
Many if not most so-called smart TVs in recent years have run on embedded Linux operating systems, but the platforms have been very limited. Clearly, TV vendors are seeing the need for more advanced Linux or Android platforms to enable apps, as well as more interaction with mobile devices. Several vendors, including Samsung, also appear to be positioning smart TVs as a potential smart hub for home automation, although this may be more of a story for next year’s CES.
Matchstick spins an open hardware platform
Matchstick, a company launched by Mozilla developers, quickly achieved its Kickstarter funding goal for a Firefox OS-based media player dongle in October, and ended up with $470,310. This open-spec HDMI stick, for which some backers paid as little as $18, will ship to backers in February, at which point it goes on sale for $25.
Matchstick (left) compared to Chromecast
(click images to enlarge)
Matchstick’s “Powered by Flint” platform promo
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Flint offers Chromecast-like content flinging
(click images to enlarge)
Firefox OS TV user interface
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Firefox OS TV featured content
At CES, Matchstick announced an open source hardware and software developer platform based on Matchstick technology called Flint. Philips/AOC and TCL will distribute an estimated one million Flint-enabled products including TV’s, monitors, and set-top boxes in 2015 alone, says the company.Like the Matchstick, Flint offers Google Chromecast-like content casting — in this case called “flinging” — using the same DIAL (DIscovery And Launch) media-casting protocol as the Chromecast. You can similarly fling content to the device from Android, iOS, and Firefox OS phones, as well as from any device running Chrome or Firefox browsers.We did not see any hardware details on Flint, but according to this GigaOm story, the reference design uses the same dual-core Rockchip RK3066 SoC, which are already being used in Philips and TCL devices, making porting easier.Presumably, Flint devices will also be able to run hundreds of apps available in the Mozilla Firefox OS store. The Matchstick will ship with Netflix, HBO Go, Pandora, ABC, ESPN, Vudu, YouTube, Spotify, and others. According to GigaOM, the TCL and Philips devices, which could ship as early as the second quarter, will also run their own native apps.“The overwhelming response to Matchstick signified that the market was ready for an open source streaming solution,” stated Jack Chang, US General Manager of Matchstick. “Inspired by Mozilla’s Firefox OS, Flint leads the way to transform how Internet video can be organized, managed and consumed.”
Panasonic’s Life+Screen (described below) and Matchstick’s Flint aren’t the only pathways to Firefox OS TV. In October, Mozilla released an experimental PiFxOS build of Firefox OS optimized for the Raspberry Pi, with an early focus on robotics and media players.
Panasonic’s Life+Screen Smart TVs
Panasonic says it will offer open source, HTML5-oriented Firefox OS in four new Life+Screen Smart TVs, starting this Spring with the CX850, CX800, CX650, and CX600 Series. Some earlier Panasonic Viera TVs had limited smart TV functionality, with access to the Internet, but these are Panasonic’s first TVs that truly deserve the “smart” label.
CX850 4K UHD TV with Firefox OS
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Pansonic’s customized Firefox OS TV user interface
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Firefox OS will provide a simpler, faster, more customizable interface, as well as “Beyond Smart Features,” says Panasonic. The platform will enable viewers to “get to their favorite content, channels, devices, or applications as quickly as they can with as little hassle as possible,” says the company.Panasonic has collaborated with Mozilla on a customizable UI that lets users access preferred content, HTML5 applications, and content from connected devices, says Panasonic. Users can combine access to channels, devices, and applications into a single gateway for quick access, and use a “Pin” function to bookmark apps, web pages, and paired connected devices. You can send photos, videos or other content to the TV from any smartphone, tablet, or computer which has a Firefox browser, Firefox OS, “or other compatible applications,” as long as they devices are using the same WiFi network, says Panasonic.
Developers can use Firefox WebAPIs to enable more complex connected experiences across platforms. For the first time, Firefox OS will allow TV on-screen notifications from applications, and, in the future, from compatible connected appliances, says Panasonic.
The CX850 Series Life+Screen TV model will feature a Voice Assistant Pro function that performs voice commands spoken directly to the TV without using a remote, says Panasonic. Commands are said to include changing channels and searching for content.
All the models will offer a Xumo Guide service that enables content discovery from multiple sources. Xumo Guide can provide content recommendations based on user’s viewing history. Users can also search for specific titles across multiple apps or browse content by genre from various VOD services, says the company.
The YouTube video below shows some aspects and features of Firefox OS TV.
Firefox OS video, including TV user interface demo
“Firefox OS powering everything from smartphones to a new category of devices like TVs and streaming devices proves the flexibility and power of the Web as the platform,” stated Andreas Gal, Mozilla CTO. “We’re excited about the collaboration with Panasonic because it offers consumer and developers a customized and easy to use way to take their Firefox Web experience across devices.”
Further information
The Panasonic Life+Screen Smart TVs with Firefox OS will ship this Spring. More information can be found at the Panasonic CES website, and should eventually appear on the Panasonic USA website.
The Flint platform appears to be available now. More information can be found in the Matchstick Flint announcement, as well as a GitHub page which currently stands in for a more complete, upcoming OpenFlint.org developer site.You may have noticed some changes today on NJ.com, namely, bylines — some familiar, some new — attributed to NJ Advance Media.
That's because, beginning today, many reporters, photographers and videographers whose work appears on NJ.com have become part of a new company. NJ Advance Media now provides news, sports and entertainment content to both NJ.com and The Star-Ledger and other newspapers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The creation of the company was announced in early April and is designed to expand and improve the news and information products available to New Jerseyans. NJ Advance Media began providing sales and marketing services for NJ.com and The Star-Ledger in June; production of content by NJ Advance Media begins today.
As our readers and advertisers use digital media more than ever, we recognize our future as a news-and-information company will become increasingly digitally focused and that it will require significant investment. NJ Advance Media now has more full-time reporters, columnists and photojournalists working for us across the Garden State than any affiliated company did in April when we announced the formation of the new company. We anticipate producing more real-time statewide and local news than ever before.
While NJ Advance Media content will appear on NJ.com and in The Star-Ledger, these and other affiliated properties — including The Times of Trenton, The South Jersey Times, The Hunterdon Democrat and The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. — will continue operating local newsrooms dedicated to providing coverage of their communities with no changes to publishing schedules.
NJ.com is New Jersey's most popular local news and information website, according to Scarborough Research. NJ Advance Media's digital-first approach is designed to support NJ.com's aggressive growth having received more than 13 million unique visitors in August.Hussain Rwidy speaking at a demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah two weeks after the murder of his son, Hussam. (Jillian Kestler-D’Amours)
“They took me to see the investigator who worked on the case. He called me inside [his office], alone, and asked me, ‘Are you strong?’” I said to him, ‘I want my son,’” Rwidy told The Electronic Intifada.
“He said directly to me, ‘Your son died …’” Rwidy paused, then continued. “ ‘Your son died, and there are two people arrested.’”
Twenty-four-year-old Hussam Rwidy was killed in the early morning hours of Friday, 11 February, on H |
it.
"I’ve brought it up with leadership," he said. "They understand the argument. I just need to get more congressmen weighing in and saying, 'Hey, leadership, this is an issue that a number of us have.'"
Standalone legislation to reform the provision has been introduced over the past several years but has never received a hearing or a vote. Similar bills are expected to be introduced in the 115th Congress in the coming weeks, and could be used as a way to demonstrate support for gutting 280E as part of the broader tax bill.
"So, as we get that number up and as we get more structures from around the country weighing in, I think it becomes more doable," Norquist said, referring to the growing number of states enacting and implementing marijuana reforms. "It’s going to be fixed in the next few years. I’d rather have it fixed in the next year."
Norquist, who once famously said that he wants to shrink the federal government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub," also discussed looming uncertainty over whether the Department of Justice would continue the Obama administration's policy of generally respecting state marijuana laws, and the industry's lack of access to banking services.
In 2009, Norquist joined a sign-on letter urging Congress to pass legislation letting states legalize marijuana without interference. Such a policy "would free federal law enforcement resources for the more urgent tasks of thwarting, apprehending, and prosecuting international terrorists or murderers," the letter said. "As a matter of States' rights, regulating marijuana and alcohol seem indistinguishable; and, alcohol policy has been entrusted to the States since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.”Story highlights The email was titled, "Friendly advice. No mercy."
The exchange is one of tens of thousands of emails stolen from Podesta's Gmail account and published by WikiLeaks
Washington (CNN) A hacked email exchange apparently shows Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and a Democratic operative discussing the need to crush Vermont Sen. Bernie Sander's insurgent primary bid.
On February 21, Washington lobbyist Joel Johnson, a seasoned Democratic activist who was a top White House adviser in President Bill Clinton's second term, emailed Podesta, saying Sanders "needs to be ground to a pulp."
He titled the email, "Friendly advice. No mercy."
"We can't start believing our own primary bulls---," Johnson wrote in the email. "This is no time to run the general. Crush him as hard as you can. Other than that, hope all is well and congrats on Nevada!"
Read MoreJapanese graves and cemeteries are a bit different from what most westerners are used to. Japanese gravestones are just big blocks in a cemetery, sometimes with additional blocks, or like holders for things, and a bunch of other strange stuff that I never really understood or took the time to look into.
I always wondered – what does all of this signify? Is there something buried underneath them? Do they channel psychic energy to allow one to communicate with the dead? Well in today's post, we're going to figure that all out. So pack your bags, kids – we're going on Japanese funeral adventure.
Your Japanese Funeral Starts With Cremation
Compared to the majority of western nations, Japan usually cremates their dead instead of putting them in the ground. Japan has one of the highest cremation rates in the world, reporting a cremation rate of 99.85% in 2008 (compared to the USA at ~40%).
Since cremated remains end up much smaller in size than the usual corpse, they can be shared between surviving relatives. Have you ever tried sharing a corpse before? It's not pretty. Those who don't wish to keep the ashes at home must buy an expensive plot of land and have a grave erected at further expense. Or they can just dump the ashes out, but that's just plain rude. Whereas many old graves in Japan are simply memorial stones, the modern grave is more geared towards the storage of ashes.
In a Japanese style cremation, the coffin is placed on a tray in the crematorium. The family then witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber, scarring small children for life. The cremation time varies based on the size of the body, so the family leaves and then returns once the cremation has been completed. Apparently it takes about an hour and a half to cremate an adult body, 45 minutes for a child, and 15 minutes for a stillborn. Not something I really want to be thinking about, but if you were curious, there you go.
After the appropriate time, the relatives go back and pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to an urn using large chopsticks or metal picks. Sometimes, two relatives will hold the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks in order to move it. This is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks.
At all other times, two people holding anything with chopsticks at the same time will remind everyone of the funeral of a close relative causing everyone to break down and cry for hours on end. This is considered a major social faux pas in Japan.
To ensure the eternal comfort of the deceased, the bones of the feet are placed first, and the bones of the head placed last. Wouldn't wanna be upside-down for all eternity, now would ya?
In some cases, the ashes may be divided among more than one urn. For example, some ashes will go to a family grave, some to the temple or a company grave, and some might even go into outer space!
Many companies have graves in the largest graveyard in Japan, Okunoin. These graves are for former company employees and their relatives, and often feature gravestones that are related to the companies' business. For example, the coffee company UCC provides a gravestone in the shape of a coffee cup.
The Typical Japanese Grave
A typical Japanese grave is usually a family grave consisting of a stone monument with a place for flowers, a place for incense, water in front of the monument, and a chamber or crypt underneath for the ashes. You'll often see sprigs of Japanese star anise in the vases. At the bottom is a sealed chamber for the ashes which are held in ceramic pots. The front of the stone pillar generally states what family the grave belongs to.
The names of the family members are sometimes carved all at once on one side of the topmost stone, and the names of those still living are colored red. The red is then removed when that person dies. The reason for this is largely economical with it being cheaper to have the names all carved on at the same time, however this practice is less frequent these days.
But that doesn't make it any less creepy. I wouldn't prefer to have my name on a grave, especially in red letters, making it stand out and everything. It can also be seen as a sign that those left behind are waiting to follow their family member (spouse, etc) into the grave. Romantic or creepy? You be the judge.
Other grave features include a family crest, and many graves also have stone lanterns in front of them. Some may have a post box where you can leave your business card to show that you've paid your respects in case anyone is keeping tabs on you, and there might even be a stone slab with a genealogy of the family carved on it too.
Fun Facts and the Future of Japanese Graves
Gravestones can also be used to judge the relative intensity of earthquakes. If the topmost stone has fallen off and is lying broken in pieces, you'll know it must've been a big one. Although if you were around the area when the earthquake happened, I'm sure you'd already know that.
The high prices of Japanese funeral plots, costing on average ¥2,000,000 (~$24,000), have led to a new service of "Grave Apartments", where a locker-sized grave can be purchased for about ¥400,000 (~$5,000). Some of these may even include a touch screen showing a picture of the deceased, messages, a family tree, and other information. Behold! The graves of the future.
Expanding on this idea, a Japanese gravestone maker has developed gravestones with bar codes embedded in them. When visitors come to the site of their dead relative, they can take a picture of the tag with their cell phone, and it'll show all the details of the deceased's death and also logs how many times the tag was scanned, so visitors know when other family members last visited the grave site.
These are also other places where the cremated remains of your loved ones are stored in a fancy sealed box kept in an underground vault from the future. When you wish to access the box, you scan an RFID card which then tells the system to bring up your box and place it in the prayer area for you to pay your respects.
There have also been a number of cases where the ashes of deceased persons have been stolen from graves for various reasons. The ashes of famous cartoonist Machiko Hasegawa and of the wife of real estate chairman Takichi Hayasaka were stolen for ransom.
The ashes of famous novelist Yukio Mishima were stolen in 1971 and the ashes of novelist Naoya Shiga were stolen in 1980. The ashes of the wife of the baseball player Sadaharu Oh went missing in December 2002. And this is one downside of cremation – the remains are much easier to pilfer.Ugh. Seriously?
Jay Seaton, publisher of the Grand Junction, Colorado Daily Sentinel, is angry. He's angry because State Senator Ray Scott derided a story in the Sentinel as "fake news."
The origin of the spat is a Daily Sentinel column urging Scott to move a public records bill forward and suggesting that he was holding it up. Scott responded with a tweet saying ""We have our own fake news in Grand Junction," linking to a longer statement:
The very liberal GJ Sentinel is attempting to apply pressure for me to move a bill. They have no facts, as usual, and tried to call me out on SB 40 know as the CORA bill. They haven't contacted me to get any information on why the bill has been delayed but choose to run a fake news story demanding I run the bill. You may have a barrel of ink but it just splashed in your face. @[email protected]
Rather than take this for the empty non-specific bluster that it is, Jay Seaton freaked out:
True, this term has become part of the national vernacular as some kind of general pejorative, but I take this allegation from Sen. Scott very seriously. It attacks the very reason for our existence..... It is important for newspapers to have thick skins, to absorb criticism when it comes our way and not respond to every slight, real or perceived. That said, there is a difference between criticism of a news story, editorial stance or perceived bias and what Sen. Scott has done. His tweet is patently, provably false. Worse, he made his false statement knowingly for the purpose of diminishing the only real asset this newspaper has: its credibility. Imagine the backlash if this newspaper publicly assailed someone based on no facts and invented things out of thin air for the purposes of impugning their character. We could be sued — and we’d deserve it. I don’t think I can sit back and take this kind of attack from an elected official. We are brokers in facts. Words have real meaning in this business. Sen. Scott has defamed this company and me as its leader. To borrow a phrase from another famous Twitter user, I’ll see you in court.
Naturally, the ludicrous spectacle of nominal journalists threatening to sue politicians over criticism drew national attention, much of it simply awful and misleading on the relevant law:
If filed, legal experts said it would be the first suit of its kind, potentially setting a legal definition for what is considered fake news and what is not.
DAMMIT NPR THAT'S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.
Only provably false statements of fact can be defamatory. "Fake news" is not a provably false statement of fact — as Jay Seaton admits in the very column in which he threatens to sue over it, it's a general pejorative. Moreover, whether a statement is factual is always analyzed in the statement's full context. Here, the full statement of Sen. Scott's tweet made it clear he was deriding the story for speculating about his reasons for delaying the bill without full information, not claiming that the Daily Sentinel was fabricating a fact. In other words, the context made it even clearer that the term "fake news" was being used to offer an opinion about the paper's speculation and bias, not to accuse it of falsifying a specific fact. Senator Scott's insult-laden opinion was about politics, at the very core of First Amendment protection. And of course Senator Scott was trying to diminish the paper's credibility. That's how political arguments work. But that doesn't transform protected rhetoric into a provably false statement of fact.
Jay Seaton and the Daily Sentinel are being irresponsible and reckless. Journalists should not encourage misunderstandings of core First Amendment concepts, and absolutely should not be encouraging Americans to think that they can sue over political insults and opinions. And Seaton, perhaps enjoying the spotlight, keeps keeps doubling down:
"I'm accustomed to all kinds of criticism for what we do; that comes with the job," he said. But Seaton says the term "fake news" is "an attempt to undermine the speaker. That's where this bumps up against the First Amendment. When you've got a government actor who doesn't like something he's seen and tries to diminish its credibility, then you've got real problems."
No, no, no. You may have political problems, but you do not have First Amendment problems. Criticism — even unfair criticism — is not censorship. It is not any sort of First Amendment violation.
Stop making things worse.
Last 5 posts by Ken White“So often when you’re thinking of a book, you remember its cover,” said Jeffrey C. Alexander, professor of cultural sociology at Yale. “It’s a way of drawing people through the visual into reading.”
In the bookstore, where a majority of sales still take place, covers play a crucial role. “If you have already passed that hurdle of having a customer be attracted to the cover, and then they pick up the book,” said Patricia Bostelman, vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble, “an enormous battle has been won.”
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But it’s a victory that will be harder to eke out if no one can tell whether you’re reading “War and Peace” or “Diamonds and Desire.”
Perhaps no other element of the book-making process receives as much input from as many different people as the jacket. First, a creative director comes up with an idea. (How about this image of an apple?) Then the book’s editor, author and agent have a look. (Can we enlarge the font size on the author’s name? And wasn’t an apple used for that book about vampires? This book isn’t about vampires.) The publisher of the imprint gets involved. (Vampires sell. I like the apple.) The sales force makes comments. (Isn’t there an economics angle? How about an apple with an orange inside? That’s worked before.) Even booksellers have an opinion. (What I really love on a cover is a pair of high heels.)
A good jacket is unlikely to save a bad book, of course. But in a crowded market, a striking cover is one advantage all authors and publishers want. To get a sense of the odds, in a random analysis of 1,000 business books released last year, Codex Group, a publishing consultant, found that only 62 sold more than 5,000 copies.
Even in the digital era, publishers believe that books need graphic representations — if only for the online marketing campaign. Regardless of the format, “they all seem to need what we know of as a cover to identify them,” said Chip Kidd, associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf. Mr. Kidd has designed more than 1,000 jackets for authors including Cormac McCarthy and James Ellroy.
The music industry went through a similar transition when digital music devices arrived, but it has pushed back by finding fresh ways to display CD cover art on the Web sites where the songs are bought and the iPod screens where they are played. Publishers have already had some experience tailoring book jackets for the digital world, since so many people now buy even their print copies online.
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“We often get requests to make the type bigger,” said Mario J. Pulice, creative director for the adult trade division of Little, Brown & Company. “Because when it’s on Amazon, you can’t read the author’s name.”
As publishers explore targeted advertising on Google and other search engines or social networking sites, they figure that a digital cover remains the best way to represent a book.
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Some readers expect makers of electronic devices to add functions that allow users to broadcast what they’re reading. “People like to show off what they’re doing and what they like,” said Maud Newton, a popular book blogger. “So eventually there will be a way for people to do that with e-readers.”
For now, many publishers are counting on the Facebook effect. “Before, you might see three people reading ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ on the subway,” said Clare Ferraro, president of Viking and Plume, imprints of Penguin Group USA. “Now you’re going to log onto Facebook and see that three of your friends are reading ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’ ”
Even avid online networkers rely on physical book covers in the real world. Heather E. Johnson, 32, who writes reviews on her blog, “Age 30+...A Lifetime of Books,” was recently at one of her son’s hockey games in Glen Burnie, a suburb of Baltimore, when she noticed a copy of Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” lying open on the bleachers.
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When a friend returned to claim it, Ms. Johnson asked for an opinion. “She said it was fabulous,” Ms. Johnson recalled. As soon as Ms. Johnson got home, she moved the title up her “to be read” list.
“I don’t know that I would start a conversation with someone about something they were reading on an e-reader,” Ms. Johnson added. “It might not be something that they want anyone to know that they’re reading.”
Some digital publishers suspect that one of the reasons romance and erotica titles are so popular in electronic editions is because e-readers are discreet.
Book jackets, though, still matter.
Holly Schmidt, president of Ravenous Romance, an e-book publisher of romance and erotica, said that in one case the publisher was offering an anthology of stories about older women and younger men. The first version featured a digital cover image of a winsome woman. It barely sold any copies. The publisher put a new cover up online — this time showing the bare, muscular torsos of three young men — and sales took off.
The new cover “took a book that was pretty much a loser,” Ms. Schmidt said, “and made it into a pretty strong seller.”Taylor Swift recently pulled all of her music, including her new album, 1989, the only album to go platinum this year, from Spotify, adding the music streaming service to the long list of breakups the country-turned-pop star has become famous for.
It seemed like a righteous move at first—depriving Spotify of her #1 album in solidarity with her fellow artists, and costing herself $6 million in the process. She said of the move: “...everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.” A bold stance on the integrity and the value of artistic works by a wildly successful celebrity.
But Billy Bragg is calling bullshit.
The outspoken British folk icon wrote a Facebook post today, dismissing Swift’s move as “nothing more than a corporate power play,” citing Swift’s move towards Google’s recently launched Music Key as the true motivator. “Google are going after Spotify and Taylor Swift has just chosen sides. That’s her prerogative as a savvy businesswoman – but please don’t try to sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers,” he said.
Read his full post below which will lead 1.3 million Tay Tay fans waiting on line to buy a pumpkin spice UGG boot to pull out their iPhones and search for “who the fuck is billy bragg,” ironically enough, on Google:
What a shame that Taylor Swift’s principled stand against those who would give her music away for free has turned out to be nothing more than a corporate power play. On pulling her music from Spotify recently, she made a big issue of the fact that the majority of the streaming service’s users listen to her tracks for nothing rather than signing up to the subscription service.
“I don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free” she said in a statement to Yahoo last week.
These worthy sentiments have been somewhat undermined by Swift making her new album and back catalogue available on Google’s new Music Key streaming service…..which also offers listeners a free service alongside a premium subscription tier.
Given that this year is the first to fail to produce a new million selling album, I can understand Taylor Swift wanting to maximise her opportunities with the new record – and it worked: she shifted 1.28m copies of 1989 in the first week of sale.
But she should just be honest with her fans and say “sorry, but Sergey Brin gave me a huge amount of money to be the headline name on the marquee for the launch of You Tube Music Key and so I’ve sold my soul to Google”.
If Ms Swift was truly concerned about perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free, she should be removing her material from You Tube, not cosying up to it. The de facto biggest streaming service in the world, with all the content available free, You Tube is the greatest threat to any commercially based streaming service.
You might ask yourself why Google are setting up a commercial streaming service that will ultimately have to compete with their own You Tube behemoth? My hunch is that they are following a ‘Starbucks strategy’: it doesn’t matter if your own coffee shops on every corner are competing with one another, so long as they ultimately put all of your rivals out of business.
Google are going after Spotify and Taylor Swift has just chosen sides. That’s her prerogative as a savvy businesswoman – but please don’t try to sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers.Hind Shoufani describes her feature-length documentary Trip Along Exodus, making its world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival on Friday, as “an homage to my dad, an ode to Palestine, an ode to the revolution, an ode to socialist thinking, a call to rebellion perhaps, a call to remembering who the enemy is and a portrait of a visionary, powerful man who was very much a tragic and broken figure by the end of his life.”
Trip Along Exodus (watch the trailer above) tells the story of Palestine’s struggle for liberation through the experience the director’s father, Dr. Elias Shoufani, who left a career in academia in the United States to join the underground Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut during its heyday in the early 1970s.
Hind didn’t know at the time about her father’s role in the Fatah party and his bitter opposition to its iconic and authoritarian leader, Yasser Arafat, eventually splintering from the organization and moving to Damascus.
“We had guns in the house and we had guns in the car and we had bodyguards stationed outside our house in Syria and they answered the phone when it rang and they answered the doorbell when it rang,” Hind recalled in an interview with The Electronic Intifada (listen to the interview via the player below).
“I was always told that he [my father] was a writer, if anybody should ask,” she said.
It wasn’t until she was a young adult that Hind understood “that my father had done something quite honorable and noble and very intense and at the same time, kind of shot himself in the foot.”
After the 1967 War and subsequent occupation, Dr. Elias Shoufani, who was born in a Galilee village in the late 1930s and carried an Israeli passport, abandoned both his tenured job at a US university and his American wife and dedicated himself to the liberation of Palestine.
“His whole worldview changed,” his daughter recalled.
In Lebanon, Dr. Shoufani worked at the Institute for Palestine Studies during the day and dedicated his evenings and weekends to the armed struggle. He married a Palestinian American woman also living in the country and had two daughters.
“He could have been a much more prominent writer had he stayed in academia and published in English in the States,” Hind said.
“But my father deep in his heart was a true socialist and a true leftist. And I think he was much more comfortable with the people in the camps in Syria and Lebanon and thought it was a much better use of his time to try and change from within.”
A scene from Trip Along Exodus.
After studying film at New York University, Hind said she felt compelled to capture her aging father’s story, which spans multiple eras of Palestinian history.
She began filming in 2008 and 2009, visiting her father in Damascus every couple of months.
“Slowly and surely I broke down Dad’s defenses, because in the beginning he was pretty much only interested in talking politics, and in a very formal way and dressed up in a suit and in a jacket and a shirt,” Hind recalled. “Eventually a couple of years into it, he relaxed a lot and started telling me more personal things and crying more on camera and digging up the past emotionally.”
“So I just started taping it and it developed from there into a long, poetic story which took on a life of its own,” she said, adding that “it brought me together with my father.”
“It changed my perception of who he was. I think it changed his perception of me as a woman, and we both gained a lot of respect for each other in the process,” she recalled.
Those familiar with the aesthetics of Hind’s previous work will find her characteristic glitter and kitschy color layered into this film.
“I didn’t want the documentary to be a straightforward, serious political film. I wanted it to look like one of my poems,” she said.
A screenshot from Trip Along Exodus.
She worked with a wealth of archive footage including 8mm video, VHS and Betamax, some of it found in her father’s closet.
“You should see the Betamax stuff, it’s so trippy,” Hind said. “Because the film is so degraded … the Betamax is neon pink and neon green and neon blue. There’s these long scenes of fighters and fedayeen running around Syria and Lebanon in the camps and marches and parades and lectures and speeches and festivals and the quality of the footage is kind of degraded but also very colorful.”
Contemporary events also made their impact on the film. The war in Syria broke out, separating Hind from her father once again.
“All of the sudden my relationship with my father tremendously changed yet again because I couldn’t go to Syria, I was not allowed,” Hind said. “He forbade me to go to Syria and even in terms of paperwork, I wasn’t going to be allowed back into the country — I’m a writer and a journalist and they wouldn’t let me in.”
The father and daughter’s phone calls during this separation became another layer in the film.
“The structure of the film goes back and forth, so you never know where you are in time. You’re always moving along through a story but it goes back and forth a lot — it’s not chronological at all,” Hind said.
“I felt like it should work like your memory works, because your memory is never really chronological.”
Hind hopes the film will be shown around the world after its debut in Dubai.
“I worry that the West will think it’s too anti-Western and that the Arabs will think it’s too anti-Arab, I don’t know, we’ll see,” she said.
“I attempted to be honest and attempted to be brave,” Hind added. “I know this is nothing compared to the people who are actually on the front lines and people who are living in the war zones. But I’m a writer-filmmaker and I hope through my writing and my filmmaking, that I can be a part of the incredible cultural tapestry that is the Palestinian heritage.”
Trip Along Exodus will be screened at the Dubai International Film Festival on 12 and 15 December. All images courtesy of Hind Shoufani.Weippe Prairie is a "beautiful upland prairie field of about nine by twenty miles of open farmland bordered by pine forests" at 3,000 feet elevation in Clearwater County, Idaho, at Weippe, Idaho.[3] Camas flowers grow well there, and attracted native gatherers of the camas roots. It is the location in Idaho where the Lewis and Clark Expedition emerged from crossing the Bitterroot Mountains on the Lolo Trail and first met the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans.
The field is now part of Nez Perce National Historical Park.
Camassia quamash) Indian Camas (
Lewis and Sacajawea on the Columbia River later in 1805, wearing buckskins
On September 20, 1805 the first members of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, including Clark himself, emerged starving and weak onto the Weippe Prairie.[3] There they encountered the Nez Perce, who were attracted to the area by the abundant hunting, as well as the fields of camas flowers, whose roots were a staple of their diet. The Nez Perce "had never before seen white men", and "proved to be the most helpful of the tribes which the explorers encountered in their travels".[4] By September 22, 1805, the entire expedition made it to Weippe Prairie. Lewis and Clark met many of the Nez Perce chiefs. One of them, Red Bear, gave them dressed buckskins. Lewis and Clark reciprocated with presents of "beads and a few other articles". The Nez Perce "later found the white man's gifts to be cheap."[5]
The Nez Perce purportedly were predisposed to be friendly to the white explorers due to the positive stories told by a young woman of their tribe who had been stolen and sold into slavery, eventually sold to and lived with white people, and then returned to the Nez Perce. This woman, named Watkuweis (meaning "returned from a faraway country"), when hearing of the arrival of Lewis and Clark, pleaded that they not be harmed. Her tales of the kindness she had experienced with the white people reportedly convinced the Nez Perce to offer friendship to the explorers.[5] The Nez Perce provided camas root cakes and other food, helped them build canoes for their continued westward journey and mapped out the water route the expedition would follow. The expedition cached some materials there, and found the caches untouched when they returned in spring 1806. They also left the expedition's horses. The Nez Perce were divided about returning the horses, but the Corps eventually regained most of them. Upon their return in 1806, they spent an extended time from May to late June with the Nez Perce, due to the late spring in the Bitterroot Mountains.
View southwest from Weippe, Idaho, toward site of westernmost Nez Perce 1805 village
NHL Plaque overlooking site of western 1805 Nez Perce village
The part of Weippe Prairie most associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition, covered with camas and close to the town of Weippe, Idaho, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.[2][3] It is one of 38 scattered sites covered by the Nez Perce National Historical Park which interprets the site.[3] The name Weippe, pronounced WEE-ipe,[6] is derived from a Nez-Perce name whose meaning has been variously defined as a "very old place" or as referring to a spring of water or the camas grounds. A literal translation has not been found.[7]
"This national historic landmark is also associated with the 1877 Nez Perce War; the nontreaty bands held a council on this prairie following the Clearwater Battle."[8]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:The synthesizer that started it all...The Moog System Modular Synthesizer, represented here by the widely-known 55 model.
In 1964, Dr. Robert Moog showed the first of his modular synthesizers to the world, and over the next few years transformed the emerging world of electronic music synthesis by taking a keyboard-based approach to the controlled manipulation of electronic sounds. The Moog 55 and subsequent models made their way into universities, concert stages, and recording studios around the world.
In a modular synthesizer, various electronic components such as voltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers, filters, and envelopes are "patched" together in various ways by hardware cables, allowing the composer or player to a world of new sonic possibilities. Since the instrument is modular, various components can be swapped out, replaced, or upgraded to suit the needs of the musician.
This Lego-ified version of the Moog 55 has swappable black panels full of components, dials, and audio jacks that can be connected in various ways. Obviously, the elements are only meant to suggest the qualities of the various modular components, and the owner of this set could customize the cabling and dial and jack placement to their heart's content.Beijing (CNN) Native to a remote region of China, this tiny mammal, known as the Ili pika, doesn't know it's a member of an endangered species -- and neither do most people.
Li discovered the pika, formally known as Ochotona iliensis, in 1983 and named it after his hometown, Ili.
Last July, Li spotted and photographed the elusive creature for the first time since the early 1990s. He estimates its numbers have declined by almost 70% since its discovery.
"I discovered the species, and I watched as it became endangered," he told CNN.
"If it becomes extinct in front of me, I'll feel so guilty."
In 2008, the animal was listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature but there's no official organization or team dedicated studying or protecting it, according to Li.
Shrinking habitat
The Ili pika photographed by Li Weidong in July 2014.
The mammal, only 20 centimeters long, lives on sloping bare rock faces and feeds on grasses at high elevations. Li says the pika's habitat has been affected by global warming.
Due to rising temperatures, glaciers have receded and the altitude of permanent snow has risen in the Tianshan mountains, forcing the pikas to gradually retreat to mountain tops, Li said.
Ili pikas were originally found at elevations between 3,200 to 3,400 meters, he said. Now they have retreated to elevations of 4,100 meters.
"They have nowhere else to retreat," he added.
It's also a solitary animal and is not as vocal as other pika species, so if predators are near, Ili pikas are not able to alert each other, Li said.
Disease may also be a factor in its decline.
Empty handed
In 1983, when Li first came across the mammal, nobody knew what it was. Two years later, Li found another two and it was declared a new species.
In the decade following, Li and his colleagues conducted a number of studies, including a census at 14 different sites.
The pika may have inspired the famous Pokemon character, Pikachu.
However, in 1992, Li left Ili to work with Xinjiang Academy of Environmental Protection in the regional capital Urumqi.
No studies were conducted on Ili pika in the following decade. No one saw the pika, either.
In 2002 and 2003, Li, with a team of volunteers, conducted a fresh census. Despite spending 37 days searching the mountains for the pikas on seven separate trips, they came up empty handed.
However, by analyzing droppings and snow tracks, Li, along with Arizona State University biologist Andrew Smith, was able to conclude that the Ili pika population had seen a dramatic decline. Together they calculated that there might be 2,000 mature animals, down from 2,900 in the early 1990s.
The research, published in 2005, recommended that the animal should be listed as endangered.
'Magic rabbit'
In 2007, Li retired early to throw himself into searching for the pika.
Scientist Li Weidong points to where he and his team spotted the Ili pika in July 2014.
Last year, he organized a group of 20 volunteers to conduct another survey with infrared cameras.
This time, on the second day of the field trip, they finally spotted a pika, who jumped and stepped over Li's feet while he was trying to photograph it. The volunteers dubbed it a "magic rabbit."
They concluded that there were fewer than 1,000 Ili pikas, said Li.
"This tiny species could be extinct any time," he said. "They don't exist in the sites where they used to be anymore."
Li funds the research with himself, along with donations and occasional grants from organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature
He says he has spent more than $32,000 of his own money over the past three decades and he has to raise funds to pay for gas.
But what upsets Li most isn't the lack of funding. It's the lack of official recognition for the Ili, and other pikas' plight.
The Ili pika isn't included on China's List of Wildlife under Special State Protection -- part of the country's 1988 Wildlife Protection Law.
The Department for Wildlife and Forest Plants Protection, under the Ministry of Forestry, said it was in the process of updating the list but declined to give any further details.
Li and his volunteers have been calling for the establishment of a nature reserve to help protect the animal.
"I |
9e1238add1c1a4712904e5d5d8913482dcd6d31af166bc73918fd8148a42f22b"], "ecdhInfo": [ { "mask": "c626b75f726e88a26fc74c1bb508fa9358c0896a7635d0f1256c7f43f0217706", "amount": "63c1d97047ff515ccd5ca271f4e5013b9c1092c25307207a0ff037b13f492c00" }, { "mask": "73b4367f9b143c0a453598f85761698c4548e890fa52a05b4e28183126525008", "amount": "81b48b46e79b458a234ad36d3d0890f89e30d50cc18a687dd94fd0ef3417da0f" }], "outPk": [ "f9cabc6b0fd32822feb3e13c70b54b2cdc2a3ce7c88ac661c29ab20732e2974f", "cfb010382648e11d7d5744fe8051c8606f31c901f9ede5b7e392f73790f9e7f8"] }, "rctsig_prunable": { "rangeSigs": [ {...(chunk)...
I guess key_offsets point to the outputs P_i^j and outPk represent the output commitments C_{i,out} as in MRL-0005 (page 9, Definition 4.1). What I would like to do is to check that i -th member of R actually matches \sum_{j}P_i^j + \sum_{j}C_i^j - \sum_{k}C_{k,out}. Can I do this by myself easily, eg. by using Luigi1111's JavaScript code? How can I get P_i^j and C_i^j and i -th member of R from the daemon?Ridley Scott launched his career with a movie about a superior alien species going to town on some poor, largely helpless humans. So it’s not entirely surprising to learn that, not only does the celebrated director—currently making the press rounds for his latest Alien movie, Covenant—think that life on other worlds is “certainly likely,” but that if they ever show up on Earth, humanity is going to get creamed.
“The experts have now put a number on it having assessed what is out there,” Scott recently told Sky News. “They say that there are between 100 and 200 entities that could be having a similar evolution to us right now. So when you see a big thing in the sky, run for it. Because they are a lot smarter than we are, and if you are stupid enough to challenge them you will be taken out in three seconds.”
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Not that Scott himself is afraid; when asked whether films like his iconic 1979 horror masterpiece Alien frighten him, he laughed it off, suggesting that no movie is as terrifying as walking onto a 600-person film set where you’re expected to be in charge. Besides, he notes, “Nothing scares me. I have a 9mm [pistol]”. So there you have it, folks: when the invasion comes, head to Ridley Scott’s house. He’ll know what to do.
[via Consequence Of Sound]If you look at my Twitter profile, and of course I know all of you have looked at my Twitter profile, you will see that I use the tagline: I write the dark sounds.
A lot of people interpret that to mean "horror," and when people think of "horror," they think of fiction that is about slashers and blood and zombies, and I know how we arrived here from there, but "the dark sounds" is not about horror.
I initially encountered the phrase while reading one of Federico Garcia Lorca's lectures on artistic expression, Theory and Play of the Duende. In the lecture, Lorca explains that duende is an Andalusian concept that encompasses the dark spirit that sometimes possesses an artist so that they perform with exceptional emotional depth.
Lorca calls the duende the spirit of the earth, but the duende is actually more about artistic passion. As Lorca explains it: technique will take a person far, but duende rises from the soul. Imagine someone with a voice both true and fine, who sings in perfect pitch, yet the performance falls flat. While another individual, whose voice might not be as perfect in tone, can deliver a rendition of the same song and moves an entire roomful of people to tears. In the first example the singer relies entirely on technique, yet delivers a piece without soul, while the latter blends technique with passion to give the audience a memorable show.
In his lecture, Lorca quotes Manuel Torre, a Romani flamenco singer of great renown, as having said: "You have a voice, you understand style, but you’ll never ever succeed because you have no duende." Torre's pronouncement is harsh, and not one with which I agree. People succeed all the time on technique alone. Meanwhile, another might possess duende, but their lack of proficiency will render their work too coarse to enjoy. Remember that Picasso understood form and technique long before he created his heartbreaking depiction of the events at Guernica.
However, an artist can also become a slave to form. That is why I cringe when I hear amateur writers admonishing others about "purple prose," "show don't tell," and "always open with action." These are all good rules to remember, but it's also important for artists to know when to step outside the lines and allow the dark sounds to shine in their prose.
The best principle is for the artist to partner the two: technique and duende. When this transpires, the beauty of form accompanies the artist's soul as they carry their audience along on the dark sounds.
These dark sounds that Lorca exalts are often found in flamenco, a dance form native to Andalusia, Spain. In flamenco, dance (technique) is partnered with duende (soul) to create passionate performances. And while most people hear the word "flamenco" and think only of dance, they forget that flamenco is also accompanied by song, which is known as cante jondo, or deep song.
The early American folk songs that birthed the blues are a close approximation to cante jondo. Both American folk and cante jondo contain themes of love, death, the common person, and the unfairness of life. These songs are delivered poetically and vocally with the power of the dark sounds, the duende. However, in spite of the darker themes, hope is entwined the verses. Sometimes that hope is so thin it is not spoken through the lyrics but is conveyed by the singer's voice, yet it is there.
So when I say I write the dark sounds, I'm not saying that I write horror, but instead that I am attempting to convey the dark sounds of life (and death) into stories. I write about love, death, and the unfairness of life--themes common to us all--but I also write about hope. Most often, I rely on technique, but sometimes, the duende seizes me and I am able to translate my passion into words, and those are the best times indeed.The bottom line is your electricity bills are going up.
Not now. Not today. But not far away in the future.
“It will be months. Certainly we’re not looking at an indefinite period of time,” says Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman.
The Notley NDP government is crunching numbers to figure out what the hike will look like, an increase to go into effect while a court battle between the province and power companies is being fought.
“We’re certainly doing that work to assess what the impacts will be and try to project it forward,” says Hoffman, who sounds all fired up.
“We expect those costs will show up on our bills but we’re fighting to make sure they get reimbursed back to ratepayers. It doesn’t feel moral and it appears not to be legal either.”
Hoffman is talking of a legal battle. Yes, the Notley government is going to court in November.
Electricity companies, such as city of Calgary-owned Enmax, are bailing out on contracts to buy electricity.
Enmax, for example, is using a clause in an agreement set up 16 years ago to get out of two contracts.
It says they can exit a contract if the province changes a law and makes it “more unprofitable.”
Enmax says when the Notley NDP government hiked the carbon levy for large carbon dioxide emitters they made the contracts more unprofitable and the company dumped the deals back to the province.
Enmax says if they’d kept the contracts their carbon levies would have gone from about $15 million in 2015 to $160 million in 2018. Enmax’s net earnings from continuing operations in 2015 was $154 million.
Enmax’s position is “the government of Alberta should have known about the implications of its actions.”
Given the hike in carbon costs Enmax says its actions were “foreseeable, legal and reasonable.”
“We are concerned with the approach the government is taking and the signals it sends for future investment in Alberta.”
Mayor Nenshi joined the chorus calling the NDP court case “outrageous” and said the government “apparently didn’t know its own policies” while adding Enmax did what was right for its shareholders, the people of Calgary.
Meanwhile, the NDP isn’t just standing there taking the punches.
They are fighting back.
It’s then they bring Hoffman into the arena.
“The sooner we win the better but ultimately we’re in this to win,” says Hoffman, sounding confident the province stands a very good chance in court.
The Notley NDP government says the “more unprofitable” clause isn’t legal and was negotiated years ago in secret at the eleventh hour.
They admit not knowing about the clause until this past spring.
They say the PC government of the day wasn’t looking after Albertans allowing such an easy “escape clause” for companies wanting out of electricity deals.
“Even if you’re wrong and you’re losing money, if the government does anything, even if it’s the smallest thing, don’t worry we’ll take back your losses. That is so lopsided.”
Hoffman says the electricity companies have made $10 billion in profits and should eat their expected losses of up to $2 billion and not pass those losses on to consumers.
“I get they want to have the biggest profits,” says the deputy premier.
“The reason they are trying to put this on somebody else is because they don’t want to be seen as the bad guys. I get that.”
Hoffman takes a moment to weigh in on Nenshi’s entry into the ring.
She says there is something outrageous. It’s the escape clause the NDP does not believe is lawful.
“If business was done that way at the City of Calgary you and every reporter in the city of Calgary would be outraged and you’d be moving to shine light on what happened.”
So how does the deputy premier counter those companies laying the blame at the NDP’s doorstep?
Hoffman says they made “extreme profits” in the past but in this circumstance they are unprofitable.
“They’re arguing because they were already unprofitable, and now this is just going to tap on a little bit to that loss, they think they have the right to be able to give these contracts back. What we’re saying is: No, you don’t.”
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American football experts are hoping to convert some of England’s top rugby players into NFL stars to spark British interest in the sport.
The National Football League is growing the game in England and wants a home-grown British star for people to support.
Osi Umenyiora, who retired from the New York Giants last month, said English rugby players have the “physicality” to play American football, and said he is watching the Rugby World Cup with interest.
Umenyiora, who moved to London this month to work as an NFL ambassador, said: “Maybe we can get some players from there. There are a lot of similarities. Players who play rugby can absolutely play [American] football and we need some of those guys.”
He pointed out Australian rugby player Jarryd Hayne, who joined the NFL this year. Umenyiora, a former defensive end, said he has never played rugby but started watching it after being introduced by a Samoan teammate.
He said: “It is similar in physicality. American football is more physical because we have equipment. It almost gives you a feeling of invincibility. It is different but rugby is also a tough, difficult game.”
Umenyiora, who was born in Golders Green and moved to Nigeria and then America, will be visiting London schools as part of his new role.
He said the benefit of American football is that players do not have to start learning from a young age — he did not hear about it until he was 16.
He said: “We need to find British players in order for us to grow the game. People here in London and England, even though they are going to love the sport, it would be better if they had British players they could look up to and support.”
Umenyiora said that American football fans could learn from English “soccer” supporters. Speaking about watching Arsenal beat Aston Villa at the Emirates Stadium in February, he said: “It was awesome. The fans were singing and the opposing team brought their fans too so they were singing back and forth, it was great.”
He said this did not happen at NFL games, explaining: “Teams might have some sayings, but no real singing, the energy is completely different. Arsenal were kicking them around and they were still alive and excited and singing. I had never seen anything like that.”
Although he played American football for 12 years and won two Super Bowls, he does not miss it. “I was done. I played for 12 years and the average is three. I am maxed out.”
But Umenyiora, who lives in Notting Hill and is waiting for wife Leila Lopes to get a visa, does plan to start playing European football, and has been invited to join the office six-a-side team. “They will be like ‘What is this big guy doing here?’ But I can run.”Keeping tabs on the banks.
Photo by KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images
I wrote yesterday that Janet Yellen’s views on the Fed’s bank regulation role aren’t particularly well-known by the public. Someone who works in the Federal Reserve system pointed me to this 2010 speech that Yellen delivered to the National Association of Business Economists as one of her more thorough statements on the subject. I think you can see three main takeaways from this:
1. Emphasis on capital and leverage: Some people’s regulatory vision focused very heavily on the idea of “too big to fail” institutions and the desirability of making them somehow faller. Other people’s regulatory vision is focused very heavily on the idea of post-crisis cleanup operations—crisis response rather than crisis prevention. Yellen, in line with the actions and statements of current Fed Governor Dan Tarullo, is focused on the idea of bank leverage and bank capital. The idea here is that if banks borrow less money, they are much less likely to fail.
2. Middle ground on the international aspect: Financial services is a global industry, and that has consequences for regulation. One take is that the United States should plunge full speed ahead with tough regulations with no regard to whether other countries are setting a lower bar in a way that puts our bank at a competitive disadvantage. Another take is to go to the opposite pole, and argue that nothing should be done outside the multilateral Basel process. Yellen basically just acknowledges the tradeoff here and sensibly says that you want to avoid either extreme.
3. Monetary policy and bank regulation are different things: How you regulate your banking sector impacts macroeconomic conditions. And how you conduct your monetary policy impacts what banks try to do. That leads some people to conclude that monetary policy ought to be conducted with an eye to bank regulation goals. Yellen rejects this view and says that the Fed should think of these as separate issues that can be addressed with separate tools. This is especially important because it seems to be a subject that Obama’s Fed appointees disagree about amongst themselves.A hoard of Viking-era silver ingots and coins discovered in Wales has been officially declared treasure at a coroner’s inquest. The hoard was found in March by metal detectorist Walter Hanks in a field in Llandwrog, north-west Wales. Consisting of fewer than 20 coins and coin fragments, three complete ingots and one partial, it’s a small trove of outsized historical significance because of its age and rarity.
Fourteen of the coins are silver pennies minted in Dublin under the reign of the Hiberno-Norse King of Dublin Sihtric Anlafsson, aka Sigtrygg Silkbeard (r. 989-1036). Eight of them date to 995 A.D.; the other six, three of which are fragments, were minted in 1018 A.D. Sihtric’s coins are very rare discoveries on the British mainland. There are also fragments of three or four silver pennies from the reign of Cnut the Great, the Danish King of England who reigned from 985 or 995 through 1035. The Cnut coins were probably produced in the mint at Chester.
Archaeologists believe the hoard was lost or buried between 1020 and 1030. The Bryn Maelgwyn hoard, unearthed in 1979 near Llandudno in Conwy, north Wales, was buried around that time — after 1024 — and it too contains coins minted by Cnut and Sihtric: 203 Cnut silver pennies and just two Sihtric silver pennies. The Bryn Maelgwyn coins are thought to have been Viking booty rather than a savings account, however, unlike the Llandwrog hoard. The weight of the ingots is 115.09 grams out of a total hoard weight of 127.77 grams. That means fully 90% of the weight of the hoard is in the ingots which suggests the hoard’s main role was silver storage.
Dr Mark Redknap, Head of Collections and Research in the Department of History and Archaeology at the National Museum Wales said the find will help historians to form a picture of the eleventh century Gwynedd economy. He said: “There are three complete finger-shaped ingots and one fragmentary finger-shaped metal ingot. Nicking on the sides of the ingots is an intervention sometimes undertaken in ancient times to test purity, and evidence that they had been used in commercial transactions before burial. “At least four hoards on the Isle of Man indicate that bullion retained an active role in the Manx economy from the 1030s to 1060s, and the mixed nature of the Llandwrog hoard falls into the same category. As such it amplifies the picture we are building up of the wealth and economy operating in the kingdom of Gwynedd in the eleventh century.”
The National Museum Wales is hoping to secure the hoard. The Bryn Maelgwyn hoard is at the Cardiff branch of the Nation Museum, so it would be in excellent company. First the valuation committee must decide the fair market value of the hoard. The museum will then try to raise the price, ideally through a Lottery Fund grant, which will be divided between the finder and the landowner.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2015 at 11:21 PM and is filed under Medieval. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.Astrology in Ancient Rome: Poetry, Prophecy and Power
by
y main focus will be on an ancient Roman long poem and a set of questions surrounding it. The poem is a didactic (instructional) work on astrology. Its title is Astronomica, and it was written in the first and second decades of the first century of our era by a poet named Marcus Manilius, of whose life we know nothing whatsoever. Greatly admired by such modern figures as Goethe and Leibniz, the Astronomica is a poem that literally almost no one reads today, not even specialists in Latin literature. There are several reasons for this, but certainly one reason lies in the nineteenth and twentieth century view of astrology as "pseudo-science" and an embarrassing blemish on the faces of our classical forebears, whose images were to be kept as shiny and clean as possible. There has been some good European scholarship on Manilius in recent years, especially by Italian scholars, but in English there is still no book-length study.
Unknown as Manilius is, I suspect that many of you have heard his name recently, in the Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love, about the life of A. E. Housman. Manilius' Astronomica is the text that Housman edited over a period of many years and dedicated to Moses Jackson, a friend from school that Housman never got over. Housman's edition did not win new readers for Manilius' poem, to say the least. Housman liked to say that Manilius' great talent was "doing sums in verse"--meaning that Manilius seemed to take a virtuosic pride in the fact that he could describe complicated astrological diagrams in Latin verse meter, and this is true. Housman also liked to point out that you cannot cast an astrological chart by using Manilius' poem as a textbook. This is true as well. But then, it's also true that Virgil, writing in the generation before Manilius, had written a didactic poem on farming, called the Georgics, and certainly nobody could ever have thought that Virgil's elegant and complex poetic masterpiece was supposed to be a manual for real farmers on real farms. In fact, the Georgics was almost certainly the chief model Manilius had in mind in writing his own didactic poem, so there is at least that much reason to think that Manilius' aim, like Virgil's was not so much instructional as artistic.
Manilius' poem is in five books, with about eight or nine hundred verses to a book. Book 1 gives an overview of all the visible constellations. Book 2 describes the signs of the zodiac and the different "aspects," or geometric angles, of their relations to each other (and just as in modern astrology, 60 degree angles or "trines" are good, while 90 degree "squares" and 180 degree "oppositions" are generally bad). Book 3 gives a system of what astrologers call "houses": areas of human life governed by the twelve sections of the heavens. In Manilius' system these areas are Home, War, Business, Law, Marriage, Wealth, Dangers, Social Class, Children, Character, Health and Success. The third book also discusses what modern astrologers call "ascendants" or rising signs, and at a certain point this book flirts with the possibility of revealing the great secret that true astrologers were thought in antiquity to possess: namely, the method of predicting a person's fated life span. Book 4 describes the qualities of specific degrees of the 360 degree circle of the zodiac and also explains which regions of the inhabited world are governed by which astrological signs (Italy is governed by Libra, if you're curious, and Greece is under Virgo). Book 5 is concerned with "paranatellonta." These are the constellations outside the zodiac whose rising and setting also exercise influence over human life. This fifth book probably includes some material drawn from systems of astrology much earlier than the one practiced in the Hellenistic Mediterranean. Manilius seems to know quite a bit about non-Greek constellations, and he probably had access to one or more Egyptian sources in Greek translation.
And there you have the book, in a summary that doesn't do anything near justice to its richness and complexity. Here are some of the questions I want to ask. First, and most importantly: based on our historical, literary and material evidence, what political role, if any, did astrology play at Rome during the passage from republic to empire? Other questions to be touched on more briefly in the course of our inquiry include these: What was ancient astrology like? From what sources did it come to Rome? How did it work? What social role did astrologers play and what was the range of attitudes people had toward them?
Before I turn to this set of questions, I'd like to say something about the reasons why a literary type like me, decidedly not a specialist in the history of science, should have come to the conclusion that astrology, of all things, is important for a full understanding of Roman literature and Roman culture and society during the time when Rome was passing from an aristocratic republic to a monarchical empire. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE, his adopted son Octavian (later to be known as Augustus) buried him with something close to royal honors and ultimately raised a temple to him as a god. During the time when Julius Caesar was being publicly mourned, a comet was seen to pass across the Roman sky, and this comet was of course taken as a sign from the heavens. Divination or prophecy through reading the signs and portents of the sky was not merely a folk belief in the ancient Mediterranean; it was also part of the state religion at Rome. There was a group of official priests known as augurs whose functions included reading omens in the sky. Comets were generally read as unfavorable omens, signs of war or other calamities, but our sources tell us that after the death of Julius Caesar, certain people at Rome began to express the belief that this particular comet, so far from being a bad omen, was in fact the soul of Julius Caesar mounting the sky to become a god.
This pious opinion carried the day, and Julius Caesar was deified by the Roman senate. We don't know precisely how instrumental Octavian was in achieving this result, but we do know that he lost no time in turning it to his own political advantage. Not only did Octavian declare war on Brutus, Cassius and the rest of Julius Caesar's assassins, a war that he quickly won at a battle on the plain of Philippi in Greece and commemorated by dedicating a temple at Rome to "Mars the Avenger," Octavian also began to use iconographic images of a cosmic kind to proclaim Julius' godhead and to associate himself closely with his deified father. A great statue of Julius Caesar stood in the forum, and at Octavian's order a star was placed over this statue's head. We also possess a number of coins minted by Octavian during this period that prominently feature images of the sacred comet, now known as the sidus Iulium or "star of Julius." Some of these coins also show the profiles of the two Caesars together, deified father and living (adoptive) son. And the son, Octavian, is also described on these coins as divi filius, "son of the deified one," that is to say, son of a god. None of this is precisely astrological material, but it is certainly an instance of cosmic (and more precisely stellar) imagery being used to give divine legitimacy to a political program by furthering the notion that heavenly forces were signaling their favor toward Julius Caesar and toward Octavian as his son and successor.
Turning back to the Astronomica now, we can see a similar ideological and political use of heavenly influence in its dedication to Octavian, who by the time of Manilius' writing was known as Caesar Augustus and fully established in power. Manilius explicitly portrays the imperial rule of Augustus as cosmically ordained by the same fate that rules the motions of the stars in the heavens and governs every aspect of human life on earth. Here is how Manilius addresses the emperor in his opening lines: "You, Caesar, princeps and father of the fatherland," (this latter title had been officially conferred on Augustus by the Roman senate in 2 BCE) "you who rule the globe that obeys your august laws," (you get the pun on "Augustus"), "you yourself a god, you who merit the universe that was granted to your father, inspire my mind and give me the poetic strength to sing so great a subject, for at this time the universe itself is favorably disposed toward those who peer into its secrets; the universe itself is eager to lay open the inventory of its heavenly riches through the power of poetry."
Manilius, then, states openly and unambiguously what Octavian's iconographic imagery had merely implied. How did historical events come to the point where it was possible for claims of this nature to be made explicitly by a Roman poet, and precisely what kind of power was Augustus himself claiming to possess? Let me work toward an answer by doing a broad historical sweep of how Octavian managed to beat a path to imperial autocracy in the decades immediately following the death of Julius Caesar. Soon after the battle of Philippi, Octavian entered into a kind of power sharing agreement with Mark Antony (and a third member, Lepidus, who later dropped out of the picture). The rivalry between Antony and Octavian seems to have been fought out ideologically and culturally for an entire decade until their opposing military forces finally clashed at Actium in 31 BCE, in a battle that ended with defeat and suicide for Antony and his ally and lover Cleopatra (Plutarch's life of Antony tells the story, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is based largely on that account.)
During the decade of the thirties leading up to this final confrontation, Octavian and Antony seem to have become symbolic of two radically different ways of living as a member of the Roman elite. Octavian represented (or claimed to represent) "good old" Roman values and virtues: gravitas, moral propriety, and so on. Antony, a Roman aristocrat of an older and nobler family than Octavian's (at least that is how Antony portrayed things), stood for another set of values that many elite Romans held dear: sophistication, elegance, and "decadent" excess. Those who opposed Mark Antony, like Cicero, called him an effeminate sensualist and a drunkard (Antony actually delivered a public speech at Rome defending himself against this last charge). His enemies, Octavian chief among them, claimed that Antony had betrayed Rome by submitting himself to Rome's enemy, Cleopatra, the Hellenistic Greek queen of Egypt, at whose palace in Alexandria the two lovers were said to hold unspeakably lavish revels.
If Octavian was a sober Roman Apollo, so the ideological propaganda went, Antony was a drunken Hellenistic Dionysus. But Antony was also associated with Hercules, partly through a claim of descent by birth and perhaps also because Antony was born under Leo, and Hercules was identified in iconography by his lionskin cloak. And just as Hercules had submitted himself to the nymph Omphale, who forced the hero to wear women's clothes and learn to spin and weave, so likewise (according to Octavian's propaganda), Antony had given up both his Romanness and his manhood by submitting to the domination of Cleopatra. We have some remarkable images from this period showing Omphale wearing Hercules' lion skin and carrying his club while Hercules, for his part, is dressed as a woman. It is almost certain that these images are meant on one level as political cartoons satirizing Antony and Cleopatra.
The military struggle between the two men (if not the ideological battle between the two ways of living they represented) came to an end in 31 BCE when Octavian's admiral Agrippa defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. Octavian, or rather Augustus, is now the unrivaled master of Rome and, not to put too fine a point on it, master of the known world and even, as Manilius says, master of the universe. We have a number of coins from this period showing on one side the face of Augustus and on the other side a winged victory standing on a globe representing the cosmos. Such a coin is delivering, without words but in clear images that everyone would have understood, the message that Augustus, thanks to his victory at Actium, now rules the world. Four years after Actium, the Senate announced (with Augustus' approval) that the Roman republic had been "restored." All the old political institutions were reestablished and the "dignity" of the Senate was restored, but actual power was now in the hands of one man alone.
If Augustus' military struggle was over after the defeat of Mark Antony, he would never be finished with his ideological campaign to insert a monarchical principle into the still intact political structure of the Roman republic. One of the ways Augustus had been carrying on this ideological campaign was through the symbolism of images on coins and public monuments. Another way he had asserted his claim to sole power had been, remarkably enough, by publishing his own natal horoscope. We don't know precisely what form this publication took (I suspect it was probably an actual astrological chart), and we don't know the exact date of publication, but it seems to have been long before Augustus came to sole power. Our source is Suetonius' second century biography of Augustus, and Suetonius narrates these events as taking place just after Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE: In his retirement at Apollonia (a Greek colony in Illyria), Augustus went with his friend Agrippa to visit Theogenes the astrologer in his gallery on the roof. Agrippa, who first consulted the fates, had great and almost incredible things predicted of him. Augustus therefore did not wish to make known his nativity, and persisted for some time in the refusal, from a mixture of shame and fear, lest his own fate should be predicted as inferior to that of Agrippa. When Augustus had been persuaded, however, after much importunity, to declare his nativity, Theogenes started up from his seat and paid him adoration. Not long afterwards, Augustus was so confident of the greatness of his destiny that he published his horoscope, and struck a silver coin bearing the image of Capricorn, the sign under which he was born.
There are a number of very interesting things about this story. The first and most obvious thing to say is that Augustus' visit to the astrologer Theogenes could be a complete fiction. Suetonius' biography includes portents and prophecies of every kind, starting with Augustus' birth in 63 BCE, and all of them pointing to Augustus' destiny as master of the world. Ancient literature is full of such prophecies, and in almost every case the prophecy (in the story) has to come true; that's simply the narrative logic by which stories of this kind work. Think of Sophocles' Oedipus, for example.
Every emperor's biography seems to have featured some omen or prediction of future greatness, so on one level there's no reason to attach any truth value to this story about Augustus and a Greek astrologer. On the other hand, there is nothing impossible or unlikely about an astrologer making a prediction of future greatness and power to Augustus as early as 44 BCE. Astrology was a part of Greek learning and culture, with a high prestige value. And more importantly, individual natal horoscopes tended to be associated in the Hellenistic world with individual power, and specifically with claims to kingship. Publishing your horoscope, in other words, could be read as a way of making a bid for royal power without having to say openly that you were making such a bid. The first "published" horoscope we possess dates from 62 BCE. It is preserved in the form of a relief carved into a rock on the top of Nimrudh Dagh in the Tarsus mountains, and it represents the coronation horoscope of King Antiochus I of Commagene.
Whatever form the so-called publication of his horoscope took, we can be completely certain that Augustus wanted the world to know what sign he was born under. Let me refer you to the three images you've seen in this article. The first one is a coin, one of several Augustan coins featuring Capricorn. You can see the name "Augustus," and the sea-goat holding the globe of the world. Augustus is Capricorn, in other words, and as the cosmocrator (master of the universe), he's got the whole world in his hands. While Augustus' rhetoric in words was putting forward an image of himself as "first among equals," the astrological imagery of this coin is putting forward an unmistakable bid for autocracy and even kingship. The next image is the most famous cameo portrait of Augustus, the so-called "Gemma Augustea." The woman placing the crown on Augustus' head almost certainly represents the oikoumene, a Greek word meaning "the inhabited world" (we know this from similar representations on coins where the image bears a caption). Just behind Augustus' head is a round lozenge containing a small image of Capricorn the sea-goat. We have a fair number of other Capricorn artifacts that probably belonged to private individuals, and these have been found throughout the empire. My third image, another cameo, is an example. The young man swimming the waves is both riding on Capricorn and probably also to be identified with Capricorn. His features, shown in profile, are recognizably those of the young Augustus.
Why Capricorn? We don't really know. Augustus' sun sign was Libra. Capricorn was probably either his rising sign or, more likely, his Moon sign. Modern popular astrology, of the newspaper kind, is of course purely sun sign astrology, but the ancients tended to attach more importance to the Moon sign and rising sign. What particular qualities of the sea-goat made this sign especially appropriate for Augustus? Again, we don't know for sure. Possibly because Capricorn, then as now, was associated with stern moral authority. Possibly because Capricorn is the sign in which the sun passes |
up your pledge by $8 unsigned / $24 signed to add these too!)
(see update #7 for details) (Already getting some postcards? just up your pledge by $8 unsigned / $24 signed to add these too!) Set of FIVE Commodore 64 loader postcards: add $14 (approx.£7)
(see update #7 for details)
(Already getting some postcards? just up your pledge by $8 to add these too!)
(see update #7 for details) (Already getting some postcards? just up your pledge by $8 to add these too!) ALL THE POSTCARDS 1: FIVE Mark J. Brady (unsigned) + FIVE Kane (unsigned) + FIVE C64 Loader: bundle price just add $24
ALL THE POSTCARDS 2: FIVE Mark J. Brady (signed) + FIVE Kane (signed) + FIVE C64 Loader: bundle price just add $56
128 page hardback Cover Art Gallery book + free PDF: add $60 (approx. £30)
A3 sized Mistertronic poster signed by the artist, John the Brush: UK add $60 (approx. £30)
(Australia and Europe add $80, Rest of World add $90)
STANDARD EDITION
First up is the Standard Edition 256 page hardcover book covering all of the Mastertronic £1.99 releases including game reviews, game credits, screen shots, cover images and more.
Add $36AUD (approx. £18) to include the Mastertronic Archives USB cassette!
The Mastertronic 256 page Standard Edition (cover art not final)
COLLECTOR'S EDITION
The special 512 page Collector's Edition includes everything in the Standard Edition, PLUS an additional 256 pages featuring game reviews, game credits, screen shots, cover images and more of the other Mastertronic labels such as M.A.D., Americana, Rebound, Rack-It, etc PLUS the unique disk releases.
Add $36AUD (approx. £18) to include the Mastertronic Archives USB cassette!
The Mastertronic Archives 512 page Collector's Edition (cover art not final)
A selection of disk and cassette games and titles that appear exclusively in the 512 page Collector's Edition
STANDARD EDITION + SIGNED COMMODORE 64 IN PIXELS
Includes a copy of The Commodore 64 in Pixels signed by the author, Chris Wilkins. (Also available at higher level tiers - see rewards on right for details)
The Mastertronic Archives 256 page hardback + signed copy of The Commodore 64 in Pixels + C64 loader postcards
"199 RANGE" LIMITED COLLECTOR'S EDITION
The "199 Range" Limited Collector's Edition pledge includes the "199 Range" 512 page Collector's Edition featuring a unique cover design, PLUS a signed and numbered "199 Range" bookplate, PLUS a 128 page Cover Art Gallery book featuring a foreword by John the Brush, a signed and numbered bookplate and featuring a range of game covers including commentary by select original cover artists, PLUS a limited edition "199 Range" USB cassette, featuring a custom "199 Range" inspired hand numbered inlay, and containing a 512 page PDF copy of the The Mastertronic Archives Collector's Edition, and a 128 page PDF copy of the cover gallery book PLUS a set of limited edition postcards.
PLUS M.A.D. BONUS!
Anyone at this level or higher can send in a mini review of up to 50 words to be included on one of their favourite Mastertronic games. Yes, your name will be included with the review! Games will be allocated to backers by pledge order. I'll ask for a short list of your choices once the Kickstarter ends. I also reserve the right to edit the review. Any reviews that are inappropriate will not be used. (see update #7 for further details)
The Mastertronic Archives 512 page "199 RANGE" Limited Collector's Edition, 128 page Covert Art Gallery book, both with signed and numbered bookplates, exclusive USB Cassette and postcards (cover art not final)
MASTERTRONIC ARCHIVES USB CASSETTE
The Mastertronic Archives USB Cassette includes a USB cassette, clear jewel case with a '199 Range' inspired inlay featuring cover artwork by one of the original 1980s Mastertronic artists, Mark J. Brady. All PDFs come pre-loaded on the USB cassette along with some bonus extras!
Mastertronic '199 Range' inspired USB Cassette preloaded with all PDFs and more!
COLLECTOR'S EDITION + SIGNED MISTERTRONIC POSTER
This level includes a copy of the 512 page Collector's Edition book and an A3 Mistertronic poster signed by the artist, John the Brush. The poster will be sent rolled inside a sturdy poster tube.
512 page Collector's Edition PLUS an A3 Mistertronic poster signed by artist John the Brush.
JOHN THE BRUSH "199 RANGE" LIMITED COMMODORE 64 or ZX SPECTRUM COLLECTOR'S EDITIONS
For your generous support you will receive everything from THE MASTERTRONIC ARCHIVES "199 RANGE" LIMITED COLLECTOR'S EDITION, PLUS you will receive one original Mastertronic game for the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum, signed by the cover artist John the Brush
Pledge for one of the JOHN THE BRUSH ULTIMATE "199 RANGE" levels and receive six original Mastertronic games for the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum, all signed by John the Brush!
A sample of games featuring cover art by John the Brush
FUNDING
The funding amount will be used primarily to cover printing and distribution costs. Ten percent will go towards Kickstarter fees with a further fifteen percent as contingency to cover price rises and operating costs.
BOOK SPECIFICATIONS
The books will be full colour hardcovers measuring 8.25" wide by 10.75" high.
The Standard Edition book will be 256 pages in length and will review the main £1.99 cassette range.
The Collector's Edition book will be 512 pages in length and will review the main £1.99 cassette range as per the Standard Edition PLUS other Mastertronic labels such as M.A.D., Americana, Rebound, Rack-It, etc PLUS the unique disk releases.
PAGE LAYOUTS
The following sample page layouts cover the first twelve games in Mastertronic's "199 Range" of cassette games. Screenshots are for layout purposes only and do not reflect the images to be used in the final product.
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS:
We would like to firstly acknowledge the fantastic support given by Anthony Guter, who was the Financial Controller, then Systems Manager, at Mastertronic from 1985 to 1991, in providing us with access to Mastertronic financial records including all of the game releases, game formats and game sales figures. Anthony maintains the website aguter.plus.com which contains a wealth of information about Mastertronic.
Special thanks also to John the Brush who painted some of the great cartoon style covers ever to appear on a Mastertronic game! John has kindly helped us offer a number of unique perks adorned with his signature, the one that was unfortunately missing from his work in the early days.
We would also like to thank Mark J. Brady, who illustrated dozens of the early Mastertronic game covers, for his input into the limited edition cover gallery book. Check out his great website here.
Mark J. Brady's unique style of artwork adorned many of Mastertronic's greatest covers including Spectipede, Bullet, Bullseye, Orbitron, 1985 and dozens of others. Nowadays Mark produces some fantastic 3D fractal imagery which can be seen at markjaybeefractal.com
Established in 2008, retrogamescollector.com has grown into a popular and highly regarded source of news and information regarding retro gaming and retro gaming culture. Regular features include 'Show us Your Collection' where gamers from around the globe show off their vintage consoles, computers and games. We are proud to be supporting Player1Books with their campaign for The Mastertronic Archives.
Retro Video Gamer or RVG as we call ourselves aims to be a one stop retro hub covering, reviews, previews, homebrew news, guides a popular forum and much more. Come and see us at www.retrovideogamer.co.uk
The best gaming website for Indie and Retro Gaming News. Amstrad CPC, C64 and ZX Spectrum to the latest Free Indie PC Releases we've got it all! www.indieretronews.comDance music industry now worth $7.1B
International Music Summit’s ninth edition of its Ibiza edition is underway, and made a global splash almost immediately — the conference kicked off with one of the summit’s most highly-anticipated components the IMS Business Report 2016, presented by Kevin Watson.
According to the report, “the global electronic music industry is now worth $7.1 billion. 60% more than 3 years ago.” Fueling this colossal global industry growth are factors including continued rise in the global streaming market, and the spread of dance music in emerging markets like Asia and South America. In the United States, electronic/dance music streams are up 33%, while sales of digital tracks are down from 2013 but remain higher than 2012 levels.
54% of all dance music sales are streams in the United States, making it the fifth most popular streaming genre. Electronic music “dominated” Spotify in 2015, claiming accolades including Most Streamed Song of 2015 (Major Lazer feat. MØ’s ‘Lean On’), Breakout Artist of 2015 (Kygo), and Most Viral Track of 2015 (Robin Shulz’s ‘Sugar’).
Those holding out for the death — or reconfiguration — of commercial ‘EDM’ will be gratified to hear that techno was Beatport’s best-selling genre, overtaking Tech House in Q2 2016. The comprehensive report covers areas including DJs and Live Acts, Clubs and Festivals, Companies and Brands, IMS’ Survey, and Industry Overall outlook; check out the 28-page report here.
Read more:
Watch James Barton and Lee Anderson discuss the state of electronic music at IMS Engage (Exclusive)
The six most pressing dance music issues from IMS Engage
Categories: MusicTo say I am excited for the upcoming release of IT, would be a gross understatement. Thanks in large part to just having finished the novel, I have a newfound appreciation for what is one of the ultimate monster stories of all time.
I remember being terrified of the mini series when I was little. My fear of clowns was very prominent then, but my need to prove how brave I was to my brother and cousins by watching it with them was stronger. Many sleepless nights followed.Tim Curry’s rendition of Pennywise traumatized me as a kid. There was no convincing me that blood would not be gushing out of the bathroom sink or that he wouldn’t try to entice me with balloons. It was only a matter of time! I was going to die for sure.
Now I realize that the mini series really isn't all that good, and that the novel is just too good. Not only is the concept of an entity who will take the form of your biggest fear and slaughter you horrifying enough, the way the story unfolds is truly brilliant. Things are woven into one another and thought out seamlessly. The emotional connection that you feel for the characters is so strong, that it helps propel the story forward, and helps drive home how terrifying and messed up Derry, Maine is. I highly recommend reading or getting the audio book. It is storytelling at its greatest, and the Steven Weber narration is magnificent. Which brings me to the September 8 release of the new IT film.
Normally skepticism runs high when it comes to reboots and sequels. I was the first to grunt and complain when talk of this new adaptation began, and following IT news up until now has been a roller coaster ride of dread and excitement. There was a glimmer of hope when it was announced that Cary Joji Fukunaga, who wrote season 1 of True Detective, would be writing and directing. Fukunaga explained that the book would be split up into two different films: one of the Loser’s Club as kids, and the other as them as adults.
Then Fukanaga dropped out of the project, and in comes in Andrés Muschietti who directed Mama, a terrible, awful film, and skepticism skyrocketed. The plan was still to make two films, but Fukunaga’s screenplay was ditched in favor of a new one by Muschietti and Gary Dauberman. Which, it turns out, could be for the better. Fukunaga had planned on making a few changes, but the biggest and most ridiculous was NOT giving Bill Denbrough a stutter. This is crucial to Bill’s character. Although we have yet to see Bill stutter in the trailers, it does seem that Muschietti wrote that in as part of his character. Phew! It seems I was quick to judge.
Ultimately what convinced me that we could potentially have a great horror film on our hands, were the trailers. Teaser 2 more so, but both.
The chemistry these kids have with one another is beautiful (watch teaser 2 again, just do it because this is what sold me). It all comes across so natural. Each one act the way they are portrayed in the book, and that interaction is crucial to having a successful film. Especially in this one. What I gather from the trailers, it’s pretty spot on. I have since seen each trailer more than a dozen times, and it is hard not to derive correlations from the book and trailers. There is a mention of grey water, the gun, the black spot, Richie’s impersonations (mainly the character he was doing in teaser 2), the leper, the fact that there is an actual house on Neibolt Street this time around! All these things that are in the book, but weren't included, or just glossed over in the mini series, are what’s going to make the difference. The attention to detail is very much appreciated. Not to mention that this film will have an R rating, and from what I could gather, is going to be very bloody.
I wasn't sure how to feel about Pennywise from the first photo that was released, but having seen him in the trailers, he is going to be a fright.
I’m eager to hear what he sounds like. In the audio book, Steven Weber had a bone chilling rendition. My hopes are that Bill Skarsgård, who is cast to play him, can do just a good a voice. The rest of the cast reads as follows:
Jaeden Lieberher (Midnight Special) as Bill Denbrough
Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom
Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh
Finn Wolfhard (+Stranger Things*) as Richie Tozier
Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak
Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon
Wyatt Oleff (Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Young Peter Quill) as Stanley Uris
Nicholas Hamilton (also in The Dark Tower) as Henry Bowers
Owen Teague as Patrick Hockstetter
Logan Thompson as Victor Criss
Jake Sim as Belch Huggins
Javier Botet (The Conjuring 2’s Crooked Man) has also been announced as the Leper: another, non-clown iteration of It. (It-eration?)
This is, of course, the junior half; the adult cast has not yet been announced.
Now, I realize there is a strong possibility that I am setting myself up for disappointment, but in this case, it feels like Andrés Muschietti may be able to do IT justice.
In an interview with Empire magazine, Muschietti had this to say,
"There's supposed to be a less-is-more thing in horror, It's like you're not really meant to show the monster. But Pennywise is different. With Pennywise, it's like, 'This is the monster, I'm showing it to you... and you're going to shit a brick.'"
I am in, I am all in.The U.S. Marines could deploy a host of futuristic military technology to "storm the beaches."
Included in the new technology are machine-gun toting robots that charge up the beaches as advance assault, as well as speedboats that instantly transformed into small stealthy submarines diving beneath the surface to avoid detection.
For the past two weeks, the Navy and Marine Corps have been quietly testing about 50 new fascinating technologies out at Camp Pendleton, at the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise 2017, in California.
The exercise is investigating how the military can leverage the latest technological advances for ship-to-the-shore, or the space between the Naval ship and the beach where they could potentially land.
Sailors and Marines have been experimenting with the technology and evaluating the wide range of sea, air and land innovations in a variety of realistic scenarios.
The tech includes amphibious vehicles, but also drones like quadcopters and potentially weapon-wielding ground robots.
Why add this new technology?
In light of escalating tensions around the globe, the event is timely because “storming the beaches” has changed a lot since it was done in Normandy, France during World War 2.
Adversaries now possess technology that makes it difficult – if not impossible – to surprise them with a large-scale amphibious invasion. Even a kid with a social media account could post a picture that tips off forces are attempting a covert approach, making covert operations that much more difficult.
DRONE SAILBOAT TRANSFORMS INTO SPY SUB
By using the newest advanced technology, it can help Marines to mount an aggressive beach invasion – and do it in a way that significantly reduces the risk to the lives of Marines compared to times past.
In this exercise, the Marines have been integrating the tech, such as robots, to explore how they can provide advantages in future wars. Drones can be assigned scout type roles collecting data, conducting surveillance and doing reconnaissance.
If robots are deployed to go ashore first, it could save Marine lives.
Armed MUTTS
But new autonomous fighting machines, like the machine-gun toting MUTT robot, could also provide decisive advantages.
Designed by General Dynamics, Multi-Utility Tactical Transports (MUTTs) are smart, ATV-sized robots mounted with machine guns that can charge up a beach and drive themselves, while helping dismount small units.
Surf, sand and steep inclines are not going to stop the water-friendly MUTTs. The vehicles drive on tracks, or wheels, and there are two wheeled variants: 8x8 and 6x6.
The robot can be mounted with a range of different weapons, including machine guns.
THESE NEW KINDS OF BULLETS ARE LETHAL UNDERWATER
The Browning M2.50 caliber machine gun that weighs about 84 pounds is one option. Others include the belt-fed fully automatic FN Hershel 240B medium machine gun and the classic SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon M249).
Beyond machine guns, they’ve also been successfully kitted out with options like 60mm mortars.
Handy for forces on the move, MUTTs can integrate into the human squad and ease some of the burdens of the soliders
Able to carry approximately 600 pounds, ground forces can harness the power of this weapon without having to lug around the weight themselves. Hence, the MUTT can carry the heavy weapons that provide even more serious firepower.
Less weight means warfighters can move faster while reducing fatigue and improving force protection.
Hyper Sub - The Fathom
The Fathom, made by Reynolds Marion, is a speedboat that transforms into a submarine.
Sleek and black, it looks like something that would be a must-have for Batman.
RUSSIA UNVEISL KAZAN NUCLEAR SUB, A POWERFUL NEW WEAPON IN ITS NAVAL ARSENAL
Aside from the hybrid speedboat-submarine being worthy of a Hollywood summer blockbuster, it could potentially be used for tasks like scouting and surveillance. It could travel rapidly ahead of the fleet speeding along the surface.
Marion calls the hybrid Fathom, a “HyperSub.” A specific model was created and brought to this exercise with details rather hush hush. But in general, the HyperSub can deploy from a beach or a dock and with its two 480-hp Yanmar 6LY3-ETP diesel engines reach cruising speeds of 38 mph.
To evade enemy detection, it could dive beneath the surface. Able to recharge dive air and batteries, the vehicle can dive repeatedly. It is designed to provide protection from pressure changes.
The HyperSub has more than 30,000 pounds of lift on demand. When the “coast is clear,” the Fathom can surface again and zip along the shore conducting surveillance.
The dry chamber, where the vehicle is driven and personnel sit, can be customized.
Another hybrid that the Navy and Marine Corps has been testing in this exercise is the solar and wind powered Submaran. This innovation is part sailboat and part submarine.
The stakes?
The United States used to be able to rely on Naval supremacy. But now, countries like China – who just revealed a new aircraft carrier this week are expanding and advancing their Naval capabilities rapidly.
Terrorists can cause damage and loss of life by taking advantage of the accessibility and low price point of devices like basic unmanned aerial vehicles combined with readily available explosive material.
Identifying and exploring useful new technologies and rapidly transitioning them to the force is an important step to maintaining US maritime supremacy and reducing risk to the lives of Marines in future conflicts.MOSCOW - Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed Saturday that its latest airstrikes in Syria destroyed a command center of the extremist group Islamic State (IS).
"Russian warplanes have carried out more than 20 flights to attack nine IS sites in Syria over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in an online press release.
"Surgical strikes carried out by Su-34 fighter bombers near the town of Raqqa (an IS stronghold in northern Syria) destroyed a command post of the IS gangs," according to the press release.
An underground bunker with a warehouse of explosives and ammunition was also destroyed during the strikes, it said.
The airstrikes, which included six sorties, were launched late Friday and early Saturday, targeting three IS terrorist infrastructure sites.
The ministry added that sorties made by Su-24M bombers destroyed military equipment and weapon depots, as well as logistics facilities, of IS militants in Idlib Province.
Meanwhile, terrorist fortifications, ammunition depots, fuel and lubricant materials as well as seven pieces of military hardware were struck by Russian aircraft.
Along with the statement were two video footage released by the ministry, which were taken by camera drones monitoring the results of airstrike missions in the Raqqa and Jisr al-Shughour cities of Idlib Province.
The ministry stressed that high-precision weapons like KAB-500 bombs were only used to target the IS control centers, ammunition and fuel storage sites as well as weapon workshops.
Russia started airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday after the Russian Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, granted President Vladimir Putin the right to send troops abroad following a request by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Over 50 Russian aircraft and combat helicopters have been deployed at Syria's Hmeymim airbase, located close to the port of Latakia. The base is guarded by a battalion of marines and is protected by a group of Russian warships from the sea.Automated cockpits may negatively impact pilots' thinking skills such as navigating and their ability to diagnose troublesome situations, a new study has warned.
Researchers from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in US studied how the prolonged use of cockpit automation negatively impacts pilots' ability to remember how to perform these key tasks.
"There is widespread concern among pilots and air carriers that as the presence of automation increases in the airline cockpit, pilots are losing the skills they still need to fly the airplane the 'old-fashioned way' when the computers crash," said Steve Casner, coauthor of study and research psychologist at NASA's Ames Research Centre.
Casner and coauthors Richard Geven, Matthias Recker, and Jonathan Schooler studied 16 experienced pilots as they flew routine and nonroutine flight scenarios in a Boeing 747-100 simulator.
Levels of automation available to the pilots were varied as the researchers graded pilots' performance. The pilots also reported what they were thinking about as they flew.
Results indicated that pilots' instrument-scanning and "stick-and-rudder" skills remained reasonably intact despite prolonged periods of disuse.
More significantly, however, the study found that pilots often struggled with maintaining awareness of the airplane's position when the GPS and map display were disabled, or with troubleshooting problems when the automated systems were not available to provide hints.
Furthermore, pilots who relied more heavily on the computers to handle these tasks and who allowed their thoughts to drift during flight were more likely to suffer the effects of rusty cognitive skills.
"Our results suggest that we might be a bit less concerned about things that pilots do 'by hand' in the cockpit and a bit more concerned about those things that they do 'by mind,'" said Casner.
"Pilots' ability to remain mindful and engaged as they now watch computers do most of the flying may be a key challenge to keeping their cognitive skills fresh," Casner added.
The study was published in the journal Human Factors.Other new businesses we heard about this week: Heritage Bicycles, the bike and coffee shop at 2959 N. Lincoln Ave., opened a cafe at 1325 W. Wilson Ave. in Uptown on Nov. 13. Heritage plans to open another coffee shop next year at 1020 W. Lawrence Ave. in Uptown. Crain's recently profiled the owners of Heritage....Home Chef, a service that delivers chef-curated ingredients and recipes to your door, has moved into new headquarters in the West Loop. The Chicago company, which launched in fall 2013, says it has raised $750,000 from investors including Craig Ulliott, co-founder of Belly, and Rich Mott, owner of North Pond restaurant....Funded Justice is a crowdfunding platform where people with legal issues can raise money to hire an attorney. Founded by Michael Helfand and Alan Savage, the Chicago startup launched this month....This is the last New in Chicago column for 2014. The column will return in January on Thursdays.
New in Chicago spotlights new local ventures. Send your startup announcements to [email protected]
Follow New in Chicago writer Robert Loerzel on Twitter: @robertloerzel.
New in Chicago has a Twitter handle now, too. Robert tweets each week's picks as well as updates on a slew of other local launches.
Connect with Crain's via Facebook and Twitter. Join Crain's LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And follow Crain's on Tumblr.The KKK has popped up into prominent society again after Charlottesville thanks to our new President, and, ironically, it’s not gay people that are recruiting, but the KKK.
The Louisiana chapter of the KKK recently distributed fliers in the community in an effort to recruit more people for genocide. Flyers read things like, “Stop Aids: Support Gay Bashing”; “Homosexual men and their sexual acts are disgusting and inhuman”; and “Our race is our nation.” Along with the fliers, they left boxes of rocks or candy on the residents’ doorsteps.
The fliers are brandished with a web address and phone number for racists and homophobes to call in case they want to join in with the described horror. A recorded message meets the caller with “save our land, join the Klan, white power;” However, residents seem less than happy about the invitation.
One resident who preferred to remain anonymous claimed she was “extremely hurt” by the fliers. “As a member of the gay community, I think it shows the ignorance of society still.”
A local mother Sonja Chaves says she is afraid for her son and afraid for the children of her neighbors.
“It’s hurtful, it’s scary,” she said. “I have a little boy. We have neighbors. They have kids.”
“I mean, I guess it’s kind of repulsive, you know,” said Patrick Sarver, a neighbor of Chaves, “I don’t discriminate against any group and I don’t feel like anyone around here should be discriminated against either.”
The KKK are currently emboldened and are shedding their guise of secrecy and leaving the underground. White gay men can no longer ignore this issue because it doesn’t affect them. This is something that affects both people of color and the LGBT community. We have to defend ourselves and our communities and fight White Supremacy and bigotry by any means necessary.
The KKK is emboldened so much as to try and recruit people out in the open with flyers. This is a clear failing of the American people that let this dangerous and disturbing group to spring back up. It will have to be up to us to tear it back down.
Watch out, stay safe, fight bigotry, and protect each other. We must be unified against White Supremacy.Hurricane Irma’s storm surge increased the salinity levels in much of the fresh water around the Florida Keys. Officials are growing concerned the salty water could impact the endangered Key deer along with birds, rabbits, butterflies and other species.
As a result, wildlife experts are now asking for the publics help to provide fresh water.
“We recognize that fresh water is still a rare commodity at this time and first responder and resident needs should be considered before offering water to wildlife,” said Dan Clark, project leader for the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Complex.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is emphasizing that the wildlife does not need food, just fresh water.
“At this time there appears to be enough forage, please do not feed wildlife including Key deer.” https://t.co/SKPGBgUnlM @usfws @Interior — US Fish and Wildlife (@USFWSSoutheast) September 20, 2017
The Key deer only live in the Florida Keys and recent estimates put the population between 700-1000.
If you do have water resources to share, here’s how you can help:
Provide water in a shallow basin so that Key deer, birds, and even insects like butterflies and other pollinators can drink. (Something like an upside down trash can lid would work well.)
Change water frequently to avoid mosquitoes; clean water basin daily to minimize disease spread. Use soapy water or a 10% bleach solution to clean containers, rinsing well afterward.
If there are mosquito control activities in your area, turn the container upside down or move it indoors during pesticide application. Clean the basin to minimize pesticide exposure to non-target critters before putting it back outside.
Place containers away from residences and roads to minimize encounters between wildlife and people. Keep wildlife wild!
One Shirt = One Tree
The USFWS says they will continue to monitor both food and water availability for wildlife. The refuge has a source for water for this effort, so donations are appreciated but not needed at this time.
If you want an additional way to help, consider reaching out to Friends and Volunteers of Refuges, a nonprofit support group for the refuge, at http://www.favorfloridakeys.org/.
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Email5 Awesome Motivation Sources
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[UPDATE] A representative for NECA told GameSpot today that the company is not in fact producing new Crash figures, at least not right now.
"It's not the case," the rep said. "Someone has misunderstood a comment he made. Randy saw a faked fan-made image right before he came to the show and said that if the game were coming back, we'd love to do figures."
The original story is below.
More evidence to suggest that the Crash series is being resurrected has come to light. In an interview with Pixel Dan at the New York Toy Fair this week, NECA director of product development Randy Falk mentioned the Crash series as one that the company is excited about for the future (via NeoGAF).
"Finally, we've been able to get back in with Sony," he said, referencing new toys it's making for the Uncharted and God of War series, among others. "Looking at some of their other titles, I see they're bringing Crash Bandicoot back, which is really cool."
NECA has a number of figures based on Sony franchises coming out this year, including Nathan Drake (Uncharted), Sakcboy (LittleBigPlanet), and Kratos (God of War) figures.
The above-mentioned interview was even promoted by NECA on its Twitter account.
GameSpot has followed up with NECA in an attempt to get more details on the company's plans for the Crash series. We'll update this post with anything we hear back.
Earlier this month, the PlayStation Middle East Twitter account posted the tweet below, the English translation of which is, "Most wanted person... where are you Crash?"
أكثر شخص مطلوب... أين أنت يا كراش؟ pic.twitter.com/aj85Ap018v — PlayStation Mid East (@PlayStation_ME) February 6, 2016
Before that, at PlayStation Experience in December 2015, PlayStation boss Shawn Layden wore a Crash t-shirt, but no Crash announcements were made during the show.
The latest Crash Bandicoot game for consoles was 2008's Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant, which was published by Activision. The series was created by Naughty Dog and was for a time developed exclusively for PlayStation systems before Activision apparently scooped up the rights.
In November 2013, it was suggested that the Crash IP might have switched hands and gone to Sony after all mention of Crash was removed from Activision's website. However, Activision at the time confirmed that it continued to own the franchise and was still looking to "explore ways in which we could bring the beloved series back to life."
For its part, Naughty Dog has said it's open to the idea of making a new Crash, though it's a Sony-owned studio, which could be problematic.
"It's never off the table," Naughty Dog community strategist Arne Meyer said in July 2014 when asked about bringing back Crash. "It's not too much time passing, but it's the same issues we explored with the Jak game: Is it something that makes sense to us now? I mean, we still have people that worked on the Crash games in the studio. We never forget our past and it'd be great for nostalgic reasons. It'd be the same reason as why there isn't a Jak 4: I don't know if it's playing to our strengths right now."
Would you like to see Crash come back? Let us know in the comments below!I’m happy to report that A Scandal in Bohemia: Can You Solve the Case? is now for sale! And YOU get to pick the price.
The first file is interactive and has the most features, so if you’re going to pick that one up, consider giving slightly more for the extras! You can download the files by clicking the links below. Paying is optional – if you want it for free, it’s yours.
To pay: Click on the “Pay Now” button below. Enter in the amount you’d like to pay and click “Update.” Then either sign in with your PayPal account, or you can use a credit or debit card as well.
All versions have the same basic setup: It’s a choose-your-own-adventure through A Scandal in Bohemia, a classic Sherlock Holmes story. You choose which choices Holmes and Watson should make – see if you can solve the case! All versions also include a simple, plain-text version if you want to read it straight through, as well as the option to see how Holmes did it, which highlights the choices that lead through the original text.
Interactive, EPUB3 Version : http://bit.ly/Y9jvWJ
This version can be read on iBooks for iPhone and iPad, or another reader that supports EPUB3. In addition to what’s mentioned above, this version also includes an interactive cluepad at the end of many sections, which will test your knowledge of what you’ve read so far and perhaps help you solve the case.
: http://bit.ly/Y9jvWJ This version can be read on iBooks for iPhone and iPad, or another reader that supports EPUB3. In addition to what’s mentioned above, this version also includes an interactive cluepad at the end of many sections, which will test your knowledge of what you’ve read so far and perhaps help you solve the case. Basic EPUB2 Version : http://bit.ly/ZZsSoy
This version can be read on any e-reader besides a Kindle. It does not contain the interactive cluepad.
: http://bit.ly/ZZsSoy This version can be read on any e-reader besides a Kindle. It does not contain the interactive cluepad. Kindle Version: http://bit.ly/ZY4XXA
Use this version if you have a Kindle. This one also does not contain the interactive cluepad.
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The Reading upstarts have blazed a trail over the past 18 months, with their electric live show sparking a frenzied reaction from Clash |
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The promotion codes do not apply to upcoming EK-MLC products and EK Fluid Gaming kits, sorry!Story highlights The SAVE database contains alien registration numbers
Florida election officials sued to gain access to a federal law enforcement database
Florida wants to purge non-citizens from its voter rolls
Florida officials want to use the database to challenge voter eligibility
Florida election officials will have access to a federal law enforcement database to challenge the eligibility of a person to vote as part of its effort to purge non-citizens from its voting rolls, state officials said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will allow state officials access to the SAVE -- Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements -- database in an agreement that was announced Saturday by Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner and the Florida Department of State.
The announcement follows weeks of legal wrangling between the federal and state officials, a fight being closely watched in Colorado, Nevada, Michigan and North Carolina -- states that could ultimately swing November's presidential election -- where officials are advocating for similar access.
"Florida voters are counting on their state and federal governments to cooperate in a way that ensures elections are fair, beginning with ensuring the voter rolls are current and accurate," Detzner said in a statement.
"Now, we have a commitment to cooperate from DHS and we look forward to a partnership that improves our election process."
Details of the agreement were not immediately available, and it was not clear when Florida would begin checking its voter rolls against the database, which lists those who are legally in the United States on either visas or "green cards" but not eligible to vote. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond late Saturday to a CNN request for comment.
The SAVE database, which contains alien registration numbers, is a web-based service that was created to help "federal, state and local benefit-issuing agencies, institutions, and licensing bureaus determine the immigration status of benefit applicants so only those entitled to benefits receive them," according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Florida officials sued last month to gain access to the database after an effort this year to purge the state voting rolls -- using driver licenses and birth dates -- went awry because of faulty state records.
A Florida Department of State spokesman, Chris Cate, told CNN in June that the state identified roughly 100 people who are not citizens but registered to vote. CNN found, though, that some of the names on the potential purge list were, in fact, legitimate voters -- newly minted Americans recently granted citizenship.
DHS and Florida struck a deal over the database just weeks after a federal judge rejected a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit aimed at preventing Florida from moving forward with a voter registration purge.
Proponents of the plan say purging the rolls protects the integrity of the voting process, while critics say it targets the poor and minority voters who may be disenfranchised by the process. The poor, voting and civil rights groups say, can not afford to pay for documentation that may be required, while minorities would likely be among the groups whose voter registration records are examined.
A number of states are moving to institute and tighten voter identification laws, and many are finding themselves in direct conflict with the federal government. A key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 grants the federal government open-ended oversight of states and localities -- many in the South -- with a history of voter discrimination. Any changes in voting laws and procedures in those pre-determined areas must be "pre-cleared" by Washington.
Today, 32 states have in place varying degrees of voter identification laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Some of the states with the most stringent requirements are also regions that have seen large increases in their minority population. Florida has the nation's third largest Hispanic population, behind Texas and California.Sikhs are taking one of their traditions of religious hospitality to one of the most inhospitable places on Earth — five miles from the Syrian border in refugee camps for people fleeing that country’s civil war.
The UK group, Langar Aid, an organization that provides food and water to people in need, has set up a bakery that currently feeds 14,000 people a day.
The group takes its name from the langar in the Sikh religion, a large common kitchen where food is served free to all visitors, regardless of religion or background. Langars are typically found at Sikh place of worship, but wherever Sikhs are, they have established the free kitchens open to all.
World’s Largest Free Kitchen Feeds 100,000 a Day Inside a Golden Temple
Volunteers have been feeding distressed people for over a year now, reports the Times of India.
The volunteers had to strip down the traditional langar model and focus solely as a bakery due to the small quantities of food that can make it through to the Kurdish region.
However, in recent months, more support has been pouring in from around Europe, which could allow them to broaden their scope.
After Wedding, Instead of Fancy Meal Couple Serves 4000 Syrian Refugees
Most of the volunteers with Langar Aid, an extension of UK charity Khalsa Aid, are from Europe, with ancestors from the northern India’s Punjabi region.
(Photo from Langar Aid, Facebook)If the Return of Kings viral Mad Max story had taught us anything it’s that the mainstream media seems to think calling someone a “men’s rights activist” is an effective shaming technique- CNN would never put quotations around the word “feminist.”
The mainstream media and feminists alike understand that people are inherently unsympathetic to men- in particular, men who have unauthorized opinions– and to easily sway a story in the favor of good Hollywood versus bad opinionated men, all they really need to say is “men’s rights activist.” Anything further is academic- the term immediately invalidates any argument presented.
The mainstream narrative will always deny that feminism has become institutionalized. If the narrative is that men are privileged, of course men who are looking to defend themselves as men in a system they see as bias against them would be viewed unsympathetically; as hateful, greedy, misogynist losers.
The system makes it clear that women are the oppressed class and men are the privileged class, always and forever. Women need our resources and support while men only need restraint and emasculation.
Make no mistake that this mindset is pervasive and trickles down to how our Education system is structured.
I’m a teacher and the other day I was in the classroom of one of my colleagues.
The walls of this classroom are littered in Girl Power[TM]: news clippings of girls being successful in science, Rosie the Riveter, Michelle Obama… absolutely nothing that would particularly inspire a young boy. All female centered stuff with just enough plausible deniability for her to say “these are artifacts of successful people.”
But then something else caught my attention… This poster was hanging amongst the clutter.
“Gee!! I wish I were a man, I’d join the NAVY”
At first glance you can arguably group the poster with your typical “girls can do it” fodder… From a post-modernist perspective the idea is that if women were able to join the NAVY, of course they would have. So, for middle school kids, the narrative is:
Women are tough and willing to do anything men can do. Despite clearly being willing, women were not allowed to join the NAVY due to male oppression. Therefore, while having made tremendous strides only recently, women come from a place of victimization at the hands of men.
Had the poster ended there it would have been as innocuous as the rest of the female empowerment content in her room… but the bottom line stood out to me and made the historical context of the poster clear:
“Be a man and do it; United States Navy Recruiting Station”
This was the true purpose of the poster when it was created… not a rallying cry for women’s rights, nor a statement of the rough-and-tumble “can do” spirit of American women; the poster served as a manipulative shaming tactic to get men to join the Navy. Therefore, the true historical reading of the poster is:
Hey pussy, this fucking LADY would join the NAVY if she could. As a man, you have the ability to join the NAVY. Therefore, it is your duty to join the NAVY.
In reality the poster speaks more to the dutiful and noble spirit of men than anything else. It was certainly not a rallying cry for women, nor did it speak to women wanting to be a part of the U.S. Navy. The idea behind this poster is that men can be controlled through feelings of shame.
There is absolutely no way the teacher of this class mentioned this to her students.
Seeing this poster hanging in a classroom made me feel sad for the current generation of boys facing an Educational system that is only putting forth effort in the inspiration and motivation of young girls. Boys are marginalized and excluded on the premise of male privilege following the idea that they don’t need guidance or mentoring- if boy’s want to be successful they’ll simply “be men” and “do it.”
Like my post? I accept Bitcoin tips via ChangeTip @ killtoparty.tip.me/Whenever an prisoner and a guard get into an altercation, Melvin Ray sees an opportunity to connect and educate. After stepping in and trying to de-escalate the situation, he’ll talk to his fellow prisoner and ask him how he got here. Not just “here,” in the sense of an altercation stemming from the emotional stresses of being incarcerated. Or “here,” in terms of the conviction that sent him to prison in the first place. Ray, ultimately, presses a larger point: “You’re not here because of that crime. You’re here because someone has figured out a way to make money off of you.”
These sorts of one-on-one conversations are critical for organizing incarcerated people, and Ray — who also goes by Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun — knows this better than anyone. He is one of the founders of the Free Alabama Movement, or FAM — a prisoner-led human rights group that is organizing what could become the largest nationwide prison work stoppage, starting September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising.
Along with Support Prisoner Resistance and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or IWOC, of the IWW labor union, FAM issued a call to action earlier this summer, with an estimated 40 prisons in 24 states expected to participate. Much like the prisoners who took over New York’s infamous correctional facility in 1971, today’s prisoners are fighting against the conditions of their imprisonment, especially the conditions under which they are forced to work, which many describe as slavery.
Although some states allow prisoners to get paid for their labor, the pay is often less than a dollar per hour, and sometimes absolutely nothing. Half of those wages, in federal institutions at least, are withheld for room and board, victim’s programs and family support. Whatever remains goes toward buying the necessary commissary items for making life in prison tolerable. Essentials like toilet paper, deodorant, menstrual products and laundry detergent can each cost multiple days’ wages.
Meanwhile, America’s prisons constitute a multi-billion dollar industry. UNICOR, also known as the Federal Prison Industries, reported net sales from prisoner-made products and services of $472 million in 2015, and this is only for federal institutions. Federal and state prisons combined are estimated to produce at least $2 billion in goods and services.
In private prisons, there have even been reports of prison personnel selling prisoner-made goods for personal profit. However, privately run facilities are facing increased scrutiny, as the Department of Justice recently announced it will no longer contract with private prison companies, and the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees immigration — is considering doing the same.
prisoners perform essential jobs like running recycling plants in Wisconsin, to fighting fires in California and Georgia. They also participate in a modern-day version of convict leasing, making uniforms for McDonald’s, running call centers for AT&T and even preparing artisanal cheeses sold at Whole Foods.
“We make products for every type of business you can think of,” said Ray, who is being held in the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama, which was ranked one of the deadliest prisons in the nation just two years ago, due to overcrowding and an indifferent warden. “[The businesses involved] understand that this is an operation of slavery and everyone is exploiting the free labor out of the prisons.”
In addition to generating revenue, the labor of prisoners is essential to keeping the prisons themselves running. prisoners deliver mail, prepare food and do laundry. But, according to Support Prisoner Resistance and IWOC organizer Ben Turk, this is precisely why prison work strikes can have a significant impact on the state.
Poster announcing the prison strike. (Free Alabama Movement)“Work stoppages cost the Department of Corrections a lot of money in overtime because guards and prison staff have to do jobs prisoners would otherwise be doing,” Turk said, who has been involved in prison abolition since at least 2011.
Both Turk and Ray spoke about how actions often spread to other prisons. The 2010 Georgia work strike, after all, is what inspired Ray to start FAM in 2013. Lasting just under a week, at the time, it was the largest prison work strike to date, involving thousands of prisoners and nearly a dozen facilities. prisoners were seeking better educational opportunities, improved access to medical care and higher wages.”
Work stoppages and hunger strikes don’t often end in prisoners’ demands being met, but they do often inspire other prisoner’s to do something.
“[Prisoner strikes] are generally not successful at getting the specific demands,” Turk explained. “But they are very successful at inspiring other prisoners, and also building awareness and creating some of the cultural shifts that are necessary to get past these institutions of slavery and torture in America.”
The work of organizing these stoppages in a single prison — let alone across multiple facilities in two dozen states — is extremely challenging. Retaliation from prison officials can result in being stripped of any privileges or being locked up in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, communications are monitored by guards, unless prisoners are able to access a cell phone.
Siddique Abdullah Hasan, who is part of FAM sister organization the Free Ohio Movement and is an organizer of the September 9 work strike, has already been charged as a security threat — a catch-all charge that can be used to justify locking prisoners in solitary confinement. He will spend 30 days in solitary confinement at Youngstown’s Ohio State Penitentiary, stripped of his personal belongings, and denied access to email and other forms of communication.
Melvin Ray (Free Alabama Movement)Ray is no stranger to the repercussions of prison organizing. Back in 2013, FAM members started posting videos depicting the conditions of their prisons — the poorly maintained buildings, the food provided by the kitchens, the overcrowding of their facilities. They also started organizing work strikes in several Alabama facilities, following the example set by Georgia prisoners back in 2010. Eventually, Ray was put in solitary confinement as punishment for his involvement.
“It’s what they call soft touch or hands-off torture. It’s a small cell, it’s filthy,” Ray said. “It’s hell. I mean it’s literal hell, and they use it to torture people.”
Ray sees the forced labor of prisoners — running the prison itself, providing services to the state and being rented out to for-profit corporations — as not simply an unjust condition with roots in slavery, but the direct continuation of those practices.
“We were told and taught that the 13th amendment abolished slavery,” Ray said. “But the 13th amendment never abolished slavery. What it did was nationalize it.”
This is not hyperbole. The 13th amendment, indeed, makes it clear that slavery — despite being an unlawful practice among private citizens — is permissible “as a punishment for crime.”
Prisoners organizing against their forced labor, or any of the conditions of their confinement, must contend with a high level of monitoring by the state. Any mail or other communications with the outside world are subject to the scrutiny of prison officials.
“They gonna read all of our mail, just plain and simple,” Ray explained, especially if prison officials know a hunger strike or work stoppage is being planned.
However, there is also a reality that in severely overcrowded prisons, like many of the facilities in Alabama, guards and prison officials simply cannot keep up with what prisoners are doing.
“The Alabama prison system is the most overcrowded and understaffed at the same time,” Ray said. “So, literally, they don’t have enough officers to monitor our every conversation, our every move.”
In some states, it is easier to get cell phones into prisons, allowing prisoners to coordinate activities unmonitored, as well as connect with loved ones, and share photos and videos on social media about their living conditions.
“Those states will probably be able to be more effective. That’s what worked in Georgia and Alabama,” Turk said, referring to the 2010 Georgia work strike and multiple work strikes that have happened in Alabama, often organized by FAM.
While those demands were never met, both Turk and Ray credit them with starting other work stoppages and hunger strikes, including the Alabama work stoppages that ultimately landed Ray in solitary confinement.
All that goes to show the power of cell phones, both in terms of coordinating between prisons and posting videos to social media.
“The most effective thing we do is we use social media,” Ray said. “We do our own videos, and we use the social media platforms to put those videos out.”
For that reason, he doesn’t see cell phones as mere contraband. “These are necessities to stay alive.”
As an organizer on the outside, Turk spoke about navigating the difficulties of getting information in advance of an action.
“It’s almost second nature for me to be able to respond to events as they happen on the inside,” he said, noting that oftentimes he may have an idea of when an action will start, and which prisons will be involved, but the specifics can rarely be confirmed.
Nevertheless, Turk is at the ready to coordinate banner drops in high-traffic parts of town; noise protests, where protesters gather outside a prison or jail and make as much noise as possible in order to let the prisoners know they have support on the outside; and call-ins, to, for example, have a prisoner released from solitary confinement. He also fields questions from the press and arranges any legal support prisoners may need.
“Just a visit from a lawyer can go a long way toward checking the retaliatory efforts of the prison authorities,” Turk said.
And Turk, of course, isn’t alone in this work. Groups like The Ordinary People Society, which does a broad array of advocacy and support work around mass incarceration, are also supporting the call for the strike from the outside.
How the strike will unfold, whether it will reach national proportions for a significant length of time, and what will come of it are questions even the prisoners can’t answer. What is clear, however, is that they are fighting against an exploitative labor practice, and the demands are up to the organizers in each facility taking part.
While prisoners face incredible barriers to organizing, Turk and Ray, and many others like them, are — with each conversation, protest and day of resistance — incrementally slowing down the profit motive that drives the prison system.
For as slow as the progress may seem, Ray has a surprisingly practical approach. “September 9 is simply the next date on the calendar that we are going to continue to push our movement forward,” he said, because ultimately “we’re trying to dismantle the system.”When asked who could be the New England Patriots' defensive MVP in 2015, Texas Longhorns alum and current Bleacher Report NFL analyst Chris Simms chose one of his own.
“Hook ‘em Horns, fellow alumni, but Malcom Brown, he’s a guy that really jumps out to me,” said Simms. “First of all, because he’s ultra-talented. The second reason is this – I worked up in New England, I know a lot of coaches, people in the front office, and basically they’ve been in awe of Malcom Brown and what he’s done through minicamp, OTAs.”
Simms, who spent seven seasons in the NFL and served as a Patriots coaching assistant in 2012, added another note on what he’s heard from members of the organization.
“They are shocked, still, that they got Malcom Brown at pick No. 32 in the first round,” he shared. “In fact, one of them told me, ‘Now we know what it feels like to be the Jets and get Muhammad Wilkerson at pick No. 30.’”
It is high praise for the 21-year-old All-American defensive tackle, being placed in same sentence as Wilkerson, a 3-4 defensive end who has accrued 237 tackles, 24.5 sacks and seven forced fumbles since arriving in New York in 2011 out of Temple.
But Simms explained where that comparison comes from.
“We all know Bill Belichick; he runs every defense under the sun. Malcom Brown can play every position under the sun as far as the defensive line is concerned – nose tackle, three-technique, five-technique in the 3-4 defense. But the big thing is, I think he’ll be the best run-stopper. He’ll be the most disruptive defensive lineman on this football team. And most of all, he’s going to have true pass-rush value.”
The 6-foot-2, 320-pound Brown recorded 165 tackles, 29 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks, 14 quarterback pressures, six pass deflections and two forced fumbles over his three collegiate seasons.
He’ll look to add to those totals alongside Sealver Siliga, Dominique Easley, Alan Branch, Chris Jones and others in Foxborough.
Related: Four notes on the Patriots' group of defensive tacklesA Syrian refugee waits to be transferred to the Moria registration center, after arriving at the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, following a rescue operation by the Greek Coast Guard at open sea on March 21. (Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters)
On the isle of Lesbos, there are now two facilities to house the migrants who risked their lives crossing the sea. The Syrian refugees call them the good camp and the bad camp.
The good camp is airy and open, and migrants are getting ready to sail to the Greek mainland, where there is still a chance they may reach their dream destinations in Germany, Sweden or France.
In the bad camp, there is razor wire and a locked gate, and the police are preparing the asylum seekers for a forced ferry ride back to where they came from.
The two transit centers show in stark relief the past and future for migrants clamoring to reach Europe.
It is here that Europe will answer the big questions: Will Greece really send people fleeing war and chaos in Syria and Iraq back to Turkey, by force if necessary?
The Europeans say they will — starting Monday.
Greek officials said the first ferries are scheduled to take the first migrants back to Turkey next week. They hope the move stems the tide of newcomers.
Humanitarian organizations, along with the U.N. refugee agency, warn that the returns are being rushed, that Greece could be overwhelmed. The asylum seekers will not get a full hearing, they say. The aid organizations worry that traumatized people may balk at being herded onto boats and sent to uncertain conditions in Turkey.
“The risk is that they will do everything very, very quickly and create an assembly line for returns,” said Michele Telaro, project coordinator on Lesbos for the group Doctors Without Borders.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom was on Lesbos this week to assess the situation. “There is still a lot of work going on to determine how people will be processed and what that will look like,” she said. “We’re eager to see those details as much as everyone else.”
The Greek parliament passed legislation late Friday designed to ease concerns about whether the human rights of irregular migrants would be protected under international law. The asylum amendment bill stated that people will be sent back to a “safe third country” or a “safe first country of asylum” without explicitly designating Turkey as safe.
[The mass migration of refugees from Turkey to Greece has stalled]
1 of 12 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Migrants get stuck in Greece as door closes to Europe View Photos After a year and a half of massive migration to the continent, some nations along the route are saying no. Caption After a year and a half of massive migration to the continent, some nations along the route are saying no. March 1, 2016 Yazidi asylum seekers from Shengal, Iraq, rest outside an Ikea house at the Diavata migrant camp recently built by Greece on the outskirts of Thessaloniki. Jodi Hilton/For The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Tensions are rising. As disturbances broke out at migrant hot spots on the Greek mainland this week, authorities announced plans to send additional police to the islands to keep order. Activists told reporters that Greek police used stun guns on Syrians and Iraqis on the nearby island of Chios, where fences were torn down in protest.
In the good camp on Lesbos, where the last hundred refugees are waiting for a ferry ride to the Greek mainland, the residents still can dream of making it to the heart of Europe. These asylum seekers were smuggled to the Greek island from Turkey before Europe shut the door to new arrivals on March 20.
The camp is spotless, with fresh herbs growing in flower boxes and a quartet of Greek musicians serenading the residents, who are smothered with help from a dozen humanitarian aid groups.
“We don’t call them ‘refugees.’ They are our guests,” said Stavros Myrogiannis, manager of the Kara Tepe site, correcting a visitor. He seemed sad to see them go.
This is the Europe with open arms, the Europe of 2015.
Myrogiannis estimated that, over the past six months, he has “hosted” hundreds of thousands of “travelers” from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who made the perilous trip across the Aegean Sea.
Asked what he thought when he learned that the people of Lesbos and the other Greek islands were to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their acts of charity, Myrogiannis waved away the flattery.
“We acted like human beings,” he said. “That is enough.”
One of his last guests was Hasan Zaheda, 31, a landscape designer from Damascus, Syria. He, his wife and toddler son barely made it before the cutoff date. The first raft they were put on by smugglers in Turkey sank, the second trip was foiled by police, the third by foul weather. The fourth was the charm. They were rescued by the Greek Coast Guard.
About 400 people have died in the Aegean Sea crossings this year. Most of them drowned, according to the Greek Coast Guard. An additional 170 are missing and presumed dead.
“We know we are lucky,” Zaheda said.
He said he hopes to live in Paris, where his brother-in-law works at the Pasteur Institute.
A few miles away, at the bad camp, life and prospects for the future are far less sunny. Thousands of migrants are detained behind high fences at a former military base near the village of Moria. The toilets are overwhelmed, the asylum seekers complain, and the food is disgusting now that aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee pulled out in protest, refusing to work at what they called a “detention” facility.
This is Europe 2016. These are the migrants who had the misfortune to arrive in Greece after March 19.
“I am living in a prison,” said Mohammad Al Balkhi, 21, a Syrian college student from Damascus, who stood by the fence, amid a pile of cigarette butts, speaking with a reporter before a police patrol shooed his visitor away.
“Get us out of here,” he said. He seemed amazed that the difference of a day or two would determine his fate.
[E.U. strikes deal to return new migrants to Turkey]
If Europe is to make good on its promise to shut down the deadly smuggling route through the Eastern Mediterranean, which has brought more than a million migrants to the continent, then it will happen here in the islands.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said uncontrolled illegal mass migration across the Aegean Sea, assisted by rapacious smugglers who put passengers on unseaworthy rafts, must stop. Allowing the migration to continue is not only wrong, it is deadly.
The European Union and Turkey agreed last month that all irregular migrants who arrive in Greece after March 19 will be returned to Turkey.
The E.U.’s Frontex agency, which is responsible for stopping illegal immigration, is bringing 1,500 police officers, asylum case workers and interpreters to Greece to begin processing the migrants.
The ferries will leave Lesbos and head to Dikili on the Turkish coast. Mustafa Nazmi Sezgin, the deputy governor there, said the Turks would erect a temporary transit facility to receive the returnees. “They won’t stay here,” he said. “They will go to other places in Turkey.” He was not sure where.
He agreed that war refugees would be angry to find themselves back in Turkey, but shrugged.
The European Union, including the Greek government, argue that Turkey is a safe haven, proven by the fact that the country already hosts about 3 million Syrian refugees.
As of Friday, there were more than 5,000 migrants on six Greek islands; the largest number, almost 3,000, were on Lesbos. The number of migrants making the trip from Turkey to Greece has plummeted in recent weeks — from thousands a day to hundreds. Aid workers and migrants say the reason was a combination of rough seas and anxiety over what will happen to new arrivals.
Another 46,000 asylum seekers are on the Greek mainland, spread out at more than 40 camps, where the security situation and living conditions are deteriorating.
The mass migration to the heart of Europe was stalled in Greece after Macedonia shut down its border to new arrivals a month ago.
Smugglers in Turkey told The Washington Post that the trafficking cartels were exploring alternative routes to Western Europe through Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. They also warned that smugglers may reopen routes using derelict trawlers and freighters from Libya to Italy, a trade that could incorporate militias operating in Libya, including the Islamic State.
Aid workers said the first people to be sent back to Turkey may likely be the “easy” cases — those deemed immediately inadmissible for asylum in Europe, such as economic migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal.
“Everyone is waiting to see what happens next,” said Panos Navrozidis, country director for the International Rescue Committee. “That’s part of the problem for everyone. Not knowing.”
Read more:
Germany learns how to send back migrants: Pay them
New plan for migrants draws scorn as Germany’s Merkel struggles for unity
7 things to know about the incredibly complicated migrant crisis
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the worldLarry Stevens eats a piece of high-cacao content chocolate every afternoon, which is in part because he has developed a taste for the unsweetened dark chocolate. It's also because research shows that it lowers blood pressure and his new study reveals that it improves attention, which is especially important when hitting that midday slump.
"Chocolate is indeed a stimulant and it activates the brain in a really special way," said Stevens, a professor of psychological sciences at NAU. "It can increase brain characteristics of attention, and it also significantly affects blood pressure levels."
The study, published in the journal NeuroRegulation and sponsored by the Hershey Company, is the first to examine the acute effects of chocolate on attentional characteristics of the brain and the first-ever study of chocolate consumption performed using electroencephalography, or EEG technology. EEG studies take images of the brain while it is performing a cognitive task and measure the brain activity.
Historically, chocolate has been recognized as a vasodilator, meaning that it widens blood vessels and lowers blood pressure in the long run, but chocolate also contains some powerful stimulants. Stevens said his team wanted to investigate if people who consume chocolate would see an immediate stimulant effect.
Stevens and his colleagues in the Department of Psychological Sciences performed the EEG study with 122 participants between the ages of 18 and 25 years old. The researchers examined the EEG levels and blood pressure effects of consuming a 60 percent cacao confection compared with five control conditions.
Michelle Montopoli, an NAU alumna and student at the time of the study, led the EEG testing phase which included measuring serving sizes of the samples based on participant weight and packaging them so the participants were blind to what they were tasting. Constance Smith, professor of psychological sciences, assisted with the physiological analyses.
The results for the participants who consumed the 60 percent cacao chocolate showed that the brain was more alert and attentive after consumption. Their blood pressure also increased for a short time.
"A lot of us in the afternoon get a little fuzzy and can't pay attention, particularly students, so we could have a higher cacao content chocolate bar and it would increase attention," Stevens said. He added that a regular chocolate bar with high sugar and milk content won't be as good, it's the high-cacao content chocolate that can be found from most manufacturers that will have these effects.
The most interesting results came from one of the control conditions, a 60 percent cacao chocolate which included L-theanine, an amino acid found in green tea that acts as a relaxant. This combination hasn't been introduced to the market yet, so you won't find it on the candy aisle. But it is of interest to Hershey and the researchers.
"L-theanine is a really fascinating product that lowers blood pressure and produces what we call alpha waves in the brain that are very calm and peaceful," Stevens said. "We thought that if chocolate acutely elevates blood pressure, and L-theanine lowers blood pressure, then maybe the L-theanine would counteract the short-term hypertensive effects of chocolate."
For participants who consumed the high-cacao content chocolate with L-theanine, researchers recorded an immediate drop in blood pressure. "It's remarkable. The potential here is for a heart healthy chocolate confection that contains a high level of cacao with L-theanine that is good for your heart, lowers blood pressure and helps you pay attention," Stevens said.
Stevens hopes the results of this study will encourage manufacturers to investigate further and consider the health benefits of developing a chocolate bar made with high-cacao content and L-theanine.
"People don't generally eat chocolate and think it's going to be healthy for them," Stevens said. He added that there is a possibility the millions of hypertension patients in the country could eat a bar of this heart healthy chocolate every afternoon and their blood pressure would drop into the normal range, and they would be more alert and attentive.We often hear that science has proved that race does not exist. But I alway ask, Don’t the same arguments about blurry boundaries and the like also apply to the proposition that species does not exist? Then I cite confusing cases regarding species that have big money implications under the Endangered Species Act. Are dogs, coyotes, and wolves one species or separate species? What about red wolves?
In the NYT, Carl Zimmer brings us up to date on the latest findings regarding my go-to example:
DNA Study Reveals the One and Only Wolf Species in North America
Carl Zimmer
MATTER JULY 27, 2016
The first large study of North American wolf genomes has found that there is only one species on the continent: the gray wolf. Two other purported species, the Eastern wolf and the red wolf, are mixes of gray wolf and coyote DNA, the scientists behind the study concluded.
The finding, announced Wednesday, highlights the shortcomings of laws intended to protect endangered species, as such laws lag far behind scientific research into the evolution of species.
The gray wolf and red wolf were listed as endangered in the lower 48 states under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s and remain protected today, to the periodic consternation of ranchers and agricultural interests.
In 2013, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service recognized the Eastern wolf as a separate species, which led officials to recommend delisting the gray wolf. Conservationists won a lawsuit that forced the agency to abandon the plan.
The new finding sharpens a scientific question at the heart of that debate: How should the Endangered Species Act address threatened animals that are hybrids? …
Those efforts were possible because of the Endangered Species Act, established in 1973. The law led to a recovery program for a species known as the red wolf, or Canis rufus, believed to have originally lived in the Southeast. The last red wolves were removed from the wild in 1980, and captive-bred animals were released into the wild beginning in 1987.
The gray wolf, or Canis lupus, once ranged from the Rockies to New England. In 1978, the Fish and Wildlife Service declared it to be threatened in the lower 48 states.
In 2000, some scientists began to argue that the eastern population of gray wolves was in fact a separate species, which they called Canis lycaon. The Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that species in 2013, and officials argued that the gray wolf, now deemed to be limited to the western United States, was doing well enough to be taken off the list.
The new analysis, published in the journal Science Advances, paints a profoundly different portrait of the American wolf.
Bridgett M. vonHoldt of Princeton University and her colleagues sequenced the genomes of 12 gray wolves, six Eastern wolves, three red wolves and three coyotes, as well as the genomes of dogs and wolves from Asia.
Dr. vonHoldt and her colleagues found no evidence that red wolves or Eastern wolves belonged to distinct lineages of their own. Instead, they seem to be populations of gray wolves, sharing many of the same genes.
What really sets Eastern wolves and red wolves apart, the researchers found, is a large amount of coyote DNA in their genomes.
The new study revealed that coyotes and North American wolves shared a remarkably recent common ancestor. Scientists had previously estimated their ancestor lived a million years ago, but the new study put the figure at just 50,000 years ago.
“I could not have put money on it being so recent,” Dr. vonHoldt said.
That ancestor gave rise to two species — the predecessor of today’s gray wolves and that of today’s coyotes — somewhere in Eurasia. Dr. vonHoldt said that |
the reach of fossil fuel lobbyists in the state it’s unclear that his office has taken any steps to actually help that come about.
Offshore Wind Energy For North Carolina
Based on figures collected by federal agencies, the Southeastern Coastal Wind Coalition makes a tight case for exploiting North Carolina’s offshore wind potential.
The four coastal states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia have 82 percent of the total Atlantic coast wind potential in shallow water (defined as being at least 12 miles offshore, so not too shallow). These four states also have some of the lowest construction costs for offshore wind turbines all along the eastern seaboard, and they’re among the largest and fastest-growing electricity markets.
The WEAs for North Carolina were designated last summer pending a final environmental assessment. For those of you keeping score at home, the total comes to more than 300,000 acres divided among three parcels: Kitty Hawk (122,405 acres), Wilmington West (51,595 acres), and Wilmington East (about 133,590 acres).
The latest development occurred last week, when Interior announced the completion of its environmental assessment.
The assessment takes into consideration viewsheds (that’s fancyspeak for “nice view,”) and habitat conservation as well as potential conflicts with shipping, fishing, military activities, and other uses.
The next step is a 30-day public comment period and the clock began ticking on January 23 so if you have anything to say about it, check out Interior’s website.
More And More Offshore Wind Energy
In its North Carolina announcement, Interior offered up a recap of its progress so far on competitive offshore leases administered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM):
To date, BOEM has awarded seven commercial wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast: two non-competitive leases (Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts and an area off Delaware) and five competitive leases (two offshore Massachusetts-Rhode Island, two offshore Maryland and another offshore Virginia).
Interior also made clear that a recent setback for Cape Wind won’t stop offshore development in Massachusetts. The state is scheduled for a competitive lease sale auction later this month.
As for New Jersey, the Fisherman’s Energy wind project has also faced some obstacles, but even if that project doesn’t go through there is wind energy in New Jersey’s destiny. BOEM is also planning a lease sale for the state later this year.
Follow me on Twitter and Google+.Following this week's announcement that Google has agreed to purchase connected home device maker Nest for $3.2 billion there has been a lot of speculation about whether Google can be trusted with our home data. The smarter approach, to me, is represented by a Taipai-based tech commentator named Ben Thompson who wrote about Google's New Business Model on his blog. He refers to Nest as the "second-leg for the Google stool… arriving just in time," as the "growth rate in Internet penetration is set to peak in 2016." Google has been able to confidently move into any business that drives internet use since its ad business benefits from a large share of that traffic. With that growth curve flattening, Thompson explains, Google needs to look elsewhere.
The connected home is a good place to start. There are many innovations that can save families time, money and energy that can be implemented through small connected devices controlled and monitored by smartphones. Driverless cars, robots, the smart home, all of these things are connected in Google's future.
But, according to a report by security-as-a-service provider Proofpoint, the Internet of Things (IoT) has just experienced its first global cyber attack. "The global attack campaign involved more than 750,000 malicious email communications coming from more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions and at least one refrigerator that had been compromised and used as a platform to launch attacks" the company announced yesterday in a press release.
The incident documented by Proofpoint occurred between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014. It was a form of botnet attack that involved sending waves of malicious email. These emails were sent in batches of 100,000, three times a day, but significantly, no more than 10 emails were sent from any single IP address. This form of distributed attack is very hard to trace. The innovation here is in using internet connected devices other than laptop and desktop machines for a significant share of the traffic (more than 25% in this case.) Proofpoint's General Manager of Information Security, David Knight, refers to this collection of devices as a "thingbot" and explains that, "Many of these devices are poorly protected at best and consumers have virtually no way to detect or fix infections when they do occur. Enterprises may find distributed attacks increasing as more and more of these devices come on-line and attackers find additional ways to exploit them."
Getting spammed by your refrigerator is a laughable concept, but it points to a serious potential problem.
Google is in fact well positioned to help Nest with the inevitable security threats. The company acquired the German security analytics software company Zynamics in 2011 and the Spanish malware scanning company VirusTotal in 2012. And most people don't think of it this way, but the spam filtering in Gmail (one of Google's signature accomplishments in machine learning) is perhaps the most prevalent security software on the planet.
When I think about the differences between Apple and Google it seems to me that Apple excels in the device in your hand and Google in the network that connects them all. Apple's attempts at big data and synchronization (Apple Maps and iCloud in particular) have fallen short of the equivalent Google efforts. So buying Nest is really a way for Google to buy that piece of Apple DNA that they cannot synthesize themselves.
For Nest co-founders Tony Fadell (CEO) and Matt Rogers (VP of Engineering), both former Apple employees, acquisition by Google gives them access to these network strengths that Apple could not provide. Besides, Apple is not in the business of diversifying as Google is. Cupertino's acquisitions are all focused on things that can make their existing products better or, in the rare case like the forthcoming iWatch, of setting up a major new line. Apple, for example built the software for iBeacons but hasn't produced hardware for any standalone devices to make use of it.
Counterintuitively, the announcement of a coordinated cyber attack originating in the IoT may be good news for Nest as it is acquired by Google. Security is not top of mind for consumers when it comes to smart home adoption—convenience and return on investment are—but it can be an irritant, a wrench in the gears that creates confusion and doubt. Nest's product design makes the smart home easy to use and Google can make their connectivity easy and secure. This could be a winning combination.
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To keep up with Quantum of Content, please subscribe to my updates on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and App.net or add me on Google+.Algae are organisms useful in many ways in the transition towards a bio-economy. Even in a cool climate as in Finland, algae might be used to produce biochemicals and biofuels, besides use in capture of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. The ALGIDA project coordinated by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland explored algae growing in Finland.
Algae are not yet profitably cultivated for energy production purposes. The cultivation is challenging especially in cool climate where there is little daylight in winter.
Production is expensive compared with wood and agricultural biomass. But the findings of the ALGIDA project indicate that establishing profitable algae cultivation can also be possible in Finland.
The components of algae are suitable not only for producing biofuels but also pigments, cosmetics components or hydrogels. Algae are also used in the production of nutritional supplements, particularly omega-3. Algal biomass is suitable for biofertilizers.
“The most sensible thing to do in Finland is to integrate cultivation into industrial processes with spill heat and to integration into industrial processes with spill heat and focus development on the production of biofuels and biochemical compounds, and on nutrient removal from effluents. Algae can also be used to recover nutrients, organic impurities and heavy metals from waste and waste water,” says the project manager, Principal Scientist Mona Arnold from VTT.
Using algae to produce biofuels requires growing conditions where the algae produce high levels of lipids. The profitability of commercialisation depends on trends in oil prices. Economically sustainable production requires that all components of the algal biomass need are used. This is an internationally active area of research, and it is worthwhile for Finland to be involved. The aviation industry in particular is interested in the potential of algae-based biofuels.
Algae need heat but manage without light
The purpose of the ALGIDA project was to explore algae growth in waste waters in Finland and how the condition could be improved. Short daylight hours of winter are a problem, but algae are able to adapt to variable growing conditions. There are basically two options for a carbon source in algae cultivation: either carbon dioxide in the air and in industrial emissions, or organic waste. The project demonstrated the possibility of cultivating algae by using carbon dioxide source in the summer, when light is available and waste sugar in the winter.
Algae need warmth to grow. In the Finnish climate it makes sense to link algae cultivation to industrial operations where residual heat is available to heat algae cultivation ponds or reactors. Energy is also needed for harvesting and water extraction. In the SWEET programme, VTT and Kemira collaborated to develop chemical means for enhancing the harvesting and drying stage.
VTT is currently launching cooperation with the oil and gas company ONGC in India and with CLEEN Ltd. (Cluster for Clean Energy and Environment in Finland). The aim here is to demonstrate the capacity of algae in pilot scale to bind carbon dioxide from emissions from a natural gas refinery. This will reveal the potential of algae in a CO2 capture, best applications for algal biomass and how well algae could be grown in industrial waste water.
VTT coordinated the project ‘Algae from waste for combined biodiesel and biogas production’ (ALGIDA) between 2010 and 2013. VTT collaborated with the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Environmental Institute, the HAMK University of Applied Sciences and the Lahti University of Applied Sciences.
Research report online: http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/technology/2013/T147.pdf
Source: VTT Technical Research CentreAlien vs Predator is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar on October 21, 1994 and later in Japan by Mumin Corporation on December 8 of the same year, where it became a pack-in game when the console was launched in the region.[1][2][3] It is the first game in the Alien vs. Predator franchise to be developed by Rebellion.
Set in the Golgotha Training Base camp, the player takes control of either the Alien, Predator or the human Private Lance J. Lewis of the Colonial Marines, each having their own storyline. Alien vs Predator was originally under development by Images Software for the Atari Lynx, where it featured references to the comic book series Alien Versus Predator by Dark Horse Comics and was a corridor-based shooter but after its cancellation, it was then planned to be a port of the SNES beat 'em up title of the same name for the Jaguar, which was previously developed by Jorudan in 1993 but was changed into a first-person shooter when Atari Corporation resubmitted the project to both 20th Century Fox and Activision.[4][5]
Alien vs Predator received critical acclaim when it was released, with critics praising its atmosphere, graphics and single-player campaign, garnered multiple awards and was referred by various publications as one of the best games for the Jaguar.[6][7][8] It was also a commercial success, selling over 85,000 copies, becoming one of the best-selling games for the system as of July 1995, though it is unknown how many were sold in total during its lifetime.[9][10] Atari Corporation had opened discussions with Beyond Games about their interest in developing a sequel to the game, titled Alien vs Predator 2: Annihilation,[11] but dropped out of these negotiations shortly before they officially discontinued the Jaguar.[12]
Gameplay [ edit ]
Top: Alien gameplay.
Middle: Predator gameplay.
Bottom: Colonial Marine gameplay. Each of the playable characters have their own corresponding Alien gameplay.Predator gameplay.Colonial Marine gameplay. Each of the playable characters have their own corresponding HUD, showing a picture of the character, score, energy and corresponding weapons, while each one shows different gameplay elements at the left side of the screen.
Alien vs Predator is a first-person shooter presented with digitized graphics on a rudimentary 3D environment, similar to Wolfenstein 3D, with two-dimensional digitized sprites. Each of the three playable characters have their own scenario, objectives, weapons, abilities and disadvantages. All of the enemies in the three campaigns do not emit any other sound effects, except when they are attacking the player. Progress, high-scores and other settings made by the player is manually kept by pausing the game and saving in any of the three available save slots via the cartridge's internal EEPROM.
When playing as the Alien, the player's objective is to rescue the Alien queen, who is being held captive on a Predator spaceship. The player must fight numerous marines and Predators through various sublevels of the ship in order to reach the Queen. The Alien is unable to heal itself from injuries and instead "cocoons" marines; if the Alien dies, a cocooned marine will become a new Alien, allowing the player to continue from that location. The Alien is unable to use elevators and instead travels between levels of the ship through air ducts.
As the Predator, the player's objective is to reach and kill the Alien queen in order to claim her skull. The Predator can use elevators to travel between levels but he cannot travel through the air ducts. He can carry medical kits and use them later to recover health, and can use a cloaking device to become invisible from the Aliens and the Marines. Weapons and scoring are based on how the Predator kills enemies. Killing an enemy while invisible results in a loss of honor points, which can in turn result in losing equipped weapons. Killing an enemy while visible result in an increase of honor points, which in turn allows access to more weapons. Available weapons in this scenario includes a combi stick, shoulder cannon, flying disk and a wrist blade. Stepping on the Alien's acid blood after being killed results in a loss of health. The Predator can get attacked by the Facehugger.
As Private Lance J. Lewis of the Colonial Marines, the player's objective is to escape from the military base that has been invaded by Aliens and Predators. At the start of the game, Lewis awakes in the base's brig after a cryosentence for strike offence at an officer and has no weapons, motion tracker, or security clearance. The player must find new weapons and security cards in order to fend off enemies and access new sublevels of the base, activate the base's self-destruct mechanism, and escape from the area in the escape pod. Lewis can use medical kits and food scattered on the base to recover health, but unlike the Predator, he cannot carry them and must use them immediately. Similarly, he cannot carry ammunition found on the base so the player must conserve ammo as much as possible in order to defend themselves. He can also use computer terminals in the medical laboratories to recover health, but the final amount of health possible depends on the grade of security card which the player possesses. Lewis can also access computer terminals scattered around the sublevels to learn more about the backstory of the base after the occupation by the Aliens and computer teminals in the armory to learn more about the weapons available found on the corpse of the marines. Available weapons in this scenario include a shotgun, pulse rifle, flame thrower, and smart gun. As Lewis, the player can use both air ducts and elevators to access new sublevels. Like the Predator, Lewis can get attacked by the Facehugger and lose health by stepping on acid blood.
Plot [ edit ]
Taken from the introduction in the manual of the game:[13]
Alien vs Predator is a tactical simulator depicting the events following the fall of the Camp Golgotha Colonial Marine Training Base to a group of xenomorphs [aliens] not yet fully classified. Limited data from the incident allow for reasonably extrapolated simulations from the viewpoint of the two alien groups believed to have participated in the incident. The data contained herein is considered top secret as of this release, and any duplication, distribution or display is punishable by court-martial with a maximum penalty not to exceed seven years imprisonment in the Yuggoth penal colony, SYS Aldeberan IV. [USCMC, 53622a]
The game takes place in the Golgotha Training Base of the United States Colonial Marines Corps built by Weyland-Yutani on the Vortigern Sector Perimeter. When an unknown Space Jockey Boneship vessel approaches to the base, a Chatterjee Class tug is sent to retrieve it for further examination. As soon as the vessel is aboard on the base, it is quickly overrun by the Aliens, leading to the evacuation of civilians, recruits and personal of the base from the area via escape pods, while the remaining Colonial Marines go into defensive positions in an attempt to protect the base from the xenomorphs and sending an emergency distress signal requesting for backup. After the occupation of the training base by the Aliens, a Predator ship looms over the horizon from their home planet preparing for boarding the station after receiving the signal and seeing this as an opportunity to hunt down the xenomorphs.
Production [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
Rebellion Developments was founded in 1992 by brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley.[14][15][16][17] The pair just finished their academic degrees at the University of Oxford, and had ambitions of starting doctorates.[14][17] while in their spare time, they did freelance work in the games industry.[14][15][16][17] When their freelance jobs roles began to expand and taking on more management responsibilities, they decided to establish the company in Oxford.[17] The foundation of the studio was laid when the brothers secured a deal with Atari UK.[14][17] Rebellion presented a 3D dragon flight game demo for the Atari Falcon,[15][16] which decipted dragons against vikings longships to directors at the publisher, including then-Atari UK CEO Bob Gleadow and Software Development Manager Alistair Bodin, who were seeking games for the then-upcoming Atari Jaguar.[14][17] They were commissioned by the company to work on two titles for the Jaguar: Alien vs Predator and Checkered Flag, which both were released in 1994.[14][16][17]
Development [ edit ]
Alien vs Predator was instead developed and released for the Jaguar. Originally conceived as a Lynx title,was instead developed and released for the Jaguar.
According to producer James Hampton, Alien vs Predator originally started as a corridor-based shooter for the Atari Lynx that was in development by Images Software, a UK-based developer who created a demo that only featured both the Colonial Marine and Predator as playable characters but lacked the Alien, while its design document featured characters and locations that referenced Dark Horse Comics' Alien Versus Predator series, in addition to being one of his first projects when he started working for Atari Corporation in 1992 after leaving LucasArts.[4][5] However, the project was put on hold and later cancelled as Atari Corp. focused its resources for the then-upcoming Jaguar but work on it was later restarted, as the company was ramping up production of upcoming titles for the Jaguar but it was originally intended to be a port of the Super Nintendo beat 'em up game Alien Vs. Predator, which was developed by the Japan-based developer Jorudan, but James felt it did not represented the franchise's universe and characters properly.[4][5] He then submitted an updated design proposal of the project to both 20th Century Fox and Activision, which now labeled it as a first-person shooter with the ability of playing as either of the three characters and without elements from the comic book series.[4][5] The decision of having three playable characters was an idea from Chris and Jason Kingsley, who both had the desire to play as either side.[4] Atari also shared the original design documents from the cancelled Lynx game with Rebellion Developments, along with other concepts created by the former's internal team.[5]
Alien vs Predator was initially developed entirely in house by Rebellion in Oxford. Mike Beaton programmed the graphics engine, whilst the Kingsley brothers plus additional artists Stuart Wilson and Toby Harrison-Bamfield produced the artwork using the novel technique of photographing built models.[18][19] The game was first showcased to the public at Atari's August 1993 press conference at Sunnyvale, California in a very early playable state and was also one of the first titles to be announced for the system, with magazines comparing it to Wolfenstein 3D in terms of its gameplay structure.[20][21][22][23] In their October 1993 issue, GamePro magazine showcased screenshots from another very early build of the game, which featured different graphics compared to the final release,[24] while in their next issue on the following month listed the game as a January 1994 release.[25] The game made its first trade show appearance at the January WCES '94.[26][27] During this time, Rebellion's development team was expanded to assist with work on additional projects, including artist Justin Rae and programmer Rob Dibley working on Checkered Flag for the Jaguar,[28] and programmer Andrew Whittaker (now Jane Whittaker) to assist with programming of the gameplay engine for Alien vs Predator, which was jointly written by Beaton and Whittaker.[29][30] Alien vs Predator was later scheduled for a Q2 1994 release, but the game's then-low budget caused multiple issues during development, leading it to be delayed for a holiday release on the same year for improvements.[5] James Hampton acknowledged both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom as influences for the game, as he and Atari encouraged the development team to play games like them.[4] The game later appeared at SCES '94 in a mostly finished playable state,[31][32][33][34][35][36] and had its last trade show appearance at Autumn ECTS '94.[37][38][39][40][41]
Alien vs Predator runs between 10-15 frames per second,[19][42] with the in-game visuals being displayed at a 16-bit color format, while both cutscenes and static screens are rendered at the 24-bit color format.[19][18] The system's Blitter and GPU processors are used to draw the textured polygons on-screen and handle calculations respectively.[42] The Alien's AI, dubbed "Alien Chess" by Andrew Whittaker,[4] was created for the title and its function is to activate the enemies when the player approached them, among other features.[4] The Colonial Marine is named after then-Atari employee Lance J. Lewis, who was one of the map designers, manual writers and lead tester for the title.[43][44][45]
Art design [ edit ]
During development, Alien vs Predator originally made use of hand-drawn graphics using the 256 color format but according to Jason and Chris Kingsley however, they were deemed not realistic enough for the intended atmosphere and instead it uses a combination of tile panels for the texture-mapped graphics and model figures for sprites, an idea that came from both Stuart Wilson and Toby Harrison-Banfield.[19][46][47][42][48][29][49][4][5] Both characters and tiles began with a series of production sketches drawn by the art team at Rebellion and by using the drawings as a starting basis, the team proceeded to create both models and tiles.[46][47][42] Walls, ceilings and floors were constructed from scratch by using 5x5 inch tiles made up from various materials such as latex, wax and resin, while the details were then airbrushed and later photographed and digitized into the game by using a 35mm camera, with one particular tile created for the kitchen areas having drinking straws as pipes running across.[46][19][47][42][49]
The same process was also applied to the character models, which used the same materials as the tiles but were created as a mix of both off-the-shell kits from an local shop and custom-made models.[46][19][47][42] Each of the animations seen in-game were then filmed using these models through the process of stop motion and digitization.[29][4] Both the cover art for packaging and the title screen were rendered in LightWave 3D by freelance artist Andrew H. Denton.[50] The Colonial Marine's HUD portrait is from Sean Patten,[4] the producer of Iron Soldier, who was a fan of the franchise to the point of building replicas of the costumes seen on the movies and he was then digitized for the character's animations with the built costume.[19][29][4] All of the graphics were compressed by using JagPEG, an Atari adaptation of the JPEG format, which compress art asset into approximately an 8:1 ratio without loss of the picture's quality.[18][42][29] Both Atari and Rebellion were encouraged to watch the movies for reference, with one scene in Aliens being the template for the starting area.[4][51]
Audio [ edit ]
Many of the game's sound effects and voices samples were provided by Atari Corp.'s sound department, in addition to the films from both Alien and Predator series.[5][44] The sound for when the Alien cocoons a Marine was done by Dan McNamee, one of the lead testers and level designers for the title,[52] who took a bite out of an apple.[53] The voiceovers for the Marine were done by James Grunke, one of the composers for the game and head of Atari's sound department.[44] The computer voice heard in terminals found through the game were recorded by Sandra Miller, wife of Richard Miller, who was the former vice president of Atari Corp. and founder of VM Labs.[4] The scream of the Aliens were recorded from Richard Miller's then-newborn child.[44]
Release [ edit ]
Alien vs Predator was released on October 21, 1994.[1] The game was also released in Japan on December 8 of the same year by Mumin Corporation,[3] where it came with an exclusive Japanese manual and became the pack-in title for the system instead of Cybermorph.[54] A CD-ROM conversion of the game for the Atari Jaguar CD was in the planning stages but it never moved forward beyond this phase.[5][53][55] In addition, a virtual reality version of the title that supported the never-released Jaguar VR headset was also in development but it went unreleased.[56]
Reception [ edit ]
Alien vs Predator was one of Atari's most high-profile Jaguar games, and was eagerly awaited after several delays. Most reviews of the game were favorable, with reviewers commenting on the atmospheric and frightening sounds and visuals,[87][72] diversity of gameplay between the different character types,[87][72] and the greater reliance on strategy over the standard first-person shooter.[87] Conversely, Edge gave the game 4 out of 10, negatively comparing it to Doom.[65]
In 2006, GameTrailers named the game one of the "Top Ten Scariest Games". The reviewer noted that while creepy on its own, the early hardware of the Atari Jaguar did not allow the player to notice an enemy sneaking up on them, and with little other noise to warn the player.[88]
Legacy [ edit ]
A sequel, titled Alien vs Predator 2: Annihilation, was planned for the Jaguar CD after the first game was released.[11] Atari Corporation opened discussions with Beyond Games about their interest in developing a sequel, however, the former dropped out of these negotiations shortly before they officially discontinued the Jaguar platform.[12] An unfinished model of the Alien intended for the sequel is owned by Beyond Games' de facto successor - Smart Bomb Interactive, which later became WildWorks and still operates as of date.[89]
After its release, Rebellion Developments would go on to develop other games in the Alien vs. Predator franchise such as Aliens versus Predator for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 1999, which used ideas that were provided to 20th Century Fox by Atari for the unreleased CD-ROM version of the Jaguar game.[5][53]Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde Thursday read out parts of his statement twice in the Lok Sabha on the attack on CRPF troopers in Srinagar, adding to the list of his gaffes.
According to parliament sources, Shinde stopped only when an official pointed it out to him that he had read out parts of his statement twice. BJP members protested the issue.
Controversies are not new to the political leader from Maharashtra, who started off as a police inspector, quit the force and rapidly climbed the political ladder to become the Maharashtra chief minister and later a central minister.
Recently, Shinde, who regretted his January statement linking the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to terrorism, was in the eye of a storm over the alleged intelligence failure behind the Hyderabad blasts that killed 16 people and injured 117.
The issue had rocked parliament as opposition parties attacked the government after Shinde said there were prior intelligence reports about the blasts.
Shinde was also criticised for the delay in intimating the family of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru about his execution Feb 9, denying the family basic human courtesy.
Earlier this month, while making a statement in the Rajya Sabha on the rape and murder of three minor sisters in Bhandara in Maharashtra, Shinde named all the victims, which according to the law is prohibited. This drew the ire of BJP members and the deputy chairman expunged the names from the records.
In December last year, during the visit of Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha hit out at Shinde for "not responding appropriately" to Malik's controversial remarks about 26/11 Mumbai attacks' mastermind Hafiz Saeed and the Babri Masjid issue.
Malik compared the 2008 Mumbai attacks with the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992.
However, he later claimed his statement was misunderstood.
Shinde was made the home minister after incumbent P. Chidambaram moved to the finance ministry in August 2012. He was also made Leader of the Lok Sabha after Pranab Mukjerjee vacated the post when he was elected the president in July.
Shinde is considered to be Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's choice for the high-profile post of India's home minister as a reward for his loyalty to the party leadership.It is an oversimplification to assert that deep bit depth is necessary for passive radar. In my radar class I give my students a passive raddar data set in which they can detect several aircraft (out to 100 km or so) as well as auroral electrojet irregularities (at 750 km). Initially I have them use full precision 16bit data, and then have them truncate the data all the way down to 1 bit (only the sign bit) — and it still works, with a surprisingly small sensitivity hit. [This data set came from the Manastash Ridge Radar which takes advantage of mountain range to provide significant suppression of the direct path.]
The reason for this is that passive radar data is processed with very large processing gain — about 40 dB for commercial FM, and nearly 70 dB for digital TV. Loosely speaking, passive radar detection information in range and doppler is contained not in the amplitude of the signals, but by performing appropriate correlations in the data. With other tricks, it is possible to achieve over 100 dB of instantaneous dynamic range using shallow digitizers; we’re managing that with 8 bit digitizers at the moment.
The book “Advances in Bistatic Radar” by Griffiths and Willis (2007) contains quite a bit of information about passive radar (I wrote one of the chapters, passive radar for ionospheric physics).
There will be sessions and short courses on passive radar at the May 2017 IEEE Radar Conference in Seattle.FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Courtney was frustrated Tuesday as she stood outside of Terminal 1 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
She'd been trying to connect with her Uber driver in the pickup zone at the airport, but she couldn't seem to get a ride.
But even after three rejections, she remained positive that she'd make it to her home in Plantation.
"I'll get home eventually," said Courtney, who didn’t want her last name used.
The thing is, Courtney isn't the only one getting rejected by Uber.
Other travelers said drivers with the ride-sharing app are cherry picking rides at the airport. They're accusing drivers of rejecting shorter rides.
Since drivers cannot see a passenger's destination until they're in the car, passengers said the drivers are calling them for destination information.
Phil Davis, who travels often for work, is fed up with the rejections.
"I often find myself waiting 40 minutes to an hour just to get a ride home from the airport," he said.
Shaun Ramey, who was also stranded at the airport, said drivers aren't supposed to question where passengers are going, but it happens.
"It can be frustrating," Ramey said.
Local 10 News decided to test the issue with the Uber app.
The driver called moments after a request was placed for a ride.
When the driver was told that the destination was a business on Stirling Road, which is a four-mile trip that would cost about $21 with a traditional taxi and about $14 with Uber.
The driver rejected the request.
When asked why the ride was rejected, the driver hung up.
So Local 10 called again.
This time, the location changed to the Bayside area in downtown Miami. The trip is about 21 miles and would net the driver nearly $41.
This time the answer was different.
"I'll see you in five minutes," the driver said.
When told about the problem, Uber issued a statement.
"Uber’s mission is to connect riders to reliable transportation, everywhere for everyone," Uber Florida spokesman Javi Correoso said. "It is unacceptable to refuse to provide services based on where someone is going. We are working with both, driver partners and airport officials, to improve the pick up process at FLL airport."
Uber also reminded riders to contact support on the app if a driver cancels a ride.Certain sensitive documents will come out in the public domain after a long time. After 20 years, PGurus accessed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) closure report on the two decade old Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spy case. The 32-page report published in the end of this post lays the blame squarely at the Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials and top Kerala Police officers for spoiling the career and fame of ISRO’s top scientists like Nambi Narayanan and D. Sasikumar.
Apart from criticising the IB Joint Director Mathew John and Deputy Director RB Sreekumar, CBI also blames then IB Chief D C Pathak (referred to as DIB in the report) for the goof-ups in the case resulting in disaster to ISRO scientists. The CBI’s closure report clearly admonishes the IB’s interrogation team led by Mathew John and Sreekumar for putting pressure on the scientists and two women from Maldives to prove their point.
The closure report says there was no leakage of documents from ISRO or no money exchange was found. But the IB officials and Kerala Police officials were just pressing the arrested scientists and women to make false statements. Worse, the then IB Chief was just sending the daily interrogation notes (mentioned as UO or Un-Official (?)) and reports to Home Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) without verification (Page 13), says the CBI report.
The 32 page report ends: “The above mentioned facts show that the aforesaid IB officials comprising the team enquiring into ISRO case, acted in an unprofessional manner and were privy to the arrest of six innocent persons, thereby causing them immense mental physical agony. The senior officers who were supervising and monitoring the enquiries under reference, particularly, Shri. Mathew John, Jt. Director and R B Sreekumar failed in their duty to conduct the inquiry in an objective and fair manner. At the IB Headquarters, the UO notes referred to herein-above were prepared based on these interrogation reports and without verification leading to serious complications including casting doubts on the integrity of two top ISRO scientists who were responsible for developing the PSLV project and launching our country into the space”.
The scientists were arrested and tortured in mid 1994 and were let off; after many years the CBI closed the case, blaming IB and Kerala Police for the unprofessional investigation. Now scientist Nambi Narayanan is fighting for justice to get back his lost honour. Others arrested with him try to believe their bad days as their fate (bad karma).
This “fake scandal” had a disastrous effect on India’s cryogenic program. It led to the downfall of K Karunakaran, the Chief Minister of Kerala who could never become a Chief Minister again. Nambi Narayanan, an honest, sincere and brilliant scientist (he had a Masters from Princeton, an Ivy League University), who was a peer of A P J Abdul Kalam, was tortured, kept in a cell for days and even after he was acquitted, never given the same pride of place in the ISRO.
The full CBI report follows:
CBI Report on IB on RBS Role FinalThe Obama campaign filed a motion on Wednesday asking a federal court to force the state of Ohio to obey its decision to restore early voting in the three days before the November election.
The motion was filed in response to an announcement from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who said Tuesday that he wouldn’t set early voting hours until an appeals court ruled on a decision made by U.S. District Judge Peter Economus last week. Economos found that the “public interest is served by restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters.”In its filing Wednesday, the Obama campaign pointed out that Ohio had not sought an actual stay of Economus’ decision, and instead “appears to believe it can issue [a stay] on its own authority.” The Obama campaign said Husted’s memo does not “identify the legal basis for this extraordinary action,” and argued that the memo conflicts with a well-established principle that orders based on a court decision are to be respected until an appeals court rules on the matter.
“Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court act as appropriate and necessary to enforce its Order issued August 31, 2012,” lawyer Donald J. McTigue writes in the motion.
Mitt Romney’s campaign has previously attacked the Obama campaign for filing the lawsuit, falsely |
before he died. It’s the persistent worry that I will run out of money before I run out of time. It runs over and over and over, a pedal stroke, a free wheel, an absurdity.
The next kilometer is at least two kilometers long. It’s twice as steep as it was last time I was there, and I will surely blow up as soon as I get to it. There are monsters around every bend. There are potholes. The next kilometer is impossible, theoretical physics, antimatter, a unicorn.
This kilometer is hard enough. It deserves more of my attention. Honestly. I’m pedaling squares here. I’m slumped over like a drunk at closing time. How am I supposed to breathe like this? I’m going to crush these goddamned handlebars too. Loosen up, jackass. You’re burning watts with that death grip. Yes. Yes. This kilometer deserves much more attention.
The next kilometer is the cart, and I am the horse. It is the chicken, and I am the egg.
This kilometer is harder than it ought to be. Why am I so off today? Did I not eat enough? Did I not sleep well? Am I just off form? What the hell does that really mean? What is my form? Am I getting tendonitis in my knee? If this kilometer doesn’t give it to me, the next one probably will. Bernard Hinault had tendonitis in his knee. I am not Bernard Hinault.
The next kilometer. Is there a more pure expression of the future? In this present, everything is going worse in the future. It is going like it is going now, but more so. I don’t even dare think about the kilometer after the next kilometer. That would be pure hubris. That would be murder. Cain and Abel. Or worse, plucking that ancient apple and taking a bite. The stupid snake. Never trust a lizard with no arms.
The great mercy of cycling is that, at some point, the next kilometer becomes this kilometer enough that you run out of things to worry about, and you can slink off to the shower, pull on a fresh, clean shirt and some dry underpants, and begin the necessary process of revising the past, all those killer kilometers, into one nice smooth ride. Done. Dusted. And easy.Photo: MICHAEL MACOR / SFC Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close
Image 2 of 24 2001 — Barry Zito, a year away from his Cy Young, in the dugout during Game 3 of the ALDS between the A's and the Yankees. That year, Zito had a career-high 205 strikeouts. 2001 — Barry Zito, a year away from his Cy Young, in the dugout during Game 3 of the ALDS between the A's and the Yankees. That year, Zito had a career-high 205 strikeouts. Photo: MICHAEL MACOR / SFC
Image 3 of 24 2002 — Zito appears on The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn (Late, indeed. Craig Ferguson took over the program in 2005). 2002 — Zito appears on The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn (Late, indeed. Craig Ferguson took over the program in 2005). Photo: HANDOUT / SFC
Image 4 of 24 2002 — A's pitcher Barry Zito relaxes in his San Francisco home and plays a little guitar. He says he has thought about writing a song about baseball, but mostly he plays just for fun and relaxation. Ah, classic Barry. less 2002 — A's pitcher Barry Zito relaxes in his San Francisco home and plays a little guitar. He says he has thought about writing a song about baseball, but mostly he plays just for fun and relaxation. Ah,... more Photo: SCOTT SOMMERDORF / SFC
Image 5 of 24
Image 6 of 24 2002 — Zito at a press conference after he was awarded the American League Cy Young Award. It was an incredible year; he went 23-5 and had a 2.75 ERA, all while sporting frosted tips. 2002 — Zito at a press conference after he was awarded the American League Cy Young Award. It was an incredible year; he went 23-5 and had a 2.75 ERA, all while sporting frosted tips. Photo: LANCE IVERSEN / SFC
Image 7 of 24 2003 — Zito poses in our old "Cars of the Stars" feature. In case you can't tell, his car is a Dodge Durango and that's a jean jacket draped across his knees. Or a skirt. 2003 — Zito poses in our old "Cars of the Stars" feature. In case you can't tell, his car is a Dodge Durango and that's a jean jacket draped across his knees. Or a skirt. Photo: John Storey / SFC
Image 8 of 24 2003 — Here, Zito outduels Roger Clemens in a marquee matchup of the last two AL Cy Young winners, blanking baseball's top-scoring team for eight innings and pitching the Oakland Athletics over the New York Yankees, 2-0. less 2003 — Here, Zito outduels Roger Clemens in a marquee matchup of the last two AL Cy Young winners, blanking baseball's top-scoring team for eight innings and pitching the Oakland Athletics over the New York... more Photo: GREGORY BULL / AP
Image 9 of 24 2006 — Zito in his photography phase; there are several photos of him taking photos in the Chronicle archive. In this, his final year in Oakland, he posted a 3.83 ERA in 34 games started. 2006 — Zito in his photography phase; there are several photos of him taking photos in the Chronicle archive. In this, his final year in Oakland, he posted a 3.83 ERA in 34 games started. Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice / SFC
Image 10 of 24
Image 11 of 24 2007 — New San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito holds his jersey as he is introduced at a news conference with general manager Brian Sabean and owner Peter Magowan. HIs seven-year, $126 million deal was the highest for any pitcher in Major League history at the time. less 2007 — New San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito holds his jersey as he is introduced at a news conference with general manager Brian Sabean and owner Peter Magowan. HIs seven-year, $126 million deal was... more Photo: By Lance Iversen / SFC
Image 12 of 24 2007 — What better way to celebrate signing a $126 million contract than by pretending to be Carlos Santana for the night? No word on how good (or bad) the performance was. 2007 — What better way to celebrate signing a $126 million contract than by pretending to be Carlos Santana for the night? No word on how good (or bad) the performance was. Photo: Kat Wade / SFC
Image 13 of 24 2007 —Barry Zito and Willie Mays share a laugh at a press conference was held at AT&T Park to outline the 2007 All-Star week schedule of events. 2007 —Barry Zito and Willie Mays share a laugh at a press conference was held at AT&T Park to outline the 2007 All-Star week schedule of events. Photo: Kurt Rogers / The Chronicle
Image 14 of 24 2007 — Barry Bonds made t-shirts for himself and Barry Zito. They came out of the dugout and showed them off to the media. Bonus: check out the Ray Durham sighting. 2007 — Barry Bonds made t-shirts for himself and Barry Zito. They came out of the dugout and showed them off to the media. Bonus: check out the Ray Durham sighting. Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice / SFC
Image 15 of 24
Image 16 of 24 2007 — Barry Zito wipes his brow as he works against his former team, the Oakland Athletics. It was a rough, but not terrible, year for Z. He gave up 105 runs in 196 2/3 innings pitched. 2007 — Barry Zito wipes his brow as he works against his former team, the Oakland Athletics. It was a rough, but not terrible, year for Z. He gave up 105 runs in 196 2/3 innings pitched. Photo: Ben Margot / AP
Image 17 of 24 2008 — The next year was a different story. Zito had a career-high 17 losses and an ERA over five. His 115 runs in 180 innings pitched had many Giants fans bemoaning his enormous contract. 2008 — The next year was a different story. Zito had a career-high 17 losses and an ERA over five. His 115 runs in 180 innings pitched had many Giants fans bemoaning his enormous contract. Photo: Brant Ward / SFC
Image 18 of 24 2009 — All the while, though, Zito kept up his community service efforts. Here, he visits with Miguel Villa Perez, 3, of Sunnyvale at UCSF Children's Hospital in San Francisco. 2009 — All the while, though, Zito kept up his community service efforts. Here, he visits with Miguel Villa Perez, 3, of Sunnyvale at UCSF Children's Hospital in San Francisco. Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
Image 19 of 24 2011 — Zito helps St. Anthony's celebrate serving their 37th million meal, by lending a hand in the serving line. 2011 — Zito helps St. Anthony's celebrate serving their 37th million meal, by lending a hand in the serving line. Photo: Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle
Image 20 of 24
Image 21 of 24 2011 — With just 13 games started, three wins, a 5.87 ERA and this mustache, 2011 was the low point of Zito's career. A foot injury sidelined him early, and he failed to find a permanent spot in the rotation after his recovery. As a result, however, Ryan Vogelsong became the Giants' newest star. less 2011 — With just 13 games started, three wins, a 5.87 ERA and this mustache, 2011 was the low point of Zito's career. A foot injury sidelined him early, and he failed to find a permanent spot in the rotation... more Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle
Image 22 of 24 2012 — This year he's had his ups and downs, but he's finally showing flashes of the brilliance Giants fans had hoped for. Here, Zito acknowledges a standing ovation from fans as he is removed from the game against the Chicago Cubs on June 3. Zito pitched 8 1/3 scoreless innings for his 150th career win. less 2012 — This year he's had his ups and downs, but he's finally showing flashes of the brilliance Giants fans had hoped for. Here, Zito acknowledges a standing ovation from fans as he is removed from the game... more Photo: Ben Margot / Associated Press
Image 23 of 24 2012 — Zito pitches against the New York Mets at Citi Field on April 20, 2012 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. 2012 — Zito pitches against the New York Mets at Citi Field on April 20, 2012 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. Photo: Chris Trotman / Getty ImagesCD-28 Kodiak Heavy Infantry Robot, the Commonwealth of Democratic World's answer to the Novan Attrition Series. The Kodiak is a much heavier unit, weighing in at over 800 kilograms and while it is standard to have a Novan soldier commanding a fireteam of Attrition Robots, each Commonwealth Joint Army fireteam has a Kodiak assigned to it. Kodiaks have what is called the Gunface (among other less flattering names which shall not be listed here) frontal mounted long arm turret mounting a 4.4mm PDW. This weapon is used for urban combat, peering around corners and laying down fire while exposing as little of itself as possible. They also carry a top mounted gun turret, usually carrying a 7.5mm machine gun, but can be outfitted with a variety of turrets. It also is much more heavily armored than Attrition series robots and can carry up to four times as much ammunition. Kodiaks cost more than twelve times as much to produce than attrition series Robots.Imagine you're walking through some dense jungle. You know it's dangerous out there after dark,the light of the ringed moon isn't enough for visibilty so you start looking for shelter. You come across an old colony base, decrepit and falling to pieces, overrun by plant life. You figure it's your best bet of shelter for the night, so you head inside. you start building camp in the most structurally sound dome you can find and as you do, you notice the rubble shift from the corner of your eye. A blue glow begins to flicker into existence just under the surface. You move in closer to investigate only to see the dome of an old space suit emerge from the detritus, two glowing eyes rising to meet your own, a dry mechanical his inundating the room.
If this sounds interesting to you
come check out my Patreon! You can get things like this and some really cool rewards!A man was arrested for eating a hamburger. Cops make up charges to arrest innocent people for crimes they never committed. That’s what happened to a man who identified himself as Rick.
He was pulled over and detained by an Austin cop for eating a hamburger in a “high prostitution, high drug area”, which actually is not a crime.
Note that the officer didn’t accuse Rick of any moving violation, parking violation or criminal infraction. He just decided to pick the silliest reason to get the man arrested.
The officer demanded Rick to leave the car.
“And when I step out and I don’t have any drugs on me, then what?” asked Rick.
“Nothing.” replied the still unidentified Austin PD Officer
“Ok, What do you mean then nothing?” asked the uncaused man in his car.
“Hand me your driver’s license,” demanded the Austin officer.
This Austin officer had no authority to search a car, ask for ID or arrest anyone without probable cause. No authority to pat down for a gun or anything.
Without further warning, the Austin cop opened the door and pulled Rick out of the car.David Andrew Stieb (; born July 22, 1957) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays.[1] A seven-time All-Star, he also won The Sporting News' Pitcher of the Year Award in 1982. Stieb won 140 games in the 1980s, the second-highest total by a pitcher in that decade, behind only Jack Morris.[2] Dave Stieb was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.[3]
Playing career [ edit ]
Born in Santa Ana, California, Stieb played varsity baseball at Southern Illinois University[1] as an outfielder.[4] Scouted by Bobby Mattick and Al LaMacchia of the Blue Jays as an outfield prospect in a varsity game, Stieb's performance failed to impress until he was pressed into service as a relief pitcher. His pitching surprised and convinced the Blue Jays to draft him.[4]
He played for the Blue Jays from 1979 to 1992 and again in 1998. On September 2, 1990, he pitched the first (and, to date, only) no-hitter in Blue Jays history, defeating the Cleveland Indians 3–0.[5] Previously, on September 24 and 30, 1988, Stieb had no-hitters broken up with two outs and two strikes in the top of the ninth inning in two consecutive starts.[6] He also took a no-hitter into the ninth inning in a 1985 game; this bid was broken up by back-to-back home runs and Stieb being replaced in the game before he recorded an out in the ninth.[7] On August 4, 1989, he had a perfect game broken up with two outs in the ninth. It was the third time in two seasons that Stieb had lost a no-hitter with two out in the ninth inning.[8] After an excellent 1990 season, a series of shoulder and back injuries early in the 1991 season ended his effective pitching years, culminating in a 4–6 season in 1992 that resulted in his release.[9] Despite this, he was awarded a World Series ring, after the Blue Jays won their first championship later that year. In 1993, he played four games with the Chicago White Sox, before finally retiring due to lingering back problems.[9] In 1998, after a five-year hiatus from baseball, Stieb returned to the Blue Jays and pitched in 19 games.[1] He recorded one win and two saves, and started three games.
In 1985, Stieb signed with the Blue Jays what was then one of the richest contracts in baseball.[10] The contract, including options exercisable by the team, was for a term of ten years and specified a salary that increased to $1.9 million in 1993, $2 million in 1994, and $2.1 million in 1995.[11] While this was seen to be generous at the time the contract was signed, by the time the later years of the contract came around this was a bargain, considering that several players were receiving several times the amount per year. The Blue Jays voluntarily renegotiated the last three years of his contract to pay him a higher amount in recognition of his years of service.
During his career, Stieb won 176 games while losing 137. Only Jack Morris won more games in the 1980s.[2] Stieb holds career records for Toronto pitchers in wins, games started, shutouts, strikeouts, complete games and a variety of other categories. Stieb appeared in seven All-Star games, also a Blue Jays team record.
On August 29, 2010, Stieb threw the ceremonial first pitch at the Rogers Centre, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his no-hitter game, with the anniversary coming four days after the celebration. Stieb's number 37 was engraved on the pitcher's mound for the game.
Strengths and weaknesses [ edit ]
Stieb entered the league primarily as a power pitcher,[12] relying on a high, inside fastball to strike batters out. The brushback pitch was an integral part of his repertoire to back batters off the plate,[13] and was especially tough on right-handed hitters in this respect. As a result, he led the league in hit batsmen a few years.[14] But arguably his best pitch was his slider that had a late and very sharp break, especially difficult for right-handed batters to handle.
Later on in his career he developed his breaking ball repertoire, and he became very effective with a "dead fish" curveball[15] that would break into the dirt as the batter swung.
Stieb had a high-strung personality and was known as a fierce competitor on the mound; he was regularly seen having animated conversations with himself during pitches when in difficult situations. Whereas with other pitchers this would be seen as a sign of weakness, with Stieb it was perceived as the best way to motivate himself to get out of a jam. Early in his career, Stieb would also frequently yell at his teammates after errors, or plays that he thought they should have made.[4] In later years, Stieb mellowed somewhat, although a fierce glare after a botched play was still not uncommon.
Personal [ edit ]
Stieb is still involved with the Blue Jays spring training camps and currently resides in Reno, Nevada.
Stieb's older brother Steve was a catcher and pitcher in the minor leagues from 1979 to 1981.
Books [ edit ]
Stieb's autobiography was titled Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect, and was released in 1986.
See also [ edit ]Texas Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre (29) smiles as he looks at the big screen during the eighth inning of play at Globe Life Park in Arlington on Tuesday, June 20, 2017. Texas Rangers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 6-1. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)
Editor's note: This story was originally published on July 25, 2017. We're bringing it back with the news of Adrian Beltre retiring.
Felipe Alou, a trailblazer for baseball players out of the Dominican Republic, knew about Adrian Beltre before anyone else in the game.
"I have a soft spot for Adrian, because I used to hold him," Alou said.
Alou became friends with Beltre's father, known as "El Negrito" because he was an exceedingly handsome and dark-skinned man, through their shared interest in fighting roosters. The activity is legal in the Dominican.
In the winter of 1979, the elder Beltre had good news for Alou. Beltre's wife was pregnant, and the father believed she would deliver a son who would be a ballplayer. Perhaps as great a player as Alou, an outfielder who played 17 seasons in the majors and became the first everyday Dominican player when he played 154 games for the San Francisco Giants in 1962.
The long march to 3,000 hits began on April 7, 1979, when Adrian Perez Beltre was born in Santo Domingo.
Alou had departed that time for his managing job in the Montreal minor league system. When he returned to the Dominican that fall, the elder Beltre proudly brought his son to him.
"He said, 'I am going to train him, and he's going to be a big league player,'" Alou said. "He's going to be a big league player.
"He was right."
Beltre showed signs of baseball aptitude at an early age, Alou said. While managing powerhouse Escogido in the Dominican winter league, Alou took Beltre along for the ride to a game at San Pedro de Macoris. The kid was enthralled.Australian of the Year finalist Eman Sharobeem 'can't remember' lying about qualifications, ICAC told
Updated
Australian of the Year finalist Eman Sharobeem has broken down while giving evidence at a corruption inquiry over allegations she defrauded NSW taxpayers and made up professional qualifications to further her career.
The 54-year-old migrant women's rights campaigner burst into tears and told a corruption inquiry she could not remember lying about having two PhDs in psychology.
"My memory cannot at all remember anything," she said.
"I can't remember and I don't want to tell a lie."
Ms Sharobeem told the inquiry she was mentally and physically unwell and the hearing was adjourned for a short time to allow her to compose herself.
She was answering allegations she had falsified her education to further her career in Australia and to treat patients at a non-profit migrant women's health centre in Sydney's west.
The inquiry has previously heard she had no training in psychology and has not completed her masters degree.
Ms Sharobeem is also alleged to have used government money for personal expenses when she was in charge of the Immigrant Women's Health Service and the Non-English Speaking Housing Women's Scheme.
It is alleged she renovated her $600,000 Fairfield home that she later sold for $1.3 million, used the money to purchase her husband a luxury car, holidays and jewellery, and claimed reimbursement even when retailers had refunded the amount.
Honorary degree destroyed in fire, Sharobeem claims
When questioned about where she got her degrees, Ms Sharobeem said she was given one honorary doctorate from the American University in Cairo.
She said the degree was given to her by an unnamed professor and an unnamed person in human resources.
Ms Sharobeem said business cards then mysteriously turned up for her with the title of Dr Sharobeem.
There were a number of tense exchanges between Ms Sharobeem and the counsel assisting Ramesh Rajalingam, as he persisted in trying to get answers to his questions.
When the Acting ICAC Commissioner Reginald Blanch AM QC stepped in to try to clarify if there was any proof of the "honorary degree", Ms Sharobeem said there was no record of it anywhere anymore, because it was destroyed in a building fire in 2012.
Ms Sharobeem today admitted she had started various degrees in Australia but had never completed them, with the exception of a Granville TAFE course in office management.
When quizzed about a Bachelor of Commerce qualification on her passport, she said she could not remember much about that qualification including what mark she obtained.
Sharobeem's CV faked by someone else, ICAC told
Ms Sharobeem said when she first came to Australia in 1987, she had no money and was controlled by a violent and abusive first husband who gambled, kidnapped her children, and locked her up before her cousins helped her to escape.
"I was forced into sex," she said.
Ms Sharobeem was then quizzed about an entry on her CV that claimed she had written a thesis on community management.
She said the CV was fake and must have been made up by someone else.
"I don't know why this was in my personnel folder," she said.
Council assisting relied on a number of documents to support the allegations, including alleged copies of Ms Sharobeem's CV and email communications where she allegedly appeared to rely on the qualifications.
Ms Sharobeem said other people referred to her as Dr Sharobeem in Australia, but she was too modest to use the term herself.
"If you want the truth please help me," she said.
The inquiry continues.
Topics: corruption, sydney-2000, nsw, parramatta-2150
First postedChris Martin: “This is a new song and we’ll never play this again”
Coldplay performed a new song titled “Houston” at a recent concert in Miami, as HuffPost points out, paying tribute to those in the Texas city affected by Hurricane Harvey. Frontman Chris Martin explained that the song was a “once-off” for the occasion, and that the band would never play it again. “This is because we all grew up loving country music, and of course that’s kind of what we think of when we go to Texas,” he said, prefacing the performance. “We’re gonna sing it in Miami for everybody here, and we’re gonna send it over there to everyone who missed the show.” Watch it go down below. Coldplay’s most recent release, their Kaleidoscope EP, was released this summer.Crash Test Dummies Show The Difference Between Cars In Mexico And U.S.
YouTube
Editor's note: Updated Nov. 21 at 11:15 a.m. with a comment from Nissan.
A video shows two cars crashing head-on at 35 miles per hour. (Don't worry, the drivers are crash test dummies.) One car is red, one is silver.
The red car crumples like an accordion. The dummy's face collides with the steering wheel as glass flies everywhere. Then the entire front of the cabin collapses in, pushing the dummy's knees up and crushing them against the dashboard.
The front of the silver car is also crushed. But the frame of the car is relatively intact This dummy flies forward in the seat belt, but front and side airbags soften the blow. The windshield cracks, but doesn't shatter. They're both Nissan cars. The red car is a 2015 Tsuru, manufactured for sale in Mexico. The silver one is a 2016 Versa, made for the U.S. market.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Screengrab by NPR/Insurance Institute For Highway Safety/YouTube Screengrab by NPR/Insurance Institute For Highway Safety/YouTube
Both are at the bottom of the line for price point. But there are crucial differences. Unlike the American Nissan, the Mexican model has no air bags, no antilock brakes or stability control to adjust tire speed and prevent skidding.
On crash safety tests run by the nonprofit Latin New Car Assessment Program, the Versa gets four out of five stars. The Tsuru gets zero.
Nissan isn't the only carmaker with different safety options for different markets. A 2017 Chevrolet Spark sold in the U.S. comes with 10 airbags. The same version sold in Mexico doesn't come with any airbags, and like the Tsuru, it scored zero stars in crash tests.
Latin NCAP, along with its affiliate Global NCAP, has crash tested dozens of cars. Hyundai, Nissan, Renault, Suzuki, Datsun, Ford, Fiat, Kia, Volkswagen and others have all sold zero-star cars in middle- and low-income countries around the world. Many of the vehicles in question lack basic safety features that have been mandatory in the U.S. and European Union for almost two decades.
"How can a manufacturer justify selling a vehicle in low-income countries that they know would be illegal in high-income countries?" asks David Ward, secretary-general of Global NCAP.
In the U.S., conversations about vehicle safety usually focus on the latest technology — adding cameras and crash sensors and self-driving features to limit human error.
But in other countries, basic safety features are missing, and adding them could save lives, says Ward. A October 2016 report by Global NCAP and the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that enforcing the U.N.'s minimum recommended vehicle safety standards in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Brazil could save over 40,000 people and prevent over 440,000 injuries by 2030. In 2015 only 27 percent of countries used the U.N regulations aimed at protecting drivers and passengers from front-impact crashes. Only 26 percent applied the regulations for side-impact crashes.
According to Meleckidzedeck Khayesi, a technical officer working in road safety at the World Health Organization, the U.N. is working closely with Global NCAP to address the issue — both on the manufacturer end and on the consumer end.
"How do we make sure quality is almost uniform irrespective of country? And how do you get people to purchase safer cars?" asks Meleckidzedeck Khayesi, a technical officer working in road safety at the World Health Organization. "You shouldn't compromise on your life just because you think the price will go up."
Indeed, a manufacturer will spend about $50 per airbag, according to Alejandro Furas, the secretary-general of Latin NCAP. So that's not a huge price jump. But in many countries airbags are part of a so-called luxury package that also include leather seats and better speakers. If Mexican consumers want to purchase a Chevrolet Spark with airbags, they need to pay an additional $2,000 for the deluxe LTZ model, which comes with two airbags, one for the driver and one for the passenger.
There are signs of progress. Furas says that Argentina and Brazil made airbags mandatory in 2014. Mexico just wrote new automobile safety standards to curb the sale of unsafe vehicles. But there are some caveats.
The new rules are vague, says Furas. While they specify that cars need to protect the passenger in front and side collisions, they don't specify how, so it's up to the manufacturers to decide. And section 6.4 of the regulations says that manufacturers can conduct their own vehicle safety tests — and if the tests meet certain requirements they'll be considered valid forever, regardless of what other crash testers might find.
Furas points out that Mexico has until 2020 to comply with the new regulations, supposedly to give manufacturers time to alter their fleets. But many Mexican cars are manufactured at local factories that already produce safer vehicles for export. The U.S. version of the Nissan Versa, for example, is manufactured in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and comes with Nissan's "advanced airbag system" that includes side-curtain airbags that drop down and keep passengers from hitting the side of the car, and supplemental airbags. The baseline Mexican version, manufactured at the same facility, comes with the option of two airbags.
Some manufacturers are already taking steps to improve their made-for Mexico cars. The same day Latin NCAP announced their intention to crash-test the Tsuru, Nissan announced that it would stop selling the cars in May of 2017.
"Is it a coincidence?" says Furas, "you'd have to ask Nissan."
We reached out to Nissan for comment. A Nissan spokesman said the company was aware of the "car-to-car crash demonstration" test and noted: "Nissan vehicles meet or exceed safety regulations for the markets in which they are sold. The Tsuru has been one of the most popular subcompact vehicles in Mexico for more than three decades due to its affordability and its proven reliability. Nissan Mexico recently announced it will discontinue Tsuru production in May 2017." He added that Nissan in Mexico has incorporated safety features in its current vehicle lineup.
When we asked GM about safety disparities, a spokesman told Goats & Soda that all of its cars will meet minimum safety standards by 2019, and that "front dual airbags and three-point seat belts in all seating positions [will be] standard" on eight models by 2018.
While Furas is happy to see progress, he worries it isn't coming fast enough. Although unsafe cars are being phased off the manufacturing line, he says it could take years for them to be retired from the roads.Years ago retailers would jump at the opportunity to showcase their brands on Robson Street.
But walk through the outdoor shopping district today and there are a dozen of empty storefront windows displaying 'for lease' signs within a three block radius — from Jervis to Thurlow Streets.
"Up until probably five years ago, most often you wouldn't even see a vacancy," said Mario Negris, a commercial realtor.
"Tenants would say I'm prepared to cut a cheque to get on the street."
But in the past few years, a long-list of retailers have moved out, including Chapters, French Connection, Mexx, the Starbucks on the kitty-corner and most recently the Canucks store.
The Mexx store on Robson Street has been sitting empty for months, but it will soon be turned into the Nike store. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Negris — who has been working on Robson Street for 20 years — said the shift is specific to the 1100 block of Robson Street, because foot traffic has moved east towards Nordstrom and Pacific Centre Mall.
Retail consultant David Ian Gray, the founder of DIG360 Consulting, agrees.
"It was really triggered by two things. One was the rise of the luxury area off Alberni," Gray said.
"The other has been a more sudden shift triggered by Nordstrom taking over from Sears — what we used to call the urinal, because no one wanted to walk down that part of Robson," he said.
Commercial realtor Mario Negris says they're trying to bring more interesting stores to Robson Street. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Rents dropped 20 to 25%
Negris said even though rents have dropped, high property taxes continue to feed the problem.
"Your property tax on Robson Street is $50 to $60 a foot," he said. "We're talking about some pretty hefty numbers that add to the occupancy costs of tenants."
Rents for stores on Robson Street between Bute and Thurlow Streets are around $125 to $150 a square foot, down 20 to 25 per cent from its peak five years ago.
"I do think it is a good deal right now for retailers to get on Robson, because you are signing up for rents which are really at a discount," he said.
During its peak, rents for Robson Street were about $200 to $250 a square foot. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Future is bright
Negris believes things will turn around, despite the number of empty storefronts.
Rather than popping a tenant to plug a vacancy, he is trying to introduce a mix of new brands to Vancouver — brands similar to Ladureé, the popular macaron store which has had a line-up since it opened in March.
"The more desirable we make it as a shopping destination, then the greater the success tenants will have as well," he said.
Negris doesn't expect it to be long until the street once again sees peak rents of $200 to $250 a square foot.
"It will only take one [store] of some prominence to sign on and others will be drawn to the area," Gray agrees.A London-based film and TV production guide publisher, KFTV.com, is reporting Jan. 15 that Marvel Comics’ Ant-Man will be the much anticipated blockbuster movie to start filming in May at Pinewood Atlanta Studios in Fayetteville.
“It is likely that the other locations for Ant-Man will be predominantly Atlanta-based; these were being locked down at the time of going to press,” according to the KFTV.com story, “Ant-Man: First film to shoot at Pinewood Atlanta.”
Set to star in the film are Paul Rudd as Ant Man’s alter ego, Scott Lang, while Michael Douglas will play the scientist who creates the technology to shrink himself to insect size, according to the story.
“President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, said of Douglas’ hire: ‘With Hank Pym’s rich history in the Marvel Universe, we knew we needed an actor capable of bringing the weight and stature to the role that the character deserves,’” the story by Nia Daniels said.
“Although Ant-Man is part of the juggernaut that is Marvel Studios, it is very much the baby of British director Edgar Wright, who has been working on it for years. He is at the helm to direct from a screenplay he wrote with Joe Cornish, adapted from the original Marvel comic books,” the KFTV.com story said.
“Wright is based at Big Talk Productions, the shingle behind Ant-Man, and is probably best known for his work on the ‘Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy,’ comprising ‘Shaun of the Dead,’ ‘Hot Fuzz’ and ‘The World’s End.’ Other credits include ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ and, as co-writer, ‘The Adventures of Tintin.’
The U.K-based film trade guide said that “Ant-Man” was first intended to be filmed at Pinewood’s London studio site, but was bumped by “the sheer volume of other major features moving in and filling the big studios to capacity,” the story said.
The website, KFTV.com |
rate, across four centuries. It’s the last step that’s the most wobbly. Historians haven’t studied murder much, but criminologists have. Although most criminologists trace the homicide rate back only a few decades, Roth takes his lead from their work. The fluctuations in the homicide rate since the nineteen-forties have at least something to do with demography. A vastly disproportionate number of murderers and murder victims are young adult men. When baby boomers reached that age bracket, the homicide rate soared. Now that they’ve aged out of their most lethal years, the rate has fallen. To Roth, the demographic explanation of the postwar crime boom and bust falls short, but, where other social scientists have investigated economic conditions like joblessness or government policies like gun control to fill the explanatory gap, Roth favors the argument made by a criminologist named Gary LaFree, in a book called “Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime and the Decline of Social Institutions in America” (1998). LaFree observed that the crime rate correlates, inversely, with public faith in government and trust in elected officials. So, for instance, the Vietnam era, marked by declining confidence in elected officials, experienced a rising crime rate. He measured that faith and trust by consulting national opinion surveys taken beginning in 1958, which asked questions like “How much of the time can you trust the government to do what is right?” Roth attempts to graft LaFree’s argument onto all of American history. He has determined that four factors correlate with the homicide rate: faith that government is stable and capable of enforcing just laws; trust in the integrity of legitimately elected officials; solidarity among social groups based on race, religion, or political affiliation; and confidence that the social hierarchy allows for respect to be earned without recourse to violence. When and where people hold these sentiments, the homicide rate is low; when and where they don’t, it’s high. Whatever you think about the value of public-opinion polls, LaFree at least had them. Roth doesn’t. How do you measure the belief that government is stable in 1695 or 1786 or 1814 or 1902? You can’t. You can only look at what was happening in those years and tell a story about what you think people believed about their government, and, if you know what the homicide rate is, it’s easy to find a story that fits your data. The homicide rate in New England fell from a high, in 1637, of a hundred and twenty to under one, in 1800, chiefly by dropping, rather dramatically, after the Pequot War and King Philip’s War. Roth argues that the rate fell, over all, as judicial institutions were established and people developed faith in them, and that the rate fell, sharply, after these wars because conflicts with hostile neighbors brought the colonists together. But it seems equally plausible to argue that the homicide rate in Colonial New England tracks the European decline quite nicely, over all, and drops, in a stepwise fashion, after wars because they diminish the population of young men, leaving fewer potential murderers and murder victims around. Both interpretations make sense; neither has been demonstrated. The implications of Roth’s argument are, as he realizes, distressing. Democracy requires dissent. If a high American murder rate is a function of not placing our trust in government, are we doomed to endure a high murder rate? Roth takes his case all the way to the White House: “The statistics make it clear that in the twentieth century, homicide rates have fallen during the terms of presidents who have inspired the poor or have governed from the center with a popular mandate, and they have risen during the terms of presidents who presided over political and economic crises, abused their power, or engaged in unpopular wars.” The homicide rate appears to correlate with Presidential approval ratings. If Roth is right, electing a bad President is dangerous and inciting people to hate any President, good or bad, could be deadly. But which is the cart, and which the horse? The Presidential approval rate might be a proxy for all sorts of measures of a well or poorly adjusted society. Or maybe there’s another horse, somewhere, some third factor, that determines both the Presidential approval rate and the homicide rate. It’s hard to say, partly because, in using quantitative methods to make an argument about the human condition, Roth has wandered into a no man’s land between the social sciences and the humanities. After a while, arguments made in that no man’s land tend to devolve into meaninglessness: good government is good, bad government is bad, and everything’s better when everything’s better. Correlating murder with a lack of faith and trust may contain its horror, but only because, in a bar graph, atrocity yields to banality.
Every September, the F.B.I. issues a report on crime, a compilation of statistics for the previous year. It does not offer an interpretation of this immense quantity of data. “We leave that up to the academics and the criminologists and the sociologists,” an F.B.I. spokesman said, upon the release of this year’s report. For all the number crunching, it’s clear that there is no such thing as an average murder. Even if there were, what happened at the Petits’ house in Cheshire, Connecticut, on July 23, 2007, wouldn’t be it, and not just because of that crime’s particular depravity. Much about the case is out of the ordinary. The victims were white and wealthy; murder victims are disproportionately black and poor. Exceptional, high-profile crimes often lead to legislative action driven by citizen initiative. California’s controversial three-strikes law, a ballot measure, was proposed by a Fresno photographer whose daughter was murdered. Last year, after the Petit murders, the Connecticut legislature doubled and tripled mandatory penalties for second- and third-time offenders. “Big cases make bad laws” is a criminological axiom, and one with which Mark A. R. Kleiman agrees, in “When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment” (Princeton; $29.95).* Kleiman blames big cases and bad laws for another distinctive feature of American life: 2.3 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. That works out to nearly one in every hundred adults, the highest rate anywhere in the world, and four times the world average. Prison crowding may have been one reason that Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky were paroled. Although the crime rate today is fifteen per cent lower than it was twenty-five years ago, the incarceration rate is four times as high. At what point, Kleiman wonders, will incarceration be a greater social ill than crime? He proposes, for lesser offenders, punishments that are swift and certain but not necessarily severe: a night in jail, instead of a warning, for missing a meeting with a parole officer, say, and ten nights the next time. Whether or not Kleiman’s recommendations are practical, Connecticut, reeling from the Petit murders, is heading in the opposite direction. The F.B.I. may leave the analysis of crime to academics, but, in the past few decades, the government has, increasingly, left the punishment of criminals up to public opinion. William Petit and his sister* Johanna Petit-Chapman serve as the honorary co-chairs of Three Strikes Now, a grass-roots organization lobbying the state legislature to adopt California-style mandatory sentencing of life without the possibility of parole for third-time violent offenders. The Cheshire case has also dominated the state’s death-penalty debate, a debate that, nationwide, has long centered on race. In Connecticut, whose population is eighty-four per cent white, six of the ten men on death row are black. (Both Hayes and Komisarjevsky are white.) Earlier this year, the Connecticut legislature voted to abolish the death penalty. William Petit publicly denounced the bill, and Jodi Rell, the state’s governor, a Republican, vetoed it.Dodgy dealings at banks are in the spotlight again – but AI-based systems can help spot bad behaviour
LAST week, another UK banking executive was made to squirm in front of the TV cameras as he was grilled by angry parliamentarians over alleged corruption in his organisation.
Barclays bank was fined $450 million by UK and US authorities for its part in an inter-bank interest-rate fixing operation. Now the bank’s former chief executive Bob Diamond has told a UK Treasury committee that rogue employees operating far outside the bank’s trading and dealing rules were to blame.
“When I read the emails from those traders I got physically ill,” Diamond said of the missives that proved Barclays staff had rigged the rates.
The computer power that has automated financial markets and made lightning-fast trading possible is being turned on the more suspect elements that operate within the world’s financial system. The techniques are based on our love of smartphones, tweets, blogging and email.
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Thanks to the US rules of corporate governance that came in after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, firms like Hewlett-Packard’s subsidiary Autonomy Systems are selling software that flags up employees whose trading deviates from the norm. Meanwhile, a European team has developed a system that can be customised to detect anything from money-laundering schemes to insider-trading scams (Digital Investigation, DOI: 10.1016/j.diin.2012.04.003).
Autonomy’s software trawls a company’s information systems for “unstructured” data – as opposed to information held in corporate databases. This could include tweets, text messages, Skype video, smartphone data, emails, or transcripts from phone calls. The software then hunts for examples of behaviour that varies from normal practice.
Autonomy is not the only organisation combing through unstructured data. At the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, a team of computer scientists led by Rafal Drezewski has written software that helps the Polish state police check for evidence of money laundering in phone calls, SMS and bank statement data.
Their system uses AI routines to seek out and visualise clusters of information. This might include money transfers from vast numbers of sources to a single account, or many people texting or phoning someone of interest. “We detect suspicious patterns and roles played by different people using pattern mining and social network analysis algorithms,” says Drezewski.
It doesn’t end there. This cluster analysis system could be customised to check through bankers’ emails, texts and documents to search for suspicious-looking activity.
In the past decade since company data has gone digital, such programs have become vital tools, says Adam Stronach, a director at forensic accountants Harwood Hutton in Beaconsfield, UK. Where firms used to scan paper data, looking for patterns of unusual transactions, he says, they now have access to vast data stores which, depending on company privacy policy, might even include employees’ retweets and forwarded emails. “Even what employees regard as deleted data can be accessible,” he says.
Tweets, texts and calls, even what employees regard as deleted data, all can be accessedBelt up and enjoy this 365-day ride as you cruise past the most momentous motoring events in history. Packed with fascinating facts about races, motorists and the history of the mighty engine, this is a must-visit web site for any car enthusiast.
On This Day
Monday 23rd October 1911
107 years ago
The first Ford car to be made in Britain, a Model T, was produced at the Ford Motor Company (England) plant at Trafford Park in Manchester. The assembly plant, located in an old Tram factory employed 60 people to make the Model T and the company was re-registered as Henry Ford & Son, Ltd. This was the first Ford factory outside North America. At first the cars were assembled from imported chassis and mechanical parts with bodies sourced locally. Six thousand cars were produced in 1913 and the Model T became the country's biggest selling car with 30% of the market. In 1914 Britain's first moving assembly line for car production started with 21 cars an hour being built. After the First World War, the Trafford Park plant was extended, and in 1919, 41% of British registered cars were Fords. lthough the Manchester plant was served by the Manchester Ship Canal, Ford decided that access to a deep water port was required and in 1923 a new site was chosen by the River Thames at Dagenham, east of London.In terms of exploring subjectivity and how the mind works, Charlie Kaufman is perhaps today's preeminent screenwriter. Either that, or he's an expert in solipsism and desperate attempts to avoid it, which inevitably leads to becoming solipsistic and even more desperate attempts to avoid it. Either way, Charlie Kaufman is truly -- truly -- an original screenwriter, and one of my personal favorites. Kaufman's perspective on screenwriting is obviously unique, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (better known as BAFTA) has posted a podcast of Kaufman giving a speech on what he thinks screenwriting really is. You can listen to the entire podcast here:
The speech is as reflexive as Kaufman's scripts, which makes it entertaining, enlightening and inscrutable all at once, much like his films. While the speech is rich in content, here are a few highlights specifically related to screenwriting. First, Kaufman defines a screenplay, and it's far from a conventional definition (but what did you expect?):
A screenplay is an exploration. It’s about the thing you don’t know. To step into the abyss. It necessarily starts somewhere, anywhere, there is a starting point, but the rest is undetermined, it is a secret, even from you. There’s no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn't be. There are at least as many screenplay possibilities as there are people who write them. We’ve been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form.
Most of us will write screenplays in this pre-established form and follow typical story conventions. It's what we know and it's what audiences know. When I read a Kaufman script or see one of his films, however, I want to push myself and my writing beyond my comfort zone, beyond my boundaries. Stepping into the abyss is certain an apt metaphor. Kaufman expands on this idea later in his speech when he talks about story:
Don't let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include, what form it must take. As an experiment, go out of your way to write a non-story. It will still be a story, but it will have a chance of being a different story.
Many of us seek out the advice of established screenwriters on how to write a screenplay, to which Kaufman responds:
I can't tell anyone how to write a screenplay because anything of value you might do comes from you. The way I work is not the way you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me. What you have to offer is you. And if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity, I will be moved.
For many screenwriters, the fear of failure can become an insurmountable obstacle, but Kaufman sees it completely opposite:
Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don't risk failure, you're never going to do anything that's different from what you've already done or what somebody else has done.
The speech is rich with much more content plus a Q&A at the end, so find an hour to spare and listen to it in its entirety for the full impact. And if merely listening to Kaufman isn't enough, check out this 72-minute video master class with the man himself.
Kaufman's approach to screenwriting and storytelling certainly garners much discussion and debate. In fact, you can hear John August and Craig Mazin dissect this very speech by Kaufman in their Scriptnotes podcast, Episode 18, and how it relates to their own work as Hollywood screenwriters.
Does Kaufman's recursive speech and storytelling inspire you or frustrate you to no end? Tell us what you think.
Links:
[via Ted Hope on Twitter]Nearly everyone claims to want to do something about ISIS, but nothing ever happens. In reality, the only powers directly affected by ISIS that are willing to fight are Iran and Syria, with a little help from Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Pessimistic intelligence assessments prepared for the Pentagon warn that there are multiple agendas being pursued by almost everyone else claiming to be involved in what has been misnamed a multinational coalition. Iraq, a frontline player in the conflict, has been hampered by a dysfunctional and corrupt military that just cannot make headway against the more resolute ISIS fighters, even with U.S. air support. Indeed, ISIS reportedly benefits from more than a sprinkling of renegade Sunni former officers from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army.
Elsewhere, the duplicity is more openly on display. The Saudis would prefer to see ISIS in Syria rather than Bashar al-Assad, whom they regard as an Iranian proxy. They support ISIS secretly, while they are pretending not to, and have focused their military effort on bombing Yemen. Ditto for the Gulf States, most particularly Qatar, home of the United States Central Command. Jordan, nervous about its own internal security, reacted when its pilot was publicly burned to death but has since largely dropped out of the fight except as a venue for the failed U.S. effort to train “moderate” militants.
But Turkey and Israel take the prize for countries playing on both sides. Turkey planned and staged its shootdown of a Russian warplane to disrupt development of a genuine coalition against ISIS, preferring instead to press ahead with its war against the Kurds and Assad. The Turks have been allowing militants to cross their border from Syria with relatively little impediment, a point raised by Obama in recent discussions. More to the point, they have been exchanging weapons and cash for oil, which ISIS is pumping out of the fields that it has occupied in Syria and Iraq. Turkish President Erdogan’s son Bilal is behind the syndicate that exports and sells the oil, transactions that might well amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. An attempt to investigate Bilal in 2013 was derailed when his father intervened to fire all the prosecutors and policemen involved. Turkey will not be joining the fray against ISIS at any time soon.
And then there is Israel, which has made clear that it prefers terrorists to Assad. United Nations observers have for months been reporting its collaboration with militants across its border on the Golan Heights, to include some al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS. It is also buying ISIS oil through Turkish intermediaries. Recent reports out of Iraq reveal that an Israeli colonel named Yusi Oulen Shahak, a reputed member of the elite Golani Brigade, was captured while embedded as an adviser with an ISIS tactical unit. Israel’s government has not commented on the claims, and its media is avoiding the story, but it just might be true given the convoluted politics of the region. In any event, the Turkish, Saudi, and Israeli predilection to pursue their own interests separately underlines the immensity of the problem for Washington, which knows exactly what is happening but is unable or unwilling to openly contradict or rein in its would-be allies.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.Best Buy just rolled out their Black Friday preview and it includes a couple of pretty solid deals for the 3DS, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One.
The retail chain's sales are available online Thursday and Friday and in store from 5 p.m. Thursday until 1 a.m. Friday and then again from 8 a.m. Friday until closing.
Here's the rundown of the circular by platform.
Nintendo
Best Buy has a 32 GB Wii U bundled with Super Mario 3D World, Nintendo Land, Super Smash Bros for Wii U and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for $359.97. It also has a Nintendo 3DS XL bundle with Mario Party: Island Tour for $174.99.
You can also pick up Nintendo eShop Cards at the store for 15 percent off.
PlayStation
This is only the second place I've seen the PlayStation 4 Black Friday Bundle on sale. It includes a PS4 and digital downloads of The Last of Us Remastered and Grand Theft Auto 5 for $399.99. The store also has The Lego Movie Videogame, Wolfenstein, The Evil Within, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Just Dance 2015 for $24.99 each.
You can also pick up a PS4 wireless controller for $39.99 or the PlayStation camera for PS4 for $39.99 and the Turtle Beach Ear Force PX4 wireless Dolby Surround Sound headset for $79.99.
Xbox
The store is selling the Xbox One Assassin's Creed: Unity bundle, which comes with Unity and Black Flag, for $329.99. You can also get the same bundle, with the Kinect and a free controller, for $429.99.
You can pick up The Lego Movie Videogame, Wolfenstein, The Evil Within, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Forza 5, Titanfall, Dead Rising 3 and Just Dance 2015 for $24.99 each.
You can pick up an Xbox One wireless controller for $39.99 and a Turtle Beach Ear Force XO One wired headset for the Xbox One for $39.99.
Games
Best Buy will have a bunch of games discounted including the latest Madden, FIFA and NBA 2K, Alien Isolation, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel and Ryse for $29.99. They also have a bunch of games discounted to $19.99, $14.99 games and even some $7.99 games.
Skylanders: Trap Team starter pack for Xbox 360 is $49.99. And you get a free Volcanic Eruptor with the purchase of any Skylanders: Trap Team starter pack. Best Buy promises to announced another price drop for Skylanders: Trap Team starter packs on Nov. 20.
The Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes 2.0 Edition starter pack will be selling for $39.99 for Xbox One and other, unnamed, platforms. You can also get the Disney Infinity: Toy Box starter pack 2.0 Edition for $39.99 for Wii U and other, unnamed, platforms. The store is also running a three for $33 deal on all Disney Infinity single figures.
Best Buy will also be running a buy two get one free on all pre-owned games.
Misc.
Among Best Buy's many television deals is a 29-inch Insignia 720p HDTV for $99.99 and $100 off all iPad Air 2s. Best Buy promises to announce another price drop for all iPad Airs on Nov. 20.
Make sure you check out our deals page for other price breaks landing this month.A former state judge who stepped down after allegations of misconduct is trying to get rid of the the watchdog agency that went after him.
The ballot in the November election will include a proposed constitutional amendment to get rid of an independent watchdog agency: the judicial qualifications commission that polices the state’s judges.
If voters approve the November referendum, the independent agency will be removed from the constitution and replaced with one that answers to the state legislature.
That judicial watchdog agency has forced dozens of Georgia judges to resign, including a man who is now a powerful state representative.
But the only public evidence showing the former Griffin judge sexually harassed a female attorney in his courtroom disappeared - until 11Alive chief investigator Brendan Keefe hunted it down.
The document contains words so damning it took down two judges.
“He leaned in to give me a hug and crammed his tongue in my mouth,” the victim said in the record.
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He would “tell me to wear my pants a little tighter in court” the document stated.
“He” was Johnnie Caldwell, the former district attorney elevated to Superior Court judge in the Griffin judicial circuit.
The woman testifying was a female lawyer in the judge’s courtroom.
“If I wanted an order signed in my favor…I needed to come to his office…and take down my pants and at least let him look at it if I wasn’t going to let him touch it.”
Some of the sexual comments in this transcript are so graphic they can’t be repeated on television or in this article. These were the allegations that ended Caldwell’s career as a judge - but not his political power.
The testimony remains the only public record of what happened behind closed doors in the judge’s chambers.
11Alive went inside the Fayette County Court House and immediately found the electronic entry “Transcript of 6/25/10”
But the paper court records told a different story.
There was a folder labeled “Transcript 6/25/10” but inside was only an addendum listing the courtroom exhibits from that day.
The testimony detailing graphic sexual allegations against Judge Caldwell was missing.
We can only conclude that pages 1 through 236 are missing from the court record. The docket has been altered.
There was no reply from the court reporter until the next day when, without explanation, she wrote, “the transcript has been located you may now obtain a copy for yourself.”
Not one but two certified copies of the previously missing transcript suddenly appeared in a drawer that had been empty during our earlier visits.
The wrong case number was typed on the front and it had been misfiled with a totally unrelated case.
Inside those lost pages were the “sexually charged” allegations that brought judicial ethics investigators to the courthouse 6 years earlier.
Judge Caldwell abruptly stepped down, writing in his resignation letter to the governor that he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren. He also promised the Judicial Qualifications Commission investigator that he would never run for judge again.
He didn’t. Instead he ran for a higher office – from the courthouse to the state house. Now Representative Johnnie Caldwell is trying to dismantle the Judicial Qualifications Commission itself by going after the same watchdog agency that went after him.
“You’re stripping an independent, constitutionally-mandated watchdog agency out of the constitution and putting it to the complete whim of the politicians,” former Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) chair Lester Tate said.
Tate resigned after Caldwell and five other representatives co-sponsored legislation to abolish the JQC.
“It was introduced by at least one judge who resigned while being investigated,” Tate said.
Rep. Caldwell walked out of his own judiciary committee minutes before a hearing on bills he co-sponsored, where lawmakers talked about judges like him who were forced to resign.
In the House chamber, while a candidate for judge recused himself; former Judge Caldwell did not.
He voted “yea” -- asking voters to amend the Georgia state constitution to create a new commission answering to state lawmakers like him.
“It’s a political dumpster fire,” Tate said. “And the only way that dumpster fire gets put out is if the people of the state of Georgia realize what’s going on, go to the ballot box, and vote no.”
Rep. Caldwell responded to 11Alive’s investigation of the sexual harassment case writing “I accepted responsibility for making a mistake. Since then I have tried to move forward with my life and make my family and friends proud of me.”
The former judge said he knew nothing about the missing file in his statement, provided below.Vid US-based arms'n'airliners globocorp Boeing has released video of its aircraft-mounted ray cannon, the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) in operation.
The company doesn't say how far the carrying Hercules transport plane was from the target vehicle in the vid, but there's no audible engine noise on the soundtrack, suggesting that it was some distance off.
In the offered clip the laser beam doesn't seem to penetrate the vehicle's bonnet, but Boeing have previously announced that the ATL has "defeated" a stationary vehicle in tests, so it could be assumed that the blaster-gun is capable of doing so.
The ATL is the smaller of Boeing's two airborne deathray projects: the larger, the jumbo-jet mounted Airborne Laser (ABL) is said to be in the megawatt range and is intended to destroy intercontinental missiles boosting up through the atmosphere, beaming them out of existence from hundreds of kilometres away.
The ATL has no such clearly-defined purpose, but it has been speculated that it could be used as a silent, invisible, traceless sniper. The carrying aircraft might be hidden by distance or darkness, and selected enemies of America - or cars, buildings, cell towers etc - would appear to suddenly and inexplicably burst into flame. Or at any rate suffer a nasty burn, going by the vid above.
Lending credence to such ideas is the fact that the ATL has been developed under the auspices of the Special Operations Command, the USA's secret, deniable military elite.
Ray-weapons probably won't be a tool for every day, however. The current lasers run on dangerous chemical fuels, and hints dropped by Pentagon scientists suggest that the length of time the beam can be kept burning without costly and troublesome replenishment is distinctly limited.
In most situations a conventional AC-130 gunship or a helicopter sniper would be more useful. And a lot cheaper. ®NOTICE:
The American (Fever) Dream – Play as the President of the United States in a story that spans countries, space, and time. Saints Row IV is to Saints Row: The Third what Saints Row: The Third is to Do The Right Thing. You’re not ready.
– Play as the President of the United States in a story that spans countries, space, and time. Saints Row IV is to Saints Row: The Third what Saints Row: The Third is to Do The Right Thing. You’re not ready.
Super Hero-in-Chief – Leap over buildings. Kill people with your mind. Run through tanks. Those are some of the most mundane powers you will wield in your quest to stop an alien menace hell-bent on destroying the Earth.
– Leap over buildings. Kill people with your mind. Run through tanks. Those are some of the most mundane powers you will wield in your quest to stop an alien menace hell-bent on destroying the Earth.
Alien Toys of Destruction - Wield an impressive array of alien vehicles and weapons… FOR SCIENCE!
- Wield an impressive array of alien vehicles and weapons… FOR SCIENCE!
Custom Weapons, Custom Mayhem – You’ve customized your character. You’ve customized your clothes. Now you can complete the look with our all new weapon customization system. Turn traditional weapons into exotic conversation pieces!
– You’ve customized your character. You’ve customized your clothes. Now you can complete the look with our all new weapon customization system. Turn traditional weapons into exotic conversation pieces!
Dynamic Duo - Seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op, a Saints Row standard, improved. The only thing better than one malicious super-powered President is two.
OS: Windows Vista (x86 or x64) with SP2 installed and DirectX 11 update installed
Processor: Any Quad Core Processor (Intel Core i5 or AMD Phenom II X4) or 3.0+ Dual Core CPU
Memory: 4GB System RAM or more
Graphics: 1GB Video RAM GPU w/ Shader Model 4.0 support. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 series or better. ATI Radeon HD5000 series or better
For demonstration of the game, please use GTX560 and above or ATI HD 5870 and above
DirectX: DirectX 11
Hard Drive: 10 GB
Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0C compliant sound card or equivalent onboard sound
OS: Windows Vista (x86 or x64) with SP2 installed and DirectX 11 update installed
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 (4 * 2500 MHz) or AMD Phenom 9850 (4 * 2500 MHz)
Memory: 4GB System RAM or more
Graphics: Radeon HD 5850 (1024 MB) or GeForce GTX 260 GTS (1024 MB)
DirectX: DirectX 11
Hard Drive: 10 GB
Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0C compliant sound card or equivalent onboard sound
OS: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS or SteamOS Brewmaster
Processor: : Intel Core i3-2100 (3.1 GHz) or AMD Athlon II X4 645 AM3 (3.1 GHz)
Memory: 4096 MB de mémoire
Graphiques : GeForce GT 440 (1024 MB) or Radeon HD 6670 (1024 MB)
Hard Drive: 10 GB d'espace disque disponible
Notes: Recommended Graphics Drivers: Nvidia: 352, 355 or 358 series driver / AMD: AMD Catalyst (fglrx) 15.9 or better. MESA drivers and Intel Graphics are not currently supported.
OS: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS or SteamOS Brewmaster
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3 GHz) or AMD FX-4300 (3.8 GHz)
Memory: 8192 MB de mémoire
Graphiques : GeForce GTX 660 (2048 MB) or Radeon HD 6970 (2048 MB)
Hard Drive: 10 GB d'espace disque disponible
Notes: Recommended Graphics Drivers: Nvidia: 352, 355 or 358 series driver / AMD: AMD Catalyst (fglrx) 15.9 or better. MESA drivers and Intel Graphics are not currently supported.
© 2013 by Koch Media GmbH, Gewerbegebiet 1, 6604 Höfen, Austria. Deep Silver is a division of Koch Media GmbH. Developed by Deep Silver Volition, LLC. Saints Row, Deep Silver and their respective logos are trademarks of Koch Media. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
Activation key must be used on a valid Steam account, requires internet connection. NORTH AMERICA ONLYThe US President must save the Earth from alien overlord Zinyak using superpowers and strange weapons in the wildest open world game ever.The epic conclusion to the game that changed all the rules!The Saints have gone from the crackhouse to the White House—but the Earth has been invaded and it’s up to you to free the world from Overlord Zinyak and his alien empire. With homies new and old, superpowers and strange weapons, you must save the world in the wildest open world game ever!Minimum:Recommended:Minimum:Recommended:A 1965 Ford GT40 works prototype roadster is being put up for auction later this month. Yes, Ford GT40. That car built to give ol’ Enzo a thrashing.
This particular green-hued hunk of Detroit muscle - numbered GT/111 with a 444bhp 4.7-litre V8 - was built by Ford Advanced Vehicles here in Britain as one of twelve pre-production GT40s, and raced in that year’s Targa Florio; a race where it only ran on seven of its eight cylinders and crashed after briefly losing a front wheel and hitting a wall.
See more pics of the Ford GT40 roadster up for auction
After the race it was shipped back to Blighty and forgotten. Official GT40 production began soon after and the idea of a roadster was binned, so GT/111 was left at the back of the FAV shop and later went missing after a scrap merchant cleaned the whole place out.
Presumed dead, or as a soldier of fortune in the LA underground, it suddenly reappeared in a lockup garage in East London 40 years later, resting on an old mattress. GT40 experts were called to inspect, verified its authenticity and then began its restoration from rusty scrapheap to factory finish.
Clarkson on the Ford GT40
It’s since been raced in the Spa 6 hours and the Le Mans Classic in ‘07 and ‘08, and came 2nd in class at the 2010 Masters Festival at Brands Hatch. Estimates put the auction price at £2,600,000 when it goes under the hammer at the Villa D’Este auction on 21 May.
You want it.IRVING, TX—Hailing it as a rapidly replenishable and easily accessible fuel source, ExxonMobil revealed a lucrative new oil extraction method Friday that involves drilling directly into gas stations. “We’ve found nearly unlimited reserves of highly refined petroleum mere meters beneath thousands of service stations across the country,” said ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, noting that the company had already erected oil extraction rigs alongside pump islands in all 50 states. “As I speak, we’re yielding 3 million barrels per day just by boring through a few thin layers of asphalt, concrete, and metal. And, amazingly enough, the supply seems to somehow refill itself every week.” Tillerson went on to say that the company was exploring the possibility that there were still massive untapped sources of oil already in Americans’ cars, as well as in their homes.
Advertisement21st and Wynkoop Streets Will Become Part of Denver’s New Pedestrian and Cyclist-Friendly Downtown Loop.
Downtown is full of bustling city streets moving cars and buses across Lodo and the Central Business District. Most streets downtown are one-way streets, with three, four, or even five lanes clogging up with traffic during the rush hour. This makes 21st Street and Wynkoop Street look like small neighborhood side streets. Both of these streets have two-way traffic and only one lane in each direction. There are no turn lanes and very few stoplights, making them oddities in downtown’s busy grid. This makes them ideal candidates for pedestrian and bicycle friendly thoroughfares. Denver is slowly implementing plans to make this happen.
21st Street is currently lined mostly by parking lots, but it ends at Coors Field and cuts through the nightlight area around Market, Larimer and Lawrence Streets. The Southeast end of 21st Street ends at Benedict Fountain Park. Wynkoop Street is only six blocks long, with the last block also ending by the ballpark. This block is already closed to traffic, but outside of Rockies’ game days, it is a largely unused pedestrian plaza (page 18). Given that it is right by Union Station, it is already utilized by a large number of pedestrians, but the heavy traffic and street parking doesn’t make it the most conducive street for people to walk along.
The proposal calls for wide sidewalks and bike-friendly paths along both streets, with plenty of green space and possible small parks and plazas lining 21st, as well as extending the plaza in front of Union Station. There would be a three block “apron” constructed around Coors Field to provide a connection between the two streets. Studies into the project have also looked at public art which could be installed along the streets. Given the current condition of the streets, especially 21st Street, this would be a welcome change. Special attention will be given to the intersection at 21st and Broadway, where clearly marked crossings for pedestrians and cyclists will help to connect downtown to Arapahoe Square. Two-traffic is planned to be maintained on both streets.
The project has been in the planning stages, but the |
not). Currently, the only protocol available is HTTP, which will handle 90% of requests since most web services are built over HTTP in order to ease client development.
The developer don't get access to most of the BUrlProtocol child classes directly, he rather call the public SetOption member to define some protocol related parameters and tweak the url protocol internals.
Synchonous and asynchronous events
The developer can, at contruction time, specify a listener for events emitted during the request processing. The listener members will be called at specific instants, such as "connection opened", "data received", "request end",... which allow a synchronous notification between the url protocol and the rest of the application. An oberver is also available in order to have a asynchronous way to handle these notification.
To react to these events, the developer will only have to derive a class from BUrlProtocolListener and make his own mixture.
A result, finally!
When a request is fulfilled, the developer has a direct access to the request results via the BUrlResult class. This class contains the raw data received, and other informations when applicable (e.g: HTTP headers,...). An app can therefore build his logic over the data received : this will also be the role of the Service Kit's data layer which will let the developer to extract informations in an XML tree or a JSON response for example.
The next steps
My further development concerning the Services Kit will be focused on the enhancement of the existing code, and on the data layer of the kit. By enhancement I mean the optimization of existing classes which will require a lot of efficiency in order to be widely used (e.g: the BNetworkCookieJar class which is currently using a BList of pointer to BNetworkCookie, a relatively slow method when looking for cookies corresponding to a specific URL across a thousand cookies).
Additionally, some features are not yet implemented, such as the protocol roster and the add-on interface, and are also on my todo list for the second part of the Summer of Code.
The API interface is likely to change during further development, and many things are to be moved or modified, I'm also open to every remarks or questions! ;-)MinecraftErro charlestaker Jul 29th, 2014 524 Never 524Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 20.02 KB ---- Minecraft Crash Report ---- // Why is it breaking :( Time: 29/07/14 11:15 PM Description: Unexpected error java.lang.IllegalStateException: Not tesselating! at net.minecraft.client.renderer.Tessellator.func_78381_a(Tessellator.java:162) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:64) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:38) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:148) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:65) at mcp.mobius.waila.events.TickHandler.tickRender(TickHandler.java:56) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler_36_TickHandler_tickRender_RenderTickEvent.invoke(.dynamic) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler.invoke(ASMEventHandler.java:51) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:122) at cpw.mods.fml.common.FMLCommonHandler.onRenderTickStart(FMLCommonHandler.java:315) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_71411_J(Minecraft.java:979) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_99999_d(Minecraft.java:870) at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:103) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source) at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.launch(Launch.java:134) at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.main(Launch.java:28) A detailed walkthrough of the error, its code path and all known details is as follows: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Head -- Stacktrace: at net.minecraft.client.renderer.Tessellator.func_78381_a(Tessellator.java:162) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:64) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:38) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:148) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:65) at mcp.mobius.waila.events.TickHandler.tickRender(TickHandler.java:56) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler_36_TickHandler_tickRender_RenderTickEvent.invoke(.dynamic) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler.invoke(ASMEventHandler.java:51) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:122) -- Affected level -- Details: Level name: MpServer All players: 1 total; [EntityClientPlayerMP['charlestaker'/124, l='MpServer', x=-392.97, y=75.62, z=485.97]] Chunk stats: MultiplayerChunkCache: 125, 134 Level seed: 0 Level generator: ID 04 - New Dawn, ver 0. Features enabled: false Level generator options: Level spawn location: World: (-44,64,252), Chunk: (at 4,4,12 in -3,15; contains blocks -48,0,240 to -33,255,255), Region: (-1,0; contains chunks -32,0 to -1,31, blocks -512,0,0 to -1,255,511) Level time: 3587733 game time, 1104927 day time Level dimension: 0 Level storage version: 0x00000 - Unknown? Level weather: Rain time: 0 (now: false), thunder time: 0 (now: false) Level game mode: Game mode: survival (ID 0). Hardcore: false. Cheats: false Forced entities: 169 total; [EntityCreeper['Creeper'/256, l='MpServer', x=-421.48, y=20.00, z=452.56], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/257, l='MpServer', x=-418.54, y=20.59, z=457.49], EntityZombie['Zombie'/258, l='MpServer', x=-420.50, y=20.00, z=463.97], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/259, l='MpServer', x=-425.88, y=20.00, z=460.66], EntityEnderman['Enderman'/260, l='MpServer', x=-426.50, y=17.00, z=448.16], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/261, l='MpServer', x=-423.66, y=39.00, z=457.94], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/262, l='MpServer', x=-426.56, y=19.00, z=467.44], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/263, l='MpServer', x=-421.00, y=16.00, z=476.53], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/264, l='MpServer', x=-424.50, y=19.00, z=478.50], EntityZombie['Zombie'/265, l='MpServer', x=-420.59, y=19.00, z=467.94], EntityZombie['Zombie'/266, l='MpServer', x=-423.72, y=19.00, z=473.75], EntityZombie['Zombie'/267, l='MpServer', x=-431.06, y=18.00, z=474.47], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/268, l='MpServer', x=-431.65, y=19.00, z=464.60], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/269, l='MpServer', x=-428.59, y=37.00, z=468.00], EntityChicken['Chicken'/270, l='MpServer', x=-428.38, y=74.00, z=474.38], EntityItem['item.item.egg'/271, l='MpServer', x=-427.50, y=74.13, z=473.78], EntityChicken['Chicken'/272, l='MpServer', x=-420.41, y=67.00, z=537.53], EntityChicken['Chicken'/273, l='MpServer', x=-423.41, y=65.00, z=560.56], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/280, l='MpServer', x=-415.56, y=18.00, z=439.88], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/281, l='MpServer', x=-410.13, y=26.00, z=454.28], EntityZombie['Zombie'/282, l='MpServer', x=-407.69, y=25.00, z=456.16], EntityBat['Bat'/283, l='MpServer', x=-402.75, y=21.10, z=460.75], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/284, l='MpServer', x=-412.63, y=16.00, z=453.50], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/285, l='MpServer', x=-403.47, y=46.00, z=454.16], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/286, l='MpServer', x=-407.72, y=45.00, z=452.50], EntityZombie['Zombie'/287, l='MpServer', x=-414.50, y=19.00, z=489.50], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/288, l='MpServer', x=-400.50, y=26.00, z=489.50], EntityBat['Bat'/289, l='MpServer', x=-410.85, y=20.57, z=486.37], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/290, l='MpServer', x=-401.50, y=35.00, z=500.50], EntityChicken['Chicken'/291, l='MpServer', x=-409.53, y=70.00, z=503.47], EntityBat['Bat'/303, l='MpServer', x=-389.39, y=24.00, z=430.43], EntityChicken['Chicken'/304, l='MpServer', x=-396.41, y=83.00, z=417.47], EntityZombie['Zombie'/305, l='MpServer', x=-384.34, y=18.00, z=462.31], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/306, l='MpServer', x=-398.72, y=46.00, z=454.56], EntitySpider['Spider'/307, l='MpServer', x=-397.16, y=45.00, z=453.41], EntityZombie['Zombie'/308, l='MpServer', x=-396.47, y=46.00, z=451.97], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/309, l='MpServer', x=-389.50, y=74.50, z=478.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/310, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=77.50, z=472.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/311, l='MpServer', x=-390.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/312, l='MpServer', x=-390.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/313, l='MpServer', x=-389.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/314, l='MpServer', x=-389.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/315, l='MpServer', x=-389.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/316, l='MpServer', x=-392.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/317, l='MpServer', x=-392.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/318, l='MpServer', x=-392.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/319, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/320, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/321, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/322, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/323, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/324, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/325, l='MpServer', x=-384.50, y=71.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/326, l='MpServer', x=-384.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/327, l='MpServer', x=-384.50, y=69.50, z=471.06], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/328, l='MpServer', x=-390.50, y=70.50, z=471.06], EntityItem['item.item.egg'/329, l='MpServer', x=-399.69, y=68.13, z=523.38], EntityChicken['Chicken'/330, l='MpServer', x=-385.59, y=68.00, z=526.56], EntityMinecartHopper['entity.MinecartHopper.name'/344, l='MpServer', x=-369.50, y=76.34, z=460.50], EntityMinecartHopper['entity.MinecartHopper.name'/345, l='MpServer', x=-368.50, y=76.34, z=459.47], EntityArrow['arrow'/346, l='MpServer', x=-369.97, y=84.56, z=459.56], EntityZombie['Zombie'/347, l='MpServer', x=-377.31, y=19.00, z=465.63], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/348, l='MpServer', x=-379.32, y=18.06, z=465.95], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/349, l='MpServer', x=-383.59, y=18.00, z=466.31], EntityZombie['Zombie'/350, l='MpServer', x=-382.31, y=18.00, z=468.28], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/351, l='MpServer', x=-380.78, y=18.00, z=466.34], EntityEnderman['Enderman'/352, l='MpServer', x=-381.88, y=39.00, z=468.00], EntityEnderman['Enderman'/353, l='MpServer', x=-379.32, y=37.45, z=467.69], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/354, l='MpServer', x=-380.31, y=39.00, z=469.69], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/355, l='MpServer', x=-381.59, y=30.00, z=528.00], EntityBat['Bat'/365, l='MpServer', x=-367.50, y=26.80, z=455.39], EntityZombie['Zombie'/366, l='MpServer', x=-360.50, y=32.00, z=457.50], EntityItem['item.item.egg'/367, l='MpServer', x=-356.38, y=72.13, z=495.31], EntityChicken['Chicken'/368, l='MpServer', x=-355.16, y=72.00, z=495.16], EntityChicken['Chicken'/369, l='MpServer', x=-355.78, y=72.00, z=495.16], EntityChicken['Chicken'/370, l='MpServer', x=-357.84, y=72.00, z=495.91], EntityChicken['Chicken'/371, l='MpServer', x=-357.28, y=72.00, z=495.22], EntityChicken['Chicken'/372, l='MpServer', x=-355.16, y=72.00, z=495.75], EntityChicken['Chicken'/373, l='MpServer', x=-355.75, y=72.00, z=495.75], EntityChicken['Chicken'/374, l='MpServer', x=-354.78, y=73.00, z=500.22], EntityChicken['Chicken'/375, l='MpServer', x=-355.34, y=72.00, z=497.81], EntityChicken['Chicken'/376, l='MpServer', x=-357.80, y=72.00, z=497.85], EntityItem['item.item.egg'/377, l='MpServer', x=-356.56, y=72.13, z=497.06], EntityChicken['Chicken'/378, l='MpServer', x=-354.16, y=72.00, z=497.16], EntityChicken['Chicken'/379, l='MpServer', x=-358.84, y=72.00, z=498.84], EntityChicken['Chicken'/380, l='MpServer', x=-358.14, y=72.00, z=496.80], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/125, l='MpServer', x=-385.50, y=63.50, z=480.94], EntityChicken['Chicken'/381, l='MpServer', x=-356.84, y=72.00, z=499.84], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/126, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=63.50, z=480.94], EntityChicken['Chicken'/382, l='MpServer', x=-355.94, y=72.00, z=497.31], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/127, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=63.50, z=480.94], EntityChicken['Chicken'/383, l='MpServer', x=-356.56, y=72.00, z=497.25], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/128, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=64.50, z=480.94], EntityChicken['Chicken'/384, l='MpServer', x=-358.51, y=72.00, z=497.39], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/129, l='MpServer', x=-385.50, y=64.50, z=480.94], EntityChicken['Chicken'/385, l='MpServer', x=-358.44, y=72.00, z=498.22], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/130, l='MpServer', x=-385.50, y=65.50, z=480.94], EntityCow['Cow'/386, l='MpServer', x=-367.19, y=72.00, z=499.13], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/131, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=65.50, z=480.94], EntityCow['Cow'/387, l='MpServer', x=-363.63, y=72.00, z=499.78], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/132, l='MpServer', x=-387.50, y=65.50, z=480.94], EntityCow['Cow'/388, l='MpServer', x=-362.47, y=72.00, z=498.28], EntityItemFrame['entity.ItemFrame.name'/133, l='MpServer', x=-386.50, y=64.50, z=480.94], EntityCow['Cow'/389, l='MpServer', x=-366.94, y=72.00, z=500.35], EntityChicken['Chicken'/390, l='MpServer', x=-356.25, y=72.00, z=499.84], EntityChicken['Chicken'/391, l='MpServer', x=-358.81, y=72.00, z=496.56], EntityChicken['Chicken'/392, l='MpServer', x=-358.44, y=72.00, z=516.56], EntityWaypointContainer['unknown'/397, l='MpServer', x=0.00, y=0.00, z=0.00], EntityZombie['Zombie'/398, l='MpServer', x=-347.50, y=6.00, z=481.50], EntityPig['Pig'/399, l='MpServer', x=-347.03, y=72.00, z=496.47], EntityPig['Pig'/400, l='MpServer', x=-347.59, y=72.00, z=499.50], EntityPig['Pig'/401, l='MpServer', x=-346.47, y=72.00, z=499.53], EntityPig['Pig'/402, l='MpServer', x=-349.47, y=72.00, z=496.47], EntityPig['Pig'/403, l='MpServer', x=-347.03, y=72.00, z=498.31], EntityPig['Pig'/404, l='MpServer', x=-349.91, y=73.00, z=496.09], EntityPig['Pig'/405, l='MpServer', x=-345.75, y=72.00, z=497.47], EntityPig['Pig'/406, l='MpServer', x=-348.16, y=72.00, z=497.59], EntityPig['Pig'/407, l='MpServer', x=-349.38, y=72.00, z=497.63], EntityPig['Pig'/408, l='MpServer', x=-349.53, y=72.00, z=498.81], EntityPig['Pig'/409, l='MpServer', x=-350.53, y=72.00, z=497.53], EntityPig['Pig'/410, l='MpServer', x=-348.28, y=72.00, z=496.47], EntitySheep['Sheep'/411, l='MpServer', x=-337.69, y=72.00, z=498.91], EntitySheep['Sheep'/412, l='MpServer', x=-339.75, y=72.00, z=499.53], EntitySheep['Sheep'/413, l='MpServer', x=-339.84, y=72.00, z=496.53], EntitySheep['Sheep'/414, l='MpServer', x=-340.78, y=72.00, z=498.31], EntityHorse['Rocinante'/415, l='MpServer', x=-346.00, y=71.00, z=524.00], EntityZombie['Zombie'/416, l='MpServer', x=-340.50, y=29.00, z=536.50], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/417, l='MpServer', x=-337.09, y=24.00, z=535.69], EntitySpider['Spider'/418, l='MpServer', x=-343.50, y=11.00, z=559.50], EntityChicken['Chicken'/423, l='MpServer', x=-323.47, y=83.00, z=407.53], EntityChicken['Chicken'/424, l='MpServer', x=-329.41, y=83.00, z=415.09], EntityZombie['Zombie'/425, l='MpServer', x=-322.13, y=47.00, z=425.56], EntityChicken['Chicken'/426, l='MpServer', x=-321.34, y=80.00, z=446.44], EntityZombie['Zombie'/427, l='MpServer', x=-332.50, y=30.00, z=541.50], EntityClientPlayerMP['charlestaker'/124, l='MpServer', x=-392.97, y=75.62, z=485.97], EntityZombie['Zombie'/434, l='MpServer', x=-313.50, y=57.00, z=411.50], EntityChicken['Chicken'/436, l='MpServer', x=-315.59, y=79.00, z=459.38], EntityChicken['Chicken'/200, l='MpServer', x=-468.59, y=79.00, z=408.38], EntityChicken['Chicken'/204, l='MpServer', x=-467.63, y=78.00, z=435.66], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/207, l='MpServer', x=-468.41, y=18.00, z=454.31], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/208, l='MpServer', x=-467.50, y=17.00, z=454.50], EntityChicken['Chicken'/209, l='MpServer', x=-468.44, y=74.00, z=471.44], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/215, l='MpServer', x=-460.09, y=66.00, z=414.53], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/216, l='MpServer', x=-453.50, y=66.00, z=412.50], EntityChicken['Chicken'/217, l='MpServer', x=-454.56, y=78.00, z=424.59], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/218, l='MpServer', x=-460.30, y=15.00, z=451.47], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/219, l='MpServer', x=-457.44, y=17.00, z=449.94], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/220, l='MpServer', x=-452.16, y=18.00, z=453.28], EntityChicken['Chicken'/221, l='MpServer', x=-456.59, y=74.00, z=461.63], EntityItem['item.item.egg'/222, l='MpServer', x=-455.84, y=74.13, z=463.00], EntityChicken['Chicken'/223, l='MpServer', x=-461.44, y=75.00, z=459.56], EntityPig['Pig'/224, l='MpServer', x=-460.94, y=73.00, z=475.84], EntityChicken['Chicken'/225, l='MpServer', x=-450.34, y=73.00, z=485.53], EntityChicken['Chicken'/234, l='MpServer', x=-432.56, y=77.00, z=447.59], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/235, l='MpServer', x=-433.00, y=20.00, z=476.47], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/236, l='MpServer', x=-432.68, y=19.00, z=464.44], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/237, l='MpServer', x=-437.69, y=21.00, z=473.50], EntityPig['Pig'/238, l='MpServer', x=-435.53, y=76.00, z=466.81], EntityChicken['Chicken'/239, l='MpServer', x=-440.38, y=71.00, z=496.63], EntityPig['Pig'/240, l='MpServer', x=-435.41, y=69.00, z=510.84], EntityChicken['Chicken'/247, l='MpServer', x=-428.38, y=80.00, z=422.53], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/248, l='MpServer', x=-419.50, y=18.00, z=446.88], EntityBat['Bat'/249, l='MpServer', x=-420.25, y=18.10, z=445.75], EntityEnderman['Enderman'/250, l='MpServer', x=-422.72, y=16.00, z=447.31], EntityChicken['Chicken'/251, l='MpServer', x=-418.56, y=79.00, z=447.44], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/252, l='MpServer', x=-421.50, y=19.00, z=462.50], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/253, l='MpServer', x=-425.13, y=19.00, z=462.69], EntitySkeleton['Skeleton'/254, l='MpServer', x=-423.50, y=20.00, z=455.91], EntityCreeper['Creeper'/255, l='MpServer', x=-416.44, y=17.00, z=450.63]] Retry entities: 0 total; [] Server brand: fml,forge Server type: Integrated singleplayer server Stacktrace: at net.minecraft.client.multiplayer.WorldClient.func_72914_a(WorldClient.java:384) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_71396_d(Minecraft.java:2433) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.func_99999_d(Minecraft.java:899) at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:103) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source) at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.launch(Launch.java:134) at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.main(Launch.java:28) -- System Details -- Details: Minecraft Version: 1.7.2 Operating System: Windows 7 (amd64) version 6.1 Java Version: 1.8.0_11, Oracle Corporation Java VM Version: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (mixed mode), Oracle Corporation Memory: 145995808 bytes (139 MB) / 360710144 bytes (344 MB) up to 1908932608 bytes (1820 MB) JVM Flags: 2 total; -XX:HeapDumpPath=MojangTricksIntelDriversForPerformance_javaw.exe_minecraft.exe.heapdump -Xmx2G AABB Pool Size: 1790 (100240 bytes; 0 MB) allocated, 1790 (100240 bytes; 0 MB) used IntCache: cache: 0, tcache: 0, allocated: 12, tallocated: 94 FML: MCP v9.01-pre FML v7.2.116.1024 Minecraft Forge 10.12.0.1024 Optifine OptiFine_1.7.2_HD_U_C2 13 mods loaded, 13 mods active mcp{8.09} [Minecraft Coder Pack] (minecraft.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available FML{7.2.116.1024} [Forge Mod Loader] (forge-1.7.2-10.12.0.1024.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available Forge{10.12.0.1024} [Minecraft Forge] (forge-1.7.2-10.12.0.1024.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available bspkrsCore{6.0(1.7.2)} [bspkrsCore] (bspkrsCore (v6.0).jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available craftguide{1.5.2} [CraftGuide] (CraftGuide-1.6.7.5.zip) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available DamageIndicatorsMod{3.0.7} [Damage Indicators] (Damage Indicators (v3.0.7).jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available Eln{BETA-1.4.6c} [Electrical Age] (ElectricalAge_BETA_1.4.6c.zip) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available inventorytweaks{1.57-116} [Inventory Tweaks] (InventoryTweaks-1.57-116.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available newdawn{172.1.0} [New Dawn] (newdawn-172.1.0.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available DarrenPR_RottenFleshToLeather{1.0.0} [Rotten Flesh to Leather] (Rotten Flesh To Leather Mod.zip) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available AS_UpdateCheck{1.1.5} [AtomicStryker Update Check Mod] (UpdateCheckerMod-1.7.2.jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available voxelmap{1.7.2} [VoxelMap] (Voxelmap (v1.0).jar) Unloaded->Constructed->Pre-initialized->Initialized->Post-initialized->Available->Available->Available->Available Waila{1.4.5_1.7.2} [Waila] (Waila (v1.4.5).jar) 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---- Minecraft Crash Report ---- // Why is it breaking :( Time: 29/07/14 11:15 PM Description: Unexpected error java.lang.IllegalStateException: Not tesselating! at net.minecraft.client.renderer.Tessellator.func_78381_a(Tessellator.java:162) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:64) at mcp.mobius.waila.cbcore.ItemRenderer.drawItem(ItemRenderer.java:38) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:148) at mcp.mobius.waila.overlay.OverlayRenderer.renderOverlay(OverlayRenderer.java:65) at mcp.mobius.waila.events.TickHandler.tickRender(TickHandler.java:56) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler_36_TickHandler_tickRender_RenderTickEvent.invoke(.dynamic) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.ASMEventHandler.invoke(ASMEventHandler.java:51) at cpw.mods.fml.common.eventhandler.EventBus.post(EventBus.java:122) at cpw.mods.fml.common.FMLCommonHandler.onRenderTickStart(FMLCommonHandler.java:315) at net.minecraft |
oves of the disc. In theory, this would provide generally poorer audio fidelity. Furthermore, since constant angular velocity translates into constant linear velocity (the radius of the helical track is constant), cylinders were also free from inner groove problems suffered by disc recordings. Around 1900, cylinders were, on average, indeed of notably higher audio quality than contemporary discs, but as disc makers improved their technology by 1910 the fidelity differences between better discs and cylinders became minimal.
Cylinder phonographs generally used a worm gear to move the stylus in synchronization with the grooves of the recording, whereas most disc machines relied on the grooves to pull the stylus along. This resulted in cylinder records played a number of times having less degradation than discs, but this added mechanism made cylinder machines more expensive.
Advantages of discs [ edit ]
Both the disc records, and the machines to play them, were cheaper to mass-produce than the products of the cylinder system. Disc records were also easier and cheaper to store in bulk, as they could be stacked, or when in paper sleeves put in rows on shelves like books—packed together more densely than cylinder recordings.
Many cylinder phonographs used a belt to turn the mandrel; slight slippage of this belt could make the mandrel turn unevenly, thus resulting in pitch fluctuations. Disc phonographs using a direct system of gears turned more evenly; the heavy metal turntable of disc machines acted as a flywheel, helping to minimize speed wobble.
Virtually all US disc records were single-sided until 1908, when Columbia Records began mass production of discs with recordings pressed on both sides. Except for premium-priced classical records, that quickly became the industry standard. With their capacity effectively doubled, the storage efficiency advantage of discs over the space-wasting cylinder format became even more obvious.
The disc companies had superior advertising and promotion, most notably the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States and the Gramophone Company/HMV in the Commonwealth. Great singers like Enrico Caruso were hired to record exclusively, helping put the idea in the public mind that that company's product was superior. Edison tried to get into the disc market with hill-and-dale discs, Edison Disc Records.
Decline [ edit ]
Disc records and cylinders
Cylinder records continued to compete with the growing disc record market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In 1912, Columbia Records, which had been selling both discs and cylinders, dropped the cylinder format, while Edison introduced his unique Diamond Disc format. Beginning in 1915, new Edison cylinder issues were simply dubs of Edison discs and therefore had lower audio quality than the disc originals. Although his cylinders continued to be sold in steadily dwindling and eventually minuscule quantities, Edison continued to support owners of cylinder phonographs by making new titles available in that format until the company ceased manufacturing all records and phonographs in November 1929.[7]
Later applications [ edit ]
Cylinder on Dictaphone dictation machine (ca 1922). The recording head moved left to right. The black lines are shiny gaps between tracks. Each cylinder could record 1200-1500 words. They could be reused 100-120 times by putting them in a machine that erased them by shaving off the surface.
Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for Dictaphone and Ediphone recordings for office use for decades.[18]
In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their Dictabelt technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by magnetic tape recording. However, cylinders for older style dictating machines continued to be available for some years, and it was not unusual to encounter cylinder dictating machines into the 1950s.[19]
In the late 20th and early 21st century some new recordings have been made on cylinders for the novelty effect of using obsolete technology. Probably the most famous of these are by They Might Be Giants, who in 1996 recorded "I Can Hear You" and three other songs, performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. This song was released on Factory Showroom in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. The other songs recorded were "James K. Polk", "Maybe I Know", and "The Edison Museum", the last a song about the site of the recording. These recordings were officially released online as MP3 files in 2001.[20]
Small numbers of cylinders have been manufactured in the 21st century out of modern long-lasting materials. Two companies engaged in such enterprise are the Vulcan Cylinder Record Company of Sheffield, England[21] and the Wizard Cylinder Records Company in Baldwin, New York.[22] Both appear to have started in 2002.
In 2010 the British steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing released the track "Sewer", from their debut album, Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1 on a wax cylinder in a limited edition of 40, of which only 30 were put on sale. The box set came with instructions on how to make your own cylinder player for less than £20. The BBC covered the release on Television on BBC Click, on BBC Online and on Radio 5 Live.[23]
In August 2010, Ash International and PARC released the first commercially available glow in the dark phonograph cylinder, a work by Michael Esposito and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, entitled The Ghosts Of Effingham. The cylinder was released in a limited edition of 150 copies, and was produced by Vulcan Records in Sheffield, England.[citation needed]
Preservation of cylinder recordings [ edit ]
Proper way to hold a cylinder record: put fingers on the inside; do not touch the outer surface which has the recording.
Because of the nature of the recording medium, playback of many cylinders can cause degradation of the recording. The replay of cylinders diminishes their fidelity and degrades their recorded signals. Additionally, when exposed to humidity, mold can penetrate cylinders' surface and cause the recordings to have surface noise. Currently, the only professional machine manufactured for the playback of cylinder recordings is the Archéophone player, designed by Henri Chamoux. The Archéophone is used by the Edison National Historic Site, Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, Ohio), The Department of Special Collections, Donald C Davidson Library at The University of California, Santa Barbara, and many other libraries and archives.[citation needed]
Other modern so-called 'plug-in' mounts, each incorporating the use of a Stanton 500AL MK II magnetic cartridge, have been manufactured from time to time. Information on each may be viewed on the Phonograph Makers Pages link. It is possible to use these on the Edison cylinder players.[citation needed]
Also of interest is the cylinder player built by BBC engineers working in "Engineering Operations - Radio" in 1987. This was equipped with a linear-tracking arm borrowed from a contemporary Revox turntable, and a variety of re-tipped Shure SC35 cartridges.[citation needed]
In an attempt to preserve the historic content of the recordings, cylinders can be read with a confocal microscope and converted to a digital audio format. The resulting sound clip in most cases sounds better than stylus playback from the original cylinder. Having an electronic version of the original recordings enables archivists to open access to the recordings to a wider audience. This technique also has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken cylinders.[24]
Modern reproductions of cylinder and disc recordings usually give the impression that the introduction of discs was a quantum leap in audio fidelity, but this is on modern playback equipment; played on equipment from around 1900, the cylinders do not have noticeably more rumble and poorer bass reproduction than the discs. Another factor is that many cylinders are amateur recordings, while disc recording equipment was simply too expensive for anyone but professional engineers; many extremely poor recordings were made on cylinder, while the vast majority of disc recordings were competently recorded. All cylinder recordings were acoustically recorded as were early disc recordings. From the mid-1920s onwards, discs started to be recorded electrically which provided a much enhanced frequency range of recording.[citation needed]
Also important is the quality of the material: the earliest tinfoil recordings wore out fast. Once the tinfoil was removed from the cylinder it was nearly impossible to re-align in playable condition. The earliest soft wax recordings also wore out quite fast, although they have better fidelity than the early rubber discs.[citation needed]
In addition to poor states of preservation, the poor impression modern listeners may get of wax cylinders is from their early date, which can compare unfavorably to recordings made even a dozen years later. Other than a single playable example from 1878 (from an experimental phonograph-clock), the oldest playable preserved cylinders are from the year 1888. These include a severely degraded recording of Johannes Brahms, Handel's Israel in Egypt and a short speech by Sir Arthur Sullivan in fairly listenable condition. Somewhat later are the almost unlistenable 1889 amateur recordings of Nina Grieg. The problem with the wax cylinders is that they readily support the growth of mildew which penetrates throughout the cylinder and, if serious enough, renders the recording unplayable. The earliest preserved rubber disc recordings are children's records, featuring animal noises and nursery rhymes. This means that the earliest disc recordings most music lovers will hear are shellac discs made after 1900, after more than ten years of development.[citation needed]
Gallery [ edit ]
Celluloid phonograph cylinders displaying a variety of colors
Wax phonograph cylinders in a variety of diameters
Wax phonograph cylinders in a variety of lengths
A sound engineer holds one of the Mapleson Cylinders containing a fragment of a live performance recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in 1901
Close-up of the mechanism of an Edison Amberola, manufactured circa 1915
Thomas Edison in 1888 listening to a wax cylinder phonograph at the Edison laboratory, Orange, N.J.
Delivering Ediphone wax cylinder recordings of propaganda broadcasts for analysis at the CBS listening post (May 1941)
Transcribing propaganda broadcasts from Europe recorded on Ediphone cylinders at the CBS listening post (May 1941)
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
NotesAs the snow falls, so do the ticket prices! With the winter season officially kicking into high gear, the Philadelphia Flyers are offering a special Snowstorm Savings on tickets to the team’s next two home games at the Wells Fargo Center—this Monday, January 25 vs. the Boston Bruins at 7 p.m., as well as next Tuesday, February 2 vs. the Montreal Canadiens at 7 p.m.
The more snow that Philadelphia gets, the deeper the discount. On Sunday, January 24 at 12 p.m., the ticket discounts will go live on PhiladelphiaFlyers.com, with the savings dependent on how many inches of snow falls at Philadelphia International Airport, according to the National Weather Service:
0”-5” – $40 upper level seats/$80 lower level seats
6”-10” – $35 upper level seats /$70 lower level seats
11”-15” – $30 upper level seats /$60 lower level seats
16”+ – $25 upper level seats /$50 lower level seats
Fans can follow Flyers social media (Twitter: @NHLFlyers; Facebook: Philadelphia Flyers; Instagram: PhiladelphiaFlyers) for the most up-to-date details, as well as the confirmed discounted pricing following the storm.
The Flyers will take on the Boston Bruins on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Center, then will square off against the Montreal Canadiens the following Tuesday, February 2 at 7 p.m.When people around you discuss Israel’s gas deal, do you feel your eyes glaze over in confusion? The Times of Israel feels your pain. Here’s our handy primer of the top ten things you should know about the gas deal.
1. Where is the gas?
There are two small gas fields off the coast of Ashkelon, discovered in 1999, which have about 45 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The major gas fields, Leviathan and Tamar, were discovered in 2009. They’re about 90 miles west of Haifa. Tamar has an estimated 240 billion cubic meters of natural gas, while Leviathan has 450 billion cubic meters. Production began at the sites near Ashkelon in 2004, and at the Tamar site in 2009. The rights to Leviathan are still under negotiation. The gas at the Leviathan and Tamar sites is located three kilometers beneath the sea floor, in a 200-meter wide pocket of natural gas trapped within spaces of the sandstone rock bed or layers of sand.
2. How are they planning to get this gas out of the sea and into my home?
A special underwater drill, perched on a floating platform, drills a well from the sea floor to a depth of three kilometers. Due to the depth of the fields, the gas is trapped under pressure that can be 400-500 times the pressure at sea level. This pressure causes the gas to flow into the well and upwards to a platform above the sea surface. On the platform, the gas is treated, and impurities such as trace amounts of oil or other gases are removed. The treated gas is then shipped via pipeline to Ashdod. Once it arrives on the mainland, a government-owned corporation called Israel Natural Gas Lines (“Natgaz” is its Hebrew acronym) has a network of 430 kilometers of natural gas pipes that snake around the country. This distribution network brings the natural gas to eight power plants and major energy consumers, like industrial zones in Haifa Bay, Dead Sea Works, Ramat Hovav and Mishor Rotem, among others. Right now, the natural gas does not reach your home, because it is prohibitively expensive to lay gas lines across the country. Read more about the technical process here.
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3. So if it’s not coming into my home, why should I care about it?
Israel now gets approximately 60 percent of its electricity from natural gas. Environmental activists encourage the use of natural gas, especially in power plants, because natural gas pollutes much less than oil or coal. The Ministry of Natural Infrastructures, Water, and Energy found that in addition to reducing pollution and greenhouse gases, natural gas is much more efficient and can produce almost 20 percent more electricity than coal or oil. The natural gas discovery also has the ability to make Israel energy independent. Amit Mor, the CEO of Eco Energy, an independent consulting company and expert in the field, said that just the Tamar field can supply most of Israel’s domestic needs for the next 15 years. This could have far-reaching implications, turning Israel into a major gas exporter, and making the country energy independent.
4. Is natural gas good or bad for the environment?
Environmentalists generally favor natural gas over other energy sources. “The discovery of natural gas is a blessing, we have it so we don’t have to use coal and oil,” said Green Course activist Ely Abramovitch. “We don’t only support gas usage, we also support making it more widespread.” Abramovitch added that in an ideal world, Israel would eventually move to renewable energies other than natural gas. However, he knows this will take a long time. Solar energy currently only provides 2% of Israel’s electricity, said Mor. So for now, he’d rather see more factories use natural gas rather than coal.
5. So if environmentalists support gas, what are all the protests about?
“We want to bring to light the undemocratic activities around the gas deal,” explained Abramovitch. Environmental group Green Course is one of the leaders of the umbrella group of environmental organizations that hold weekly protests on Saturday nights to protest the gas deal.
In the spring, activists were incensed that the details of the gas deal were not released to the public – or even the Knesset members themselves, until external pressure forced Netanyahu to reveal the terms of the gas deal on June 30. “The public realizes the gas deal is dangerous for Israel. It allows for quick export of Israeli gas and will leave us without gas in the future,” said Abramovitch.
This past Saturday night on November 14, more than 10,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the gas deal, the largest in recent months. Activists also staged protests in 15 other cities around the country. Abramovitch credited the recent three-part TV documentary “Silver Platter” with bringing the complicated issue to the forefront of the public’s mind. The main speaker at the Tel Aviv rally was Prof. Yaron Zelekha, the former accountant general in the Finance Ministry who also stars in the second part of Silver Platter, who called the gas deal “organized robbery.”
“Over the past months we have opened the public’s eyes to the way the government is despoiling the greatest national resource ever discovered here, after dividing it up among a group of magnates almost without consideration,” Zelekha said, according to Globes. “This is a monopoly that is selling our own gas back to us, that it received for nothing. They say it’s worth making concessions for the sake of Israel’s geostrategic standing, but Netanyahu has tuned Israel into the country with the most expensive housing in the West. The country in which cars are the most expensive in the West. The country in which food is the most expensive in the West, and now the country with the most expensive gas in the West and it’s our gas.”
6. So what’s all this talk about Article 52?
In December, then-antitrust commissioner David Gilo ruled that the Delek-Noble conglomerate that is developing Leviathan may constitute a monopoly, sparking a vociferous national debate on the terms given to the energy companies. Under Article 52 of the Antitrust Law, only the economy minister may override the antitrust commissioner’s ruling and give a special dispensation to a monopoly to operate in Israel if, for example, it is essential for security concerns. For the past year, Aryeh Deri (Shas), who until just recently was economy minister, has refused to give that dispensation, and Netanyahu failed over the summer to pass a Knesset vote transferring his “Article 52 authority,” as it is known, to the broader cabinet.
Gilo resigned in May over Netanyahu’s decision to push the current deal through, saying that the deal would not promote enough competition in the natural gas sector. Public outcry and intergovernmental conflicts forced Netanyahu to bring the gas deal to the Knesset for a vote, which he had hoped to avoid since he was not certain he could get a majority. The Knesset passed the deal on September 7, by a 59 to 51 vote.
Even after the Knesset vote, the gas deal must still either get approval from the Antitrust Commission or the economy minister must invoke Article 52. Deri refused to be the first minister to exercise this clause, and resigned in a widely anticipated move on November 1.
Deri is now minister of the Development of the Negev and Galilee and Periphery while Netanyahu took control of the Economy portfolio, in addition to the other three portfolios he already held: Foreign Ministry, Communications Ministry, and Health Ministry. “In order to proceed with the (offshore gas) agreement the ministry will be transferred to me and I will give the green light” on a deal outline with an energy conglomerate to develop offshore gas fields, Netanyahu said on November 1.
7. So what, exactly, does the gas deal say?
Under the terms of the outline, the Delek Group will sell its holdings in the Tamar gas field, as well as two smaller, as-yet undeveloped fields about 120 kilometers off the Haifa coast called Karish and Tanin, within six years and Noble Energy will gradually reduce its holdings in Tamar to no more than 25 percent within the same time frame. During those six years, prices for natural gas will be regulated. Shaul Amsterdamski, a journalist with the economic Calcalist newspaper, explained that the current deal focuses on the issue of the duopoly between Nobel and Delek, not specific percentages about the revenues of the gas. “The question of who will get what from the gas, that was already solved in 2011 with the Sheshinski Commission, so that question is not relevant any more,” he said.
8. What does Bill Clinton have to do with this?
According to some sources (with the company denying that this was the case), Bill Clinton has lobbied for Noble Energy in the past directly with Netanyahu. When the size of Leviathan was announced in 2009, taking everyone by surprise, then finance minister Yuval Steinitz said the country needed to renegotiate some of the tax breaks and other terms of the exploration contract. Previously, Israel was forced to offer appealing tax breaks to any company that wanted to explore offshore natural gas because it was so prohibitively expensive to explore, and the chance of success was unknown.
But Leviathan was larger than anyone imagined. “We definitely didn’t have a set of regulations that were suitable for the level of discovery,” Professor Shimon Feinstein, a professor of geology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, explained in August. “We’re caught in this very embarrassing situation where we sold a lease for exploration with certain conditions, and due to the huge discovery which were beyond our imagination, we decided ‘Oh, we made a mistake,’ and we are changing the rules of the game after the game was over.”
That’s exactly what Bill Clinton accused Netanyahu of doing. According to the Wall Street Journal, a Clinton aide said Clinton raised the issue in a private meeting Netanyahu in New York in July 2010. “Your country can’t just tax a US business retroactively because they feel like it,” Clinton told Netanyahu, according to the aide. When Clinton spoke at the 20th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at Rabin Square on October 31, 2015, some members of the crowd booed him due to his lobbying efforts for Noble Energy.
A Noble Energy spokesperson denied Clinton was ever a paid lobbyist for Noble.
9. What about Egypt’s offshore natural gas?
In August, an Italian company exploring off the coast of Egypt announced the discovery of a “supergiant” natural gas field, one of the largest ever found in the Mediterranean that could have as many as 2,500 billion cubic meters, according to Eco Energy’s Mor (for comparison, Israel’s offshore fields hold approximately 1,000 billion cubic meters). This is a boon for Egypt’s struggling economy, but problematic for Israel, which had hoped to export natural gas to Egypt.
The domestic market for natural gas in Israel and the Palestinian territories, which are dependent on Israeli infrastructure, is approximately 8 billion cubic meters per year. This could increase to 12 billion cubic meters per year as more businesses and factories are connected directly to gas, Mor explained. “Developers and partners need an export market,” he said. Israel and the West Bank alone are “too small to economically justify a multi-billion dollar development,” Mor added. He estimates it will cost approximately $6 billion-$7 billion to develop the Leviathan field, but companies will only invest that money if they can be ensured a stable export market. While there has been some talk of a joint Italy-Egypt-Israel agreement, another option is to turn to Turkey. Mor noted that a deal with Turkey makes a lot of economic sense but faces political hurdles due to the strained relationship between Israel and Turkey for the past several years.
10. What about the security issues relating to the offshore gas?
The biggest security issue right now is that there is one single pipe leading from the Tamar gas field to the Israeli shore. “If there is a technical problem, or a missile from Hezbollah or Hamas, all the Israelis and Palestinians are going to sit in the dark,” said Mor. “For national security purposes, it’s crucial to develop another pipeline so we can develop more fields in the future.” Mor would eventually like to see four separate pipelines from the Tamar and Leviathan fields, though others say three could be sufficient. The companies that develop Leviathan would be responsible for laying additional pipelines.
Amsterdamski, the journalist with Calcalist, said the issue of the single pipe is the main problem that Israel must address. “It’s a problem economically because it means there’s a monopoly, and also there’s a problem if something happens,” he said.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this article.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of the article stated that Bill Clinton was a paid lobbyist for Noble. A Noble spokesperson denied he was paid.Strip reopens after lengthy standoff with ‘delusional’ gunman on bus Police ID suspect as 55-year-old Rolando Cardenas
Parts of the Las Vegas Strip were closed for more than four hours Saturday as Metro Police negotiated with a “delusional” man they said killed one person and wounded another in a shooting on a double-decker bus.
Rolando Cardenas, 55, barricaded himself inside the bus near the Cosmopolitan, forcing authorities to shut down the Strip from Flamingo Road to Harmon Avenue while negotiating his surrender, police said.
Metro Police stressed that the shooting, which transpired on the second floor of a Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada bus, was isolated and wasn’t thought to have a nexus to terrorism.
Officers arrived at the scene near the Cosmopolitan almost immediately after the rounds went off about 10:45 a.m., Metro Assistant Sheriff Tom Roberts said. There, they encountered fleeing passengers and quickly determined Cardenas was still on the bus.
The two wounded people, who were believed to be unknown to the gunman, were rushed to University Medical Center where one of them died, Roberts said. The other, who was shot once in the stomach, was expected to recover.
During the standoff, Cardenas fired two more rounds as officers sent robots into the bus, Roberts said. Police did not return fire.
Then about 3:15 p.m., negotiators convinced Cardenas to drop his.40-caliber handgun out of a bus window and peacefully surrender, Roberts said. No one else was inside the bus.
Roberts said Cardenas "didn't seem to have a motive" for firing his gun. Photographs captured a man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans, flip flops and a light orange cap, being hauled off by heavily-armed SWAT officers wearing helmets and carrying shields.
Cardenas was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on charges of open murder with use of a firearm, attempted murder with use of a firearm, burglary while in possession of a firearm and discharging a gun within a vehicle.
Northbound traffic reopened soon after the suspect surrendered and the rest of the closures were lifted about 5:20 p.m., RTC said.
"Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family of the rider who was fatally shot, and we also extend our sincere sympathies to the injured victim, the bus operator and the other passengers who were aboard during this tragic incident," said RTC spokeswoman Angela Castro in a statement. "The safety and security of our transit riders, contractors and staff is our utmost priority. We are working closely with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and remain committed to providing a safe public transportation system."
Sidewalks near the incident also were closed to foot traffic, marking one of the rare occasions when a section of the Strip was empty of pedestrians and cars alike. Police said hotel and casino patrons trapped between the perimeter of the crime scene were not allowed to exit through the front doors during the standoff and for a short time after Cardenas was arrested.
Standing in a denim jacket with her hands folded across her chest, Cosmopolitan guest Remy Camacho, 47, walked across the casino from a slot machine where she was seated at the north end of the venue to step outside just after 5 p.m.
The main entrance at the time remained guarded by a set of chairs and a security guard who said "negative" when asked if he knew when it would reopen.
Camacho said she hadn't been given any news of the barricade outside by the resort, but "could live with" not going out the front door for the afternoon. She expressed concerns for proximity of the shooting to where she was enjoying her Las Vegas vacation.
"That's kind of scary that it happened right here," said Camacho, who lives in San Diego. "What's to stop someone from coming inside and doing that?"
Officials at the Cosmopolitan said the safety of their guests was a top priority.
"We are cooperating fully with law enforcement officials and have no further details pending investigation," said a statement issued by property officials.
At the Bellagio, at least 20 guests stood mingling with each other near the resort's front doors and observing as valet and other staff stood by luggage carts lined in front of the doors.
"It's Metro's call," said a valet manager just after 4:45 p.m. when asked when the doors might reopen. "They have to clear the scene."
Foot traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard near the site of the barricade had both tourists and locals alike grumbling impatiently as they tried to navigate through heavy crowds.
Walking north past the Linq minutes after the suspect was reported captured, Las Vegans Hannah Savage, 24 and Amanda Pearla, 25, compared the jammed pedestrian flow to that of the year's busiest summer weekends on the Strip and even New Year's Eve.
"It's definitely not this hard to get around normally," said Savage, a 15-year Las Vegas resident.
Police stressed that the incident wasn't connected to a Hollywood-film-like heist at a high-end jewelry store at the nearby Bellagio about 10 hours earlier, police said.
Most interviewed guests at the respective hotels said while they were aware of Saturday's barricade and the robbery at the Bellagio earlier in the morning, the events were nothing more than an inconvenience, because they had to exit out of the hotels' parking garages instead of their front doors.
"I wouldn't say I'd never come back here," said Bellagio guest Brian Markley of Baltimore. "This rarely happens."I honestly don't know how to express how much in awe I am! The thought that a stranger a cross the world would so thoughtful and send me such amazing things is beyond my belief! I must admit I got SO lucky!
The amazing Madishka got me Stila eyeshadow palette, make-up brushes set (I shall post my attempt at using this make-up on r/makeupaddiction!), the cutest purse ever and most importantly, the best maple syrup in Canada!
But the best gift she gave me was her friendship, we've been messaging through redditgifts and I dare say that she is now a dear friend of mine, and for me that is priceless!
Thank you so much! I pray/wish/hope that you get back all the kindness you showed me a 100 folds back!
Thank you, so so so much!While it has not yet been confirmed by DC Comics, Mr. Conrad’s Facebook was spotted having a sneak peek of something he’s working on, with the following caption:
“Just a tease of my new home at DC… Just finished my first issue, and couldn’t be happier.”
There’s been speculation as to who would take Brett Booth’s place, since he left to work on other projects such as Justice League of America. Kyle Higgins was also tagged in the post, but we can’t know for sure until we hear it out of DC’s mouth. Check below for the sneak peek:
Keep your ear to the ground, folks! As soon as we know for sure whether this rumor is true, we’ll let you know.
Let us know what you think in the comments below, and don’t forget to head over to our Twitter and Facebook and say hi!
SourceMeet Yuki-taro, a self-guided, GPS and camera equipped robot snowplow that somehow manages to look as cute as Pokemon's Pikachu - this is Japan, after all!
Snow? In Japan? Yes indeed, and not just on top of Mount Fuji. Some parts of northern Japan can receive a surprising amount of snow in wintertime, enough to block roads and isolate people living in mountain villages. Elderly people in particular are at risk in these areas, both from being shut-in and from trying to shovel all the snow. That's where "Yuki-taro, the friendly snowbot", comes in!
Though only a prototype at present, Yuki-taro's creators in the snowy city of Niigata expect to have a marketable version ready within 5 years at a cost of under 1 million yen (about $9000). That may sound like a lot, but it's likely that municipalities would pay the cost and deploy them where needed.
Besides, Yuki-taro is packed with high-tech features such as a GPS positioning sensor, twin video cameras for obstacle avoidance in the "eyes", and an integral snowblock maker that will thrill local kiddies looking to build an igloo or two!
The internal compressor addresses a very real problem - what to do with the snow? Instead of acting as a snowblower, which might create more snow clearance problems,
Yuki-taro takes in snow at the front, squeezes it into rectangular bricks, and excretes said bricks out the back. Try teaching your dog to do that! The bricks can be easily stacked and stored for summer cooling needs - unless those pesky neighborhood kids get at them first!
The first part of Yuki-taro's name means "snow" in Japanese while "Taro" is a popular boy's name. If it were sold here - and one day, it likely will be - it'd probably be called "Snow Joe" or something. Like most Japanese robots, Yuki-taro is designed to look cute. There are more than a few altered photos of Yuki-taro modified to look like Pokemon's Pikachu foating around online. Expect a Pikachu conversion kit (and, dare I say it, a Hello Kitty version) to be sold right alongside Yuki-taro once he/she/it hits the stores (via Pink Tentacle)
See the latest update - Japan's Automatic Robot Snowplow - An Update On Yuki Taro
Steve Levenstein
Japanese Innovations Writer
InventorSpot.comSince I’ve started writing at Progressive Army I’ve written about local issues, from the city to state, and even a few stories including foreign policy implications. Today I’m writing about something personal, and about as local as it gets, outlining a specific issue at my son’s elementary school.
School Move, by and Large, Excludes the Community it Affects
My son attends Roxhill Elementary in Southwest Seattle, which is slated to move into E.C. Hughes’s building at the beginning of the 2018 school year. E.C. Hughes is designated a historical landmark, having been originally built in 1926. The school is slated to be renovated throughout, to include new electrical, plumbing, duct work, sprinklers, and new finishes. These are all well and good, but there is one glaring deficiency in the proposed move. Although you may think all is well in getting a retrofitted school, the process is in need of major improvement. One major flaw is that this proposed move, including the design team, didn’t include the community on a broad scale. Jenny Rose Ryan, spokesperson for Friends of Roxhill, tells Progressive Army her overarching thoughts of the situation:
I think the issue is really that people don’t see the way contemporary technologies can build social equity. Communities of color have been most impacted by the exploitive and oppressive practices of capitalism, so when schools like Roxhill are overlooked for opportunities like solar, it replicates the same structures. Also, they had a ‘design group’ that met twice and didn’t include Roxhill Families. Some of it is language. Some of it is laziness. Some of it is ‘this is how we do it and we don’t do it special for you.’ But the counter is, why not? You should. We’re different. We’re a global community
Other main aspects of the move include failing to plan for the lunchroom, which will be about half of what it is currently. This means lunch may have to start as early as 10 A.M. in order to rotate everyone through. Furthermore, there is no plan or design for a computer lab. Julian Gardner-Irving, a member of Friends of Roxhill, outlined a few of her frustrations:
Roxhill’s move to the E.C. Hughes building highlights the structural inequality within our district. Our school is being moved to a building that doesn’t quite fit our needs, our cafeteria is getting downsized considerably and it seems we currently have no dedicated space for a computer lab. Meanwhile, other schools that have far less economic need than ours get brand new, state of the art buildings such as Arbor Heights Elementary that doesn’t need the financial support that a school like Roxhill does. The distribution of funds from levies needs to be reassessed so Seattle’s educational system is more equitable thereby giving every student in Seattle Public Schools an equal opportunity to succeed.
All these issues occur while, as articulated by Ms. Gardner-Irving, a mile away students at Arbor Heights elementary are treated to state of the art accommodations including two computer rooms. Furthermore, Arbor Heights elementary will be installing solar panels, as well six other schools, with a total price tag of over 2 million dollars, yet Roxhill Elementary can’t get money allocated for a playground…
#SaveRecess
The most notable shortfalls have to do with anything existing outside of the school structure itself, such as the school playground. The school playground at E.C. Hughes is currently a concrete slab with no serviceable equipment. To bridge the budget shortfall the Seattle Public Schools is relying on the community to split the bill.
In order to meet the demands of this oversight/shortfall, parents and neighbors of Roxhill Elementary are in the process of forming a 501(c)3 named “Friends of Roxhill.” This group, replacing the previous PTA in a nonprofit structure, has taken on the responsibility of filling the gap where the school district fell short. Most of the shortfall will rely on a Seattle city grant called a “neighborhood matching fund.” Created in 1988, this fund grant awards up to $100,000 that includes a $50,000 match. According to Friends of Roxhill, the Seattle Public schools has committed to covering $30,000 of the match, leaving the community to come up with the remaining $20,000.
What You Can do to Help
To raise the cash needed to cover the match of the “neighborhood matching fund” grant, which Friends of Roxhill are currently in the process of writing, people can volunteer their time which will be calculated at $20/hr toward the match, or, by in-kind donations or actual cash donations.
Friends of Roxhill tells Progressive Army they are not currently set up to take cash donations, but ask that you make a pledge by emailing them: friendsofroxhill@gmail.com
Follow Friends of Roxhill on Facebook for updates.
Beyond the playground, Friends of Roxhill have their sights set |
.5 5 3 0.533... 3 5 0.533... 5 4 0.45 4 5 0.45 5 5 0.4 etc.........
Example: s=5, m=5 1/s + 1/m - 1/2 = 1/E becomes 1/5 + 1/5 − 1/2 = 1/E −0.1 = 1/E which makes E (number of edges) = −10, And we can't have a negative number of edges!
Real?
: There are only 5 that work! All the rest are just not possible in the real world.
And the last step is to see if those solids are real:
s m what it means solid 3 3 triangles meeting 3-at-a-corner tetrahedron 3 4 triangles meeting 4-at-a-corner octahedron 4 3 squares meeting 3-at-a-corner cube 5 3 pentagons meeting 3-at-a-corner dodecahedron 3 5 triangles meeting 5-at-a-corner icosahedron
So, only 5, and they all exist.
Job Done.
Schläfli!
And just to keep you well educated... the "s" and "m" values put together inside curly braces {} make what is called the "Schläfli symbol" for polyhedra:When President Trump announced on Friday that he is withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, I was relieved for the manufacturers and small businesses in Wisconsin’s Sixth District.
The Paris climate agreement was a bad deal for all Americans, but would have hit Wisconsin’s Sixth District particularly hard.
We have the most manufacturing jobs of any congressional district in the U.S. If our country had continued to participate in the climate agreement, it would have cost the U.S. 440,000 manufacturing jobs and 2.7 million jobs in total.
At best, the climate agreement was a wealth redistribution program that imposed hefty costs on American families, and focused far more on handouts to other countries than actually protecting the environment.
The truth is: our environment is far cleaner today than it was 40 years ago.
Air quality has mostly improved. For example, there have been substantial decreases by 84 percent in concentrations of carbon monoxide and 99 percent in concentrations of lead in our air from 1980 to 2015, while emissions of air pollutants have also decreased.
Additionally, ozone levels have dropped dramatically. Nationally, they’ve decreased by 32 percent since 1980, and by 13 percent in the upper Midwest since 2000.
Furthermore, if President Obama was serious about the U.S. continuing its involvement in the Paris agreement past his presidency, he should have had Congress ratify it as a treaty.
A non-binding agreement, entered into swiftly and carelessly without congressional approval, is simply not the answer. Innovation in manufacturing and other industries -- not government interference -- is a far better way to ensure that our environment remains clean and safe for future generations while preserving our jobs.
###
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman is serving his second term representing Wisconsin’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.A high school German teacher fired by a northern Indiana school district has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging religious discrimination.
The Goshen News reports 29-year-old Kevin Peck alleges he was fired by Middlebury Community Schools because he sent a faculty-wide e-mail indicating he was an atheist. Peck said he also spoke out against Northridge High School Principal Gerald Rasler's religious references during the school year.
Middlebury Community Schools Superintendent Jane Allen said school corporation officials have been advised not to discuss the complaint. After an open records request from the newspaper, Allen indicated Pack received poor performance evaluations and listed several other complaints, including saying he poorly managed his classroom, lost students' work, missed multiple staff meetings and was late several times.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Close
Apple's announcement last June regarding a new subscription-based business model in which app developers get a bigger piece of the pie is now materializing.
Subscriptions were previously limited to video and music streaming apps, but Apple changed all that with its new auto-renewable subscription model that is open to all apps regardless of the categories they fall into. Moreover, a better split awaits app developers that retain their subscribers for more than a year.
"We are excited to open this business model to apps of all types and provide you with new opportunities to grow your business and support your customers," says Apple.
Apple explains that with auto-renewable subscriptions, the subscription gets automatically renewed after each billing cycle unless the subscriber opts to cancel the subscription. Apple also specified that when a user signs up for a free trial, the subscription automatically begins but the user won't get billed until after the trial is over.
As for revenue, the app developer will get the traditional 70/30 split for the first year of the auto-renewable subscription. If a subscriber racks up a year of paid service, the developer will see an increase to 85 percent of the revenue, with applicable taxes deducted. However, if a user unsubscribes from the app for more than 60 days, the accumulated paid service days will be reset.
"A move to a subscription in a different subscription group resets the days of service," Apple adds. "[The developer] will receive 70 percent of the purchase price until one year of accumulated service passes."
Furthermore, Apple's guidelines for auto-renewable subscriptions also allow developers to offer service levels and subscription groups, which will give subscribers more options for upgrading, crossgrading or downgrading their subscription levels. Apple also opens up territory-specific pricing in which 200 price points across all currencies are available for developers to use.
Developers can also increase the subscription fees for existing customers or opt to keep the price for them while setting a higher price for incoming customers. Subscribers will be notified regarding the increase in subscription fees and they will be asked if they agree to the new subscription fee. If they do agree, then the subscription will continue but if they don't or if they fail to take action, their subscription will end after that billing cycle.
With the upcoming macOS Sierra and iOS 10, Apple promises to provide users with more tools in order to manage their subscriptions.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.TL;DR Was having a bad week, my secret Santa made my year with a box full of amazing and personal gifts.
So I was having one of those weeks were everything seems to go wrong, I just moved to Canada from Europe and I was feeling a bit lonely and was thinking about going back home, we all get one of those weeks from time to time...
This morning on my way to the office I went to the post office to pickup what would be my secret Santa gift, I was expecting something pretty small but I got this pretty big box. As I was halfway to the office I decide to just go there with the box. A couple of hours later I can't stop looking at the box, I should be working, but... I NEED TO KNOW WHAT'S IN THE BOX! (insert "Seven" reference). So I decide to open it and get a sneak peak... first thing I see is a drawing wishing me a merry Christmas and a Totoro plushie (I LOVE IT!), I look a bit more and I see all these amazing gifts and, in the middle of the office, tears start coming, WHAT AN AMAZING GIFT!!!
I ended up going home earlier cause I couldn't wait to look at the rest of the stuff and thank my secret Santa, honestly you made my whole year, I ended up having a stupid smile in my face the whole day! It's almost as if you entered my apartment and bought everything based on that... it seriously amazes me the amount of generosity someone can have towards a complete stranger, you are seriously an incredible person.
I got: - Zelda breath of the wild amiibo (one of my favorite games, how did you even know I owned it?). - Japanese candies (I love japan and always wanted to try some of their candies). - Lindt chocolate (My grandma used to have those exact chocolates on her table, so it's even more personal than you expected). - Ice-wine candies in the shape of a maple leaf. - Maple syrup with a note welcoming me to Canada (I truly feel welcome in this lovely country). - A Sora magnet (Kingdom Hearts, my favorite game of all time). - Totoro plushie (I actually own a few totoro plushies already and I've always wanted more, I seriously love it, will upload a picture of the whole Totoro family).
This was my first secret Santa and I will definitely participate in more, I want to make someone feel the way I felt today, thanks again!(CNN) The U.S. launched a new ground-based missile defense system in Romania Thursday, sparking fresh tensions with Russia, which quickly blasted the system as a threat to its security.
The system, to be operated by NATO, is getting up and running nearly a decade after the U.S. first announced plans to do so, only to encounter pushback from Russia. The U.S. has long insisted that the shield is directed against rogue states like Iran and not intended to target Moscow's missiles, but Russian officials have slammed the move as an "attempt to destroy the strategic balance" in Europe.
"The United States' Aegis ashore system is declared certified for operations," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday at the ceremony launching the system.
"Missile defense is for defense," he added. "It does not undermine or weaken Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent."
Russia has described the U.S. anti-missile shield in Europe as a "threat" and says it is taking "protective measures" to guard against it, the country's state news agency TASS reported.
President Barack Obama scrapped the George W. Bush administration's planned bilateral deployment of a different system to Poland and the Czech Republic and has instead pursued a NATO-centric approach using alternate technology.
The system is to be turned over to NATO command and will be housed at a U.S. naval support facility in Deveselu, Romania, the site of a Romanian military base. Construction will begin on an additional anti-missile platform in Poland on Friday.
The Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System unveiled Thursday is capable of firing SM-3 defensive missiles that can "defeat incoming short and medium range enemy missiles," according to Lt. Shawn Eklund, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy.
Eklund told CNN that the facility will be manned by approximately 130 U.S. sailors. The inaugural ceremony for the new system will be attended by top U.S. and NATO military officials.
The Romania installation is the first land-based defensive missile launcher in Europe and will join other elements of the NATO defensive shield, including a command-and-control center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, a radar installation in Turkey and four ships capable of identifying enemy missiles and firing their own SM-3s based in Rota, Spain.
The U.S. and NATO have continually stressed that the system is intended to defend Europe from Iran and its expanding arsenal. Tehran has continued to test-fire ballistic missiles following the internationally negotiated deal to limit its nuclear program.
But Russia has dismissed the justification.
"From the very outset we kept saying that in the opinion of our experts the deployment of an anti-missile defense poses a threat to Russia," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Tass News Agency. "The question is not whether measures will be taken or not; measures are being taken to maintain Russia's security at the necessary level."
Russia believes the missile defense system breaches a 1987 agreement it signed with the U.S.
In October, at a meeting of the meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Russia, Russian President Vladimir accused the U.S. of "lying" about a "hypothetical Iranian threat, which never existed" and called the system "an attempt to destroy the strategic balance."
At a Wednesday press conference in Romania, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose pushed back on Putin's perspective.
"Russia has repeatedly raised concerns that U.S. and NATO missile defenses are directed against Russia and represent a threat to its strategic nuclear deterrent," he said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
He added that the "U.S. and NATO missile defense systems are directed against ballistic missile threats outside the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO and the United States have explained this to Russia many times over the years."
Heather Conley, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told CNN that Russia has previously suggested that it could retaliate for the missile defense system by stationing S-300 surface-to-air missile systems in Crimea and Kaliningrad, its European enclave located between Poland and Lithuania.
Obama had previously drawn criticism from politicians in the U.S. and Europe for canceling the Bush-era plan to station land-based interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009. Obama was further criticized for announcing the change on the day of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland during World War II.
Conley said that announcement would "go down in the history of poorly timed announcements."
Obama was also caught on an open mic in 2012 telling then-Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, that "After my election I have more flexibility," with regard to the U.S.-led NATO missile defense system in Europe.
Obama's posture made the Poles and Czechs "very concerned" that the entire missile defense project would be abandoned by his administration, according to Conley.
But, she said, "What they wound up getting with the current system was more robust than they had anticipated."
Conley said that the Obama administration might have switched gears on the Bush plan in part because it may have been trying to "buy time in order to make the case" to Russia that the new system was not directed against them.
She referred to that period as "the heady days of the 'Russian Reset' and New START treaty," an attempt by the newly inaugurated Obama to repair relations with Russia and sign a new arms reduction treaty -- and signal that the missile defense shield wasn't a threat.
But she added, "Despite an incredible amount of consultations with Russia, the Russians never bought the argument that the system was not directed at them."
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have increased in recent years following the Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and intervention in Eastern Ukraine.
In recent months, Russian military aircraft have flown within 50 feet of U.S. planes and ships, actions which Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said had "the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between the two countries."Larry Foote might not be the only veteran starter the Steelers lose from their defense. Brett Keisel might be leaving, too.
Keisel, an eight-year starter on a defense that ranks No. 1 in the NFL during that period, hasn’t been contacted by the Steelers about returning next season and is preparing to play elsewhere, according to his agent.
Unlike Foote, who was released Wednesday with one season remaining on his contract, Keisel is an unrestricted free agent who is free to sign with any team.
While he will be 36 in September, Keisel is coming off an effective season in which he graded out 13th among all NFL 3-4 defensive ends in Pro Football Focus’ pass rush evaluations.
“He’s productive, healthy and has every intention to continue to play football,” said Eric Metz, Keisel’s agent, Thursday.
Keisel missed four games late last season with a painful plantar fasciitis condition in his left foot that was worsened by a tear, but he returned to have two sacks in the final two games plus a critical fumble recovery against the Packers.
Keisel finished his 12th NFL season — he missed one season with an injury — with four sacks, giving him 8 1⁄ 2 in the last two seasons, a forced fumble, two fumble recoveries and 29 tackles. He is 13th in team history with 29 sacks.
Keisel made $2,825,000 in base salary last season, with a salary cap charge of $4.9 million, but the Steelers — if they have any interest in him returning — probably don’t want to pay much more than the minimum of $955,000 plus a small signing bonus.
The Steelers’ lack of interest in Keisel to date might not necessarily be a sign they have decided to move on. They could be waiting to see if Keisel, a defensive captain and one of the most-respected players in their locker room, attracts interest elsewhere.
“Hopefully, he can finish his career a Steeler as he’s always desired,” Metz said.
The Steelers’ two starting defensive ends at the beginning of last season, Keisel and Ziggy Hood, are free agents.
Still, the Steelers’ approach to free agency appears to be as patient as ever. They want to bring back wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery, who caught 10 touchdown passes last season, but they have yet to discuss a contract with his agent, Jack Scharf.
The Steelers’ new $20 million, three-year contract with safety Troy Polamalu includes a signing bonus ($6.75 million) and a 2014 base salary ($1.5 million) that equals the $8.25 million he was due to make in the final season of his former contract. There is no money guaranteed beyond this season.
Alan Robinson is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at arobinson@tribweb.com or via Twitter @arobinson_Trib.The country is so dangerous it's no wonder so many leave, travelling alone across the Middle East in search of a new life
Behind the security bars of a spartan, white-tiled room, 25 youths are arranging bedrolls on the floor. The workers on the Salvation Army nightshift, who watch over these lone foreign teenagers in a shelter in a gritty corner of Paris, are distributing sheets and sleeping bags; there are a couple of boys from Mali and a contingent of Bangladeshis; the rest have travelled overland, by every conceivable method, from Afghanistan.
The youngest are 13 years old, pint-sized cousins from Kabul who arrived that morning after a journey of five months. They take off their trainers and place them at the end of their bedrolls. One of them, Morteza, gingerly peels off his socks. The undersides of his toes are completely white.
I ask what happened to his feet. "Water," he says. Where was he walking in water? Mohammed, the boy on the next bedroll who knows more English, translates. "In the mountains," he says. Which mountains, I ask, thinking about the range that forms the border between Turkey and Iran. "Croatia, Slovenia, Italy,'' Morteza says. Mohammed intervenes. "Not water,'' he clarifies. "Snow."
Suddenly I understand. Morteza's feet are not waterlogged or blistered. He has limped across Europe with frostbite.
The next day I run into them watching the older Afghans play football in a park. Morteza's 13-year-old cousin Sohrab, pale and serious beyond his years, recounts, in English learned during two years of school in Afghanistan, what happened. "Slovenia big problem,'' he says, explaining how he and Morteza, "my uncle's boy'', were travelling with eight adults when they were intercepted by the Slovenian police. Two members of their group were caught and the rest made a detour into the mountains. They spent five days in the snow, navigating by handheld GPS, emerging from the Alps in Trento, in the Italian north.
The road to peace: 13-year-old Morteza spent five months travelling from Kabul to Paris. His journey took him through Iran, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP
Morteza acquired frostbite on the penultimate part of a 6,000km journey that detoured through the Balkans: through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia. Their aim is to join their uncle who lives in Europe, the solution their relatives found after Morteza's father was killed in an explosion. His mother died earlier "in the war''; Sohrab lost his own father when he was 11.
Morteza and Sohrab are among the world's most vulnerable migrants. Like scores of Afghan teenagers in transit across Europe, they are in flight from violence or the aftershocks of violence that affect children in particularly harsh ways. Those who turn up in Paris have spent up to a year on the road, on the same clandestine routes as adults, but at far greater risk.
No one knows how many unaccompanied Afghan children have made it to Europe. Paris took in just over 300 in 2011 – the biggest nationality among the 1,700 lone foreign minors in its care. Sarah Di Giglio, a child-protection expert with Save the Children in Italy, says that last year the number of Afghan boys – there are almost never girls – passing through a day centre in Rome had doubled from the year before, to 635.
Asylum statistics are another measure, though they give only a rough indication since many children never make a claim. Still, at 4,883, Afghans were the biggest group of separated foreign children requesting asylum in 2010, the majority in Europe.
While some are sent out of Afghanistan for their own safety, others make their own decision to leave. Some are running from brutality, or the politics of their fathers, or recruitment by the Taliban. Others have been pushed onwards by the increasing precariousness of life in Pakistan and Iran, countries that host three million Afghan refugees.
Blanche Tax, who is responsible for country guidance at the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, says security is deteriorating in Afghanistan, which Unicef described two years ago as the world's most dangerous place to be a child. From January to September, she said, 1,600 children were reported killed or injured, 55% more than the previous year.
A report to the general assembly of the UN security council on 13 December 2011, meanwhile, said "the killing and maiming of children remains of grave concern". "The most frequent violations continued to be recruitment and use of children, including for suicide bombing missions or for planting explosives,'' the report continued. It highlighted a recent rise in "cross-border recruitment by Taliban – as well as attacks on schools''. And it added 31,385 cases of "severe acute malnutrition" among minors to a litany of child-specific damage that already includes landmines, sexual violence and forced labour.
It is from this maelstrom, and its spread to Afghanistan's south, north and east, that Morteza, Sohrab and others have fled. I first came across adolescents like them three years ago, when I saw them squeezing between the railings of a Paris park to sleep on cardboard among the shrubberies or in the bandstand, along with adult refugees. When the police raided the park and started to patrol it with dogs, they bedded down under the swings of a playground, or on the edges of a canal.
Subsequent raids have moved them on again, but they still play football there or under a railway bridge, in teams that sometimes take on the local boys. They find the undersized Salvation Army shelter by word of mouth, or through a reception office for unaccompanied foreign minors run by a French NGO called France Terre d'Asile (FTDA). It's the only emergency place of refuge for the children, and is oversubscribed: lately 20 or so have been turned away each evening, to sleep in a corner of a park or metro station, or walk the streets all night in order to keep warm.
Omar, 16, was separated from his father while fleeing Afghanistan Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP
In the entrance to the FTDA office for minors I stumble upon Omar, a slender 16-year-old with a ski hat pulled low over his eyes. He is leaning on the counter by himself, too tense to wait on the seats with the other boys. He is doodling with a yellow marker pen on a sheet of paper on which someone before him has pencilled the word "Tunisia".
"All my family are very worried about my father,'' Omar says. "We don't know where he is.'' This is almost the first thing he tells me. He expresses this same anxiety four times in our conversation, and I realise that what initially I took for tension was distress.
From a village in Afghanistan's Logar province, just south of Kabul, Omar says he is the eldest of five. Enmities from the Soviet era up-ended his life. "I did school in Afghanistan for three years and I wasn't able to go more,'' he said. "My grandfather said don't go to school, we have enemies who will kill you; stay in the house and don't go out in the village a lot." His father and grandfather had "done jihad with the Russians", he said; those they had sided against came back and "gave a warning". His grandfather sold their almond orchard and paid $11,000 to a smuggler to get him and his father out.
Travelling with Omar's uncle, the three made it as far as Turkey before being stopped by the police. Everyone scattered. Separated in the confusion, Omar was deported to Afghanistan. He said his uncle had contacted his grandfather to let them know he was all right; from his father they have had no word.
Omar set off again, spending the next five months on the road. He moved in and out of the hands of smugglers, was held with dozens of others in "passenger houses'', then abandoned in a deserted place on the Turkish side of the border with Greece. There, he and his companions waited, night after night without shelter, for a guide. Finally they gave up and struggled back to Istanbul.
On his second attempt Omar swam a wide canal and walked for five hours in wet clothes, heading on his smuggler's instructions towards the lights of a Greek town. There he was picked up by the police and held for three days in a room with 15 men. The next four nights he spent in a train station in the northern Greek town of Alexandroupolis, until a railway employee paid his fare to Athens. He waited 25 days in another passenger room before being crammed, with 32 others, into the back of a truck. Told to bring two packets of biscuits and no water, they spent 30 hours inside. "There was no air and it smelt very bad," he said. The driver abandoned them in Italy.
He caught trains to Milan, and then Cannes, with three other boys. "We slept on the earth next to the sea and we were so cold," he says. Arriving in Paris, he spent six nights on the street before asking at this office for help. "I want to live here,'' he says. "People don't hurt me in France." And yet, they already had. A few days earlier three men had mugged him in a Paris park. They stole his bag that contained his last €30 and the slip of paper that bore his grandfather's phone number, severing his last link to his family.
In the state of anxiety he was in, it was hard for him to think about the future. "I want to have peace,'' he said. And if he were able to stay in France? "I'd like to go to school,'' he said, "if they give us the opportunity to go." For many of the kids going to school seems like an enormous privilege, but first they have to be accepted as minors. That means going before a judge, who can order bone x-ray exams – which have a two-year margin of error – if he disbelieves their age; they may have to wait months to get formal protection.
Waiting in hope: boys from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa line up in the hope of being offered a bed for the night Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP
By the time they turn 18, these teenagers will have to prove they speak French and have embarked on a profession in order to have a chance of regularising their status. For Afghan boys with almost no prior schooling, the pressure is enormous. "They have no time to have their adolescent crises,'' says Pauline Ferrais, head of the education service at the Maison du Jeune Réfugié (MJR), a day centre. As Pierre Henry, managing director of FTDA, puts it: "Some have spent one or two years on the roads of Asia and Europe in extreme conditions playing with the laws of survival, and we ask them to respect very strict rules in an education system that makes no allowances for them." Yet teachers remark that those who do go to school have a dynamic effect on the class. It's something that's been noted by Romain Levy, the deputy mayor for Paris with special responsibility for minors. "Because of their motivation they act as an engine and pull the other kids up," he says.
But Paris's budget for providing for minors is stretched. And elsewhere in Europe the likelihood that these boys will get a second chance at a childhood is waning. Sweden, alarmed by the 1,693 Afghan teenagers who requested asylum there in 2011, has teamed up with Britain, Norway and the Netherlands to create the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors, or Erpum, an EU-funded project that aims to send them back.
Its Stockholm-based co-ordinator denied reports that Erpum wanted to establish care centres in Kabul. She said the programme would be voluntary, and only involve minors who had exhausted asylum appeals and wanted to rejoin their families. "We are not discussing care centres,'' she said. "We will only send them back if their family can be traced.'' That, she says, meant "a welcoming family'' who would come to the airport to meet them.
Erpum hopes to start repatriations of 16- and 17-year-olds this year, provided the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation agrees; Erpum has a target of deporting 100 Afghan minors by the end of 2014. The prospect has alarmed child-protection bodies, who fear such initiatives will push those in Europe underground. They want reassurances over how the minor's best interest would be established, stress the danger to the tracers of inaccurate information, and warn that families who have spent thousands of dollars to send a son to safety will have incurred debts in which collateral can include the betrothal of a younger sister to an older man. "Family tracing is not as innocent as it sounds," says one children's rights researcher. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles also opposes returning minors to Afghanistan.
Governments concerned about deterring minors from embarking on hazardous journeys risk missing the point about why children flee in the first place, says Judith Dennis, policy adviser at the UK Refugee Council. "We share concerns that children's journeys to safety are often dangerous,'' she comments, "but it is inappropriate to suggest that the international response should be to discourage them from escaping the threats in their country.''
Young refugees at the Maison du Jeune Réfugié, trying to reorientate themselves after the long journey to Paris. Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP
Every Afghan minor who has survived the endurance test that reaching Europe entails has a story of equal parts courage and grief. Some of them are too frightened, or too traumatised, or simply too young to be able to explain the forces that have borne them here.
I meet Jalil, a round-faced 16-year-old from Kunduz, in Afghanistan's north, between classes at the MJR, where he is taught French. "This is my first school,'' he says with pride. His only education hitherto had been from a neighbour in Afghanistan who came to his house at night to teach him English, "one word at a time", from a book.
Jalil took his future into his own hands after being orphaned. He had lost his mother to "a heart sickness" when he was nine or 10 and was living with his father, who was killed "three years and four months ago". "Someone said he helped the Taliban," Jalil tells me. He didn't witness the attack. "But my brother saw that and now he is mad,'' Jalil says. "He can't talk. It is like he is finished. He is 22 years old.''
Young refugees at the Maison du Jeune Réfugié. Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP
He and his younger siblings moved to his uncle's house, where he was often beaten. "He was cruel, cruel, cruel," Jalil says of his uncle. His brother-in-law helped him get away, paying $4,000 to a smuggler to get him to Turkey. Barely 15, he went first to Pakistan, then Iran, and on to Turkey and Greece. He had no money so he stayed there "a long time", living by washing windows, then crossed into Italy from the Greek port of Patras by clinging to the chassis of a truck. After a nine-month journey he reached Paris in August, and slept for a month in the street. Now he is learning the language and goes every day after class to "the library with headphones" at the Pompidou Centre. "I go there and listen to French," he says. "The plan is I study more to be a doctor, but if I cannot do a big job I will do a little job. If I can't be a doctor I will be an electrician.''
Pierre Henry of FTDA believes that Europe should be investing in these teenagers. "You don't win war, democracy, hearts with occupying armies,'' he says, pointing out that educating these minors would help create the diaspora that will one day rebuild their country. "It puts paid to all our values if we can't take care of those among the world's disinherited children who come to us."
A week later I pass by the meeting point where the new arrivals gather to be chosen for the 25 places in the Salvation Army shelter. Forty-five boys are waiting in a ragtaggle line against a supermarket wall, and every one of them is new. Sohrab and Morteza, the boy with frostbitten feet, have left; they are back on the road. There is no sign of Omar. Jalil, who lined up here four months ago, now has a place in a hotel, though sometimes he stops by a nearby soup kitchen, where many Afghans gather, to speak his language again. The others have disappeared on their search across Europe for some place that will allow them to stay. They leave only their stories behind.
Hinterland, a novel by Caroline Brothers about Afghan boys in Europe, is published on 2 February by Bloomsbury, £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846
• This article was amended on 4 February 2015 to remove a name.CHICAGO — In a pointed rebuke to the Environmental Protection Agency, an internal watchdog concluded on Thursday that the agency should have acted more swiftly to warn residents of Flint, Mich., that their water was contaminated with lead.
The report, issued by Arthur A. Elkins Jr., the inspector general for the E.P.A., blamed the federal government for inaction in Flint, echoing the sentiments of many Republicans who have said for more than a year that the agency failed in its oversight role.
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has said that while he accepts his share of blame for the contamination of Flint’s water, he also believes officials on the local and federal levels were partly responsible.
In an 11-page report, Mr. Elkins said that E.P.A. officials had enough information and authority to issue an emergency order under the Safe Drinking Water Act as early as June 2015. At that time, officials knew that “systems designed to protect Flint drinking water from lead contamination were not in place, residents had reported multiple abnormalities in the water, and test results from some homes showed lead levels above the federal action level.”CNN's Phil Gast filed this report:
Britain recognized Druidry, an ancient belief that worships deities that take different forms in nature, as a religion for the first time and gave it charitable status on Saturday.
"There is a sufficient belief in a supreme being or entity to constitute a religion for the purposes of charity law," declared the Charity Commission for England and Wales in response to the Druid Network's application.
The decision will give the neo-pagan religion, known for its cloaked worshippers at Stonehenge (above, in 1999) and other sites, tax advantages and is expected to lead to broader acceptance.
"This has been a long hard struggle taking over five years to complete," said the Druid Network, which is based in England, in a statement on its website.
In some ways, Druidry in Britain is catching up to Druids and other neo-pagans in the United States, which already provides tax-exempt status for religious groups, said Marty Laubach, Associate Professor of Sociology at Marshall University.
The British commission noted that Druidry "is animistic and based on a belief that everything has a spiritual dimension." It also said that the religion recognizes deities within nature and conducts worship ceremonies.
The Druid Network, which has about 350 members, sought charitable status for "the advancement of religion for public benefit and no other purpose," the commission said in its ruling.
Druidry has no asserted dogma, the network said in its application. It added that members associate their gods with the moon, fertility, rain, love and other forces.
Druids were members of the learned class among ancient Celts, acting as priests, judges and teachers. They performed human and animal sacrifices and worshiped in forests in western Europe, Britain and Ireland.
Neo-pagan groups are growing in the United States, the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found.
Such groups include Druids and Wiccans, along with voodoo and other belief systems, Laubach said.
"It's a quintessentially American religion in that it is a highly individualistic religion," Laubach said of neo-paganism.
Marshall, in Huntington, West Virginia, allows students to miss classes to observe pagan and other religious holidays.
Neo-pagans seek to communicate with spirits, but witchcraft is not Satanic because its believers don't recognize the Satan of Christianity, Judaism or Islam, Laubach said.
Many people look at Satanic worshippers and neo-pagans "as a bunch of people dancing in the forest" without realizing the distinction, said Douglas E. Cowan, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
"We often tend to be demonized," said Laubach, a member of the neo-pagan movement, indicating Britain's decision is a "form of legitimacy."
Neo |
) and geographical information system (GSI) applications.INS-1A and INS-1B are versatile and modular nanosatellite bus system envisioned for future science and experimental payload.Among the foreign satellites, 88 cube satellites belonged to San Francisco-based earth imaging startup Planet. With the launch, the company has increased its fleet to 143 satellites which will soon begin capturing images of the earth’s entire landmass, including India, every day.Eight other satellites belonging to Spire Global, US, will provide services for vessel tracking and weather measurement.The nano satellites from Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UAE are mostly technology demonstrators.In 2009, when Naples native Fabio Quagliarella signed a five-year deal to play forward for his hometown club, it seemed life couldn't get any better for him, nor for arguably Italy's most passionate football fans. But after only one season, Quagliarella was sent packing from Naples to play for archrival Juventus. The Societa Sportiva Calcio Napoli faithful—once full of unremitting love for their native son—proved they could express their unmitigated hatred with equal passion.
What the fans did not know—what virtually no one, in fact, knew—until earlier this year was the torment Quagliarella was being subjected to during his time with the club.
Quagliarella, now with Unione Calcio Sampdoria and a three-time Serie A Italian champion, sat down with Bleacher Report and spoke in stark detail about how a stalker was able to penetrate his inner circle and victimize him and his family for years. B/R also tracked down Quagliarella's stalker, who spoke for the first time about the verdict and the aftermath of the trial—and who had a revealing reaction to the mention of Fabio Quagliarella's name.
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Fabio Quagliarella walks into a side lounge area of the team hotel in Swansea, Wales, the day before Sampdoria's friendly against Swansea City. The large room has been cordoned off for our interview, though coaches and other team personnel wander in and out. Quagliarella eyes some snacks set on a table against the wall but decides against taking any. He spots the reporter in the room and gingerly approaches, introduced in Italian by the two members of the team's public relations staff who will sit in on our interview.
Photo by Kelly Naqi
Quagliarella is reserved and respectful. A football god to the entire region of Naples, he wanted to explain the hell he endured for years as an unsuspecting victim of a Napoli fan. The PR staff guaranteed us a half-hour for the interview; Quagliarella willingly sat with Bleacher Report for over 70 minutes before the reps wrapped us up. It's not that Quagliarella enjoys speaking about the topic; he's an introvert, and the team expressed shock that he even agreed to revisit it. But Quagliarella says he wants to take the recognition he gets simply for being a pro footballer and use that to increase awareness for a crime that he believes gets far too little attention: stalking.
Quagliarella was born in 1983 in Castellammare di Stabia, a coastal town in the Bay of Naples. Like most boys from the area, he dreamed of playing for Napoli when he grew up.
"This is how I always imagined it," Quagliarella says, a smile crossing his face.
"I would enter the pitch as a substitute. I could feel the anticipation of the spectators as I entered the pitch. There wasn't much time left; it was an important match.
"Then I would score a goal—a decisive one," he continues, the pace of his words quickening. "It would be one of those goals that—at the time—only [Diego] Maradona could score. A weird goal, something that would make people go crazy. Surely [it] would be a long-range shot—a powerful kick in the last second of an important match."
His childhood fantasies morphed into real-life talent. By the time Quagliarella was 26, he was a striker for Udinese and had already played for four seasons in Italy’s Serie A.
YURI KADOBNOV/Getty Images
Even at the height of his fame, you'd be hard-pressed to know of his wealth and prominence on the pitch when you saw him back home. Quagliarella still lived at his parents' house and slept in his childhood bedroom. His holidays were always no-frills, low-key affairs, shared with family and childhood friends.
Giulio De Riso is one of those friends. A tan, lean man, De Riso owns a Vodafone shop on the high street in Castellammare di Stabia, 18 miles from Naples. The store is a gathering spot for locals, where they can buy SIM cards or catch up on the latest happenings regarding De Riso's best friend—the local kid-made-great—Quagliarella.
In 2006, as was his custom, Quagliarella came home during Christmas break, and he and De Riso met up. Quagliarella casually mentioned that someone had recently hacked into the messenger account on his personal computer.
De Riso told him he recently met a guy who could help Quagliarella out. A few months earlier, De Riso says, he received a couple of letters at his office from someone accusing him of working with the Camorra (mafia). A friend who owned the shop across the road introduced De Riso to his brother-in-law, Raffaele Piccolo, who happened to work with the postal police in Naples. Piccolo's department specialized in postal fraud and cybercrime. He escorted De Riso to the Napoli police headquarters and filed a report with him. De Riso was grateful, and the two became friendly, swapping phone numbers and promising to stay in touch.
Piccolo came through again for him more recently, De Riso says, when he began receiving anonymous text messages on his cellphone, accusing him of the same thing. This time, Piccolo met up with De Riso at his shop to write the complaint, and assured him the report would be filed alongside the other one once Piccolo got back to the station, De Riso recalls. Piccolo personally scrubbed and reset De Riso's phone, the way only a cybercrime expert could. The officer now regularly stopped by the shop to chat—sometimes grabbing a bite to eat—to keep tabs on the situation.
"So when Fabio told me about the problem, I said, 'I've got the person that can solve your problem!" De Riso says. "And at that moment, I introduced Raffaele to Fabio, here in the shop."
Piccolo was happy to help out the local sports hero. As he did with De Riso the first time, Piccolo fixed Quagliarella's PC and took him to Naples to file his official complaint. "After he helped me sort out my PC problem, we became friends," Quagliarella says. The two exchanged numbers, and Quagliarella gave Piccolo some autographed memorabilia to show his gratitude.
Two-and-a-half years later, in July 2009, Quagliarella signed a five-year, €18 million deal with his home club, SSC Napoli. The entire town—even the notorious cammorristi (Neapolitan mafia)—was united in its feelings.
Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images
"We were so happy," a member of a local cammorristi, who requests we not mention his family name, tells B/R. He was taking a break from work and was with a handful of family and friends, who nodded in agreement. "We felt a lot of emotion because he's a son of this city, a son of this earth."
"It was the best," De Riso concurs. "Everybody dreamed about this for two years before he came here. [Fabio] seemed like a kid: 'I'm coming back!' He was so very, very happy."
"I knew of the importance of this for my city," Quagliarella acknowledges. "Napoli fans saw themselves in me. I knew I was not alone when entering the pitch, but I was there with a whole city. It was the dream of many fans, which I was realizing."
Many fans, Quagliarella soon realized…except one.
Quagliarella was seven years old when football legend Diego Maradona vaulted Napoli to its last league title in 1990. Maradona was the only player for whom Napoli fans had written a personal song in tribute…until Quagliarella's arrival.
To translate part of that:
BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM
shoot that ball in that goal
BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM
what a champion's hit
with him they know there's no escape he shot from the midfield and with no problem he scores a goal
he is not able to score a normal goal but we like him this wayyyyy
BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM Quagliarella BUM BUM
he makes the whole city dream.
The media added to the accolades, referring to Quagliarella as "Masaniello," Napoli's leader during the popular revolution in the 17th century.
Quagliarella shared each success with the fans: Every time he scored a goal, he would press his Napoli jersey to his lips and kiss it.
"It's the team of my city," he says. "I made the dream come true, and every goal that I scored was making that dream all the more true. It was like if a fan had descended from the Curva (the corner of Stadio San Paolo, where Napoli's most rabid fans sit) to score a goal for his own team. It was the best feeling."
But off the pitch, Quagliarella began to feel uneasy. In the two years prior to arriving in Napoli, while he played for Sampdoria and Udinese, Quagliarella had occasionally received anonymous text messages on his cellphone accusing him of being a drug addict, or of being affiliated with members of the cammorristi. He ignored them, along with the occasional letter that made its way into his stack of fan mail at the club, making similar accusations. A crazy fan, he thought. But when he signed with Napoli, the frequency of those texts intensified, along with strange new ones. His best friend De Riso was targeted as well.
"We started receiving encrypted messages, just a sequence of letters and numbers: ABC 37 12. ABCD 37 27 12. They looked like codes," De Riso recalls. "[Piccolo] told us they were probably viruses that will infect the phone, and could steal all your data. So he said: 'Give me the phones. I'm going to clean them.'"
The three met at De Riso's shop once again. Piccolo wrote up a new report from the privacy of the back office, De Riso remembers, and promised to personally file it back at headquarters. No need for Quagliarella’s presence to draw unwarranted attention, was the logic used at the time, according to De Riso.
To express his appreciation, Quagliarella provided Piccolo with game tickets and sometimes signed football jerseys—whenever Piccolo would make a request.
De Riso's phone shop Photo by Kelly Naqi
"I would sign things for fans anyway, so for me it was not a problem doing it for Raffaele, since he was helping me," Quagliarella says.
Quagliarella changed his cellphone number, and the anonymous text messages stopped. But the stalker found a new, more potent way to target the hometown hero.
Everyone in the community knew where Quagliarella grew up and currently lived. Letters—once, sometimes twice a week—started arriving by post in the family's mailbox, which Quagliarella's mother would retrieve, open and read.
"The letters would contain pictures of underage girls naked, with the allegation that I was a paedophile for sleeping with these girls," Quagliarella recalls. "These were pictures clearly downloaded from online websites.
"That was the worst for me. If I have to be honest, maybe it was worse for my mother. My parents had to deal with this much more than I did."
Soon, Quagliarella's parents decided to absorb the blows from the stalker silently, to protect their son. "Many things they kept hidden from me," he reveals, "so that I would not worry too much, because I had to play football. When I asked them, they would tell me that they did not receive anything. The truth is that they were constantly getting these letters. In total, we have a box with hundreds of letters at home."
Piccolo gave Quagliarella, his parents and De Riso some solemn advice: Don't speak with anyone about what was happening. Piccolo would take on the case himself, but any leaks could hinder his investigation. He would continue to write up the criminal complaints in De Riso's back office, then file them at police headquarters later on. But Piccolo needed more evidence, he said. He had special instructions for Quagliarella's mother, Susanna.
"When we received the letters at my parents’ home, Raffaele would tell us not to touch them with our hands," Quagliarella says. "My mother would go downstairs, put plastic gloves on and pick up the letters with tweezers. Without touching them with our hands, we would bring the letters to Raffaele, who would then put them into a sealed plastic bag. It was like an episode of CSI. … My father would come home and ask my mother: 'Have you touched them?' and my mother would say 'No!' There was conflict in our home; it was like a war."
The accusations grew in scope and sickness. Fabio was fixing games. Fabio was participating in orgies. One time, Quagliarella says, a letter was addressed to his father, Vittorio, containing a photocopy of a coffin with Quagliarella's picture on it. The accompanying text: Vittorio's son will be killed.
The stalker also started texting Vittorio on his personal cellphone, Quagliarella says, cementing his belief that his personal phone contacts had been hacked earlier.
"We would receive a letter or a phone message," Quagliarella recalls. "When we left home, my family and I, we would be anxious. As soon as we would leave home, [if the stalker spotted us in town] they would go to a public phone and send anonymous text messages to my father, telling him that they knew that I was out and that my life was in danger.
"It would usually be a death threat: 'I know your son is out in Naples tonight. We will shoot him in the legs. We will beat him to death.'"
Even if his parents remained at home, when Quagliarella was out with his friends, Vittorio would still get text threats.
De Riso at his phone shop Photo by Kelly Naqi
"My father would then call my friends to make sure that I was safe," Quagliarella remembers.
Piccolo, meanwhile, was staying on top of the situation. He'd swing by De Riso's shop occasionally for updates and to write up reports. De Riso says while he continued to receive anonymous letters and texts, he didn't feel he could change his number because too many of his business customers had it, and had used it, for years.
Quagliarella was confident in Piccolo's assessment, based on his years of experience, that the stalker was likely a member of the friends' inner circle.
"Sometimes in the letters we received, it mentioned personal facts, something that really happened, so we started to suspect everybody around us—friends in our immediate circle, people who came into the shop," Quagliarella says. "Things were getting harder for sure. I would finish training and be suspicious of everybody around me."
It became more imperative, Piccolo convinced them, that they keep their investigation a secret. No one could be ruled out—not even teammates. Piccolo told the group they must act the same around everybody—"act normal"—so the stalker wouldn't alter his/her habits before Piccolo could nail them with definitive, criminal proof.
Being innocent didn't prove to be quite the elixir Quagliarella had hoped.
"It was painful," Quagliarella says, "because [some letters said] that there were people on the internet who believed the allegations about me. I would be worrying about what people would be saying about me. On the other hand, I knew I was innocent, because I have never done any of the things I was accused of. I was serene because of that and thought, Bring me proof of what you are saying. I want to see them. [But] the letters wanted to make me believe that people knew things about me—for example, that I was abusing drugs. The letters would include printouts from fake webpages…where people would be talking about Fabio.
"Sometimes [I used to] get letters with a page of eMule screen shots, showing images of files titled, 'Video of Fabio Quagliarella with Little Girls,'" Quagliarella continues. "The files supposedly linked to a video [of me engaged in this activity]. So at that point, you started to worry that on eMule, there really could just be a file title like this, even if you were innocent."
"I tried to go online to search for these websites," he says, "but I never found anything."
According to Quagliarella, even Piccolo had trouble keeping up with it all. "He told me he had already took care of deleting [the websites], but that it was too late because the rumors were already spreading online."
Quagliarella was deeply grateful to Piccolo for his continued devotion and discretion. With all the crimes Napoli law enforcement has to deal with, Quagliarella felt lucky to have a direct link to the postal police department. When Piccolo requested match tickets, autographed jerseys or special access to the pitch for training sessions, Quagliarella happily obliged.
Inevitably, though, Quagliarella's performance on the pitch began to suffer.
"My head was somewhere else," he admits. "I wasn't as focused on what I was doing as I should have been. I would always be worrying about being in danger. I was scared. I would rarely go out, and when I did I would be looking over my shoulders to see if somebody was following me. I was training, but I was not doing it with the right serenity. It was not just a matter of a day or two, this went on for months....
"It consumes you. It wears you down."
Quagliarella was taking his off-field problems onto the pitch. Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images
And there was something else: There's something shame-inducing about being repeatedly accused of a crime like paedophilia, even if it isn’t true. Did someone really think that about him? If so, who? And now—because the accusations had been posted online—did a bunch of people believe it? Who were they? And who are they telling?
"I cried a lot," Quagliarella admits. "I am not embarrassed. I cried because I was suffering and because I could not understand who was doing it to me. I was scared for my family, my two brothers and my sisters and my eight young nephews. I would be worried that they would be in danger, maybe while going to school. I would be thinking, Because of me, they have to go through this. I felt guilty, even if I hadn't done anything wrong."
Since the day he signed with Napoli, Quagliarella says he spoke daily to team president Aurelio De Laurentiis, and they became close. But as much as he wanted to, Quagliarella could not break his promise to Piccolo and tell De Laurentiis about his stalking problem.
Quagliarella says he found it odd, then, when one day De Laurentiis called and asked him to move and live closer to the stadium, because "it would stay more quiet for you," Quagliarella recalls, and "you could remain focused on football."
Why that strange suggestion?, Quagliarella thought. Napoli goalkeeper Gennaro Iezzo and defender Luigi Vitale lived nearby, and they weren't asked to move closer to the stadium. Could it be that De Laurentiis had heard the paedophilia rumors? Or the cammorristi ones? The game-fixing allegations? Quagliarella couldn't bring any of it up; it could compromise the investigation. But that didn't keep him from obsessing over the possibility.
Piccolo assured Quagliarella that he was getting closer to solving the mystery. Just. Hang. On.
Quagliarella's mind was at war with itself. On one side, there remained the fantasy of Quagliarella, the hometown hero, hoisting the Italian Cup as Napoli's captain, fireworks exploding around him and his teammates in the background, the fans roaring their love and appreciation. On the other, his reality: Someone close to him—someone he loves?—is actively tormenting him and his family in the most insidious fashion. For what possible reason? What did he do to them? When will this end?
"From an outsider's point of view, I am still a professional football player," he says. "I have to try to give it my best because people expect great things from me. I had to try, as best as I could, to not let them down. I didn't want people to worry about me, thinking, What is wrong with Fabio? For a period, I had to fight against everything and everybody. I had to do my job. The club was paying my wages; there was no other way. I could have given up, but it was not an option for me."
But would his club give up on him? Quagliarella's production had fallen off some, to be sure. And lo and behold, his best friend shares a bizarre new twist: the threats De Riso received in his mail at the shop took on a new slant. The envelopes were addressed to De Riso, but the letters inside were addressed to De Laurentiis. Was this a mistake? Or did the stalker want De Riso to think that letter was sent to the club, and De Riso was receiving a "courtesy copy" of that correspondence? De Riso had no way of knowing. He gave Bleacher Report a copy of one such letter. In it, the stalker claimed De Riso was "organizing meetings between Quagliarella and the Camorra's family members," and the Camorra was "keeping [Quagliarella] as their symbol…because they protect him."
Napoli team president Aurelio De Laurentiis Marco Luzzani/Getty Images
Bleacher Report contacted a Napoli team spokesperson, asking whether De Laurentiis or anyone at the club had received any correspondence of this nature regarding Quagliarella, or otherwise learned of the rumors about him, during this time period. A Napoli team spokesperson responded via email: "We won't give any information regarding your request, or any interviews."
Quagliarella says after he moved closer to the stadium, he never heard from De Laurentiis again.
"This is a strange place," De Riso muses. "If someone tells you a person is a bad person, but he is a good guy—even if different people tell you bad things—maybe you start thinking, He's a bad person."
In August of 2010, Quagliarella was loaned to Juventus, Napoli's hated archrival, and in June of the following year, Juventus opted to sign him for €10.5 million.
Six years later, reliving the circumstances of his unexpected and unwanted move from Napoli causes Quagliarella noticeable discomfort. He shifts in his chair, and his speech slows.
"For Napoli's fans, I went from an idol to a traitor; people did not love me anymore," he says flatly.
Quagliarella was called a traitor for joining Juventus. Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images
With his stalker still unidentified, Quagliarella couldn't let the fans know about the horrors he and his family were enduring, or their effects on him; fans, meanwhile, believed he chose to go to Juventus to make more money. As he was playing for the "enemy" almost 550 miles away, fans redirected their anger toward a closer target: his family in Castellammare.
"You're a whore!" Quagliarella's mother, Susanna, would hear.
His parents read the comments members of their own community posted on social media about their son: "WHEN YOU COME BACK IN NAPOLI WE WILL F--K YOU UP IN THE ASS, BASTARD!" read one Facebook post. … "Judah of our times" … " "PIECE OF S--T QUAGLIARELLA!!! WORM!!!!!!!" … "you are a s--tty mercenary, i hope you will have a good championship with juve with a serious accident to [your] tibia, fibula and a broken ass."
Quagliarella's stalker didn't disappear from their lives, either; they continued to send vile missives to the family’s home. The threatening letters followed Quagliarella to his new club in Turin as well, lumped in with the rest of his mail.
"In the letters [to me], they would claim that people were talking about me, burning my football shirts," Quagliarella remembers. "Mentally, I was in a bad place. I was scared. This is the reason I didn't use social media, because I was scared of everything. Many times I would be training, doing exercises, but my head would be thinking about my family in Napoli, what could happen to them. I had left, but people did not know why. It was a massacre in Napoli after I left."
Over a year had passed since Piccolo started working on the case. He appeared to be diligent, regularly keeping in contact with Quagliarella's father and De Riso. Not all of Quagliarella's friends had been eliminated from suspicion, so Piccolo convinced Quagliarella and De Riso to dupe their companions into providing their fingerprints on objects when they were all together, so they could pass those objects along to Piccolo for testing and see if those particular friends could be eliminated from suspicion.
"A couple of times, he made us take a music CD with us so that our friends could leave their fingerprints on the bottom part of the CD," Quagliarella recalls. "He claimed that it was the only way for him to find out who the culprit was. I would then put a CD on the table, and ask my friend to pick it up for me, so that they would leave their fingerprints on it. I would then pick it up—careful not to touch it too much—and bring it to Raffaele, who would then compare the fingerprints from the letters with those from the CDs."
Quagliarella's discomfort grew, but Piccolo "kept telling me the end was near, and the culprit would be caught soon," Quagliarella says. "The hope of finding out who was behind it was stronger than the desire to give up."
Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images
Piccolo's requests for tickets and signed memorabilia became "heavier," Quagliarella noted. "But I rationalized that since he was lending me a hand with my problem, I had to put up with it. We were friends, but we didn't hang out together. He would send me emails, but mostly he was in touch my father."
Vittorio Quagliarella, Fabio's father, met with Piccolo one afternoon to get an update on the status of the investigation. Piccolo shared some unsettling news: Quagliarella's stalker had somehow found out that Piccolo was involved in trying to unmask his/her identity. Piccolo said he'd begun receiving strange, anonymous text messages on his own cellphone. There had been a leak, or perhaps Piccolo was just that close to nailing the culprit?
Piccolo promised to stay in touch. As they began to say their goodbyes, Vittorio made a quick request:
"May I see the texts they sent you?"
Piccolo hesitated and then told Quagliarella's father, "I deleted them."
Piccolo had to head back to work. As Vittorio walked away, his mind reeled: Why would Piccolo delete texts he received himself—evidence!—during an active investigation? Confusion turned into fury, and he immediately pulled out his cellphone.
"My dad called and said, 'I think it's that s--t [Piccolo],'" Quagliarella recounted to Mediaset (via The Daily Mail). The son counseled the father to simmer down. "I said that we were all stressed by this hellish situation and mustn't doubt him, of all people."
Giovanni Barile is an attorney in Castellammare di Stabia, and a former member of "Ultras"—the ultra-fanatical support group of Napoli. These fans populate the sacred Curva B of Stadio San Paolo, where Napoli plays its home games.
"A Neapolitan loves to the death, or hates to the death," Barile says with a measure of pride from his law office. "[But] with Fabio, he had both happen to him. Neapolitan fans don't forgive."
Napoli's fans are famous for their passion. CARLO HERMANN/Getty Images
Barile had met Quagliarella through his friendship with De Riso, and over the years the three had become close. In July 2010, they decided to get away from it all and head to Barile's summer house in Scario for a break. As it turns out, a lucky break during that vacation ultimately helped reveal the stalker's identity.
Scario is a village on the water in the Campania region of Italy. Quagliarella drove his new toy, a Primatist power boat, over to meet up with the group, which included his then-girlfriend and his parents; De Riso, his wife and children; and Barile and his family.
One picture-perfect day, Quagliarella, De Riso and Barile went out on the boat. For hours, Quagliarella forgot about all his troubles. The three laughed and cranked the music, dancing to a remake of an old Neapolitan song, "You Wanna Be Americano?" De Riso says he rode Quagliarella hard about his lack of dancing moves.
Back at the house, their families prepared dinner. The three friends were due back on shore by 6 p.m.
"Fabio's father is very gruff—but in a good sense—and precise with time," Barile says. "So at 6:30 p.m., we were supposed to have dinner, according to his father's decision. But we lost track of time. The music was loud, the boat was big and we started to dance and we didn't have any idea that we were running late. At 7:30 p.m., we realized we were late."
When they got back to the house, Barile says, Quagliarella's father couldn't contain his frustration. "Fabio's father was really angry," Barile recalls. "I went to take a shower. Fabio's father asked, 'Why are you so late?' Fabio answered, 'We were just hanging out on the boat, and we were dancing.'
Quagliarella and De Riso Photo by Kelly Naqi
"Fabio's father is a serious person; he really cares about the public perception of Fabio. Because Fabio told his father he danced on the boat with his friends, and—in Fabio's father opinion, the boat is a public place, and Fabio is a football player—he didn't need to be seen showing off. Because of that, Fabio's father said, 'Don't complain that you received anonymous letters! Maybe someone was standing up on a building, and they could be looking down on the boat and see you dancing, and they could make a picture of you, dancing.'"
Most people may have ignored the remark or brushed it off, thinking Vittorio was making reference to his son's fan mail. But Barile was intrigued.
He stepped out of the shower, toweled off, threw on some clothes and approached Quagliarella.
"What kind of letters are you receiving?" Barile asked.
So much for getting away from it all. Screw it, Quagliarella thought, and decided to tell Barile about the anonymous letters he had received, accusing him of being involved with the cammorristi. Before Quagliarella could continue, Barile interrupts:
"What about being accused of paedophilia?" Barile says he asked his friend. "Drugs?"
De Riso now jumps into the conversation: "Please, stop talking! I'm receiving a lot of anonymous letters, too."
The floodgates opened. Five years earlier, Barile began receiving these accusations himself, he says he told them, and they had stopped just three months ago. "We started to talk about the similarities of the letters we had all received," Barile says. Then, the mother of all bombshells:
"I have an idea of who I think it could be."
Last month, Barile hosted Bleacher Report in his law office. Three cups of espresso arrive, covered in aluminum foil, to keep warm. Retro orange spectacles command his face, hovering over a salt-and-pepper beard. Now in his 50s, Barile says he's known Piccolo since he was 14 years old, and remembers him as a loner.
"He was a very shy person. He didn't have friends," Barile recalls. "He was coy and discreet. Unlike the other kids in class, he didn't have a great social life."
Barile says he lost track of Piccolo after high school.
In 2005, Barile was working at a law firm with an attorney named Simona de Simone, who happened to be married to Piccolo. By this point, Piccolo had become a father of two and was an esteemed member of the Naples postal police force.
Barile says sometime in 2005, the firm's employees began receiving strange, anonymous letters. Some female employees were described as "little fillies that were acting in the office with airiness." Lawyers were accused of having extramarital affairs with each other. Barile says he received letters at work and at home. De Simone was targeted in a different way: In the firm's lobby, there was a missive scrawled in black spray paint: "SIMONA DE SIMONE IS A WHORE."
During this time, Piccolo and his wife suffered a "conjugal crisis," according to Barile. Piccolo was suspicious of his wife's work relationships, and for a time she moved in with her mother.
"[Simona] never suspected her husband," Barile recalls. "[She] said: 'Look, we should ask for my husband's help. This is what he does for a living—he does investigations for the postal police.'
"Because I've known him since high school, I said, 'Ask Raffaele to come here so we can talk with him.' We trusted in him. We used to say everything to him."
Quagliarella wasn't the only person targeted. Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images
One day, Barile remembers, Piccolo called and warned him. "He said: 'Look, I'm investigating. Pay attention because at the postal police office, stuff is arriving that says that you are a habitual drug user, that you're having an extramarital affair with another woman,'" Barile says.
Letters accusing Barile of being a pimp and drug abuser began to arrive at his wife's workplace as well. His spouse was a teacher at a primary school. The frequency of the letters, and the outrageous allegations made in them, began to persuade her that the accusations might be true, Barile says. Who would make this stuff up, and what motivation would they have to do so?
One day, he says, "When I arrived at home, I found my wife looking crazy. She had put a new, anonymous letter received under a dish on the table. The letter contained a picture of my son and one of his friends. There was not anything explicit about paedo-pornography, but in the letter it was written, 'Prudish and respectable lawyer that is having fun with young kids.' It was an eMule screenshot and a picture of my son."
The Bariles separated.
One day, Barile recalls, "I was in the courthouse and [Piccolo] called me on my cellphone. He said, 'Listen, Giovanni, I have to speak with you right away.' So I go to meet him and he said, 'Look, there are some letters arriving to the police station that say that you are in a paedo-pornophelia ring.'"
Barile says he was rattled, but he pushed it out of his mind and let Piccolo continue his diligence. Then, in April 2010, Barile says he finally put it together.
"I used to be in politics in Castellammare," he says. "Piccolo called me saying that the mayor received on his personal email address a letter, where it was written that I was affiliated with the Camorra linked to the D'Alessandro family, and I used to launder money for them. The mayor reported this accusation to Piccolo, in his role with the postal police office. Piccolo called me and told me about the mayor's report, and I called the mayor and asked him about the email and the mayor said, 'Look, I received an email, and I reported the email to the postal police, but you are not mentioned in the email. Who told you about this?'"
The police station where Piccolo once worked Photo by Kelly Naqi
"It was at this time I started to think [Raffaele] was lying to me," he says. But Barile needed proof. He went to the mayor's office, and he called up the email he sent Piccolo from his 'Sent Items' folder. No mention of Barile.
Barile summoned Piccolo to his law office. "I threatened him," Barile recalls angrily. "I wanted to fight him. I said to him in a very aggressive way: 'From tomorrow morning, forget about my name. Even if I receive a letter that was not written by you, I'll blame you.'"
Piccolo looked "very nervous," Barile recalls. "He said, 'No, you're wrong.' His voice began to tremble. He started to look at the ground, up at the ceiling, but he didn't look directly in my eyes."
Barile's anger brings him back in time. "I wanted to run him over with my car," he fumes.
"But from that moment, the letters stopped coming because he knew me well. He understood that he couldn't do this to me anymore."
Barile says he wanted to file a denouncement (legal case) against Piccolo, but the two lawyers he consulted about doing so warned he didn't have enough proof. Also, Piccolo had a great reputation in the area |
, or do you want it to remind you of Flickr or del.icio.us or some obscure social networking app no one’s ever even heard of?
If you want to build a product for people who don’t necessarily trust you innately, then you need to use every tool in your toolbox to create that feeling of authoritativeness and trust.
As Level Money shows us, design can also help you create a product that’s easy to use and lower the barrier for making complicated financial decisions.
Level Money — How Level Money designed for millennials by reducing choice
When you design any product, one of the biggest choices you make is the amount of information that you’re going to expose to your users. Are you building a dashboard, or are you building a single view on a dataset?
This choice is more than an aesthetic one — it’s about deciding who your product is for, what they want to do with it, and the amount of information that they need.
Level Money built a budgeting app that succeeded with millennial users by taking a minimalist stance on all of these questions, simplifying its UX to meet the real concerns of the people in their market.
With the Level Money app, you simply enter how much you make every month, how much you pay in bills, and how much you want to save each month. This is the end of setup — the next screen presents you with the main UI of the Level Money app.
Three bubbles — representing how much money you have left to spend today, this week, and this month — make up the main view of the app.
“I’m a big fan of Level — I use it to track how much I spend on ride-sharing services every month, among other things. And it fills a niche: most official bank apps are ugly, hard to use, and siloed — they don’t give you a sense of your overall financial health,” writes Casey Newton at the Verge.
Only once I tried Level, a new app for iPhone, did I realize that the question I truly cared about was this: how much money can I spend today, or this week, or this month?
“I still use Mint to make sure I’m not eating out too much or having too many drinks at the bar, but Level has taken its place on my coveted home screen, and I refer to it daily. Level isn’t for everyone, but for people with just a few bills to pay per month and a predictable cash flow, there’s no better app for providing clarity on your finances. One thing well? This app does it,” Newton adds.
These reviews tell us that those three bubbles are all that many millennials need or want — for now — while their finances are relatively simple. Especially in contrast to products with fuller feature sets, like Mint:
“Like most budgeting systems, Mint splits things up into too many categories. I don’t care about my clothing or entertainment budgets, because those are things I worry about only after monthly bills, gas, and food,” one Level Money reviewer wrote. “Ultimately, I wanted something simple that would let me know how much I have to spend after the essentials are paid for.”
Information-wise, an app like Mint does it all. It lets you track your investment portfolio next to your credit cards next to your personal loans next to your bank accounts next to your checking account. But about a third of millennials don’t even have a single dollar in savings.
The main navigational dashboard of Mint demonstrates the point — only one of the options represents information about what’s actively going on with your finances right now, while the others represent planning (budgets, goals) or potential future outcomes (investments, ways to save).
If you have a lot of different accounts to manage, then Mint makes a lot of sense.
If you’re among the half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, then you’re probably more concerned with what you’re able to spend (on yourself, on your family) right at this moment. You’re mostly concerned with the information under Transactions — what you’ve spent, how much you’re supposed to spend, and what the spread is.
The bubble-centric look of Level Money was highly minimalistic for a PFM product, but it wasn’t that way just because it looked cool. It was that way because the team at Level Money saw an opportunity to take the standard PFM design and pare it down to its bare essentials for a very specific market of users with very specific questions.
Let’s look at how the best personal financial management tools monetize their users’ progress so that they can succeed when they help others succeed.
4. Monetize your users’ financial betterment
Products with network effects get better the more users there are. For example, the telephone gains value as more people have phones. Facebook gains value as more of your friends get profiles.
The PFM space has no easy analogy for network effects because its focus is so intimate — you don’t care about other people’s money. You care about your own money, managing it better, and making it grow.
One of the top posts on Reddit’s /r/robinhood subreddit celebrates 100% lifetime returns.
Instead, PFM tools operate according to something more like what you might call “quality of life effects.”
If you start using an app and it helps you improve your life — whether by diversifying your portfolio or helping you find a low-interest loan — then you’re more likely to keep using it, tell your friends about it, and post on social media about it.
The top post on Reddit’s /r/acorns subreddit celebrates a $2,800 gain over two years.
The best PFM tools don’t just help their users succeed. They promote financial betterment and turn it into a flywheel of growth, benefiting from their users’ enthusiasm for improving their finances and even sharing that improvement with others.
Mint — How to find a $2B market opportunity giving your users’ product recommendations
Rather than put ads on Mint, founder and CEO Aaron Patzer monetized the service by recommending products to Mint users based on their financial histories.
This required more work than using banner ads, but in the long run it made for a stronger business.
While ads bring revenue at the expense of the user experience, the recommendations on Mint bring revenue and improve the user experience. The more on point Mint’s recommendations are, the more likely their users are to find value in using Mint. So incentives are aligned.
“Mint users have saved 38% more on interest compared to non-users” reinforces the value prop of this algorithm-generated Mint ad.
Mint’s Patzer knew he didn’t want to put conventional banner ads on the site. It wasn’t going to bolster users’ trust in the product to see ads everywhere. And it would be a constant challenge to keep them from hurting the customer experience.
As discussed above, Mint’s defining feature at the time was its automatic categorization algorithm. It was in this algorithm that Patzer found the business model.
“We realized, well, if you can categorize transactions accurately, that’s great, because the user knows where their money is going … But that also means we know where their money’s going,” he said in a speech at Princeton University.
“We can see that you spend $180 on phone, TV, and internet… and that you could get a bundle for $99 that would save you $1200 a year. And Comcast would pay us a sales fee for that lead. So all of a sudden … we had our business model.”
Rather than show conventional ads, Mint decided early on that it would use customer data to offer personalized product recommendations.
It was a business model that made a lot of sense. The product would be free, to encourage as many people to use it as possible. Users would get special deals (“preferred pricing”) when they bought into an offer.
Doing the math on the different kinds of lead generation opportunities Mint could have with its users’ data across different industries, you get about $30 per potential user per year:
(Source)
There were 65 million people in America using online banking at the time, and about 20 million using Quicken and Money — which cost $30 – $70. This meant Mint’s potential market size was between 20 million and 65 million. With a potential per user revenue of $30/year, Mint’s market opportunity came out to somewhere between $0.6 billion and $1.8 billion. (Plus, the more users Mint got and the better it got at analyzing their data, the better the app would get at recommending products.)
A few years later, Patzer said that while some of the numbers had been off in one direction or another, the bigger picture had held.
Mint’s example shows how you can build a business model by understanding your users and offering them product recommendations and valuable referrals. Offering a free product and putting ads in it is going to be a far more effective strategy when those ads are actually relevant and helpful to people.
As Credit Karma shows us, this holds just as much for those trying to rebuild their credit and get a loan as it does for people saving for retirement.
Credit Karma — How to build a $500M business helping the disadvantaged
When Credit Karma first entered the market, the only options you had for getting more than one free credit report a year were sites like TrueCredit and FreeCreditReport.com.
With these sites, “free” was a misnomer. At one point, the FTC sued FreeCreditReport.com (and their owner, Experian) because when consumers signed up for their service, they were also surreptitiously signed up for $15 a month in credit monitoring with it.
Credit Karma gave credit scores away for free, and in doing so acquired a user base larger than FreeCreditReport or TrueCredit ever could with their model.
A part of that user base is the vast number of Americans who have bad credit and are actively working to fix it. An entire third of Americans, according to Experian, have officially “bad” credit, or a credit score under 600.
Much of Credit Karma’s growth has been driven by people looking to not just learn their credit score, but improve it.
The American states with the worst overall credit are also, overwhelmingly, the most likely to be visiting Credit Karma:
The states with the worst credit scores in the country in 2006:
Georgia — #7 in Credit Karma searches
Mississippi — #1 in Credit Karma searches
Louisiana — #6 in Credit Karma searches
Nevada — #10 in Credit Karma searches
Texas — #13 in Credit Karma searches
Oklahoma — #12 in Credit Karma searches
South Carolina — #3 in Credit Karma searches
Alabama — #2 in Credit Karma searches
Tennessee — #8 in Credit Karma searches
New Mexico — #16 in Credit Karma searches
People with bad credit are more likely to visit Credit Karma than other sites because:
it’s free and doesn’t represent an additional financial burden
it allows them to see their credit score as it changes from week to week
Credit Karma can offer them financial products that are tailored to their situation
Its products are where Credit Karma really differentiates itself from the traditional credit monitoring sites.
Because Credit Karma has access to so much user data, connections with financial institutions, and exposure to Americans with bad credit, it can offer the kind of products that people in subprime financial situations can’t get elsewhere.
“We talk about this sometimes — what about payday lending, what about some of these other lending instruments where the typical consumer would say, well that’s bad,” founder Kenneth Lin told Fast Company, “But what if you have really poor credit? You quickly realize, there is a group of people that are served by this. It’s sort of Ivory Tower if you’re saying, ‘Don’t do this.’”
This practice of serving underserved communities has become a foundation of Credit Karma’s business model: “There are a lot of families struggling to make ends meet,” Lin says. “To the extent that we can help save $50 or $100 — a month, a week, a year — that’s valuable. And we can make a business out of it, which is great.”
Similar to Mint, the company was founded with the free model in mind — better to get users and use their data to make money than to limit your audience by charging a fee upfront.
It’s easy to assume that in PFM, it’s better to go after the high-net-worth user base every time. But everyone needs financial help — and Credit Karma was able to tap into a much larger market by making their product free and offering it to more people. (Of course, everyone wants to know their credit score; not all products can offer something so obviously desirable.)
Other PFM tools are able to not just link up their products with peoples’ already-existing desire for financial improvement, but use their products to make those desires easier to act on (and even automate).
After the buzz has worn off and the PR has faded, they’re the products that are still picking up and retaining their users — let’s look at how they do it.
5. Productize personal responsibility
The internet, as Twitter co-founder Evan Williams says, is not a utopia: it’s “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.”
Opportunities are found where you can give people what they want better or faster than others. Uber got people from point A to point B faster. Google got them information faster.
The PFM space is one where there are a lot of wants not being met by providers. Americans want:
The central stumbling block, much of the time, is human psychology:
Present bias leads us to systematically overspend on short-term goods rather than put our money towards the future
Cognitive inertia stops us from doing obvious things like signing up for investment accounts when there’s too much friction/forms involved in the process
Scarcity bias leads us to spend more when we decide that we’re going to go on a budget
When more than half of all Americans can’t afford a surprise $500 expense, it’s clear that the existing solutions for solving this crisis have failed.
That’s why PFM tools are so powerful — they can help people overcome these cognitive biases by changing how we think, automating and amplifying good habits. Most importantly, they can make it as easy as downloading an app.
Acorns — How the app does 17x the trading volume of Fidelity
Acorns is a financial planning app that makes it easier to invest your money. You can invest lump sums or set up recurring deposits, but its primary differentiator is the “Round-Ups” feature.
When enabled, Acorns will take purchases on your linked credit cards and bank accounts and “round them up” to the nearest dollar, investing the remainder into a portfolio of your choosing.
Pay for a $3.69 coffee with your credit card, and Acorns will round it up to $4.00 and put that $0.31 into an investment portfolio.
Micro-transactions like these are a time-tested way to skirt the ordinary human reticence around saving. Apps like Candy Crush tap into this: once you’ve given Candy Crush 99 cents, what’s another 99 cents, and another 99 cents, and so on?
But what Acorns taps into is the positive potential of this phenomenon. Rather than reward you for compulsive behavior, Acorns harnesses micro-payments (and the associated dopamine rush from making them) to help you save.
The classic advice that young people and those who have never invested before get about investing is that you don’t need a lot of money to start. You can get started with “pocket change.”
As soon as you start thinking about pocket change, you realize that we’ve been learning this lesson from very early on in our lives. We’re encouraged to save in small increments, to be frugal, to put every coin we can into a piggy bank.
In a society no longer tethered to cash, the piggy bank is little more than a symbol. But it embodies a desire for simple financial discipline that Acorns is able to not just harness, but amplify.
When you’re investing with Acorns, you can set each round up to multiply by 2x or 3x (so that $0.31 from before becomes $0.62 or $0.93).
So every time you do that pleasurable activity (spend money), your brain releases dopamine. At the same time, Acorns adds your money into your investments.
The two activities become associated, forming a potent feedback loop that lets you harness your natural inclinations towards beneficial long-term ends. Gradually, you begin to associate positive feelings with saving, rather than spending.
Acorns shows us how human tendencies can be bent towards responsible ends. Stash, on the other hand, shows us how a product can simply make it easier to fulfill the responsible desires we already have.
Stash — Add 25,000 users a week by constraining users’ investment options
Stash is one of the newer personal finance apps on our list, but it’s grown like a weed over the last year — of its 850,000+ user accounts, it’s picked up 500,000 of them in 2017 alone. Stash adding 25,000 users a week to its app, 86% of whom are investing in stocks for the first time
Where Acorns productizes the piggy bank investment ethos, Stash productizes the ethos of portfolio diversification.
Unlike an app like Robinhood, where you have to have a significant amount of cash in your account to buy a share of companies like Facebook or Amazon, Stash lets you invest in buckets of related stocks with as little as $5.
That lets you build a portfolio much more easily than in an app where you must buy a discrete unit of stock like Amazon.
The returns on these funds are much higher and much more reliable (for most) then trying to build a portfolio manually, especially when accounting for retail investor psychology.
Researchers looking at 700,000 stock purchases found that people made systematically poor decisions in how they chose to repurchase previously held stocks, often making intuitive (but ultimately unwise) pickups of individual stock. Investors that trade more often also tend to lose more money, on average, than those who trade less.
Stash encourages you to think long-term about the industries that you believe will make a difference and want to support without letting you to stray too far outside the lines of what’s actually fiscally responsible. It prompts users to think about advances in various fields:
Robotics, clean energy, and aerospace are pretty safe bets as industries — as individual companies, perhaps not. You can lose a lot of money as a retail investor betting on a company in one of these sectors. But invest in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that holds a variety of aerospace and defense assets, and you could be looking at better risk-adjusted returns.
With a social media-based ETF made up of stocks like Facebook and Snapchat, you might see a similar phenomenon. You’re able to make decisions about what you want to invest in without being dependent on any one company to succeed, and you’re definitely earning more than you would with 1% a year in your savings account.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” may be sensible, but it can turn investing into a chore for someone unacquainted with the markets. That’s why Stash built different baskets into their product, allowing users to easily diversify their portfolios while still investing in areas they’re passionate about.
Rather than investing in stocks, you invest in ETFs—exchange-traded funds, or securities that rise and fall with the value of their underlying asset or commodity.
If Acorns is the app that lets you invest without thinking, Stash is the app that helps you think more intelligently about where you want to invest and learn more about your different options.
By opening up the way people think about investing, and yet constraining the options presented to safe investments likely to produce good outcomes, Stash gives users the best of both worlds.
We’ve gone through how the best PFM tools monetize and productize their users’ financial success to grow.
Helping users make better financial decisions is enough to win over customers, but then getting them to recommend you to friends is critical to success. The best PFM tools supercharge their referral programs by making them all about self-improvement. They’re not doing it like PayPal, by simply giving away $10 to each new user — they’re doing it in new, creative ways. Let’s dive in.
6. Turn Sharing into Self-Improvement
Businesses built off referrals have a stronger foundation.
Referred customers convert 3x – 5x more often than your average user, they’re 16% more likely to stick around for the long-term, and they tend to have a 20% higher lifetime value.
Fintech is a space where it can be harder to make referrals happen, however. The progenitors of viral growth through referral, the Facebooks and Zyngas, succeeded largely because their products gained value as more of your friends got on them.
Your budgeting app doesn’t have any such natural incentive. It doesn’t get better at managing your money the more friends you have using the same budgeting app. And you’re not likely to “share” your bank balance or post it to Twitter, either. Your personal finances are personal.
The best PFM tools don’t fight these anti-network effects, and instead turn referrals into a means for self-improvement.
Whether your reward for bringing a friend onboard is Apple stock or a bucket of American defense ETFs, referral bonuses in the PFM space can be a powerful way to demonstrate a product’s value to new users and get them hooked.
Robinhood — How Robinhood drives addictive referral at a cost of cents per user
In a casino, the house always wins. Pull the lever on a slot machine over and over, and on a long enough timescale, you’ll lose. But imagine if compulsive gambling was good for your financial health. Imagine if pulling it brought you assets that would appreciate over time and improve your well-being in the long run.
That’s the model that Robinhood uses for its referral program.
Instead of giving you money when you refer a user, Robinhood gives you a share of stock selected at random from a pre-populated list of options.
For the price of one referral, you can receive a share of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or others:
The program was popular on sites like Reddit, where Robinhood users got together to share thoughts on the stocks they received or were hoping to receive for their referrals.
Naturally, the users who got stock others were excited about floated to the top of these threads, confirming for others that valuable stocks were being given away in the program and stirring up a bit of envy.
Looking through these threads, you can see that plenty of the time, the stocks people get aren’t Apple — they’re Sirius, or Groupon, or Zynga.
Like a slot machine, Robinhood’s referral program has you (most of the time) winning small, consistent amounts that are calibrated to be just enough to keep you gambling referring.
If Robinhood is mostly giving away stock in the $2 – $4 range, and only giving away an Apple or a Facebook ($100+) every 80th or so referral, that average reward stays low — about $5 a referral. That cost isn’t incurred right away either, as new users have to wait 30 days to withdraw the money from their account.
Walking through the thought process of receiving a stock reward helps clarify why it would work for Robinhood:
If you receive a share of stock worth $2, you have to wait 30 days and go through the process of linking up your bank account just to get that $2 out; or, you can leave it in and let it appreciate (leaving the door open to further investment).
If you receive a share of Apple, or Facebook, or Microsoft, you can wait 30 days and withdraw the cash from your account, or you can spend those 30 days and beyond letting it grow in value even more.
Receive a share of Apple stock today, and its value could double, triple, or quadruple within the next several years. And Robinhood’s referral program makes you consider this before you choose to take your winnings and cash out.
While Robinhood wants to lure you into trying its product through the psychology of “skin in the game,” Stash looks to surmount the main barrier that people feel when they think about investing: thinking they need a big sum of money to get started.
Stash — Seeding user accounts with $5 to demonstrate the power of exponential returns
Stash founders Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson knew they had to lower the bar to investing if they wanted to get people to start using their product.
When they talked to potential users, they found that there were two reasons that people weren’t currently investing:
they didn’t know how to get started, or
they thought investing was only for rich people
They built their referral program to address these hang-ups. Each new user that a current Stash investor refers gets $5 to invest in a bucket of ETFs of their choice.
Log into the Stash app, and new users can play around with various models of investment to see what that $5 can become over the years.
With a $150 monthly deposit at 4.8% growth, for instance, that could become $10,000 after 5 years, or $23,000 after 10.
The $5 gets you into the app, where Stash tries to show you what can happen if you stick with investing for the long term.
This addresses another key pain point in getting people to start investing: most people can’t understand exponential growth.
As part of a study into people’s understanding of growth, the psychologists Craig McKenzie and Michael Liersch asked participants how much saving $400 per month with 5% return annually would turn into after 40 years.
The majority said $200,000. The real answer is over $600,000.
McKenzie and Liersch found that people systematically expect their savings to grow linearly, not exponentially. They have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that compounding growth is the latter:
“People’s failure to recognize the power of compound interest — especially over long periods of time — leads to gross underestimation of future account balances, and by consequence, the cost of waiting to save,” they conclude.
When you get your Stash account seeded with those first $5, you don’t just get the material, short-term benefit of $5. You get a glimpse into what your future could be if you use Stash to invest those $5 for the future.
Liersch and McKenzie found that simply pointing out the implications of exponential growth could encourage people to start saving more, and earlier — and Stash employs a similar strategy to help people understand why they should be investing.
Acorns, on the other hand, helps us see how even a modest, non-viral referral program — optimized with various UX best practices — can be a serious driver of growth.
Acorns — How non-viral referrals let Acorns lower its CAC by 50x
Acorns has raised $70M from the likes of Bain Capital Ventures and PayPal, growing to 2 million active accounts within the span of three years.
In Australia, Acorns pays just $4.50 for each new user account it acquires. That’s far cheaper than your average PFM tool. Today, according to Business Insider, fintech companies are paying anywhere from $300 to $1,000, depending on the lifetime value of their customers.
Meanwhile, the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) for a British robo-advisor startup, according to SCM Direct, is about $234. Even a well-known startup brand like Lending Club still spends about $200 per customer it acquires.
Acorns, at $4.50 per customer, has reduced its CAC by 50x compared to many of its competitors.
Acorns has an amazingly low cost of acquiring customers largely because they’ve tapped into social sharing in a way that other financial services companies haven’t.
Acorns provides strong incentives to share, optimizes the process to make sharing as likely as possible, and ensures that payouts correspond with actually active new users.
If you’re paying $4.50 per customer, an extra 500,000 users from referral means you’re paying a modest $2.25M. If you pay $200 per customer like Lending Club, you’re paying a far-less-modest $100M.
Acorns built its CAC-lowering referral program in two parts.
First, Acorns offers a solid incentive. You get $5 per new customer that you refer. That money gets deposited into your Acorns account and is available for you to start using immediately.
Second, it optimizes the UX around referral and makes it as easy as it can be. Too many companies just tack referral on, assuming that their incentives will do the work of motivating users to actually pull the trigger. But according to research conducted by referral marketing company Extole, eliminating the need to load a new page to refer increases the odds of referral by 4x.
When you arrive at the Acorns referral screen, you have several options for how you can send out your invite code. Each works completely inline — no separate landing pages, copying and pasting, or wonky referral code systems to figure out.
When you hit the Message option, the very next screen is an auto-filled text message that lets you send your link to your friends. If you hit the Twitter button, an auto-filled tweet pops up in-app.
Making it slightly easier for users to share may seem like a small optimization, but every little bit makes a difference when it comes to referral.
In addition, by only offering the referral incentive to those who actually begin depositing money rather than just sign up, Acorns can save significant costs while encouraging users to become active on the app.
More than 600,000 new users have started investing on Acorns in the last seven months. If Acorns spent $10 on each new customer it acquired rather than just those that deposit money, it would spend $6M on its next 600,000.
If it only pays out to users who’ve converted to paying customers — assuming they do so at about a Dropbox-quality rate of 4% — then it only spends about $24,000 to acquire those 600,000.
Acorns isn’t throwing away millions on its referral program just to grow its user base. It’s counting on referred users seeing the value in the product and actually starting to use it.
The future of personal finance apps
The next 7 high-growth PFM tools aren’t going to be built according to a formula. The specific tactics that worked for these 7 tools aren’t going to work for the next 7 — tactics change too often.
However, the core strategies that these companies used to drive traffic, convert users, keep them engaged, and monetize their audience are not flashes in the pan. They’re fundamental to building products that people want to use.North-east of Swakopmund is the stark grandeur of The Spitzkoppe (sharp head), one of Namibia's most recognizable landmarks. It is located in the Namib Desert, between Swakopmund and Usakos, which is also the nearest town (approximately 50km away). The summit of this imposing granite rock formation (1,728m) was first scaled only in 1946, and its shape has inspired its nickname, The Matterhorn of Africa. But similarities between Namibia's granite inselberg and the glaciated Swiss Alp, begin and end with its sharp peak. A minor peak – the Little Spitzkoppe – lies nearby at an elevation of 1,584m above sea level.
Many examples of Bushmen artwork can be seen painted on the rock in the Spitzkoppe area, which is also the remnant of an ancient volcano, formed in the same way as the nearby Brandberg and Erongo massifs. The Spitzkoppe is now a popular mountaineering, hiking and camping destination.
Folklore has it that the first ascent of Spitzkoppe took place as early as 1904, when a soldier of the Royal Schutztruppe supposedly soloed the peak and made a fire on the summit. What he burned remains a mystery to this day, as there is absolutely no natural fuel of any kind on the upper parts of the peak. The legend suggest that he never returned and that his body was never recovered. What is certain thought, is that there is no proof of his conquest available today. (Perhaps he collected some firewood before he went up!)
The first documented conquest was made by a team of climbers from Cape Town, led by S. le Roux. The next party – O'Neil, Shipley and Schaff – pioneered a route up the northern extremes of the peak, after having first failed on the southwest ridge. They gained access to the gully now known as the'scramble', but ran out of time to attempt the final faces. Four days later, they made another attempt, but finally gave up. Some of the earliest climbers were defeated by a smooth band of granite only about 3m high, and resorted to carving steps into the rock with a hammer and chisel.
Further successful attempts to the summit of Spitzkoppe included expeditions by Hans and Else Wong and Jannie de Villiars Graaf. Over the next 25 years, the mountain maintained its reputation of presenting a 2 or 3 day struggle to potential climbers. This era came to an end in 1971, when the peak was climbed in 4 hours by a party led by J. W. Marchant from the University of Cape Town Mountain and Ski Club. This team scaled all the lower pitches without ropes and got through the difficult band without using the artificial steps hacked into the granite. They descended from the peak in 2 hours and as they reached the base, rain began to fall for the first time in a year.
Another notable feature of the area is the dome-like Pondok (grass-hut) mountain. It has a chain at the eastern end, helping visitors to scramble up the steep rock to the Bushman's Paradise site, a natural amphitheater that encompasses a splendid floral wonderland.
Unfortunately, the large depository of San art has largely been vandalized, hence The Spitzkoppe is currently a protected MET conservation area, a necessary mandate to save the mountain from increased tourism and abuse. The Spitzkoppe area is run by a woman's cooperative who maintain campsites throughout the brilliantly coloured rocks. There are often local guides to take the visitor around. Alternatively, visitors can join a day tour from one of the hotels or lodges in the area.
Recently the Spitzkoppe where used as the backdrop for the filming of the hollywood blockbuster (or was it a bit of a flop?) 2000BC. Having slept through most of the movie we're really not sure if any of the landscapes bear much resemblance to the Spitzkoppe at all, we're pretty sure the snow was fake though!
At the base of the mountain is the Spitzkoppe Campsite - a community run campsite.
Mountains of NamibiaOpenBSD director Bob Beck criticises group for not maintaining code.
Heartbleed was exacerbated by a chronic neglect of OpenSSL by its supporting foundation as it pursued lucrative contracts, according to Bob Beck, director of the OpenBSD Foundation (OBF).
Beck accused the OpenSSL Software Foundation (OSF) of neglecting the technology, adding new features in preference to fixing existing code and in the process discouraging outsiders from becoming involved with the project.
Criticising the way the technology handled memory allocation, Beck said: "It could not have been designed better to make an attack like Heartbleed both hard to detect, and have dire consequences."
Developers from the OBF are working on replacement for OpenSSL called LibreSSL, a decision Beck claims was sparked by the old technology’s poor memory allocation, rather than the discovery of the Heartbleed bug.
The OBF aims to preserve compatibility with OpenSSL, while enticing more people to work on the codebase and modernise the coding. The foundation is currently seeking funding for their project, which it hopes to maintain alongside its existing commitments to other open-source software.
"Horrible code actively discourages outside involvement," Beck said. "The barrier to entry for other developers is too high. Everyone looks at it, and goes back to doing their own stuff, hoping like heck that the upstream maintainers know what they are doing and care.
"I honestly think a lot of it is not necessarily deliberate incompetence or malice, it’s just a case of the codebase starting to go that way and nobody put the time and effort in to fix it, and nobody had enough of a strong hand to say ‘This can’t stay this way’.
Heartbleed attained notoriety last month when it was revealed that OpenSSL had made clients and servers vulnerable to eavesdropping for at least two years.
The bug affected many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google and Yahoo, and is thought to have afflicted half of all web servers, equating to more than half a billion websites.
"We’ve got a very good start on cleaning it up, it’s certainly a lot better than it was a month ago," Beck added. "We know where we want to go with this, and we want to bring the rest of the community with us."
According to its website, the OSF offers consultancy services for $250 per hour, with annual support contracts charged at upwards of $20,000. It does not provide free consulting support.Reddit 9 Pin 29 Shares
Discriminated against for decades, Bolivia’s indigenous Aymara women were once bound to lives as servants. But one group has risen from oppression, reaching new heights on the summits of the Andes.
When she was a little girl growing up in the early 70s, Lidia Huayllas dreamt of becoming a journalist or TV host. But she was a cholita, once a derogatory term for Bolivia’s Indigenous Amayra women, also dubbed the “maids of the middle class” and subjected to harsh discrimination. Restricted from free movement in parts of the capital city La Paz, denied access to restaurants and even refused service on some public buses, Lidia’s childhood dreams were naturally replaced with more practical options.
At the age of 14, she met Eulalio Gonzales, an aspiring mountain guide. The pair courted, married and moved to the snowy base of Huayna Potosi, a 6,000-metre mountain located 25 kilometres north of the capital, in the Cordillera Blanca. There, Lidia raised their children and worked as a camp cook for mountain tourists. For over 30 years she lived a rather ordinary life, until one day she asked her husband what it felt like to stand at the summit. He answered: “Why don’t you see for yourself?” She decided to do just that.
By this time, Aymara women had risen to take their place in government, economics and even fashion. Lidia asked herself, “Why not, then, in the mountains too?”
The 49-year-old, mother of two, assembled a team of 10 other cholitas, ranging in age from 42 to 50 years, and on December 15, 2015, they set out to climb Huayna Potosi. The women had no formal training and wore thermal suits under their polleras (layers of multicoloured skirts), puffed out by las enaguas (petticoats), and their |
step back and let women lead these conversations. And you know what? That made a lot of sense to me. So I decided to seek out the voices of women instead. And not just feminist voices, which are certainly important, but the voices of any woman who wanted to speak on this topic, because everyone's voice is important.
First, a disclosure of my admittedly not very in-depth methodology. I started by going through my own channels, posting on Negative World, Facebook and on Twitter looking for anyone who identified as a woman to lend a voice. Because it seemed like a topic of some relevance to the bigger issues going on in video gaming right now, I also posted in both the #gamergate and #stopgamergate2014 Twitter tags, although neither of those posts led to any responses. And those few spots are the only places that I looked for respondents. I did not reject any respondents, so what you are reading here is the totality of everyone who wanted to get involved. There is probably some bias involved in me mostly sticking to my own channels, but we ended up with a wide range of opinions represented, so I think that we turned out to cover a pretty solid variety of viewpoints here.
Let me clarify that this was not an attempt to represent what women as a gender think about Bayonetta. Frankly, if I were to try to get some kind of general consensus, I would have tried to talk to a lot more women with a much more exhaustive research plan. And then I still wouldn't consider it enough to try to make a broad claim like "this is what women think about the Bayonetta franchise!" So please remember not to read anything more into this other than "this is what these individual women think about the Bayonetta franchise!"
I ended up with seven women who responded to the questions that I sent out, and what you will read below are their responses, full and unedited (outside of minor formatting / corrections), with no commentary from Negative World or myself attached to the feature (though of course comments will be welcome.)
So let's get to it!
(Ed. Note: All respondents were asked to provide some way that I would refer to them, with the understanding that they could use a real name (full or partial), pseudonym, or reply anonymously.)
#1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Do you have any experience working in the video game industry (writer, developer, etc.)? What is your experience with video games? What is your experience with the Nintendo platforms specifically?
Alicia Andrew: I've been a developer for roughly 9 years, mostly indie studios. Currently I work at Game Worlds, a company I founded to teach kids 10-18 game development and software development. I am a hard core gamer who happens to think System Shock 2 is the best game of all time. My first console was the NES and I played it from age 7-13, every day for hours. I unfortunately missed out on the N64 era (to my secret gamer shame). Now I'd say the PC is my home.
Emily Gitelman: I'm currently a student. I grew up around the video game industry because my parents and many of their friends are developers, community managers, writers, etc. Some of my earliest memories are of playing video games, and it's something I truly love. I have interned for game companies and intend on entering the industry after I graduate. In the spring I wrote my thesis on gender and video games. It was titled Beyond Princess Peach: Gender Issues and the Boy's Club Hegemony of Video Game Development. I mostly play Nintendo games when I am at friend's houses because I don't own any Nintendo platforms.
Erica Hollinshead Stead: I have worked in the games development industry in different capacities for four years. Before that I was somewhat in the "periphery" of the industry, doing gaming related social media, blogging, etc. I have mostly worked on projects in the PC/Xbox?Playstation realm. I've never personally worked on a Nintendo project, or had any professional dealings with Nintendo.
Kimberly: I've been console gaming for most of my life. My parents picked up an NES system when I was fairly young; we were primarily a Nintendo family. I remember saving up and buying my first game for the SNES, which I played over the next few months whenever the system wasn't in use by one of my siblings. These days I own a variety of games across several systems.
I identify myself as a feminist and feel that representation of women in games can be problematic. I prefer games with good writing and those with fun and unique stories. I love finding characters (male or female) that I can identify or empathize with.
Laura: I have very brief experience in the games industry. I worked QA/Support for a major games company for about 6 months, while teaching myself to program. I now work as a software engineer in the general tech sector, but I have many friends working in the game industry and would love to work in the industry again as a developer.
Lily: I'm just a few days short of twenty-five, and I've been out as trans and a lesbian for soon-to-be five years. I used MMOs, especially Final Fantasy XI, to present as my identified gender starting with Runescape when I was twelve. I kept it pretty hidden from my family and felt guilty the entire time. It sucked, but it made games a place of blissful escapism for me. I still have friends from those days who I've told the whole story to.
I don't have much experience in the industry. The best I can claim is that I was a writer for an indie game that fell through. We got the engine complete, but we could never find an artist or anything of the like, and eventually we realized the project was just too ambitious for two people to work on. Beyond that, I've dabbled with various ideas and tried some things, but I kind of think someone should laugh in my face if I ever claim to have actual, serious experience in creating video games.
I've been playing video games since before I can remember. I'm the youngest of four, and my three older siblings all played. I have some really early memories about the NES, but the earliest game I have any real clarity of is Super Mario World and being tricked by my siblings into thinking I was playing it when I really wasn't. The first game I've ever beaten was Hyperzone -- a very mediocre SNES game. I bothered to learn to read because my siblings had managed to convince my mother to get Sega Channel, and I was enamored with Shining Force 2 but couldn't understand what was going on.
I hate to admit to myself that I'm a Nintendo fangirl, but it's hard to deny. I made the most out of the Wii and hoped that games that were totally going to be mediocre would somehow turn out good. I had a Wii on release, I had a Gamecube on release, I can still remember the Christmas when my dad got me an N64. It was kind of adorable, really. He got me Ocarina of Time and pretended to not realize that it needed a console. Turns out the console was just in its normal box under his coat. He asked me to get his coat, and I didn't even notice. It's one of my fondest memories.
Vivian "SJ" James: There was a period of time I worked in games press. Mostly reviews, occasionally articles or opinion pieces. My experience with video games is substantial, I'd think. I probably play them more than is healthy, but I enjoy most any genre, with a personal preference for horror and action. I've owned and played a lot of Nintendo consoles. I think my first was an NES, then a Gameboy Color, eventually I got a Gamecube and I've kept up to date ever since. I have a Wii U that we got this year and lately my girlfriend and I have been playing Hyrule Warriors on it.
#2. What is your experience with the Bayonetta franchise? Have you played / do you plan to play the original game? Do you plan to play the upcoming sequel? Do you like / dislike the franchise?
Alicia Andrew: I have played the game all the way through twice (second time on Hard), and will run through it a 3rd time (NOT ON HARD) before jumping on to Bayonetta 2 (excited girl squeal). So yes, absolutely I plan on playing the sequel. I like the franchise, a lot. I will probably buy a Wii U just to play the damn game.
Emily Gitelman: I have played snippets of the original Bayonetta game, and watched Youtube play throughs. I did that specifically for research when I was writing my thesis. Bayonetta originally caught my eye because of the ridiculous part of the game where Bayonetta's hair-clothing disappears when she does a magic spell. I thought it was really gross and problematic, so I wanted to learn more about it and write about it. I don't plan on playing the next game, because I really just expect more of the same. The creators of Bayonetta have been really forthright with their blatant sexism and over sexualization of Bayonetta and other female characters in the Bayonetta franchise, and I can't respect the game because of it. It's just not in good taste.
Erica Hollinshead Stead: I played the original game on PS3. I plan to play Bayonetta 2; I even bought a Wii U mostly for that purpose. The original Bayonetta is one of my favorite games of that generation. I loved the gameplay, but everything from the lore to the aesthetics to the humor seemed like it was made for me. I loved the way they took classic images of angelic beings and were able to retain their beauty yet make them ugly at the same time. I loved how they combined the relative seriousness of the religious references for enemies with the over-the-top, Austin Powers level stylization in Bayonetta's character/attitude/line delivery. I like to call it "madcap badassery". And, to address the elephant in the room: I liked Bayonetta's looks and outfit. I liked the goth and sexy look, and I liked that it was combined with unexpected glasses (this was before the glasses-as-sexy thing was super saturated remember) and the high updo, rather than perhaps more expected bombshell hair and makeup. I have been known to dress both dark and/or body consciously at different points in my life, and Bayonetta was a (perhaps slightly exaggerated) version of something I would have gravitated towards in real life. The addition of the glasses and distinctive hairstyle, to me, provided the hint that this character might be sexy, but was an individual rather than a series of straight male fantasy check boxes. I also liked that her costume, although tight, wasn't made of strings cutting into her skin or crawling into crevices. My degree is in fashion design; I understand what works and doesn't work so well in garment construction, and her outfit didn't require too much suspension of disbelief for me. I could believe that she would actually have chosen to put on that outfit in the morning. Of course there's also the matter of the mythology associated with her outfit- its actually made of hair and disappears during some of her moves! This actually worked for me as well. (I deliberately used the word "actually" there because people seem to be surprised by it.) Hair is connected with power in some traditional witch myths, and sexuality/non-adherence to societal "decency standards" is sometimes connected to witches as well. And as a person who comes home and loses the pants at the earliest convenient moment.. associating shedding clothing with a surge of freedom/unrestricted power doesn't seem a stretch to me.
Kimberly: When the first Bayonetta game came out, I heard some of the controversy, but most of the coverage I saw was either negative or shallow (more on this below). Because I lacked time and funds during that period, I let it pass by without playing it. I assumed the game was more fanservice than anything else.
As the second game gets closer, the debate has kicked back up. I stumbled on some really positive sentiments towards the games that I'd missed the first time around, especially about Bayonetta as a positive character. After a short bit of research, I decided that I will definitely be playing both games when Bayonetta 2 comes out later this month.
Laura: I have not played the Bayonetta games and I do not plan to. I'm too disgusted by the portrayal of the main character in the trailers and other advertising. It's not how I want to see women represented. I'd rather play a game that had a male main character or no female characters at all then deal with female characters that make me feel like developers think of all women as sex objects or plot devices. The trailer for Bayonetta 2 has what I can only refer to as a 'vag shot' for crying out loud. No, I do not feel like the developers of that game have any respect for me as a woman, and that's upsetting.
Lily: I've beaten the first Bayonetta on Infinite Climax. I really, really loved that game. It was great, it came out right before I did. (Hah.) And I loved it. It was a bit of a reminder of the complexities of gender and attitude that I think a lot of people don't really ever have to pay attention to. And really, the first game was just something fresh in a landscape that was catering more and more toward shooters. Endless shooters. I'm picking up Bayonetta 2 on release night. So, yeah, it's safe to say I like the game. A lot.
Vivian "SJ" James: I played the first Bayonetta back when it came out, so it's been a while. I definitely plan on checking out the sequel, and will probably use it as an excuse to replay the original. I'm not sure if I like the franchise, it'll depend a lot on how Bayonetta 2 is, but I definitely want to like it. I want to have awesome franchises starring powerful women that I can just enjoy myself playing.
#3. How do you feel about the way that the Bayonetta franchise presents its female characters, especially the lead playable character, "Bayonetta"? Do you think there are problematic / sexist elements involved, or "over-sexualization" of the females? On the other hand, do you find Bayonetta, as a "strong female lead" to be an empowering character in any way?
Alicia Andrew: As a developer, sexualization of characters is a topic that's come up in some great discussions. I use Bayonetta as an example of "sexy" done right. A lot of the discussion about female representation seems to get stuck at whether its appropriate for a character to be "sexy". Some people see the discussion around the dislike for the "chain-mail bikini" as a form of censorship or a push towards characters they see as potentially boring or downright prudish. I see the discussion as more nuanced than just an issue of cleavage. In my opinion, it's an issue of ownership.
Its complicated, but I think desperately important, that while we understand that sexuality is healthy and has a place in our media, a lot of the backlash around the proverbial "chain-mail bikini" is because often, the female character is made to be sexualized not sexy. She has little to no perceived ownership of how her body is displayed, dressed, or presented. This mindset leads to sometimes ridiculous character designs, such as Mythril Bikinis for the epic journey to the gates of hell, and breasts on alien rock creatures.
To me, Bayonetta owns her sexuality. It seems, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that the tight pants, the flirty quips, the languid posing, are all that character's choice. Bayonetta, the character, enjoys her sexuality. She is choosing to display it in this manner, and is inviting you in on the fun. It's wonderfully refreshing to have a character that seems in control of her sexy bits. She's not a inanimate object with breasts heaving in the wind, but a woman flirting. To me that's sexy done right.
To clarify, I'm not saying that we should take away titillating armor mods in Skyrim, or anything of that nature. But if you want to have a female character be more than just decoration, AND you want her sexuality to be part of that character, then creating that sense of ownership is important.
In this I think Bayonetta has done something great, and a lot of female players have responded to it. Initially I had no interest in the game, filing it into the "another game with heaving breasts" category. A friend of mine talked my ear off about how much she loved it, and why. I gave it a shot, and loved all of it. If I had the height, I'd cosplay the hell out of Bayonetta or Jeanne.
Emily Gitelman: I think the female characters in Bayonetta are presented incredibly poorly, and certainly over sexualized. They're a male fantasy, completely. I'm going to focus on Bayonetta herself. To start with her physical appearance, Bayonetta is built like a super model, has a sexy English accent, and walks around in a skin-tight catsuit that disappears and basically gives her censor bars when she casts spells. It's practically a reward for the player: use a powerful attack; see a naked woman. As soon as Bayonetta displays power, she is stripped of her clothing and her dignity. When her health runs too low, her catsuit also disappears. The symbolism (lip marks, flowers, butterflies) used in her attacks is very stereotypically feminine in a way that box female sexuality into a narrow category. These are calculated ways of making her seem like a Strong Female Character, but they actually undercut her agency and power as the lead character of a franchise.
It's insulting to think that Bayonetta could be viewed as a positive, empowering character because she is plainly a sex object. When Hideki Kamiya, the director of Bayonetta, and Yusuke Hashimoto, one of the producers on the project, were making the interview rounds, they said really sexist things about women. In an interview with 1UP, Hashimoto said that Bayonetta couldn't be over sexualized because she didn't have large breasts (which is obviously not the only facet of over sexualization). In the same article, he said that Bayonetta isn't "all about showing skin," but she's constantly on display as a sex object because of her tight outfit, posture, and husky voice.
Basically, the men in charge of how Bayonetta is portrayed have made their opinions about how women should look and dress and be visually appealing to themselves and other men make it entirely obvious that Bayonetta is treated as a sex object. Because of that, I definitely don't find Bayonetta to be empowering. In fact, she is the opposite.
Erica Hollinshead Stead: I somewhat ventured into this question's territory above. I don't think that something can be "certified" non-sexist, to use a phrase I read somewhere and can't remember where. I also don't know if I necessarily go in for the "strong female lead" thing. Certainly, I want a world where most female characters aren't the embodiment of weakness. But I'm not sure that "strong" makes top of my list of adjectives I want to use to describe more female characters. If I were to throw out some words that might top my list, it would likely be something like "individual", "unique", "complex", "well defined", maybe even "multi-faceted". I feel like Bayonetta meets a few of these.
Tangent aside, after having played the game, I do not find Bayonetta's character problematic. Its a complex set of factors that lead me to that conclusion, one being that Bayonetta has, in my opinion, unique aspects to her aside from sexuality/sexualization. Even just appearance wise, Bayonetta has a specific aesthetic aside from "sexy" - I feel as if I could choose clothing that she would like at a mall - not just any old sexy thing from Victoria's Secret is going to be her taste; just grabbing a garment because it is revealing wouldn't be her taste. I also think the humor and tongue-in-cheek aspect of the dialog is context that matters. Bayonetta feels very "in on the joke" if you can say that about a fictional character; it felt to me as if when she utilized sexy stylization, she was making a choice to style herself that way. Its certainly subjective, but to me, Bayonetta felt like a full character who was self-styling herself as a cavalier vampy goth badass, rather than a shell of male fantasies.
I think that its the environment that Bayonetta the game exists in that causes the perception of Bayonetta as sexist more than Bayonetta the character in the game. It is a world in which developing a full female character IS often sacrificed for sex appeal and stereotypes, and a realistic gender ratio is often traded for a single token girl that only provides a single vision of women. But I do think its important to leave room for the possibility that sexy doesn't always equal bad. For me, many of the things cited as "bad" about Bayonetta could be charges leveled at me. If Bayonetta's hip pop and tight outfit are bad, then how can I not be "part of the problem" if I gravitate towards tight (or god forbid revealing) clothing, and tend to stand with my hip popped, AND want to create and see characters that are similar to me in that aesthetic? I want to see more female characters who aren't sexy in that way too, but it doesn't mean I never want to see a character who fancies herself a pin up.
I have seen some marketing pieces for Bayonetta that I do think lack the full picture of Bayonetta's character, and so I understand how one could see them and be concerned. Its hard to contain all of the nuance in a still image for example. But, having played the game I do not find the game itself problematic.
(Ed. Note: In order to keep the discussion in a single place, comments will be closed on part one of this feature. Please head over to part two where comments will be open.)
Continue to Part Two. My alternate title ofwould probably have gotten way more hits. But nah, not going to go there. I sort of hate articles that ask controversial questions in the title that you know darn well they won't give a definitive answer to.Anyway, I'm going to keep this intro short and sweet because really, this feature is not about me or my opinions. This is about the opinions of female gamers, writers and developers.In respect to the various conversations in the industry lately about the representation of women in video games, Bayonetta has become a bit of a fascinating franchise to me. On the surface, it would appear to be a sort of cut and dry contender for one "side" of that debate (feminists, social justice types, etc.) to line up on "sexist" while another side (to be honest I'm not sure what they call themselves?) lines up on "not sexist". And that is certainly what I expected to see. For instance, prominent feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian is definitely not a fan. However, I have many friends who identify as feminists, the majority of which fall loosely on the "plenty of games have problematic / sexist representations of women" side in these debates (more or less), and as talk of the franchise started heating up due to the upcoming (at the time) release of Bayonetta 2, I began to notice that the opinions, even from self-described feminists, are divided on the Bayonetta franchise much more than I expected that they would be.I was vaguely thinking of writing a feature on this interesting phenomena when one of my female friends posted a comment on Twitter about how men should step back and let women lead these conversations. And you know what? That made a lot of sense to me. So I decided to seek out the voices of women instead. And not just feminist voices, which are certainly important, but the voices of any woman who wanted to speak on this topic, because everyone's voice is important.First, a disclosure of my admittedly not very in-depth methodology. I started by going through my own channels, posting on Negative World, Facebook and on Twitter looking for anyone who identified as a woman to lend a voice. Because it seemed like a topic of some relevance to the bigger issues going on in video gaming right now, I also posted in both the #gamergate and #stopgamergate2014 Twitter tags, although neither of those posts led to any responses. And those few spots are the only places that I looked for respondents. I did not reject any respondents, so what you are reading here is the totality of everyone who wanted to get involved. There is probably some bias involved in me mostly sticking to my own channels, but we ended up with a wide range of opinions represented, so I think that we turned out to cover a pretty solid variety of viewpoints here.Let me clarify that this was not an attempt to represent what women as a gender think about Bayonetta. Frankly, if I were to try to get some kind of general consensus, I would have tried to talk tomore women with a much more exhaustive research plan. And then I still wouldn't consider it enough to try to make a broad claim like "this is what women think about the Bayonetta franchise!" So please remember not to read anything more into this other than "this is what these individual women think about the Bayonetta franchise!"I ended up with seven women who responded to the questions that I sent out, and what you will read below are their responses, full and unedited (outside of minor formatting / corrections), with no commentary from Negative World or myself attached to the feature (though of course comments will be welcome.)So let's get to it!I've been a developer for roughly 9 years, mostly indie studios. Currently I work at Game Worlds, a company I founded to teach kids 10-18 game development and software development. I am a hard core gamer who happens to think System Shock 2 is the best game of all time. My first console was the NES and I played it from age 7-13, every day for hours. I unfortunately missed out on the N64 era (to my secret gamer shame). Now I'd say the PC is my home.I'm currently a student. I grew up around the video game industry because my parents and many of their friends are developers, community managers, writers, etc. Some of my earliest memories are of playing video games, and it's something I truly love. I have interned for game companies and intend on entering the industry after I graduate. In the spring I wrote my thesis on gender and video games. It was titled Beyond Princess Peach: Gender Issues and the Boy's Club Hegemony of Video Game Development. I mostly play Nintendo games when I am at friend's houses because I don't own any Nintendo platforms.I have worked in the games development industry in different capacities for four years. Before that I was somewhat in the "periphery" of the industry, doing gaming related social media, blogging, etc. I have mostly worked on projects in the PC/Xbox?Playstation realm. I've never personally worked on a Nintendo project, or had any professional dealings with Nintendo.I've been console gaming for most of my life. My parents picked up an NES system when I was fairly young; we were primarily a Nintendo family. I remember saving up and buying my first game for the SNES, which I played over the next few months whenever the system wasn't in use by one of my siblings. These days I own a variety of games across several systems.I identify myself as a feminist and feel that representation of women in games can be problematic. I prefer games with good writing and those with fun and unique stories. I love finding characters (male or female) that I can identify or empathize with.I have very brief experience in the games industry. I worked QA/Support for a major games company for about 6 months, while teaching myself to program. I now work as a software engineer in the general tech sector, but I have many friends working in the game industry and would love to work in the industry again as a developer.I'm just a few days short of twenty-five, and I've been out as trans and a lesbian for soon-to-be five years. I used MMOs, especially Final Fantasy XI, to present as my identified gender starting with Runescape when I was twelve. I kept it pretty hidden from my family and felt guilty the entire time. It sucked, but it made games a place of blissful escapism for me. I still have friends from those days who I've told the whole story to.I don't have much experience in the industry. The best I can claim is that I was a writer for an indie game that fell through. We got the engine complete, but we could never find an artist or anything of the like, and eventually we realized the project was just too ambitious for two people to work on. Beyond that, I've dabbled with various ideas and tried some things, but I kind of think someone should laugh in my face if I ever claim to have actual, serious experience in creating video games.I've been playing video games since before I can remember. I'm the youngest of four, and my three older siblings all played. I have some really early memories about the NES, but the earliest game I have any real clarity of is Super Mario World and being tricked by my siblings into thinking I was playing it when I really wasn't. The first game I've ever beaten was Hyperzone -- a very mediocre SNES game. I bothered to learn to read because my siblings had managed to convince my mother to get Sega Channel, and I was enamored with Shining Force 2 but couldn't understand what was going on.I hate to admit to myself that I'm a Nintendo fangirl, but it's hard to deny. I made the most out of the Wii and hoped that games that were totally going to be mediocre would somehow turn out good. I had a Wii on release, I had a Gamecube on release, I can still remember the Christmas when my dad got me an N64. It was kind of adorable, really. He got me Ocarina of Time and pretended to not realize that it needed a console. Turns out the console was just in its normal box under his coat. He asked me to get his coat, and I didn't even notice. It's one of my fondest memories.There was a period of time I worked in games press. Mostly reviews, occasionally articles or opinion pieces. My experience with video games is substantial, I'd think. I probably play them more than is healthy, but I enjoy most any genre, with a personal preference for horror and action. I've owned and played a lot of Nintendo consoles. I think my first was an NES, then a Gameboy Color, eventually I got a Gamecube and I've kept up to date ever since. I have a Wii U that we got this year and lately my girlfriend and I have been playing Hyrule Warriors on it.I have played the game all the way through twice (second time on Hard), and will run through it a 3rd time (NOT ON HARD) before jumping on to Bayonetta 2 (excited girl squeal). So yes, absolutely I plan on playing the sequel. I like the franchise, a lot. I will probably buy a Wii U just to play the damn game.I have played snippets of the original Bayonetta game, and watched Youtube play throughs. I did that specifically for research when I was writing my thesis. Bayonetta originally caught my eye because of the ridiculous part of the game where Bayonetta's hair-clothing disappears when she does a magic spell. I thought it was really gross and problematic, so I wanted to learn more about it and write about it. I don't plan on playing the next game, because I really just expect more of the same. The creators of Bayonetta have been really forthright with their blatant sexism and over sexualization of Bayonetta and other female characters in the Bayonetta franchise, and I can't respect the game because of it. It's just not in good taste.I played the original game on PS3. I plan to play Bayonetta 2; I even bought a Wii U mostly for that purpose. The original Bayonetta is one of my favorite games of that generation. I loved the gameplay, but everything from the lore to the aesthetics to the humor seemed like it was made for me. I loved the way they took classic images of angelic beings and were able to retain their beauty yet make them ugly at the same time. I loved how they combined the relative seriousness of the religious references for enemies with the over-the-top, Austin Powers level stylization in Bayonetta's character/attitude/line delivery. I like to call it "madcap badassery". And, to address the elephant in the room: I liked Bayonetta's looks and outfit. I liked the goth and sexy look, and I liked that it was combined with unexpected glasses (this was before the glasses-as-sexy thing was super saturated remember) and the high updo, rather than perhaps more expected bombshell hair and makeup. I have been known to dress both dark and/or body consciously at different points in my life, and Bayonetta was a (perhaps slightly exaggerated) version of something I would have gravitated towards in real life. The addition of the glasses and distinctive hairstyle, to me, provided the hint that this character might be sexy, but was an individual rather than a series of straight male fantasy check boxes. I also liked that her costume, although tight, wasn't made of strings cutting into her skin or crawling into crevices. My degree is in fashion design; I understand what works and doesn't work so well in garment construction, and her outfit didn't require too much suspension of disbelief for me. I could believe that she would actually have chosen to put on that outfit in the morning. Of course there's also the matter of the mythology associated with her outfit- its actually made of hair and disappears during some of her moves! This actually worked for me as well. (I deliberately used the word "actually" there because people seem to be surprised by it.) Hair is connected with power in some traditional witch myths, and sexuality/non-adherence to societal "decency standards" is sometimes connected to witches as well. And as a person who comes home and loses the pants at the earliest convenient moment.. associating shedding clothing with a surge of freedom/unrestricted power doesn't seem a stretch to me.When the first Bayonetta game came out, I heard some of the controversy, but most of the coverage I saw was either negative or shallow (more on this below). Because I lacked time and funds during that period, I let it pass by without playing it. I assumed the game was more fanservice than anything else.As the second game gets closer, the debate has kicked back up. I stumbled on some really positive sentiments towards the games that I'd missed the first time around, especially about Bayonetta as a positive character. After a short bit of research, I decided that I will definitely be playing both games when Bayonetta 2 comes out later this month.I have not played the Bayonetta games and I do not plan to. I'm too disgusted by the portrayal of the main character in the trailers and other advertising. It's not how I want to see women represented. I'd rather play a game that had a male main character or no female characters at all then deal with female characters that make me feel like developers think of all women as sex objects or plot devices. The trailer for Bayonetta 2 has what I can only refer to as a 'vag shot' for crying out loud. No, I do not feel like the developers of that game have any respect for me as a woman, and that's upsetting.I've beaten the first Bayonetta on Infinite Climax. I really, really loved that game. It was great, it came out right before I did. (Hah.) And I loved it. It was a bit of a reminder of the complexities of gender and attitude that I think a lot of people don't really ever have to pay attention to. And really, the first game was just something fresh in a landscape that was catering more and more toward shooters. Endless shooters. I'm picking up Bayonetta 2 on release night. So, yeah, it's safe to say I like the game. A lot.I played the first Bayonetta back when it came out, so it's been a while. I definitely plan on checking out the sequel, and will probably use it as an excuse to replay the original. I'm not sure if I like the franchise, it'll depend a lot on how Bayonetta 2 is, but I definitely want to like it. I want to have awesome franchises starring powerful women that I can just enjoy myself playing.As a developer, sexualization of characters is a topic that's come up in some great discussions. I use Bayonetta as an example of "sexy" done right. A lot of the discussion about female representation seems to get stuck at whether its appropriate for a character to be "sexy". Some people see the discussion around the dislike for the "chain-mail bikini" as a form of censorship or a push towards characters they see as potentially boring or downright prudish. I see the discussion as more nuanced than just an issue of cleavage. In my opinion, it's an issue of ownership.Its complicated, but I think desperately important, that while we understand that sexuality is healthy and has a place in our media, a lot of the backlash around the proverbial "chain-mail bikini" is because often, the female character is made to be sexualized not sexy. She has little to no perceived ownership of how her body is displayed, dressed, or presented. This mindset leads to sometimes ridiculous character designs, such as Mythril Bikinis for the epic journey to the gates of hell, and breasts on alien rock creatures.To me, Bayonetta owns her sexuality. It seems, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that the tight pants, the flirty quips, the languid posing, are all that character's choice. Bayonetta, the character, enjoys her sexuality. She is choosing to display it in this manner, and is inviting you in on the fun. It's wonderfully refreshing to have a character that seems in control of her sexy bits. She's not a inanimate object with breasts heaving in the wind, but a woman flirting. To me that's sexy done right.To clarify, I'm not saying that we should take away titillating armor mods in Skyrim, or anything of that nature. But if you want to have a female character be more than just decoration, AND you want her sexuality to be part of that character, then creating that sense of ownership is important.In this I think Bayonetta has done something great, and |
it is acknowledged within the report that the eventual fee paid by Liverpool was the value of the buyout clause in the striker’s Villa contract.
Interestingly, Raheem Sterling, who left Liverpool for Manchester City in July, is ranked as the most ‘undervalued’ transfer of the summer.
The 20-year-old moved to the Etihad for a total fee of £49m, but CIES’ study suggests his truer value was around 95.1m Euros (£69.5m).
Nathaniel Clyne, who joined Liverpool from Southampton in a £12m deal, is fifth on the list of undervalued transfers, with his market value estimated at around 24.5m Euros (£18m).
CIES’ 10 most overpriced footballers, summer 2015
1. Anthony Martial (Monaco to Manchester United)
2. Kevin De Bruyne (Wolfsburg to Manchester City)
3. Christian Benteke (Aston Villa to Liverpool)
4. Angel Di Maria (Manchester United to Paris SG)
5. Arda Turan (Atletico Madrid to Barcelona)
6. Nicolas Otamendi (Valencia to Manchester City)
7. Alessio Romagnoli (Roma to AC Milan)
8. Aymen Abdennour (Monaco to Valencia)
9. Petr Cech (Chelsea to Arsenal)
10. Ivan Perisic (Wolfsburg to Inter Milan)
CIES’ 10 most underpriced footballers, summer 2015
1. Raheem Sterling (Liverpool to Manchester City)
2. Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa (Newcastle to Roma)
3. Robin Van Persie (Manchester United to Fenerbahce)
4. Denis Suarez (Barcelona to Villarreal)
5. Nathaniel Clyne (Southampton to Liverpool)
6. Mattia Destro (Roma to Bologna)
7. Sergio Garcia (Espanyol to Al Rayyan)
8. Connor Wickham (Sunderland to Crystal Palace)
9. Gerard Deulofeu (Barcelona to Everton)
10. Juanmi (Malaga to Southampton)CASE REPORT EFFECT OF PAPAYA LEAF JUICE ON PLATELET AND WBC COUNT IN DENGUE FEVER
A CASE REPORT DEEPAK BSR1, GIRISH KJ,2 JADHAV LAKSHMIPRASAD L3 1Postgraduate Scholar, 2Professor, 3Associate Professor and Head, Department of Kayachikitsa, Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College of Ayurveda and Hospital, Thanniruhalla, Hassan-573201, Karnataka, India. Corresponding author email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Access this article online : www.jahm.in Published by Atreya Ayurveda Publications, Ilkal-587125 (India) All rights reserved. Received on: 22/05/2013, Revised on: 29/05/2013, Accepted on: 03/06/2013
Summary: Dengue fever caused by dengue viruses (dengue 1–4) having Aedes aegypti mosquito as their principal vector, causes symptoms such as sudden onset of fever, headache, retro-orbital pain and back pain along with severe myalgia due to which dengue fever is also known as “break-bone fever.” Laboratory findings include leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and in many cases, serum aminotransferase elevations. dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS) may occur as a complication of dengue fever.A pilot study and a randomized controlle trial showed that administration of papaya leaf juice was beneficial in dengue patients in elevating the total white cell counts and platelet counts. Based on this report, a dengue patient with thrombocytopenia and leukopenia was treated in a tertiary Ayurveda hospital. The patient was administered papaya leaf juice in the dose of 25 ml twice daily along with conventional line of management for a period of eight days. There was remarkable improvement in the subjective symptoms and the white blood cell count and platelet count were restored to normalcy.
Keywords: Ayurveda, dengue fever, papaya leaf juice, platelet count, dengue hemorrhagic fever
Introduction:
Dengue fever is caused by dengue viruses (dengue 1–4) having Aedes aegypti mosquito as their principal vector. After an incubation period of 2–7 days, the patient typically experiences the sudden onset of fever, headache, retro-orbital pain and back pain along with the severe myalgia due to which dengue fever is also known as “break-bone fever.” The illness may last a week, usually with additional symptoms like anorexia, nausea or vomiting. Laboratory findings include leukopenia, thrombo-cytopenia and in many cases, serum aminotransferase elevations. The diagnosis is made by IgM ELISA; antigen-detection ELISA or RT-PCR during the acute phase; paired serology during recovery. Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or Dengue shock syndrome (DSS) may occur as a complication of dengue fever. DHF is identified by the detection of bleeding tendencies (tourniquet test, petechiae) or overt bleeding in the absence of underlying causes such as pre-existing gastrointestinal lesions. DSS, usually accompanied by hemorrhagic signs, may result from increased vascular permeability leading to shock and is much more serious. In mild DHF/DSS, restlessness, lethargy, thrombo-cytopenia and hemo-concentration are detected 2–5 days after the onset of typical dengue fever, usually at the time of defervescence.The maculopapular rash that often develops in dengue fever may also appear in DHF/DSS. In more severe cases, frank shock characterized by low pulse pressure, cyanosis, hepatomegaly, pleural effusions, ascites and in some cases, severe ecchymoses and gastrointestinal bleeding is apparent.
Today, the world is looking up to complimentary systems of medicine such as Ayurveda for treatment of disorders such as
dengue for which specific treatment is not available.2 In this regard, when the literature was surveyed, a pilot study showed that the administration of papaya leaf juice proved to be beneficial in dengue patients in elevating the total white cell counts, platelet counts and recovery without hospital admission.3 A randomized controlled trial demonstrated that the administration of papaya leaf juice in dengue fever and DHF is safe and induces rapid increase in platelet count.10 One case, where the administration of papaya leaf juice to a patient of dengue fever in a tertiary Ayurveda hospital was found to be beneficial, is reported here.
Case history: A 51 years old male patient reported to the Kayachikitsa outpatient department on 11th June 2013, with history of fever associated with chills and generalized body ache. On asking about the details of the same, he stated that he was alright till the evening of 4th June 2013 after which he developed loss of appetite and nausea. The next day he begot fever with chills, generalized body ache and weakness. He took treatment from a nearby doctor but found little relief. After 3 days he suffered from loose stools and an old pile mass began to bleed during defecation. He had bitter taste sensation in the mouth. He had past medical history of jaundice at the age of 15 and no surgical history. On examination, he was afebrile, had pulse rate of 60/min with good volume and blood pressure of 110/80 mm of Hg. Per abdomen examination revealed tenderness in epigastrium. He was subjected to various routine laboratory investigations. He tested positive for dengue NS1/IgG-IgM test. Routine blood examination revealed leukopenia (white blood cell count-3,600 cells/cmm) and thrombocytopenia (platelet count-56,000 cells/cmm). USG scan of abdomen showed acalculous cholecystitis. The same day he was admitted in the inpatient department and the opinion of an allopathic physician was sought.
Treatment and results:
From the second day of admission,the patient was advised IV fluids (ringers lactate) in maintenance dose; Injection dexamethasone-1 ampoule IV twice daily; Injection gramocef-1g IV twice daily; tablet paracetamol 650mg-one tablet thrice daily. The next day, in addition to the above, papaya leaf juice in the dose of 25ml was advised to be taken twice daily. The papaya leaf juice was prepared from washed tender leaves after deveining them and then grinding in a juice extractor with small quantity of water. This regimen was followed upto seventh day of admission. On the eighth day, treatment was revised and the patient was advised to take papaya leaf juice in the same dosage; syrup balaguduchyadi kashaya 15 ml thrice daily after food with 15 ml water; tablet samshamani vati-2 tablets thrice daily after food; tablet septilin-1 tablet thrice daily after food. By 19th June, the patient recovered well and was discharged with the same advice. Day wise improvement in subjective and haematological findings is presented in Table
Table 1: Effect on clinical & laboratory parameters
Date Complaints and clinical findings Platelet count WBC count 11/06/2013 myalgia, nausea, weakness, bitter taste, bleeding pile mass, afebrile 56,000 cells/c mm 3,600 cells/ cmm 12/06/2013 -do- 52,000 cells/cmm 4,600 cells/cmm 13/06/2013 -do- 60,000 cells/cmm 8,600 cells/cmm 14/06/2013 nausea and bitter taste in mouth reduced; weakness, myalgia, bleeding pile still persist; afebrile 71,000 cells/cmm 10,200 cells/ cmm 15/06/2013 -do- 1.11 lakh cells/cmm 10,800 cells/cmm 16/06/2013 no nausea and bitter taste. Weakness and myalgia reduced. bleeding from pile mass stopped. patient was afebrile - - 17/06/2013 Patient was asymptomatic 1.99 lakh cells/cmm 10,600 cells/cmm 18/06/2013 -do- 1.98 lakh cells/cmm 10,200 cells/cmm 19/06/2013 -do- 2.29 lakh cells/cmm 10.900 cells/cmm
Discussion: Dengue virus induces bone marrow suppression resulting in low platelet count. Anaemia and spontaneous severe bleeding are the other consequences of bone marrow suppression. Dengue virus can bind to human platelets in presence of virus specific antibody and cause immune mediated clearance of platelets.5 A study suggested that hemorrhage in dengue without circulatory collapse is most likely due to activation of platelets rather than coagulopathy, which is well compensated. Vascular alteration may be the principal factor involved in the association of thrombocytopenia and hemorrhage with disease severity. 6
The journey to drug discovery through the study of immune-modulatory effects against dengue infection lies on the research of generic compounds and natural products.4 Vinca alkaloids have been proven effective against anti-platelet macrophages in patients suffering from Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP).7 The saponins in Panaxnoto ginseng have been shown to reduce platelet adhesion and aggregation, prevent thrombosis and improve microcirculation.5 Carica papaya leaves contain various phytoconstituents like saponins, tannins, cardiac glycosides and alkaloids. The alkaloids present include carpaine, pseudocarpaine and dehydrocarpaine I and II. These constituents can act on the bone marrow, prevent its destruction and enhance its ability to produce platelets. Moreover, it can also prevent platelet destruction in the blood and thereby increase the life of the platelet in circulation.8 Carica papaya was found to have protective effect on the bone marrow and stimulate haemopoiesis of the cells, particularly the myeloblasts and megarkaryocytes.9 In the present case, it was observed that upon administration of papaya leaf juice, both the platelet and total white cell count were restored to normalcy as suggested by the above studies and the patient was relieved of all subjective symptoms.
Conclusion: The administration of papaya leaf juice was found to be beneficial in increasing the platelet and white blood cell count in the case of dengue reported. This fact is well established by various experimental studies and clinical trials cited earlier. Hence it can be concluded that papaya leaf juice would definitely prove beneficial to the mankind at large owing to the cost effectiveness and easy availability of papaya plant.
References:
1. Peters CJ. Infections caused by arthropod and rodent borne viruses. In Harisson’s Principles of Internal Medicine. Fauci AS, Braunwald E, Kasper DL, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL, et.al. 17thedition. USA: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc; 2008. p.1239.
2. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Dengue fever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever (accessed 10 August 2013).
3. Hettige S. Salutary effects of Carica papaya leaf extract in dengue fever patients–a pilot study. Sri Lankan Family Physician 2008; 29:17-9.
4. Selisko B, Dutartre H, Guillemot JC. Comparative mechanistic studies of de novo RNA synthesis by flavivirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerases. Virology 2006; 351(1):145–158.
5. Wang J, Xu J, Zhong J. Effect of Radix notoginseng saponins on platelet activating molecule expression and aggregation in patient with blood hyperviscosity syndrome. Zhing guo Zhong XI Yi Jie He Za Zhi 2004; 24:312-6.
6. Krishnamurti C, Kalayanarooj S, Cutting MA, Peat RA, Rothwell SW, Reid TJ, et.al. Mechanisms of hemorrhage in dengue without circulatory collapse. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg 2001; 65(6): 840–7.
7. Ahn Y, Bymes J, Harrington W, Cayer M, Smith D, Brunskill D, Pall M. The treatment of idiopathic thrombocytopenia with Vinblastine-loaded platelets. N Engl J Med 1998;298:1101-7.
8. Patil S, Shetty S, Bhide R, Narayanan S. Evaluation of Platelet Augmentation Activity of Carica papaya Leaf Aqueous Extract in Rats. Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry 2013;1:57-60.
9. Tham CS, Chakravarthi S, Haleagrahara N, Alwis RD. Morphological study of bone marrow to assess the effects of lead acetate onhaemopoiesis and aplasia and the ameliorating role of Carica papaya extract. Exp Ther Med 2013;5:648-52.
10. Subenthiran S, Choon TC, Cheong KC, Thayan R, Teck MB, Muniandy PK et.al. Carica papaya leaves juice significantly accelerates the rate of increase in platelet count among patients with dengue fever and dengue haemorrhagic fever. Evidence-Based
Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2013; Article ID 616737: 1-7. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/616737
Cite this article as: Deepak BSR, Girish KJ, Jadhav LL. Effect of papaya leaf juice on platelet and WBC count in dengue fever: a case report. Journal of Ayurveda and Holistic Medicine. 2013;1(3):43-46.Story highlights Incident similar to Air France crash in Toronto in 2005 -- all survived
Investigation into Asiana crash will look at onboard training
Onus is also on passengers to understand and follow safety procedures
The attention into the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 is now shifting to two areas.
One, why did the incident happen? They will be looking at things like instrument landing systems, the glide slope, the approach of the Boeing 777, the way the pilot flew the aircraft and other key aspects.
Secondly, they will be looking at the onboard training to get the passengers off as fast as they can.
Video from passengers after the crash landing show slides deployed and people exiting well before fire really took hold of the aircraft.
Asiana have confirmed there were 291 passengers plus 16 cabin crew onboard flight OZ214. Looking at video of the burned out wreckage and of smoke and fire soon after the crash, some may be surprised the casualty figures are so low considering there were more than 300 onboard.
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This is very reminiscent of an incident in Toronto in August, 2005 when an Air France plane crashed. Although there was a large fire in that crash, all 309 passengers and crew on the Airbus A340 managed to get off.
Without ignoring the casualty figures from the San Francisco incident, it shows that aircraft crashes like this are proving to be survivable incidents provided there is adequate crew training and an awareness of passengers to know what to do when there is an emergency.
And those key things: Know where your exit is, know to leave your belongings behind and exit the plane quickly and orderly because that is the way planes are designed.
The B777 aircraft is built so that everybody can get off the plane within 90 seconds even if half the doors are inoperable.
And they work on that basis because as you can see in the Asiana incident, one side of the aircraft is a lot more damaged than the other -- and appears to be the main area of the fire -- so you wouldn't want to open the doors on that side.
Importantly, there is an onus on passengers -- know where the emergency exits are, don't try and take your belongings with you and take notice of and follow crew instructions and directions.
If you look at the image to the left you can see several passengers with bags -- one passenger with a carry-on roller case. Grabbing your carry-on luggage does not assist a speedy evacuation and observations like these will form part of a thorough safety investigation.
In this image from David Eun, a passenger on Asiana Airlines Flight 214, you can see passengers disembarking from the plane via the inflatable slides.
If there is one thing we all can take away from a tragic incident like this, it is not to ignore those important flight safety briefings at the start of each flight we take. When I fly, I always take note of where my nearest exit is, whether it is three or four or whatever rows away.
Those briefings exist for a reason. We've seen as well in recent years several airlines, such as Air New Zealand, add an entertainment value to their safety videos, in part to try and make sure more passengers watch them.
An incident like the Asiana crash should really reinforce the value of being aware of safety and emergency procedures.
Most of the planes we fly today are designed so passengers can get out within 90 seconds in an emergency. That is what we have seen in the case with this incident in San Francisco. And while flight crew training is vital, so too are the actions of passengers.The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee reportedly has approved legislation allowing the buying and selling of marijuana.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee has approved legislation allowing the buying and selling of marijuana, according to media reports.
“In a surprise move that supporters hailed as a historic victory, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee approved legislation Wednesday that would make it legal to buy and sell marijuana in the state,” The Houston Chronicle reported on Wednesday.
The support for House Bill 2165 came as a result of two Republicans joining the panel‘s three Democrats, giving the bill a 5-2 victory.
The proposal makes Texas the fifth US state to approve marijuana for recreational purposes, but is unlikely it will become a law in this year’s legislative session, local media said.
© Photo : Bob Pearson for Sputnik US Study Concludes Marijuana Can Kill Cancer Cells
This move came two days after the same panel voted 4-2 to decriminalize marijuana, making it the first time ever such a piece of legislation was approved by a Texas legislative committee.
The final vote, local media said, came after the committee made clear marijuana should still be illegal for minors to consume, except with parental guidance.
The legislation now moves to the state House floor calendar, local media added.
On April 15, 2015, US legislators introduced the Compassionate Access Act, which would make medical marijuana treatments available for patients, including sick children.SILVER SPRING, Maryland-- The Rev. Jeffrey O. Thames Sr. can pinpoint the exact moment his view of his adopted hometown started to change. During a 2014 run for a county councilman position, he spoke at a public forum downtown. Thames, who is black, was running against two white men.
After the event, a white man casually walked up to Thames. "We'll never vote for a black boy when we have a white man to choose from," Thames recalled the man saying.
Thames didn't win the election.
"It opened my eyes to let me know there was undercurrent of racism in Montgomery County that we thought was done away with," Thames told International Business Times on a recent afternoon. The 38-year-old now works as an activist and is the president of Hope Restored, a non-profit organization that works with the homeless, the formerly incarcerated and victims of hate crimes, among others.
Silver Spring, Maryland, one of the United States' most diverse towns, is a vision of what many people imagine America might look in the future. With rapidly shifting demographics and a large immigrant community, the town nestled firmly in the so-called liberal bubble has largely embraced its diversity. But since the election of Donald Trump — who is slated to officially take over the presidency Friday during an inauguration ceremony in D.C., some six miles away, there are new concerns that old resentments over race and culture are bubbling to the surface.
Thames described a need to come together for action, which could include working with the new administration.
"We have to adjust," he said. "Conversations left undone can cause a lot of people to hurt."
Photo: Tim Marcin/IBT
Silver Spring has transformed in recent years, rife with what sociologists call "global neighborhoods," meaning there is representation from just about every spot on the globe. Ethnic minorities make up the majority of the population, and from the 2000 Census to the 2010 census, the Hispanic population alone increased some 17 percent. The latest Census data showed the town of some 70,000 is about 46 percent white, 28 percent black or African-American, 26 percent Hispanic or Latino, 8 percent Asian and 13 percent "some other race." There's an especially large Ethiopian population in town and many recent immigrants from Central America.
Wander through Silver Spring's downtown and its diversity is clear. If you're hungry, the main strip has Ethiopian food, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Thai, Jamaican, and, of course, ubiquitous chains like Red Lobster or upscale bars serving popular farm-to-table style cuisine. Silver Spring was rated the fourth-most diverse city in the country in a Wallethub study, alongside a handful of other Montgomery County cities that made the list.
The Rev. Robert Harvey said he's seen Silver Spring grow increasingly more diverse in his decade at the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour. He said some 80 percent of his congregation are immigrants and at any given service about 52 countries are represented. That's why Harvey felt particularly targeted when his church was the subject of a hate crime.
In November, a few days after the election, the church's Spanish-language banner was slashed, the words "Trump Nation, Whites Only" scrawled on it. The same message was painted on a memorial wall outside the church. In the wake of a stunning election, the news spread slowly throughout the Mid-Atlantic, then to the national scene, then eventually internationally, with a BBC News reporter calling the reverend for comment at one point.
Harvey told IBT Trump's campaign played on people's "worst fears and sins" and that the U.S.' next president "foments that racial hatred." Trump made frequent controversial statements about immigrants, promoted a ban on Muslims entering the country and was embraced by the so-called alt-right, which is popular among white nationalists and neo-Nazis. In Montgomery County, meanwhile, 76 percent of the population voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the liberal, pro-immigrant candidate. But even a diverse, left-leaning enclave is not without hatred.
"Racism affects all of us. It's a condition of the human heart," Harvey said, speaking in the offices of the church.
Photo: Tim Marcin/IBT
Two days after the election, just before his church was vandalized, Harvey said he saw an older Latina woman crossing the road outside of Our Saviour near a store frequented by the immigrant population. Two "big white guys" were haranguing her, Harvey said, yelling: "This is Trump nation, you need to go back to Mexico." Not dressed in his collar, he scared the men off, telling them to stop, while reaching for his phone to call 911.
Two Muslim women who saw the scene play out told Harvey, "It's almost as if they were positioned there to target anyone who didn't look like them." Soon after, the church was vandalized.
The hate crime brought a flood of support: A new, pro-immigrant banner appeared on the lawn, a local Muslim community center sent some 550 supportive cards signed by children and other synagogues/churches have planned interfaith events and services. But many parishioners are frightened and Harvey knows there's longstanding issues resurfacing they have to tackle. Over the past decade, as the population of Silver Spring changed, and his church's membership shifted in lockstep, Harvey saw how folks can react, even in a town that has long taken pride in diversity. A woman, who was a member of the church at the time, asked him, "Robert what are you going to do to attract more white people?"
"What do you say to a question that dumb?" Harvey said. He told her that Jesus preached acceptance. The woman and her family eventually left the church.
Photo: Tim Marcin/IBT
Other residents have also described fear and violence since Trump's victory. Seble Lemme, a 42-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who cooks at Lucy Ethiopian Restaurant in downtown Silver Spring, said, "to be honest, people are afraid."
"I'm scared too, but I'm not scared the way people get crazy," she said, citing her faith in God.
She came to Silver Spring some two decades ago and believes God can turn pain into "a good hurt." All of her family voted for Clinton, but she preached being patient.
Students in local high schools, meanwhile, have spoken out against Trump ahead of the inauguration. Hundreds of children in Montgomery County schools, including Silver Spring's Montgomery Blair High School, staged a post-election walkout, chanting "no hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here."
Derek Turner, spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools, told IBT they were "closely monitoring" the local increase in hate crimes. "Students should feel safe and welcome at our schools … without fear," Turner said.
Matt Braddock, a 46-year-old pastor at the Christ Congregational Church, has used his Silver Spring house of worship as a clearinghouse of sorts for folks to report hate incidents. He told IBT there has been a sharp uptick after the election, including local schools seeing drawings of swastikas and threats to African Americans. The night of the election, a banner at his church reading "Black Lives Matter," was defaced. It was one of the first instances of a number of similar incidents in the immediate aftermath of the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center counting nearly 900 incidences of hateful harassment in the ten days after Nov. 8.
Braddock's church has a largely white congregation and has long promoted a progressive agenda, including acceptance for the LGBT community. Although the sign had been defaced before, the election night vandalism of the sign felt different, like "a desecration," Braddock said. It felt like folks with simmering resentments now had permission to act out. Like Harvey, Braddock saw an outpouring of support from some locals. To him, that may be the answer ahead of a Trump administration.
"I'm becoming more and more convinced that our response to national events has to be more local," Braddock said, calling for an increase in dialogue and reaching out to folks who need to be protected.
Photo: Tim Marcin/IBT
County Councilmember George Leventhal told IBT there was only so much he could do as a local elected official under Trump, whom he slammed for stoking hatred.
"We are in a time of backlash. People of good will need to stand up," he said. "I've been to a lot of meetings, seeing a lot of earnest liberals looking for communities to protect."
Of course, there are others who are more ambivalent. Stephen Singh, a 37-year-old whose family came to Silver Spring from Guyana when he was 10, said he was glad Trump won, but he didn't vote in the election. Speaking with the distinct accent found only in the U.S.' Mid-Atlantic region, he said didn't like Clinton, and all the racial stuff would "blow over."
"Do American stuff... live your routine," he said. "I don't see people looking at me differently."
As Kris Strkna walked Thursday along one of Silver Spring's main streets downtown, surrounded by chains like Starbucks and Potbelly, the 52-year-old mother was less positive, concerned by the recent local incidents. It was just one day before Trump would become president and her worry was audible, her tone flat and tired.
"I hope that Americans' better nature will prevail," she said.Why Thor Is Using Guns In Ragnarok, According To The Director By Corey Chichizola Random Article Blend This past weekend was a major one for the TV and film world. San Diego Comic-Con ran for days at a time, providing new footage and trailers from a variety of highly anticipated projects like The Walking Dead and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The latter debuted a handful of new information, but one of the most thrilling was the new trailer for Thor: Ragnarok. Thor's threequel looks like a game changer for the franchise, especially regarding the limitations of the title character's superpowers. One particularly popular shot from the trailer features Loki and Thor shooting up some enemies with some futuristic guns, and now director Taika Waititi has explained the reasoning for this choice: Thor needs to use whatever he can without Mjolnir. Following the release of Thor: Ragnarok's comic-con trailer, Taika Waititi spoke to IGN about the new footage. Regarding Thor's brandishing of a space gun, he said: I think we really wanted to challenge Thor in this film. He's challenged more than in any of the other films. He loses the hammer, which is the source of his power, and he's really on the back foot most of the film. We didn't want him to be able to utilize magic, or to have Loki's magic. We didn't want him to have too many advantages. He had to really find his way out of this predicament using his brain and using his friends. This certainly make sense, and makes me even more excited to see Thor: Ragnarok when it hits theaters in a few months. One of the most powerful Avengers will be up shit's creek without a hammer, and it's going to bring a much different type of action sequences to the table. The events of Thor: Ragnarok will see the titular hero stripped of everything that previously made him a god. During an early confrontation with Cate Blanchett's Hela, the new villainess destroys his hammer, and therefore his access to the electrical powers that made him so powerful. From there, he's kidnapped by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and trapped on Sakaar to battle in an intergalactic colosseum. In order to escape the planet and save Asgard from Hela's destruction, he'll have to assemble a motley crew of fighters to battle themselves off of Sakaar- and that includes a fair amount of gun toting by all. It should be interesting to see how Thor's journey in Ragnarok affects his character development moving into Avengers: Infinity War. He'll presumably be much closer to Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/Hulk after their team up, and he'll also be bringing Valkyrie into the fold. But with Thanos soon arriving on Earth to claim the Infinity Stones, the Avengers and Guardians are going to need all the help they can get to save the planet. Maybe this will even include Loki. Thor: Ragnarok will arrive in theaters on November 3, 2017. In the meantime, check out our 2017 release list to plan your next trip to the movies. Watch The Avengers: Infinity War Cast Go Nuts With Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topMarcus Morris was told that police they had taken his VW Polo because the open window - which he had accidentally left down - meant the vehicle was at risk of theft.
Mr Morris, 25, had parked the car near to Leeds city centre as he went for a job interview but returned an hour-and-a-half later to find it had gone.
He contacted West Yorkshire Police believing it had been stolen but was told they had removed it to protect it from thieves.
"So what if I had left my window open? If anything had been taken then it'd have been my own fault."
Police told him a window had been left open and a CD wallet was in the back of the car. The vehicle had been taken to a storage facility.
When Mr Morris collected his car the next morning he was handed a bill for £150. "I'm not working at the moment and that's a lot of money for me. It's money I don't think I should have had to pay," he said.
West Yorkshire Police said it made no apology for taking action. Chief Insp Elizabeth Belton said: "Officers regularly patrol our communities looking for opportunities to prevent crime, which is exactly what has happened on this occasion.
"The vehicle was left insecure with valuables on show in an area with significant levels of car crime and we were unable to locate the owner.
"We make absolutely no apology whatsoever for the officer's actions, which have prevented this vehicle becoming a target for thieves. Had a thief got there first it would have been a very different story.
"We need people to take responsibility for their own property and take any valuables with them when they park up. We hope Mr Morris's story will serve as a reminder."
The charges made for the recovery and storage of vehicles are set nationally by the Government. Mr Morris confirmed he is taking legal advice in an attempt to recover the cost.Report: Eto'o could leave Samp
By Football Italia staff
There are sensational reports that Samuel Eto’o could be set to tear up his Sampdoria contract, just six days after signing.
The former Everton striker is believed to have walked out of training today, refusing to take part in a double training session.
Coach Sinisa Mihajlovic imposed the double workout as punishment for his team’s display in a 5-1 defeat to Torino yesterday.
Now, Calciomercato is reporting that the Blucerchiati are desperately seeking to patch things up between Coach and player, otherwise Eto’o’s contract will be terminated with immediate effect.
The 33-year-old only officially joined the port city side last Tuesday.
That would mean the Cameroonian couldn’t sign for anyone else until the summer, having played for Everton already, and made his Samp debut yesterday.
image via @sampdoriaWhen it comes to recycling, Sweden is incredibly successful. Just four percent of household waste in Sweden goes into landfills. The rest winds up either recycled or used as fuel in waste-to-energy power plants.
Burning the garbage in the incinerators generates 20 percent of Sweden’s district heating, a system of distributing heat by pumping heated water into pipes through residential and commercial buildings. It also provides electricity for a quarter of a million homes.
According to Swedish Waste Management, Sweden recovers the most energy from each ton of waste in the waste to energy plants, and energy recovery from waste incineration has increased dramatically just over the last few years.
The problem is, Sweden’s waste recycling program is too successful.
Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency said the country is producing much less burnable waste than it needs.
“We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration,” Ostlund said.
However, they’ve recently found a solution.
Sweden has recently begun to import about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the rest of Europe per year to use in its power plants. The majority of the imported waste comes from neighboring Norway because it’s more expensive to burn the trash there and cheaper for the Norwegians to simply export their waste to Sweden.
In the arrangement, Norway pays Sweden to take the waste off their hands and Sweden also gets electricity and heat. But dioxins in the ashes of the waste byproduct are a serious environmental pollutant. Ostlund explained that there are also heavy metals captured within the ash that need to be landfilled. Those ashes are then exported to Norway.
This arrangement works particularly |
to understand and comprehend it better. But is it not, after all, reality, and won’t it one day become better than worse? To many it would no doubt appear foolish and superstitious to believe in any improvement for the better. Sometimes in winter it’s so bitterly cold that one says, it’s simply too cold, what do I care whether summer comes, the bad outweighs the good. But whether we like it or not, an end finally comes to the hard frost, and one fine morning the wind has turned and we have a thaw. Comparing the natural state of the weather with our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to variables and change, I still have some hope that it can improve.
Nearly a year elapses until the brothers reconnect — the longest break in their lifetime of letters and loving support — during which time Van Gogh sinks into a state of destitution and despair. On June 24 of the next year, he finally reaches out to Theo upon receiving 50 francs from him — around $200 in today’s money — which the aspiring artist accepts “certainly reluctantly, certainly with a rather melancholy feeling.” Indeed, he attests to the creative value of melancholy and echoes Nietzsche’s belief in the spiritual benefits of suffering as he writes to Theo:
What moulting is to birds, the time when they change their feathers, that’s adversity or misfortune, hard times, for us human beings. One may remain in this period of moulting, one may also come out of it renewed, but it’s not to be done in public, however; it’s scarcely entertaining, it’s not cheerful, so it’s a matter of making oneself scarce. […] Instead of giving way to despair, I took the way of active melancholy as long as I had strength for activity, or in other words, I preferred the melancholy that hopes and aspires and searches to the one that despairs, mournful and stagnant.
Considering how he adapted to this state of “active melancholy” as he immersed himself in making art, Van Gogh makes a wonderfully self-aware remark about his notorious unkept appearance:
The man who is absorbed in all that is sometimes shocking, to others, and without wishing to, offends to a greater or lesser degree against certain forms and customs of social convention. It’s a pity, though, when people take that in bad part. For example, you well know that I’ve frequently neglected my appearance, I admit it, and I admit that it’s shocking. But look, money troubles and poverty have something to do with it, and then a profound discouragement also has something to do with it, and then it’s sometimes a good means of ensuring for oneself the solitude needed to be able to go somewhat more deeply into this or that field of study with which one is preoccupied.
Reflecting on having spent the past five years “more or less without a position, wandering hither and thither,” Van Gogh revisits the question of finding his purpose. In a sentiment reminiscent of Picasso’s remark that “to know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing,” he offers a magnificent counterpoint to the myth that so frequently paralyzes people, especially young people, who set out to live a life of purpose — the idea that the path must reveal itself before you embark upon it, that you must “find yourself” before you begin your creative journey. Van Gogh writes:
On the road that I’m on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don’t study, if I don’t keep on trying, then I’m lost, then woe betide me. That’s how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that’s what’s needed. But what’s your ultimate goal, you’ll say. The goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.
Echoing Kierkegaard’s admonition that most people succumb to conformity by seeking out “a solid position in life” — that is, a humdrum jobby job — Van Gogh adds wryly:
One of the reasons why I’m now without a position, why I’ve been without a position for years, it’s quite simply because I have different ideas from these gentlemen who give positions to individuals who think like them.
Countering his brother’s accusation that he has changed a great deal since their youthful walks together, Van Gogh argues that merely his circumstances changed, while his innermost values only deepened as he immersed himself more fully in his two great loves, art and literature:
What has changed is that my life was less difficult then and my future less dark, but as far as my inner self, as far as my way of seeing and thinking are concerned, they haven’t changed. But if in fact there were a change, it’s that now I think and I believe and I love more seriously what then, too, I already thought, I believed and I loved. […] If you now can forgive a man for going more deeply into paintings, admit also that the love of books is as holy as that of Rembrandt, and I even think that the two complement each other.
He returns to the heart of the matter — the anguish of not having settled into his sense of purpose:
In my unbelief I’m a believer, in a way, and though having changed I am the same, and my torment is none other than this, what could I be good for, couldn’t I serve and be useful in some way, how could I come to know more thoroughly, and go more deeply into this subject or that? Do you see, it continually torments me, and then you feel a prisoner in penury, excluded from participating in this work or that, and such and such necessary things are beyond your reach. Because of that, you’re not without melancholy, and you feel emptiness where there could be friendship and high and serious affections, and you feel a terrible discouragement gnawing at your psychic energy itself, and fate seems able to put a barrier against the instincts for affection, or a tide of revulsion that overcomes you. And then you say, How long, O Lord! Well, then, what can I say; does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way. So now what are we to do, keep this fire alive inside, have salt in ourselves, wait patiently, but with how much impatience, await the hour, I say, when whoever wants to, will come and sit down there, will stay there, for all I know?
And yet as cut off from the capacity for affection as he may feel, Van Gogh nonetheless believes that love is the only conduit to connecting with one’s purpose, with divinity itself:
I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing [the divine] is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.
Remarking on having benefited from “the free course at the great university of poverty,” Van Gogh envisions finding his purpose after a long period of floundering:
One who has been rolling along for ages as if tossed on a stormy sea arrives at his destination at last; one who has seemed good for nothing, incapable of filling any position, any role, finds one in the end, and, active and capable of action, shows himself entirely differently from what he had seemed at first sight.
Once again, he appeals to his brother to see him as “something other than some sort of idler” and to learn to distinguish between the two types of idling, the destructive and the constructive:
There are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast. There’s the one who’s an idler through laziness and weakness of character, through the baseness of his nature… Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a great desire for action, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t’ always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a raison d’être! I know that I could be a quite different man! For what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There’s something within me, so what is it! That’s an entirely different idler.
Bleeding from Van Gogh’s words is the hope that his brother would see him not as the first but as the second kind of “idler” — a hope he amplifies with a moving metaphor in closing the lengthy letter, one that speaks with harrowing elegance to the hastiness with which we tend to judge others and to mistake their circumstances for their capabilities:
In the springtime a bird in a cage knows very well that there’s something he’d be good for; he feels very clearly that there’s something to be done but he can’t do it; what it is he can’t clearly remember,and he has vague ideas and says to himself, “the others are building their nests and making their little ones and raising the brood,” and he bangs his head against the bars of his cage. And then the cage stays there and the bird is mad with suffering. “Look, there’s an idler,” says another passing bird — that fellow’s a sort of man of leisure. And yet the prisoner lives and doesn’t die; nothing of what’s going on within shows outside, he’s in good health, he’s rather cheerful in the sunshine. But then comes the season of migration. A bout of melancholy — but, say the children who look after him, he’s got everything that he needs in his cage, after all — but he looks at the sky outside, heavy with storm clouds, and within himself feels a rebellion against fate. I’m in a cage, I’m in a cage, and so I lack for nothing, you fools! Me, I have everything I need! Ah, for pity’s sake, freedom, to be a bird like other birds! An idle man like that resembles an idle bird like that. […] You may not always be able to say what it is that confines, that immures, that seems to bury, and yet you feel [the] bars…
He concludes by returning to the ennobling, liberating nature of close relationships:
You know, what makes the prison disappear is very deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn’t have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.
That summer, Vincent resolved to pursue art as his lifelong endeavor. It was Theo who first urged him to turn art into a career, and he soon became Van Gogh’s greatest champion and most selfless supporter — one of creative history’s greatest unsung sidekicks. Despite his well-documented and ultimately fatal struggle with mental illness, Van Gogh wrote frequently of the sublime joy and immense fulfillment he found in art — a sense of purpose without which his life would have been undoubtedly grimmer and quite possibly even shorter, and creative culture vastly impoverished.
Ever Yours: The Essential Letters is a revelatory read in its hefty totality, brimming with insights into the rich and turbulent inner life of one of humanity’s greatest creative luminaries. Complement it with Vincent’s letters to Theo on art and the power of love, then marvel at how his greatest masterpiece explains the scientific mysteries of fluid dynamics.After FBI Director James Comey announced last Friday in a letter to Congress that he had revived his investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server, Democrats went on the attack. Since then, Americans have witnessed one of the great displays of political hypocrisy in modern history.
Comey told lawmakers that "emails that appear to be pertinent" to the investigation of Clinton's personal email server were discovered while separately investigating former Congressman Anthony Weiner for reportedly exchanging sexually explicit photos with an underage girl.
For those who don't know, Weiner happens to be the now-estranged husband of top Hillary Clinton aide and confidante Huma Abedin. The New York Times has reported that the FBI is combing through tens of thousands of emails found on private devices in the Weiner household.
So why are the Democrats so angry? They don't like that Comey made the announcement just 11 days before the election. Fair enough.
But they sang a different song in July when Comey closed down the investigation by prematurely declaring he would not bring charges in the case. It took away a major campaign issue for Clinton, clearing the way for her current lead over Donald Trump in most polls.
The Democrats' anger now is more than just a bit hypocritical.
To start with, as has been noted elsewhere, Hillary Clinton and n-presidential candidate Bill Clinton openly gloated back in 1992 when Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh indicted President Reagan's Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
Walsh had become obsessed with the idea that then-President George H.W. Bush, while serving as Reagan's vice president, had known about the Iran-Contra arms deal. But he couldn't prove it.
So he indicted Weinberger no doubt to get him to finger Bush. He didn't. The indictment was eventually thrown out. But some believe the last-minute indictment cost Bush, who had been gaining in the polls, the election.
So how did Bill and Hillary Clinton respond to Walsh's obvious political move?
As PowerLine blogger Paul Mirengoff wrote: "The Clintons seized on the new indictment, howling about a 'culture of corruption' that supposedly pervaded the administration. Bush's poll numbers declined and Bill Clinton won the election."
Hypocrisy? Nah.
Now, as the scandal unravels, we've learned that Hillary Clinton, her top aides, campaign officials and even Barack Obama lied about Clinton's illicit unsecured email server -- and may have taken part in a cover-up that included the destruction of evidence material to the federal investigation.
Yet, here's what Hillary's campaign had to say about Comey back in July, when he announced that he would not recommend charges in the case.
"Throughout his long career in law enforcement, the independence of FBI chief James Comey has rarely been questioned," the Clinton campaign said in a statement.
"Comey is a well-respected Republican who served as George W. Bush's Deputy Attorney General. And when President Obama tapped him to serve as Director of the FBI, he was confirmed by a 93-1 vote."
Quite a difference from just last weekend, when Democratic operatives and Hillary's Big Media allies were calling Comey a "threat to democracy" and saying the election was "rigged."
Also last July, Clinton Press Secretary Brian Fallon ripped into Republicans for daring to criticize Comey's decision not to press criminal charges against Hillary in the middle of an election.
In an interview on CNN's "Situation Room," Fallon said: "I think it is a bad look for House Republicans to be second-guessing a prosecutor who is a registered Republican, No. 2 official at the Justice Department under George Bush and was even deputy council on the committee investigating the Clintons in the 1990s."
OK. But on Sunday, Fallon had changed his tune, calling Comey's move last week "an undisputed violation of protocol."
But perhaps worst hypocrites of all were Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Attorney General Eric Holder.
ABC News, citing sources in the FBI, said that Lynch and other Department of Justice officials made it "abundantly clear" to Comey that they didn't want him to inform Congress that he had restarted his investigation, citing Justice protocols for not interfering with an election.
But Lynch herself had "interfered" by pushing Comey to shut down his investigation last summer, before it was finished. In doing so, she inserted Justice directly into the middle of a presidential campaign.
"No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision," an FBI source told Fox News, speaking on condition of anonymity. Clearly, Lynch wants to keep her job.
Then there's Holder, who in a letter to the Washington Post, said Justice officials need to "exercise heightened restraint near the time of a primary or general election."
This is laughable. He's actually right -- officials shouldn't interfere in elections.
But under Holder the Justice Department became more politicized than it has ever been before, and used his department's enormous resources to push a leftist, class-warfare legal agenda -- and not during elections, but all the time.
The point is, the Democrats' hypocrisy on this is never-ending. But they could have avoided all this by nominating someone less ethically-challenged than Hillary Clinton to be the next president.
RELATED:
Clinton Vs. Trump: IBD/TIPP Presidential Election Tracking Poll
What's The Latest News On The Hillary Clinton Email Scandal?McGill University researchers have chemically imprinted polymer particles with DNA strands – a technique that could lead to new materials for applications ranging from biomedicine to the promising field of “soft robotics.”
In a study published in Nature Chemistry, the researchers describe a method to create asymmetrical polymer particles that bind together in a spatially defined manner, the way that atoms come together to make molecules.
Although polymers are used in everything from clothing and food packaging to 3D printing and electronics, most self-assembled polymer structures have been limited to symmetrical forms such as spherical or cylindrical shapes. Recently, however, scientists have focused on creating non-symmetrical polymer structures -- for example ‘Janus’ particles with two different ‘faces’ -- and they are starting to discover exciting new applications for these materials. One example: robotics made with soft, flexible structures that can change shape in response to external stimuli.
The method described in the Nature Chemistry paper “introduces a programmable level of organization that is currently difficult to attain in polymer chemistry,” says McGill Chemistry professor Hanadi Sleiman, senior author of the study. “Chemically copying the information contained in DNA nanostructures offers a powerful solution to the problem of size, shape and directional control for polymeric materials.”
Using DNA cages as molds
The new study builds on a technique developed in 2013 by Sleiman’s research group to make nanoscale “cages” from strands of DNA, and stuff them with lipid-like polymer chains that fold together into a ball-shaped particle that can contain cargo such as drug molecules.
To take that nano-engineering feat a step further, Sleiman and her PhD student Tuan Trinh teamed up with colleagues at the University of Vermont and Texas A&M University at Qatar. Together, the researchers developed a method to imprint the polymer ball with DNA strands arranged in pre-designed orientations. The cages can then be undone, leaving behind DNA-imprinted polymer particles capable of self-assembling – much like DNA, itself – in pre-designed patterns. Because the DNA cages are used as a ‘mold’ to build the polymer particle, the particle size and number of molecular units in the polymer can be precisely controlled, says Sleiman, who holds the Canada Research Chair in DNA Nanoscience.
The asymmetrical polymer structures could be used eventually in a range of applications, the researchers say. One potential example: multi-compartment polymer particles, with each compartment encapsulating a different drug that could be delivered using different stimuli at different times. Another possibility: porous membranes that are asymmetric, so they direct molecules along specific paths to separate then.
------------------------------------------------
Funding for the research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Centre for Self-Assembled Chemical Structures, the Qatar Research Foundation, and the Canada Research Chairs Program.
“DNA-imprinted polymer nanoparticles with monodispersity and prescribed DNA-strand patterns,” Tuan Trinh et al, Nature Chemistry, published online Dec. 4, 2017
https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.2893
Video: Researchers at McGill University, the University of Vermont and Texas A&M University in Qatar have developed a method to chemically imprint polymer particles with DNA strands. This approach could lead to new materials for applications ranging from biomedicine to “soft robotics.” This computer simulation shows the first step of this process, in which the polymer chains associate together and fold inside the DNA cage.
CREDIT: The Li Research Group/University of Vermont
Contact:
Prof. Hanadi Sleiman
McGill University, Department of Chemistry
hanadi.sleiman [at] mcgill.ca
Chris Chipello
Media Relations Office
514-398-4201
christopher.chipello [at] mcgill.ca
https://mcgill.ca/newsroom/
http://twitter.com/McGillUL.A. full of roads to ruin for cars
The city gives its road network an average grade of C. But a Times analysis finds wide disparities, and they're not driven by wealth or political power.
The streets in the newer development of Playa Vista, which the city's database gives the highest ranking with an average grade of B, scored 80% higher than those in Silver Lake, which ranks among the worst with a D-minus average.
Despite the city's best efforts to keep up with the constant flood of road repairs, Los Angeles is a city divided — by its potholes, cracks and ruts.
But on South Seabluff Drive in Playa Vista the ride is smooth, the pavement is black and you can smell the fresh asphalt.
The differences are not driven by wealth or political power. In fact, some of the poorest parts of the city have some of the best roads.
The heart of the problem is aging streets, heavy traffic, undulating terrain and the sheer size of the network. The streets in the poorest shape tend to be in hillside neighborhoods, such as the Hollywood Hills, Mount Washington, Los Feliz and Bel-Air.
But layered on top of those problems is a street repair strategy that bypasses the worst streets in favor of preserving salvageable ones. Street officials have also made a political decision to bring the overall grade of roads in each City Council district to the same level.
For Angelenos waiting for their street to be rebuilt, abandon all hope: There is a 60-year backlog of failed streets — meaning residents might not see them fixed in their lifetimes.
"If you ask people 'How many of you have been a victim of crime today?' nobody will raise their hand," said Rusty Millar, a Silver Lake Neighborhood Council representative. "If you ask 'How many of you have been a victim of bad streets and traffic?,' everybody will raise their hand."
::
With its stately homes and manicured lawns, Hancock Park is one of the wealthiest areas in L.A. and considered one of the city's historical gems. But that hasn't helped get its mostly ancient concrete streets repaired: The neighborhood has an overall D-minus grade.
Hancock Park residents Michael and Ruth Steinberger live on Rimpau Boulevard, which was graded F when last inspected. They have complained to the city that their street has a severe rut at the intersection with 3rd Street that has scraped the undercarriage of their Mercedes countless times.
"It ruins every car," Ruth Steinberger said. "And God forbid you don't know about it and you are coming in at normal speeds — you can get hurt."
After decades of neglect, Los Angeles is trying to play catch-up in places like Hancock Park.
It's a Herculean task, given the size of L.A.'s street network — the largest municipal system in the country with 6,500 miles of paved roadway. Factor the number of lanes into the equation and there are enough miles of road in the city to build a 10-lane freeway from here to New York City.
The average grade of the city's roads is a C. The network scores lower than all 10 of the most populous counties in the state, according to city and state data.Famous movie quotes get repeated so often that, through a process of cultural telephone, they often become altered and misremembered. It can even be the misquotes, not the quotes themselves, that become ingrained in popular culture. At least three of the most famous Star Wars movie quotes are not actually what you think.
3. "May the Force Be With You."
Plenty of people have said "may the Force be with you" in the Star Wars movies. The quote, however, is frequently misattributed to Obi-Wan Kenobi in "A New Hope." Here's what Obi-Wan does say:
"The Force will be with you...always."
"Luke, the Force will be with you."
"Use the Force, Luke."
"Remember, the Force will be with you always."
"May the Force be with you," on the other hand, is first uttered by General Dodonna before the Death Star battle in "A New Hope." Han Solo repeats it in the next scene, and it's this moment—a suggestion of the bond with Luke that's snuck up on Han, coming right on the heels of Han's selfish refusal to help the Alliance—that made the line particularly memorable.
Many years later, from a production point of view, Obi-Wan does finally say "may the Force be with you" to Anakin in both "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith." Because people have been attributing the quote to him since 1977, thinking it came from "Episode IV," it still counts as a famous misquote.
2. "I'd Rather Kiss a Wookiee!"
Han and Leia's love/hate relationship in "The Empire Strikes Back" produced quite a few great one-liners, not the least of which is the iconic "I love you"/"I know." Leia's snarky response when Han accuses her of having feelings for him—"I'd rather kiss a Wookiee"—is one that frequently appears on lists of favorite Star Wars quotes. Here's the actual exchange:
Han Solo: "Afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"
Princess Leia: "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee."
Han Solo: "I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss."
Han's response is also often misquoted as "He [Chewbacca] could use a good kiss!" Because Chewie's been flying with Han for years and rarely sees his wife, that's probably true as well.
1. "Luke, I Am Your Father."
The Darth Vader reveal quote is probably the most famous line in all the Star Wars films—that iconic moment when Vader tells Luke the truth about his family history. The exchange goes like this:
Darth Vader: "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."
Luke Skywalker: "He told me enough! He told me you killed him!"
Darth Vader: "No. I am your father."
"Luke" probably snuck into the real quote because, taken out of context, "No. I am your father" is not that impactful or recognizable. "Luke, I am your father," on the other hand, is immediately obvious as a line from Star Wars (even if you're not doing the voice, though this line is usually quoted because people want to try out their impersonation of Darth Vader). As a result, the "Luke" version has become one of the most memorable movie misquotes of all time.Oakland: La Idea squatted social center served eviction order by La Idea
Monday Jun 1st, 2015 6:08 PM
A summary of recent events at La Idea
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page: <video style="width: 444px;" data-aspect-ratio="1.2219959266802" preload="none" poster="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/06/01/laideainfinite.3gp_600_.png" controls><source src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/06/01/laideainfinite.3gp_preview_.mp4" type="video/mp4" /><a class="video" href="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/06/01/laideainfinite.3gp" title="download video: laideainfinite.3gp"><br /><span class="video-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/06/01/laideainfinite.3gp_600_.png" border="0" /></span><br /></a></video>
On May 29th, 2015, an eviction order was served to La Idea, a squatted social center near the Dimond District of Oakland. In two weeks, the Alameda County Sheriff will put the house on its list of upcoming evictions and will dispatch an armored personnel carrier and several armed men to the house to clear everyone out at gunpoint. In this regard, La Idea is not exceptional and thousands of people have been evicted in the same manner all over Oakland. It is simply the normal functioning of capitalism.
Since the building was squatted in June of 2013, real estate prices have gone up dramatically. Where the house was once valued at $300,000 in 2011, it is now valued at almost $600,000. After the building was squatted, the legal owner was contacted and eventually gave verbal permission for people to live there, provided they clean up anything considered to be 'blight' by the City of Oakland. Throughout July 2013, the legal owner of the building stopped by every-other-day to check on the clean up. In the beginning of August, the legal owner showed up in his truck for the last time. After that, he did not attempt to reach any of the residents. Contact with the legal owner was only kept up by running into him on the streets of the Dimond District.
During one of his visits to the house, he observed a Black Panther chant written on the wall of the second unit. The chant went, “the revolution has come---off the pigs!---time to pick up the gun---off the pigs!---no more brothers in jail---off the pigs!---the pigs are gonna catch hell---off the pigs!” Upon seeing this chant written in red upon the wall, the legal owner expressed his approval and proceeded to monologue about how the US was a police state that we were all trapped inside. Later he would explain how the 60s and 70s were the best time of his life and how he spent those years in Oakland. From these interactions, it appeared that the legal owner was a friend to the revolution and supportive of liberation struggles.
However, nearly two years later, the legal owner has signed a legal eviction order for La Idea and the house will eventually be surrounded and stormed by armed men. As it is, the legal owner was pressured into this by his younger brother.
In January 2015, directly after the national uprising against the police, La Idea received a visit from an Alameda County Sheriff. He was accompanied by a code enforcement official, the legal owner, and the legal owners younger brother. They informed everyone they would have to leave. At first, the legal owner pretended not to know the residents, but eventually he was forced to admit that he did. After this visit, there was no contact with law enforcement or the legal owner for nearly two weeks.
The next visit brought the legal owner, his brother, and two Oakland Police Department officers to La Idea. After a lengthy and pointless conversation, the legal owner and his brother decided to talk to the residents directly without the police present. During this conversation, it was revealed that the brother wanted to sell the house so he could provide for the legal owner. According to him, the legal owner was broke and needed the money. However, it was obvious that the brother wanted to cash out before the bubble burst. The house had been paid for by their mother and father, built by people in the community, and left to the legal owner after her death. With the legal owner approaching 80, his younger brother has a clear interest in selling the house sooner rather than later.
During the fall of 2014, a hostile group of people began to sabotage the house in various ways. After threatening the house with weapons, a hostile individual installed a person in the backyard without the permission of the long-term residents. Two of these residents were threatened with death if they remained in the house and quickly left. Within a month, another person had been installed under the protection of firearms. Knowing we would not call the police, this hostile group began forcing itself into the house. It quickly became clear that something devious was occurring. One of them tried to pit everyone against each other over the course of a month. During this time, they also kept their space heater and sink running all day, spiking the utility bills to almost three times their normal amount. They were in constant contact with the person who installed them, reporting the movements of the people who lived above her and those she would block in with her car.
The hostile group began to leave a large amount of waste all over the backyard. Around this time, another hostile person made a 'blight complaint' to the city. When the code enforcement official arrived there was no one home at the property. The official blighted the property and left a notice to that effect. This notice was then taken by the hostile group without any of the long-term residents seeing it and the 'blight complaint' was not addressed.
The person installed in the backyard was eventually kicked out after they repeatedly spread lies among the residents in an attempt to pit them against each other. When they were asked to leave, they brought two people over who immediately started a fight with residents of the house. During this confrontation, the hostile person was punched in the face. The second hostile person was later removed after the person who installed them attempted to force a resident out with a shotgun. Once the entire hostile group had been removed, one of them began a six-month long crusade of malicious lies against the house.
When the code enforcement official returned to La Idea, it was because the hostile group called the city and informed on some illegal construction that had gone on in the backyard. The official placed a stop work order on the construction, informed the residents of the 'blight complaint' and threatened to fine the legal owner. After a period of negotiation, the city waived the fines and allowed the residents to deconstruct the two illegal apartments without penalty. Once this deconstruction and 'blight abatement' had been finished, the city was satisfied. Now lacking two extra apartments, the residents quickly constructed a three story modular house. But just as construction of that house was complete, the owner and his brother arrived with a code enforcement official and the sheriff.
Everything described above was (in no uncertain terms) an act of sabotage conducted by a hostile group against the residents of La Idea. It involved the brandishing of weapons, physical violence, space-heaters and faucets left running all day, and selective snitching to the city. The parties involved will go unnamed, but there is now a clear and identifiable pattern to their behavior and the methods they use to undermine and destroy autonomous spaces.
Currently, the residents of La Idea are facing an eviction after two years of holding the space. While the residents of La Idea will not go quietly, there are few options when it comes to facing down armed men. There are no intentions of defending the house with guns, and such a thing would hardly keep this house from being put on the market or destroyed. However, it should be clearly stated that the only ways to stop an eviction are through the force of arms or through mass-popular support. Neither of these options are viable for the house at the present moment. Until autonomous movements are capable of defending themselves, they will always be scattered and precarious.
We release this statement in the hope of generating support over the next two weeks. As was stated earlier, there is nothing exceptional about the circumstances we face. But it is a chance to challenge capitalism at a specific location on the grid of the city. The house has been clearly identifiable as an anarchist space for two years and the neighborhood is familiar with our goals and aspirations. Several squats have and continue to exist in the greater area, so the idea is nothing new to the neighborhood. Challenging capitalism is possible and our eviction will provide another opportunity.
Over the past two years, La Idea has housed 26 people and dozens of guests from across the planet. We are and have always been a multi-racial, multi-tendency, and multi-gendered house. We are as varied as Oakland itself. Currently, over half the residents grew up in Oakland and white people are in the minority. An unquantifiable amount of projects have emerged from this house. We are involved in a wide variety of projects in Oakland and many of you will most likely be familiar with one of us.
We do not have a community land trust offering to purchase the house, nor do we have a popular movement able and willing to hold the building. We are open to both of these options, but we prefer the popular movement to any form of capitalist relations. It is important that some free housing remain in Oakland before it is all eaten up by the bubble. Please consider helping us prevent La Idea from being seized and rendered back into capital. We will be releasing more information soon.
In love and struggle,
The residents of La Idea
*After this text was composed, two residents of La Idea contacted the legal owner at his house. In his own words: “The matter is out of my hands. Its up to the powers that be.” To us, it is clear that he has been pressured by someone.
This stop work order, in response to an anonymous complaint, was delivered on the day that the Mike Brown verdict was delivered
For future referenceGREEN BAY, Wis. -- Mike McCarthy has been in Wisconsin long enough to know what kind of football works best late in the season.
He has the recent record -- 14-6 over the final month of the season since 2010 -- to back that up. Only two teams have been better in their last four games of the season than McCarthy's Green Bay Packers the past five seasons.
So when the 10th-year coach discussed his formula for late-season success, it was no surprise that it centered around the ground game.
"You can put that A number 1,” McCarthy said. “You have to run the football and you have to stop the run. You're not going to beat the good teams being one-dimensional. And to be two-dimensional, you've got to run it to set up the pass because with that you have the ability to be an action-pass team and a dropback. That's our focus each and every week and it will be no different Sunday.”
There’s a significant part of that equation, however, |
donations to Rogers' campaign to the tune of $15,000 in 2012, $15,000 in 2014 and $10,000 in 2016.
While the new bill still has to pass in the Senate before being negotiated to a conclusion by members of Congress, it's unclear if the bill in its current form will benefit insurance companies or not.
Rep. Bradley Byrne, who has received $45,500 from Blue Cross Blue Shield since 2014, said in a statement to AL.com that such campaign contributions did not buy his favoritism because, according to him, the insurance industry did not favor the AHCA bill.
"I was pleased to vote for a bill last month that passed the House with a bipartisan majority stripping insurance companies of protection from anti-trust laws and look forward to voting for a bill allowing all of us to purchase health insurance across state lines so that we have real competition in the health insurance markets," he said. "Given the criticism of the insurance industry toward our plan, I don't think the insurance industry has any expectation of favoritism from me."
However, independent insurance experts have indicated that it's too early to make a firm opinion on whether or not the bill favors insurers.
Analysts from the Jeffries Group wrote in a research note that they see the current bill as a net negative for Medicaid, positive for Medicare Advantage and mixed for commercial insurance companies. Fitch Ratings, one of the country's biggest credit rating agencies, said that it would give a negative outlook for the insurance industry in 2017 because of regulatory uncertainty that had loomed over the industry since the election in Nov. 2016. A note from Standard & Poor's offered a neutral outlook for the industry, expecting insurance companies to adapt to any new rules that come with AHCA.
A statement from Blue Cross Blue Shield in the aftermath of the House vote said that "Americans are best served by a competitive, private health insurance market that offers people the choices they want at a price they can afford" and that it was "committed to ensuring that everyone, including those with pre-existing medical conditions, can access coverage that is affordable for them."
While the U.S. Senate is expected to write its own version of the bill, Senate Republicans, vital to the passing of the bill, are already criticizing the House's version. However, if it does pass the, the Senate and the House will have to negotiate on any differences before voting on it one more time. Then it goes to President Donald Trump who will pass it into law.[+] Replies @Nimbostratus
I don't play FF, but that sounds like something a Chocobo would say!
If you want a link, check Dray's post down below. Or google it, that works too.
@BubbleTea
I totally agree! So much for the art, simple but effective. The train station scene stole my heart for how well drawn it was :)
@Audial Oblivion
It's amazingly well done, I agree with you! It honestly doesn't look like a fan-made thing at all, there is so much creativity in this.
@GoGoGogoat
Haha, thanks! For the time being it's proving unbelievably fun, I NEVER thought I'd get my hands on a dating sim and actually enjoy it. It makes me excited to know that other people have been hyped for it too, means I'm very likely to like what I'm about to see as well!
Hey, dorky characters are my thing. If it gets worse, it gets better!
[+] @Versil Yeah, I know :( Sadly CamStudio wouldn't let me record the music either, it crashed when I selected mixed inputs (computer audio + microphone). So I've had some really poor luck with video stuff.
It was! See? *Points to avatar*
START9
In my head, all Johto team members are Johto Heathens. We'll see if the game touches on the subject of people's religious orientations later on. After all, it might.
Agreed. Like Genesis
How could it be flam-anything if it wasn't a Fire- *shot*
But of course, I love making fun of whatever can be made fun of.
Also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryWCmvnIzLs @Shiny Dustox
I KNOW RIGHT EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE HERE IS CUTE
At least they compensate for Chandrasekhar's bloodbath...?
I literally only got interested in TPP for the lore lol. Also, links have been added in today's update!
@Yanmark Iggy
YES ALL THE HYPE AND ALL THE BURRITO BISHIES AND BISHOUJOS
AND CAPS OF COURSE
@LightHelco
Burrito is 10/10. And as I will mention further down in this post, the suggestion has been accepted!
@catas123
YAY
@Waluigi, Vice President of Earth
Thanks for telling me about that section, I am definitely keeping an eye out for it! It shall be showcased.
Also, I didn't know so many (well, a few) people had already played it :D
@FlyingPiig
I shall not disappoint! The power of punsmithery must live!
And the lore has also been added, as I will mention later in this post.
@Dray
Heeeeeey thanks for stopping by! And thanks for being part of those who made this game, because so far it's freaking awesome. I mean it!
And that's totally good putting puns in the final release because I love puns. Never take them off. Ever.
Sure thing, I have started including lore in this update as it's been a popular request. If there'll be no spoilers, all's good!
Thanks for making it, and FINISH IT because we all want to know how it ends. PLS. The very pretty please variant with sugar on top :D
[+] Part 1: All Psyched Up
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!
Burrito doesn't seem worried either. Good!
Oooh, first character! Who could it be...?
A wild Oracle appeared!
Notably female in the original TPP run.
Will is a pretty fitting name. Notice how he's male in this game.
Of course you did, Burrito, that's your roommate!
...You're not the most talkative Pokémon on the planet, are you Will?
OH RIGHT
BUT LET'S JUST STAY AND CHAT INSTEAD
I mean this is a dating game we're not here for the grades. We're here for the CUDDLES.
See? That's perfect. Stay and chat!
...What?
I'm going to assume that they're talking with their psychey wackey ways and that I can't hear them. I am the worst Psychic type in the history of ever. ;_;
AT LEAST GIVE HINTS TO WHAT HE'S SAYING, GAME!
You're a cutie pie yourself but you're not the most normal of creatures either.
In fact, you kind of stopped being normal when you evolved.
Protip: if you ever want factual advice and plan on going to Twitch Academy yourself, don't ask a Psychic type.
*Frustrated*
*Even more frustrated*
PLOT TWIST???
Burrito blushing is the cutest thing
Yes, that's what people do when they're in a hurry.
What? What kind of dumb school does that?!?
That's cheeky as hell!
...Ah, so it was a prank.
SORRY, I DIDN'T NOTICE BECAUSE IT WASN'T FUNNY >:(
It's not! Go away!
Here's another character! And his TPPedia reference as well.
This guy doesn't look like the brightest of students.
Well, at least he sounds funny.
When you're steering clear from him, that is.
Poor Burrito. It's okay, people are moronmons anyway.
You better grow a thick skin though. You know, people tend to pick on newcomers!
Ooh, finally someone who sounds nice and not (too) weird!
Probably the most famous TPP character in history right after Lord Helix.
Sounds like the model student type. I'm tempted to go for Abba as the first date route. We'll see.
Wait, that's not your- oh right, RJ. But Burrito is so much cuter!
Okay, why in the world would you let your mother do your school application for you? I mean, one is either great at salsa or bureaucracy. You should have known!
That sounds like a blueblood's name. RJ "the first"... oh wait, maybe the protag has siblings?
Uh-oh.
Now this is something that could actually get you kicked out, Burrito. Wat do?
We are given the choice, and we will make it!
...Next time!
Since some of you asked for TPP reference pages, I figured I'd start with Burrito's since that's our main character. The page will explain why I said it's the most fitting possible choice for this type of game.As we go on, I'll add page links to the characters that are introduced throughout the game. Bear in mind that I wasn't a TPP watcher myself (I peeked in some runs and followed the lore through the wiki, but nothing more), so I may also not know some of what's going on! I'll try my best to provide whatever knowledge I have.Also, as far as the pun section goes, not sure where it is because I may not have gotten there yet. I'm playing along, so I know exactly as much as you guys do, if not less. I'll put the screens up whenever I spot it!P. S.: Just to be clear, by "irregular updates" I don't mean they'll necessary be infrequent. As you can see, I'm updating barely after two days now since I had some time to advance with the game. This may or may not hold true for future updates as it depends on how hyped I am and how much I want to binge-play this, as well as when I actually have time to binge-play... sometimes I might put up three updates a week, and other times go a full week without updating, even. It depends. It definitely helps that I can save at any given point, though. Props to the creators for that function!Yesterday, the Umlaut published another article (this time by Eli Dourado, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University) [1] about neoreaction’s supposed inability to understand the positive aspects of democracy. Let’s start with praise: unlike the majority of articles written about neoreaction, he links to a few relevant articles and spends a minority of the piece discussing them.
Dourado spends most of the piece explaining why a journal article [2] refutes Mencius Moldbug, the authors at More Right, and Nick Land. Dourado should not have wasted his time attacking neoreactionaries, who are mostly presenting cases developed by other authors. Moldbug himself builds his case against democracy on a pile of pre-20th century sources and a few more recent ones that are uncomfortable to name.
For whatever reason, the Umlaut was happy to mention Hans-Hermann Hoppe in two of the previous articles about neoreaction, but did not see fit to mention him in this one, instead namedropping Bryan Caplan, who is affiliated with the author.
This professorial split is critical, and will become more relevant later on in this article. The intellectual approach of Caplan, which makes room for empiricism as it relates to society, and that of Hoppe, which states that empiricism is not applicable to society, is the breach that can’t be repaired. I don’t share the Caplan/Dourado worldview, and I’m comfortable asserting that almost no one who considers themselves even neoreactionary-sympathetic really shares that view, either.
Within neoreaction, you will find near universal sympathy for Hoppe’s views outside his deontological views on ethics in neoreaction, and near-universal contempt for Caplan’s views on many topics.
As should become clear, this split is not a distinguishing characteristic of neoreaction, but is independent of that fresh phenomena.
This is the central point that Dourado attempts to establish:
[Mulligan, Gil, and Sala-i-Martin] find, controlling for economic and demographic variables, that democracies have similar government consumption, education spending, social spending, corporate tax rates, and payroll tax policies as nondemocracies.
The authors conclude this based on a slice of time, 1960-2000, during which all of the world powers were assembled in favor of democracy, and engaged in a program of worldwide democracy promotion, punishing states that did not hold elections and rewarding those that did. This should not be a controversial observation.
The 20th century world democracy promotion project is a central theme of Unqualified Reservations. It does not make sense to draw a universal conclusion of this nature from a limited sample size.
These results eviscerate much armchair political economic theorizing, of both the academic and Internet varieties. Models that rely on formal allocations of power through voting (i.e., most of the academic literature) are contradicted, because they all assume that the distribution of votes alters the distribution of power. So are the implicit models used by the neoreaction—if democracy creates a giant political commons, then why do nondemocracies have basically the same economic and social policies that democracies do?
‘Eviscerate’ is a lovely verb, but in this case, it’s misused. Given the 2004 publication date of the study, current events blunt the intended rhetorical impact that Dourado attempts to make with it: when the American president himself confesses that the leading democratic government “tortured some folks,” when the world’s leading democratic states are busy enforcing pervasive censorship laws, dealing with problems related to maintaining an enormous standing army, police misconduct, and prosecuting various people for failing to observe ‘marriages’ that their religion finds to be abhorrent, it is just mistimed in a way that Thomas Friedman writing about his ‘Golden Arches theory’ of international conflict in the early 2000s and 1990s was not poorly timed.
Given that academics live in a sort of time warp, insulated as they are, it’s easy to understand his misstep in this case, when few, even the most fervent advocates of democracy, believe that democracy and liberalism are compatible. The advocates of both democracy and liberalism find themselves engaging in a rearguard action to ‘restore constitutional freedom’ from both the left and the right, exemplified by the writing of journalists like Glenn Greenwald and of pop-up nonpartisan activist groups like ‘Restore the Fourth.’
‘Democracy promotion’ has come to be synonymous with violent political destabilization. This was not the case in 2004, at least in the minds of democracy advocates. It is the case, now.
The conflict of ‘Euromaidan’ was portrayed as democracy in action, even though it resulted in enormous destruction and bloodshed. The result of that democratic revolution has been bloody and illiberal, much as the other contemporary (and historical) democratic revolutions have been. The short postwar period in which it was rhetorically feasible to conflate democracy with liberalism has expired.
It is not a good time to purport that (nominally) democratic governments are better on liberal grounds after your government is exposed to be operating a global wiretapping operation that makes the Stasi look like the local peeping Tom. That does not itself undermine Dourado’s presented argument, but the juxtaposition is hilarious.
Dourado is unwilling to defend democracy with as much fervor as the typical State Department employee, instead selecting a weak defense that he himself does not appear to be fully comfortable with, as he’s intimate with the existing literature on topics like public choice theory.
To be a progressive-libertarian defender of democracy today, you must be both conservative and out of step with the latest political developments.
The basic problem that neoreactionaries are going to tend to have with this sort of rhetoric is not actually unique to neoreaction or even to the right-wing. It is not original to me, either.
The problem is that there are no controlled experiments in social science. It’s wrong to state that a given political point about democracy is proven by this uncontrolled observation based on an array of subjective definitions and selective measures assembled in what amounts to a black box put together by a trio of authors and their assistants.
In this case, they’re misusing empiricism, at least from our perspective, so this rhetorical tack is unlikely to be effective. It may persuade people who believe that one can ignore the need for controls in experiments. The reason why the material sciences use controls is because, even with controlled experimentation, it’s easy to assign the wrong causes to certain effects, because the data collected is necessarily polluted. No matter how many times that social scientists argue around this point, it does not lose its impact, especially as the obvious, widely-acknowledged errors of social science mount.
This is not a unique case from me, nor is it a unique perspective to neoreaction. It is more common on the right than on the left, and not universally observed. I would not be surprised if other contributors to Social Matter disagree with me about the possibility of practicing empirical science on society.
I imagine that this sort of response is both predictable and irritating to Dourado and to others, because it represents a break that is not bridgeable, a mismatch in intellectual frameworks that cannot be reconciled. It would be one thing to quibble about the data in the study (which I cannot verify independently), and another thing entirely to have a basic disagreement about the limitations of the scientific method in analyzing human behavior that side-steps the possible debate on the details.
We can poke more holes in the cited case by pointing out that, in that the authors’ argument against taxation completely ignores monetary depreciation, which is a historically common method of increasing effective taxation that isn’t unique to democracy. Even ardent democrats are pleased to admit that depreciation of currency is a form of indirect taxation. Yet, the authors gloss over this, perhaps because even with official inflation measures, it does not fit into an easily comparable dataset like fractions of GDP do.
Another issue is that we cannot access the data or see the work that has been purported to have been done. We must rely upon blind faith in the statements of these academics. This might be easy for an academic to do, but it’s certainly not easy for neoreactionaries to do, given the widespread distrust within this community towards academics.
We’re not willing to just take their words for it, no matter how good their reputation reportedly is. We also must take for granted that all the various data sets were responsibly collected and are accurate. Because we have neither the time nor resources nor access to verify their work and the work of their diverse source institutions, it must have limited persuasive impact in our minds (unless we are feeling particularly trusting).
We must also ask how the various categories of spending were selected, because unless we take the words of the authors for gospel, we cannot use them reliably. Further, one wonders how one can separate categories of ‘spending’ so clearly from categories of ‘investment’ with such specificity in areas like health and education.
I spend most of my education budget on books and most of my health ‘spending’ is not measurable accurately in monetary terms. It does not likely show up in the data as such, and when I buy a book in cash, the purchase must be fudged, especially if the business’ records are not perfect, which they rarely are, because small business accounting standards are not flawless.
I go into this detail to illustrate why empiricism is not a workable approach towards society, because of the necessary reliance on fuzzy models that nonetheless purport to precision. In the Real World (TM) of Serious Business outside the academy, corporations of all types have enormous difficulty measuring activity within controlled environments of all sorts. It is not even possible to get 100% reliant models of server traffic or of grocery store inventory, yet econometricians and their apologists would have us believe that they can be trusted to achieve greater precision than is possible at smaller scale with greater environmental control and more objectively definable variables.
The joke is that the scientific method is not a scientific approach outside the scientific laboratory. All that you get applying these methods to statistical models is an exquisite analysis of an immensely complicated textual-statistical diorama of the real world. Even if the math used is flawless, the plugged-in variables are distinct from what they’re intended to represent, in the same way that a drawing of a horse is not the horse itself.
The cited article itself is far less confident in its conclusions than Dourado seems to be. The conclusions speak of tendencies. It is also less willing to speak of strong equivalency. It is especially difficult because it relies upon subjective definitions of categories.
Pol Pot ran a democratic party: is he suddenly not a democrat? How racist that is, othering our Cambodian friends! Is it fair at all to draw a conceptual dividing line between Communist governments and democratic ones? Surely this was not as conceptually clear before 1945, especially.
The conceptual distinction only became critical during the Cold War, and the distinction would not have made any sense in the 19th century or earlier. Discussing these historical shifts in language and conceptual categories is part of what makes neoreaction appealing to so many readers.
Social categories are arbitrary in a way that carbon atoms are not.
The cited article also picks a fight with the statement that I’ll paraphrase as ‘nondemocratic governments should remain small, but they don’t.’ This is not an accurate characterization of the Hoppean position that has been adapted and altered by various neoreactionaries (again not unique to Hoppe, as the paper authors characterize it as the Tocqueville position on democracy also — the latter author only echoing common European wisdom at the time).
The difference is not between authoritarian and demotic or authoritarian and liberal, but more towards owned and un-owned forms of government. It is closer to an application of the tragedy of the commons argument to general politics, as Dourado himself notices in his article. The dichotomies are not necessarily that clear, either.
Authoritarian governments can be quite liberal for certain classes of people, while quite repressive towards others, and vice versa in different mixes. Even North Korea is liberal in regards to its restrictions on the behavior of the Kims. Samurai enjoyed many freedoms under the Shogunate that peasants did not. Human societies throughout history tend to defy simplistic chart-models.
Demotic governments cannot effectively ‘own’ property permanently at scale, whereas more authoritarian structures can. Where there is agreement in neoreaction, it is that tenant governments have an incentive to exploit their temporary property in a way that more permanent owners don’t.
It’s unclear to me what Dourado was hoping to achieve, and why he thought that his case was as persuasive as he seemed to think that it was.
It is an ‘evisceration’ if the reader shares his views on empiricism as it relates to human behavior and if he finds the cited article as credible as Eli seems to think that it is, if he has as much respect for the moral authority of the people that he cites as he does. It seems to me that he has a hard time fully accepting that his outlook on these points is not shared, that there is no universal agreement on the assumed framework of his arguments.
Because none of those things are accurate for most of neoreaction, the article has no persuasive weight for us.
[1] What the Neoreaction Doesn’t Understand about Democracy [2] Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies Than Nondemocracies?Google is working on making a connected, technology-laced jacket that you'll be able to wear in any type of weather, Google announced Friday. It's called Jacquard, and the company has been working on it since 2015. It's set to come out in spring 2017.
Jacquard is made with interactive denim, made in partnership with Levi's. It has sensors that detect things like hand movements, which connect to various services on your smartphone, including calls, texts, Google Maps, Spotify and more.
You can swipe your hand over the wrist cuff to answer or decline an incoming call. Image: google
If you're getting a phone call while riding your bike and wearing your Jacquard jacket, you can wave your hand over the sleeve to either accept or decline the call. You could also run your finger up or down the wrist cuff to turn your music volume up or down, or swipe quickly to change to the next song.
The jacket itself doesn't connect your your smartphone, it uses an electronic cuff link, or tag, to connect to a Jacquard app. It doesn't have any wires and charges through anything with a USB port.
The four components that make up the Jacquard connected jacket. Image: google
Google is providing open APIs for Jacquard to allow third-party developers to create their own jacket-supported services.
"Fashion and technology need to work as one," says ATAP's Dr. Ivan Poupyrev #io16 — Pete Pachal (@petepachal) May 20, 2016
For developers, there is a beta version of Jacquard coming out in fall 2016, which you can sign up for to give feedback to Google and work on connecting your own products.
This may be the first time there is ever a beta release for a denim jacket #IO2016 — Karissa Bell (@karissabe) May 20, 2016
Below is a video that shows the process of making denim that is both resistant to the elements and able to connect to your technology.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.Seeing Opportunity In A Question: 'Where Are You Really From?'
Enlarge this image toggle caption Martin Schoeller/National Geographic Martin Schoeller/National Geographic
More From 'The Changing Face Of America' See more of Martin Schoeller's portraits from "The Changing Face Of America" and read Michele Norris' post, "Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change," for the National Geographic photography blog, Proof.
NPR continues a series of conversations about The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words. Every so often NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris will dip into those six-word stories to explore issues surrounding race and cultural identity for Morning Edition.
"Where are you from?"
National Geographic
"No, really, where are you from?"
Those questions about identity and appearance come up again and again in submissions to The Race Card Project. In some cases, Norris tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, people say it feels accusatory — like, 'Do you really belong?'
It's also a question that Alex Sugiura, because of his racially ambiguous appearance, can't seem to escape.
Sugiura, 27, is the child of a first-generation Japanese immigrant father and a Jewish mother of Eastern European descent. Sugiura's brother Max looks more identifiably Asian, but when people meet Alex, they're often not satisfied to hear that he's from Brooklyn.
Some people find this question accusatory, as if the person being asked doesn't quite belong. But Sugiura actually welcomes the question and the conversations that flow out of it — and he says he understands why people ask.
"I have always thought I've had a particularly strange face," he explains. "I looked at my parents growing up and I didn't see their faces in my face — I did see some combination, some mixture." When he looked in the mirror, he says, he didn't see a "typical American face."
That may be so, but Sugiura's face, along with his brother Max and other adults and children of mixed race, was recently highlighted in the October issue of National Geographic. "The Changing Face of America" examines the nation's growing number of multiracial people and how they choose to identify themselves.
When Sugiura fills out question about race in the census form, he checks the box for Japanese. But in more casual situations, he self-identifies as American but says he's ethnically Jewish.
Alex Sugiura considers the fluidity of racial and ethnic identity 3:57
Enlarge this image toggle caption Martin Schoeller/National Geographic Martin Schoeller/National Geographic
But for as long as Sugiura can remember, he's been confused with someone of Latin American descent. It first happened when he was 6 or 7 years old, when someone began asking him questions in Spanish. "And at that point, I had no faculty for the language and almost started crying cause I was just so terrified," he says.
But by age 11 he started to take Spanish classes. And while he'd already been taking Japanese language and cultural classes for years, he found he enjoyed Spanish much more.
"It was a passing fancy at first, this idea [that] by people jokingly or mistakenly identifying me as Hispanic.... I thought there was some kind of safe space there, you might say — that I was given a kind of fictional persona," Sugiura says. "I would say it propelled me forward and I feel very much like my own man through the Spanish language."
toggle caption Courtesy of the Sugiura Family
There's another interesting wrinkle in Sugiura's thoughts on the intersection of race and appearance, Norris says, noting that this particularly sensitive subject was a bit tough for Sugiura to talk about. "He says that his height, his deep voice, his Type A personality, his sort of, big physical presence, has helped him sidestep... some of the more painful, offensive stereotypes that are too often attached to Asian men."
Sugiura bristles at those stereotypes, and yet, he notes that his father "did us a great favor by marrying our mother.... They made two tall, loud boys."
"When you're a typical, you know, shorter, soft-spoken Asian male, you are perceived almost to be weaker or lacking the fiber of what an American leader is supposed to be," he says.
The Sugiura family's appearance raises questions in the American South 1:46
Sugiura says this all goes back to the reason that he welcomes this question, "Where are you really from?" He sees that question as an opening to make the point that there are many different ways to be Asian, Jewish, white or even a New Yorker. "And he has a chance to make that point," Norris explains, "if he actually gets to participate in those conversations."
And, Sugiura notes, this question about where you come from can lead to some very unexpected conversations — like one his family experienced on a stop at a gas station in the American South. An older white man behind the counter asked his father, "Where are you from, boy?"
And while the question felt laden with tension, the outcome of the encounter surprised everyone. But the experience was a reminder, Sugiura says, of the unfortunate reality that one must assume the worst in this country when it comes to questions based on the color of one's skin.About a year ago on here there was an entry about the meeting on the night of 29th of September 2008/early morning of 30th September 2008, the meeting which give rise to Ireland – population 4.5m, GDP €160bn – guaranteeing the liabilities, all €440bn of them, in the Irish banking system. Subsequently that system imploded but was maintained in a quasi-stable state at huge cost to the nation. Although it may take years to assess the final bill and it may never be possible to assess the opportunity cost – what the nation could have done with the money instead of supporting a banking system – it seems that the final bill will conservatively be €50bn and may be in the €60-70bn range. Immediately prior to the banking guarantee, the country had a commendable 25% debt as a % of GDP, a primary budget surplus, nearly a decade of healthy economic growth, almost no real unemployment and we were held up as a model of economic competence.
Today the country has unemployment of 14.5%, the scourge of emigration has returned, we have a national debt heading towards 110% of GDP (130%+ of the more representative Irish GNP) of which 30-40% of GDP relates to the cost of dealing with the banking disaster, we have an annual deficit of €18bn and are only hoping to get it below 10% next year. There has been a reluctant collapse in asset values, particularly property and bank shares, most of the domestic banking system has been effectively nationalised. It would go too far to blame one meeting in September 2008 for the change in circumstances, but it seems that the meeting was a least pivotal – from it flowed the banking guarantee, the placing of unrealised banking losses on the shoulders of the nation, and the repayment of banking debt.
As for the meeting which started on 29th September, 2008 at around 8pm, the entry on here last year, compared it to the meeting portrayed in that HBO film, Conspiracy; the film which told the story of the infamous meeting in Nazi Germany in 1941 which was pivotal to the subsequent murder of Jews and others in concentration camps. When the Financial Times linked to the entry, there was localised outrage that the extermination of the Jews could be likened to the economic disaster in Ireland. For the first time in my life, I came across the term “Godwin’s Law” which refers to the phenomenon of ultimately comparing all misfortune to the World War 2 holocaust. Though to be honest I thought it should be renamed the “Lord Voldemort Law” from Harry Potter as the aim of the Law seemed to be to suppress any reference to that “which shall not be mentioned”. But this is a blog for adults, not children.
As for the infamous meeting which started on 29th September, 2008 – and whose 3-year anniversary occurs today – as a nation there is still a sense of shock and incredulity that what seems like a snap decision was taken which exposed the nation to debts of nearly three times GDP. This entry pieces together most of what is now in the public domain on the context, course and content of the meeting. Alas, from this armchair perspective there is no smoking gun, just an everyday tale of professional politicians with a mediocre grasp of events, making mistakes, not asking the right questions and coming to the wrong conclusion (and by guaranteeing historical bond debt, it was the wrong conclusion). Outside the political circles, some may have suppressed or misrepresented information, but even there, there is evidence of denial and poor assessment of risk; but all of that and the wider context of the 29th/30th September 2008 meeting will be for another day…
27th Saturday, Minister Lenihan is at a Fianna Fail fundraising event inGowranPark in Kilkenny when he takes a call from President of the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet who reportedly tells Minister Lenihan to expect an urgent call from CBI Governor, John Hurley later that day. Minister Lenihan takes initiative and rings John Hurley 28th Sunday morning, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan meets with Central Bank ofIreland Governor, John Hurley at the Central Bank onDame Street,Dublin who advises Minister Lenihan that several banks inEurope are facing crisis including Fortis and DEPFA.Sunday Business Post publishes article by economist David McWilliams in which he advocates a guarantee, claiming banks face a liquidity problem, guarantee depositors/creditors but not shareholders. Sunday, Green Party Minister for the Environment Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley claims to have met with Brian Lenihan to discuss the guarantee/nationalization. Minister Gormley claimed that the guarantee was discussed “on-and-off” for about a week. Minister Gormley claims that the option that he, Min Gormley, had gone for was the nationalization of Anglo and a Bill was drafted to effect that nationalization. Minister Gormley claimed on the Marian Finucane programme on RTE radio on 4th December, 2010 that there was a Cabinet meeting on the Sunday and the “arrangements” were made after going “through it in detail” British Chancellor to the Exchequer, Alastair Darling says he spoke with Minister Lenihan who “assured him the Government would not give a blanket guarantee to the banks” 29th Monday“Early Monday” – meeting between Department of Finance, Financial Regulator, Central Bank and CEOs of AIB, Eugene Sheehy, BoI, Brian Goggin, EBS, Fergus Murphy and others. There were claims that banks were near “tipping points” (understood to be a reference to liquidity) and that there was speculation that one unnamed bank was at severe risk of going under. Nationalisation was discussed but dimissed. Morning: Announcement of nationalization of Bradford and Bingley Building Society’s mortgages and loans and plans to sell off its deposit book toSantander Announcement of nationalization of Fortis bank by Belgian and Luxembourgian governments and the German state/banking sector funding ofGermany’s Hypo Real Estate. 1pm, Anglo CEO and Chairman meet with Bank of Ireland CEO, Brian Goggin in 6th floor office of BoI HQ and ask BoI to take over Anglo. The response was “no” After 1pm, Anglo CEO and Chairman contact AIB CEO Eugene Sheehy and ask same question and get same response Mid-afternoon, Minister Lenihan leavesUpper Merrion Street to attend daughter’s birthday party in Castleknock,Dublin 5pm ISEQ closes down 13%, Bank of Ireland shares down 15%, AIB down 16%, ILP down 34% and Anglo down 45%. AIB and BoI CEOs call Brian Cowen’s office to state that the banks couldn’t sustain themselves for another day and needed a plan overnight. 6.43pm, Second Secretary at the DoF, Kevin Cardiff receives report from Merrill Lynch 8pm – An Taoiseach meets with Minister Lenihan and shortly after they are joined by Attorney General, Paul Gallagher, Governor of the Central Bank, John Hurley, Director General of the Central Bank,Tony Grimes, the Financial Regulator Patrick Neary, and core finance people from Brian Lenihan’s team, An Taoiseach’s top advisor, Joe Lennon, economics advisor, Peter Clinch, and Government press spokesman Eoin O Neachtain. There are suggestions of contact with or input from economist David McWilliams, businessmen JP McManus and Dermot Desmond and former Minister for Finance and EU Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy. 9pm Dow Jones closes down 7% (738 points – the biggest one day drop) following the rejection of the €700bn Troubled Asset Relief Program in the US House of Representatives “after 9pm” (9.30pm) AIB/BoI chairmen and CEOs (four individuals) meet with Brian |
."[19] The same text defines abstinence as refraining from flesh meat on all Fridays of the Church Year, except for those during Christmastide.[19]
The historic Methodist homilies regarding the Sermon on the Mount stress the importance of the Lenten fast, which begins on Ash Wednesday.[20] The United Methodist Church therefore states that:
There is a strong biblical base for fasting, particularly during the 40 days of Lent leading to the celebration of Easter. Jesus, as part of his spiritual preparation, went into the wilderness and fasted 40 days and 40 nights, according to the Gospels.[21]
Rev. Jacqui King, the minister of Nu Faith Community United Methodist Church in Houston explained the philosophy of fasting during Lent as "I'm not skipping a meal because in place of that meal I'm actually dining with God".[22]
The Reformed Church in America describes Ash Wednesday as a day "focused on prayer, fasting, and repentance."[1] The liturgy for Ash Wednesday thus contains the following "Invitation to Observe a Lenten Discipline" read by the presider:[23]
We begin this holy season by acknowledging our need for repentance and our need for the love and forgiveness shown to us in Jesus Christ. I invite you, therefore, in the name of Christ, to observe a Holy Lent, by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by practicing works of love, and by reading and reflecting on God's Holy Word.[23]
Many of the Churches in the Reformed tradition retained the Lenten fast in its entirety, although it was made voluntary, rather than obligatory.[24]
Ashes [ edit ]
[25] A priest marks a cross of ashes on a worshipper's forehead, the prevailing form in English-speaking countries
Ashes are ceremonially placed on the heads of Christians on Ash Wednesday, either by being sprinkled over their heads or, in English-speaking countries, more often by being marked on their foreheads as a visible cross. The words (based on Genesis 3:19) used traditionally to accompany this gesture are, "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris." ("Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.") This custom is credited to Pope Gregory I the Great (c. 540–604).[26] In the 1969 revision of the Roman Rite, an alternative formula (based on Mark 1:15) was introduced and given first place "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" and the older formula was translated as "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The old formula, based on the words spoken to Adam and Eve after their sin,[27] reminds worshippers of their sinfulness and mortality and thus, implicitly, of their need to repent in time.[28] The newer formula makes explicit what was only implicit in the old.
Various manners of placing the ashes on worshippers' heads are in use within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, the two most common being to use the ashes to make a cross on the forehead and sprinkling the ashes over the crown of the head. Originally, the ashes were strewn over men's heads, but, probably because women had their heads covered in church, were placed on the foreheads of women.[29] In the Catholic Church the manner of imposing ashes depends largely on local custom, since no fixed rule has been laid down.[25] Although the account of Ælfric of Eynsham shows that in about the year 1000 the ashes were "strewn" on the head,[30] the marking of the forehead is the method that now prevails in English-speaking countries and is the only one envisaged in the Occasional Offices of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, a publication described as "noticeably Anglo-Catholic in character".[31] In its ritual of "Blessing of Ashes", this states that "the ashes are blessed at the beginning of the Eucharist; and after they have been blessed they are placed on the forehead of the clergy and people."[31] The Ash Wednesday ritual of the Church of England, Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, contains "The Imposition of Ashes" in its Ash Wednesday liturgy.[32] On Ash Wednesday, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, traditionally takes part in a penitential procession from the Church of Saint Anselm to the Basilica of Santa Sabina, where, in accordance with the custom in Italy and many other countries, ashes are sprinkled on his head, not smudged on his forehead, and he places ashes on the heads of others in the same way.[33]
A woman receives a cross of ashes on Ash Wednesday outside an Episcopal church
The Anglican ritual, used in Papua New Guinea states that, after the blessing of the ashes, "the priest marks his own forehead and then the foreheads of the servers and congregation who come and kneel, or stand, where they normally receive the Blessed Sacrament."[31] The corresponding Catholic ritual in the Roman Missal for celebration within Mass merely states: "Then the Priest places ashes on the head of those present who come to him, and says to each one..."[34] Pre-1970 editions had much more elaborate instructions about the order in which the participants were to receive the ashes, but again without any indication of the form of placing the ashes on the head.[35]
The 1969 revision of the Roman Rite inserted into the Mass the solemn ceremony of blessing ashes and placing them on heads, but also explicitly envisaged a similar solemn ceremony outside of Mass.[34] The Book of Blessings contains a simple rite.[25] While the solemn rite would normally be carried out within a church building, the simple rite could appropriately be used almost anywhere. While only a priest or deacon may bless the ashes, laypeople may do the placing of the ashes on a person's head. Even in the solemn rite, lay men or women may assist the priest in distributing the ashes. In addition, laypeople take blessed ashes left over after the collective ceremony and place them on the head of the sick or of others who are unable to attend the blessing.[25][36] (In 2014, Anglican Liverpool Cathedral likewise offered to impose ashes within the church without a solemn ceremony.)[37]
In addition, those who attend such Catholic services, whether in a church or elsewhere, traditionally take blessed ashes home with them to place on the heads of other members of the family,[38] and it is recommended to have envelopes available to facilitate this practice.[39] At home the ashes are then placed with little or no ceremony.
Unlike its discipline regarding sacraments, the Catholic Church does not exclude from receiving sacramentals, such as the placing of ashes on the head, those who are not Catholics and perhaps not even baptized.[36] Even those who have been excommunicated and are therefore forbidden to celebrate sacramentals are not forbidden to receive them.[40] After describing the blessing, the rite of Blessing and Distribution of Ashes (within Mass) states: "Then the Priest places ashes on the heads of all those present who come to him."[34] The Catholic Church does not limit distribution of blessed ashes to within church buildings and has suggested the holding of celebrations in shopping centres, nursing homes, and factories.[39] Such celebrations presume preparation of an appropriate area and include readings from Scripture (at least one) and prayers, and are somewhat shorter if the ashes are already blessed.[41]
The Catholic Church and the Methodist Church say that the ashes should be those of palm branches blessed at the previous year's Palm Sunday service,[34][42] while a Church of England publication says they "may be made" from the burnt palm crosses of the previous year.[31][32] These sources do not speak of adding anything to the ashes other than, for the Catholic liturgy, a sprinkling with holy water when blessing them. An Anglican website speaks of mixing the ashes with a small amount of holy water or olive oil as a fixative.[43]
Where ashes are placed on the head by smudging the forehead with a sign of the cross, many Christians choose to keep the mark visible throughout the day. The churches have not imposed this as an obligatory rule, and the ashes may even be wiped off immediately after receiving them;[44][45] but some Christian leaders, such as Lutheran pastor Richard P. Bucher and Catholic bishop Kieran Conry, recommend it as a public profession of faith.[46][47] Morgan Guyton, a Methodist pastor and leader in the Red-Letter Christian movement, encourages Christians to wear their ashed cross throughout the day as an exercise of religious freedom.[48]
Ashes to Go [ edit ]
Two Anglican priests distribute ashes to passerby in the American city of Boca Raton as part of the Ashes to Go movement
Since 2007, some members of major Christian Churches, including Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists, have participated in the Ashes to Go program, in which clergy go outside of their churches to public places, such as downtowns, sidewalks and train stations, to distribute ashes to passersby,[49][50][51] even to people waiting in their cars for a stoplight to change.[52] The Anglican priest Emily Mellott of Calvary Church in Lombard took up the idea and turned it into a movement, stated that the practice was also an act of evangelism.[53][54] Anglicans and Catholics in parts of the United Kingdom such as Sunderland, are offering Ashes to Go together: Marc Lyden-Smith, the priest of Saint Mary's Church, stated that the ecumenical effort is a "tremendous witness in our city, with Catholics and Anglicans working together to start the season of Lent, perhaps reminding those who have fallen away from the Church, or have never been before, that the Christian faith is alive and active in Sunderland."[49] The Catholic Student Association of Kent State University, based at the University Parish Newman Center, offered ashes to university students who were going through the Student Center of that institution in 2012,[55] and Douglas Clark of St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church in Statesboro, among others, have participated in Ashes to Go.[56][57] On Ash Wednesday 2017, Father Paddy Mooney, the priest of St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in the Irish town of Glenamaddy, set up an Ashes to Go station through which commuters could drive and receive ashes from their car; the parish church also had "drive-through prayers during Lent with people submitting requests into a box left in the church grounds without having to leave their car".[58] Reverend Trey Hall, pastor of Urban Village United Methodist Church, stated that when his local church offered ashes in Chicago "nearly 300 people received ashes – including two people who were waiting in their car for a stoplight to change."[52] In 2013, churches not only in the United States, but also at least one church each in the United Kingdom, Canada and South Africa, participated in Ashes to Go.[59] Outside of their church building, Saint Stephen Martyr Lutheran Church in Canton offered Ashes to Go for "believers whose schedules make it difficult to attend a traditional service" in 2016.[60] In the United States itself 34 states and the District of Columbia had at least one church taking part. Most of these churches (parishes) were Episcopal, but there were also several Methodist churches, as well as Presbyterian and Catholic churches.[61]
Commination Office [ edit ]
St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, Tennessee on Ash Wednesday 2011 (the veiled altar cross and purple paraments are customary during Lent)
Robin Knowles Wallace states that the traditional Ash Wednesday church service includes Psalm 51 (the Miserere), prayers of confession and the sign of ashes.[62] No single one of the traditional services contains all of these elements. The Anglican church's traditional Ash Wednesday service, titled A Commination,[63] contains the first two elements, but not the third. On the other hand, the Catholic Church's traditional service has the blessing and distribution of ashes but, while prayers of confession and recitation of Psalm 51 (the first psalm at Lauds on all penitential days, including Ash Wednesday) are a part of its general traditional Ash Wednesday liturgy,[64] they are not associated specifically with the rite of blessing the ashes. The rite of blessing has acquired an untraditional weak association with that particular psalm only since 1970, when it was inserted into the celebration of Mass, at which a few verses of Psalm 51 are used as a responsorial psalm. Coincidentally, it was only about the same time that in some areas Anglicanism resumed the rite of ashes.
In the mid-16th century, the first Book of Common Prayer removed the ceremony of the ashes from the liturgy of the Church of England and replaced it with what would later be called the Commination Office.[65] In that 1549 edition, the rite was headed: "The First Day of Lent: Commonly Called Ash-Wednesday".[66] The ashes ceremony was not forbidden, but was not included in the church's official liturgy.[67] Its place was taken by reading biblical curses of God against sinners, to each of which the people were directed to respond with Amen.[68][69] The text of the "Commination or Denouncing of God's Anger and Judgments against Sinners" begins: "In the primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend. Instead whereof, until the said discipline may be restored again, (which is much to be wished,) it is thought good that at this time (in the presence of you all) should be read the general sentences of God's cursing against impenitent sinners".[70] In line with this, Joseph Hooper Maude wrote that the establishment of The Commination was due to a desire of the reformers "to restore the primitive practice of public penance in church". He further stated that "the sentences of the greater excommunication" within The Commination corresponded to those used in the ancient Church.[71] The Anglican Church's Ash Wednesday liturgy, he wrote, also traditionally included the Miserere, which, along with "what follows" in the rest of the service (lesser Litany, Lord's Prayer, three prayers for pardon and final blessing), "was taken from the Sarum services for Ash Wednesday".[71] From the Sarum Rite practice in England the service took Psalm 51 and some prayers that in the Sarum Missal accompanied the blessing and distribution of ashes.[64][72] In the Sarum Rite, the Miserere psalm was one of the seven penitential psalms that were recited at the beginning of the ceremony.[73] In the 20th century, the Episcopal Church introduced three prayers from the Sarum Rite and omitted the Commination Office from its liturgy.[67]
Low church ceremonies [ edit ]
In some of the low church traditions, other practices are sometimes added or substituted, as other ways of symbolizing the confession and penitence of the day. For example, in one common variation, small cards are distributed to the congregation on which people are invited to write a sin they wish to confess. These small cards are brought forth to the altar table where they are burned.[74]
Regional customs [ edit ]
In Victorian era, theatres refrained from presenting costumed shows on Ash Wednesday, so they provided other entertainment, as mandated by the Church of England (Anglican Church).[75] Also, "in Iceland, on Ash Wednesday children pin small bags of ashes on the back of some unsuspecting person".[76]
Biblical significance of ashes [ edit ]
Ashes were used in ancient times to express grief. When Tamar was raped by her half-brother, "she sprinkled ashes on her head, tore her robe, and with her face buried in her hands went away crying" (2 Samuel 13:19). The gesture was also used to express sorrow for sins and faults. In Job 42:3–6, Job says to God: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The prophet Jeremiah calls for repentance by saying: "O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, roll in the ashes" (Jer 6:26). The prophet Daniel recounted pleading to God: "I turned to the Lord God, pleading in earnest prayer, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes" (Daniel 9:3). Just prior to the New Testament period, the rebels fighting for Jewish independence, the Maccabees, prepared for battle using ashes: "That day they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their clothes" (1 Maccabees 3:47; see also 4:39).
Examples of the practice among Jews are found in several other books of the Bible, including Numbers 19:9, 19:17, Jonah 3:6, Book of Esther 4:1, and Hebrews 9:13. Jesus is quoted as speaking of the practice in Matthew 11:21 and Luke 10:13: "If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago (sitting) in sackcloth and ashes."
Christian use of ashes [ edit ]
[25] An 1881 Polish painting of a Roman Catholic priest sprinkling ashes on the heads of worshippers, the form prevailing in, for instance, Italy, Spain, and parts of Latin America
Christians continued the practice of using ashes as an external sign of repentance. Tertullian ( c. 160 – c. 225) said that confession of sin should be accompanied by lying in sackcloth and ashes.[77] The historian Eusebius (c. 260/265 – 339/340) recounts how a repentant apostate covered himself with ashes when begging Pope Zephyrinus to readmit him to communion.[78]
John W. Fenton writes that "by the end of the 10th century, it was customary in Western Europe (but not yet in Rome) for all the faithful to receive ashes on the first day of the Lenten fast. In 1091, this custom was then ordered by Pope Urban II at the council of Benevento to be extended to the church in Rome. Not long after that, the name of the day was referred to in the liturgical books as "Feria Quarta Cinerum" (i.e., Ash Wednesday)."[79]
The public penance that grave sinners underwent before being admitted to Holy Communion just before Easter lasted throughout Lent, on the first day of which they were sprinkled with ashes and dressed in sackcloth. When, towards the end of the first millennium, the discipline of public penance was dropped, the beginning of Lent, seen as a general penitential season, was marked by sprinkling ashes on the heads of all.[80] This practice is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary of the late 8th century.[28][81] About two centuries later, Ælfric of Eynsham, an Anglo-Saxon abbot, wrote of the rite of strewing ashes on heads at the start of Lent.[30][82]
A Lutheran pastor distributes ashes to a communicant during a Divine Service
The article on Ash Wednesday in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica states that, after the Protestant Reformation, the ashes ceremony was not forbidden in the Church of England, a statement that may explain the research by Blair Meeks that the Anglican tradition "never lapsed in this observance".[83] It was even prescribed under King Henry VIII in 1538 and under King Edward VI in 1550, but it fell out of use in many areas after 1600.[67] In 1536, the Ten Articles issued by authority of Henry VIII commended "the observance of various rites and ceremonies as good and laudable, such as clerical vestments, sprinkling of holy water, bearing of candles on Candlemas-day, giving of ashes on Ash-Wednesday".[84] After Henry's death in January 1547, Thomas Cranmer, within the same year, "procured an order from the Council to forbid the carrying of candles on Candlemas-day, and the use of ashes on Ash-Wednesday, and of palms on Palm-Sunday, as superstitious ceremonies", an order that was issued only for the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury, of which Cranmer was archbishop.[85][86][87] The Church Cyclopædia states that the "English office had adapted the very old Salisbury service for Ash-Wednesday, prefacing it with an address and a recital of the curses of Mount Ebal, and then with an exhortation uses the older service very nearly as it stood."[71][88] The new Commination Office had no blessing of ashes and therefore, in England as a whole, "soon after the Reformation, the use of ashes was discontinued as a 'vain show' and Ash Wednesday then became only a day of marked solemnity, with a memorial of its original character in a reading of the curses denounced against impenitent sinners".[89] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in the 19th century, observed Ash Wednesday: "as a day of fasting and humiliation, wherein we are publicly to confess our sins, meekly to implore God's mercy and forgiveness, and humbly to intercede for the continuance of his favour".[90] In the 20th century, the Book of Common Prayer provided prayers for the imposition of ashes.[91]
An Episcopal priest has an Ashes to Go station for commuters at the Metro-North Railroad in the American state of Connecticut
Monte Canfield and Blair Meeks state that after the Protestant Reformation, Anglicans and Lutherans kept the rite of blessing and distributing ashes to the faithful on Ash Wednesday, and that the Protestant denominations that did not keep it encouraged its use "during and after the ecumenical era that resulted in the Vatican II proclamations".[83][92] Jack Kingsbury and Russell F. Anderson likewise state that the practice was continued among some Anglicans and Lutherans.[93][94] On the other hand, Edward Traill Horn wrote: "The ceremony of the distribution of the ashes was not retained by the reformers, whether Lutheran, Anglican or Reformed", although these denominations honored Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent.[95] Frank Senn, a liturgical scholar, has been quoted as saying: "How and why the use of ashes fell out of Lutheran use is difficult to discern from the sources… [C]hurch orders don't specifically say not to use ashes; they simply stopped giving direction for blessing and distributing them and eventually the pastors just stopped doing it."[96]
As part of the liturgical revival ushered in by the ecumenical movement, the practice was encouraged in Protestant churches,[92] including the Methodist Church.[97][98] It has also been adopted by Anabaptist and Reformed churches and some less liturgical denominations.[99]
The Eastern Orthodox churches generally do not observe Ash Wednesday,[100] although in recent times, the creation of the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate has led to the observance of Ash Wednesday among Western Orthodox parishes.[79] In this tradition, ashes "may be distributed outside of the mass or any liturgical service" although "commonly the faithful receive their ashes immediately before the Ash Wednesday mass".[79] In Orthodoxy, historically, "serious public sinners in the East also donned sackcloth, including those who made the Great Fast a major theme of their entire lives such as hermits and desert-dwellers."[101] Byzantine Catholics, although in the United States use "the same Gregorian calendar as the Roman Catholic rite", do not practice the distribution of ashes as it is "not part of their ancient tradition".[102]
In the Ambrosian Rite, ashes are blessed and placed on the heads of the faithful not on the day that elsewhere is called Ash Wednesday, but at the end of Mass on the following Sunday, which in that rite inaugurates Lent, with the fast traditionally beginning on Monday, the first weekday of the Ambrosian Lent.[103][12][104][105]
Lent [ edit ]
Ash Wednesday marks the start of a 40-day period which is an allusion to the separation of Jesus in the desert to fast and pray. During this time he was tempted. Matthew 4:1–11, Mark 1:12–13, and Luke 4:1–13.[106] While not specifically instituted in the Bible text, the 40-day period of repentance is also analogous to the 40 days during which Moses repented and fasted in response to the making of the Golden calf.(Exo. 34:27–28) (Jews today follow a 40-day period of repenting in preparation for and during the High Holy Days from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur.)
Ash Wednesday and other named days and day ranges around Lent and Easter in Western Christianity, with the fasting days of Lent numbered and other named days and day ranges around Lent and Easter in Western Christianity, with the fasting days of Lent numbered
Ash Wednesday is exactly 46 days before Easter Sunday, a moveable feast based on the cycles of the moon. The earliest date Ash Wednesday can occur is 4 February (which is only possible during a common year with Easter on 22 March), which happened in 1598, 1693, 1761 and 1818 and will next occur in 2285.[107] The latest date Ash Wednesday can occur is 10 March (when Easter Day falls on 25 April) which occurred in 1666, 1734, 1886 and 1943 and will next occur in 2038. Ash Wednesday has never occurred on Leap Year Day (29 February), and it will not occur as such until 2096. The only other years of the third millennium that will have Ash Wednesday on 29 February are 2468, 2688, 2840 and 2992. (Ash Wednesday falls on 29 February only if Easter is on 15 April in a leap year starting on a Sunday.)
Observing churches [ edit ]
These Christian Churches are among those that mark Ash Wednesday with a particular liturgy or service.
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not, in general, observe Ash Wednesday; instead, Orthodox Great Lent begins on Clean Monday. There are, however, a relatively small number of Orthodox Christians who follow the Western Rite; these do observe Ash Wednesday, although often on a different day from the previously mentioned denominations, as its date is determined from the Orthodox calculation of Pascha, which may be as much as a month later than the Western observance of Easter.
National No Smoking Day [ edit ]
In the Republic of Ireland, Ash Wednesday is National No Smoking Day.[135][136] The date was chosen because quitting smoking ties in with giving up luxury for Lent.[137][138] In the United Kingdom No Smoking Day was held for the first time on Ash Wednesday 1984[139] but is now fixed as the second Wednesday in March.[140]
Notes [ edit ]Trop Gun made a big splash on social media and forums on Thursday for their refusal to show Glock employees their 4473s for customers who had purchased guns through the Blue Label Program. In response to Trop’s refusal to show the Glock representative the 4473s, Glock terminated Trop from the Blue Label Program. You can read Trop’s response to having their Blue Label Program participation revoked here. For those who are unfamiliar, the Blue Label Program allows law enforcement, military, Glock Shooting Sports Foundation (GSSF) members and several other select individuals to purchase Glock pistols at a reduced price.
The Blue Label Program imposes certain requirements on dealers when selling “blue label” guns. Those requirements include collecting a copy of the individuals credentials (photocopy of their ID), filling out a form that certifies the sales representative saw the credential if a photocopy cannot be made or collecting the GSSF coupon that GSSF members bring. Glock requires that these be attached to the 4473.
According to Trop, when the Glock representative came to do an audit of the “blue label” firearms that were sold, the representative demanded access to view records relating to “blue label” sales including access to the 4473s. Trop Gun wisely refused the representative’s request. After attempting to find a solution that would allow the Glock representative to be satisfied that the “blue label” sales were only made to qualified individuals and arriving at nothing that would satisfy the demands of the Glock representative, Trop Gun was terminated from the Blue Label Program.
While Trop Gun refused the Glock representative access to the 4473s based on their position of protecting their customer’s privacy, there appears to be a more pertinent reason to deny the Glock representative access. It’s a violation of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code for a Pennsylvania FFL to disclose information provided by the transferee in relation to the purchase of a firearm.
18 Pa.C.S. § 6111(i) of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code reads:
Confidentiality.–All information provided by the potential purchaser, transferee or applicant, including, but not limited to, the potential purchaser, transferee or applicant’s name or identity, furnished by a potential purchaser or transferee under this section…shall be confidential and not subject to public disclosure. In addition to any other sanction or penalty imposed by this chapter, any person, licensed dealer, State or local governmental agency or department that violates this subsection shall be liable in civil damages in the amount of $1,000 per occurrence or three times the actual damages incurred as a result of the violation, whichever is greater, as well as reasonable attorney fees.
As Section 6111 pertains to the sale or transfer of firearms, the information provided by the transferee is confidential and not subject to public disclosure. This prohibition of disclosure would surely include the Glock representative who arrives at a Pennsylvania FFL to conduct an audit of “blue label” sales. Furthermore, any FFL who did provide the 4473s and/or Pennsylvania Record of Sale to a Glock representative would be in violation of Section 6111(i) and subject to civil penalties in the amount of $1,000 per occurrence or three times the actual damages incurred as a result of the violation, as well as reasonable attorney fees!
Ostensibly, as the credentials Glock requires individuals to provide in order to purchase a “blue label” gun are being provided for the purchase of a firearm, there may be an argument that the disclosure of those credentials are in violation of Section 6111.
All FFLs in Pennsylvania who are Blue Label Program members should be aware of this issue. If a Glock representative requests information pertaining to an audit for “blue label” guns and the PA FFL provides them with any information furnished by the transferee, that FFL could be civilly liable under the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. Perhaps the next Pennsylvania FFL who is ordered to disclose their 4473s for a Glock “blue label” audit would be better suited in pointing out the request is asking them to violate the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. Maybe after reviewing this matter more closely, Glock will reconsider their termination of Trop’s Blue Label Program participation, as they were asking Trop Gun to potentially open themselves up to civil liability.
Did you find this blog post informative? Be sure to share it with your friends! Click the buttons below to share on Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to like our Facebook pages by using the buttons to the right!Borderlands is a 2009 open world action role-playing first-person shooter video game. It is the first game in the Borderlands series, developed by Gearbox Software, and published by 2K Games for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Shield Android TV.[7][8] The game was released worldwide in October 2009, with the Mac OS X version being released on December 3, 2010 by Feral Interactive.[9] The game's story focuses on a group of four "Vault Hunters", who travel to the distant planet Pandora to hunt down an alien vault, rumored to contain advanced alien technology, finding themselves battling the local fauna and bandit population, but ultimately attempting to stop the head of a private corporation army from reaching the vault first.
The game features the ability to explore the in-game world, and complete both main missions and optional side quests, either in single-player or online cooperative gameplay, with the latter providing additional options for duels and competitive PVP matches in designated areas. Gameplay features include access to various weapons and shields that vary in type and statistics, weapons with special elemental functions, each playable character having distinctive class types and unique abilities for combat, up-gradable skills, and the use of two-person vehicles. The game itself is rendered in cartoon-style, cel-shaded graphics, to provide greater detail on weapons and environments, and was inspired by various action role-playing games of the time, such as Ultima and Diablo.
Borderlands received favourable reviews upon its release, and sold over two million units by the end of 2009. Its success spawned four DLCs - The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned in November 2009; Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot in December 2009; The Secret Armory of General Knoxx in February 2010; and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution in September 2010 - and a sequel, Borderlands 2, on September 2012.
Gameplay [ edit ]
Lilith, the siren (left) and Mordecai, the hunter (far right) prepare to attack the Rakk Hive, one of the enemies in the game
Borderlands includes character-building elements found in role-playing games, leading Gearbox to call the game a "role-playing shooter". At the start of the game, players select one of four characters, each with a unique special skill and with proficiencies with certain weapons.[10] From then on, players take on missions assigned through non-player characters or from bounty boards, each typically rewarding the player with experience points, money, and sometimes a reward item.[10] Players earn experience by killing both human and non-human foes and completing in-game challenges (such as getting a certain number of kills using a specific type of weapon). As they gain levels from experience growth, players can then allocate skill points into a skill tree that features three distinct specializations of the base character; for example, Mordecai can become specialized in sniping, gunslinging with revolvers, or using his pet Bloodwing to assist in kills and health boosting. Players can distribute points among any of the specializations, and can also spend a small amount of in-game money to redistribute their skill points.
Players start the game with the ability to equip two weapons but later gain up to four weapon slots, as well as slots for an energy shield, a grenade modification, and a class modification. Items collected can be sold back at vendors for money that then can be used to buy better items. One of the key features of Borderlands is the randomly generated weapons and items created either as dropped by enemies, found in storage chests about the game, on the ground, sold at vendors in the game, or as quest reward items. The game uses a "Procedural Content Creation System" to create these weapons and items, which can alter their firepower, rate of fire, and accuracy, add in elemental effects such as a chance to set foes on fire or cover them in burning acid, and at rare times other special bonuses such as regenerating the player's ammo.[11] A color-coded scale is used to indicate the rarity of the weapon or item. It was estimated that the random system could generate over 17 million variations of weapons, but actually only resulted in a little over 3,500,000.[12][13] The Procedural system is also used to create the characteristic of random enemies that the player may face. This allows for enemies of the same species to have widely varying attacks: for example, variations of "spiderants" in the game could leap around and would jump onto players' faces, while another variant can roll up into a ball and attack people, depending on the content generator.[14]
When in combat, the player can take damage if their shield is depleted, affecting their health. If they lose all their health, they must either wait to be revived by another player or attempt to kill an enemy to achieve a "second wind", or otherwise will be regenerated back at the last "New-U" station that they passed, losing a 'ratio-appropriate' percentage of their money in the process. Players quickly gain access to two-passenger vehicles, and can engage in vehicular combat with other enemies. Eventually, a system of fast transit points between the game world is available to the player; until then, players must walk or drive between areas to get around.
The game can be played alone, but also supports two-player cooperative play through split-screen (on consoles), and up to four players playing co-operatively online or over LAN. The game follows the progress of the host player, rewarding the other active players for completion of quests for their characters. If the other players are doing the same quests in their campaign, the completed quests remain the same in their campaign as well as the host's. When more players are present, the game alters the statistics of the generated enemies, balancing the game due to the larger number of players. Players can take part in one-on-one duels anywhere in the game world,[15] or can visit arenas in the game world to participate in free-for-all, 2-on-2 or 3-on-1 combat battles with their fellow players.[16] The original title as shipped for Microsoft Windows used GameSpy servers for multiplayer modes; as a result of GameSpy's shutdown in 2013, 2K Games patched the game and moved the servers to Steam, as well as providing Steam-versions of the game for those that purchased the title through retail channels.[17]
Plot [ edit ]
Setting [ edit ]
Borderlands is set in the distant future, at a time when various mega-corporations seek control of various planets to colonise and mine for their mineral wealth. Prior to the events of the game, the Atlas Corporation, one of the major mega-corporations, uncovered an ancient alien vault filled with advanced weapons technology, allowing them to rapidly overtake their competitors. Finding similar ruins of the same alien architecture on the planet Pandora, Atlas sought to settle the planet in hopes of finding more alien technology, but were forced to abandon their plans due to a |
Mr Dimas-Martinez's lawyers said the case was likely to bring in new rules.
"It's not about your right to tweet or be on Facebook," Janice Vaughn said.
"It's about protecting the right of the person who may end up behind bars or end up losing a significant amount of money in a civil case."
Mr Dimas-Martinez's lawyers had also complained that another juror had fallen asleep while the prosecutor had been presenting the evidence.
The Supreme Court has recommended a retrial. A spokesman for the attorney general said the state had not decided its next step.
Facebook failure
The news follows a warning from the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales that technology was making iteasy for jurors to communicate with others.
"We must be astute to preserve the integrity of jury trial and the jury system," said Lord Judge.
Earlier this year, a Manchester woman became the first juror to be jailed for contacting a defendant via Facebook.
Because other defendants were still on trial, the judge decided to discharge the jury, and the case collapsed.
Joanne Fraill was sentenced to eight months in jail for contempt of court.NEW DELHI: In Hindu mythology it's holy, a cradle of Hinduism. In modern historiography, its existence is a much debated topic. In Indian politics, it's a BJP vs Congress political cultural battle — with BJP in power, the hunt for Saraswati river is on mission mode. The culture ministry has asked ASI to restart the hunt for archaeological evidence that'll show the Saraswati river was not just a myth but a reality.ASI has started its first excavations in Rajasthan. The Vajpayee government had originally conceived the idea of looking for the 'lost' river, and in 2002 had also set up a panel of experts headed by the then culture minister, Jagmohan. The Modi government will set up a similar panel. Congress-led UPA had scrapped the Vajpayee government's Saraswati project in 2004.But with power shifting, the 'holy' river of Hindu mythology is a priority again. The Centre's efforts come after BJP's Haryana government announced setting up of the Adi Badri Heritage Board and its plans to create a new water channel along the supposed path of the river.But the Union culture ministry will now play the lead role. ASI's first round of excavations is at a site along the Ghaggar-Hakra river course believed to be the course that the river once took. An ASI team is excavating at Binjor in Ganganagar district of Rajasthan. A centrally protected site last excavated partially only in the 1970s, mounds at Binjor have been opened up again by ASI.Binjor will be excavated this year to conduct studies related to the Harappan culture in the Saraswati-Ghaggar valley. ASI ADG BR Mani told ET the 2002 panel will be revived and some new members may be added to it. He said excavations related to the river were never really stopped and fresh excavations are only an extension of an ongoing exercise."There are other new components related to the revival of the river that are being taken up now by other bodies but ASI has continued excavations ever since 2002." But senior officials said ASI's work had come to a near halt after 2004 and new excavations have started only now. Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma's office said the ministry will "continue the work taken up by Jagmohan and team".A nodal officer from the ministry has been appointed for the project. ASI has got back an archeologist, who had first worked for the project, in its team. The Jagmohan panel had Baldeo Sahai of ISRO, archaeologist SK Raman, DK Chadha of Central Ground Water Authority as members, among others.WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has formally launched the Australian WikiLeaks Party and announced its federal election candidates. Assange has now officially declared his candidacy for a seat in the Australian Senate.
Speaking via Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the 41-year-old whistleblower has been holed up for more than a year due to a threat of extradition to Sweden, Assange outlined the principal policies of his political party, summed up as “Transparency. Accountability. Justice.”
He also detailed on the party’s focus on asylum seekers and climate change.
It marked the WikiLeaks Party’s official Thursday launch in Melbourne.
Assange has said his party would serve as an independent watchdog for Australian government activity.
“It’s a party to put into the Senate, to make sure whoever is put into the government does their job. It’s an insurance against the election,” he said as quoted by Australian national broadcaster ABC.
“WikiLeaks Party is a party of accountability, it’s not a party of government,” he added.
There will be seven candidates running for the Australian Senate, spanning the states of Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales. These include academics, journalists and human rights activists.
Assange himself is seeking a seat in Victoria. While not exactly sure the senate would allow him to hold office from his Ecuadorian asylum in London, the whistleblower appeared to be confident in his party’s ability to perform.
“There is, of course, some possibility that the Australian Senate would permit remote involvement. It’s never been done before, but it is theoretically possible. But in any event we have candidates available to hold the seat until such time as I am available to take it,” Assange said as cited by the New York Times.
He said the party’s candidates have already attained their experience while working for the whistleblowing project WikiLeaks.
“It’s not unlike running the WikiLeaks organization. We have people on every continent. We have to deal with over a dozen legal cases at once,” Assange has argued.
“My plans are to essentially parachute in a crack troop of investigative journalists into the senate and to do what we have done with WikiLeaks, in holding banks and government and intelligence agencies to account,” he explained.
Should the WikiLeaks Party be successful in the polls, Assange would have to take his seat within one year of being elected, according to Australian law. Technically, the senate could also grant him an extension.
However, the British government has stated Assange will be detained the minute he sets foot outside the embassy – in accordance with the European Arrest Warrant issued against him – effectively leaving the self-proclaimed rights activist in logistical limbo.
Assange fears that if detained and handed over to Sweden, he could then be extradited to America. There, according to his lawyers, he is most likely to face trial and a possible death sentence for the release of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables via WikiLeaks online project, including those about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has been a point of controversy as to whether the US and the UK would stop their persecution of Assange if he wins an Australian Senate seat, granting him protection by the country’s parliamentary privilege rules.
The WikiLeaks founder has compared his situation with that of boatpeople refugees seeking asylum in Australia, who have recently been told they are to be sent to Papua New Guinea, according to a new legislation announced by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Assange, who finds such policy “dead wrong,” says that it is an example of interference in the right for asylum on the state level.Three people were injured in a shooting near a Little Canada restaurant and a bar early Saturday, according to the Ramsey County sheriff’s office.
Deputies arrested a man in the area of the 2 a.m. shooting at Rice Street and Demont Avenue, near Flameburger and Hoggsbreath Bar. Sgt. John Eastham, sheriff’s office spokesman, did not have information Saturday about what led to the shooting.
The people who were shot have non-life threatening injuries.
The sheriff’s office was initially called to the area on a disturbance and at least one deputy was nearby when shots rang out.
A deputy reported it looked like a fight was starting outside Hoggsbreath, according to initial emergency dispatch traffic posted by MN Police Clips.
Then, it was reported that a male fired eight times.
Two women and a man were injured in the shooting, Eastham said.
A female was found on the side of Flameburger with a gunshot wound to the leg. Someone else was also shot in the leg and was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle, according to dispatchers.
About eight minutes before the shootings, there was a report at Flameburger about a male jumping on tables and trying to start fights with customers, according to audio of another dispatch captured by MN Police Clips. The person who reported it said the male acted like he was going to pull a gun, but one was not seen.
The sheriff’s office is looking into whether the Flameburger report is related to the shootings, Eastham said.Thursday, May 21, 2015
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—A recent study of the bones of hundreds of people who lived in Europe over the past 33,000 years suggests that the rise of agriculture and the corresponding reduced mobility led to a change in human bones. Christopher Ruff of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a team of researchers from Europe and the United States took molds of arm and leg bones in museum collections and scanned them with portable x-ray machines. “By comparing the lower limbs with the upper limbs, which are little affected by how much walking or running a person does, we could determine whether the changes we saw were due to mobility or to something else, like nutrition,” Ruff said in a press release. The team found that leg-bone strength began to decline in the Mesolithic era, some 10,000 years ago, while arm bone strength remained fairly steady. “The decline continued for thousands of years, suggesting that people had a very long transition from the start of agriculture to a completely settled lifestyle. But by the medieval period, bones were about the same strength as they are today.” To read more about the evolution of human limbs, go to "No Changeups on the Savannah."Shenmue's 3 console exclusivity on PS4 looks ever more uncertain today after Ys Net updated its Kickstarter FAQ.
The answer to the question about additional platform versions now reads: "Currently we are planning development only for PC (Windows) and PS4. Other platforms have not been decided yet. If other platform versions were added as rewards, an announcement would be made on the update page."
This suggests that an Xbox One version could be added as a stretch goal reward.
The FAQ also made the same comment in relation to a physical PS4 version - "If a physical copy was added as a reward, an announcement would be made on the update page."
An answer to a new question asking about the return of the original voice cast has also been posted.
"We have received many requests for the original cast to return and understand how important their connection is to the Shenmue community. The voice actors remain undetermined, but we will let you know through the updates when they become finalized," reads the FAQ.
At the time of writing the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter has earned more than $3.5 million.
Source: KickstarterA coalition of defense lawyers is asking the New York State inspector general’s office — the designated watchdog for the state’s crime labs — to launch an inquiry into the use of the disputed analysis methods in thousands of criminal cases. While the inspector general has no jurisdiction over the court system, any finding of flaws with the DNA analysis could prompt an avalanche of litigation. Previous convictions could be revisited if the flawed evidence can be shown to have made a difference in the outcome.
The medical examiner’s office “has engaged in negligent conduct that undermines the integrity of its forensic DNA testing and analysis,” the Legal Aid Society and the Federal Defenders of New York wrote the inspector general on Friday. Because the lab has kept problems with its “unreliable” testing and “unsound statistical evidence” secret from the public and the courts, they continued, “innocent people may be wrongly convicted, and people guilty of serious crimes may go free.”
In addition to those convicted using the disputed methods, many defendants may have chosen to plead guilty when they learned prosecutors had DNA evidence against them. Their cases face significant barriers to reconsideration.
The medical examiner’s office stands by its science. Its chief of laboratories, Timothy Kupferschmid, said that the discarded techniques were well-tested and valid, and that the lab was adopting newer methods to align with changing F.B.I. standards. He compared it to a vehicle upgrade.
“So just because we’re switching to the new model, I mean, our old pickup truck worked great, but my new pickup truck is so much better,” he said.An endangered Black Rhino was poached in the Pilanesberg National Park, the first rhino to be poached in this Park in its 31 year history. The 26 year old female, known as Suzi, was shot 4 times, one of the shots in the front leg “knee” joint probably to prevent her from running away or attacking, before both horns were removed by pangas.
Two holes were found in the boundary fence in a remote area of the park. Park management immediately called in a helicopter to search the area to see if the breaches in the fence were linked to rhino poaching, when the carcass of Suzi was spotted from the air. The gang had walked through the bush until finding Suzi where she was shot and her horns were removed. A full forensic investigation was carried out at the scene by the South African Police Services and spent cartridges, as well as other evidence, was found.
Suzi and her calf
Poachers removed her horn with pangas (machetes) and the knee bullet wound is visible
To Read the Full Article, Click Here
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedBuy Photo Cliven Bundy addresses those gathered for a political summit for the Independent American Party, Aug. 2. (Photo: Jud Burkett / The Spectrum & Daily News )Buy Photo
Leaders of the Elko Tea Party say southern Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy will speak in Elko next month at a fundraiser and rally they’re co-hosting with the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood.
Bundy gained fame in April during a confrontation between the Bureau of Land Management and his armed supporters in a decades-old dispute over livestock grazing at his Bunkerville ranch.
The government eventually backed down and Bundy’s allies released the 380 cattle agents had seized.
Elko Tea Party co-chairwoman Lana Noland told the Elko Daily Free Press Bundy’s crusade underscores the importance of gun rights. Additional sponsors include Nevada Families for Freedom, Elko Independent American Party and the Constitutional Seminar Group.
Bundy told an Independent American Party gathering in Utah Aug. 2 his showdown was part of an age-old spiritual battle between good and evil.
“There was people from almost every state in this United States was there. Some of them told me they’d traveled for 40 hours to get there,” Bundy said in the common language of a man who has spent his life and livelihood in the Silver State’s desert climate. “Why did they come? … Because they felt like they needed to. They was spiritually touched.”
The socially conservative IAP encourages members to reject the Republican and Democratic Party’s “duopoly” and vote for candidates based on their individual qualifications rather than a party affiliation — especially outside Utah and New Mexico, the only states to formally recognize the IAP, and Arizona and Oregon, in which the IAP enjoys other-party affiliation.
The disagreement with federal officials over whether Bundy has a right to graze his cattle on “public” lands without paying government fees remained the focus of the summit’s finale, but much of the dialogue delved into spiritual influences.
The IAP draws much of its inspiration from statements made by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the majority of its members are LDS and Utah residents, although IAP National Chairman Kelly Gneiting said the party is not about doctrines specific to the Mormon religion or any other faith that believes in the biblical “providence of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
The LDS church does not endorse any political party, although its Utah members are heavily conservative and Republican.
Read or Share this story: http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/local/2014/08/21/bundy-speak-elko-tea-party-event-sept/14426457/Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, by Jacob T. Levy, Oxford University Press, 322 pages, $49.95
In the 2000 film The Patriot, Mel Gibson's character asks an advocate of American independence: "Why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?" The line was borrowed from a real-life historical figure, the loyalist Boston clergyman Byles Mather (nephew of Cotton Mather), who reportedly made the remark in the perhaps less than tactful context of watching the 3,000-strong funeral procession for the victims of the 1770 Boston Massacre.
Mather's skepticism would have been shared by John Stuart Mill. "Any despotism is preferable to local despotism," Mill wrote in "Centralisation," an 1862 essay. "If we are to be ridden over by authority," he continued, "if our affairs are to be managed for us at the pleasure of other people, heaven forfend that it should be at that of our nearest neighbours." The latter would involve becoming "the slave of the vulgar prejudices, the cramped, distorted, and short-sighted views, of the public of a small town." A more distant and centralized power, whatever its defects, is at least likelier than local power to be guided by "some knowledge, some general cultivation, some attention and habitual deference to the opinions of the more instructed minds." In other words, the cosmopolitan is less to be feared than the parochial.
Nearly three decades earlier, in Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville expressed precisely the opposite preference, defending the superiority of local over centralized power. "When towns and provinces form so many different nations within the common motherland, each of them has a particularist spirit opposed to the general spirit of servitude," Tocqueville explained; "provincial privileges" are accordingly among the "things which softened the blows of authority and maintained a spirit of resistance in the nation." But "now that all parts of a single empire have lost their franchises, usages, prejudices, and even their memories and names, and have grown accustomed to obey the same laws," he laments, "it is no longer...difficult to oppress them."
For Jacob Levy, a political theorist at McGill University, this disagreement between Mill and Tocqueville is emblematic of a dispute that runs through the entire history of liberalism (using the term liberalism in the broad academic sense that includes both pro-free-market classical liberals and pro-welfare-state modern liberals). In Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, he traces two strands running through the liberal tradition, strands differentiated by their attitudes toward "intermediate groups" (that is, groups intermediate between the individual and the centralized state), a category in which Levy includes "churches and religious groups, ethnic and cultural groups, voluntary associations, universities," and the family, but also "levels of government below the center—towns and cities, or the provinces and states of a federation." Levy justifies including governmental and private groups in the same category on the grounds that the dispute he's tracing tends to do so as well.
One strand within liberalism—a strand associated with, for example, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Destutt de Tracy, and Mill—sees these intermediate groups as arenas of "hierarchy and subordination," driven by "local prejudices" and "excessive attachment to custom," and all too often hostage to the "insular power of in-group elites," to be contrasted with the more "publicly accountable" character of the centralized state.
The other strand—associated with Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, Lord Acton, and Tocqueville—sees intermediate groups as, in themselves, a vital expression of individuals' freedom of association, and in their consequences, a crucial site of "institutional resistance to expansions of state power" and of "alternatives to acting through the state."
In short, the first strand, which Levy calls "rationalist," prioritizes "the freedom of persons within groups," while the second, dubbed "pluralist," prioritizes "the freedom of groups from the state."
Given its epistemological associations, the term rationalist is perhaps an unfortunate choice; "cosmopolitan" might have been better. Levy stresses that his use of "rationalist" is meant to invoke not "theories of knowledge or standards of argumentation," but rather "processes of bureaucratic rationalization," and in particular of state demands for "rational accounts" to justify "the practices of non-state groups"; in brief, "Weber, not Descartes."
But Levy himself seems to bring in a broader range of connotations than this, since he associates rationalism with simple principles (Levy cites Mill's "very simple principle" as an expression of rationalism) and legal uniformity (Tracy's insistence that all states should have "the same civil and criminal laws," on the grounds that "a true proposition is true everywhere," is described as the epitome of "rationalist philosophical distrust of institutional pluralism").
Yet neither simplicity nor legal uniformity is necessarily incompatible with favoring group autonomy in preference to central direction. Think of the libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who certainly favored simple principles (the "non-aggression axiom") and legal uniformity (the "libertarian law code"), yet who nearly always sided with intermediate groups in any conflict with the centralized state, even to the point of excessive generosity to the Confederacy. Likewise one can be in favor of, for example, uniform weights and measures without seeking to have such uniformity imposed by legislative fiat, trusting instead to consumer preferences to motivate convergence. It's not because of governmental edict, after all, that no banks supply gigantic triangular ATM cards. Universalism at the level of principles is compatible with pluralism at the level of institutions.
Levy offers the conflict between rationalist and pluralist versions of liberalism as a lens through which to view current debates over "multiculturalism, religious freedom, freedom of associations, universities, and local governments," inviting us to see these not merely as an assortment of "discrete odd problems," but rather as the "deep and perennial problems" of the liberal tradition.
To see Levy's point, think of the difference between France's and the United States' policies on the wearing of the hijab. French law bans it, U.S. law protects it, and each policy is defended in the name of freedom for Muslim women.
Liberals belonging to one strand tend to question the liberal credentials of those in the other strand. Rationalist liberals such as Brian Barry condemn the pluralist approach as illiberal, since in their eyes liberalism historically and essentially stands for, in Levy's words, "equality before a uniform law and the abolition of group-based legal distinctions." More pluralistic liberals, such as Friedrich Hayek, equally condemn the rationalist approach as illiberal, by equating it with a "constructivist" penchant for central planning.
But Levy insists on the liberal bona fides of both strands. Each is genuinely concerned with protecting individual freedom, but the two strands are divided by "rival accounts of where threats to freedom are more likely to come from." While the pluralist's nightmare is the "man of system," the distant puppet master who attempts to impose an abstract bureaucratic order on individuals' lives with only the haziest understanding of the particularities he is dealing with, the rationalist's nightmare is the "busybody," the nosy neighbor who is all too well acquainted with the concrete details of the lives he's itching to meddle with.
Nor does the rationalist/pluralist distinction line up in any neat way with the aforementioned divide between classical liberalism and welfare-state liberalism. Constant and Tracy, for example, were laissez faire individualists whose commitments would today be called libertarian; yet despite the vast range of their political agreement, Constant leans pluralist, defending local and particularist loyalties as a bulwark against state power, while Tracy leans rationalist, arguing that if the central government represents the entire population, then any intermediate group acting to check its power must represent an illegitimate special interest.
The pluralist strand is likewise not necessarily associated with tendencies toward social or cultural conservatism. To be sure, it can be, and Levy accordingly cites Edmund Burke as a representative of pluralist liberalism. But he also identifies pluralist tendencies in the thought of Elinor Ostrom, James C. Scott, and the proponents of multiculturalism—figures unlikely to be identified as social conservatives.Character design for my portfolio.
Once Atticus was a great wizard, recognized throughout the world as the best at magical shields and defensive spells. But during the greatest battle of his life, he started to run out of magic while defending a capital city. Desperately, he sought the only solution he could find, to keep the enemy from entering the city walls: black magic. It was forbidden, he knew that, and he had never tested it before. Yet he saw no other choice...
The result was disastrous. Thousands of good soldiers and innocent people killed in the flaming inferno that replaced his magical shields around the city walls.
Atticus was devastated, and did not care when he was exiled from the kingdom. He left all the people he once was admired by, and settled down in an unpleasant, dangerous swamp. There he continued to study his magic for centuries, far away from the rest of world, and well aware of the fact that his glorious days were now only memories.
Medium: Photoshop CS5.
Date completed: March 13, 2012.
Edit: Fixed the brightness of the image, seeing as it was too dark.Amid the uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s immigration proposals, dozens of refugees and asylum seekers have been walking from the U.S. to Canada, despite the freezing temperatures or the possibility of frostbite or even death.
Agencies dedicated to resettling refugees and new immigrants north of the U.S. border are reporting that an unprecedented number of people are walking into Canada in order to avoid detection by border officials.
MIXED MESSAGE: 84 LUMBER'S SUPER BOWL AD SPURS OUTRAGE, CONFUSION
“They’re not crossing at the actual where there’s an immigration and customs office,” Rita Chahal, of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council told the Guardian. “They’re walking through prairie fields with lots and lots of deep snow. In Europe we’re seeing people in boats; now just imagine a prairie flatland and snow for miles and miles.”
The U.S. and Canada have a 2004 pact, known as the Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires most migrants to apply for asylum in the first county in which they arrive. However, critics of the pact argue that the United States is not a safe haven for refugees as many are being driven to north in part by Trump’s rhetoric.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT APPEALS JUDGE'S ORDER TEMPORARILY BLOCKING TRUMP'S TRAVEL BAN
“The U.S. presidential campaign, putting undocumented immigrations and refugees in the spotlight, terrified them,” Ghezae Hagos, a counselor at Welcome Place, told Reuters. “The election and inauguration of Mr. Trump appears to be the final reason for those who came mostly last month.”
According to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), more than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land posts of entry from the United States – up 63 percent from the previous year.
During the same time period, more than 2,000 more entered “irregularly” without official authorization.
TEXAS POLICE OFFICER UNDER FIRE AFTER MESSAGE TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GOES VIRAL
Just last week, one agency in Canada claimed it opened eight refugee claims from people who walked into Canada; while the Royal Canadian Mountain Police said 22 people walked across the border over the weekend – 19 of them on Saturday and three on Sunday, the Guardian reported.
Among those making the trek were Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal, two refugees from Ghana already in the U.S., who decided to try their luck in Canada, in December.
According to the Guardian, the pair started their journey in North Dakota with a cab ride that dropped them off insight of the Canadian border. The two woefully underdressed men walked for hours, suffering from cold and severe frostbite.
They eventually stumbled upon a highway and a trucker stopped to help them. Mohammed, 24, had to have all his fingers amputated, while Iyal lost all of his fingers except for his thumbs to frostbite.
Their trek, and that of dozens others, worries advocates.
“We do not, as an organization want to see anyone lose life or limb while trying to get to safety. We do not want to see an image like what we saw around the world of Alan Kurdi on a prairie field,” Chahal said, referencing the image of the three-year-old Syrian boy, whose lifeless body was found on a beach in Turkey in 2015.Beijing: How do you say "specky" (spectacular mark) in Mandarin? The AFL's milestone broadcast on Chinese state television had the commentators reaching for the dictionary – and possibly more than a few viewers scratching their heads at the unfamiliar sight.
Friday night's match between Port Adelaide and Essendon was broadcast on delay on China's state broadcaster CCTV as part of a landmark deal clinched by the South Australian club to air two of its home games on the network.
The match, which saw Port run away with a 61-point win, aired on CCTV5+, the digital multichannel offshoot of the network's main sports channel. Port's next home game, against Geelong in round five, will be broadcast live.
The initiative, which represents the most significant step to market the game to the world's largest audience since a 2010 exhibition match between Melbourne and Brisbane in Shanghai, came after a two-year effort by Port to seek partnerships and commercial arrangements in China. A further announcement is expected to coincide with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's visit to China next week.SALT LAKE CITY -- NBA summer league rosters are typically composed of rookies getting their first taste of the league or players trying to catch the eye of an organization.
Utah's Dante Exum doesn't quite fit either category.
Editor's Picks Markelle Fultz vs. Jayson Tatum headlines summer league stop in Utah The four-day event features the 76ers, Celtics, Spurs and Jazz, but all eyes will be on Philly and Boston, which will be debuting the No. 1 and No. 3 overall picks Monday night in Salt Lake City.
Hayward's Boston visit features Fenway trip, I.T. An airport pickup from Brad Stevens, a trip to Fenway Park and a meeting with Isaiah Thomas all featured in Gordon Hayward's free-agent visit to Boston, in which the Celtics delivered a basketball-centric pitch about why they're the best fit for him. 1 Related
The Jazz guard was the No. 5 overall pick in the 2014 draft and will be running a summer league team -- again. No other lottery pick from 2014 or 2015 currently is on an Orlando or Utah Summer League roster. But Exum finds himself in the unusual position of trying to attain a more secure place in the 2017-18 Jazz rotation.
"He's not the young guy anymore," Utah Jazz Summer League coach Alex Jensen said. "It's time. You've got to stand out.
"I don't think it's any one thing. When you watch the game, he can't blend in. You're too talented and too good to blend in, because a lot of guys are in their first and second year."
San Antonio, Boston, Philadelphia and Utah begin play in Salt Lake City on Monday; play started Saturday in the eight-team Orlando Summer League.
Exum said he wasn't planning to play summer league after the season ended, but the team would like to see more from him going into his fourth year. Time could be running out for the 21-year-old as the Jazz continue to try to upgrade their roster and build on last season's return to the playoffs.
One area of particular focus is point guard. Utah traded into the lottery to draft guard Donovan Mitchell and took Nigel Williams-Goss in the second round. The Jazz also traded for Ricky Rubio over the weekend.
Exum was moved to off guard down the stretch of the season and averaged 6.2 points, 1.7 assists and 2.0 rebounds and shot 42.7 percent from the field. His career progression stalled when he missed all of 2015-16 with a torn ACL. He said he's focused on working on his jumper, midrange game, 3-point shot, driving to the basket and facilitating the offense.
The Jazz are hoping to re-sign Gordon Hayward, add depth to the roster and become even more of a threat in the Western Conference after earning the No. 5 playoff seed in 2017. That means the clock is ticking for Exum, who needs to show he's more than just athletically gifted in a 6-foot-6 frame.
"One of the biggest things for me is I just want to play," Exum said. "It was an emphasis this summer just to get out and play."When it comes to The City of London, the term ‘tax haven’ is not describing all that it should. It doesn’t just shield the mega-wealthy from paying their fair dues it goes further and offers a departure from the rule of law as you would know it. Secrecy is its raison d’être. These secrecy laws do not benefit the local people living in its jurisdiction but only those individuals and corporations with enough money and with something to hide.
The reality is that the City of London caters for those above the law, it operates on the basis of bypassing democratic society as a whole. This has come about over time where an extraordinary ‘gentlemens agreement’ has stood the test of time. The head of state and his/her governments have the need of large loans for wars and the like, the City, in exchange for such commodity has extracted certain privileges the rest of the population do not enjoy. The end result over the centuries is that it now has its own financial jurisdiction to do pretty much as it pleases.
A ‘watchman’ sits at the high table of parliament and is its official lobbyist sitting in seat of power right next to the Speaker of the House who is “charged with maintaining and enhancing the City’s status and ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded.” The job is to maintain order and seek out political dissent against the City.
The City of London has its own private funding and will ‘buy-off’ any attempt to erode its powers; any scrutiny of its financial affairs are put beyond external inspection or audit.
For over a hundred years the Labour party tried in vain to abolish the City of London and its accompanying financial corruption. In 1917, Labour’s new rising star Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Peter Mandelson made a stand and failed, calling it the “devilry of modern finance.” And although attempt after attempt was made throughout the following decades, it was Margaret Thatcher who succeeded by abolishing its opponent, the Greater London Council in 1986.
Tony Blair went about it another way and offered to reform the City of London in what turned out to be a gift from god. He effectively gave the vote to corporations which swayed the balance of democratic power away from residents and workers. It was received by its opponents as the greatest retrograde step since the peace treaty of 1215, Magna Carta. The City won its rights through debt financing in 1067, when William the Conqueror acceded to it and ever since, governments have allowed the continuation of its ancient rights above all others.
The City effectively now stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global crime. It is the heart and engine of the offshore haven, with Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man its European collection centres, the Caribbean and others hoovering up billions of American dollars from all over the globe. Whilst there are good and legal reasons for offshore accounts, It has a dark and shadowy client list; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, politicians, corporations and companies, millionaires, billionaires – most with something to hide.
The Independent newspaper reported last July that the City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world’s drug trade, according to an internationally acclaimed crime expert. In addition, every notable financial expert now agrees that due to incredibly lax financial laws by the British government, the London property market is built largely on the laundered money of crime from all over the world involving hidden tax havens, most of which are British.
Her Majesty’s British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies make up around 25 per cent of the world’s tax havens, which are now blacklisted by the European Commission and now ranked as the most important player in the financial secrecy world.
Tax havens featured on the EC’s blacklist of June last year include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City of London’s crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control. Keith Bristow Director-General of the UK’s National Crime Agency said just six months ago that the sheer scale of crime and its subsequent money laundering operations was “a strategic threat” to the country’s economy and reputation and that “high-end money laundering is a major risk”.
In the meantime, the City of London remains politically immune and acts with criminal impunity as it sucks up what is now understood to be trillions in illicit and ill-gotten gains. Bankers and hedge-fund operators dodge the authorities with particular skill sets honed over a millennia, especially HMRC.
It is of no coincidence that this small area of Britian, just 1.2 square miles has the highest pay in the land and the third lowest council tax for property anywhere in the United Kingdom. A £20 million mansion costs less than £1,000 a year in council tax.
At the last census, its population stood at just 7,325, its employees stand at 414,600, nearly 40 per cent of them in financial services. Nearly 17,000 businesses are registered there, 2,700 are finance and insurance based and just over 45 per cent are foreign owned entities. HSBC’s organisation is the ninth largest bank in the world following four Chinese and four American banks located down the road in Canary Wharf.
This tiny island haven, with its own borders and police force sits within the Isles of Britain as an international hub, the tax haven of all tax havens. Make no mistake, the banks use offshore business organisations to escape regulation and the grip these organisations have over an ever weakened and corrupt political class is utterly astounding. The Conservative party is literally bankrolled by bankers and hedge funds. Half of the wealthiest hedge fund managers in the land pay millions each year to the Tories – what do they expect |
two years later, Suggs has resigned following plagiarism allegations.
"This man should not be at the helm of any educational institution because he is dishonest, he has no leadership, he does not believe in putting things in writing, and he operates on the basis of gut, he'll tell you one thing today and he'll contradict it tomorrow," added Walker.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS LEADING TO SUGGS' RESIGNATION:
The plagiarism allegations were first made by the Blue Hog Report last Wednesday.
On Thursday KATV caught up with Suggs, and he told our cameras that his 2009 dissertation was completely original, front to back, and that he had received permission to use other people's work.
Thursday's report prompted Dr. Georgann Scott, the 2005 dissertation author, to contact our newsroom on Friday saying she never gave Suggs permission to use her work.
By Friday, Suggs was no longer speaking about the matter after his attorneys advised him not to.
Along the way, Channel 7 did submit multiple requests to ADE for comment.
Thursday's comment coming from ADE Communications Director Kim Friedman:
"Accusations of this nature must be and will be taken seriously, but a rush to judgment does not serve the public interest."
Following our report on Friday, another request for comment was submitted to ADE.
Friedman then gave this statement:
"Accusations of this nature must be and will be taken seriously, but a rush to judgment does not serve the public interest. For any further questions, please contact the Little Rock School District."
On Monday during a follow-up story, KATV again requested comment from ADE. Friedman submitted the same statement released on Friday.
By Tuesday, Suggs resigned and ADE released this statement:
"Today, Commissioner Johnny Key reached an agreement with Dr. Dexter Suggs that resulted in Dr. Suggs' immediate resignation as superintendent of the Little Rock School District. Mr. Marvin Burton will serve as interim superintendent for the Little Rock School District."
Click here to read Suggs' Settlement and Severance Agreement from LRSD.
Click here to read Suggs' employment application.
Click here to read required qualifications to become the LRSD superintendent.
Click here to read the contract between LRSD and McPherson & Jacobson, LLC while searching for a superintendent.
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"ADE Commissioner Key still silent on LRSD's Dr. Suggs' plagiarism allegations"Jennifer Jones’ school day started with her standing in front of her class of third-graders at Harford Heights Elementary, and it ended with her flat on her back in the East Baltimore school’s hallway. She lay there surrounded by colleagues and students at dismissal time, injured by a boy who grabbed her leg and pulled it out from under her. His resolute stare, she says, was as frightening as the assault on that day in January 2013. Soon she was on a stretcher, headed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, hoping she would not be paralyzed. Jones is one of hundreds of city educators whose violent and traumatic encounters with students have led them to seek — and often receive — compensation for mental and physical injuries, a Baltimore Sun investigation of workers’ compensation claims has found. Those claims provide a behind-the-scenes look at violence that is rarely documented in school system reports. School employees report more injuries than those in any city agency except the Police Department. In the last fiscal year, more than 300 claims were related to assaults or run-ins with students — more than a third of the school system’s total claims. And such claims are costly. School employees account for an estimated total of $4.6 million in medical bills and other costs related to workers’ compensation claims in that year, according to records obtained by The Sun in a Maryland Public Information Act request. For officials in city government, the school system’s claims signal a troubling pattern of teachers being attacked or serving as buffers in fights. EXPLORE 2013 CLAIMS Examine the 200 most expensive claims from 2013 in this interactive database. For teachers like Jones — whose workers’ compensation payout will total an estimated $20,000 — the claims reflect a part of the job that leaves them feeling less like educators and more like punching bags. “Every day it hurts like hell, and my life is forever changed,” said Jones, 31, who remains out of work and is fighting to obtain other benefits. “I can’t walk my dogs. I can’t do laundry. You eventually start to give up on the dishes. Every time I think about it now, I think the same thing when I was laying on the floor: Why?” The school-related payments are a significant part of a large and growing expense for taxpayers, who foot the bill for workers’ compensation payments for medical bills, lost wages and permanent disabilities that can stretch for years. Local governments and insurance companies in Maryland blame high costs on a variety of factors, including fraud, a higher ceiling on payouts and changes in state law that favor public safety workers. Baltimore spent $49 million last year on workers’ compensation awards, a steady increase from $44 million two years earlier, even as the city’s workforce shrank, and officials expect those costs to rise for the next decade. In addition to payouts for new and old claims, the costs include fees for attorneys, private investigators and the company that administers the city’s program. For area counties, the expense is far lower but still reaches millions of dollars each year. Baltimore County, whose workforce is slightly smaller than the city’s, paid about $11 million last year. Baltimore’s budget director, Andrew Kleine, said the city is considering major changes, including a push to limit costs by reducing payouts for workers who are absent because of injury. Outside auditor KPMG estimates that Baltimore’s workers’ compensation system owes $161 million in current and future costs, up from $146 million last year — money it has not set aside.
Jennifer Jones Teacher at Harford Heights Elementary School HER FILED CLAIM: "Employee was trying to keep disruptive student from entering the classroom when he grabbed her leg. [She] fell, injuring her back." TOTAL CLAIM COST: $19,886 PAID TO DATE: $12,007 REMAINING COSTS: $7,879 Explore more 2013 claims Photo by Kim Hairston Every day it hurts like hell, and my life is forever changed. I can’t walk my dogs. I can’t do laundry. You eventually start to give up on the dishes. Every time I think about it now, I think the same thing when I was laying on the floor: Why?
"Every day it hurts like hell, and my life is forever changed. I can’t walk my dogs. I can’t do laundry. You eventually start to give up on the dishes. Every time I think about it now, I think the same thing when I was laying on the floor: Why?" - Jennifer Jones Photo by Kim Hairston “It’s huge,” Kleine said. Hundreds of the claims filed since 2011 involved assaults on educators, according to a review of city data. In claim summaries, they described the incidents in graphic terms: “Student grabbed a [cord] around my neck, pulled so hard it broke, slapped my face, hit my chest and bit my left and right arms.” “Employee was escorting student from the room, student slammed door hitting her in the abdomen. Employee is pregnant, went into labor.” “Employee alleges breaking up a fight between students, he turned his upper body, feet were planted, fractured leg.” After hearing descriptions of injuries reported by teachers, Marietta English, president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, said, “That sounds like exactly what’s going on, every single day.” She added, “The emails to me are constant about teachers being victimized. In some situations, it’s like we’re going into a combat zone, and all we’re going to do is provide an education.”
SCENES FROM THE CLASSROOM
CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "[Employee] states student pushed towards him, punched him in left eye, glasses flew off, has eye laceration, dizziness, blurred vision, ringing ear." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "Student not in my class came forward to me and jabbed me in the jaw." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "[Employee] alleges that a student grabbed her face and dug his nails into her face, causing scratches to her face." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "[Employee] alleges [she] attempted to contact the student's mother and he punched her right cheek and scratched her right arm and elbow." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "She was working on a computer and a student threw a chair hitting her on the back and head." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "A student got angry and threw a desk at another student but hit [employee] in the chest." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "Student in a rage and threw a chair and desk at employee. Also kicked in the back. Injured right hand." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "[Employee] alleges a student threw a desk at her, striking her right hip and right knee, causing pain." CLAIM FILED IN 2013 "[Employee] alleges while breaking up a fight between students, one student punched her chest where a defibrillator was inserted." CLAIM FILED IN 2012 "[Employee] alleges he asked student for ID, who did not have it. Student grabbed him by legs, tackling him to ground and robbing him of tickets." CLAIM FILED IN 2012 "[Employee] alleges a student got angry with her for taking his cell phone and started hitting her repeatedly and pushed her against the locker." CLAIM FILED IN 2012 "A student brought a basketball into class and refused to put it in his locker. He threw the ball and hit me in the head." CLAIM FILED IN 2012 "[Employee] alleges he was performing cafeteria duty when a student walked up to him and stabbed him in his left upper arm." CLAIM FILED IN 2012 "Escorting student to main office from classroom. When walking from the classroom she kicked me in ankle. In office she kicked me in knee and hit face." CLAIM FILED IN 2011 "Parent became defensive when asked to leave cafeteria for her threatening behavior. I was pushed and slapped on left side of face." CLAIM FILED IN 2011 "[Employee] alleges she escorted a student from the room. Student slammed the door, hitting her in the abdomen. [Employee] is pregnant, went into labor." CLAIM FILED IN 2011 "Student came behind her and pulled her arm back while snatching a cell phone from her hand and stating, 'Give me the phone, bitch.'" CLAIM FILED IN 2011 "[Employee] alleges, while teaching, student shoved her backward. The student also threw a pencil at her, striking her left forehead."
Kimberly Lewis, who oversees the school system’s human capital office, attributed the high number of claims to the fact that its 13,000 employees make up the largest share of the city workforce. She described the workers’ compensation expenses as “the standard cost of doing business.” School officials also said in a statement that workers’ compensation claims do not “provide reliable information about the work environment” and are not designed to provide “reliable” information about school safety. The altercations and assaults category is “too broad” and can include incidents such as an employee and student having “accidental contact in the hallway,” the statement said. Interim schools CEO Tisha Edwards said the district does not draw hard conclusions from workers’ compensation claims because they “do not afford an opportunity for the district to do our investigation of whether or not there’s been an incident.” That doesn’t mean the district dismisses the fact that teachers sometimes face dangerous situations, she said. Though teachers receive training about handling fights, school police can help as well. “We need to make sure that as a community, we are teaching children how to respect themselves and other people,” she said. Suspension data are a more reliable gauge of school safety and student-teacher relations, Edwards said. In the last school year, the district logged 873 suspensions for physical attacks on staff — nearly triple the number of workers’ compensation claims labeled altercations and assaults. “We know that’s not what teachers signed up for,” Edwards said. “They want to go into a school where they can be in a healthy, respectful environment, and we have an obligation to help them create that environment in our schools.” ‘Epidemic-like’ fighting City government officials say that as they look for ways to trim workers’ compensation costs, they have urged the school system to help reduce expensive injuries — which usually result from educators breaking up fights, confronting disruptive students or being attacked. Of the system’s anticipated $4.6 million bill for the last fiscal year, the city has paid out about $2 million so far for injuries that range from assaults to accidental falls. The largest single category: assaults and altercations. The city anticipates paying $1.4 million for claims in that category; it has already paid out about $615,000, records show. PRICING BY BODY PART Douglas S. Kerr, who oversees Baltimore’s risk management office, said city officials track the assault and altercation data and provide it to school administrators. The city handles workers’ compensation claims for the school system and sees a sharp uptick in costs during the school year. “We offer assistance with training, anything we can do to cut down on these claims, because it is one of their top causes of loss,” he said. Of the school district’s 866 workers’ compensation claims in the last fiscal year, 293 were labeled assaults or altercations, and eight were referred for criminal charges. The highest award for a teacher injured in school was an estimated $192,793 for a man who reported that he fractured a leg while breaking up a fight between students; $44,822 of that claim has been paid, city records show. About 45 more claims related to fights or interactions with students were listed in other categories; the city estimates that those claims will cost more than $270,000. For instance, a fall that cost about $1,500 was summarized this way by a claimant: “Two students were fighting and they fell on teacher, and all fell on top of an overhead projector injuring [teacher’s] neck, shoulder, and upper back.” In an “overexertion” claim, for which the city has paid roughly $21,000 of an estimated $33,000, a teacher injured her knee breaking up two fighting students. And such incidents can leave other scars. One teacher filed a claim for psychological stress after witnessing a student assault another; the city has paid $2,300 of an estimated $9,050 for it. Kerr said that in meetings with school system officials, the city’s risk management office has questioned the protocol for teachers dealing with fights. “I don’t think they have anything set in writing,” Kerr said. “I just think the teacher knows that’s what she should be doing. The question is: Is there another way to handle a situation like that, to where they’re not going to get hurt?” Union officials said teachers are trained in workshops on safely intervening in altercations. And Edwards said the district has begun emphasizing to teachers that they should rely on trained professionals, such as school police, to handle situations. Thompson Guerrier, a para-educator at Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School, said teachers have little choice but to intervene. One of his claims stemmed from breaking up a minutes-long fight between two young boys that spilled from the classroom into the hallway. It would be one of at least three fights he broke up that day, he said. “There were staff who would see the fights and walk the other away. I couldn’t. We are adults, and they are minors. I do not have that kind of heart — to stand by and let them kill each other,” he said. Guerrier, 45, said most of his time in his fourth-grade special-education classroom last year was spent pulling students off each other, and this year is no different. Sometimes the strains to his back, neck and elbow were instant, Guerrier said. At other times, he said, he didn’t feel the pain until he couldn’t get up from bed the next morning. He’s undergoing physical therapy for sharp pains and weakness in his shoulders, back and neck. A workers’ compensation commissioner recently ruled in favor of a claim Guerrier filed; he said he was hurt restraining a fighting student who threw a desk and chair at him. Records show that claim’s bill reached $16,195 in the last fiscal year. But he was denied compensation for a separate claim in which he said he was injured breaking up another fight; he is appealing that decision in Circuit Court. He also is appealing a claim related to an assault in December 2012. While workers’ compensation filings in city schools depict the most violent setting in the area for teachers, nearby districts are not without their own problems. Baltimore County has recorded teacher injury claims in recent years, as has Howard County, which is consistently ranked as one of the best-performing districts in the state.
Thompson Guerrier Para-educator at Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School HIS FILED CLAIMS: "Alleges punched in head by student. Incident but no injury."
"Student approached pushed table into [his] left middle finger."
"Breaking up a fight. Injury to right hand/wrist, back."
"Restraining child/student thre desk/chair. Injury to back and right hand."
"Kicked and punched by student - left shoulder."
"Breaking up a fight between students - left shoulder." TOTAL CLAIM COST: $29,109 PAID TO DATE: $5,798 REMAINING COSTS: $23,311 Explore more 2013 claims Photo by Kenneth K. Lam I would break up fights three to four times a day. There were staff, even the principal, who would see the fights and walk the other away. I couldn’t. We are adults, and they are minors. I do not have that kind of heart — to stand by and let them kill each other.
"I would break up fights three to four times a day. There were staff, even the principal, who would see the fights and walk the other away. I couldn’t. We are adults, and they are minors. I do not have that kind of heart — to stand by and let them kill each other." - Thompson Guerrier Photo by Kenneth K. Lam Treated like instigators Although city government officials say they encourage employees to report every injury, no matter how minor it may seem, teachers say the practice is not encouraged by school administrators. Once an incident report is filed, some teachers say, they find they are treated less like victims and more like instigators. “When I was breaking up fights, at first, I was told to take care of myself,” Guerrier said. “But when I started filing incident reports, I was a troublemaker. You file a lot of reports, and it reflects poorly on the school — it is considered the most dangerous school. And no principal wants that.” Amy Sumor was encouraged by her union representative to file incident reports to her principal last year after she walked away bruised from students swinging fists at Augusta Fells Savage High School in West Baltimore. But she says she was met with resistance. In the first fight, she didn’t think that a punch to her chest, which she said “knocked the wind out of me,” required her to go to a clinic, let alone pursue a workers’ compensation claim. But when she turned her report in, Sumor said, she was surprised that she was interrogated by the principal and told that the school “had witnesses” who could challenge her account of the incident. “I was absolutely appalled, that I just ended the conversation,” recalled Sumor, 41, a teacher of seven years who now works at another school. The principal declined to comment. A month later, when she tried to stop another altercation and a girl slammed into her, Sumor said she met the same resistance. City workers’ compensation records show that the incidents involving Sumor — for which she did not attempt to collect compensation benefits — happened in March and April. Medical reports were submitted to the city in June. “I thought that the school not wanting to report it was more dangerous than actually being struck by the child,” Sumor said. English, the union leader, said teachers try to steer clear of drawing the ire of their principals and the central office.
Amy Sumor Teacher at Northeast Middle School Sumor filed medical reports, which did not incur any costs, in fiscal year 2013. She filed a claim last November after a student jumped on her foot and forced her to rely on crutches for walking.
This claim was too recent to be included in the records The Sun received. Explore more 2013 claims Photo by Lloyd Fox I didn’t want to press charges, because it wasn’t malicious. I thought that the school not wanting to report it was more dangerous than actually being struck by the child.
"I didn’t want to press charges, because it wasn’t malicious. I thought that the school not wanting to report it was more dangerous than actually being struck by the child." - Amy Sumor Photo by Lloyd Fox “Some just don’t want to report,” English said. “Some report it just because they have to, and they don’t want anything out of it. Some don’t want to take the wrath of their principals.” Several teachers who filed workers’ compensation claims declined to be interviewed for this article, saying they feared retaliation. Interim superintendent Edwards said the district needs to work with principals on handling teachers’ injuries. She said that there’s a bit of a “toughen up” mentality that sometimes eclipses sensitivity. “We need to do a better job of helping principals understand the process is in getting staff the assistance they need once an incident occurs,” she said. “We need to be reinforcing high standards of respect in our schools, and no adults should feel like it’s OK for a kid to cross that line with them.” Student impact Injured teachers say that for all the consequences that can come with reporting incidents, they are baffled at the lack of repercussions for students. That still bothers Jennifer Jones — even more than the back pain that she says gnaws at her every day. The third-grader who attacked her in January 2013 had been standing on desks and throwing chairs in her colleague’s classroom. After spending time with the assistant principal, he was sent to his classroom to retrieve his belongings for dismissal. The banging and expletives ringing through the hallway drew Jones out of her classroom to help the boy’s teacher calm him down. First, he rammed into Jones’ stomach. Then he knocked her to the floor. “It was treated as an accident, not as an assault,” she said. “He wasn’t suspended; he didn’t even get detention. I just wanted an apology and wanted him to understand the consequences of his actions.” Jones says when she returned to work, she was taunted by the boy, who bragged about how he “put Ms. Jones out.” Teachers say that such responses result from a districtwide campaign to lower suspensions, which has put pressure on principals and given some students free rein. Jimmy Gittings, president of the principals’ union, defends their response. He says principals sometimes try to help teachers with classroom management, which can be construed as ignoring their plight. “No principal is intimidating any teacher for recommending a student for disciplinary action,” Gittings said. “The only time a principal would probably discourage a teacher from removing a disruptive child would be in the case of a teacher that has very limited management skills.” Edwards said the discussion about using suspensions as a last resort has been muddied. “Although every incident does not warrant a suspension, every incident does warrant an adult holding them accountable,” she said. The teachers union believes the district’s code of conduct, which requires principals to take several steps before suspending a student, has resulted in a lack of consequences for students. And teachers say students take notice of the use of suspension as a last resort. “They’re not stupid; they know exactly what’s going on,” said Guerrier. “You tell them you’re going to call the principal, and they laugh at you.” Insult to injury Teachers who choose to pursue workers’ compensation claims can face an uphill battle. That’s evident, teachers and their attorneys say, when teachers take the stand to plead their cases. Veteran teacher Bruce Gayle filed a claim in May alleging that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of mental and physical abuse from students, and some parents, during the 2012-2013 school year, when he taught technology at Frederick Douglass High School. “I was told they were going to get me, hurt me, come to my house,” Gayle, 59, testified in November in a windowless hearing room at the compensation commission’s downtown Baltimore offices. “Who was ‘they’?” asked Commissioner Kimberly Smith Ward. “Students,” Gayle replied. Gayle listed a series of incidents: “There was a chair thrown from the back of the room to the front of the room.” “I was punched.” “I was pushed in the doorway numerous times.” Gayle, who has taught for two decades, said the final incident came in March, when a student pushed and threatened him in the cafeteria. He said he went to see Principal Antonio Hurt, who told him he would recommend Gayle’s termination for poor teaching performance. (Hurt, who did not testify at the hearing, referred questions to the school system, which said it would not comment on personnel issues.) That day Gayle went to a psychiatric hospital, and in the months since, he has received mental health treatment while seeking work, he testified. His lawyer, Gary Berger, told the commissioner that doctors diagnosed Gayle with job-related PTSD. A lawyer for the city, Lawrence G. Giambelluca, challenged Gayle’s claim. He asked about several episodes in the teacher’s life — the death of his 3-month-old daughter in 1997, substance abuse problems he had after her death, and his father’s suicide — in an effort to establish what he called a “clear history” of pre-existing mental health conditions.
Jonathan Lasson School Psychologist HIS FILED CLAIM: "Alleges he was restraining a student from jumping out a window and injured his left thumb." TOTAL CLAIM COST: $39,289 PAID TO DATE: $26,547 REMAINING COSTS: $12,742 Explore more 2013 claims Photo by Kim Hairston That child didn’t want to hurt me. But what you deal with on a daily basis is kids who can be assaultive.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a film series based on the comic book characters of the same name created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The first film in the series, titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was released in 1990 at the height of the franchise's popularity and was a commercial success. The success of the film garnered two direct sequels, respectively released in 1991 and 1993, and a CGI animated film in 2007 billed as TMNT building on the success of the 2003–2010 TV series. The series was rebooted in a new film made by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies, released on August 8, 2014. The sequel was released on June 3, 2016.
Original trilogy [ edit ]
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) [ edit ]
The first film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, closely follows the storyline from the Mirage comic books, in addition to some of the more lighthearted elements of the cartoons. The film tells the origin story of Splinter and the Turtles, their initial encounters with April O'Neil (Judith Hoag) and Casey Jones (Elias Koteas), and their first confrontation with The Shredder and his Foot Clan. Directed by Steve Barron and released by New Line Cinema, the film showcases the innovative puppetry techniques of Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) [ edit ]
The first sequel, titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, expands on the Turtles' origin story while claiming the distinction as Vanilla Ice's film debut. The film was dedicated to puppeteer Jim Henson. It also introduced the Turtles' human friend Keno (Ernie Reyes Jr.) and Shredder's mutant henchmen Tokka and Rahzar. This film was internationally released by 20th Century Fox.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) [ edit ]
The third film in the series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, features Elias Koteas reprising his role as Casey Jones. The plot revolves around the "Sacred Sands of Time", a mystical scepter which transports the Turtles and April back in time to feudal Japan, where they become embroiled in a conflict between a daimyō and a group of rebellious villagers.
TMNT (2007) [ edit ]
A 2007 feature film, titled simply TMNT and written and directed by Kevin Munroe, was released March 23, 2007. Unlike the previous films, it used 100% computer-generated imagery, produced by Imagi Animation Studios and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Weinstein Company. It was the final Ninja Turtle movie to be distributed by Time Warner due to the franchise being purchased by Viacom.
This film opens with the Turtles scattered as Leonardo is training in Central America, Donatello and Michelangelo have jobs, and Raphael spends his time as the vigilante crimefighter "Nightwatcher". Leonardo returns to New York City due to the events surrounding a series of monsters being hunted by the mysterious businessman Max Winters, but tensions begin to rise between Raphael and Leonardo over the leadership of the team. The Foot Clan also appear, with Karai leading them. While not strictly keeping to the continuity of the prior films,[1] it did include references to the prior three films in a scene near the end of the film.
Rebooted series [ edit ]
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) [ edit ]
A new feature film, rebooting the film franchise, was originally scheduled to be released in December 2013 as part of the acquisition of the franchise by Viacom. It was announced on May 27, 2010, that Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company had landed the rights to the new film. The film is a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies.[2] The first film was directed by Jonathan Liebesman and stars Megan Fox as April O'Neil, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, and features motion capture CGI for the Turtles and Splinter, the film was released on August 8, 2014.[3] The film became a box office success.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016) [ edit ]
A sequel, Out of the Shadows was announced for June 3, 2016 with Dave Green directing.[4][5] The sequel was announced on August 10, 2014, two days after the first film was released. The original cast (with the exception of Johnny Knoxville) returns with Stephen Amell, Brian Tee, Tyler Perry, and Gary Anthony Williams joining as Casey Jones, Shredder, Baxter Stockman, and Bebop respectively.[6][7][8] WWE wrestler Sheamus was later confirmed to portray Rocksteady.[9]
Second reboot film [ edit ]
On June 20, 2018, it was reported that Paramount is devolping a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, which is set to act as a reboot for the series, with Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller set to return from the previous films as producers, and Bad Words writer Andrew Dodge set to write the film.[10][11] On the 24th Critics' Choice Awards, Fuller and Form confirmed the film to be in devolpment, with the production set to start by the end of 2019, througth there's no current director for the project.[12]
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film [ edit ]
On February 5, 2019, Variety revealed that Nickelodeon is devolping a film adaptation of the 2018 TV series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is set to be released on Netflix.[13] It marks the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film to be animated, as well as the first film in the franchise without a theatrical release.
Canceled projects [ edit ]
Fourth original series film [ edit ]
Kevin Eastman was working on a fourth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film between 1995 and 1997 titled TMNT 4: The Next Mutation or TMNT 4: The Foot Walks Again. In 2012, Heritage Auctions published concept arts showing a fifth turtle named Kirby, but also featured are Fang, Shredder, Spyder, Nano Spyder, Super Shredder, Casey, Talbot, Lawson, Bugman and "Evil April".[citation needed] Peter Laird showed some concept art of the Turtles and Splinter on his blog.[14][15][16][17][18] The main concept behind the film will have the turtles undergo a second mutation due to the mutagen in the heroes' bloodstream beginning to change with age and giving them new abilities and new problems. Also, the film would revolve around the return of the Shredder and proceeded to rebuild the Foot empire.
TMNT sequels [ edit ]
In 2007 Kevin Munroe stated that he would like to direct a possible sequel to TMNT, possibly involving the return of the Shredder.[19] Munroe planned a trilogy. TMNT 2 would have loosely adapted the Turtles’ 13-part comic book saga "City At War". Michelangelo would have felt rejected and joined the Foot Clan. While the Turtles would have traveled to Japan and would have crossed paths with Karai and Shredder. TMNT 3 would have featured the Triceratons as well as the Technodrome’s arrival from Dimension X. Munroe wanted Michael Clarke Duncan to voice the Triceraton’s leader, Commander Mozar.[20] In an interview, Peter Laird stated he was interested in the idea of having the next film be a live-action and CGI hybrid film, with the Turtles rendered in CGI and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chris Evans reprising their TMNT roles in live-action.[21]
John Fusco-written reboot [ edit ]
In late April 2009, it was announced a new live-action film would be in the works for a 2011 release. Mirage Studios was partnering with producers Scott Mednick and Galen Walker, with Peter Laird, Gary Richardson, Frederick Fierst, Eric Crown would serve as executive producers, and 4Kids Entertainment would handle the film's merchandising with Lightbox Productions, LLC. funding the project.[22] The film would have used animatronic suits whose facial expressions would be digitally enhanced in post-production.[20] It was stated that the story would focus on the Turtles origin.[23] In July 2009, an open casting call was made for extras to play as members of the Foot Clan with Ernie Reyes, Jr. as an acting judge.[24] "Ninja Turtles" co-creator Peter Laird said "there are a lot of positive feelings about a Batman Begins-style reboot,[25] while producer Galen Walker said the film would be headed in a darker direction.[26] In July, 2009 it was announced that John Fusco would be the films writer.[27] His version was to be inspired by the original dark and gritty black and white comics that Eastman created with Peter Laird, but Paramount wasn't on board. Kevin Eastman described the script as being "too edgy for what Paramount wanted".[citation needed] Peter Laird revealed the film would have been a direct sequel to the 1990 film ignoring its sequels.[28] In October 2009, it was announced that Viacom's subsidiary network Nickelodeon had purchased all of Mirage's rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property for $9.75 million, thus terminating all deals with 4Kids and Time Warner.[29][30][31]
Cast and characters [ edit ]
Crew [ edit ]
Reception [ edit ]
Box office performance [ edit ]
Film Release date Box office gross Box office ranking Budget Ref(s) North America Other
territories Worldwide All time
North America All time
worldwide Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) March 30, 1990 $135,265,915 $66,700,000 $201,965,915 #331 #568 $13,500,000 [32] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ll: The Secret of the Ooze March 12, 1991 $78,656,813 #804 $25,000,000 [33] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III March 19, 1993 $42,273,609 #1,665 $21,000,000 [34] TMNT March 23, 2007 $54,149,098 $41,459,897 $95,608,976 #1,289 $34,000,000 [35] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) August 8, 2014 $191,204,754 $302,128,830 $493,333,584 #183 #157 $125,000,000 [36] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows June 3, 2016 $82,051,601 $163,538,376 $245,589,977 #829 #512 $135,000,000 [37] Total $583,601,790 $565,498,264 $1,149,100,054 $353,500,000 [38] List indicator(s) A dark grey cell indicates the information is not available for the film.
Critical response [ edit ]
Film Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic CinemaScore[39] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) 40% (50 reviews)[40] 51 (21 reviews)[41] N/A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze 32% (41 reviews)[42] 40 (20 reviews)[43] N/A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III 21% (29 reviews)[44] 40 (12 reviews)[45] N/A TMNT 34% (115 reviews)[46] 41 (21 reviews)[47] A-[39] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) 22% (133 reviews)[48] 31 (33 reviews)[49] B[39] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows 38% (139 reviews)[50] 40 (27 reviews)[51] A-[39] |
girl – what’s not to like?
24. Dr Helen Noel (Marianna Hill)
Original Series
Love her bedside manner.
23. Droxine (Diana Ewing)
Original Series
One of the most elegant actresses to pass through the series.
22. Nona (Nancy Kovack)
Original Series
Played a Kanutu medicine woman in A Private Little War, but is possible more famous for her role as Medea in Jason And The Argonauts.
21. Lt. Saavik (Kirstie Alley)
Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan
Yeah, we know, but there is little doubt she was a fine-looking woman in her early years.
20. Tonia Barrows (Emily Banks)
Original series
Received the benefit of Doctor McCoy‘s bedside manner.
19. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)
Original series
No Star Trek list would be complete without her. A true legend.
18. Kelinda (Barbara Bouchet)
Original Series
Played Kelinda in the original series, but is possibly more famous for playing Miss Moneypenny in the 60s spoof version of Casino Royale.
17. Kara (Marj Dusay)
Original series
Watch out for this temptress, a glorified zombie itching to steal your brain!
16. Ensign Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes)
Next Generation
A rebel, unliked by many, and ultimately a traitor. Shame on you Ensign Ro, but how can we say no?
15. B’elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson)
Voyager
Klingon ridges and her temper work against B’elanna, although we bet she’s feisty in the bedroom.
14. Beverly Crusher (Gates Macfadden)
Next Generation
A redhead and MILF to boot. What more could you ask for?
13. Ishara Yar (Beth Toussaint)
Next Generation
Tasha’s sister has the body of a champion whippet
12. Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney)
Original Series
As Kirk says, she was “too beautiful to ignore” and “too much woman”. We certainly agree Kirk.
11. Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis)
Next Generation
England’s very own Marina Sirtisis loved by fans for her voluptuous figure, skin tight bunny suit and the fact she’d sleep with anyone or anything.
10. Anij (Donna Murphy)
Star Trek: Insurrection
A looker for her age (over 300 years old). If Picard didn’t have his eyes already set on Anij, you know you’d want a piece of that action.
9. Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer)
Deep Space Nine
Essentially, Jadzia Dax version 2, which can’t be all bad.
8. Android Andrea (Sherry Jackson)
Original series
Kissing Kirk was not part of her programming. What can we say, programmes are there to be hacked. Better still that costume doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
7. Ensign Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd)
Next Generation
Ensign Lefler lives by her own rules, Sadly, one of them being #22: Never date a co-worker. Too bad Wesley (Crusher)
6. Kes (Jennifer Lien)
Voyager
Youthful and Innocent, just about the cutest elf you’ll find this side of the Delta Quadrant
5. Hoshi Sato (Linda Park)
Enterprise
Sultry and smart, knowing over 40 languages is a good workout for the mouth if you catch our drift.
4. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell)
Deep Space Nine
A very hot woman who attracted the attentions of Bashir and ultimately Worf. Slight turn-off: her multiple personalities, call it what you will.
3. Kamala (Famke Janssen)
Star Trek: Next Generation
Simply stunning and a real favourite at Hecklerspray Towers.
2. T’Pol (Jolene Blalock)
Enterprise
A Trellium-D addict, which is great for lowering her inhibitions.
1. Seven of 9 (Jeri Ryan)
Voyager
Seven of 9? More like 10 out of 10.
Honorable mentions:
Lieutenant Valeris (Kim Cattrall)
Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor)
Hungry for more? You might want to check out our ranking of the top celebrity nudes of all time. NSFW warning, of course.An Australian sniper uses a periscope rifle at Gallipoli in 1915. Nearly a century of erosion later, these trenches are 2 or 3 feet deep at most.
Photo by Ernest Brooks/Imperial War Museum via Wikimedia Commons
ÇANAKKALE, Turkey—Separated by language, culture, and 9,000 miles of ocean, Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey have little in common—except for a hilly peninsula known as Gallipoli in western Turkey. For nearly nine months in 1915 and 1916, Gallipoli witnessed some of World War I’s most intense fighting. The battle pitted untested troops from former British colonies in the Pacific against Turks fighting to protect their homeland from foreign invasion.
Nearly a century later, Australians, New Zealanders, and Turks all regard the conflict at Gallipoli as a central event in their modern history. Like Gettysburg, Gallipoli is shared sacred ground that unites former enemies and marks a pivotal moment in their past. “Those countries all date their existence to that battle,” says Australian National University historian Bill Gammage.
Though Gallipoli was a small conflict compared with landmark battles of the first world war like the Somme, the battle for the narrow peninsula contains the story of the war in microcosm: the fatal bravado, the futile fighting, the error-prone assumptions made by politicians and generals, and the killing fields that decimated a generation of young men. “Ships, submarines, mines, planes, war on the soil, balloons—almost everything humankind used in war was used in the Gallipoli campaign,” says Haluk Oral, a professor at Koç University in Istanbul and author of Gallipoli 1915: Through Turkish Eyes. “It’s like the whole first world war in a cup of tea.”
Yet thanks to its rugged terrain and remote location, the battlefield was nearly forgotten until the mid-1970s, when it was turned into a national park by the Turkish government. No systematic archaeological survey of Gallipoli has ever been conducted—until now. In the lead-up to the battle’s 100th anniversary in April 2015, a team of archaeologists, historians, classicists, geographers, and government officials from Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey is using a combination of traditional archaeological methods and high-tech tools to map what’s left of the battlefield’s trenches, tunnels, and terraces.
The early results have been surprising. Unlike the fertile fields of Belgium and France, Gallipoli’s rocky soil was never plowed after the war, making it a battlefield archaeologist’s goldmine. In its field work over the past four years, the team has mapped miles of trenches and recovered more than 1,000 artifacts, more than anyone expected to find at a battlefield a century old. “I’m surprised at how much is left,” says University of Melbourne researcher Antonio Sagona, the survey’s lead archaeologist. “There’s nowhere on the Western Front where there’s a continuous line like this. It’s the best-preserved World War I battlefield anywhere in the world.”
* * *
World War I was the first global conflict. The assassination of an Austrian nobleman in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, set off a tangle of territorial disputes and interlocking alliances that led to declarations of war. Within the space of a few months, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were facing off against France, Britain, and Russia. Men equipped with the latest weaponry—from machine guns and long-range artillery to poison gas and airplanes—were led into the field by generals whose tactics and strategy were stuck in the age of cavalry charges and naval cannonades.
The results were catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of men died in the first few months of the war alone. Promised a weeks-long war, entire armies instead found themselves stalemated. On the so-called Western Front, millions of men faced off across a shell-scarred line of trenches, sandbags, bunkers, dugouts, and artillery positions that ran for 475 miles through France and Belgium.
As the war bogged down, an ambitious British politician named Winston Churchill began dreaming up shortcuts to victory. Churchill, 40, had recently been given the dashing title First Lord of the Admiralty. He was eager to use the British navy under his command to accomplish something that equaled his ambition.
Churchill’s big idea was to ignore the Western Front entirely. He wanted to use the British navy to make a daring attack on Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Known as “the sick man of Europe,” the empire was weak. It had been in decline for centuries, shrinking to a territory that was about twice the size of modern Turkey, before reluctantly joining the war on the side of the Germans.*
The entire plan hinged around the Dardanelles, a channel that connects the wide-open Aegean Sea to the much smaller Sea of Marmara. If British warships could force their way through the channel, they could easily capture Constantinople, now the Turkish city of Istanbul, and bring the war to a swift end. Gallipoli was the name given to the long, narrow peninsula along the northern side of the channel. Seize the peninsula, and the warships would have an easy time steaming through. “The price to be paid in taking Gallipoli wd no doubt be heavy, but there wd be no more war with Turkey,” Churchill hastily wrote a friend not long after the war began. “A good army of 50,000 & sea-power—that is the end of the Turkish menace.” Seizing Constantinople would topple the Ottoman Empire, link the British and French with their Russian allies, and open up a vast new eastern front.
But first, the Allies had to control the channel. Barely half a mile wide, the Dardanelles had been fought over for millennia: The ancient city of Troy controlled the channel’s entrance for more than 1,000 years. Before the British arrived, the Turkish navy had liberally mined the passage and sent troops to man forts up and down the shore. When battleships finally steamed into the narrow strait on March 18, 1915, they quickly demolished the forts. But Turkish mines crippled or sank four unlucky battleships within hours.
The fleet hesitated, and the decisive moment was lost. British commanders decided seizing the peninsula needed boots on the ground. Thousands of experienced French and British troops were assigned to take the tip of the peninsula and a landing site on the other side of the channel called Kum Kale. The third assault was aimed at the peninsula’s narrow middle. The task of cutting the peninsula in half fell to eager volunteers from the other side of the world: the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or ANZACs.
The ANZACs were an unknown quantity, for the British and for themselves. Australia and New Zealand were both part of the British Empire, but had been governing themselves for decades. Though separated from the war in Europe by thousands of miles of ocean, both populations eagerly supported the fight against Germany and tended to think of themselves as British.
A desire to prove their valor mixed with the promise of adventure overseas to lure tens of thousands of young Australians and New Zealanders to volunteer for military service. There were so many volunteers that only the biggest, most physically fit were taken; men sometimes rode or walked hundreds of miles across Australia’s outback to sign up at recruiting stations.
Troop ships carried tens of thousands from the South Pacific to Egypt, where the ANZACs set up camp in the shadow of the pyramids. After months of training, they set sail once again, this time for the Dardanelles. Not long after midnight on April 25, soldiers loaded with more than 90 pounds of gear and ammunition apiece crowded into rowboats under a star-filled sky. In the darkness, they wound up more than a mile off course, finally approaching not at the wide-open beach they expected but at a small cove surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs. The first ANZACs hit the beach, known in Turkish as Ariburnu, at 4:29 a.m.
Mustafa Kemal in 1918. Photo by Presidency of Republic of Turkey via Wikimedia Commons
There to meet them were Turkish troops under the command of a German general and a charismatic Turkish colonel named Mustafa Kemal. Poorly equipped and trained compared with the ANZACs, the Turks had powerful reasons to stand and fight: survival, for one, but also a determined desire to protect their homes and country from foreign invasion. “We weren’t fighting at Canberra or Sydney,” says Mete Tuncoku, a professor at nearby Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. “This was our land, and we were defending our land from threat.”
Dug in on and above the beaches, about 200 Turkish soldiers opened fire on the first wave of 3,000 ANZACs. Stuck in a landing boat approaching shore, an Australian officer recalled the noise of the incoming fire. “Klock-klock-klock. Wee-wee-wee came the little messengers of death. Then it opened out into a terrific chorus,” he wrote. “The key was being turned in the lock of the lid of hell.”
Dozens were shot in their boats. Others drowned trying to get off the beach in the first few hours of the landing. The rest fought their way past the first line of Turkish defenders and scrambled uphill through thick brush to reach the ridges that surrounded the beach.
On the heights above the beach, the ANZACs came face to face with Turkish reinforcements. When his men ran out of ammunition and started to fall back, Kemal, the Turks’ ranking commander on the beachhead, told his men to fix their bayonets and lie down. “I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die,” he told his men. “In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our places.”
It was a gamble, but it worked. Standing at a small, well-kept military cemetery at Johnston’s Jolly, one of the many oddly named toeholds the Australians established in the early days of the battle, Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs historian Richard Reid gestures north and south along the ridge. Today, an asphalt road winds along the ragged line where the Australians and New Zealanders stopped their advance and dug in. The turquoise water of the Aegean Sea is visible barely half a mile away. “Within the first day, they were on this ridge here, and they were here till the end. They never got any further,” Reid says. “They all fought bravely, but the Turks held them to this perimeter.”
Over the next week, both sides doubled down. New Zealand and Australian reinforcements poured in from ships offshore; Turkish troops were marched in from elsewhere on the peninsula. In the first 10 days of battle, nearly 14,000 Turks were killed or wounded; the ANZACs lost 10,000 men.
At the southern end of the peninsula, British and French troops faced equally stiff fighting. But while Gallipoli was a sideshow for the empires of “old Europe,” it was the first time troops from New Zealand and Australia had gone to war as nations, rather than colonies. Australia had only coalesced into a federation in 1901. “In 1914, you have a keen sense of concern over whether Australia’s going to measure up to nations of old Europe, especially to the soldiers of Britain,” says Gammage. “It was a test of Australian manhood versus international competition.”
On May 6 the results were splashed across front pages in Australia and New Zealand. “There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and the storming of the heights,” gushed British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. “These raw colonial troops, in these desperate hours, proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of the battles of Mons, the Aisne, Ypres, and Neuve-Chapelle. … They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time, and had not been found wanting.”
* * *
The “raw colonial troops” had demonstrated their manhood in the first hours of battle. But in military terms, the assault was a repeat of the mistakes made in France and Belgium just months before. “They thought they were going to go through the Turkish army within a day,” says Reid. Instead, the ANZAC area of Gallipoli became a miniature version of the Western Front. More than 200,000 men packed into a battlefield 1.5 miles square, the size of three National Malls. Hundreds of thousands more British and French soldiers were pinned down at beachheads elsewhere on the long, skinny peninsula.
Soon countless trenches and tunnels cut through the rocky soil like capillaries, bringing fresh blood forward and carrying the wounded back. One narrow stretch of no-man’s land was known in Turkish as “Bomba Sirt,” or “Bomber Ridge,” because of the near-constant exchange of hand-tossed grenades.
The convoluted lines required intimate familiarity with every fold of ground. Geographical features and trench complexes were all named, giving historical accounts a fantastical flavor. Men fought from, in, and over places like the Nek, the Pimple, Dead Man’s Ridge, Battleship Hill, Lone Pine, the Daisy Patch, Plugge’s Plateau, the Sphinx, Courtney’s Post, Shrapnel Valley, Baby 700, and Hell Spit.
The archaeological survey, like the battle, concentrates on the ridges and cliffs overlooking ANZAC Cove, running about a mile from Lone Pine up to a round-topped hill called Chunuk Bair. Fighting along the ridge was brutally intimate, conducted almost face to face along knife-edge ridges and across narrow ravines.
To link the historical accounts with what’s left on the ground, the team originally hoped to methodically walk every square foot of the battlefield. Lead researcher Sagona had to scrap those plans almost as soon as work began. “The usual methods for archaeological surveys just cannot apply,” he says. “When you’ve got a sheer cliff, or vegetation you need a machete to cut through, you can’t use standard techniques.”
Instead, the survey team spends weeks each fall moving in a sweating herd through the thick brambles. Tearing through the brush behind Turkish colleagues wielding well-used machetes, Reid and New Zealand war historian Ian McGibbon take the lead, looking for the remains of trenches.
Once deep enough to conceal a tall man and 3 or 4 feet wide, the elaborate fortifications have all but disappeared. Most of the trenches are just dips in the ground now, 2 or 3 feet deep at best. “You’re dealing with 100 years of erosion,” Reid says. His right wrist is bandaged, torn badly by a jagged thorn the day before. “We’re quite lucky to see anything. Eventually you get an eye for what look like insignificant little features.”
When they identify a trench, Reid and McGibbon call for University of Melbourne landscape archaeologist Jessie Birkett-Rees. Using an antenna mounted on a long carbon-fiber pole to link her banana-yellow Trimble GeoXH 2008 Series GPS device to half a dozen satellites, she records the location and elevation of each landscape feature and artifact. “Now we’ve got a technology that makes it possible to make a scientific contribution to battlefield archaeology,” she says, tapping the GPS’s touch screen with a small stylus.
By loading the data recorded in the field into a computer, Birkett-Rees can create a digital map of the battlefield accurate to within a foot. The data can be compared to archival materials, including maps made just after the war by Turkish cartographers. “The data is corroborating the historical maps,” Sagona says. “When you think they were produced nearly 100 years ago, they’re really quite good and very detailed.”
Both sides also dug tunnels deep into the hills, to move around safely or to plant mines under the enemy’s lines. In September the team used ground-penetrating radar to locate them along the main road, which runs directly over no-man’s land. Over the next three years, the team hopes to create an authoritative layout of the front lines, mapping everything from trenches and tunnels to bullet casings and fragments of barbed wire.
* * *
On a hot, clear day in September, Sagona is crouching beneath a bush not far from Johnston’s Jolly, a small outpost that was under attack almost constantly during the battle. He’s cradling a rusted “pannikin,” or mess tin, its buckles and latches fragile but intact. It’s just one of hundreds of artifacts the team has found in four seasons of field work. By mapping out the location of their finds, the archaeologists are shedding light on what life must have been like for the ANZAC troops.
The team has found distinct differences between front-line trenches and sheltered spots farther behind the front. Domestic items like canteens, mess tins, and dozens of tin cans that once contained beef or sardines are concentrated on flat “terraces,” spaces wide enough for men to lie down cut into the hillsides with quick access to the front via shallow connecting tunnels. “Bullets, on the other hand, are concentrated in trenches,” says Sagona.
In Sagona’s room at a small bed-and-breakfast a few miles from the battlefield, five red plastic crates hold dozens of artifacts in plastic bags: heavy shrapnel fragments, tin cans, bullet cartridges, pieces of grenades and roof tiles from Turkish trenches.
Some of the finds fire the imagination, like a deep-blue enameled water bottle with two neat holes where a bullet shot through it, or the glazed ceramic jugs that once held rum rations for the soldiers. (Glass bottles found on the Turkish side suggest that beer was the booze of choice there.)
The survey is confirming aspects of the battle historians have guessed at from records and letters. Tin cans of salted beef, for example, only turn up on the ANZAC side of the battlefield. It’s evidence ANZACs—with no access to fresh food, and supply lines that stretched across hundreds of miles of ocean—ate a monotonous, unhealthy diet of corned beef, rocklike biscuits, and the occasional shot of rum. Not long after Sagona and Birkett-Rees record the rusted mess tin, Turkish archaeologist Mithat Atabay leads the team down the opposite side of the ridge, down a gully choked with thorn bushes. Brushing away leaves and dirt, he uncovers a hearth made of roofing tiles and bricks.
Stamped with Greek letters, the bricks were probably taken from a local house and reused as a field kitchen. “On the Turkish side, we haven’t found any [tin cans]—they were cooking on this side,” says Sagona. “Archaeologically, now we can show there were kitchens over here and tin cans over there.”
Inevitably, the team occasionally comes across human bones, which are reburied by officials from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, an international organization that manages the graveyards and monuments here. During the war, the battlefield was littered with corpses, sometimes stacked two or three deep. Men killed between trenches lay in the open for weeks or months, just feet from their surviving comrades.
The team’s finds are helping make contemporary accounts of the grinding horror of life in the trenches concrete. “I wrapped my overcoat over the tin and gouged out the flies, then spread the biscuit, held my hand over it, and drew the biscuit out of the coat. But a lot of flies flew into my mouth and beat about inside,” one Australian soldier wrote. “Of all the bastards of places this is the greatest bastard in the world.”
“Something you can’t replicate now is the stink of the bodies decomposing, the flies everywhere,” says New Zealander McGibbon. “You knew they had been on a corpse minutes before.” The combination of flies and poor hygiene—each man was given just five cups of water a day for drinking and washing—spread diseases like typhus and dysentery all through the ranks.
Ultimately, more men were taken out of commission by illness and malnutrition than by battle wounds. After four months in the trenches, the majority of the men were considered “totally unfit for active service,” Gammage writes in his book The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, the source of many of the first-person accounts quoted here. “Yet most stayed proudly in their trenches, determined to fight to the end.”
The end came in December 1915, when snow began to fall on the trenches and the Turkish command brought heavy artillery to bear on the ANZAC beachhead. Allied commanders decided that continuing the fight was pointless. “The point was to take the Dardanelles and let the British navy sail through to Constantinople,” Reid says. “If you’re not going anywhere, what’s the point of the campaign?”
Using a variety of clever tricks—rifles set up to fire on their own, men ordered to stand around in the open as decoys—ANZAC commanders managed to evacuate 90,000 men in less than two weeks with almost no losses. On Dec. 19, 1915, the last ANZACs left Gallipoli under cover of darkness. They weren’t entirely glad to go, says McGibbon: “There was a terrible feeling that they were leaving their mates. A lot of them were unburied.”
Historians today see Gallipoli as a waste—of resources, of men, and of time. Nearly 8,700 Australians were killed at Gallipoli. New Zealand, a much smaller country, lost 2,700 men. More than 30,000 British and French troops died in the fighting elsewhere on the peninsula. Many of the bodies were never recovered or identified, and today the entire battlefield is considered a graveyard.
French troops in Moudros (Lemnos island) in 1915. Photo by Agence Rol/Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons
The man who cooked up the whole scheme was very nearly ruined by Gallipoli. Before the battle was even over, Churchill resigned from his position in disgrace. He briefly commanded a unit on the Western Front, then spent nearly 20 years in political obscurity. He was loathed by soldiers at Gallipoli. “As for Winston,” a British officer wrote in a letter home, “I would like to see him die in some of the torments I have seen so many die in here.”
The Turks may have suffered the most. Estimates of the Turks killed defending their homeland range from 50,000 to 90,000. For the Ottoman forces, the victory was short-lived. Together with their German allies, the empire surrendered to the Allies in 1918 and was dismantled at the Treaty of Versailles.
Remarkably, Kemal was conciliatory to his foes. ANZACs and Turks respected each other during the fighting, and nearly a century later, the three-way friendship is still strong. “You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace,” Kemal said on the 20th anniversary of the battle. “After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.” Today, the words are carved in marble at a memorial on the beach at ANZAC Cove.
* * *
From the moment the first ANZACs landed, the battle has been woven into the identity of modern Turkey, New Zealand, and Australia. For Turks, the battle is remembered for the exploits of Mustafa Kemal, who leveraged the prestige from his successful battlefield command at Gallipoli to become Turkey’s founding president.
Kemal, who died in 1938, is something of a George Washington figure in Turkey, usually referred to as “Atatürk,” or “Father of the Turks.” Determined to turn his homeland into a modern European nation after the war, Kemal changed the national script from Arabic to the Latin alphabet, promoted Western dress, and pushed for the separation of the state and Islam. His picture still hangs in airports, offices, and stores all over Turkey; a massive statue of him overlooks the hill at Chunuk Bair. “Kemalists” come to Gallipoli to celebrate his secular, Western-oriented legacy.
But in the last decade, the battlefield has also become an important destination for growing numbers of Turkish Islamists, who see Gallipoli as a rare Muslim victory over aggressive Westerners. “Gallipoli is an important symbol for both sides of Turkish society,” says Gürsel Göncü, the editor of NTV Tarih, a popular Turkish history magazine. “On one side, nationalists are praising Mustafa Kemal. On the other side, they’re talking about the importance to Allah.”
The battle has become a major symbol in Australia and New Zealand as well. Gallipoli helped both countries shape an independent national identity as something more than British subjects, albeit within the British Empire. “We see it as central to our national identity,” says New Zealander McGibbon. ANZAC Day, which commemorates the early-morning assault on April 25, is the equivalent of Veterans Day, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one, celebrated with parades and memorial services. Every year, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders make their way around the world to a wide marble memorial at ANZAC Cove for a dawn service commemorating the landing.
Historians, meanwhile, are excited about the possibility that the survey might provide new information about the fight: Hundreds of books have been published about Gallipoli, not to mention a 1981 movie starring Mel Gibson. But most rely on soldiers’ accounts and memoirs, which can be imprecise and vague. “Battlefield archaeology is the only way to test the facts,” says Göncü. “I hope this helps us separate the history from the myth.”
The survey is also a timely intervention. Sipping strong Turkish tea in one of the hotels that line the waterfront in the town of Eceabat, the staging point for many battlefield tours, professor Tuncoku says a rising tide of visitors is overwhelming the area. “Every year 4 million Turks come to the peninsula,” Tuncoku says. “What I am worried about is that it’s becoming like an amusement park.” Between March and the end of September, more than 250 buses roll past Tuncoku’s house each weekend.
Even during the middle of the week, the battlefield is hardly a peaceful place. At Chunuk Bair, a hilltop that changed hands several times during the fighting, tour buses park in a dusty lot next to a massive statue of Mustafa Kemal. Hawkers sell ice cream and knickknacks. When the wind is right, the hum of diesel generators rumbles hundreds of yards down the hill to the thickets where Sagona’s survey team is documenting trench lines.
As the 100th anniversary of the battle gets closer, the increased interest in Gallipoli may be putting the future of the battlefield in jeopardy. Some Turkish historians worry the lines of tour buses are accelerating erosion. And increasing visitor numbers means a demand for more infrastructure: wider roads, more parking lots and other facilities, all built on top of the battlefield. Last year, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened a state-of-the-art, $40 million visitors center close to the park’s entrance. Documenting what’s still left may help advocates protect it from further damage.
Yet there’s no way to preserve a battlefield like Gallipoli forever. Wind, rain, and plant growth will continue to blur and eventually erase traces of the fight here. That makes the survey work all the more important. Sagona and the rest of the team are creating a snapshot of a battlefield about to disappear, one that future historians and archaeologists can use long after the last trenches have vanished.
Daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of Australian war veterans who fought at Gallipoli visit a cemetery at ANZAC Cove on March 19, 2008.
Photo by Fatih Saribas/Reuters
*Correction, Nov. 13, 2013: The article originally stated that by the time the Ottoman Empire joined World War I on the side of the Germans, it had shrunk to roughly the size of modern Turkey. In fact, the empire had shrunk to roughly twice the size of modern Turkey. (Return to the corrected sentence.)Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said it was imperative politicians “respect the decision of the majority... especially when we disagree with it.” (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Prominent Republicans in tough reelection battles spent Thursday blasting Donald Trump for refusing to promise that he would respect the results of the presidential election if he loses.
“There have been irregularities in our elections, sometimes even fraud, but never to an extent that it affected the outcome,” said GOP Sen. John McCain, who is up for reelection in Arizona, where some polls show Clinton with an edge in the traditionally red state, even though the senator has a big edge on his own rival.
“We should all be proud of that, and respect the decision of the majority even when we disagree with it. Especially when we disagree with it.”
McCain joined other Republican senators from blue states facing tough reelection bids in condemning the remarks, including Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Ron Johnson (Wis.).
But as of midday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — whose own GOP majorities are at stake because of Trump’s unpopularity — had not commented on the latest statement from Trump about the election’s legitimacy.
Ryan’s office pushed back earlier this week against allegations of a “rigged” election, when spokeswoman AshLee Strong said: “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”
The Republican backlash was sparked by an exchange during Wednesday night’s final presidential debate, in which Trump repeatedly refused to say he would accept the results of the election, despite pledges to do so from his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said, "I'll keep you in suspense," when answering a question about the tradition of accepting the results of presidential elections. (The Washington Post)
“I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense,” Trump told moderator Chris Wallace, a response Hillary Clinton called “horrifying.”
Trump clarified his position during a campaign rally Thursday, in which he told supporters that he would “totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.”
He added that he would also “accept a clear election result,” but “reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.” Trump did not define where he considered the line between a clear and a questionable result to be.
Republican presidential nominee said he will accept the results of the election if he wins, at a rally on Oct. 20 in Delaware, Ohio. (The Washington Post)
The latest broadside — which was roundly criticized by conservatives across the GOP — is likely to cause even more headaches for down-ballot Republicans, who already fear mass Republican defections because of Trump’s polarizing nature and unconventional stances.
McCain knows something about conceding a presidential election — he had to do as the GOP nominee in 2008, to President Obama. He noted in a statement Thursday that he “didn’t like the outcome” of that election, but “had a duty to concede, and I did so.”
“A concession isn’t just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader’s first responsibility,” McCain said.
Other embattled Republicans pointed out that Trump needed to respect a process that has safeguards in place to examine and correct for uncommon irregularities.
“The voters are going to decide this election, and Donald Trump needs to accept the outcome,” said Ayotte, who served as New Hampshire’s attorney general and has a slight lead this year against Gov. Maggie Hassan (D). “If there are reports that need to be investigated, they will be, as I used to do as attorney general.”
Portman also expressed “full faith” that Ohio state officials could sort out any allegations of impropriety on Election Day “to ensure the integrity of the election,” in a statement Thursday. Portman is well ahead of his Democratic rival in a state that is very competitive at the presidential level.
A campaign spokesman for Johnson also said in a statement Thursday that Johnson “believes we need to respect the results on Election Day.” Johnson is trailing former senator Russ Feingold (D) in his reelection contest in the Badger State with Clinton ahead there.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) took a slightly different approach, using the controversy as an opportunity to criticize his Democratic opponent Jason Kander, who currently serves as Missouri’s secretary of state.
“I have faith in the electoral system across the country, but it is still important to watch for the type of conduct that should not happen on Election Day,” Blunt said in a statement. “I don’t have faith in Missouri’s chief election official Jason Kander because of multiple ballot blunders, judicial rulings, and court mandates that required two do-over elections in recent months.”
Trump has spent the past several days charging that the election is “rigged” to help Clinton, casting a long shadow of doubt on the sanctity of the American elections process and its potential outcome.
Right now, Trump is lagging behind Clinton in almost every national poll.Washington (CNN) In response to New York Times reporting that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign, President Donald Trump dictated a misleading statement for his son, The Washington Post reported Monday evening.
The Post, citing multiple people with knowledge of the situation, said the original plan in response to the Times' reporting was to issue a truthful statement ahead of the story, but then Trump personally decided to have the statement say Trump Jr. had met with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to discuss adoption of Russian children by people in the US. The Post reports that Trump dictated the statement while flying back to Washington from the G20 summit in Hamburg, aboard Air Force One.
JUST WATCHED Wapo: Trump dictated initial misleading response to son's mtg Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Wapo: Trump dictated initial misleading response to son's mtg 03:56
One of Trump's advisers told the Post that Trump's move was "unnecessary" and warned that it opened Trump up to criticism that he was seeking to obfuscate |
my mind mutter stagger I'm in you I got you covered scatter you're meant to pull a lick real quick made off I fling shallow plots for senile kings cruelty keeps me even I moan like flukes euphoria follows puke I won't pull my chute I keep giving bad people good ideas lead heavy lead us remedy us hem me I suffer to catch reflux I ingest reflux bile threshold cortex deluxe torture me lust holding horses with bacteria uhh I'm downing this vial of old Siberia overtoning mysteria
2 Hot Head blo blo blo blo oh no hot head clip a hundred doves like a bald head rasta raw no fucking filter crooked needle hot head self inflicted what'd you tell them I just told them hell's existence but you know me don't nobody know my business my presence flog your confidence who wanna brand new complex now on I'll call you go fetch get used to fetch I shoot you catch I snap you come I don't call you back act natural my style attack give it up give it up give it up give it up dive bomber dive bomber clip a hundred doves like a bald head rasta clot of the dot got a head a piranha my cobra head draped in mota hooded regime like ebola blink and you're over wouldn't shut the fuck up answered for their behavior cleft palate creator morgue head forsaker phallus cloud crown me vapor
3 Spikes I skid like Rita lifted ocean I drift like my planet don't spin I skid all over marks like I'm haunted rev it up twirl my la la like profits it's never much I'm war torn in the cockpit don't interrupt my turbulence slaps my path massive demands panoramic you're having notions I'm not impressed shitty you're ten thousand leagues subzero sweat dripping my hancock do-rag riptides like tent city standoff through low lands eerie silencing peel out press me to magnetic slab severe swerving I tow lag off uncertainty 'til your zipper locks my salvia silhouette commence shots sixty shots a second on this hexed clock I strike 'tween each time your solar plex drops I'm skidding out I can't help yourself I skid in doubt I've dealt with yourself I tricked hell out I'm all helter skelter I'm on that Faust none of me left but reflex skidding out pulse in my chest feel like it's fixing to bounce bounce bitch I can't be the road I'm crashing into planes I crash and stroll maxed out my oath don't blame me I've no soul spikes my skids 'til the brink I jizz snowmen tall knives in my grill feel potent my jigsaw manipulates you open my skids rit rubbernecks agent orange I skid like I'm no use my headband expand like I choose juice I binge all black enhance my tragic ends to a means I can't establish noise of nomads on sapphire spice cumulus in both hands can't kill myself twice pawns tremble like dildos wielded by duppies traumatized on for size roadkill hides like yuppies I'm too passcode these gates won't stay closed control gets old I smash out my skin my vessel thrown like slack at the wind I'm finally astral now grab my stems spikes
4 Warping falling out in tune out my grooves uhh warping all I do is lose my form I'm warping influence executed mass execution rapid improvements toothless accent drawl of a shaman putrid fanatic ride out like famine luminescent rattles thunder in vials choose your battles or end in piles braided fumigation destitution ramped desiccated satyr make a massacre dance falling out in tune out my grooves uhh warping all I do is lose my form I'm warping psychotropic steel trap rock a beat up bears hat naw man I don't feel this and I shit on your guilt trip then extinguish your illness like seven grams of thorazine tyrannic authority cleansed by your aggressor inhuman elitist decline your surrender sign of the freak thriving on a bender forbidden discipline all lines disconnected vacated premises occupied by my death wish falling out in tune out my grooves uhh warping all I do is lose my form I'm warping luster of entrails stacked and slung under cement veils my traffic hums compulsion on risers your stranglers knuckles your temples buckle decompression silo inside this muzzle overdriven rituals on my torso my infernal boro if I went soft glock to my navel flaws get knocked off falling out in tune out my grooves uhh warping all I do is lose my form I'm warping
5 Eh who you think you are fucks like do you know who I am fucks fail to understand I'm like eh two letter text translation next skip that rerun like ya see one seen 'em all get eh have you the slightest I.D. why you're so trifling second I see you coming I'm teeth sucking like eh my voice eh see my reflection eh invited excited eh eh who you think you are fucks like do you know who I am fucks fail to understand I'm like eh I must confess I'm like eh no one's ever seen me feel shit but eh lil' bits of gleaming like piss christ cover me like skintight why my rep is like why they might be right I'm kinda sketch I might shoot a glance at the desperate like then I forget shit like Death Grips like eh I wave them off I wave them in gotta flake I fuck 'em off 'cause I ain't them I'm like eh who you think you are fucks like do you know who I am fucks fail to understand I'm like eh my approach like I'm ghost like I'm out of focus 'cause I'm coated with the most stripes late movement on my trajectory anomalous like entropy make all things perforated they apply iodine to trace this I'm like eh posse up steadily feel your void split I'm like eh who you think you are fucks like do you know who I am fucks fail to understand I'm like eh who put your obese flex on ice whose effortless corrupts your dice who does you just like I told you tell me what's it like don't be a don't be a 'bout mummified worm in the sun when shit's up to me 'cause I figure I'll watch you urn I'm not concerned I'm on leisure like eh I'm just on leisure why fuss don't be a medical procedure just stamp my fucking visa I'm way too loose like catch me hanging from my noose like eh how I vandalize full moon like you're so serious ease off I don't feed animals you seem lost I'm offended like but in the end I'm like eh
6 Bubbles Buried In This Jungle fuck weak no respect no chance wick wick cease and desist when I chant bitch try to creep like ivy oh now ivy don't like me candle gone out ignite my horns aglow let a vet rap a bullet through your buttonhole you're making me uncomfortable slumber terror my calvary sandman point you down to me hesh made make the rest stiff atrophy fuck weak no respect no chance wick wick cease and desist when I chant act accordingly I got a quota high noon smoke rings no high rollers brought your forecast and a shovel bubbles buried in this jungle polar jungle frozen punters all my sculptures look so flustered dress code swallow dick go get your boss security turn green 'cause I never floss fuck everything or I up the cost lack pedigree my index push pause notch can't talk I'm smearing mute don't have shit locked I hear the proof petty formula never amuses me fuck if I ever let a bitch get used to me fuck weak no respect no chance wick wick cease and desist when I chant
7 Trash we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash I'm cloaked trash poker fucking polygraphs my dirt so baked man menstruate after each take test say I passed that's trash I'm trash kind you mine to trade for cash you're trash born trash eye you close all I see's more trash mi amor we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash stoked ain't shit I was over that for this whole shit taste of my blood bliss fuck who I wasn't commodify my lack of progress specifically the process but this lukewarm elixir my blood's real real shit sir we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash be it motel six to vogue vino trash local comcast to shit vevo ads from upper mid to been repossessed face down trash begets trash we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash this side of my machete fall out mercury confetti ebony skies I died already liquor store counting pennies I'm in motion do you savvy I exhume 'cause it relax me whatch you think 'bout that don't fight it smell me though fucker quiet cyclone in a gortex shell audio input for my spell show up for what this cig's too plush long as my smokescreen's holding up I hold this down like high contrast stills taken from shade on flash I'm so shade tree it makes me laugh every time you reply that's fine we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash lawn glad stretch 'til it sag like breast off fat fucks stressed 'cause they can't compress extra bump this shit is sex decrepit sex shit I got something for this orchid we know trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash when we load trash we know clean don't last never last when we load trash we upload trash face down trash begets trash
8 Houdini three four fuck you baby disjointed Houdini baby music use us fuck who's this what after before or does this just stay fucked k arsenic liquid chrome my carcass for my throne vcr saliva smog China swiped alright alright alright alright invasive clinical wayside at intervals that don't stop that okey doke stroke slid into pine box bloated bullshit I must maim ever met a prick on a metro trip get his hair did like a disco-tech guess at the v make a simp sweat cheese what you want to drink can I need you yet fuck is that a hairstyle this asshole be at pussy church first three four fuck you baby disjointed Houdini baby music use us fuck who's this what after before or does this just stay fucked k wake up or flung 'cause I'm detonation in your head boom I spray like girl who whip her device fuck a warning that bores me I'd rather get blazed I detest you always come test me fucks get sliced caught a tiny cougar even she don't wet dick get left but he leave real slow typical no clue he don't grow official fuck no with a capital hoe wack hoes wanna piece so a bitch pose pack of putos got me rollin' up my windows fuck is that a hairstyle this asshole be at pussy church first three four fuck you baby disjointed Houdini baby music use us fuck who's this what after before or does this just stay fucked k
9 BB Poison I sneak up on me I shed my shh my shock my body clear obey me poison where's your heat at it won't lit I'm not surprised check your thermostat no digits I drop a dime you can have that collect your tip go buy a rhyme and bring my cash back you broke ass bitch I sneak up on me I shed my shh my shock my body clear obey me poison never betray me oh and while you're at it double my inhibitor I can't hack it be my buffer my habit hunger havoc I digress I can't live in this contagion I spread into incisions on occasion heavily stricken witness visions omens wall to wall followed by a loss of any and all symptoms it won't lit you're like hold on fuck it won't lit stay put you're the wrong one bitch don't fit too shook you're flows off blood this won't hit got no hook true or false though you can't spit bitter face Frida Kahlo the costco remix you're a case all you got though free shit what a waste how can you not know so which is it love or hate you'd rather not know why shit won't lit fucks hesitate I sneak up on me I shed my shh my shock my body clear obey me poison didn't mean to I I just assumed it'd be you I I never knew no idea I I was confused excuses it won't lit's a rubik's cubicle for the new cog to chew off to sulk with and flask on how the sick with it put my mask on Zach hit them off like it won't lit they shit bricks bbpoltergiest don't touch this don't insist favorite the copyright then go home bitch no homeless I'm in your house like oh shit I own this I'll kick your ass out don't bitch bitch it's winter bitch take my trash out real quick or live in it where's my cash out promo slip I'm skipping shit 'cause when I'm tacked out my it won't lit's it won't lit
10 Three Bedrooms in a Good Neighborhood I'm all up in my glory hole s o no no no no nylons on side bitches don't your table through my my body through your three bedrooms in a good neighborhood on fire like a margarita made out of wood she got solar panels for thirty cents a watt there's a future there's a party from the past she's a cop I'll jail break adx with a blank tarot card same card pull your hoe card like zoltar two crystal balls dangle from my boneyard I'm niagara falls flowing crowbars la la la la I got folsom bars your flows urinal take a dive bars go down in the fifth you service town car swiftly service me bitch it's called outlaw nylons on veal side bitches don't heal your table through my head my body through your bed I'm all up in my glory hole s o no no no no three bedrooms in a good neighborhood on fire like a margarita made out of wood she got solar panels for thirty cents a watt there's a future there's a party from the past she's a cop this private ocean I carve I'll carve this bitch into high art no say bitch made state of mind art my murder spree murk out this conk Albert Fish gaunt sunk out this conk strictly ugly fuck for your cunt cunts over easy and more blunts thermal strong arm gravity sink bong head games with an only child I foghorn devils devils jelly felt me unbelt me bombard your belly force feed me through your telly cyborg swelling pregnant can't abort nylons on side bitches don't your table through my my body through your nylons on veal side bitches don't heal your table through my head my body through your bed I'm all up in my glory hole s o no no no no nylons on side bitches don't your table through my my body through your nylons on veal side bitches don't heal your table through my head my body through your bed
11 Ring a Bell america america now I'm coming Africa my death is money whose bad his bad who's looking shitty not me you think he's listening probably mouthpiece on sally's like san joaquin valley fuck your middle man throw that towel in you irk me yeah yeah go tell a friend you're irrelevant ain't shit but a skank skank way too far from her holding tank come on girl get your front on girl you rank a-list or so I hear but no basic here no safe bets here wouldn't touch a fake bitch with latex here she's so she's so beat thirsty thought I heard a mosquito she know we know but her vox so desert and our beats so dro party full of thirsty lurkers hella worried all in six high glass heels cinderella water hole climbing for a pot of goldie flip you for a twenty bill aim for eldorado estimated arrival time it take a fuck to make a deal ain't gonna make it though try your luck in porn you're so thirsty all you'll ever earn is frills check two skeeze pop that pussy pitch into a tent how those poles make you so bent push that cart peddles you ring the bell ring the bell though hands full of dick use your elbows door to door you sand every last floor deep as you can choke a quicksand storm lipstick lap dance won't record she's so she's so beat thirsty thought I heard a mosquito she know we know but her vox so desert and our beats so dro
12 80808 air raid I slang the math raider nation black cab psychic radio also known as only channel in our mobile lab I got that priceless touch won't cost you a fucking thing biter appear instantly got pigs to feed you see my pimp she's pissed at me aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that acquire this link it's a ringer cop my steeze make yours much fresher or whatever flock of pigeons come I got crumbs biters bob and slum aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that feeds the gank move biters eat the gank move fuck with me I keep my street the same pave these potholes see no rain lately I seen rain fall close range ain't no thing too clean don't bang besides can't trust a man with cream as white as hundred clean cocaine I'm custom like you like biters in my sights I got that priceless touch aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that feeds the gank move biters eat the gank move fuck with me I hardly notice them I toss all bums generous portion of my goat but I keep the bones aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that mastered by me magnified my laughter fed back through your swine your forehead tat my hazmat tag serpent coil egg and flag aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that twins sat rows all identical not seen as a threat or so we've been told I hold the key I blame the key made me defame the mold aye doe bite that aye doe aye doe aye doe bite that feeds the gank move biters eat the gank move fuck with me
13 Bottomless Pit I'm a fucking jug close your circle with my hooves I'll snub you faster I'll fuck you in half a my gauge go true vulture I hate you I hate you colder my hate crush your shoulders but you feel me in your liver my funeral's all the blister all corrosive and rupture my lingo roaches fucker I feast on you I fucked you in half I see you fiending marvelous gagballs drooling pools 'cause I see you fiending marvelous gag 'til I'm all drenched gagballs drooling pools 'cause my cum hatch in you struck books of match in you subwoofer I'm dry humping 'lectrify me I'm fucking apparitions fire we desire agony exposure ground flesh in heat human flesh wreath can't go nowhere too iron to rant I lift my hammer drives us red bottomless pit rising out and through my hammer like the dead I fucked you in half I see you fiending marvelous gagballs drooling pools 'cause I see you fiending marvelous gag 'til I'm all drenched gagballs drooling pools 'cause my hooves'll snub you faster I fucked you in half I see you fiending marvelous gag till I'm all drenched gagballs drooling pools 'cause this pit's bottomless I'll bleed you through this tase don't get depressed you won't survive I'll reap you through this maze of masochists bulging with hives let this craving slave you bad appoint your fix my chemicals molest your sanity anoint at risk death classic bitch gag on it bitch I see you fiending marvelous gag 'til I'm all drenched I fucked you in half I see you fiending marvelous gagballs drooling pools 'cause I see you fiending marvelous gag 'til I'm all drenched gagballs drooling pools 'cause
CONTINUE TO THIRD WORLDS →
WARNING: This website contains explicit content that is not suitable for persons under the age of 18.A Penn Hills woman is accused of setting her boyfriend on fire and then dousing him with urine because she was angry, police said.
Police: Woman sets boyfriend on fire then dumps urine on him
A Penn Hills woman is accused of setting her boyfriend on fire and then dousing him with urine because she was angry, police said.Leigh Ann Sepelyak, 38, faces charges including attempted homicide and arson for the incident early Sunday morning.Penn Hills police said Sepelyak and her boyfriend were involved in an argument in the bottom floor of a home on Lime Hollow Road. When the boyfriend fell asleep, investigators said Sepelyak poured gasoline on him and set it on fire with a lit match.“The gas ignited, and the boyfriend caught fire from the waist down,” Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.Authorities said Sepelyak then decided to put the fire out, but instead of using water, grabbed a bucket of urine that the couple had been using in place of a bathroom and poured it onto the victim.People who live above the couple drove the victim to UPMC Mercy, where he’s said to have burns to at least 25 percent of his lower body.Penn Hills police said they had no prior interactions with the couple, and Sepelyak would only explain the incident by saying that she was angry.
A Penn Hills woman is accused of setting her boyfriend on fire and then dousing him with urine because she was angry, police said.
Leigh Ann Sepelyak, 38, faces charges including attempted homicide and arson for the incident early Sunday morning.
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Penn Hills police said Sepelyak and her boyfriend were involved in an argument in the bottom floor of a home on Lime Hollow Road. When the boyfriend fell asleep, investigators said Sepelyak poured gasoline on him and set it on fire with a lit match.
“The gas ignited, and the boyfriend caught fire from the waist down,” Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.
Authorities said Sepelyak then decided to put the fire out, but instead of using water, grabbed a bucket of urine that the couple had been using in place of a bathroom and poured it onto the victim.
People who live above the couple drove the victim to UPMC Mercy, where he’s said to have burns to at least 25 percent of his lower body.
Penn Hills police said they had no prior interactions with the couple, and Sepelyak would only explain the incident by saying that she was angry.
AlertMeAbout 30 former Cave Rock unit owners are being thousands in rates before receiving a payout for their demolished homes.
About 30 Sumner unit owners are stuck paying thousands of dollars in rates for land they cannot live on, as they remain in a standoff with IAG over an insurance payout.
Last week it was reported that 91-year-old owner Bertelle Smyth, who has indebted herself to pay at least $8000 in Christchurch City Council rates and penalties for the land.
Her Cave Rock Apartments unit was one of many demolished after the February 2011 earthquake.
SUPPLIED Bertelle Smyth is one of about 30 Sumner unit owners paying rates for land they cannot live on.
Smyth's son, Kieran, said the council had shown a lack of compassion for his ailing mother's situation.
READ MORE:
* Ailing owner 'living on the breadline'
* Cave Rock apartment owners will not accept 'full and final' settlement
* Seven elderly residents at Sumner apartments died waiting for settlement
* Multimillion-dollar dispute in Christchurch over Sumner apartments
* Sumner apartments coming down
Cave Rock body corporate chairman Mike White said residents owned "fresh air" after 30 units comprising the main block were demolished.
SUPPLIED Age Concern chief executive Simon Templeton finds Bertelle Smyth's situation upsetting.
Having to pay rates on the land, while in dispute with IAG, was a bitter pill to swallow, he said.
"At the end of the day we're getting no service... for those rates, there's no rubbish collection, there's no water, there's no nothing in respect of those properties.
"All of us have got to have somewhere else to live, so in whatever way the individuals that have had to move on are paying rates on another property," White said.
"We're all double-whammied now with rates."
The dispute with IAG had not helped the owners' cause.
"You wouldn't say that's the reason for it, but it's certainly exacerbated the situation," White said.
Kieran Smyth said his family approached the council asking for a significant reduction to his mother's penalties or whether they could be remitted altogether.
There appears to be no hope of further relief.
Asked for her opinion on the matter, Lianne Dalziel said she did not have information on personal cases, so could not comment.
Council head of financial management Diane Brandish said the council developed a range of earthquake-related remissions, which were applied to the property Smyth was living in.
"There are no plans to introduce any more earthquake-related remissions," she said.
Rebates, considered separately to earthquake remissions, were Government-funded and available to low-income ratepayers occupying their house on July 1 each year.
The maximum rebate was $610 per annum.
"Earthquake rates remissions are a council initiative and in the case of residential ratepayers means that they pay rates on their land only if their house is unable to be occupied," Brandish said.
Age Concern Canterbury chief executive Simon Templeton found Smyth's situation "upsetting".
"We are many, many years down the track now and I suppose what we commonly hear from older people is that they're told 'give us time and we'll get all this sorted it out'.
"At the age that she is at, and her state of health and things, a lot of people they don't have the time to wait," he said.
Bertelle Smyth's situation was "tricky", Templeton said.
He understood bare land rates were in place to stop issues such as land banking.
"She can't build on it. That is, I think, inherently unfair."
Seven of the 11 elderly people who once called the apartments home died waiting for their insurance payout.
The body corporate remained in dispute with IAG, meaning former residents had not been paid out for their destroyed homes.
It claimed the complex would cost $23 million to rebuild, but IAG had only paid out $10m.
The body corporate rejected the insurer's final offer of the difference between indemnity value, $10m, and the sum insured, $16m.A county councillor on trial for the false imprisonment of former tánaiste Joan Burton told gardaí the right not to be unlawfully detained and the right to protest were balanced quite well on the day of the Jobstown water charges protest in November 2014.
The jury heard details of the arrest, detention and questioning of South Dublin County Councillor Michael Murphy in the early hours of 9 February 2015.
Evidence is continuing in the trial of seven men who are charged with falsely imprisoning the then tánaiste, Joan Burton, and her assistant during the protest in Jobstown on 15 November 2014.
Detective Garda David Connolly told the court Mr Murphy was formally arrested after gardaí approached him as he sat in his car outside his home in Ballyboden.
During his interviews with gardaí Mr Muphy was shown video footage of events in Jobstown on 15 November 2014.
Asked a number of times if that was him in the videos, he replied: "The video speaks for itself."
Asked if Deputy Paul Murphy asking the crowd if they would let Ms Burton go implied that she was not free to leave, he also replied: "The video speaks for itself."
He was also asked why he had banged the bonnet of the garda car containing the tánaiste, Mr Murphy also replied: "The video speaks for itself, the jeep is moving."
Asked who he was speaking to when he said bring her back into the church, Mr Murphy replied: "Who brought her out of the church is the answer, the video is quite clear, there will be no problem explaining it to a judge."
Reminded that Article 40 of the Constitution says no one shall be detained unlawfully and asked if he had upheld the rights of Joan Burton and her aide that day, Mr Murphy replied: "There is also the right to protest. Those videos would suggest that both rights were balanced quite well on the day.
Garda tells court TD Murphy was in charge of Jobstown crowd
A garda witness at the Jobstown false imprisonment trial has insisted that Solidarity TD Paul Murphy was in charge of the crowd during the water charges protest in November 2014 and has denied that video footage showed his evidence was dishonest.
In his evidence, Garda Jonathan Ryan said Ms Burton appeared genuinely distressed and scared during the protest.
He said people were pushing towards the jeep she was in, "trying to get at her" and he said it was dangerous.
He said she was subjected to awful abuse. People were using every kind of swear word imaginable and she was called a c**t, slut and b***h.
Garda Ryan said at one point all sense, logic and control seemed to be lost. He said he helped a woman who was knocked over and was called a "uniformed scumbag", "coward" and a "f*****g disgrace".
He said he heard Paul Murphy holding a vote over whether Joan Burton should be held in Jobstown or allowed to leave.
He said it was a "unanimous" decision to keep her there. He said Mr Murphy appeared very, very pleased with himself and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He was smiling and chuckling away, the garda said.
Garda Ryan said one of the accused, Michael Banks, was very aggressive at the An Cosán centre and called him a woman beater and a bully in an effort to make him lose his temper.
Under cross-examination by senior counsel, Sean Guerin, on behalf of Mr Murphy, Garda Ryan said it was difficult to observe everything because he was being shoved and pushed around but he said he was satisfied he had a clear recollection of what happened.
He said he did not hear Councillor Michael Murphy addressing the crowd with a loudspeaker but did hear Paul Murphy. He was questioned about his understanding of the word "unanimous" and he said he believed a majority of the crowd or all of them voted to keep Ms Burton in Jobstown.
During repeated questioning, Garda Ryan said he accepted his account of events was incomplete but said it was not misleading. He said he had given evidence as honestly and truthfully as he could based on what he had seen and heard.
He denied that his evidence was dishonest. Mr Guerin put it to him that he could not recollect details that were favourable to Paul Murphy but instead remembered only details that were unhelpful.
Garda Ryan agreed that he had said Paul Murphy was in control or in charge of the crowd and he said he stood by that.
The court was shown a clip where Paul Murphy suggested slow marching Ms Burton out of the area but the crowd favoured keeping her there. Mr Guerin suggested that this showed Paul Murphy was not in fact in control of the crowd.
Garda Ryan said he was in Jobstown from 1.30pm to 5pm and he did not accept it was adequate to say Paul Murphy was not in control based on a three-minute clip.
He said he was there and had gone through a lot that day. He said he saw Paul Murphy in control of the crowd.
Garda Ryan denied that he was a dishonest witness and said his evidence was truthful.
Garda tells court protester apologised to him
Another garda witness told the trial that one protester apologised to him after he was abused and threatened by a couple of young lads.
Garda John Healy said he was approached by a couple of youths who said they were going to get him and threatened to steal his wedding ring, baton and pepper spray.
Garda Healy said that a woman then approached him to apologise and said "that is not what we are interested in, that is not what we are about".
He also said he was called names including a "rat", "traitor" and "free state bastard" who deserved to die a horrible death.
He said every time someone was hit by something there were cheers from the crowd.
He said the only person he recognised was Solidarity TD Paul Murphy who was holding a loud hailer.
He said he heard Mr Murphy say words to the effect of "will we hold on to her" but he was not aware of Mr Murphy using the loud hailer to communicate an agreement reached with the gardaí to move the protest on in a slow march once the public order was withdrawn.
During cross-examination by defence counsel for Paul Murphy, Garda Healy repeated his claim that Mr Murphy had shown "blatant disregard" for his safety and the safety of his garda colleagues.
Paul Murphy, 34, from Kingswood Heights, Tallaght, Councillor Mick Murphy, 53, from Whitechurch Way, in Ballyboden, Councillor Kieran Mahon, 39, from Bolbrook Grove in Tallaght, Scott Masterson, 34, from Carrigmore Drive, Tallaght, Frank Donaghy, 71, from Alpine Rise, Tallaght, Michael Banks, 46, from Brookview Green, Tallaght, and Ken Purcell, 50, from Kiltalown Green, Tallaght all deny the charges.Previously on Lost Girl: Bo went over the rainbow. There she met lions and stoners and Tin Tamsin, oh my. But Vex met with the sharp end of the wicked Hades. Right, so, not to be rude, but we’ve only got two episodes left here. Whatever is supposed to happen better happen soon, or we’re out of time. So bring on the fire-breathing hell horse. Summon in the armies of darkness. Heck, send in the clowns. Something, anything. No time like the present and all–tick tock. Wait, wait–I didn’t say burn everything to the ground, Bo. Granted, I’ll take this inferno over the agonizingly slow burn of the story arc this season–but it would be better if Lauren, Kenzi and Dyson weren’t trapped in it. Oh, Mark is also there? Gosh, bummer. What? We can’t expect everyone to survive. Flash backward 24 hours and Kenzi is burning toast or something similarly flammable in the kitchen in the Suck Shack. This sets off the fire alarm, which she smashes with a broom handle. While I appreciate the “danger” foreshadowing here, I doubt having a working smoke detector will save our crew. Bo is of like mind–not about household safety equipment, but about keeping her friends safe. She tells Kenzi she doesn’t have to stick around. Whoa, whoa–speak for yourself, lady. Our little K-Star better be in this until the end, especially now that she has begun streaking her hair again like the old days. Our heroine is trying to come up with a plan. Aw, that’s cute. But why start now? Five seasons of totally plan-less forging ahead into danger has been going so well for the last five seasons. Bo knows whatever the plan is it will involve the Pyrippus, and Kenzi promises to help her find it. Goodness, I missed these two together so much. The show needs them, it really does. Kenz leaves our beautiful bestie moment to go check up on Tamsin. Um, has no one checked on her all night? Did no one think it was odd she didn’t say goodnight? And has no one wondered where Vex has wandered off to as well? Do Canadians not say goodbye at the end of friendly gatherings? I don’t understand your customs. Do you just leave a bottle of maple syrup on the doorstep and disappear? Instead they find Vex on the floor and no Tamsin upstairs. Yep, Hades has taken her. Rape, forced pregnancy AND kidnapping? Have the writers been reading my wish list for things I wanted to happen in the final season? *audible groan* Our poor Valkyrie is locked in a cage, just like Aife, in a room that is already fitted with a fully decked out baby crib. Someone got a little ahead of himself while browsing the Pottery Barn Kids website. Jack the Rapist arrives filled with unwanted pregnancy advise. It all makes Tamsin want to throw up. So say we all.TBILISI, DFWatch–Two judges in the Supreme Court of the former Soviet republic of Georgia have filed a formal request to the country’s top prosecutor to investigate an attempt to influence them.
The case led to an exchange of strong claims and counterclaims on Friday, between the government and proponents of the former National Movement government.
Since the two judges themselves have not yet commented, it was unclear exactly who has tried to pressure them in a lawsuit over who shall control the television Rustavi 2, the major opposition media outlet in Georgia and a thorn in the side of the ruling party.
The Prosecutor General’s Office (POG) said in a statement on Friday that it has launched a probe into alleged interference into the professional activities of two Supreme Court judges reviewing the Rustavi 2 TV case.
According to the statement, the two Supreme Court judges, Besarion Arveladze and Paata Katamadze, who are presiding in the Rustavi 2 case, appealed to the POG on January 14, claiming that they had received letters to their home addresses, as well as short text messages (SMS) from unrecognized mobile numbers on behalf of one particular unnamed former government official, the identity of whom has not been released.
In these mails and SMSs ‘there were signs of attempted interference in their activities’, the POG statement says.
“At this stage a number of investigative actions were carried out and an intensive investigation is continuing. Every necessary investigative steps will be carried out to investigate the alleged interference with the activities of the Supreme Court judges”, the Office said.
Rustavi 2 is the largest Georgian TV channel by audience and is strongly in opposition to the current government |
could justify using one of his or her precious choices on it.
Sorcery points and Flexible Casting were intentionally designed so that a sorcerer who does nothing but convert spell slots to sorcery points in order to cast higher-level spells does so at the cost of overall output. Be cautious when altering this balance.
Warlock
Warlocks have a unique spellcasting method, and they rely on being able to cast a smaller number of spells more frequently. Remember that a warlock automatically increases the spell slot level of spells he or she casts, meaning that even lower-level spells gain potency when cast by a warlock.
The warlock spell list was carefully cultivated to avoid including spells that might become annoying if cast too often at the table. If you want to grant a warlock access to a new spell, but are concerned that its frequent casting could be disruptive to the game, consider creating an eldritch invocation that enables the use of the same magic on a more limited basis (by requiring a rest between uses, for instance).
Warlocks derive a lot of their combat potency from the eldritch blast cantrip, and already have a lot of invocations to choose from to increase that reliance. Be wary of creating new invocations that make eldritch blast even more powerful.
Wizard
Wizards have the full spellcasting progression; any changes to the Spellcasting feature will have a big impact on the class.
Wizards have the longest spell list and the broadest selection of spells to choose from each day, thanks to their spellbooks. Anything that further increases their versatility in this respect should be approached with caution.
The Arcane Traditions serve three purposes, which you should consider when creating new ones: encouraging the casting of certain kinds of spells, providing utility that is unique to specialists of a particular kind of magic and that cannot be found within spells, and subtly altering the play style of the wizard without fundamentally drawing the thrust of the class away from spellcasting.
Example: Rangers with No Spells
As an example of what the class feature replacement process might be like, we will remove spellcasting from the ranger class. Let’s say that in your campaign you want rangers to be a little bit more like Strider from the Lord of the Rings, and less overtly magical from the outset.
The Spellcasting class feature has a big impact on the ranger class, so this is no small project. Start by evaluating what the Spellcasting feature is contributing to the class. In general, rangers have a more limited spell list (and know only a relatively small number of spells), and operate on the same half-speed progression for spellcasting as the paladin does. Looking over the ranger’s spells, you might come to the following conclusions about what the Spellcasting feature contributes to the class:
Rangers have a lot of exploration utility in their spells, with access to magic such as detect poison and disease, beast sense, and conjure animals.
Rangers gain a lot of their combat potency from spells, especially hunter’s mark.
Rangers get some healing and restoration ability from spells such as cure wounds, lesser restoration, and protection from poison, which stave off the harm an adventurer might suffer while exploring in the wilderness.
Rangers get some combat control effects from their spells such as ensnaring strike, spike growth, and conjure barrage, all of which give the ranger a magical edge in combat.
At some levels at which the ranger gains access to new spell levels, this is the only class feature the character receives. As a result, the ranger will need additional class features at those levels to prevent them from providing nothing to the ranger aside from increased hit points.
Given the usefulness of the cure wounds spell, and the greater need for healing at lower levels, let’s create a healing class feature that allows the ranger to create and apply herbal poultices—an improvement that is on par with drinking a potion at first, but one that will scale up as the ranger gains levels.
Additionally, since the ranger is likely to need some extra combat utility that spells would normally provide, let’s add a version of the Combat Superiority class feature drawn from the Battle Master fighter. The maneuvers that Combat Superiority grants can provide a nice boost in combat, especially in matters of battlefield control. Looking at the fighter class, we can see that the Battle Master fighter’s Combat Superiority is sitting in a similar space as the spellcasting progression of the Eldritch Knight. We don’t want the ranger to outshine the Battle Master fighter, so we’re going to start the ranger with fewer maneuvers, scaling up as the ranger gains levels. Since we’re going to be replacing a one-half spellcasting progression, this means that we’ll need a few other features to bring this ranger up to par.
At 9th and 13th levels are gaps where we can place some exploration-focused mechanics. Let’s model the first one on the protection from poison spell, and also give the poultice-creating class feature an improved effect. The second one we can model on the conjure animals spell, which can be useful both in exploration scenes and in combat scenes.
At 17th level is another gap, which we can fix with an improvement on Combat Superiority. Fortunately, the Battle Master has a class feature that would fit in well in the concept of this ranger, so we can swap in the Relentless feature to make sure the ranger always has at least some ability to exercise control over the battlefield, even in the later part of an adventuring day.
Finally, we need to consider the impact of these changes on other class features, and make adjustments as necessary. For example, the Beast Master archetype for the ranger has a Share Spells class feature at 15th level that will no longer work without a Spellcasting feature. If your non-spellcasting ranger decides to play a Beast Master, you will need to create a substitute class feature for Share Spells as well, perhaps something to help keep the ranger’s beast companion alive longer. Additionally, since Primeval Awareness requires the ranger to expend spell slots to activate the class feature, we can modify that feature to allow the ranger to use it once and regain its use after finishing a short or long rest.
Here are the full descriptions of the new class features for our spell-less ranger:
Combat Superiority
At 2nd level, you learn maneuvers that are fueled by special dice called superiority dice.
Maneuvers. You learn two maneuvers of your choice, which are chosen from the list of maneuvers available to fighters with the Battle Master archetype. Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. You can use only one maneuver per attack.
You learn one additional maneuver of your choice at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th levels. Each time you learn a new maneuver, you can also replace one maneuver you know with a different one.
Superiority Dice. You have four superiority dice, which are d8s. A superiority die is expended when you use it. You regain all of your expended superiority dice when you finish a short or long rest.
You gain another superiority die at 9th level and one more at 17th level.
Saving Throws. Some of your maneuvers require your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver’s effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:
Maneuver save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (your choice)
Poultices
At 3rd level, you can create special herbal poultices that have healing power comparable to some potions. You can spend 1 hour gathering herbs and preparing herbal poultices using treated bandages to create a number of such poultices equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). You can carry a number of poultices at one time equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). The poultices you create cannot be applied by anyone but you. After 24 hours, any poultices that you have not used lose their potency.
If you spend 1 minute applying one of your poultices to a wounded humanoid creature, thereby expending its use, that creature regains 1d6 hit points for every two ranger levels you have (rounded up).
Natural Antivenom
Starting at 9th level, you have advantage on saving throws against poison and have resistance to poison damage. Additionally, you can use one of your poultices to cure one poison effect on the creature you are applying it to, in addition to restoring hit points.
Call Natural Allies
Starting at 13th level, when you are in an area of your favored terrain, you can call natural creatures from that terrain to fight on your behalf, using your attunement to the natural world to convince them to aid you. The DM chooses beasts appropriate to the terrain to come to your aid from among those that could hear you and that are within 1 mile of you, in one of the following groups:
One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower
Two beasts of challenge rating 1 or lower
Four beasts of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
Eight beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower
These beasts approach you from their current location, and will fight alongside you, attacking any creatures that are hostile to you. They are friendly to you and your comrades, and you roll initiative for the called creatures as a group, which takes its own turns. The DM has the creatures’ statistics.
After 1 hour, these beasts return to their previous location. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again in the same general area for 24 hours, since the same animals will not repeatedly heed your call.
Relentless
Starting at 17th level, when you roll initiative and have no superiority dice remaining, you regain 1 superiority die.
As a replacement for Share Spells, we could also consider the following feature:
Beastly Coordination
Beginning at 15th level, when an attacker that you can see hits your beast companion with an attack, you can call out a warning. If your beast companion can hear you, it can use its reaction to halve the attack’s damage against it.
Example: Favored Soul
As an example of how creating a new class option could work, let’s examine a design that was a full-fledged class in the third edition supplement Complete Divine: the favored soul. This might be an appealing archetype if you are running a game where the gods are going to have a big impact on the world, and where the Chosen of those gods (individuals bestowed with a fragment of a god’s divine power) are prominent players in the campaign. To reflect this tone, let’s create the Favored Soul as a new origin for the sorcerer class. This decision reflects the idea that the character is someone who is fundamentally changed by the touch of his or her deity, which awakens powerful magical abilities.
Looking at the existing sorcerous origins, we can determine that, at 1st level, an origin provides not only the explanation for the source of the sorcerer’s power, but also a flourish on the way that character plays. Since this sorcerer is going to be gaining its magic by being imbued with divine power, we decide to give the Favored Soul access to some spells normally gained by the cleric. Any time we expand the known spells of the sorcerer, we run the risk of overshadowing the other sorcerous origins, since the limitation on the number of spells the sorcerer knows has a big impact on how the class plays. This indicates that the other class features probably shouldn’t all tie closely to the sorcerer’s spellcasting, since that aspect of the sorcerer is already getting quite a boost. Since the favored soul class was a little more martial in its previous incarnation, we decide to give our sorcerer some better armor and access to simple weapons, similar to the defensive bonuses gained by the Draconic Bloodline sorcerer at 1st level.
At 6th level, the other sorcerous origins provide features that have an impact on the character’s combat abilities. Looking at the bard class, we can see that the College of Valor gains the Extra Attack class feature at the same level, and we decide to give that to the Favored Soul to further enhance its martial bent.
At 14th level, the sorcerous origins provide some measure of utility, with little direct impact on spellcasting or combat capabilities. Here, we choose to model the Favored Soul’s feature after the Draconic Bloodline’s feature at the same level, reflecting the touch of the divine with some imagery typically associated with divinity: wings.
At 18th level, the sorcerous origins provide options that are both potent and strongly linked to the origin’s central theme. Since the sorcerer will have access to higher-level spells at this level, and the feature we gave it at 1st level to provide some cleric spells won’t have as much of an impact, we decide to tie this class feature to those cleric spells, both to incentivize the continued use of those spells, and to give the Favored Soul a little more resilience in the face of high-level threats.
When we are done with this initial design, here’s what the Favored Soul sorcerous origin looks like:
Chosen of the Gods
At 1st level, you choose one of the cleric class’s divine domains. You add that domain’s spells for 1st-level clerics to your known spells. These spells do not count against the number of spells you can know, and they are considered to be sorcerer spells for you. When you reach 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th levels in the sorcerer class, you likewise learn your domain’s spells that become available at those levels.
Bonus Proficiencies
At 1st level, you gain proficiency in light armor, medium armor, shields, and simple weapons.
Extra Attack
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Divine Wings
At 14th level, you gain the ability to sprout a pair of wings from your back (feathered or bat-like, your choice), gaining a flying speed equal to your current walking speed. You can create these wings as a bonus action on your turn. They last until you dismiss them as a bonus action on your turn.
You can’t manifest your wings while wearing armor unless the armor is made to accommodate them, and clothing not made to accommodate your wings might be destroyed when you manifest them.
Power of the Chosen
Starting at 18th level, when you cast one of the spells you learned from your Chosen of the Gods class feature, you regain hit points equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum +1) + the spell’s level.
In the end, the capabilities of our Favored Soul sorcerer are quite close to those of the spontaneous-casting favored soul class from long ago!
About the Author
Rodney Thompson is a senior designer for the Dungeons & Dragons game. In addition to serving as a designer on the fifth edition of D&D, he is the co-designer of the Lords of Waterdeep board game and its expansion. Rodney is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and has worked at Wizards of the Coast since 2007, when he joined the company as the lead designer of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition.
Modifying Classes PDFBackground Edit
Recording and production Edit
Minutemen originally recorded an "album's worth of material" with James in November 1983 in Radio Tokyo Studios. However, after hearing labelmates Hüsker Dü's double album Zen Arcade (1984), which had been recorded a month earlier, Minutemen decided to write more material. Watt later commented: "It wasn't really a competition even. When I wrote 'Take that Hüskers!" in [the album's liner notes] it was acknowledging that they gave us the idea to make a double album."[10] Unlike Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, Minutemen did not have a unifying concept, but soon decided that the record's concept would be their cars.[11] The band wrote almost two dozen more songs for a second recording session with James in April 1984.[12] Double Nickels on the Dime was then mixed on a single eight-track in one night by James and cost $1,100 to record.[13] Several songs on the album were recorded elsewhere; a studio-recorded cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Don't Look Now" was replaced with a live version of the song,[14] and according to Watt, "Love Dance" was written at Ian MacKaye's Dischord House.[15] For sequencing, the band decided that each band member would be allocated a side of the record, an arrangement inspired by Pink Floyd's 1969 double album Ummagumma.[13] The band drew straws to select songs; Hurley won the draw and decided to pick his solo track "You Need the Glory", followed by Boon and Watt.[16] The fourth side of the record was named "Side Chaff", an admission that the songs present were the leftover songs.[17]
Music Edit
Watt refers to the album as being the band's art record in the documentary We Jam Econo: The Story of The Minutemen. The songwriting styles of Boon and Watt on Double Nickels on the Dime contrasted. Boon tended to write the band's anthems, and often explored wider political issues. "This Ain't No Picnic" was an example of his approach. Exploring racism and the strife of the working class with both gravity and humor, he composed the song after his supervisor would not let him listen to jazz and soul music on the radio at his day job, claiming it was "nigger shit."[18] Watt favored complex and abstract lyrical themes, exemplified by songs such as "The Glory Of Man" and "My Heart and the Real World". Influenced by James Joyce's novel Ulysses (the subject of "June 16th") and the stream of consciousness literary technique in general, Watt's lyrics were often complex and philosophical. On "Take 5, D.", Boon felt that the lyrics were "too spacey". Watt agreed to rewrite the song, adding: "There ain't nothing going to be more real." He found a new set of lyrics: a note from a friend's landlady about a leaking shower.[18] Double Nickels on the Dime contained several inside jokes that were missed by the band's audience. Watt later remarked: "No one knew what the fuck we were talking about. We'd explain it to people and they'd say, 'I don't get it, what's so funny about that?' And we couldn't tell them because it was our whole angle on the rock & roll, our worldview on the music scene."[13]
Imagery Edit
The album was named Double Nickels on the Dime as a reaction to the Sammy Hagar song "I Can't Drive 55," a protest against the federally imposed speed limit of 55 miles per hour on all U.S. highways in place at the time.[13] Minutemen decided that driving fast "wasn't terribly defiant"; Watt later commented that "the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin' songs and trying to come up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever. So he can't drive 55, because that was the national speed limit? Okay, we'll drive 55, but we'll make crazy music."[12] The band illustrated the theme on the cover of Double Nickels on the Dime, which depicts Watt driving his Volkswagen Beetle at exactly 55 miles per hour ("double nickels" in trucker slang) traveling southbound through downtown Los Angeles, where Interstate 10 ("The Dime"[19] in trucker slang) meets the San Pedro Intersection of Route 11/110 [20], also known as the Harbor Freeway, toward the band's hometown of San Pedro, California. "The title means fifty-five miles per hour on the button, like we were Johnny Conservative."[12][21] Dirk Vandenberg, the band's "buddy/contributor," took photos from the backseat as Watt drove under the sign to San Pedro; it took three circuits of the highway and two days of photography before Minutemen were happy with the cover.[22] Vandenberg later commented on the cover art: "There were three elements that Mike [Watt] wanted in the photo: a natural kind of glint in his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, the speedometer pinned exactly at 55mph, and, of course, the San Pedro sign guiding us home". However, when the cover was presented to SST, "someone botched the cropping for the print and cut off the end of the word Pedro."[22]
Release Edit
Critical recognition Edit
Accolades Edit
The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[37] Additional accolades below attributed to Double Nickels on the Dime are adapted from AcclaimedMusic.net.[38] Publication Country Accolade Year Rank Blender U.S. The 100 Greatest American Albums of All Time 2002 83 Pitchfork U.S. Top 100 Albums of the 1980s 2006 17[39] Rolling Stone U.S. The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2004 411[3] Rolling Stone U.S. The Essential 200 Rock Records * * designates unordered lists.
Track listing Edit
Credits Edit
Notes EditWP Split Tester Pro
WP Split Tester Pro Information
Split testing is a common practice by many marketers to find out what will work best with their site. WP Split Tester Pro is Rapid Crush’s plugin and guide that attempts to ease the process of setting up and running split tests.
In this review, we will go through how Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos thought about creating the WP Split Tester Pro, its different features, creating split tests, and how much it will cost.
The Importance of Split Testing
Split testing (or A/B testing) is a common web practice to compare how effective two versions of a website or page. A lot of companies use this technique (some big names include BBC, eBay. Google, Netflix, and Zynga) to find out what version will bring in more profits or traffic.
Although there are many variations to split testing, the end goal is the same: find what version is better.
The Story Behind WP Split Tester Pro
Many marketers know that it is important to do split tests but there are some factors that get into realizing that. According to Jason, these are the top three reasons for that:
It’s hard to set up split tests. It takes a long time to create the tests. Traffic is not enough for split testing.
Aside from trying to solve these problems for marketers, it was this email that showed Jason the importance of split testing.
Using WP Split Tester Pro Plugin
The WP Split Tester Pro allows its users to set up and run split tests in a few minutes. With this plugin, an otherwise laborious process, can be cut down to a few clicks. To use this plugin, there are only three steps to follow:
1. Install it just like any other WordPress plugin.
2. Enter the details needed: test name, test trigger URL, test page/s, destination page/s, and the option to show visitors the same test page.
3. Check the results and compare the statistics.
The great thing about the plugin is that it will provide you with statistics that could be very helpful: number of views, visitors, conversions, and rates.
The WP Split Tester Pro Documentation
When you download this plugin, it will come with complete support and documentation to use it. The document will feature a more detailed and step-by-step process of using the plugin.
The “Split Testing Bastard” Bonus
Aside from the plugin and documentation, WP Split Tester Pro comes with a bonus: video training aimed at finding the best page for your split tests.
In the video, Jason will also talk about:
How to increase conversion
His personal squeeze page split testing secrets
What pages do not need to be tested
Why “social proofs” aren’t really important
How his “contextual testing” can increase conversion by 591%
More tips and tricks
The video training bonus, although not advertised on the WP Split Tester Pro website, is very informative and will certainly make your split tests more effective.
The Cost of WP Split Test Pro
Much like most products from the Rapid Crush Club, there are three pricing and package options for WP Split Test Pro:
Basic Package
– Plugin can be used on three sites
– Costs $49.95
Pro Package
– Plugin can be used on 10 sites
– Costs $79.95
Advanced Package
– Plugin can be used on 25 sites
– Costs $99.95
WP Split Test Pro also comes with a 30-day guarantee and support from the Jason Fladlien team.
The Overall Verdict: WP Split Test Pro
Just like what Jason and Wilson said, a lot of marketers forego split testing because of many different reasons. WP Split Test Pro aims to solve those problems with this easy-to-use and statistics-based plugin.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission.” on all 99 posts published on the website.Sign-up for the Urban Milwaukee daily email
Two state senators released a Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) memo yesterday that provides an updated estimate of the potential savings to Wisconsin from expanding BadgerCare to more adults. The Fiscal Bureau estimates that expanding BadgerCare for adults up to 133% of the federal poverty level would cover an additional 83,000 adults, but would yield a net savings for the state of more than $1 billion over a six-year period – by taking advantage of increased federal funding available for states that expand Medicaid.
If the expansion were to begin on January 1, 2016, the net savings for state taxpayers during the 2015-17 biennial budget period would be $323.5 million. Because that starting date is no longer a realistic option, the paper also lays out the projected fiscal effect of beginning expanded coverage a year later. Under either of those two options, Wisconsin would save an average of more than $15 million per month once the change took effect.The savings estimates are somewhat lower than the LFB’s projections last spring. Several factors have reduced the savings from getting a much higher level of federal funding for childless adults.
The number of childless adults in BadgerCare has come down since April, and has been about 10,000 per month below the projection in the budget bill.
The state now expects the regular federal match rate to be a bit higher in fiscal year 2016-17 than it anticipated six months ago, which makes the cost of covering childless adults a bit lower.
The projected enrollment of parents between 100% and 133% of the poverty level is now a little higher than previously estimated, and since parents (unlike childless adults) are not eligible for the higher match rate, that means a somewhat higher cost for expanding coverage to adults in that income range.
An argument that I sometimes hear against expansion is that it has cost more than expected in states like Ohio. But Wisconsin is in a much different position than those states. We can much more easily estimate the changes in enrollment and the net costs because unlike most of the state that expanded coverage last year, we have already been covering parents and childless adults up to the poverty level. In fact, from 1999 until April of 2014 BadgerCare covered parents up to 200% of the poverty level, which makes it far easier to make the fiscal estimate for partially restoring the coverage of those parents.
Another argument that has made against expansion is that because the full federal funding for childless adults would gradually decline to a 90% match rate, there would be a structural deficit in future years. But as I wrote in a previous article, that’s like turning down the opportunity to refinance your mortgage if you learned that the initial savings of $100 per month would decline over a few years to $90 per month. The LFB memo indicates that even after the federal match rate declines to 90%, Wisconsin would save an estimated $171.6 million per year.
Sooner or later, Wisconsin policymakers will have to face up to the facts that expanding BadgerCare would be a great deal for state taxpayers, while significantly improving coverage for low-income working adults.Get the biggest rugby 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
He is viewed as one of the brightest hopes for the future in English rugby right now.
But Sam Moore was born in Cardiff, his dad Steve played for Wales and so did his uncle Andy, who even skippered the Welsh national team.
Welsh blood is coursing through his veins, then, but the young Sale star has been educated over the Severn Bridge and has featured for England throughout the age-grades up to under-19s.
(Image: Getty Images)
That the former Everton Football Club academy player of the year has immense talent as a sportsman isn’t in doubt.
Welcoming him into the senior set-up at Sale Sharks after his graduation through their development system, director of rugby Steve Diamond said: “He comes with a magnificent reputation. His impact in games is massive.”
Moore is a No. 8 for the modern game, strong and fleet-footed but skillful with it.
So highly was he rated as a junior that he found himself propelled into the Waterloo RFC team as a 15-year-old.
He subsequently stepped up to the Sale Sharks Academy and has banked 10 appearances in age-grade rugby for England, leading their under-18s team last season and scoring four tries, including two against Wales at Ebbw Vale in March.
(Image: Mike Cooper /Allsport)
But who the precocious back-row teen will pledge his allegiance to in rugby terms is still not certain.
Wales were in touch before their recent autumn internationals but Moore is still mulling over his options and didn’t feel ready to make a decision.
His dad Steve explained: “Sam is still young and does not have to decide anything right now.
“He is only just starting out in senior rugby and knows he has a lot of work to do before he gets close to realising his full potential.
“He is a grounded kid who is taking nothing whatsoever for granted.
“As a player in England’s age-grade teams since the age of 15, he has made a lot of friends along the way and he is hugely comfortable in Sale’s set-up.
“Wales picked up on him after his performances in the international under-18s competition in South Africa in the summer, when he came away as player of the tournament.
“Of course he feels some allegiance to Wales. He has been to the Principality Stadium with me and Andy to watch matches and I would defy anyone not to be stirred when the crowd are singing the national anthem. He was born in Wales and he knows I played for them and so did Andy.
“But his England ties are strong as well, so he hasn’t committed either way.
“His focus right now is on becoming the very best player he can be.”
Wales are lacking depth at No. 8 and need to start developing options other than Faletau in the position. At 27, the Lions Test man is in his prime, but he has picked up a number of injuries in recent seasons which have stretched Welsh resources.
Ross Moriarty covered there for much of last season and did an excellent job, but the Dragons-bound player prefers to operate at blindside flanker.
While it is still early for Moore junior, he has shown huge potential and the Wales management have evidently seen enough to suggest he is the genuine article.
Earlier this season, the Rugby Football Union pledged to complain to World Rugby to prevent Wales and other countries targeting players at English club academies.
But the Welsh Rugby Union were having none of it and issued a rapid response, pointing to the large number of young Welsh players who are being lured across the border by free scholarships at English fee-paying schools and colleges — with 19 Welsh qualified players currently at one institution.
The certainty is the governing body in Wales would be missing a beat if they didn’t try to court Moore.
His dad achieved an everlasting position in Welsh rugby’s history when he scored the final try in a major game at the old National Stadium, for Swansea in the 1997 Welsh Cup final against Cardiff.
Signed by Mike Ruddock six years earlier, Steve Moore figured in two of the Whites’ Heineken League title-winning sides in the 1990s and won three caps for Wales.
Andy won 26 caps for Wales and led them on their tour to Japan in 2001. He played for Swansea for eight seasons and featuring in winning cup-final sides in 1995 and 1999, plus three Heineken League title-winning teams.
“The pair of them were great lads,” said Ruddock.
“I remember Steve came down from North Wales to see what he thought of Swansea and I met him at the railway station and put him up in my house for a couple of days.
“He went back home and I phoned him for a decision.
“There was this voice on the phone and it turned out to be his younger brother Andy, who told me he was a football goal-keeper and played at quite a high standard.
“It transpired he was 6ft 7in and could also play rugby.
“I asked him: ‘Can you be as good as your brother?’
“He laughed: ‘I’ll be better’.
“I’ll pass on saying who turned out to be better of the two.
“Let’s just say they were both top players and top blokes to have in the squad.”
Moore the Younger is said to be made of the same stuff, which is why Wales are keen to get him on board.
An intriguing battle for his services lies ahead.In an interview with CBS News, Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), has said that she doesn’t believe that the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama is playing fair, and that their only campaign philosophy is “Let’s kill this guy.” The former Massachusetts First Lady was sitting next to her husband at their summer vacation compound, an $8 million estate that includes a $640,000 boat house on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee.
“I feel like all he’s doing is saying, ‘Let’s kill this guy,” she told reporter Jan Crawford while pointing to her husband, “And I feel like that’s not really a very good campaign policy.”
Romney was referring to a thinly-sourced Politico story from August of 2011, in which an unnamed “prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House” said that the president’s then-sagging approval ratings were going to leave the Democrats no choice but to go negative. “Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments,” he or she said, the president “will have to kill Romney.”
When asked if she would like to see a woman as her husband’s selection for the Vice Presidential nomination, Romney demurred, saying she’d “love” that option, but that she has faith that Gov. Romney will choose the person best suited to the job.
Watch the video, which aired Thursday, July 5, and is embedded via CBS News, below:Google Chrome 28 is Out for Windows, Mac With Rich Notifications and Blink, Linux Coming Soon
Google today unveiled Chrome version 28 for Linux, Mac and Windows. The new version of chrome now comes with a notification center, however it is only accessible on Windows. The existing browser’s version can be updated directly by using chrome’s built-in silent updater or it can be downloaded through google.com/chrome.
This is the very first launch of Chrome that will be shipped with Blink feature instead of WebKit. The blink id can be checked by simply navigating to chrome://version/.
If you are marvelling about Google Chrome v28 for Linux OS,it literally arrived on June 17 before the Windows and Mac platforms. The minimal requirements for the new version had been updated to these Linux distribution: Fedora Linux 17+, OpenSuSE 12.2+, Ubuntu 12.04+ and Debian 7+.
“We’ve designed these notifications to be beautiful, useful and engaging,” Google says. Notifications through extensions and apps can be formatted to show images and texts, as well as actions will be included directly within the pop-up.
Since January, we heard the news related to the introduction of notification center on Windows and it was introduced in March which further solidified the expectation.
Basic web notification is already supported by both Chrome OS and Chrome browser, but rich notification Chrome extensions and applications truly modified the game as they can not only show different contents like images, lists etc, but users can also take out any action on them directly. Moreover, notifications now appears in a center outside the browser, which lets users to see the notifications even the web browser is not open.
Most probably, the next platform to get the rich notifications will be Mac. In May, it was displayed in Chrome for Mac and the Chrome official blog specifically said “Mac is coming soon”, however, Google has been saying this about Linux and Mac from last few months.
Most of the people believe that the notification center has been introduced with an objective to bring Google Now to the desktop, which was also displayed in pre-launch builds of both Chromium and Chrome, But Google has not still enable Google Now in Chrome yet, although, the company has been working with other extension and application developers to develop rich notification to integrate into their products.
Earlier, Google has also provided the following details for the developers:
Apart from the basic notification type shown above, you can use other formats like image to show a preview of an image within the notification or list to coalesce multiple notifications from your app into a single one. For example, a mail app could show multiple unread emails within a single notification using the list type. You can also specify different priorities for notifications that determine how long they stay on the screen before moving into the notification center where they continue to live until dismissed by the app or user.
As in the earlier launches, Google has also fixed some bugs in the latest release Chrome v28 and also in Chrome version 28.0.1500.7. Check out the SVN Revision log for more details.
At last, Google Chrome v28 also points out 16 security issues which are listed below:
[252216] Low CVE-2013-2867: Block pop-unders in various scenarios.
[252062] High CVE-2013-2879: Confusion setting up sign-in and sync. Credit to Andrey Labunets.
[252034] Medium CVE-2013-2868: Incorrect sync of NPAPI extension component. [$21,500] A special reward for Andrey Labunets for his combination of CVE-2013-2879 and CVE-2013-2868 along with some (since fixed) server-side bugs.
[245153] Medium CVE-2013-2869: Out-of-bounds read in JPEG2000 handling. Credit to Felix Groebert of Google Security Team.
[$6267.4] [244746] [242762] Critical CVE-2013-2870: Use-after-free with network sockets. Credit to Collin Payne.
[$3133.7] [244260] Medium CVE-201 |
have to work to get where we we're needed."
It sounds like the type of cliche athletes always repeat, but there's something to be said for Calipari making everyone believe it.
More in College Basketball:
• Gruesome injury brings Cardinals together
• Spencer Hall: One night in Dunk City
• NCAA printable bracket: Final Four is set
• Steve Alford leaves New Mexico for UCLA
• Wichita State just latest mid-major to crash Final FourThe old ESPN app on Xbox Live was mediocre at best. There were highlights and a few non-important ESPN3 live offerings, but not much past that.
That all changes today with the official launch of WatchESPN, an updated app that now features ESPN’s full slate of programming, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3 and ESPN Goal Line.
Already on iOS and Android devices, WatchESPN provides content from ESPN for Xbox Live Gold members who receive ESPN as part of their cable subscription with Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Verizon FiOS TV, XFINITY TV from Comcast, and Midcontinent Communications.
I just tested the app out and from a sports-fan perspective, it’s a home run. Once you choose your cable provider and verify your log-in credentials online, you have live ESPN and ESPN2 programming, plus a whole plate of other features, highlights and replays a few buttons away.
My favorites are the dual-screen feature and the “My Sports” section. The app allows you to watch two live events at once, which I can’t even do on my cable box. The “My Sports” feature lets users customize their favorite teams and sports and then see those specific highlights, replays or live coverage all in one section.
There’s also the familiar “Bottom Line” ticker that that runs along the bottom of the screen with the latest news. By hitting the D-pad, users can easily cycle through other live events, channels and features.
You’re also able to rewind, fast-forward and pause content like a DVR would. Though I couldn’t get this function to work with live ESPN and ESPN2 content.
I’ll probably still watch live sports with my HD cable box, but I can’t complain about highlights, replays and live around-the-clock content all in one place. And the fact that you can navigate the app with voice or motion controls via Kinect is pretty cool as well.
Check out the short video demo above where I watch Monday Night Football and explore the bevy of features on this new app.If you ever fell victim to the prejudice that people today are smarter and more intellectually sophisticated than the people of the 1st or 13th centuries, you need only ask your friends and neighbors about the terrifying word "anarchy" to prove to yourself that our generations are just as stupid and foolish as any others. Even mentioning the word with a straight face is bound to put your acquaintances on edge, which is remarkable in itself. But, once they recover their senses from hearing the word pronounced out loud without a clap of thunder following on its heels, they will usually offer an argument against anarchism that rivals in its sheer stupidity any arguments that the flat-Earthers ever gave in antiquity.
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It usually goes something like this: Human nature is so intrinsically evil and depraved that, without cops walking the streets, judges locking up potheads, and politicians buying hookers and crack in Washington, the entire world would devolve into a horrifying bloodbath. Murder and rape would run rampant as soon as the "criminals," (that is, all of us, as per our shared evil nature), got word that the police were no longer in the business of shooting, beating and incarcerating them. Virtually everyone and everything would be killed or destroyed in the ensuing mayhem. Cannibalism would probably even reappear for the barbaric survivors of the initial anarchic bloodbath. That’s right, cannibalism.
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So, as you can clearly see, the fragile fabric of society is held together ultimately by the simple police officer, whom we all take for granted, and whose life is spent deterring the innumerable "criminals" out there from butchering one another, like you and me. Without police officers, given human nature’s intrinsic depravity, life would indeed be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
The sheer stupidity of arguments along the lines that human nature is so totally depraved that society would devolve into cruel chaos in the absence of police officers is almost difficult to fathom. One can forgive the flat-Earthers of yesterday for not being gifted enough in astronomy and mathematics to determine that the giant hunk of rock they stood on is spherical, but how can one forgive the people of today for thinking that that guy wearing blue polyester with mustard in his mustache in the corner of the deli is the very linchpin of human society? How can one forgive an intellectual error as large as the one that presumes that you and I would probably fight each other to the death if it wasn’t for that woman with a mullet and a radar gun under the highway overpass? How will future generations be able to comprehend an intellectual error as large as the one that holds that our very lives and our entire civilization hang oh-so tenuously from a 56-inch braided duty belt?
If our lives and fortunes were indeed dependent upon protection from a handful of people swaddled in hideous blue polyester, mankind would have long ago lost them. If human nature were truly as depraved as these arguments would have us believe, then the chubby blue line would long ago have been annihilated by its vastly numerically superior criminal adversaries. No "criminal" worth the name would be deterred from committing his favored atrocities by a small group of lightly-armed fat people, whose national reputation is tied inextricably to the donut. To even suggest that this 300 million-strong horde of savage, would-be criminals are kept at bay only by some irrational fear of blue polyester is so asinine that it makes the flat-Earthers look like geniuses by comparison.
This intellectual error is all the more inexcusable in America, where the population is armed to the teeth with high-powered rifles, pistols, and shotguns. If the American population were truly as depraved as this argument would have us believe all people are, then its bloodlust could hardly be contained by a few pudgy men and women carrying small caliber pistols. The thought is as laughable as would be an argument to the effect that the hardened and rifle-toting farmers of Mayberry were deterred from slaughtering one another by Andy Griffith and his slow-witted sidekick.
On another level, moreover, arguments to this effect are deeply insulting to people like you and me, for they insinuate that you and I are savage beasts that are only kept in check by those enlightened and portly souls who populate the local police force. Unlike those ultra-civilized "public servants," you and I would like nothing more than to cut each other’s throats, if only the peace-loving police officers of the world weren’t holding us back. The truth, as anyone with eyes in America should be able to tell you, is precisely the reverse, since police officers and soldiers are often the most depraved perpetrators of the very crimes they claim to "protect" Americans from. The police are people just like us, after all, even if their waists are often larger, and they are capable of the same brutality as any other people.
There are some intellectual errors that one can excuse, or at least understand. The people of antiquity could not see that the Earth was round, so one can understand that they did not grasp that seemingly obvious truth There are other intellectual errors, however, that are so idiotic and so self-evident that they smash to pieces any sense of superiority we might be foolish enough to entertain over other peoples. Such is the magnitude of the error of dismissing the sublime idea of free-market anarchism by assuming that the geniuses in blue keep us savages from killing each other.
The Best of Mark R. CrovelliISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, led prayers at a mosque in Islamabad on Friday and called on his country’s military to shoot down any American drones entering Pakistani territory.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (C), chief of the Jamat-ud-Dawa organisation, arrives to attend the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Islamabad, Pakistan, June10, 2016. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood
The anti-U.S. rhetoric came as the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Islamabad for the first time since last month’s killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in western Pakistan.
U.S. and Pakistan relations have been strained by the strike, which Islamabad has protested against as a violation of its sovereignty.
Friday’s public appearance by Saeed, whom the U.S. and India accuse of masterminding a 2008 attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai that killed 166 people, was another reminder of the many sore points in the Pakistani-U.S. relationship.
The United States has offered $10 million for information leading to Saeed’s arrest and conviction, but he remains free.
He maintains a low profile for much of the time, meaning his occasional public appearances and pronouncements are closely watched.
“The U.S. stands with India in their enmity towards Pakistan,” Saeed told a crowd of hundreds of people after leading Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque.
“We want to request the army chief and make the air chief realize that it is their duty to shoot down any drone that comes into Pakistan and respond to it in kind.”
In response to the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansour, an Islamist charity Saeed heads, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has announced a series of anti-U.S. protests in major cities, with Saeed expected to be a featured speaker.
Pakistan’s top foreign policy official and its powerful military chief met Richard Olson, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, during a visit.
A statement from the military said Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif had expressed “serious concern” over the U.S. drone strike. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad said it had no statement on Olson’s visit.Drink and Drive Alive Free Cab Ride Program
Serving The Bay Area area, San Jose, Oakland, Tri-Valley metro area, and Sacramento.
The Car Accident Attorneys at GJEL is committed to keeping the roads in California safe. One of the most dangerous times to be on the roads is during the holidays when people are out drinking. We want to do our small part by helping people make the right decision to NOT drink and drive.
Take a Cab Ride (Or Uber or Lyft) on GJEL this St. Patricks Day from Sunday, March 17 at 5:00PM to March 18, 2019 by 10:00AM.
To show our commitment to preventing DUIs (and even worse, alcohol-related injuries and deaths), we are offering free rides home this St. Patricks Day in the Bay Area, as well as the Tri-Valley area (Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon, and Danville), and Sacramento. This offer is sponsored by our San Jose Personal Injury Lawyers at GJEL.
How the Drink and Alive Program Works
The program is simple. All you have to do is make the right choice to take a cab ride, Uber, or Lyft home if you’ve been drinking. Pay for the cab up front, and we’ll reimburse you for it.
Register to claim your reimbursement and be automatically emailed the instructions. Registration coming soon.
Here are the details for our St. Patricks Day Holiday Free Cab Ride Offering
Rides must be in the Bay Area area, San Jose, Oakland, Tri-Valley metro area, or Sacramento.
Rides must be taken between Take a Cab Ride (Or Uber or Lyft) on GJEL this St. Patricks day on Sunday, March 17 at 5:00PM to March 18, 2019 by 10:00AM.
You must be of legal drinking age to qualify (21 and over)
Valid for one, one-way ride to a safe destination
Limit one reimbursement per household
The maximum value of $20.00 anywhere in the Bay Area area, San Jose, Oakland, Tri-Valley metro area, or Sacramento.
How To Claim Your Reimbursement
To claim your cab ride reimbursement please take the following steps:
1. Claim a “ticket” using the registration information below:
Buy Tickets
Buy Tickets on Eventbrite
2. After the event is over we will send you instructions to fill out an online form where you can submit your information online. Reimbursements will come via paypal.
Please remember that all submissions must be received by no later than March 25, 2019.
Reimbursements will be processed within 30 days of receipt Please direct any questions to casey@gjel.com.
Have a happy safe holiday
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*This campaign is managed by the Law Firm SEO Company Juris DigitalPorkbarreling Pigs in Haiti North American "Swine Aid" an Economic Disaster for Haitian Peasants by Allan Ebert It is no small matter to own a pig in Haiti. With very little hard currency in the countryside, pigs act as living savings accounts and are often bartered for other products or wares. One pig can be traded for a year's education for two children. In fact, pigs comprise 30 percent of the peasantry's income. In late 1978, when the outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) spread to Haiti, the peasantry was devastated. In the next four years, the Haitian government, spurred by the U.S. and Canadian governments, slaughtered every pig on the island to stymie the spread of the fever. African Swine Fever, a virus for which there is neither vaccination nor medication, made its way from Europe or Africa to the Dominican Republic, and later spread to Haiti. The disease, which decimates swine populations, endangers neither humans nor other animals. Even the contaminated meat, if the animals were slaughtered under proper conditions, is perfectly edible. When AFS first made its appearance in the Dominican Republic, the Haitian government, as a protective measure, ordered the extermination of all Haitian swine on the border within a radius of 15 kilometers-100,000 pigs were slaughtered. The peasants received no compensation for the losses they suffered. This preventive measure, however, did not stop the disease from spreading. Haiti's northern neighbors-most notably Canada and the United States-watched the spread with apprehension. If African Swine Fever ever made its way to the United States, the University of Minnesota estimated it would wreak $150 million to $5 billion worth of damage. The American and Canadian governments, together with the Mexican government, through the Interamericano Institute de Ciencias Agricola (IICA), quickly imposed a Swine Fever eradication plan on the Haitian government. This plan was extremely simplistic: kill all the swine in Haiti and restock the swine population with foreign pigs-either from the United States, Canada, or Mexico. The African Swine Fever Eradication and Swine Industry Development Project (PEPPADEP) was launched in 1981, by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; the IICA, a branch of the Organization of American States; the International Development Bank; the governments of Mexico, Canada, the United States; and finally, the government of Haiti. According to the government of Haiti, it was to "eliminate the debilitating effects of ASF in Haiti and to begin development of a productive swine industry." The first part of the plan, the eradication of the swine, was the object of an agreement (supported by a budget of $23 million) between the Haitian government and the IICA. The U.S. government spent $15 million and 13 months to kill every pig in Haiti. Canada and Mexico both sent manpower and money under the auspices of Institute for International Cooperation, a subgroup of the Organization of American States, to help with the eradication. Haiti formed a "pig army," a group of conscripts and volunteers totaling about 700 at its peak. More than 400,000 pigs were killed, while another 500,000 to 600,000 died of African Swine Fever. Although the main reason for the project may have been to protect Haiti's neighbors from African Swine Fever, the IICA saw the eradication project as a chance to do much more. The IICA stated that it would eliminate the "debilitating effects of the African Swine Fever in Haiti," and start "the development of profitable swine production." AID makes no pretense as to the purpose of the swine eradication project in Haiti when it states: "Thus PEPPADEPs most obvious-though unstated - objective is to eradicate once and for all the Haitian model of swine raising, whose `primitive' conditions may at all times be a source of nuisance for the modern swine industry of North America." AID's project paper signed by Phyllis Dichter, Acting Mission Director, went into more detail: The eradication of ASF has presented the international agricultural community with an excellent opportunity to improve the productivity of the Haitian swine industry," the report stated. "The introduction of these [U.S.] breeds will permit the national agricultural sector to make a new beginning toward a modern swine industry. This would be a sufficient basis for undertaking a swine project in Haiti even if the eradication of the swine population had not occurred." The swine project fits nicely into the long-term U.S. plans for Haiti. In more practical terms, the swine project is pushing the Haitian economy to a model of development that concentrates agricultural enterprises, displaces the population from the countryside, forces farmers to accumulate debts and to undertake non-localized stock breeding which yields poor quality meat in large quantities, critics charge. U.S. AID has decided that Haiti's development must adopt the Taiwan model of dependent industrialization. Haiti will be able to concentrate more on export crops like coffee, and the rest of its labor force will be free from non-productive agricultural activities so that it may serve as the workforce for export-oriented assembly industries owned by transnationals. Critics charge that ASF Eradication Project is an antidevelopment initiative, reinforcing Haiti's underdevelopment by increasing the poverty of the majority of its people, strengthening the wealth of 200 millionaire families of Port-au-Prince, and raising the level of dependency on the U.S. All agree that the ASF Eradication Project was devastating for the peasantry. Although $9.3 million of the money made available for the eradication project through the OAS was to be used to compensate the farmers, some $70 to $90 for each pig, this figure was unrealistically low, leaving out the profits and the cost of all lost services during the no-swine transition period. So in reality, no adequate compensation was granted to the peasants. Immediately after the program was announced, unscrupulous government officials scared swine producers into selling their hogs at liquidation prices. In some instances, pigs valued at $200 or more were sold at the price of two for $30. AID states that indemnity schedule for the sacrificed pigs amounted to $40.00 (US) for adult pigs, $20.00 for junior pigs, and $5.00 for piglets. What followed was a massive slaughter which some critics charge caused more damage to the swine population than ASF could have. In January 1982, four years after ASF first appeared in Haiti, it was announced that the fever had lost its epizootic virulence. Although the agreement between IICA and the Haitian Government stipulates that the owners of hogs slaughtered in the 1978 campaign were to be compensated "prior to the depopulation stage of the Project." No compensation was given to the peasants whose pigs near the Dominican border were exterminated in 1978, nor were peasants who lost their pigs in the later wave of slaughtering compensated. The damage done to the peasants is almost irreparable, as AID clearly admits: "The repopulation of the Haitian pig herd to its pre-campaign status of approximately 1.2 million pigs is clearly outside the scope of any single effort, and will only be feasible given time and favorable conditions. The long-term repopulation program at the national level will require a substantial financial commitment from the [Haitian government], involving the training of technicians and farmers, interventions in swine nutrition and health, as well as concerted efforts by private voluntary organizations and the private sector." The only real beneficiaries of this "development project," critics argue, are the North Americans who have not only protected their industry, but who will be able to reorganize a dependent sector of the food-processing industry and rich Haitians who are using the opportunity to build a stock-breeding industry. The big losers in this project will be the peasants, for whom only $7 million of compensation in a $23 million project is foreseen. The destruction of the swine means the loss of their capital and their working tools. They are afraid the new breed of pig will not be as strong or as well-adapted as the native swine referred to as Cochon Plances who were fed available, seasonal wastes and that the "better" swine stock will only benefit the meat processing industries and American firms such as the Haitian American Meat & Products Company, HAMPCO, an American firm created under the U.S. occupation and responsible for providing Port-au-Prince with meat and exporting meat to the United States. The Haitian-American Meat and Products Company (HAMPCO) and the U.S. pig producers stand to gain nearly $1 billion from AID's project. Only the HAMPCO facilities will be used by AID and the swine stock to be procured under the project will be produced and sold by U.S. swine farmers. HAMPCO is leasing its Port-au-Prince facility to IICA for nearly $1 million. There is fear too that the U.S.-backed swine project will require more from the Haitian peasants than is financially possible. Critics argue that the peasants will be required to spend too much to take care of the pigs-leaving the family with even less money to spend on food. According to contract, "It is forbidden to feed to the animals, wastes or other ingredients which are not part of the formula approved by the project." The U.S. pigs were chosen for their ability to produce larger litters, and, according to the U.S. AID, the pigs have been averaging 9.5 piglets per litter twice a year. The first pigs were brought in April, 1984, with the first piglet distribution in late October-early November, 1984. These piglets were then distributed to secondary centers, sponsored by 88 local organizations around the country. Although these local organizations, receive no funds, they provide feed, drainage, farrowing protection and veterinary care for the pigs and draw up lists of which farmers will get the piglets. To receive a free pig the farmers must be unable to buy the pig, and agree to learn how to take care of the pig. Each peasant or group of peasants must also build or have a pig pen made with appropriate materials, guarantee that pigs will not have access to human waste and return one pig from the second generation litter to the distribution center. Although U.S. AID hopes to build the Haitian pig population back up to pre-Swine fever days in less than 10 years, corruption and graft may make that goal impossible. Father Jules of the Catholic Church in Mombin Crochu claims that despite the $7 million the Haitian government has received from U.S. AID for a swine repopulation program, no meaningful repopulation has resulted. It was reported in the London-based Caribbean Report that even an AID official admitted that "We are now encountering the problems of corruption which are unsurpassed. Equipment has disappeared and swine are nonexistent. Veterinary supplies have been sold for human consumption." There is also concern that the switch from the "Cochon Plances" pig to the Iowa or U.S. pig will cause environmental problems. The Cochon Plances are an intrinsic part of the ecological system of Haiti. While digging for tubes and roots left in the soil and for underground bugs, worms and larvae, the hogs destroy a large quantity of insects harmful to plant growth and productivity e.g. the Maroka, larva of the common may-beetle-and against which the peasant is otherwise powerless. Swine are also one of the main sources of fertilizers. Their manure contains a high percentage of nitrogen and provides manure fertilizer that the farmers can use for their most demanding or most valued plants: coffee, plaintain, vegetables, fruits such as grenadine or a custard-apple. Proper sanitation facilities are almost non-existent in Haiti, and the Cochon hogs, by absorbing organic human and domestic wastes, prevent their open air decomposition and the proliferation of insects and bacteria. The impact of the extermination of the pigs and their repopulation with an imported breed has a tremendous impact not only on Haiti's physical environment but also on its social, economic, and cultural environment. The New Internationalist observes, "The second stage of the project (first stage being extermination of all the pigs in Haiti) which aims at starting a'profitable pig industry' using imported varieties has yet to begin. Since these improved breeds require heavy capital investment (clean water, pig sties, etc.), high maintenance costs (feed, vaccine, medicines) and skilled veterinary care, they have no place in the Haitian peasant economy. The beneficiaries of this project will include North American agribusiness firms (who will supply the pigs and equipment) and their counterparts among Haiti's elite 200 families. "But for hundreds of thousands of Haitian peasants things look very different. The loss of their pigs-one of the mainstays of the fragile peasant household economy-is an unmitigated disaster. They have become the hapless victims of an `aid' project thrust upon them by foreign agencies in collaboration with their own government." The repopulation scheme is tearing at Haiti's social fabric in a dangerous way. According to agronomists working with the Department of Agriculture, the simultaneous disappearance of all the swine stock, without replacing it with substitute breeds, could create such an imbalance in the already precarious revenues of the smallbreeders, that one-third of them will be ruined in a short time. The pork market would then be left to rich Haitians or, perhaps more likely, U.S. corporations like HAMPCO, a subsidiary of Servbest Foods, further exacerbating the problems already facing Haiti's peasant population. Allan Ebert is program associate for the Washington Office on Haiti.Photo: Focus Features
At the beginning of (and throughout) every month, Netflix Streaming adds new movies and TV shows to its library. Here is a quick list of several that you might be interested in. Some of these may also have previously been on Netflix, only to have been removed and then added back. Feel free to note anything we’ve left out in the comments below.
Pretend summer never ended: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Wes Anderson’s ode to young love and symmetrical compositions will hit streaming right as the weather changes and summer turns to fall. Here’s your chance to enjoy some quality time with the all-star cast of Anderson’s summer-camp dramedy, and also a few cute kids. Available September 16.
The one Netflix wants you to watch: Longmire (Season 4)
Netflix recently rescued this stylish contemporary Western from cancellation at A&E. Longmire had a dedicated following on cable, but it never managed to hit big in the 18–49 demo. It was more valuable to Netflix, however, as the site cares less about advertisers and can use this renewal to appeal to a wider range of viewers. If you haven’t heard about Longmire, it’s better than you expected, with fun performances from Katee Sackhoff and Robert Taylor. (If you have heard of Longmire, congratulations, the wait is almost over.) Available September 10.
Please don’t watch on your iPhone: Lawrence of Arabia: Restored Version (1962)
Listen, we know you want to watch Lawrence of Arabia, and we know it might be tempting to get through its three-hour-and-48-minute running time by streaming it bit by bit on your phone — on the train during your commute, while eating breakfast, in bed to distract yourself from your snoring partner, or perhaps to escape the terrifying feeling of being alone. Don’t. Get a projector. Invite friends over (or make friends, by telling them you have a projector). Then you’ll truly appreciate the majesty of David Lean’s epic, and you’ll be able to say you watched Lawrence of Arabia the right way. Available September 1.
From the terrible naming convention department: Rambo: First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III: Ultimate Edition (1988)
Sylvester Stallone is supposedly prepping for the next Rambo sequel, but until that comes out, you’ll have to rely on the already extensive Rambo discography for your supply of Sylvester Stallone–beating-up-people footage. Don’t worry. There’s plenty to go around. All available September 1.
TV catch-up: The Walking Dead (Season 5), The Blacklist (Season 2), The Fosters (Season 3), The League (Season 6), Gotham (Season 1), and more
Netflix’s gets its latest shipment of last season’s TV shows just weeks before most of them start up their new seasons. Since we are living in the era of “too much TV,” we can’t endorse the decision to catch up on every show offered here — maybe pick just one or two? — but we’re glad that Netflix continues to fuel our collective TV FOMO by making it all available. Different shows available at different dates throughout September. Full list below.
Biggest time-suck: Person of Interest (Seasons 1–4)
Perhaps because it airs on CBS, Person of Interest hasn’t yet gotten the credit it deserves for its radical portrayal of massive government surveillance. The series’ first season features a plotline that foreshadowed the Edward Snowden leaks, and its more recent episodes have dealt with the consequences of hyperpowerful artificial intelligence.
If you loved Mr. Robot but were bummed by its brief ten-episode season, then a 90-episode, 67-and-a-half-hour binge of this might cure your craving for techno-paranoia — or simply reinforce it. (Seasons 1–3 available September 1; season 4 available September 22.)
FULL LIST OF NEW TITLES
NEW SEASONS OF TV:
September 1
72 Dangerous Animals: Australia (Season 1)
Arthur (Season 17)
Battle Creek (Season 1)
Da Jammies (Season 1)
Los Hombres También Lloran (Season 1)
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (Volume 1)
Mouk (Season 1)
Person of Interest (Season 13)
Puffin Rock (Season 1)
The League (Season 6)
Zoo Clues (Season 1)
September 4
Baby Daddy (Season 4) (New episodes)
Madame Secretary (Season 1)
Melissa & Joey (Season 4) (New episodes)
September 7
Space Dandy (Season 2)
September 10
Fugitivos (Season 1)
Longmire (Season 4)
September 12
Portlandia (Season 5)
September 13
Comedy Bang! Bang! (Season 4) (Part 2)
September 14
Call the Midwife (Series 4)
September 15
Kambu (Season 1)
Sin Senos no Hay Paraiso (Season 1)
Zoobabu (Season 1)
September 16
The Blacklist (Season 2)
The Fosters (Season 3)
September 17
The Mysteries of Laura (Season 1)
September 21
Gotham (Season 1)
The Following (Season 3)
September 22
Person of Interest (Season 4)
September 25
Blue Bloods (Season 5)
Hawaii Five-0 (Season 5)
Parenthood (Season 6)
VeggieTales in the House (Season 1) (New episodes)
September 27
The Walking Dead (Season 5)
September 29
Bones (Season 10)
September 30
Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Series 12)
Murdoch Mysteries (Seasons 47)
NEW MOVIES:
September 1
Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher (2014)
Blackbird (2014)
Capital C (2014)
Combustion (2013)
Divorce Corp. (2014)
Giggle and Hoot’s Best Ever! (2014)
Hamlet (1990)
Hardball (2001)
Heather McDonald: I Don’t Mean to Brag (2014)
Lawrence of Arabia: Restored Version (1962)
Masters of the Universe (1987)
Mississippi Damned (2009)
Our Man in Tehran (2013)
Pandas: The Journey Home (2014)
Rambo: First Blood (1982)
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Rambo III: Ultimate Edition (1988)
Shake the Dust (2014)
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Such Good People (2014)
The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl (2005)
The Monster Squad (1987)
Up in the Air (2009)
Zathura (2005)
September 2
Black or White (2014)
Miss Julie (2014)
September 3
Drumline: A New Beat (2014)
September 4
Bad Night (2015)
September 8
6 Years (2015)
Love at First Fight (2014)
September 9
Teen Beach Movie 2 (2015)
September 11
About Elly (2009)
God Bless the Child (2015)
Madame Bovary (2014)
September 12
It Happened Here (2015)
The Roughnecks (2014)
Why Did I Get Married? (2007)
September 13
Pixies (2014)
September 15
Closer to the Moon (2015)
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014)
Rubble Kings (2015)
The Bank Job (2008)
The Road Within (2015)
September 16
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Reservation Road (2007)
September 18
Keith Richards: Under the Influence (2015)
September 22
Philomena (2013)
SMOSH: The Movie (2015)
September 23
The Loft (2015)
September 24
Iris (2014)
September 26
The Canyons (2013)
September 29
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
Monster High: Boo York (2015)
RL Stine’s Monsterville: Cabinet of Souls (2015)
September 30
Leafie: A Hen Into the Wild (2011)
Midnight’s Children (2012)
Ned Rifle (2014)As we prepare to give thanks for our delicious Thanksgiving meals (and impending food comas), let's not forget to pay tribute to the wonderful developers who bring us our favorite free apps.
Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and you came through with thousands of votes for apps covering the desktop, mobile phone, and devices in between. With a little spreadsheet magic and a few choices of our own, we bring you the top 50 free apps we're all most thankful for. Whether you're celebrating the holiday or not, it's a great list of free software that ought to make for some gluttonous downloading. The popular apps are some of the more obvious, however, so be sure to look further down the list for new free software you may not yet know about. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
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The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For
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And that |
26 February 2008, THEMIS probes were able to determine the triggering event for the onset of magnetospheric substorms.[20] Two of the five probes, positioned approximately one third the distance to the Moon, measured events suggesting a magnetic reconnection event 96 seconds prior to Auroral intensification.[21] Dr. Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is the principal investigator for the THEMIS mission, claimed, "Our data show clearly and for the first time that magnetic reconnection is the trigger.".[22]
Laboratory plasma experiments [ edit ]
Magnetic reconnection have also been observed in numerous laboratory experiments. For example, studies on the LArge Plasma Device (LAPD) at UCLA have observed and mapped quasi-sepratrix layers near the magnetic reconnection region of a two flux rope system[23][24], while experiments on the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have confirmed many aspects of magnetic reconnection, including the Sweet-Parker model in regimes where the model is applicable.[25]
The confinement of plasma in devices such as tokamaks, spherical tokamaks, and reversed field pinches requires the presence of closed magnetic flux surfaces. By changing the magnetic topology, magnetic reconnection degrades confinement by disrupting these closed flux surfaces, allowing the hot central plasma to mix with cooler plasma closer to the wall.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]TWSNOW and HCSC Photo Workshop Recap and Best-of Gallery
TransWorld SNOWboarding and legendary snowboard photographers, Andy Wright and Tim Zimmerman, join forces once a summer for the annual Photo Workshop hosted by High Cascade Snowboard Camp. The workshop is an exceptional opportunity for campers and clients of all levels to experience the full spectrum of snowboard photography from the best in the business. The weeklong program has on and off-hill components, and wraps with a student slideshow and award ceremony where the best images of the week are recognized in front of a sprawling crowd of HCSC’s pros, coaches, campers, and staff.
We caught up with Andy Wright, an eight year veteran and the current Director of Workshop, for all the highlights from this year's workshop. Read on for his interview, and check the gallery above for all the best photos from this year’s session.
How are the days spent during the week of the workshop?
Days are long and start early and often go until late in the evening. Everyday starts in the classroom for two to three hours of instruction, before heading to the mountain. The on-snow segment is the most valuable because the students get to apply the things they may have just learned a few hours ago to a real world setting. Mount Hood is the number one summer destination for snowboarding’s top talent. Everyone riding the facilities, whether they are pro snowboarders or up- and-coming amateurs, are fair game for the workshop students to shoot. There is no other workshop in the world that provides access to its industries top athletes like ours. After dinner we reconvene in the classroom to help select, edit and present the top photos of the day for a group critique. This session is followed up by an exclusive presentation from one of the instructors of their top photos from the recent snowboarding season. Most, if not all, of this work has not yet been published yet, and is proceeded by a discussion of the stories and technical mechanics behind selected shots.
How many students were apart of this year's class?
Class sizes vary, we’ve had as many as 20 and as few as five. This year we had 12, with five returning students from years' past.
What other photographers were apart of this year's workshop?
Tim Zimmerman is the other cornerstone of the workshop and has been involved a few years longer than myself. If it weren’t for his busy schedule as the Photo Director for Mervin Mfg, I’m sure he would be the director. We collaborate on much of the syllabus and both try to stay true to the vision of Trevor Graves who founded the workshop in the early 2000’s (before digital photography!). Chris Wellhausen is the final piece of the trio that makes up the workshop’s core instructor base. Chris brings real-world experience second to none as the Photo Editor of Transworld. Every year we like to bring in some special guest photographers to help supplement with their insights and experience. But most of all, we bring these other shooters in to get an exclusive peak at some of their recent work and some behind the scenes stories. Aaron Blatt and Darcy Bacha are returning guests that we’d like to have as full-time instructors someday when the workshop grows in size. Bud Fawcett has been to every workshop I’ve been a part of, and opens the class up with a presentation of his seminal photos covering the early days of snowboarding. Other guests over the years have included: Adam Moran, Mark Welsh, Erin Hogue, Cole Barash and Mike Yoshida.
What were some of your highlights from workshop?
The highlight from the workshop, for me, is seeing the most photographed mountain in the history of snowboarding, captured in new and creative ways by all the fresh and eager eyes. Even in years when the conditions are far from ideal, (like this summer), the shots the students come up with are mind-blowing. The amount of improvement from day one to the end of the workshop is almost always substantial, and is also a highlight to see immediate results from what is being taught.
What else should we know about this year's workshop?
I’m a firm believer that snowboarding wouldn’t be the awesome pastime it is today without the efforts of those who have documented it tastefully over the years. The images on the pages of snowboarding magazines and catalogs from years ago caught my attention and brought me to the slopes. I know many others who found their path to the snow through the same exposure to photography. Many of these people have gone on to lead the industry, either through their riding talent, engineering of the gear we ride, or basically just keeping from becoming skiing! The mission of the workshop is to pass along the principals and aesthetics we were taught to the next generation of shooters in order to keep inspiring people to ride.
Check out the full gallery of the best-of images above and head here for more info on the workshop and to dial in your spot for next year.
Download your favorite snowboard films here!Filmmakers: Rashed Radwan and Carmen Marques
More than a decade after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's national grid struggles to provide more than six hours of electricity a day - so a new form of entrepreneur has sprung up, the "generator man".
For a price, he will fill the gap.
Hadi is a generator man who owns two generators but finds that being on call for hundreds of people, all desperate for power, means that his life is no longer his own.
Witness follows him as he wanders the backstreets of Baghdad to talk to some of his customers for whom power - or the lack of it - has become the most important fact in their day-to-day-lives.
Of the many ironies of post-conflict Iraq this is perhaps the starkest: how a country afloat on a sea of oil and in receipt of $5bn of US investment since 2003 cannot yet guarantee power for its people.
Editor's note: This film was first broadcast on Al Jazeera English in 2012.
FILMMAKER'S VIEW
By Rashed Radwan
They say the war in Iraq is over. But is it really?
George Bush declared it over when he was president and Barack Obama did the same. But ask ordinary Iraqis and they will tell you that a new war is just starting in a country where the most basic of infrastructure has been destroyed.
In the summer of 2010, I spent two months filming in Iraq.
It was during that summer that I first met Bakr, a 12-year-old boy from Sadr City; a child carrying the soul of an adult.
He told me about the death of his brother, a victim of an American apache, as though it was something that could not have been avoided; an almost inevitable part of his destiny as an Iraqi.
And, when asked about his dreams, Bakr revealed that he had just one: to have electricity so that he might have a fan to keep him cool in summer and a heater to keep him warm in winter.
It was an unusual conversation to have with a child. After all, aren't their dreams usually filled with the more remarkable, with the less mundane?
In the comfort of my hotel, power outages were a problem only in the few minutes between the national grid going down and the lights coming back on - triggered by the huge and noisy generator behind the building.
But Bakr had opened my eyes to a problem I had not been aware of. I began to notice the tangled mess of wires hanging from buildings all over the city. And for the first time I understood why I had met so many people wearily climbing the stairs of Baghdad's general hospital with their sick children in their arms, trying to reach a doctor on a higher floor: without electricity, elevators do not work.
When I spoke to doctors, they told me of patients who could not visit the hospital because they were too weak to reach the higher floors. In these tales, I thought I had found the starting point for this story - but I soon came to realise that doctors and patients are too afraid to talk about their daily struggles in these hellish conditions.
For the past nine years, two words have been at the forefront of Iraqi minds: kahraba (electricity) and amn (security).
Security has improved markedly, although only to the levels that many of those who proclaim this war over would consider murderously dangerous in their own countries.
But the single most crucial ingredient in the country's reconstruction - electrical power - continues to lag far behind the country's needs.
On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 40 pallets of cash were loaded on to a truck that delivered the money to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington DC. The money was then transferred to a C-130 transport plane. The next day, it arrived in Baghdad. That was the largest shipment of currency in one single day in the history of the NY Fed. But it was not the first shipment of money to Baghdad. For more than a year, $12bn taken from Iraqi oil revenues - in other words, belonging to the Iraqi people - was delivered for use in reconstruction. At least $9bn has gone missing.
Iraq is swimming in oil, which generates revenues of nearly $2bn a week, but Baghdad's seven million people are reliant on private generators. And the private generator is a luxury most people cannot afford. Fuel prices are too high for many, and the poorest are literally living in the dark.
Those who are fortunate enough to have their own personal generator must either spend hours waiting in line to buy fuel or pay the steepest premiums on the black market.
The generator man - owner and operator of the neighbourhood power plant - is the solution for the vast majority of the Iraqi population. Iraq depends on the generator man to survive. They are the country's umbilical cord, bringing power to hundreds of thousands of homes and shops.
I wish I could tell all of the stories hidden behind the headlines declaring to the world that the war in Iraq is over. I wish each of you could know the suffering and despair that has been left behind and how Iraqis must live huddled in dark houses, sleeping outside during the summer months because the heat inside is unbearable, afraid that they may be hit by a stray bullet from somewhere in their neighbourhood.
I have covered the war in Iraq since 2003, and if there is one thing that I can say for sure, it is that beyond the tragedy lies the triumph of the human spirit as ordinary people fight to preserve their dignity.
I wish I could tell all of their stories - the stories of the children dying from strange diseases never seen before the war or of the army of women awaiting the return of their missing husbands and sons. But Generator Man is a simple story about common people - people who will probably never find a place in the history books. These people are the real witnesses to the reality behind the headlines that the war is over.
Source: Al Jazeeraabove, a video walk through of the new Hongthong Gym in Chiang Mai w/ some fighter interviews
When I did my first private session with Joe Hongthongnoi at the gym several months ago he and his twin brother run in Chiang Mai, he mentioned that they were planning a new gym location in the next six months. It was still kind of unannounced as the planning wasn’t finalized, but what Joe described sounded great. The existing Hongthong gym was beautiful as it was, surrounded by these enormous trees that threw nearly entire work area into a speckled shade, but it was clear from how Joe talked about the ideas for the gym that they needed more space and to create a more all-in-one option for their students, who at that point were housing in the apartment buildings down the street from the gym.
Kevin and I rolled up to the new Hongthong location a few weeks ago on the big cleaning day before their opening. The rings were up, but the ropes were still slack. Some of the heavy bags were being lifted and positioned by very strong Thai men (trainers from the gym), everyone laughing and joking with each other as they worked – check out that video here. Joe pointed to this open bit of land with enormous and beautiful trees at the front of it, explaining it would be a lawn by next week, and on the other side of it was this very modern but unobtrusive structure that would be the student housing. When we returned about a month later, everything was up and running. The area is as beautiful as the previous Hongthong gym, but just much more open. Like it unfolded, kind of. But the surrounding area, in a larger sense, has a cool energy to it as well. There’s a soccer pitch right across the little road, some apartments down the street that feel young – college students maybe – so there’s this kind of buzzing energy without it being busy. And Joe is a very energetic fellow as well, so his excitement and drive permeate the space while still having a very laid back feel overall.
Everything is in full swing, and the gym was just gorgeous, adding significantly to the options for Muay Thai training and fighting. I walked through the whole space and met a few of the students of the gym, I was struck by how there seemed a pretty distinct quality of westerner at the gym (that tends to be true of most of the gyms I have visited; energies attract similar energies, I think) that felt like there was a social connectedness while still providing space and privacy for each member. Laid back, serious, committed, nice people. The gym already has a culture which is an extension of the brothers Joe and Gen who run it. Everyone I interviewed was either just about to fight or had an idea of when they would be fighting, which to me is a huge deal. While Hongthong is very western inclusive and Joe has his finger on the pulse of “modern sport science” for their conditioning methods, it’s still a fighter’s gym at heart. And that’s kind of the best of both worlds.
As for the training itself, I’ve had two private sessions with Joe and he’s proved to be one of the best Muay Khao trainers I’ve trained with. What is really interesting about the gym is that his twin brother Gen is the opposite kind of fighter, a Muay Femeu specialist. So in one gym you can find focus on two dominant, opposing styles that make up much of Thailand’s Muay Thai.
Where is the Gym?
below is a Google Map of the gym, you can contact Joe who speaks English quite well on their Facebook page.
If you are a female fighter Hongthong has a long reputation of working with women who want to fight, and I believe that there is no city in the world that is better for female fighting. I wrote about that here:
You can see my full list of recommended gyms here in this thread on my forum.
You can support this content: Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu on PatreonAdam Le Fondre smashed a 20 minute hat-trick as a rampant Reading crushed Bolton Wanderers 7-1 at Madejski Stadium this afternoon.
Pavel Pogrebnyak, Kaspars Gorkss, Hope Akpan and Nick Blackman also found the net as Royals sent Bolton to their worst defeat in 31 years.
It was wonderful, mesmeric stuff from Nigel Adkins' side who had scored just six goals in their previous six home games.
But from the moment Le Fondre put them in front after 13 minutes, they ripped Wanderers to shreds with a stunning display of attacking football.
Goals followed on 28 and 33 minutes for Le Fondre as he became the first Reading player to score a hat-trick since Kevin Doyle did it in 2008.
Pogrebnyak then rifled home a penalty just before half-time to cap a glorious opening 45 minutes for the hosts.
Any suggestion they would ease up after the interval was soon put to bed when Gorkss prodded home his second goal in as many games on the hour mark.
Akpan then smashed home a sixth before substitute Blackman rounded off a day to remember with a seventh 12 minutes from time.
Bolton did pull a late goal back through Sanmi Odelusi but by then most of their fans were well on their way back home.
The win, Royals' biggest ever at Madejski Stadium, moved them above Brighton into sixth in the Championship table.
For only the second time this season Nigel Adkins named an unchanged side, keeping faith with the team that won at 1-0 Watford last weekend.
That meant Jordan Obita continued at left back while Akpan started his first home game of the season alongside Danny Williams in central midfield.
In the build up to the game both Adkins and Williams had spoken about the importance of a quick start from the hosts.
They got one last week at Vicarage Road, grabbing an early lead which they held onto the claim a first win in six.
And they repeated the trick this afternoon by taking under a quarter of an hour to get themselves in front.
Garath McCleary was the architect, racing down the right before slipping a ball into the path of Adam Le Fondre who thumped an effort past Andy Lonergan.
It was a wonderful finish from the frontman who had not scored since his late strike against Bournemouth on December 7.
Boosted by the early goal, Reading went in search of a second and went close through a long range effort from Akpan.
They were well on top but almost got caught out by a Bolton sucker-punch just moments later but Alex McCarthy stood up well to deny David Ngog.
Despite that scare, Royals were bossing things and they doubled their lead on 28 minutes with a classic route one goal.
McCleary's long ball was flicked on by Pogrebnyak, sending Le Fondre clear. He had a long time to think about his finish but he kept his nerve and drilled home his ninth of the season.
And he didn't have to wait long for number 10, just five minutes in fact as he completed his hat-trick to leave the visitors stunned.
Tim Ream dallied on the ball and was robbed by a rampaging McCleary who bore down on Lonergan.
He could have shot but instead chose to roll the ball into the path of Le Fondre who tapped home his third goal in a blistering 20 minute spell.
It was stunning stuff from the home side and things got even better four minutes before half-time when they scored a fourth from the penalty spot.
Jordan Obita's cross was blocked by Alex Baptiste's arm right on the edge of the box and referee Andy Davies pointed to the spot.
It was maybe a bit harsh on the visitors but Pogrebnyak made no mistake, drilling low into the bottom right hand corner to complete a wonderful opening 45 minutes from the hosts.
And they showed no signs of easing up after the interval as they raced out of the blocks once again.
And Le Fondre really should have added to his tally within five minutes of the restart but he blazed a close range volley over having been set up by Pogrebnyak.
The fifth goal did arrive soon after, however, when Kaspars Gorkss got in on the act.
Fresh from his winning strike at Watford last weekend, the big Latvian defender slotted home McCleary's cross after Alex Pearce's shot had been blocked.
McCleary was replaced by Nick Blackman soon after and while Le Fondre will get the headlines for his goals, the Jamaican winger was superb once again.
His three assists have taken his tally to 12 for the season now, that's eight more than any other Reading player.
It was now party time at Madejski Stadium with Bolton being ripped apart by every attack.
Reading were rampant and they made it six when Akpan bagged his first goal for the club.
Seizing on a loose ball in the box, he rifled a powerful right foot shot into the top corner from 12 yards.
It was wonderful stuff from the home side. They sensed blood with every attack and, having been on for just 12 minutes, Blackman made it seven.
Racing clear down the left the substitute drilled a shot over Lonergan with the help of a slight deflection.
The visitors were shell-shocked but they did raise themselves to grab a late consolation to complete the scoring through Sanmi Odelusi's late strike.
Reading : McCarthy, Gunter, Pearce, Gorkss (Hector, 79), Williams, Obita, Akpan, McCleary (Blackman, 67), McAnuff (C), Pogrebnyak, Le Fondre (J.Taylor, 76).
Subs not used: Federici, Kelly, Cummings, Drenthe, J.Taylor.
Bolton : Lonergan; Baptiste, Ream, Mills, Knight; Spearing (c), Pratley, M Davies (Odelusi, 67), Danns, Chung, Ngog.
Subs not used : Bogdan, White, Hall, Eagles, Kamara, C Davies.
Attendance : 18,629.
Referee : Andy DaviesAdvertisement Search for survivors continues after earthquake kills at least 245 Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Latest updates out of Mexico City as work continues to find survivors of Tuesday's earthquake. (All times EST)5 a.m. ThursdayMexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera says a total of 115 people have died in the capital following the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that shook the capital and nearby states.That would bring the nationwide death toll to 245, based on an earlier federal government report counting 100 deaths in the capital and putting the overall number of confirmed deaths at 230.Mexico City has suffered the highest death toll. But Mancera also said that two women and a man had been rescued alive from a collapsed office building late Wednesday, almost 36 hours after Tuesday’s midday quake.2:10 p.m.The Mexico City government says 52 people have been rescued from the rubble of collapsed buildings in the capital following Tuesday’s powerful earthquake.The city’s Social Development Department tweeted the number Wednesday afternoon and added: “We won’t stop.”The quake has killed at least 225 people in several states, and rescue efforts are continuing furiously, including at a primary and secondary school where 25 bodies have been found and a young girl was located alive amid the rubble.Workers have been trying to extricate her for hours now.2:00 p.m.Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto says “every minute counts to save lives” of people under the rubble of buildings toppled by yesterday’s powerful earthquake.Pena Nieto says the country’s highest priority is rescuing people in downed structures and treating the wounded. Earlier Wednesday he declared three days of national mourning in honor of the victims. At least 225 people died in the quake.12:00 p.m.The government of Panama says one of its citizens is among those killed by Mexico’s deadly earthquake.The Foreign Ministry reports that a 55-year-old Panamanian woman who resided in Mexico City for the last 10 years died in a building that collapsed. A group of 35 Panamanian workers from the Red Cross, National Civil Defense and security agencies left Wednesday for Mexico to help with rescue efforts.11:00 a.m.Emergency crews have found 21 children and four adults dead in the rubble of an elementary school that collapsed during the earthquake in Mexico City, Luis Felipe Puente, the national coordinator of civil protection of the Ministry of the Interior, said in a tweet Wednesday.10:00 a.m. Rescuers said Wednesday they have found a surviving child in the ruins of a school that collapsed in Mexico’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake, one of many efforts across the city to save people trapped in under schools, homes and businesses toppled by a quake that killed at least 225 people.Helmeted workers worked at the debris, sometimes calling for silence, as they tried to reach the girl at the Enrique Rebsamen school in southern Mexico City.Foro TV reported that rescuers spotted the child and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear them, and she did. A search dog subsequently entered the wreckage and confirmed she was alive.Original Story: Police, firefighters and ordinary Mexicans dug frantically through the rubble of collapsed schools, homes and apartment buildings early Wednesday, looking for survivors of Mexico’s deadliest earthquake in decades as the number of confirmed fatalities stood at 225.Adding poignancy and a touch of the surreal, Tuesday’s magnitude-7.1 quake struck on the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed thousands. Just hours earlier, people around Mexico had held earthquake drills to mark the date.One of the most desperate rescue efforts was at a primary and secondary school in southern Mexico City, where a wing of the three-story building collapsed into a massive pancake of concrete slabs. Journalists saw rescuers pull at least two small bodies from the rubble, covered in sheets.Volunteer rescue worker Dr. Pedro Serrano managed to crawl into the crevices of the tottering pile of rubble that had been Escuela Enrique Rebsamen. He made it into a classroom, but found all of its occupants dead.“We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble and we found a girl and two adults — a woman and a man,” he said.“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from above or below, from the walls above (crumbling), or someone below calling for help.”A mix of neighborhood volunteers, police and firefighters used trained dogs and their bare hands to search through the school’s rubble. The crowd of anxious parents outside the gates shared reports that two families had received WhatsApp messages from girls trapped inside, but that could not be confirmed.Rescuers brought in wooden beams to shore up the fallen concrete slabs so they wouldn’t collapse further and crush whatever airspaces remained.The federal Education Department reported late Tuesday that 25 bodies had been recovered from the school’s wreckage, all but four of them children. It was not clear whether those deaths were included in the overall death toll of 217 reported by the federal civil defense agency. Pena Nieto had earlier reported 22 bodies found and said 30 children and eight adults were reported missing.President Donald Trump tweeted support for Mexico City saying, "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you."In a video message released late Tuesday, Pena Nieto urged people to be calm and said authorities were moving to provide help as 40 percent of Mexico City and 60 percent of nearby Morelos state were without power. But, he said, “the priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people.”People across central Mexico already had rallied to help their neighbors as dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of broken concrete. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 sites in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed and twisted and hundreds of thousands of panicked people ran into the streets.Long lines of volunteers passed chunks of debris from hand to hand at a collapsed clothing factory where several people died. When a person was hauled out alive, they broke into shouts of “Yes, we can!”Dust-covered and exhausted from digging, 30-year-old Carlos Mendoza said two people were pulled alive from the ruins of a collapsed apartment building in the Roma Sur neighborhood during a three-hour period.“When we saw this, we came to help,” he said, gesturing at the destruction. “This is ugly, very ugly.”Blocks away, Alma Gonzalez was in her fourth-floor apartment when the quake collapsed the ground floor of her building, leaving her no way out. She was terrified until her neighbors mounted a ladder on their roof and helped her slide out a side window.The official Twitter feed of civil defense agency head Luis Felipe Puente said 86 dead had been counted in Mexico City and 71 in Morelos state, which is just south of the capital. It said 43 were known dead in Puebla state, where the quake was centered. Twelve deaths were listed in the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City on three sides, four in Guerrero state and one in Oaxaca.At the site of a collapsed apartment building in Mexico City, rescuers worked atop a three-story pile of rubble, forming a human chain that passed pieces of rubble across four city blocks to a site where they were dumped.Throughout the day, rescuers pulled dust-covered people, some barely conscious, some seriously injured, from about three dozen collapsed buildings. At one site, shopping carts commandeered from a nearby supermarket were used to carry water to the rescue site and take rubble away.As night fell, huge flood lights lit up the recovery sites, but workers and volunteers begged for headlamps.Where a six-story office building collapsed in Mexico City, sisters Cristina and Victoria Lopez Torres formed part of a human chain passing bottled water.“I think it’s human nature that drives everyone to come and help others,” Cristina Lopez said.“We are young. We didn’t live through ′85. But we know that it’s important to come out into the streets to help,” said her sister Victoria.Ricardo Ibarra, 48, did live through the 1985 quake and said there hadn’t been anything like it since.Wearing a bright orange vest and carrying a backpack with a sleeping bag strapped to it, he said he and his friends just wanted to help.“People are very sensitive because today was the 32nd anniversary of a tragedy,” he said.Buildings also collapsed in Morelos state, including the town hall and local church in Jojutla near the quake’s epicenter. A dozen people died in Jojutla.The town’s Instituto Morelos secondary school partly collapsed, but school director Adelina Anzures said the earthquake drill held in the morning came in handy.“I told them that it was not a game, that we should be prepared,” Anzures said of the drill. When the quake came, she said, children and teachers rapidly filed out and nobody was hurt.The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.1 quake hit at 1:14 p.m. (2:14 p.m. EDT) and was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, 76 miles (123 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City.Much of Mexico City is built on former lakebed, and the soil can amplify the effects of earthquakes centered hundreds of miles away.The quake appeared to be unrelated to the magnitude 8.1 temblor that hit Sept. 7 off Mexico’s southern coast and also was felt strongly in the capital.U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle noted the epicenters of the two quakes were 400 miles (650 kilometers) apart and said most aftershocks are within (60 miles) 100 kilometers.Greetings Pioneers!
This week has been full steam ahead in the run up to the next release. We have been pushing ourselves to get most of the new features into an internal build this week so we can test and debug them over the next few weeks. Oh so many items, icons, creatures, features and new mechanics coming soon!
John – Lead Designer
So this week we have been working really hard to get an internal build together of the following components; Armour System which includes crafting of the armour and how it will affect stats, the survival system’s first pass, including food stuffs and looking at how it may affect level design, the Wolf and Deer (placeholder names – these just represents the creature’s characteristics), the Loot system for finding Armour, Weapon Parts, Full Weapons, Compound Resources (Parts such as circuitry or advanced metals for stronger Structures and new Utilities).
Once these are all in, we will then review the level design of the Compounds that the players can raid and how we are going to spawn enemies within the Compounds and smaller procedurally spawned Bases. I’ve also been working on the final stat designs for the Modular Weapon system which will be receiving its first internal build next week and guiding the guys with the final HUD and UI designs.
Matt – Art Director
Many icons were made this day, pixels were sacrificed and saturated, layers were copied and deleted. Their memory had consumed most of my maximum capacity, but what was discarded shall not be forgotten. I’ve been putting together models for many of our new survival items as well as taking images for icons to use in our armour system ‘paper doll’.
Lee – Technical Director
This week I began by debugging the group behaviour component and started testing it. I’ve also been working on creating some new AI this week, the deer and the wolf. The deer is ready for testing now, while the wolf still needs a bit more care and attention. Another AI I’ve been looking at is our first crustacean creature, which is now ready for testing too.
Tristan – Senior Developer
This week I have been working on implementing the majority of the modular weapon system. We still have to put the crafting components in but hopefully you will be able to experience it sometime soon.
Yves – Senior Developer
I have been working on the first pass of the loot spawning, we have a selection pre made bases which are randomly spawned in, and their lock boxes are filled up randomly from a loot table.
Ricky – Developer
Armour and HUD/UI redesigns.
Adding extra polish to the HUD and UI, along with ironing out a few leftover Armour system HUD components. (Approximate target designs below)
Marcin – Designer
With so many new systems planned for the next release and the core mechanics of them all already in place, we are currently focusing on making sure that the user interface is crystal clear about how it all works and fits together. This week, Joe, Ricky and I have been mainly working together on integrating new UI elements for the armour, the new statistics and the effects they’re under, and the new map, while at the same time identifying and fixing readability and usability issues with our current solutions.
Joe – Environment Artist
This week I finished all the initial UI and HUD concepts that were needed before moving on to creating the artwork we required for our new ingame HUD! Over the past couple of days I’ve been helping Ricky and Marcin with implementing the new HUD so we can actually use it in-game. Additionally I’ve gone over a huge number of issues with the Tab Menu.
Tom – Character Artist
The flying beast is complete! Prepare to be attacked from above muhaha
Lauren – Animator
This week I have been working to refine the ‘deer’ and ‘wolf’ animations, adding additional movement such as leans and turns, idles and reactions and adding variant wolf attacks. I have also been putting together animation blueprints for two of our crustaceans.
Simone – Concept Artist
This week I have been mainly working on creating concepts for different Tiers of the Eden Kit. Each Tier needed to feel more and more stable, while also building up to the current Eden Kit which will be Tier 4. We have worked to make the Tier 1 have a more portable feel, with more folding parts and simple shapes to make the overall kit less bulky. Whereas, the Tier 3 of the Kit has more of a skeletal structure of the Tier 4 Eden Kit (current Kit), such as the petals that encase and fold down around the current kit. There is still work to do to get these 100% what we want but exciting times!
Andy – Lead QA
This week I continued with the testing of the new consumables and got play around with the first implementation of the new armour mechanic.
See you in the fray!
-Team FlixMitt Romney's campaign is hitting back at a new Tax Policy Center (TPC) critique of the GOP presidential nominee's latest tax reform proposal, arguing that the report failed to present a full analysis.
Romney's economic policy director Pierce Scranton blasted the report, accusing TPC of presenting its findings in a "misleading and deceitful" way in a blog posted on the campaign's website Wednesday.
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On Wednesday, the nonpartisan TPC said that Romney's latest proposal to cap itemized tax deductions at $25,000 would not come close to offsetting his individual tax rate cuts, which total about $4 trillion over 10 years. Such a cap would only raise $1.3 trillion, TPC estimated, not enough to pay for a 20 percent rate cut, ending the Alternative Minimum Tax and estate tax and eliminating capital gains taxes.
The Romney campaign says that the TPC numbers are incomplete because Romney has not yet specified other possible offsets.
“While Gov. Romney has proposed cutting marginal rates across the board by 20 percent and eliminating the AMT, he has only suggested that capping itemized deductions is one option that could be explored, and there are others,” Scranton wrote in the blog post.
He added that “technical details like this will be worked out with Congress.”
TPC on Tuesday acknowledged that it cannot yet undertake a full tax-reform analysis but wanted to point out the possible revenue offsets available. It found that eliminating all deductions on the individual side would only raise $2 trillion, for example.
Scranton, however, argued that “there are hundreds and hundreds of billions in other tax expenditures that could be used to help offset the rate reductions to ensure the plan meets the goal of not adding to the deficit."
He also blasted TPC for not using dynamic scoring that takes economic growth effects into account.
“Finally, TPC’s non-analysis of Gov. Romney’s tax reform plan does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to refute numerous independent analyses from experts at the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, the Tax Foundation, Princeton, Rice and Harvard that have demonstrated the Romney plan works,” Scranton wrote.
TPC expert Roberton Williams said the Romney campaign was mischaracterizing his original blog post.
"I never said we were analyzing Romney’s tax plan. In fact, I said that, 'Without more specifics, we can’t say how much revenue such limits would actually raise.'" he said, in an |
communications experience and I spent a lot of time on television. I spent a lot of time shaping the message of my old firm.”
3) Scaramucci is the founder of SkyBridge and its infamous SALT Conference
SkyBridge is a hedge fund that works with wealthy Americans — who are not super wealthy. In the words of New York magazine’s Jessica Pressler, who profiled Scaramucci and SkyBridge in 2012:
Hedge funds are traditionally the province of the superrich, but Scaramucci aims to make SkyBridge — a “fund of funds” that creates portfolios of hedge-fund investments — the first company of its kind to target “the mass affluent.” That is, investors who have the $200,000 annual income or $1 million in net worth the SEC requires of “accredited investors” but aren’t connected enough to get in with a Daniel Loeb or a John Paulson.
Every year, Scaramucci hosts the SkyBridge Alternatives, or “SALT,” Conference in Las Vegas. Pressler described the “hedge-fund bacchanal” in 2012 as being “launched in 2009, in defiance of former President Barack Obama’s warning Wall Street to stay away from partying while the rest of the country suffered.”
SkyBridge, beyond the conference, has its critics. Pressler spoke to Felix Salmon, then at Reuters, about covering Scaramucci, whose techniques to win investors Salmon called “sleazy” and “dangerous”:
“He is putting people into hedge funds that really shouldn’t be invested in hedge funds,” says Salmon. “He has this extremely expensive smile and very good hair, and they trust him. And to the degree that he’s accomplishing it, he’s hurting America.”
4) Scaramucci was the subject of a retracted CNN story that the Trump points to as evidence that the Russia story is “fake news”
On June 22, CNN published a story citing an anonymous source that linked Scaramucci to a $10 billion Russian investment fund. The network later retracted the story, saying it did not meet CNN’s editorial standards, and the three CNN employees who were responsible for the story subsequently resigned. However, CNN has not directly said the story is entirely false.
Scaramucci tweeted in response to the story:
.@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on. https://t.co/lyVajCKNHx — Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 24, 2017
President Trump, however, reportedly did not move on. According to Politico, he was impressed that Scaramucci received a retraction from the network that Trump himself frequently derides as “fake news.” (The president recently retweeted a video that showed him beating up a man whose face was covered by a CNN logo. Vox’s Aja Romano wrote an explainer on that controversy.)
5) Scaramucci hasn’t always been loyal to Trump
In 2012, Scaramucci appeared to be a big Hillary Clinton fan. In tweets resurfaced by the Daily Beast but since deleted, Scaramucci tweeted, “I hope she runs [in 2016], she is incredibly competent.”
According to the Daily Beast, Scaramucci deleted his tweets critical of Trump and supportive of Clinton hours after accepting the position as communications director.
Scaramucci ultimately endorsed Scott Walker and then Jeb Bush for the 2016 presidential election. While supporting Bush, he spoke critically of Trump, saying in 2015 on Fox Business Network that Trump is an “anti-American hack”:
I’ll tell you who he’s going to be president of — and you can tell Donald I said this: The Queens County bullies’ association. You gotta cut it out now and stop all this crazy rhetoric, spinning everybody’s head. I don’t like the way he talks about women. I don’t like the way he talks about our friend Megyn Kelly. And you know what? The politicians don’t want to go at Trump because he’s got a big mouth and he’s afraid he’s going to light ’em up on Fox and other places, but I’m not a politician. Bring it.
In the first press briefing since Scaramucci’s hiring, held on Friday afternoon, he took questions from the podium, including one about how he had once called Trump a “hack politician.” Scaramucci, it seems, is still repenting for his sins:
Oh, my god, he brings it up every 15 seconds, okay? One of the biggest mistakes that I made is that I was an unexperienced person in the world of politics, I was quoting another candidate, I should have never said that about him, so Mr. President if you are listening I personally apologize for the 50th time for saying that.
But beyond his loyalty to Trump, some are scratching their heads over how long he’s been involved in the Republican Party. In 2012, he tweeted in favor of increased gun control in the US.P.S. @ Matt Dillahunty._ You are going to die sooner or later_That is a natural fact. What you assert is there is no God; the God of Bible because He cannot be proven_ Is a fact. You are “Gambling” that there is no God; the Christian God of the Bible_Is a fact. By your own admission the Christian God of the Bible does not exist, therefore you would reject that you possess a soul that is eternal, that will either go to heaven or hell._Is a fact.
FACT_you are going to die someday; are you willing to take that GAMBLE that you do-not have a soul that will live forever either in heaven or hell?
P.S. _ I really believe that Matt Dillahunty is Demon possessed, and anyone that would argue with a Demon will get no-where because it is a slippery slope because Demons are masters of deviation
We get e-mails like this all the time. Matt has answered more than his fair share of these, so I’ll take one for the team. This person singled out Matt, but he (she?) might as well have written it to any AE host, or any atheist for that matter. I’ll refrain from commenting about writing style as that’s just too easy. The e-mail above is unedited.
First, atheism is the lack of a belief in a god. Check the front page of the ACA’s web site. Mankind has invented tens of thousands of gods and there is no reason to believe that any of them are real. Christians are atheists, too, with respect to most gods, but they think their god is special. Is it? I can’t think of a reason. Is it because there are a lot of Christians? There are a lot of Buddhists too, does that make their religion true? Is it because there’s more evidence in support of Christianity? Nope. I don’t know of any solid evidence for the claims of Christianity. Is it because they believe passionately? Would anyone say there’s a Muslim afterlife with 72 virgins just because the 9/11 attackers believed so passionately enough to kill themselves for martyrdom? Of course not.
In nearly all forums where I interact with believers, I ask for good evidence for the claims the believers are making. I’m usually disappointed in what I get. Let me be clear on what I’m looking for. There are lots of bald assertions that believers give, usually claiming this or that about their god. If you don’t have evidence to back up those claims, then please forgive me if I just ignore them. “That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher Hitchens) Beyond bald assertions, I’ll also disregard falsehoods, deception, logical fallacies, and emotional manipulation. These seem to be the primary tools of apologists. If you have to lie to me, trick me, or manipulate me to believe something, what does that say about that thing you’d like me to believe? It says that even the theist can’t think of a good reason to believe in their god, so what’s left are bad reasons.
I’m pleasantly surprised that you admit that your god can’t be proven. Starting from there, the conversation should go like this:
Atheist: Do you have any good reason to believe in your god?
Theist: No.
Atheist: Thank you for your honesty. Please understand if I don’t believe.
End of story. But in their desire to market their religion, theists go on to give bad reasons.
Yes, we are all going to die. And we’ve heard “Pascal’s Wager” a million times. It’s a really bad argument with at least a dozen flaws. I’ll answer it, though in my own words. I personally have no fear of your god, or any god for that matter. As near as I can tell, the god of the Bible is fictional and I can think of no reason to fear fictional characters. But let’s pretend for a minute that gods are real. Is the goal to choose the one that offers the best afterlife, or perhaps save you from the worst hell? Isn’t that exactly like being a hedonistic toady, or perhaps sucking up to a monster so that you will be spared eternal torments. Maybe it’s both: you can even get to watch the torments of others while basking in eternal bliss. This seems rather sick to me, yet it seems to be what Christianity is promising.
Do you follow the most noble god? The god of the Bible blames Adam and Eve, indeed the entirety of humanity for his mistakes. Later, Yahweh orders Abraham to kill his own son. That story reads to me like a gang initiation ritual. In New Testament mythology, the same god kills his own son because there had to be a blood sacrifice due to a rule he either made up or given to him by some other more powerful god. Appeased, by his actions, he then allows the Jews to take the blame for his alleged sacrifice? Every story about the god of the Bible paints him as a monster. Even if he were real, I wouldn’t follow him.
I’ve made the decision to live my life as if there are no gods. I’ve looked at god claims, and I find them all to be without merit and most likely derived from human imagination. So how will I respond if, after my death I find out there’s some god that wants to torture me? I may not be happy, but I will have a lot of things (assuming “I” continue to exist) that will never be taken away. I’ll have the satisfaction of having lived my life in a sensible and kind manner. I will have the solace of knowing I’ve taken responsibility for my actions and that I will forever be more moral than the monster who is torturing me. In short, I will have my integrity. My integrity is not something I’m going to bargain away for vague promises from an invisible monster.
What will be your legacy when you die? From my perspective, perhaps the biggest claim you could make is that you tried your hardest to be a vector for a disease that has stifled progress, caused untold human misery, and murdered millions. From my perspective, you have hitched your wagon to a delusion. You’ve already pissed away your integrity. How sad.
I wonder, too, if you really believe your afterlife claims. If you’re going to go on to some perpetual orgasm, why hang around only to make the world a worse place? Please don’t let me stop you. I suspect you too have your doubts. If you don’t believe in Jesus why should I?
As for demons, atheists think demons are at least as silly (and unlikely) as gods. Be sure and check for monsters under your bed and sleep with your lights on. Boo! Maybe your invisible friend will protect you.
Now let me respond to the subtext of your letter. If you actually had good reason to believe in your god, you would have presented that. Since you didn’t present a good reason, it seems clear you have none. We both know prayer is a failure or you could have prayed for one ahead of time before writing. Next, if Christianity had any positive value, you could have pitched that. Again, it seems there is no positive benefit. You did offer threats (emotional manipulation). While Islam’s main tactic is murdering those who disagree with them, Christianity relies on lies and thuggery. Death threats are a common Christian tactic to get their way. Lies, like the “Christian Nation” propaganda only show how much a fraud the religion is. With threats of hell, there is usually caveat by the threat giving Christian that he has nothing to do with the threat; they’re just passing it along from on high. Yet I have yet to meet two Christians who can agree on the nature of their god, and as you admit, there is no good evidence to believe in such a good. People like you choose to believe in a clearly evil god. I can only imagine you do so because you identify with that aspect of his storied nature. Ultimately the threats are coming from Christians who believe themselves to be good. This is part and parcel of an evil delusion.
Years ago, Christians actually tortured non-believers, with the idea that coercing them to “believe” was a kind of mercy. Converting them here through torture was thought preferable to the “loving” justice of eternal torment. Fortunately, secular morality has made torturing heretics an anachronism. Christian torture and holy wars have just made more atheists. Regardless, the subtext of your note tells me that Christianity has no merit (you seem to admit that) and you still want me to join you. You want me to shut off my brain, give up my integrity, and become a wannabe thug that excuses the atrocity of the Bible and the murderous fruits of Christian belief. Yet the only think you’re offering is some idea you have in your head that I might get to look down from heaven in a blissful amoral stupor and enjoy watching the torments of my fellow human beings in hell. Wow. What a steaming pile of shit.
I want nothing to do with your religion.You may never see a handheld Xbox on store shelves, but a Chinese company called GPD is trying to launch something similar: a Windows 10-based console that fits in your pocket.
To be clear, the $299 price tag they’re trumpeting is only for the first 2,000 people who contribute to GPD’s Indiegogo campaign. If this thing ever becomes a retail product — and there’s every reason to think that GPD will do that, given the number of similar items they’ve already released — they plan to price it at $499.
You can already buy GPD handhelds on a bunch of sites. So far, however, they’ve run Android on top of a Rockchip ARM processor. This new system will feature an Intel Cherry Trail Atom X5-Z8500 and Windows 10 Home. That means that you’ll be able to install all your favorite PC games, and not just from the Windows Store. Steam, GoG, Origin — anything you’re running on your Windows desktop or laptop should run on the GPD Win.
You’ll have to temper your expectations when it comes to the actual games, of course. The Atom processor — even today’s version — has never been an awesome chip for gaming. For older games, emulation, and casual gaming, it’s more than enough, and there are plenty of great PC games that will run just fine if you dial back the graphics settings.
What else did GPD manage to cram into the GPD Win? Inside, there’s 4GB of RAM, 64GB of eMMC storage, a 802.11b/g/n NIC, and Bluetooth radio. Outside, it has a full QWERTY keyboard, 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 pixel display, mini (not micro) HDMI output, micro SD expansion, micro USB for charging, and one full-sized USB 2.0 port for peripherals.
One reason gaming on your smartphone sucks is that the battery depletes in a hurry. GPD’s promising that won’t be a problem with their pocket console. They say its 6000mAh battery should provide six to eight hours, which isn’t too shabby — especially considering they mean six to eight hours of actual gaming, rather than secretly meaning web browsing or editing Word docs.Topics covered: Attitudes to the future, Prediction Markets, SciCast, Blockchain currency, Quadratic Voting, Artificial Intelligence Development etc.
People are engaged in extreme futures - heaven or hell scenarios - are people's attraction towards, or engagement with certain futures informed by evolved biases?
Prediction Markets in contrast to narratives about the future informed by Moralising Tales - whatever is likely to happen is probably a muddled up mix, a mixture of heaven and hell, not just one or the other - Moralising Tale, ignores statistics - it will all be terrible or fantastic, nothing in between…
Could the world do with futurists in industry? Hard to tell. Sometimes firms (i.e. google) are tied to a particular image - google have the image of innovation - google gets attention for projects like calico - pie in the sky moonshot projects are a compliment to their image. Employees are more likely to want to work for google because of its sexiness…
Justin Rattner (former CTO of Intel) spoke about the singularity quite a bit.. but not many CEOs/CTOs bring it up - with the exception of a few… though this could change.
Updates blockchain currency (bitcoin, etherium) - opportunities / risks
Futurists are often eager for big change - enthusiastic - people who are itching for big change often focus on scenarios for the future where there is big change.
Why is there little interest in quadratic voting compared to small iterations in gadgetry (which seems to get a lot of press)?
There is a lot of new and inventive gadgets, and ideas in physics that have huge communities of interest - but social technologies, ways we organise meetings, for instance Quadratic Voting… Many voting systems don't do a good job at weighing different votes based on how much you care about the issue. QV pays for votes in proportion to the square of the number of votes - can produce outcomes that weigh votes based on how much the voters care about the issue. People can be given votes as a point system, and they can choose to distribute their points based on how much they care about certain issues.
QV: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/16996
AI Dev - what are the big improvements? Whole new trend? Or progress in existing ideas?
Omens! There was always the new thing, the omen that promised this and that, cries in the wilderness - what kinds of omens should we be listening to? well… don't follow individual news events, listen to aggregates - for instance there was a whole data series of terrorist attacks - don't make a decision on one terrorist event.
Prediction Markets / Strategic forecasting - SciCast https://scicast.org/
web: http://futureday.org
the website is http://fd2015.scifuture.org
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Science-Technol……/…/220184121/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/futur…
Twitter: @futureday #futureday
G+: https://plus.google.com/communities/1…
Subscribe to this Channel: http://youtube.com/subscription_cente…
Science, Technology & the Future: http://scifuture.org
Humanity+: http://humanityplus.orgDonald Trump will become president thanks to Bernie Sanders
Donald Trump’s campaign has become a source of fascination for many since its inception. What many laughed at as a joke has since become a seemingly unstoppable freight train that has shown no signs of slowing down any time soon despite political pundits, establishment shills, and mainstream media’s blatant attempts to control public opinion. In this article we will examine why the Trump Train won’t be stopped until it reaches the white house due to a little help from Bernie Sanders of all people.
How Trump will win the GOP nomination
We all know how trump entered this campaign, calling for deporting all illegal immigrants and building a wall. Soon after he called for a mass ban of Muslims. Combine this with his self-portrayal as anti-establishment and you have built as base that every other establishment candidate was afraid to appeal to.
Trump is a strong believer in the fact that all publicity is good publicity and this has managed to get him millions of dollars in free publicity courtesy of the media which hates him so much. The outrageous claims that he made at the start of his campaign not only got him massive amounts of media attention, but they made many view him as a far right conservative when this could not be further from the truth. By making these strong statements against illegal immigration and Muslims they protect Trump from the inevitable questioning of how “conservative” he really is.
The result, total domination of the GOP primary. The establishment candidates are in shambles after a foolish civil war where they attempted to out-establishment each other while Trump continued to build momentum unabated. Trump is far ahead of the pack and the GOP is starting to accept a reality where Trump is the Republican nominee.
How Trump will win the general election
What many people fail to realize is that Trump is running his campaign just like he runs his business. His political strategy is straight out of the art of the deal, in which Trump uses a Door-in-the-Face strategy where you make an outrageous demand at the start of negotiations and then moves towards a deal that he would still be satisfied with. Trump came out strong to capture the GOP vote, but once you gets the nomination don’t be surprised to see him move towards a more moderate outlook. The true genius is the way Trump has presented himself throughout the campaign. While other politicians would be seen as flip flopping on early promises, Trump is simply making a deal and negotiating like he always has. The result is that he will pick up many democrats and moderates while keeping his loyal base.
Trump will also begin to focus on his universal health care program to replace Obamacare. This will allow him to take a chunk of the Democratic and independent base while bashing Hillary Clinton for her support of Obamacare.
In the general election Trump will finally be able to discuss his actual policies and beliefs without having to hold back to appeal to GOP voters exclusively. Many people have never actually heard these beliefs, simply listening to the sound bites from the mainstream media. Trump’s beliefs will home with a lot of people and people will see that he has a lot larger appeal than many originally thought.
Trump Will Brutalize Hillary
Hillary Clinton is barely hanging on to the Democratic primary lead despite full support from the DNC, mainstream media, and super delegates. Her only saving grace is that Bernie Sanders hasn’t taken advantage of the bunker full of ammunition that he could use to sink Hillary’s campaign. There’s a lot to choose from emails, Benghazi, the Russian Uranium deal, Wall Street bribes, Bill Clinton’s past, Vince Foster’s death, and much more. You can be sure that Trump will have no qualms about annihilating Hillary Clinton when they face off in the general election
The Bernie Factor
The DNC wants Hillary Clinton to win the nomination at all costs. This can be seen from the fact that due to establishment super delegates Hillary was able to come out of New Hampshire with more delegates than Bernie despite losing by more than 20%.
What the DNC doesn’t realize is that a majority of Bernie’s supporters are anti-establishment first, democrats second. Many will not shift their support to Hillary even if Bernie concedes, not to mention the chance of an independent run. Hillary Clinton is the polar opposite of what Bernie Sanders stands for and I believe that many of his supporters will not waver and either not vote, switch to trump, or write in Bernie in the general election.
Conclusion
The end result of this is that even if Clinton gets the nomination she will face a bloodthirsty Donald Trump who has a whole lot of ammo to use for his already deadly insults, while Hillary will have a divided part behind her. I believe that the political pundits are seriously underestimating the mass appeal that Trump has and the raw emotion that he has tapped in to. Trump has managed to tap into a hatred for politicians, political correctness, and the establishment that may provide enough fuel to put The Don into the white house.Kevin Sorbo never gets a break.
PLAYERS: 1
PUBLISHER: Sega
DEVELOPER: Bullet-Proof Software (port by Sega)
GENRE: RPG
RELEASE DATE: 1987 (JP)
The Black Onyx is one of the most important games you’ve never heard of. Developed solely by Dutch developer Henk Rogers, the game was partially responsible for introducing standard role-playing-game mechanics into the Japanese gaming industry. Creating a party of warriors, turn-based fighting, exploring a cramped dungeon – Japanese gamers had never seen anything like this upon its release in 1984. It sold over 150,000 copies for the NEC PC-8801 (big numbers back then) and became massively influential almost overnight. When Dragon Quest emerged for the Famicom two years later in 1986, the development team behind the game said that The Black Onyx was their main influence. The rest is history. Japanese RPGS or JRPGs became increasingly more successful in the 80s and 90s, and eventually, broke through to Western and European markets in the mid-to-late 90s – specifically with the release of Final Fantasy VII. The Black Onyx, along with Wizardry, started it all.
So what’s The Black Onyx doing on the SG-1000 in 1987? By this point, the game had been out for three years – a relative eternity in gaming, particularly in the 80s and 90s – and had already been released for the PC-88 and the MSX, both platforms which were much more successful than the SG-1000. Also, Sega had basically abandoned its original console by 1986 for the Mark III; so much so that The Black Onyx would be the last official Sega release that the console would see. Perhaps Sega wanted to push the boundaries of the SG-1000 or simply give the system a final hurrah. Either way, the game is certainly one of the system’s most ambitious titles, and while I’m not sure it came out the way Sega intended, I admire them for even attempting to port it.
Hmm… I’m not seeing Kevin Sorbo in this lineup.
In The Black Onyx, you create a one-to-five member party of warriors to explore dungeons under the town of Utsuro. It’s hard to tell what distinguishes the members of the group besides the color of their shirts. Each member looks exactly like the other, but their life bars are all a little different, which makes me think the color of their shirt corresponds to their stats (I didn’t find any evidence of this shirt/stat correspondence online or in the game, though, so I could just be making that up).
The town itself looks like a dungeon, all corridors and claustrophobia. Normally, I wouldn’t suggest busting out the graph paper until after you leave the first town, but it’s worth it to make a small graph of Utsuro as well, if only for you to reference later. Utsuro has all that you need for the long road ahead, including weapons, armor, medicinal herbs, and pint upon pint of grog. While the town itself is painted mostly in a disastrous lime green, the doors to shops are always highlighted in red, so there’s no mistaking them. Once you’ve gotten what you need, proceed to the middle of town and into the dungeons below.
No word on whether Schwarzenegger still owns this place.
Before you get knee-deep in monster corpses, though, press Button II to bring up the menu. This allows you to see each member’s gold, change the speed of the in-game text, cure one another, quit the game and add a warrior. Many of these options are self-explanatory, but quitting the game and adding a warrior are worth elaborating upon. Since the game itself doesn’t have a battery backup, the game gives you a password to save each character. This might be a necessary evil, but wow, what commitment you have to have to jot down five passwords each time you want to save. As for adding warriors: if for some reason, you didn’t create the maximum amount of warriors from the get-go, you can sometimes recruit fighters from the town by talking to them during battles. This is a gamble, though, as some fighters would rather battle than talk.
Queez, help me out here, what’s going on?
Once you get into the dungeons proper, you’ll notice some niggling points that are common with early dungeon crawlers. Unless you make some graph paper (or use your iPhone – surely there’s an app for graph paper now?) and jot down your every move, you won’t know where you’re going. Every environment in the game looks the same: blue walls, red doors, lime green ceilings and floors. Also, fights occur every one to two steps. This is great in the beginning when you’re trying to level up your character and get some more gold, and bad when you’re actually trying to progress. The fights themselves are as basic as it gets. Once you engage the enemy, you’re given the option to battle with them, talk to them, or run away. Choose the battle option and pick which warrior will attack which enemy, then watch the fight. If your warrior dies, he’s dead and he’s not coming back – unless you have his password handy.
Yes, for Farg please.
In the original Black Onyx release for the PC-88, the game had six floors of the dungeon, which lined up with the six colors the computer could display. You’re supposed to beat the floors in a certain order, but said order depends on the platform the game was released (at least according to my friend and yours, Wikipedia). Beating the floors in the correct order results in the creation of a stairway to the Black Tower, where you’ll find the Black Onyx and free the town of Utsuro from its curse of eternal darkness. The SG-1000 also has six floors to explore, but due to the console’s limited color palette, every floor looks the same, so I have no idea which order each floor should be beaten. There’s no FAQ/map available for the game online either, and believe me, I’ve looked. Basically, you’re taking your time and your sanity into your hands if you want to beat this game properly. You could beat all six floors, but if you don’t beat them in the right order, the stairway to the Tower doesn’t erect itself and you can’t beat the game. Ah, the cruelty.
These zombies are… cold as ice.
The Black Onyx was no doubt a revolutionary game upon its release in 1984, but the limited capabilities of the SG-1000 and Father Time himself cut severely into the game’s forgotten legacy. The dungeons: even when you know more or less where you’re going, it’s easy to get lost due to the port’s mind-numbing three-color scheme and tendency to flip you around without your consent when you hit a wall. The repetitive walk-and-fight gameplay may have been groundbreaking upon release, but it has aged into a tedious slog – particularly if you know all the fighting may be for naught if you’re not beating the dungeons in the proper order.
Admittedly, the aforementioned are two large problems, but I do recommend gaming buffs give The Black Onyx a try. As a game, The Black Onyx suffers from the ravages of age and one’s own extensive knowledge and experience of the western and Japanese role-playing genre. As a piece of history, however, The Black Onyx deserves to be played, if only briefly, to imagine what it must have been like for young Japanese gamers going through an RPG for the first time. The experience, I imagine, was nothing short of revelatory.
THE GAME: C
THE LEGACY: A
(A quick shout out to Bruce Tomlin for translating The Black Onyx for all to experience!)August 1, 2012, 4:17 am
Political scientist Andrew Hacker recently asked “Is Algebra Necessary?” and the response has, unfortunately, been predictable.
Those in society’s minority who did well in math courses are “shocked” at the suggestion that we change the typical math curriculum. The teaching may be “dismal” but algebra is a “foundation stone” in developing critical thinking skills. “It teaches one how to think.” It’s a little amusing but mostly disheartening to see folks who claim to support more challenging math standards fall back on strawman arguments, condescension, sarcasm and, my favorite, math errors in their arguments.
Those in society’s majority who did poorly in math tended to respond with relief at the suggestion of dropping algebra, although there are a few PMSD (post-mathematics stress disorder) victims whose career paths were altered by failing math and who still carry the associated baggage and resentment.
Let’s set aside the hysterics (“We are breeding a nation of morons“) and give both sides of this debate a fair shake, shall we?
Arguments in Favor of Eliminating Algebra as Courses Required for All
We definitely teach too much algebra and do so mindlessly, without considering whether it’s useful. As a teacher of math courses from arithmetic through calculus at a community college, I fought the losing fight to remove useless topics from the curriculum. For example, Cramer’s rule is a relic from the days before computers and is as practical as a slide rule, but trying to remove it from the required topic list elicited resistance and deep resentment from many of my fellow faculty. Hacker’s suggestion that we reconsider the requirement for so much symbolic manipulation is sensible.
While teaching algebra I tried to limit my syllabi to (1) the topics that would be used in later courses, (2) topics that might be useful outside the classroom, and (3) some examples of true beauty. I emphasized (1) but snuck in some of (2) and (3). Still, I did teach some material that would only be useful in later math courses and never in any kind of applied setting. We could easily cut more topics by curtailing the length of the required math sequence, at least for the math subjects taught.
Algebra is not the only way to teach disciplined thinking. One can teach precisely the same thinking skills while removing the abstraction that makes math seem useless and difficult to many students. One idea (not mine): we could integrate math beyond middle school into the science curriculum and use applications as motivation. Then there’s no need to learn how to apply math to story problems; the stories are the original problems. This also prevents folks from running around with “hammers” looking for “nails”. Unfortunately I am not sure how to get there from here; teachers of other subjects would have to cover the needed material and that would require revamping the way teachers are taught.
We don’t need to learn algebra to develop our intuition about rates of change, interest rates, probability, statistics, and other topics that typically follow algebra. There are ways (videos, interactive widgets, simulation using simple programming) to develop the intuition of calculus — often the only calculus needed in a job like medicine — without approaching it the rigorous, analytic, symbol-pushing way we typically do. Even for those who eventually will need algebra, we can teach more advanced symbol manipulation skills later as needed.
Nobody (well, almost nobody) is saying that learning algebra has no value whatsoever. However, as long as we have limited resources the pertinent question is, does algebra give us more benefit than spending that time elsewhere? I suggest that programming, statistics, and finance are better uses of most students’ time. Programming is how the nearly countless computers in our lives work; a basic understanding of how they do their magic would be invaluable. Statistics are essential for making sense out of the sea of information around us. Finance is challenging and vital for artists and engineers alike as long as they want to buy a home or save for retirement. If we remove the symbol-pushing exercises of algebra and replace that class time with simple programming, statistics, and finance, we’ll gain more than we’ll lose.
Arguments in Favor of Keeping Algebra a Courses Required for All (with occasional rejoinders)
Let’s be more specific about “algebra”. A first course (“Algebra I”) often includes basic linear algebra (lines, graphing them, solving systems of linear equations, and matrices) plus evaluating polynomial functions, graphing quadratic functions, and solving single quadratic equations. A second course (“Algebra II”) builds on this with lots of factoring polynomials, exponential and logarithmic functions, quadratic inequalities and other algebraic prep for calculus.
An Algebra I course like this is incredibly useful. The concepts generalize to every science, from physics to political science. With this foundation a student can learn the intuition behind calculus, statistics, and other tools that are useful to have seen but usually not useful to retain. I strongly recommend keeping Algebra I part of the core curriculum. With moderate resources, this material can be covered in middle school for most if not all students.
Algebra II is where common responses to “Why am I learning this?” jump the tracks.
“It builds your brain like exercising build muscle.” I used this one regularly; it’s true, but only a half truth. Programming, statistics and finance can do the same with the added bonus of being unquestionably practical.
“It helps students understand where more advanced math comes from.” Playing with simulations is even better for most students in understanding why more advanced math techniques work the way they do.
“It teaches structured thinking.” Programming is even better for that and it is easier for students to see what why structure matters. Mess up the structure and programs do odd things.
Algebra II is full of topics that you don’t need in order to understand the intuition of common useful advanced ideas; you need Algebra II when you will try to master more advanced ideas. I strongly recommend making Algebra II something that fewer students take.
Known Unknown
My recommendation to remove Algebra II from the universal curriculum is contingent on at least one assumption: Students who need more algebra will have sufficient time to learn it later. To see if this is true we would need to take average to bright students interested in technical fields and wait until college to teach them algebra. This is not common. Interestingly, I have some experience that is close to this: teaching math to political science graduate students. While there are a few notable exceptions, most political science undergraduates take very little math. Graduate students work very hard to learn the math necessary for advanced statistics and game theory, and generally they succeed. This evidence is circumstantial but shifts the burden of proof onto those who might argue college is too late to learn algebra.
Bottom Line: Question Mathematical Authority
Hacker thoughtfully asked a good question: are we teaching what we should be teaching? One cannot decry the educational establishment as ossified but resist any attempt to change for the better. Hacker may be throwing out the baby. My ideas might not be the best. What are your ideas? Let’s discuss it.
* This blogger is an award-winning teacher of math, statistics, and programming at the high-school through graduate levels, holds graduate degrees in math and political science, |
most part, the global derivatives market has no brokerage, no exchange, and no equivalent enforcement mechanism. In fact, among the $181.2 trillion in derivative bets held by U.S. banks at mid-year 2008, only $8.2 trillion, or 4.5%, was regulated by an exchange. The balance — $173.9 trillion, or 95.5% — was bets placed directly between buyer and seller (called “over the counter”). And among the $596 trillion in global derivatives tracked by the BIS at year-end 2007, 100% were over the counter. No exchanges. No overarching enforcement mechanism.
This is not just a matter of weak or non-existent regulation. It's far worse. It's the equivalent of an undisciplined conglomeration of players gambling on the streets without even a casino to maintain order. Moreover, the data compiled by the OCC and BIS showed that the bets were so large and the gambling so far beyond the reach of regulators, all it would take was the bankruptcy of one of the lesser derivatives players — such as Lehman Brothers — to throw the world's credit markets into paralysis.
That's why the world's highest banking officials were so panicked when Lehman Brothers failed in the fall of 2008. As the IMF managing director himself admitted, the threat was not stemming from just one bank in trouble; it was from many ; and those banks weren't lesser players; they were among the largest in the world. Which U.S. banks placed the biggest bets? Based on mid-year 2008 data, the OCC provided some answers:
Citibank N.A., the primary banking unit of Citigroup, held $37.1 trillion in derivative bets. Moreover, only 1.7% of those bets were under the purview of any exchange. The balance — 98.3% — was direct, one-on-one bets with their trading partners outside of any exchange.
Bank of America was a somewhat bigger player, holding $39.7 trillion in derivative bets, with 93.4% traded outside of any exchange.
But JPMorgan Chase was, by far, the biggest of them all, towering over the U.S. derivatives market with more than double BofA's book of bets — $91.3 trillion worth. This meant that JPMorgan Chase controlled half of all derivatives in the U.S. banking system — a virtual monopoly that tied the firm's finances with the fate of the U.S. economy far beyond anything ever witnessed in modern history. Meanwhile, $87.3 trillion, or 95.7% of Morgan's derivatives, were outside the purview of any exchange.
One bank! Making bets of unknown nature and risk! Involving a dollar amount equivalent to six years of the total production of the entire U.S. economy! In contrast, Lehman Brothers, whose failure caused such a large earthquake in the global financial system, was actually small by comparison — with “only” $7.1 trillion in derivatives.
The potential havoc that might be caused by a Citigroup failure, with bets that involve five times more money than Lehman's — and the financial holocaust that might be caused by a JPMorgan failure with close to 13 times more than Lehman — boggles the imagination. How bad could it actually be? No one knows, and therein lies one of the primary dangers. In the absence of oversight, the regulators simply do not collect the needed who-when-what information on these bets.
In an attempt to throw some light on this dark-but-explosive scene, the OCC uses a formula for estimating how much risk each major bank is exposed to in just the one particular aspect I cited a moment ago — the risk that some of its trading partners might default and fail to pay up on their gambling debts. Bear in mind: We still don't now how much they are risking on market moves against them. All the OCC is estimating is how much they're risking by making bets with potentially shaky betting partners, regardless of the outcome on each bet — win, lose or draw.
At Bank of America, the OCC calculated that, at mid-year, the bank was exposed to the tune of 194.3% of its capital. In other words, for every $1 of capital in the kitty, BofA was risking $1.94 cents strictly on the promises made by its betting partners. If about half of its betting partners defaulted, the bank's capital would be wiped out and it would be bankrupt. And remember: This was in addition to the risk that the market might go the wrong way, and on top of the risk it was taking with its other investments and loans,
At Citibank, the risk was even greater: $2.58 cents in exposure per dollar of capital.
And if you think that's risky, consider JPMorgan Chase. Not only was it the largest player, but, among the big three U.S. derivatives players, it also had the largest default exposure: For every dollar of capital, the bank was risking $4.30 on the credit of its betting partners.
This is why JPMorgan was so anxious to step in and grab up outstanding trades left hanging after the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers: It could not afford to let those trades turn to dust. If it did, it would be the first and biggest victim of a chain reaction of failures that could explode all over the world.
This is why super-investor Warren Buffett once called derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction.” This is why the top leaders of the world's richest countries panicked after Lehman Brothers failed, dumping their time-honored, hands-off policy like a hot potato, jumping in to buy up shares in the world's largest banks, and transforming the world of banking literally overnight.
This is also why you must now do more than just find a strong bank.
You also must find a safe place that has the highest probability of being immune to these risks. The reason: As I warned at the outset, at some point in the not-too-distant future, governments around the world may have no other choice but to declare a global banking holiday — a shutdown of nearly every bank in the world, regardless of size, country, or financial condition.
What could happen in the banking holiday? In the past, we've seen some financial shutdowns that eventually helped resolve the crisis. And we've seen others that only made it worse. Often, savers are forced to leave their money on deposit, giving up a substantial portion of their interest income for many years. And, in other cases, the only way they can get their money back sooner is by accepting an immediate loss of principal. But no matter how it's resolved, when banks have made big blunders and suffered large losses, it's the multitude of savers that are invariably asked to make the biggest sacrifices and pay the biggest price. No one else has the money.
Are Bank Runs and National Shutdowns Really Possible in Today's Modern Era?
Most observers think not. “If deposits are insured,” they ask, “why would anyone want to pull them out?” The reason: Most bank runs are not caused by insured depositors. They're caused by the exodus of large, uninsured institutions who are usually the first to run for cover at the earliest hint of trouble. That's the main reason Washington Mutual, America's largest savings and loan, lost over $16 billion in deposits in its final eight days in 2008. That's also a major reason Wachovia Bank was forced to agree to a shotgun merger soon thereafter.
During the many banking failures of the 1980s and 1990s, the story was similar: We rarely saw a run on the bank by individuals. Rather, it was uninsured institutional investors — banks, pension funds and others — that jumped ship long before most people even realized the ship was sinking. They're the ones who hammered the last nail in the coffin of big savings and loans, banks and insurance companies that failed.
How Long Would a Global Banking Shutdown Last? How Would It All Be Sorted Out?
No one can say with certainty. But based on other banking holidays in modern history, it's safe to conclude that it could last for quite some time and cause severe hardship for hundreds of millions of savers around the world.
The first and most obvious hardship is that you could be denied immediate access to most or all of your money for an indefinite period. What about government agency guarantees like FDIC insurance? A large proportion of those guarantees, unfortunately, would have to be suspended in order to give banking regulators the time they need to sort out the mess.
It is simply not reasonable to expect that governments will have the resources to immediately meet the demands of thousands of institutions and millions of individuals if they all want their money back at roughly the same time.
“Your money is still safely guaranteed,” banking officials will declare. “You just can't have it now.”
The second and more long-lasting hardship is the possibility that, by the time you do regain access to your money, you will suffer losses. In this scenario, the government would likely create a rehabilitation program for the nation's weakest banks, giving depositors two choices:
Opt in to the program by leaving your funds on deposit at your bank for an extended period of time, earning below-market interest rates. The bank is then allowed to use the extra interest to recoup its losses over time — income that, by rights, should have been yours.
to the program by leaving your funds on deposit at your bank for an extended period of time, earning below-market interest rates. The bank is then allowed to use the extra interest to recoup its losses over time — income that, by rights, should have been yours. Opt out of the program and withdraw your funds immediately, accepting a loss that approximately corresponds to the actual losses in the bank's investment and loan portfolio.
Needless to say, neither the opt in nor the opt out choice is a good one:
If you opt in, you take the chance that the government's rehab program may not work on the first attempt and that it will be replaced by another, even tougher program in the future. Moreover, even if it works out as planned, you will suffer a continuing loss of income and access to your cash over an extended period of time.
If you opt out, instead of lost income, you suffer an immediate loss of principal. Moreover, in order to discourage savers from opting out, the government would typically structure the program so that everyone demanding immediate reimbursement suffers an additional penalty.
Again you ask, “What about government guarantees?” By rights, in a fair plan, insured depositors would suffer less severely than uninsured depositors. And if the plan is structured properly, those in strong banks should come out whole, or almost whole, while those in weaker banks should suffer the larger losses. That's how it should be handled. But there's no guarantee that's how it will be handled.
To avoid all of these risks, I recommend seriously considering moving (a) nearly all of your bank deposits and accounts, plus (b) a modest portion of the money you currently have invested in securities to the safest and most liquid place for your money in the modern world:
Short-Term U.S. Treasury Securities
True safety has two elements. The first is capital conservation — no losses, no reduction in your principal. But it's the second element that most people miss: Liquidity — the ability to get a hold of your money and actually use it whenever you want to, without waiting, penalties, bottlenecks, shutdowns or disasters of any kind standing in your way.
Absolute perfection is not possible. But on both of those aspects — capital conservation and liquidity — the single investment in the world that's at the top of the charts is short-term U.S. Treasury securities. These enjoy the best, most direct, and most reliable guarantee of the U.S. government, over and above any other guarantees or promises they may have made in the past, or will make in the future.
I know you have questions. So let me do my best to anticipate them and answer them right here.
Question #1. You might ask: “The FDIC is also backed by the U.S. government. So if I have money in an FDIC-guaranteed account at my bank, what's the difference? Why should I accept a lower yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month Treasury bill when I can get a higher yield on a government-guaranteed 3-month CD?”
Without realizing it, you've answered your own question. If the yield is higher on the bank CDs, that can mean only one thing — that, according to the collective wisdom of millions of investors and thousands of institutions in the market, the risk is also higher. Otherwise, why would the bank have to pay so much more to attract your money? Likewise, how can the U.S. Treasury get away with paying so much less and still have interested buyers for its securities?
It's because the risk is higher for CDs, but much lower for Treasury securities. It's because even within the realm of government guarantees, there's a pecking order.
The first-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by the U.S. Treasury department itself.
Maturing securities that were issued by the U.S. Treasury department itself. The second-priority guarantee: Maturing securities that were issued by other government agencies, such as Ginnie Mae.
Maturing securities that were issued by other government agencies, such as Ginnie Mae. Third: The Treasury's backing of the FDIC.
This is not to say the Treasury is not standing fully behind the FDIC. Rather my point is that, in the event of serious financial pressures on the government, the FDIC and FDIC guaranteed deposits will not be the first in line.
Question #2. You might also ask: “Isn't the United States government also having its own share of financial difficulties with huge budget deficits? If those difficulties could get a lot worse, why should I trust the government any more than I trust other investments? Why should I loan my money to Uncle Sam?”
The United States is the world's largest economy, with the most active financial markets and the strongest military in the world. Despite Uncle Sam's financial difficulties, this has never been in doubt; and even in a financial crisis, that's unlikely to change because the crisis is global. So its immediate impact on the finances of other governments is likely to be at least as severe.
More importantly, the United States government's borrowing power — its ability to continue tapping the open market for cash — is, by far, it's most precious asset, more valuable than the White House and all public properties; even more valuable than all the gold in Fort Knox. Those assets are like Uncle Sam's home, land and pocket change. His borrowing power, in contrast, is like the air he breathes to stay alive.
Remember: The U.S. Treasury Department is directly responsible for feeding money to the utmost, mission-critical operations of this country, including defense, homeland security, and emergency response. The Treasury will do whatever it takes to continue providing that funding, and that means making sure they never default on their maturing Treasury securities.
Even in the 1930s, when a record number of Americans were unemployed, and when we had a head-spinning wave of bank failures, owners of Treasury bills never lost a penny.
Even in the Civil War, Treasuries were safe. Investors financed 65 percent of the Union's war costs by buying Treasury securities. But the war was far worse than those investors had anticipated, leaving over half of the entire economy in shambles, raising serious concerns among those investors. However, the U.S. government made the repayment of its maturing Treasuries it's number one priority over all other wartime obligations. Investors got back every single penny, and more.
My main point is this: The crisis ahead will not be nearly as severe as the war that tore our nation apart. If Treasury securities were safe then, we have no reason to doubt they will be safe today. Unfortunately, however, I cannot say the same for all of the money you've entrusted to a bank.
Question #3. “Suppose there's a bank holiday and I need to cash in my Treasury bills. Since the Treasury Department and the Treasury-only money market funds use banks for transfers, won't I be locked out of my money too?”
We actually have a real precedent for a similar situation. In Rhode Island in 1991, when the governor declared a state-wide bank holiday, all the state-chartered savings banks were closed down. Every single citizen with money in one of those banks was locked out.
At the time, one of our Safe Money Report subscribers happened to have a checking account in one of the closed Rhode Island banks. Thankfully, he had almost all of his money at the Treasury Department in Treasury bills, so his money was safe. But he called and asked: “The Treasury is set to wire the money straight into my bank account, which is frozen. Will the money the Treasury wires me get frozen too?”
In response, I told him to check his post office mailbox. Instead of wiring his funds, the Treasury had taken the extraordinary measure of cutting hard checks and mailing them out immediately. They wanted to make absolutely sure he got his money without any delay.
The moral of this story is that, even in a worst-case banking scenario, the Treasury will do whatever is necessary to get your money. We can't forecast exactly how. But they will probably send you hard Treasury checks. And they'll probably designate special bank offices in every city in every state where you can cash them in. Ditto for Treasury-only money market funds.
Question #4. “Throughout history, many governments have defaulted on their debts in a more subtle way — by devaluing their currency. Why are you recommending Treasury bills, which are denominated purely in dollars, if one of the consequences of this disaster could be a decline in the dollar?”
The trend today is toward deflation, which means a stronger dollar. But even if that changes, the solution will not be to abandon the safety and liquidity of Treasury bills. It will be to separately set some money aside and buy hedges against inflation, like gold or strong foreign currencies that tend to go up in value when the dollar falls.
How to Buy Treasuries
For funds that you do not need immediate access to on a daily basis, consider the U.S. Government's Treasury Direct program. They offer a variety of choices, but I recommend you use strictly the 13-week (3-month) Treasury bills.
Meanwhile, for most of your personal or business, savings or checking, you don't need a bank, an S&L or any other financial institution. All you need is a money market fund that invests in short-term U.S. Treasury bills or equivalent. The Treasuries it buys enjoy the same U.S. government guarantee as Treasuries bought through any other venue. So deposit insurance is simply not an issue.
Moreover, the Treasury-only money fund gives you the additional advantage of immediate availability of your money. You can have your funds wired to your local bank overnight. Or you can even write checks against it, much as you'd write checks against any bank checking account.
For my family and business money, we use the Weiss Treasury Only Money Market Fund. Plus we also use the fund that was founded by James Benham, a good friend of my father's. That's Capital Preservation Fund, which Jim sold to the American Century family of funds. Use either of these or your choice of the fund in the list below.
Good luck and God bless!
Martin
Correction: In yesterday's edition, I incorrectly stated that Wachovia was bought by JPMorgan Chase. The failed bank purchased by JPMorgan Chase was Washington Mutual. The buyer of Wachovia is Wells Fargo.
1 OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities, Second Quarter 2008, http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/release/2008-115a.pdf, page 1.
2 Bank for International Settlements, Semiannual OTC derivatives statistics at end-December 2007, http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf
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Comments
Dave Wyant
25 Nov 08, 15:56 correction
Great article. Not sure you closed the loop on the cascade after the bail out but you have gone where few dare to go as it relates to the size and scope of the otc derivative problem and the specific banks that hold them. Also, I don't recommend any treasury instruments as it is the equivilent of buying a debt instrument with another debt instrument and I look for a downgrading of all US backed debt as a direct result of the mismanagement of the crisis in general. I say get to gold and silver maybe euros or yen so you can come back out after the collapse and get in with the devaluation of the currency.
dpscll
26 Nov 08, 10:21 Quelling the Fear
Martin has been warning of this for some time now. The Bush and Obama PPT teams will continue to parade before the cameras everytime the market has a bad day to attempt to quell the rising fears in the public sentiment. But isn't that what our leaders are suppose to do? The last thing they need is mass panic. Unfornunately, they are out of options and the bleeding must continue. Buy gold while you still can because there are rumblings of a revaluation of the dollar in the not-to-distant future once they are able to get the G20 on board.BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State leaders had long promised their followers an apocalyptic battle — foretold, some believe, by the Prophet Muhammad — in an otherwise nondescript village they controlled in northern Syria.
But the warriors of the self-declared caliphate lost the village, Dabiq, in just a few hours over the weekend as Syrian rebels, backed by Turkey, closed in. To soften the symbolic blow, the Islamic State switched rhetorical gears, declaring that the real Dabiq battle would come some other time.
The about-face was part of a larger repositioning as the Islamic State loses ground, not only in Syria but also in Iraq, where forces backed by the United States began a drive on Monday to oust the group from the sprawling and strategically vital city of Mosul. On the defensive in both countries, the group has been making preparations for retrenchment and survival.
Hundreds of Islamic State fighters and their families have fled to the group’s de facto capital, the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, in recent days, according to several residents of that city who asked not to be named to avoid reprisals. They said that the arrivals had come from Mosul, as well as from areas around Dabiq in the Syrian province of Aleppo, and that they were waiting for the Islamic State authorities to find them housing.Animaniacs Volume 4 (3-Disc DVD Collection)
Release Date: Available February 05 on DVD.
A Review By: Kevin Lovell
Disc Rating: 8/10
Plot Summary:
Ensemble cast of off-the-wall Warner Brothers characters, appearing in a wide variety of roles. Wakko, Yakko, and Dot Warner, are WB Studio creations who were just too “zany” to be of any use to the studio. Pinky and the Brain are two mice bent on world domination. Rita and Runt are a cat and dog team, who get into perilous situations every episode, put always seem to find time to sing a song. Bobby, Pesto, and Squit are the Goodfeathers, part of a New York mob of pigeons, who worship Martin Scorsese. Slappy the Squirrel is a late middle-age squirrel; she starred in a series of popular cartoons in the Golden Age. Buttons is a watch-dog, charged with watching the mischievous toddler, Mindy. Chicken Boo is a giant chicken trying to integrate into human society. Flavio and Marita are two urbane hippopotami.
Continue on after the jump for the review.
‘Animaniacs’ is one of those shows I spent a lot of my childhood (and even some time afterwards) watching, though it’s been a good few years since the last time I found myself watching the series. Imagine my pleasant surprise when the final DVD volume of the classic series arrived on my doorstep. I tore off the wrapping, popped in a disc and took off on a trip down memory lane. I remember always being quite fond of this series, but after so long I have to admit I had forgotten how truly marvelous it really was.
Volume 4 is the final installment of ‘Animaniacs’ on DVD and includes all 24 remaining episodes in a beautiful 3 Disc DVD collection. So get ready to have some more fun with all your favorite zany characters such as Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Pinky and the Brain and all the rest of the ‘Animaniacs’ gang. From silly little quips, to their own unique spoofs of everything from Star Trek to Hercules, you won’t want to miss out on reliving all this silly fun over and over again.
VIDEO:
‘Animaniacs’ Volume 4 is presented in a 4X3 presentation representing it’s original television broadcast. Some scenes contain a noticeable amount of video noise on bright items such as bright colored hats, etc. but in all honesty it helps you to truly appreciate that this series isn’t from the past few years, it’s a classic you grew up loving and the video presentation on this release truly reflects that without polishing the show into a horrible glimmering mess. We all know what happens when studios go overboard trying to clean up and master an older source and that the end result is often more harmful than beneficial to the final product. While the video presentation here may not be top notch, there is certainly nothing wrong with it, and considering the time this series was produced it looks pretty decent overall. It should please those ‘Animaniacs’ fans out there who will likely be overjoyed to finally be able to complete their DVD collection of this tremendous series.
AUDIO:
The audio is probably the finest point of this release. Being an older series, it is presented with a Dolby Digital 2.0 Audio Track that sounds quite impressive. My receiver read the stereo track as a four channel split on auto mode, featuring the dialogue in the center channel and the music and zany effects are tossed into the front stereo speakers while leaving one channel to produce sounds/music to spread among the rear speakers making for a truly fun experience and more than I would of expected from a DVD release such as this. For those audiophiles like me out there, you can be assured that as far as 2 channel Dolby Digital audio soundtracks go, this one is quite impressive for what it is and the source in which it was taken from. The disc also includes English Subtitles for the hearing impaired as well as French subtitles.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
The Special Features section of this collection is really the only thing lacking on this DVD release. While no actual special features regarding ‘Animaniacs’ are featured, disc one includes a trailer for the animated film ‘Scooby-Doo! Mask Of The Blue Falcon’ as well as a ‘Scooby-Doo’ Dubstep video that I must admit is slightly amusing, even for someone like me who despises dubstep in general. Discs two and three do not include any features. Even with the lack of features on this release, you should still have no problem keeping yourself entertained with 24 episodes (that’s over 8 hours) of zany ‘Animaniacs’ fun.
Disc Rating: 8/10
‘Animaniacs’ Volume 4 will be unleashed on DVD in a 3-Disc Collection this Tuesday, February 5 2013 from Warner Bros Home Entertainment with the incredibly affordable SRP of only $29.99.Loading... Loading...
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US-directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program.
TeleSUR‘s article, “‘Ethnic Bomb’ Feared as US Air Force Confirms Collection of Russian DNA,” would report:
Russia has raised its concerns over attempts by the U.S. military to collect DNA samples from Russian nationals, noting the potential use of such biological samples for the purpose of creating new genetic warfare weaponry. The U.S. Air Force has sought to calm the Kremlin’s concerns, noting that the samples would only be used for so-called “research” purposes rather than for bioterrorism. Addressing Russian reports, U.S. Air Education and Training Command spokesperson Captain Beau Downey said that his center randomly selected the Russian people as a source of genetic material in its ongoing research of the musculoskeletal system.
The report would also state that:
However, the usage of Russian tissue samples in the USAF study fed the long-brewing suspicion that the Pentagon is continuing in its hopes to develop an alleged “biological weapon” targeting specifically Russians.
Russian President Vladimir Putin would be quoted as stating:
Do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally.
And while the US military attempted to brush off the notion that any sort of ethnic-specific bioweapon was being researched, the notion of such a weapon is not far fetched at all.
US policy papers have included them in America’s overall long-term geopolitical and military planning for nearly two decades, and the US Air Force itself has produced papers regarding how the various combinations such weapons could manifest.
There is also the disturbing history of Western-aligned nations having pursued ethnic-specific bioweapons in the past, including the Apartheid regime in South Africa which sought to use its national vaccination program as cover to covertly sterilize its black population.
US Policy Papers Have Discussed Ethnic-Specific Bioweapons
In the Neo-Conservative Project for the New American Century’s (PNAC) 2000 report titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (.pdf) it states (emphasis added):
The proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will make it much easier to project military power around the globe. Munitions themselves will become increasingly accurate, while new methods of attack – electronic, “non-lethal,” biological – will be more widely available. (p.71 of.pdf)
It also stated:
Although it may take several decade for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes. (p.72 of.pdf)
And finally:
And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. (p.72 of.pdf)
More recently – in 2010 – the US Air Force in a counterproliferation paper titled, “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens” (PDF), would list multiple ways such weapons could be deployed (emphasis added):
The JASON group, composed of academic scientists, served as technical advisers to the U. S. government. Their study generated six broad classes of genetically engineered pathogens that could pose serious threats to society. These include but are not limited to binary biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping diseases, and designer diseases.
The paper discusses the possibility of a “disease that could wipe out the whole population or a certain ethnic group.” While the paper claims its purpose is to study such weapons as a means of developing defenses against them, America’s history as a global military aggressor and the sole nation on Earth to have ever wielded nuclear weapons against another nation-state suggests a high likelihood that if such weapons can be produced, the US has already stockpiled them – if not already deployed them.
South Africa’s Project Coast Then and Biotech Now
The notion of the West using such weapons already has an alarming precedent. Regarding South Africa’s Apartheid regime – the United Nations’ report titled Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme would explain (emphasis added):
There was some interaction between Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL) and Delta G [biological and chemical weapon laboratories respectively], with Delta G taking on some of RRL’s biochemistry projects and RRL doing animal testing of some Delta G products. One example of this interaction involved anti-fertility work. According to documents from RRL [Roodeplaat Research Laboratories], the facility had a number of registered projects aimed at developing an anti-fertility vaccine. This was a personal project of the first managing director of RRL, Dr Daniel Goosen. Goosen, who had done research into embryo transplants, told the TRC that he and Basson had discussed the possibility of developing an anti-fertility vaccine which could be selectively administered—without the knowledge of the recipient. The intention, he said, was to administer it to black South African women without their knowledge.
At the time, the technology appears not to have been sufficiently mature enough to realize the Apartheid regime’s ambitions. However, the technology not only exists today, there are examples of it being used to spectacular effect – so far for good – but could just as easily be used for bad.
The above-mentioned US Air Force paper would go into detail regarding each weapon it listed, including one called gene therapy:
Gene therapy might just be the silver bullet for the treatment of human genetic diseases. This process involves replacing a bad gene with a good gene to normalize the condition of the recipient. Transfer of the “healthy” gene requires a vector to reach its target. Vectors commonly used are “viruses that have been genetically altered to carry normal human DNA” such as “retroviruses, adenoviruses, adeno-associated viruses, and herpes simplex viruses.”
Gene therapy has already been used during clinical trials to permanently cure everything from blood cancers to rare genetic disorders. The New York Times, in an article titled, “Gene Therapy Creates Replacement Skin to Save a Dying Boy,” would report on one of the latest breakthroughs using the technology, stating:
Doctors in Europe used gene therapy to grow sheets of healthy skin that saved the life of a boy with a genetic disease that had destroyed most of his skin, the team reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature. This was not the first use of the treatment, which adds gene therapy to a technique developed to grow skin grafts for burn victims. But it was by far the most body surface ever covered in a patient with a genetic disorder: nine square feet.
One could imagine a malicious weapon used in reverse to knock out the genes that maintain healthy skin, causing a victim’s skin to blister and fall off.
In utilizing gene therapy as a weapon, the US Air Force report would note:
Gene therapy is expected to gain in popularity. It will continue to be improved upon and could unquestionably be chosen as a bioweapon. The rapid growth in biotechnology could trigger more opportunities to find new ways to fight diseases or create new ones. Nations who are equipped to handle biotechnology are likely to consider gene therapy a viable bioweapon. Groups or individuals without the resources or funding will find it difficult to produce this bioweapon.
Regarding “stealth viruses,” a variation of the weaponized gene therapy technique, the report states:
The basic concept of this potential bioweapon is to “produce a tightly regulated, cryptic viral infection that can enter and spread in human cells using vectors” (similar to the gene therapy) and then stay dormant for a period of time until triggered by an internal or external signal. The signal then could stimulate the virus to cause severe damage to the system. Stealth viruses could also be tailored to secretly infect a targeted population for an extended period using the threat of activation to blackmail the target.
With gene therapies already approved for sale in the European Union and the United States, and with more on the way, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that covert, weaponized gene therapies are also either already developed and waiting, or already deployed as “stealth viruses.”
Developing and Deploying
The US maintains a global network of military medical laboratories and research centers.
In addition to the 59th Medical Wing involved in collecting Russian genetic material, the US covers the entire Southeast Asian region from Bangkok, Thailand with its Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFIRMS).
While it publicly claims it exists to, “to conduct state of the art medical research and disease surveillance to develop and evaluate medical products, vaccines, and diagnostics to protect DOD personnel from infectious disease threats,” its personnel, equipment, and research could easily be used for dual purposes in creating any of the above stated, so-far “theoretical” ethnic- specific bioweapons.
The US Embassy in Thailand website states that AFIRMS is the largest of a global network of military medical laboratories, claiming:
AFRIMS is the largest of a global network of US Defense Department Overseas Medical Research Laboratories—with sister laboratories in Peru, Kenya, Egypt, and the Republics of Georgia and Singapore. USAMD-AFRIMS has nearly 460 staff members (predominantly Thai and US) and an annual research budget of approximately $30-35 million.
With labs in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia – and through the use of subcontractors – the US military has access to a variety of genetic materials and facilities to conduct research and develop all of the weapons its own policy papers have described.
Through US State Department-funded programs, the US could easily create “vaccine” campaigns and “clinics” to deliver the above described bioweapons in a variety of ways.
Fighting in the Dark and Shedding Some Light
The US Air Force’s paper would also point out:
Biological warfare attacks may resemble a natural disease outbreak phenomenon and it would be very difficult to trace back to the source, thereby discounting the perpetrator’s actions.
And indeed, nations without the ability to independently sequence, detect, and react to ethnic-specific genetic bioweapons could already have been targeted, or could be targeted at any moment without any means of even knowing, let alone reacting.
On the other hand, nations with not only a well-developed biotech industry, but also with military labs focused on both detecting and launching biological warfare with such weapons – it would be like fighting a war against a blindfolded enemy.
To remove the blindfold, governments and military institutions around the world, as well as communities and local institutions, would need to develop and have access to a quick and efficient means to sequence DNA, spot abnormalities, and develop possible corrective gene therapies to repair or “patch” malicious weaponized DNA introduced into a population.
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fecal transplant also saves the healthcare system a conservative $2100 in direct costs, meaning that the 21,000 treatments that OpenBiome has sent out have saved at least $44 million.
FMT has also gotten safer. Because stool banking programs can use a small number of donors for a large number of treatments, they can be very selective. Fewer than 3 percent of people pass OpenBiome’s medical screening process, so these days, it is easier to get into Harvard than to become a stool donor.
Pratik Panchal 97 percent of the U.S. population lives within 2 hours of a fecal transplant provider
A need for an FDA-approved fecal transplant
Despite this progress, there are problems: without FDA approval, the treatment preparations aren’t covered by insurance. As well, even with FDA’s flexible policy, many clinicians run into significant institutional barriers when trying to bring this unapproved treatment to their hospitals. Most importantly, under the current arrangement, the FDA does not have oversight of stool banks providing material for C. diff (although OpenBiome has voluntarily created mechanisms for FDA oversight).
The FDA’s stance was never meant to last. When physicians and medical associations advocated for FDA to allow FMT in these cases, they pointed to the lack of alternatives for patients. In principle, then, once an FDA-approved treatment exists for adequately addressing recurrent C. difficile infection, the role for an unapproved alternative is less clear. We always imagined that an FDA approved product would eventually replace unapproved FMT.
However, the commercial derivatives of FMT that are currently under development produced lackluster results in their latest studies, either failing or narrowly out-performing antibiotic controls. Meanwhile, reported cure rates from 2,050 patients in OpenBiome’s clinical network average 84 percent. This clinical experience is consistent with efficacy observed across multiple randomized trials that have evaluated the use of stool transplants for recurrent C. diff patients. It suggests that when the entire microbial community is delivered appropriately, this treatment can be transformative for patients.
We launched OpenBiome to ensure that patients would have safe access to FMT until an FDA-approved product became available. But, in light of conflicting results between conventional FMT and commercial replacements, we owe it to patients to evaluate the treatment through adequate, well-controlled trials. Ultimately, we don’t want to see patients lose access to what might end up being the treatment most likely to save their lives.
What FDA approval requires
To preserve patient access to this treatment option, and given the scale that FMT has reached, demonstrating that the intervention works consistently is the right thing to do. That said, it costs tens of millions of dollars, invested in new manufacturing systems and robust clinical trials, to gain FDA approval. As a nonprofit organization, OpenBiome can’t access the resources needed to do so.
So, members of OpenBiome’s leadership partnered with MIT scientists to launch a separate company called Finch Therapeutics. OpenBiome will license its stool banking technology to Finch’s team of microbiologists, data scientists, and drug delivery experts to enable Finch to pursue FDA approval for a fecal transplant pill.
While Finch undertakes this years-long process, OpenBiome will continue its nonprofit mission of providing FMT treatments to patients under the current FDA policy and supporting research on the human microbiome. With resources from its collaboration with Finch, it will support early-stage, high-risk, long-term research programs that we hope will point the way towards important new breakthroughs for patients.
The way forward
In the past few years, we’ve seen the rise of fecal transplantation for treating C. diff. The scientific community has also begun to demonstrate that the bacteria in our guts play a wide-ranging role in our health, from chronic autoimmune conditions and metabolic diseases to malnutrition and mental health, among others. As we begin to understand these relationships, we will learn how to harness bacterial communities to protect and advance our health.
Both of us have seen the transformative effect that this treatment has had on tens of thousands of people. From a policy perspective, the objective should be to develop this new class of microbiome therapies in a way that optimizes its positive impact on public health. It was the right decision to allow patients to access this therapy when there is no other hope. Now, it’s right to continue to test the treatment, expanding access in line with our understanding of the risks and benefits it poses.In any other country, this would be just another car launch. After all, mass-market compact sedans are a dime a dozen, and every five or so years each gets a redesign. And now, it's the Honda Civic's turn – so what's the big deal?
It's not as if the Civic is the world's top-selling compact, let alone the top-selling car. In most major markets, it doesn't crack the Top 20. Heck, Honda no longer even sells the Civic in Japan, its home market.
In Canada, however, the Civic is huge. Honda Canada calls its owner base Civic Nation.
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Since 1988, 4.5 million Civics have been built in this country – one in eight of all the 35 million Civics built globally since 1973. And the Civic is on track to make 2015 its 18th consecutive year as Canada's top-selling passenger car, a run that began in 1998 when, as reported by Canadian Auto World magazine, the "Honda Civic didn't just remove Chev Cavalier from its car-sales leadership throne – it kicked the Chev right out of the room."
To put that in perspective, last year the Civic – one of nine nameplates in Honda's Canadian portfolio – accounted for 43 per cent of the brand's total sales here. In the United States, where mid-size sedans outsell compacts, the Civic last year ranked fourth in overall car sales and its share of the Honda total was only 24 per cent.
How did the Civic achieve its Canadian break-out? In 1998, it was midway through its sixth generation – a generation that arguably was the first of the more mature, conservative Civics, following five previous generations of whiz-kid cars that were perhaps too boldly styled and technically advanced to have broad mainstream appeal.
And, says Honda Canada senior product planner Hayato Mori, 1998 coincided with a mid-cycle freshening that introduced a new emphasis on value. Additionally, the Civic was so well rounded – like a decathlete, says Mori; not a superstar at any one thing, but good at everything – and it kept accumulating customers.
Throw in high owner loyalty – "bulletproof" and "Honda" are words that frequently co-exist in the same sentence – and the snowball effect kept the Civic on top year after year, despite periodic challenges from the Toyota Corolla, Mazda3 and Hyundai Elantra.
Still, nothing lasts forever. Early reviews of the 2012-2015 ninth generation were lukewarm at best. Reportedly, development of the car had been disrupted by the 2008-2009 credit crisis, and Honda scaled back its planned investment in the redesign. Perhaps, then, Honda is making up lost ground when it tells us the 10th generation is the most comprehensively new Civic since the 1973 pioneer.
The 2016 also features a new level of Canadian content. The Honda plant in Alliston, Ont., was the global lead plant for putting the new Civic into production – the first time that responsibility has been delegated to a plant outside Japan.
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"Lead plant" doesn't just mean Alliston began building the 2016s first; it means Alliston developed the manufacturing equipment and processes that were taught to the eight other factories worldwide that make Civics. The significance of that role is deepened by the fact that the 2016 Civic is extensively new, including its base engine, which is also built in Alliston.
The 2016 Civic also reflects a new approach and attitude. Civics sold in Europe were significantly different from the North American versions, and on this side of the Atlantic "we lost the excitement and focused only on North American mass-market rivals like the Corolla," says North American development leader, Gary Evert. "We wanted to change that and build the best compact car in the world."
With a focus on elevating the car's dynamics, the engineering team bench-marked the best compacts in Europe, including premium compacts like the Audi A3.
The new architecture was developed by Honda's U.S. operation, but will be the same in all markets, and will include future coupe and five-door hatchback body styles, as well as Si and Type R go-faster versions (the latter – which for the first time is coming to Canada – is a rabid pocket-rocket). Additional variants will be rolled out over the next 18 months.
Yet to be determined is whether the North American Type R will be based, like previous other-market versions, on the still-to-be-revealed hatchback, or on the sort-of-revealed coupe, which was the basis of the "concept car" teaser at the New York auto show last April.
Either way, Honda is bent on restoring its appeal to engaged, enthusiastic drivers. Meanwhile, it's likely the left-brain-motivated majority of Civic Nation will keep buying the cars regardless. Even in 2012, the first full year of the critically-dissed ninth generation, the Civic actually grew its share of the compact-car market. And it achieved the same share in 2014.
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That said, the segment itself is steadily declining, as buyer tastes shift to compact CUVs. Honda sold 66,000 Civics in Canada last year, down from its peak of 72,500 in 2008. But Honda Canada won't be hurting if sales never get back to that level. Over the same period, Honda's compact CUV, the CR-V, almost doubled its sales, from 20,500 to 37,800.
A similar shift occurred in the United States, where most of Alliston's Civic production goes. By a happy coincidence, the other vehicle assembled at Alliston is the CR-V.
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The acclaimed Fox sci-fi drama series Fringe simultaneously comes to a close while celebrating its 100th episodes with its series finale. Exploring the human condition through the prism of parallel universes, unexplainable phenomena and unimaginable threats, the show’s five seasons were possible thanks, in large part, to its devoted and loyal fan base. Now, it is reaching its epic climax with a two-hour finale that promises to be a satisfying conclusion.
During this interview with show star Joshua Jackson, he talked about what he’s going to miss most about the show, what Peter’s role will be in the finale, what he will take away from this experience as an actor, how involved he was in the conversations about what the final season would be, the fact that he didn’t think to take anything from the set as a memento, why he feels Fringe was able to engage an audience at a time when people have such short attention spans, how the finale experience compares to the finale experience he had on Dawson’s Creek, what he sees for the legacy of the series in television history, and how much he loves the ending to Peter’s journey. Check out what he had to say after the jump.
Question: What are you going to miss the most about Fringe?
JOSHUA JACKSON: The thing you end up missing the most is not actually what gets put on the screen. The hardest thing to walk away from, over a long-form TV show, is the comradery of the company, both with the crew and the group of actors. Creatively, I feel like this show came to a natural and satisfactory ending. I hope that people will be satisfied with the way that we put the story to bed. I feel like, instead of either stretching the show on for too long or having it cut off in an abortive way, we got to tell the ending of our story. For that, I’m really satisfied. But, I will miss the people that I was working with, for the last five years.
What is Peter’s role in the final two hours?
JACKSON: Well, the first of the two hours really deals with Olivia’s story, almost exclusively. It gives us, in a very Fringe-y way, a final insight into where she is or has been, over the course of this season. So, nobody other than Olivia has much of any role in that story. But then, in the finale, as much as Walter may be called on to make a sacrifice and the gang, in general, is trying to implement Walter and Donald’s plan, at least in the script, it read pretty fairly spread across all of the players. Everybody has their piece in the story. And then, ultimately, Peter’s role, as it has always been, is to be the dutiful son and the husband and father. That plays itself out in a really specific way. I don’t want to tell you how it plays itself out, but everybody is pretty engaged in the finale.
What will you take away from this experience, as an actor?
JACKSON: As an actor, I don’t know what the take-away is, only one month removed. I can tell you that the thing that’s most satisfying to me, as an actor, is the work that John [Noble] and I did, with Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman, to try to keep the father-son relationship as honest and dynamic as we could, in the center of this very, very large, crazy science fiction story. That was always really a point of focus for me. I had the chance to be on a serialized TV show and to tell my piece of it, which was the story of the prodigal son who starts off doing everything he can to get out of this world, and then eventually gets drawn in through the love of his father, and then falls in love with a woman, and then, over the course of the seasons, completely reverses to now because a dedicated son and solid and reliable boyfriend, and then husband and crazily protective father. I think that’s an interesting journey to go on. For me, as an audience member, I’m always most engaged by serialized storytelling, so as an actor, the thing that I take away from it is how much fun it is to perform a serialized story.
What is your take on Peter’s journey? Were you involved in any of the conversations about what you’re playing out in this final season?
JACKSON: To a greater extent than in any time in the prior seasons of the show, I was involved in the initial conversations about what Season 5 would be. Wyman was incredibly open this year, not just with myself, but with all of the actors, about what their characters would be and with what their final arcs would be. He gave all of us the signposts of what our season would be, in a way that hadn’t happened before. It gave us all the opportunity to plot out exactly how we thought we should be playing each of our individual characters. From that standpoint, it was actually tremendously satisfying. I felt like the Peter as Observer arc was quite interesting this year. What was always interesting to me about Fringe was that, even though the larger story was as big as it could possibly be, like saving the universe and dopplegangers, and all the rest of it, the beating heart of the story was always this family tale. So, I really enjoyed the fact that, at the center of what was driving Peter and Olivia this year, was both the recovery and loss of their child, and being a couple trying to grapple with that, both individually and together. I think we did a really good job this year of having the larger story driving forward, but having the smaller interpersonal story be honest. And as always, Peter and Walter are inextricably linked. Peter mirrored all of the mistakes that his father had made, all those years ago, in regards to his own child. So, I felt it was a very satisfying story, and a proper way for our show to end.
With the Observer arc, you got to do a bit of an alternate version of Peter. Was that something that you actively wanted the opportunity to do?
JACKSON: I was never too concerned about doing an alt version. As much fun as it seemed like it was for the people who had done it, it wasn’t something that I felt was necessary for me to do to feel like I had been a part of Fringe. What was more important to me was to find what would be an honest and satisfying story, and then conclusion to the story, for the Bishop family. Neither Wyman nor myself were interested in having another season of Peter and Olivia, will they are won’t they. So, it was more interesting to have them be still a couple and still a married unit, but that was deeply, deeply, deeply damaged by the loss of their child, and to have Peter mirror the mistakes that Walter had made. The becoming an Observer portion of it was just a natural outcropping of Walter’s great sin breaking the universe to save his child because there was no place that was too far for him to go. And in the version of the story that we were telling, the most outrageous thing that Peter could do would be to become the enemy to destroy him. I thought that was actually a fairly natural outcropping, and it also gave Peter and Olivia an interesting arc to their story, as they tried to figure out how to be together again, instead of being alone together, after the loss of their child.
Did you take anything from the set as a memento to remember the series?
JACKSON: You know, people ask me that all the time. Maybe I’m just not very imaginative, but it didn’t even cross my mind while I was there. So, the answer sadly is no.
How do you feel about the way Fringe engaged its audience, in today’s TV world that makes it easy for people to disengage?
JACKSON: In the true way of popular media, some of it was intentional. I know, from the very beginning, Bad Robot wanted to put a second layer beyond just watching the show. And I know that Fox was really keen on that, too, as a way to deepen people’s experience of Fringe. And the audience itself took that and ran with it in a way that went beyond the wildest imaginations of anybody who was engaged, in the beginning. As much as every TV show is trying to reach out to its audience, it really is the audience itself, in our case, that continued to drive their own interest and continued to keep each other engaged. As much as we tried to help them along, the community of Fringe became totally self-supporting. When you talk about Fringe, not just as a narrative experience on screen, one of the more interesting thing that’s come out of it is that community built around the show and how powerful that can be in tipping the scales towards the show surviving or failing. By traditional metrics, our show would have been off the air at least last year, but probably two years ago, except the passion of our fan base made it impossible for our show to be dismissed, in the way that, even 10 years ago, science fiction shows were quite often lost. The fan base and the passion of the fan base is a large part of the story of the show Fringe.
Even though they’re very different shows, you’ve been through a series finale before, with Dawson’s Creek, which had an equally emotional impact with its fans. How would you compare the two experiences that you’ve had with these finales?
JACKSON: There are oddly a lot of similarities. Clearly, I’m a decade, or maybe even more, older than I was when we finished Dawson’s, but I’ve had the good luck, on both of the TV shows that I’ve worked on, to know, going into the last season, that it was the last season. That gives you an opportunity on set to properly say goodbye to the people that you’re working with, and it also has a really good way of focusing the mind on trying to make sure that, no matter how hard it is and no matter how tired you are, you give everything that you have to those last shows because there is no tomorrow. You want to make sure that you go out on the highest note possible. So, the feeling on set, both times, was quite similar. It’s an almost carnival-like feeling, as you get towards the end of this huge experience in everybody’s lives. It’s a very cathartic thing. At the end, you look around at this group of people who you’ve spent 70 hours a week with, for nine months out of the year, for the last four or five years, and you have a chance to just take stock and go, “Oh, my god, I can’t believe we did this!” And at the same time, creatively, because you know it’s the end, you have the opportunity to finish it on your own terms, which is not often the case in television. With Dawson’s Creek, I wasn’t a fan of 90210 and that wasn’t particularly my genre of show. Fringe, on the other hand, is right up my alley. I probably have more of a personal stake in the climax of this show and making sure that it is a satisfactory end to the journey the audience has been on. I hope we achieve that.
Do you have a personal favorite episode of Fringe?
JACKSON: I’ve been asked that question before, and I have a couple of pat answers, but the truth is that there’s no specific episode that would jump out to me because the experience of making this show is so different from the experience of watching this show. The things that I will take from the experience are not specific episodes or even specific scenes, but storylines and great days at work. The thing that is probably the most cherished piece of the experience for me is the ability to have this long-form story with John Noble, and the work that we did to try to make that father-son dynamic work.
This show has always been critically acclaimed, but hasn’t received the level of viewership that it deserved. How do you think will Fringe be viewed, in the future? What will its legacy be, in television history?
JACKSON: This is a topic that I could talk about for a couple of hours because I find it really fascinating. A brief version of my answer to that is that I feel like Fringe and its afterlife is a test case for the new way that television works. Fringe, in an odd way, started its afterlife while it was still on the air. The community of the show is currently strong and vibrant, and I have a funny feeling that the afterlife of this show, as much as we who have been making it for the last five years are finishing our portion of it, will live on in that community. How that manifests itself, I don’t know. I think there will probably be a lot of fan fiction. Maybe there will even be some sort of filmed addendum to this show, whether television or podcast, or however it manifests itself. But, I feel like the afterlife of Fringe is the test case for how modern cult shows are going to live on, after they go off the air.
What would you like to see happen with Peter, in the future beyond the end of the series?
JACKSON: The proper ending that for the Peter that we’ve known on screen for the last five years actually happens in the finale. I love the ending. I think it makes really good sense and it wraps up his story in a way that is intertwined with all of the characters around him, but specifically with Olivia, Walter and Etta. I think it is a proper ending to the person and the story that we’ve been watching for the last five years. And I feel that way, truthfully, for Olivia, Walter and Peter. Olivia and Peter end in a proper space. Olivia, Peter and Walter end in a proper space. And Peter and Walter get to the place that they need to be. So, for our story, it ends tonight. But, the beauty of what Wyman has done is that he allows the space for people to live on with these characters, should they desire to. I know that’s a pretty fuzzy answer, but I don’t want to give away any of the plot details of the finale.An apparent message from a hacker with protest group “Anonymous” was taken by police as a direct threat against the mayor of Orlando and an investigation has been launched, according to published reports.
Police made the announcement after a photo of the mayor’s home was found hanging from a street sign, along with a Guy Fawkes mask — the signature symbol of Anonymous, popularized by the movie “V for Vendetta.”
The Orlando Sentinel reported that police were stepping up patrols in the neighborhood in search of “anybody who looks like they don’t belong there.”
“It was just proving a point,” an Anonymous Twitter account explained. “Anon will always be non-violent… we are however watching. Expect us.”
Anonymous has been on a hacking campaign against websites hosted by the City of Orlando and other groups promoting the city, in response to the arrests of more than 20 activists who merely sought to feed the city’s homeless population in a public park.
So far they’ve toppled the websites of the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, the Orlando International Airport, Orlando’s fraternal Order of Police, the mayor’s reelection site and two popular tourist and events websites featuring the city’s attractions.
They have also sent an image (pictured) of Walt Disney mascot Mickey Mouse, face covered by a Guy Fawkes mask, to tens of thousands of fax machines and Orlando-based email addresses, in an effort to drum up support for feeding the homeless.
A spokesman with Food Not Bombs in Orlando told Raw Story earlier this week that they see the hackers’ campaign as a “distraction” to the real work at hand: feeding the city’s homeless population, estimated to be near 10,000.
Anonymous says its campaign, formally titled “Operation Orlando,” is meant to drum up political and media support for Food Not Bombs and encourage city officials to rethink policies that push poor people out of downtown.Teen Wolf season 5: premiere date (2015)
posted in TV series | 73 Comments
MTV renewed Teen Wolf for a season 5 of 20 episodes which will be split into two parts. We know premiere air date in 2015!
TV-channel: MTV
Pilot episode: June 5, 2011
Creator: Jeff Davis
Season 1 Episode 1: 2.17 million U.S. viewers
…
Season 4 Episode 1: 2.18 million U.S. viewers
There is a little doubt the «Teen Wolf» television series will be renewed for season 5, but the fact that 20 episodes are to be financed has been very surprising to the fans.
The creators are sure the full season will pay off and will help the project to keep the status of popular MTV show.
According to the announcements, the new season will be launched in June 29, 2015 and it will be divided into two parts. The second half of the episodes should be expected at the beginning of 2016.
UPDATE 1 (Nov.23, 2015): Teen Wolf returns (Season 5B) with new episodes on Tuesday — January 5, 2016 (at 9/8c).For PC-
For Laptops-
For Macs-
FAQ/Trouble Shooting
Before reporting a bug, refresh your page or play the one on dolldivine to see if that fixes it. Not trying to seem rude, but I've tested the "bugs" people have told me about and most of the ones that people report don't show on any of the computers I try. That means it was only on your end. If it's a constant glitch though, I don't mind taking a look to see if it was a coding-side error.
FLASH GAMES ARE DYING. Wolf Maker will be gone by 2020, so click the following link to learn about the update: fav.me/dcme7jz Play the Unleashed version here: fav.me/d5yqawm Comments permanently disabled because of spam and chain letters and other random nonsense. If you want to show me your wolves, feel free to post links on my profile or send notes. You may message me with questions(), but please don't ask for certain maker types or try to give me suggestions for my next maker. I already have projects of my own lined up and there's no scarcity of ideas in that area. This game will no longer be updated.You MAY create adoptables and sell the characters for points or fake money though. No real cash profits. Just know that when you're selling adoptables, you are not selling the rights to the artwork, just the design of the character.The artwork is mine, but the characters are yours. Feel free to draw them in your own style and use them as you like for books, stories, roleplay, etc.And obviously, don't claim to have drawn them. A link back or credit is appreciated if you upload these.There should be a key on your keyboard that says Prt Scr(Print Screen), press it, then open up an image program like Paint or Photoshop, GIMP, etc. Go to Edit, then choose Paste and save your image.There should be an "Fn" button somewhere on your keyboard, press and hold it and hit your prt scr button at the same time. Then open up an image program like Paint or Photoshop, GIMP, etc. Go to Edit, then choose Paste and save.Command+Shift+4 makes you select an area of the screen and then saves the shot on the desktop.I found a bug.I don't update this game anymore, so I probably won't fix it. No one's found a bug in the past year anyways, I doubt any will pop up now. |PI can't screenshot. How do I do that?WEB SEARCH. There is already information on the game itself and the description above on how to take a screenshot. If your computer refuses or is incapable of taking a screenshot at all, do an internet search for a screenshot program. It is not a function in the game, it's a function on your computer! So if it isn't working, it's operator error, WEH WEH >:ICan you make a save function?Flash 8, the program that I used to create this game, uses ActionScript 2.0, which does not have the capability to program such a function. Games that you have seen a save function on were made with ActionScript 3.0, which I HAVE NOT been educated on. You asking me to go off and learn 3.0(not that I haven't already wasted days of my life TRYING), is like me asking you to go make a game like this. Right now, do eet now, get to da choppa. >BI Believe it(or not), but I am actually NOT a programmer. This entire game was made up of different functions and ideas I wanted the game to perform by searching for tutorials on GOOGLE!How do I save the image if I don't have an image program?I once worked in a place that sold computers. I didn't see a single computer that didn't have some sort of image pasting program, so this idea does not compute. However, you obviously need something that you can paste a screenshot into. The only thing I can think of is to get GIMP or Microsoft Paint. GIMP is free and works just like photoshop. If you need extra help for something like this though, please consult someone like a parent or computer knowledgeable person(Or Google!). I've never used GIMP before, so I really can't give opinions or help with it's installation. And if for some reason you can't get your screenshot function to work, go to google and search for help there.When are you going to update this?Never again! This game is ooooooooooold and I have lost interest in it. My art style has also changed since 2009, so I can't stand to look at this thing, bleck! At any rate, look forward to new makers in the future.Can you please add new stuff?See the previous question. ^Can you add more poses?First of all, it took me 6 months to build this game just using ONE pose. And second, see the previous question.What program did you use to make this?I used Macromedia Flash 8, which you can already tell by the title(latest releases are owned by Adobe), is an old version of flash. If you want information on how to purchase flash, use google. Or common sense.Can I use this to make a wolf? / Can I use this to make a wolf based on a character that isn't a wolf? / Can I use this at all? Etc, etc.If I didn't want people using it, it wouldn't be on the internet, that's for sure.Can I use the character I create for a book/roleplay/movie/game?The artwork belongs to me, so you can't use it in a book or movie or game(feel free to post it to a roleplay website, if they allow that). The character itself though, belongs to you. So you may roleplay them, write a story about them, or build a game around the character to your heart's content. As long as my artwork doesn't show up in the final product, everything is good.Can I use the artwork in my free game? / Can I use the artwork in my non-profit book?No. Even if the game or book is non-profit and you gave credit, the wolf maker's intended purpose, aside from killing time and having derpy fun, is to help with the creation and ideas of characters and also to use as a visual reference for those who may lack the artistic skill to draw their character(not that this artwork is much to look at. If I saw it in a game, I would give that game a 1/10. Well, it has a nice PVP system, so 2/10, but 1/10 for artwork cause, eww).Can I use the image for an avatar/icon/profile pic?As long as you aren't claiming the artwork as your own, go for it. Not to toot my own horn, but most people recognize the wolf maker wolf as a doll base anyways, so I don't mind people using them in this way.Singularity or singular point may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics [ edit ]
Mathematics [ edit ]
Mathematical singularity, a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined or not "well-behaved", for example infinite or not differentiable
Geometry [ edit ]
Singular point of a curve, where the curve is not given by a smooth embedding of a parameter
Singular point of an algebraic variety, a point where an algebraic variety is not locally flat
Rational singularity
Complex analysis [ edit ]
Essential singularity, a singularity near which a function exhibits extreme behavior
Isolated singularity, a mathematical singularity that has no other singularities close to it
Movable singularity, a concept in singularity theory
Removable singularity, a point at which a function is not defined but at which it can be so defined that it is continuous at the singularity
Natural sciences [ edit ]
Singularity (system theory), refers in dynamical and social systems to a context in which a small change can cause a large effect
Gravitational singularity, a region in spacetime in which tidal gravitational forces become infinite Initial singularity, a hypothesized singularity of infinite density before quantum fluctuations caused the Big Bang and subsequent inflation that created the Universe
Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, theorems in general relativity theory about when gravitation produces singularities such as black holes
Prandtl–Glauert singularity, the point at which a sudden drop in air pressure occurs
Singularity (climate), a weather phenomenon associated with a specific calendar date
Van Hove singularity in the density of states of a material
Technology [ edit ]
Singularity (operating system), an operating system developed by Microsoft Research written in managed code
Mechanical singularity, a position or configuration of a mechanism or a machine where the subsequent behavior cannot be predicted
Technological singularity, a hypothetical moment in time when any physically conceivable level of technological advancement is attained instantaneously
Singularity (software), a container technology that does not require root permissions to run
Arts and entertainment [ edit ]
Film and television [ edit ]
Literature [ edit ]
Albums [ edit ]
Songs [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Singularity (video game), a 2010 video game developed by Raven Software
(video game), a 2010 video game developed by Raven Software Endgame: Singularity, a 2005 video game
, a 2005 video game Steins;Gate (videogame) | Singularity event inside a black hole
Organizations [ edit ]
Singularity University, a California Benefit Corporation part university, part think-tank, part business incubator, based on Ray Kurzweil's theory of technological singularity
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly "The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence" (SIAI) Singularity Summit, its annual conferenceWith polls suggesting a nail-biting finish to the referendum on Scottish independence Wednesday, it is unsurprising that so many Westminster MPs pleaded for the Queen to make a clear public declaration in favour of the "No" campaign. The unusually blunt response from Buckingham Palace, however, is far more intriguing, especially to Canadians.
"The Monarch is above politics and those in political office have a duty to ensure that this remains the case," came the sharp reply last week. "Any suggestion that the Queen should wish to influence the outcome of the current referendum campaign is categorically wrong."
The most she was willing to offer in this final week of the campaign was a studiously neutral expression of hope that, "people will think very carefully about the future," before casting their ballots. But she pointedly declined to say which version of the future she supports.
As Britain's Head of Government, David Cameron could still constitutionally advise -- essentially require -- the Queen to deliver an unambiguous endorsement of the union. But for him to do so now would be counterproductive. It would be obvious to any audience that the Queen's words were not her own, and those Scots who most support the monarchy might turn against the cause of a Prime Minister who appeared ready to coerce their Queen into acting against her judgement.
That the Queen has effectively out-manoeuvred a Prime Minister is neither rare nor unamusing. But that she has done so on the subject of a referendum on secession reveals the complexities underlying her office across the Commonwealth realms.
Not so long ago, the Queen spoke with "her Prime Minister" on the very subject of taking a hand in his referendum campaign. The contents of the surreptitiously recorded telephone call stand in stark contrast to the palace's recent pronouncements.
"Our latest polls are showing that the separatists are going to win the referendum |
the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.MD5 is known to be broken for more than a decade now. Practical attacks have been shown since 2006, and public collision generator tools are also available since that time. The dangers of the developed collision attacks were demonstrated by academia and white-hat hackers too, but in case of the Flame malware we’ve also seen malicious parties exploiting the weaknesses in the wild.
And while most have already moved away from MD5, there is still a notable group that heavily uses this obsolete algorithm: security vendors. It seems that MD5 became the de-facto standard of fingerprinting malware samples and the industry doesn’t seem to be willing to move away from this practice. Our friend Zoltán Balázs collected a surprisingly long list of security vendors using MD5, including the biggest names of the field.
The list includes for example Kaspersky, the discoverer of Flame who just recently reminded us that MD5 is dead, but just a few weeks earlier released a report including MD5 fingerprints only – ironically even the malware they analysed uses SHA-1 internally…
And in case you think that MD5 “good enough” for malware identification let’s take another example. The following picture shows the management console of a FireEye MAS – take a good look at the MD5 hases, the time delays and the status indicators:
Download sample files
As you can see, binaries submitted for analysis are identified by their MD5 sums and no sandboxed execution is recorded if there is a duplicate (thus the shorter time delay). This means that if I can create two files with the same MD5 sum – one that behaves in a malicious way while the other doesn’t – I can “poison” the database of the product so that it won’t even try to analyze the malicious sample!
After reading the post of Nat McHugh about creating colliding binaries I decided to create a proof-of-concept for this “attack”. Although Nat demonstrated the issue with ELF binaries, the concept is basically the same with Windows (PE) binaries that security products mostly target. The original example works by diverting the program execution flow based on the comparison of two string constants. The collision is achieved by adjusting these constants so that they match in one case, but not in the other.
My goal was to create two binaries with the same MD5 hash; one that executes arbitrary shellcode (wolf) and another that does something completely different (sheep). My implementation is based on the earlier work of Peter Selinger (the PHP script by Nat turned out to be unreliable across platforms…), with some useful additions:
A general template for shellcode hiding and execution;
RC4 encryption of the shellcode so that the real payload only appears in the memory of the wolf but not on the disk or in the memory of the sheep;
Simplified toolchain for Windows, making use of Marc Stevens fastcoll (Peter used a much slower attack, fastcoll reduces collision generation from hours to minutes);
The approach may work with traditional AV software too as many of these also use fingerprinting (not necessarily MD5) to avoid wasting resources on scanning the same files over and over (although the RC4 encryption results in VT 0/57 anyway…). It would be also interesting to see if “threat intelligence” feeds or reputation databases can be poisoned this way.
The code is available on GitHub. Please use it to test the security solutions in your reach and persuade vendors to implement up-to-date algorithms before compiling their next marketing APT report!
For the affected vendors: Stop using MD5 now! Even if you need MD5 as a common denominator, include stronger hashes in your reports, and don’t rely solely on MD5 for fingerprinting!This 1961 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider (chassis 167408) has been a race car for much of its life, and was recommissioned for the “Alfas at the Glen” vintage event in 2010. The seller shares a long list of race components, and offers many good photos here on his Photobucket page. Find it listed just two days ago here on the AlfaBB in Rochester, New York for $35,000.
The Panasport alloy wheels are always a solid choice for a vintage racer, though the steel Borrani steel wheelsor TZ alloys would be appropriate as well. The seller notes that all of the road trim comes with the car, so it could easily return to street duty. It is interesting that so much effort when into the build, and that the car has not been on track again since the maiden 2010 voyage.
The entire interior, underside, and engine bay have been painted in grey urethane epoxy paint for cleanliness and easier crack detection. The Accusump oil accumulator is a good insurance policy, and the modern race seat does not look period but offers better support and safety. The alloy dash panel and full slate of gauges behind the simple aeroscreen are cleanly done.
Under the hood, the conservatively built Alfa twin-cam is based on a genuine Veloce block, and likely sounds wonderful with the short stacks dual Webers. A big remote oil filter, combined with a big oilpan and the accumulator, shows this engine is built to last. The seller notes a bunch of other improvements, with Koni shocks, an aluminum Panhard bar, and dual Tilton master cylinders heading the list.
We can tell that plenty more than the asking price was spent on this Alfa during the build process. We’d love to have it for either a street or race car.And now there are eight — the Vancouver Whitecaps today announced they have signed their eighth Homegrown Player to the club’s roster, the most in Major League Soccer.
But whereas the previous signings came directly out of the club’s residency program, Vancouver native Ben McKendry took a detour to the U.S. collegiate ranks at the University of New Mexico before returning home.
“Ben is a talented young central midfielder who has earned this opportunity,” Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson said in a statement. “He has worked hard to continue his progression, which is credit to both Ben and the University of New Mexico coaching staff. We’re thrilled to add another local talent who has not only come through our residency program, but who calls Vancouver home.”
The Caps’ other Homegrowns — Russell Teibert, Caleb Clarke, Sam Adekugbe, Kianz Froese, Marco Bustos, Marco Carducci and Ethen Sampson — came directly up the club’s pipeline, all but Sampson from the residency program.
McKendry joined the Whitecaps youth set-up in 2007 at the age of 14 and spent five years in the residency program, including the 2012 USSDA Championship final. He then led the University of New Mexico to the College Cup Final Four for the second time in program history in 2013. McKendry was named first-team All-Conference USA as a junior and sophomore, and received second-team all-American honours as a junior.
“It’s a dream come true to play in my hometown for a team that I have been connected with for such a long time,” McKendry said in a statement. “I can’t express how thankful I am to all of my teammates and coaches at the University of New Mexico and to Whitecaps FC staff, especially Bart Choufour. I’d also like to thank my local mentor and trainer Jason Kyle, and my family and friends who have supported my dream to play professional soccer.”
The 5-foot-11, 160-pound midfielder appeared in 61 of 62 University of New Mexico matches over the past three seasons, starting 52 of his appearances. McKendry finished with 14 goals, including five game-winners, and five assists.Unshackle the Middle Class
This is a guest post by Scott Kupor, managing partner, Andreessen Horowitz.
We are holding back the middle class in America. But it’s not for the reasons you think, and the culprits are not those most people think of. Rather, the US government has systematically cut the middle class out of the most important wealth creation opportunity for the next 50 years. Through a series of byzantine regulations, the government has made it virtually impossible for working Americans to enjoy the fruits of America’s greatest strength: innovation.
Over the past decade or so, regulatory changes have reduced the frequency with which the stocks of high-growth companies get offered to the public during their most dramatic phases of growth. That prevents ordinary investors from getting in on the wealth creation, and hampers the creation of middle class jobs. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution.
We’ll get to that shortly. But first let’s look at the cases of two companies founded by Harvard drop-outs.
Microsoft went public in 1986 at roughly a $500 million market cap. Today, Microsoft has a market cap of $234 billion. Thus, the public investors in Microsoft have had the opportunity to realize $233.5 billion in market cap appreciation; the private investors had only a $500 million head-start. From IPO, a single share of Microsoft stock has appreciated close to 500x.
Facebook, by contrast, went public in 2012 at roughly a $100 billion market cap. That means that, whatever public stock price appreciation Facebook has over the coming years, private investors have had a $100 billion head-start against the public investors. Even if you were prescient enough to buy Facebook at its public low of approximately a $50 billion market cap, the private investors remain way ahead. If you bought Facebook stock at its IPO, to realize a similar multiple that Microsoft’s public shareholders have earned, Facebook’s market cap would need to reach nearly $50 trillion, roughly the size of the total market capitalization of all publicly-traded companies in the world.
What accounts for the differences between these two cases?
Up until the last decade, about 300 start-up companies went public each year, with more than half of those companies raising less than $50 million in proceeds (small IPOs.) The average age of the companies at the time of IPO was just under five years old.
Fast forward to the most recent decade and fewer than 100 companies each year have gone public, with less than one-third of those being small IPOs. The average age of the companies going public has also roughly doubled to 9.4 years.
Why should we care if the world has fewer billionaire public company founders and CEOs?
Because IPOs democratize wealth creation and create jobs for the 99.9% of Americans who are unlikely to be the next Zuckerberg, fueling long-term economic growth for the country and guaranteeing access for all to the American Dream.
Indeed, we are quickly creating a two-tiered investment market—one for wealthy, accredited individuals and financial institutions and a second for the remaining 96% of Americans.
If you are an accredited investor (which the rules define as someone with annual income of at least $200,000 or a net worth of $1,000,000), you can buy or sell privately-held stock of high growth, startup companies via exchanges such as Second Market and SharesPost. If you are an accredited investor, you can become a limited partner in one of over 400 venture capital firms that invest in such companies. If you are an accredited investor, you can buy privately held stock of such companies directly from the issuing companies themselves.
However, If you are among the 96% of Americans that are not accredited investors, you can wait the 9.4 years that it takes for the average startup to go public and miss out on all of the price appreciation in the private markets that inures to the benefit of accredited investors.
Despite the many very positive changes introduced by Congress via the 2012 Jumpstart our Business Start-up Act (or the JOBS Act), the middle class remains sidelined. On the one hand, the JOBS Act potentially exacerbates the already “long time to IPO problem” by increasing to 2,000 the number of shareholders a private company may have before it is required to report as a public company.
Yet, in the same JOBS Act, we welcome “the 96%” least-wealthy Americans to invest (via crowdfunding) in the absolute riskiest stage of new company formation—early, seed-stage financings. Somehow, we have concluded that unaccredited investors should be able to likely lose their hard-earned money by investing in the most risky of asset classes. Yet precisely as the risk diminishes dramatically in the subsequent stages of a company’s development, the spoils go only to the wealthy. As veteran investor Steve Rattner pointed out recently, most Americans would have better odds of winning the lottery than of successfully investing in seed-stage companies.
There’s another important implication of the changes that have lengthened startups’ path to IPOs. On average, the Kaufman Foundation estimates that companies that go public increase their post-IPO employment levels by approximately 45%. More significantly, for small IPOs, that number more than triples to 156%. This makes sense—an IPO is a capital raising event for a company. That new capital, in turn, is invested by the company to increase growth, which requires more employees to achieve.
Had we not seen IPO volumes fall off of a cliff in the last decade, the Kaufman Foundation estimates that we would have created an estimated 1.9 million new jobs. Even more significantly, Professor Enrico Moretti of UC Berkeley has identified a multiplier effect with technology-related jobs. For every one new technology job, Professor Enrico estimates that five new service sector jobs are created.
To put the job numbers in context, the number of total US employees in 2001 was just shy of 138 million people; 10 years later, that number was only 139 million. Thus, the potential to add a minimum of two million jobs—and potentially more with the multiplier effect—to an otherwise stagnant employment environment is immense.
What’s the solution?
A number of policy and market changes—all with well-intentioned goals—have created a hostile environment for new IPOs and, in particular, for small IPOs. Arguably the most significant among the changes was the 2001 move to decimalization. Much has been written about the “death star” of decimalization, a phrase first coined by David Weild, former vice chairman of Nasdaq. But simply stated, decimalization eliminated all of the profits from trading small-capitalization stocks. How did this happen? Because decimalization reduced the “tick size,” the minimum increment in which stock prices can trade, to a penny (from its previous level of 25 cents). Thus, a trader who previously might have purchased a block of small-cap shares knowing that a $0.25 tick size likely represented his minimum profit potential on a trade now found his minimum profit potential reduced to a penny. Facing this uneconomic situation, small-cap traders simply abandoned the market, killing liquidity for these stocks.
The 2003 Global Research Settlement (which prohibited investment banking revenue from subsidizing investment research) proved the final death knell. Pre-decimalization and pre-Global Research Settlement, traders of small IPOs could actually make money, and profits from this trading activity subsidized the publication of investment research for small IPOs. Thus, the double whammy of these two policy changes not only sucked all of the profits out of trading the stocks of small IPOs—making it very difficult for these companies to build liquidity by attracting retail investors—but also choked off the use of trading profits to fund research on these companies. Lacking the ample liquidity that active trading desks and investment research create, newly public small IPOs simply can’t attract new, long-term shareholders, raise new capital and ultimately grow their businesses.
All hope is not lost, however.
The simple act of jettisoning decimalization would resuscitate the small-cap IPO market. And the US Securities and Exchange Commission already has the authority under the JOBS Act to make this happen. The SEC could test this change in the form of a broad, intermediate-term pilot and could even provide boards of directors of small IPO issuers the discretion to determine whether doing so would be in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.
Here’s what higher “tick sizes” will mean:
—Trading desks will commit capital to trading small-cap stocks.
—Research analysts will cover small-cap stocks.
—Institutional sales desks will market small-cap stocks to their clients.
—Retail investors will return to this market.
As a result, we will increase liquidity and reduce volatility for small-cap stocks, shocking the small-cap IPO market back to life and breaking the shackles that are holding back the middle class.AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, John Hart Hundreds of labor union members and supporters gather for a rally to protest the collective bargaining measures of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's administration at the Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin, Thursday, August 25, 2011.
The Supreme Court's 4-4 deadlock in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association on Tuesday delivered a high-profile win to the labor movement. The deadlock lets stand a lower court ruling that permits unions to charge fees to both members and non-members. Last year, Sam and Jake Rosenfeld examined what's at stake in the ongoing battle over labor unions for the Summer 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine.
By Daniel DiSalvo
304 pp. Oxford University Press $27.95
By John J. DiIulio, Jr.
184 pp. Templeton Press $9.07
Earlier this year, Wisconsin Governor and GOP presidential aspirant Scott Walker answered a question about how he’d handle the Islamic State with the assurance that “if I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.” Many people ridiculed Walker’s equation of Islamist warriors with American supporters of public employees’ collective-bargaining rights. But two days later he confirmed how deadly serious he is about fighting public-sector unions when he declared that “the most significant foreign-policy decision” of his lifetime was Ronald Reagan’s 1981 replacement of striking air traffic controllers.
Like Walker, many on the right believe public-sector unions are an insidious force that should be eliminated. In contrast, liberals have often sounded ambivalent and uneasy about unions representing public employees. As organized labor’s share of the private sector continues to decline—down to 7 percent in 2014, compared with 36 percent of government workers—the public sector has become ever more central to the labor movement. And with political conflict in coming decades sure to focus on the size and scope of government, liberals need to grapple with questions about labor organization and the modern civil service.
Public-employee unions are also likely to become a subject of constitutional controversy in the next year, when the Supreme Court is expected to take up a case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which could deal the unions a significant setback. Under existing precedents, unions can collect “fair share” fees for bargaining representation and contract administration from public employees who aren’t union members. The rationale is that non-members could otherwise free-ride on the backs of their fellow workers, who pay the costs of union representation. Led by Justice Samuel Alito, the conservative majority on the Court may well strike down fair-share fees, creating an incentive for workers to abandon unions.
Two very different books—both by scholars on the center-right—provide the occasion to consider the role of public employees and their unions. Government Against Itself, by political scientist Daniel DiSalvo of City College and the Manhattan Institute, is an earnestly written, sober, and unrelenting attack on government unionism. Bring Back the Bureaucrats by John DiIulio, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is a brisk, lively polemic that surprisingly calls, on conservative grounds, for an enormous increase in the federal civil service.
DiSalvo’s explicit intent is to win over liberals in the battle against what he sees as noxious public-employee unions as opposed to their worthy and defensible private-sector counterparts. DiSalvo’s own good faith need not be questioned for a liberal reader to chafe a bit at the three-card monte game such an argument conjures up. Now that four decades of relentless assaults have succeeded in rendering the private-sector labor movement a shrunken husk of its former self, conservatives are free to extoll that movement in the effort to crush public--employee unions.
At the heart of DiSalvo’s analysis is a contrast between “two worlds of work,” with “cutthroat competition and increasing inequality” defining the private sector and “middle-class security and greater egalitarianism” defining the public sector. Equity, DiSalvo argues, demands that such imbalances be redressed, and his answer is to make public-sector work more like work in the private sector. The same argument can just as easily be applied to workers in the last redoubts of private-sector unionism. Equity serves as the rationale for a race to the bottom.
On behalf of this position, DiSalvo makes a series of arguments designed to appeal to liberals. The costs created by public-employee unions, he says, crowd out social spending, and the harms fall primarily on lower-income people, who depend more than other groups on public services. But he can make this case only by ignoring countervailing evidence.
Consider, first, the experience of other countries. Given the logic of DiSalvo’s argument, we should expect to find that wherever public-sector labor unions are strong, governance is poor and economies are weak. DiSalvo points to France, that familiar punching bag, arguing that strong public-sector unions are a key cause of the “French disease” of economic sclerosis. Readers never hear, however, about sclerosis in Sweden, Finland, and Norway—all nations with levels of public-sector unionization more than twice as high as ours. Three-quarters of Canadian government employees are covered by collective-bargaining agreements. Do these nations’ public-sector unions hamstring their governments’ “ability to address social problems” and “reduce inequality”? The lower levels of poverty and inequality in all of these countries suggest otherwise. These comparisons are not dispositive evidence that public-sector unions always contribute to economic health and social well-being, but they show the limits of DiSalvo’s logic.
Besides looking abroad, DiSalvo might also have dug deeper into the variations in public-employee unionization among states here at home. He has no systematic data to prove that states with low public-sector unionization do better on such metrics as poverty, inequality, or educational attainment. In fact, even a cursory glance at those states suggests the opposite. Mississippi has a public-sector unionization rate of just 3 percent, but it also has the highest poverty rate in the nation and ranks at or near the bottom on most measures of education. Other states with similarly weak public-sector unions include Arkansas and South Carolina, not exactly models for fighting poverty and inequality.
DiSalvo maintains that unionism in the public sector involves “serious trade-offs” with a commitment to an “active government that shields citizens from the ravages of the market and supports society’s least fortunate.” Yet public employment itself—and unionized government employment in particular—“shields citizens from the ravages of the market.” The wages and benefits of bottom-rung occupations in the public sector are more generous than in the private sector. Inequality is lower among workers in the public sector. Recent research by the sociologist David Brady and his colleagues has found that the higher a state’s unionization rate and its level of public--sector employment, the lower is its rate of household poverty.
Public-employee unions also benefit other workers outside government. With private-sector unions fighting for their lives, it increasingly falls to the comparatively strong public-sector unions to advance workers’ interests in the public arena. Many union locals organize both public- and private-sector workers and use the dues from the former to organize the latter. Increasingly, the labor movement is devoting efforts to improve living standards for nonunion workers too, winning battles to raise the minimum wage and to push low-wage employers such as Walmart to boost pay. Public-sector unions contribute to these broader gains.
The roots of these wider commitments lie in the history of public-employee unions. DiSalvo provides a useful but incomplete account of the “unseen rights revolution” that brought millions of government workers into the labor movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. What he misses is the historical connection between public-employee organizing and the civil rights movement. Union organizing drew energy from civil rights activism, and the unions’ growth contributed to the emergence of a black middle class of civil servants in increasingly African American–dominated cities. It’s a testament to the hazy place of public-sector labor in the popular historical imagination that while many people know that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, relatively few recall or ever knew what he was doing there: supporting a strike of black sanitation workers from Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. King and the Memphis strike garner only one passing mention in DiSalvo’s book.
The rise of public-employee unions also transformed the labor movement itself, strengthening its left-liberal side against the hawkish, culturally traditionalist “hard-hat” wing. Public- and service-sector unions counted higher percentages of female and minority members than the old-guard unions did, and they brought the labor movement closer to civil rights, feminist, and countercultural groups. Combining economic and cultural liberalism, the new labor movement has sought to defend advances on both of those fronts.
While DiSalvo is aware of these developments, he tends to view them as evidence merely of government unions’ full integration into a partisan patronage machine. But one person’s cynical interest-group politics is another person’s coalition for the common good. A conservative like DiSalvo can’t be expected to support public-sector unions’ contribution to broader liberal political causes. Liberals should feel differently.
IN THE WORLD DISALVO IMAGINES, public-sector unions have virtually unchecked and uncontested power and enjoy incomparable legal protections and insulation from market pressures. In low-turnout elections for municipal and state offices and off-year initiatives and referenda, the unions supposedly run the show merely by dint of showing up. And they use those advantages to “elect their own bosses”—politicians who will do their bidding by killing reforms they oppose and lavishing higher pensions, health care, and salaries on their members.
To view public unions as an unstoppable juggernaut, however, is to blind oneself to central political realities. Ever since the 1970s, anti-tax sentiment has limited the growth of public-employee wages and has led to persistent failures to fund health and pension benefits adequately. Union demands have no doubt contributed to these problems, but politicians have often asked public employees to accept promises of higher retirement benefits instead of immediate wage increases. DiSalvo implicitly takes the limits set by anti-tax politics and chronic austerity as givens; in his eyes, the fault lies entirely with workers for asking too much.
DiSalvo also criticizes unions for opposing the privatization of public services, which he believes increases efficiency. In support of that view, he relies on the academic research that supported the privatization wave of the 1980s and 1990s. But scholars of public administration have since told a less rosy story of government-by-contract, emphasizing diminished accountability, vulnerability to waste and abuse, and corruption.
A useful synthesis of this newer scholarship can be found in DiIulio’s book. Best known for his work on crime and prisons and for his brief tenure as head of faith-based services in the White House of George W. Bush, DiIulio has never been a conventional conservative. (In 1990, he published a critique of prison privatization in The American Prospect.) Instead of endorsing the usual conservative line on government, Bring Back the Bureaucrats highlights the dangers of contracting out as part of a broader argument about the rise of what he terms “leviathan by proxy.” Over the last half-century, annual federal spending in constant dollars quintupled while the number of full-time federal civil service workers increased hardly at all. What explains the gap? The federal government has discharged its ever-growing responsibilities indirectly, through grants-in-aid to states and localities, contract work with for-profit firms, and grants and fees passed on to a vast national nonprofit sector.
And what accounts for this epochal shift toward proxy governance? DiIulio points to a core, long-studied contradiction in American public opinion, famously captured in a 1967 study by Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril that found Americans to be “ideologically conservative” but “operationally liberal.” Americans hate “big government” in the abstract but like most of the programs the government carries out. Likewise, they hate taxes but hate spending cuts, too. The response of elected officials to these contradictory pressures has been to provide systematically inadequate levels of revenue necessary for federal policies and to carry out ever more of those policies through channels that don’t add to the visible ranks of the dreaded bureaucracy. The result, DiIulio argues, is “a debt-financed, proxy-administered, superficially antistatist form of big government.” Only in America.
DiIulio highlights the inadequacies and opacity of proxy government to make a counterintuitively conservative argument for adding a million new full-time civil servants to the federal ranks. The state’s invisibility, he argues, has only encouraged its expansion. He thinks that boosting the numbers and capacity of the visible, accountable government workforce, when combined with such reforms as award caps to federal contractors and a comprehensive restructuring of state-federal responsibilities over jointly financed programs, would actually limit the growth of government overall. Whatever the plausibility or desirability of that prediction, DiIulio’s analysis meshes well with a growing and pan-ideological scholarly literature on the modern American state that emphasizes its “hidden,” “delegated,” “submerged,” “extended,” and “divided” qualities. Making government and its employees at once more visible and accountable is a reform agenda implicit in much of this work.
But what kind of civil service would we want for this more visible American state? DiIulio’s focus is on federal workers, while DiSalvo’s focus is on state and local government. Unions hardly come up in DiIulio’s analysis. But the questions his book raises—about state capacity, the political forces that shape it, and the day-to-day administration of government tasks—provide useful context for evaluating DiSalvo’s arguments. While DiSalvo acknowledges the historical connection between organizing efforts and the professionalization of government work, he sees the ongoing justification for public-sector unions as tied to a fundamentally bogus vision of a “dog-eat-dog world where workers need protection from managers.” The alternative vision he advocates is one in which civil servants work to serve the public good with “little risk of exploitation.” But anti-tax and pro-privatization sentiments have been central to the decades-long failure to staff the civil service adequately and treat it professionally, and DiSalvo shows little inclination to combat such forces while he internalizes their assumptions.
A visible, accountable state run by a strong and professional civil service is a worthy goal, and one compatible with collective-bargaining rights. To take this view is not to endorse every policy stance and negotiating posture taken by public-sector unions, nor to deny that tension and sometimes conflict between government unions and public officials are both inevitable and necessary. But liberals ought to recognize the good that public-employee unions do and resist the political vision of those who seek to destroy them.Decoding the effect of the criminalisation of Section 377 on society with inputs from reputed lawyer Mrunalini Deshmukh Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment of life or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend up to ten years and shall also be liable for fine.Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section. And the punishment, imprisonment for life or up to ten years, is non-bailable.This law pertains to 1860, where the churches did not allow divorce or termination of pregnancy as that was the mindset of the legislature and the churches at that point in time (we were ruled by the British at that time).To do with flesh or bodyAny kind of sex other than the one done by a man and woman from the front is termed unnatural, i.e. both ‘Anal’ and ‘Oral’ sex are equally punishable as they are equally unnatural. This will make all gays, lesbians and most Indian men and women criminals.1. Women, whether wives or live-in partners, are protected against any kind of sexual abuse in the Domestic Violence Act. However, so far in India, marital rape is not a crime which means sexual relationship between a husband and wife post-marriage is an admitted position of law.2. All forced sex is not allowed and the concerned victim is protected under the Sexual Abuse Act.Delhi High Court had de-criminalised the Section on the basis that every individual has a right to his or her sexual preference in a free democratic society, so long as it does not harm anybody.Supreme Court has said that this law is in a document called the IPC and the laws are laid down by legislature, so they have sent it back to Parliament to define the law. They have not criminalised it. They have said that while the High Court may have given their views, it is not for judicial interpretation and should be decided only by the legislature.Article 21 of the Constitution of India- states that every individual has the right to life, so far as he or she is not doing anything that is a disgrace to society or causing harm to anybody. That you have the right to live your life independently so far as it does not cause a nuisance to society. It also gives you the right to live your life with dignity.Parents knew that their son was gay. They still married him off to avoid social embarrassment. This boy has sex with his newly-wed wife where she becomes pregnant and then the gay side of him takes prominence and he starts dating his male friend. She catches him red-handed.1. Should a parent marry off a gay or lesbian child knowing fully well that they are ruining the life of another person to whom they are marrying their child to? Is it fair for the parents to get a gay or lesbian child married off just to save their own faces in society?2. Can a spouse not blackmail his or her partner once they discover them to be bisexual? It will make all bisexual men and women criminals.3. Technically, it can be argued that just like anal sex is unnatural, so is oral. Does that not make most men and women in India who have oral sex criminals?4. The law is silent on the detection of who can be termed gays or lesbians? Do they need to be caught in the act? Can just an individual proclaiming that he is gay make him a criminal? The act is open to interpretation, the effect of which will be blackmailing, extortion and most commonly corruption.1. 7-13% of Indian adults are homosexual and indulge in this as a voluntary sexual preference.2. Most Indian men and women indulge in oral sex that will make all of them criminals.3. The current law makes the offence unbailable and can put them behind bars for life, but so long as it is a voluntary act based on an individual's sexual preference and does not harm another person, is it not going too far to term them criminals?4. It will lead to blackmailing and extortion by the police. People will do it behind closed doors as they will not have the courage to come out and admit to their ‘unnatural’ sexual preferences. That will add to health hazards.5. It will lead to harassment by spouses and unmarried lovers on discovering their partners to be bisexual or on having oral sex.6. It could lead to entrapment and sting operations against the politically powerful and the rich to blackmail them.7. Above all, our Constitution allows for the right to life under Section 21. This section violates that basic right. In addition to the right to life, it also violates our fundamental rights to liberty, equality and privacy. Liberty because it comes in the way of individual choice, equality because it discriminates against a certain class of people, and privacy because it seeks to regulate what we do behind closed doors. The only tests are: Is it non-consensual, and does it disturb public peace?Tireless. That is what we are. The added comfort of having multiple media outlets at our collective back does even more to stoke our fervor. #SaveHannibal has effectively taken the internet by storm and here is what we know so far.
Following on the heels of this update, The Hollywood Reporter unveiled an interview with Bryan Fuller where he states that he’d love to continue the relationship Hannibal already has with Amazon (owner of the show’s streaming rights) and that they do seem interested. We’d previously been informed that Amazon had declined in favor of “original content only”. but it turns out this was a rote customer service response only a few fans received. Opposing that, other fans were told the suggestion of a Hannibal pickup would be passed along to higher ups for consideration. In light of this new information coming straight from the Turducken’s horse’s mouth, the fandom is inclined to believe that maybe there really is a chance Amazon will do us all the solid of inheriting Hannibal in full. It’s current ownership of the streaming rights is the reason the show is available on Netflix via DVD only; should Netflix throw their hat in the ring, as we’ve been pushing for, Amazon streaming would be in jeopardy. It’s any port in a storm right now and we’ll keep everyone posted with news as quickly as possible. Currently, it’s still worth contacting Amazon about.
What we can all make certain to do is a) Watch Hannibal LIVE tonight at 10pm EDT, b) livetweet like a biblical flood using #Hannibal and #SaveHannibal starting after 7pm EDT to create a surge, and c) participate in this Thunderclap that’s set to hit during the July 2nd EDT broadcast. Netflix, Hulu, and Yahoo haven’t left our pool of options yet so please continue to make interest in Hannibal clear. Petitions will remain linked here.
See you all at dinner!
Like this: Like Loading...The other day, a client asked me how one makes the transition from grazing to regular meals. The first problem being that it sounds very scary.
I agree.
It’s scary because, if you have any history of hunger, whether due to not having enough money to buy food, or what I like to call “self-induced food insecurity” such as dieting or food restriction, or even due to just not placing a priority on eating regularly, and hence “forgetting” to eat for a long time — a part of you still remembers that experience, and you carry the fear of not having enough to eat inside you, sometimes for a very long time.
We talked about the fuzzy self a bit before — and it seems that the fuzzy self has a long memory. It does not forgive and forget easily.
As such, grazing and eating on demand seems very comforting. It sounds, on paper, like the perfect solution: just eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full! And, indeed, lots of people apparently do this successfully by teaching themselves to eat intuitively and to give up dieting. This is the basis for programs like Overcoming Overeating, an approach that has helped lots of people.
But |
town centres identified by Mary Portas, a retail consultant —and a further £10m to a High Street Innovation Fund.
This is all likely to be a waste of money. As fast as high street tax-breaks are granted, out-of-town shopping centres expand, and transport links to the neighbouring vampire metropolis are improved. Communities secretary, Eric Pickles, has just approved a 43,200 square metre (465,000 square foot) retail park in Rushden. “It will kill Northampton”, says Matthew Hopkinson of The Local Data Company, a research firm. America has plenty of similar plans to save city centres, but places like Phoenix have continued to suburbanise.
The inability to recentralise does not preclude success, however. Between 1998 and 2008 Wakefield was one of Britain’s stronger private-sector job creators, and those jobs were almost all created in the suburbs. Cambridge and York, which encourage expansion in suburban business parks to preserve their historic centres, are growing. Deserted centres also have solutions which do not involve rejuvenating the high street: giving the space over to housing, for example, which should also boost whatever shops are left. Leicester is turning it into student accommodation. Town halls are no longer in the thick of the action, says Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, but that is “not the worst thing in the world”.Dear Totalbiscuit, we just had a small chat in twitter when I took exception to your claim that Tone Policing is “made up”. This was all in response to your lengthy blogpost on the recent brouhaha in the gaming sphere, first started with the Zoe Quinn “scandal” ands latter inflamed by Anita Sarkeesian daring to post another Tropes VS Women in Gaming video.
Once I provided one of your followers an accessible link to explaining what Tone Policing is from the geek feminism wiki, you decided to directly challenge me to provide “academic evidence” that Tone Arguments are actually a thing. Eventually you declared that you would only engage me further if I discussed your blogpost itself in a length counter-argument, which given your status as an internet celebrity and mine as a virtual nobody, was intimidating to say the least.
So I’m going to use this opportunity and attempt to do exactly that. Even though I’m not the most knowledgeable on the subject and in fact I feel woefully inadequate to fully express the issues as those actually oppressed. Only I’m not going to talk about Tone Arguments. Because you see, while your blog has some issues with gross false equivalence and many aspects of tone policing, the biggest flaws in it lie elsewhere.
They lie in intellectual laziness and the arrogance by which you wield it. So let’s talk about two-player games.
By far the biggest issue I have with your blogpost is how little research you did before you wrote it. In fact that seems to be a chronic problem with your approach to sensitive issues that have been affecting the industry you’re part of. Reading your original foray into these issues, it was obvious you were caught proudly unaware, but rather than do due diligence and explore what is the issue, you had your followers feed you the info they felt you needed to know, and then you wrote about that. As a result, in the midst of one of the most massive and brutal campaigns of harassment against a woman and feminist allies, the best you could find to talk about was corruption in games journalism and an alleged DMCA violation. Talk about having perspective!
And then today, came your secondary opinion piece on this issue, in which you start talking about some nebulous MRAs and SJWs who might or might not be caricatures and they’re really surely just as bad as each other. You promote “non-extremism” without explaining what exactly it is. You’re talking about “your perspective” on what bro-gamers probably think, about what feminists think. You assume and interpret what people on both sides of the debate are thinking and doing. But you don’t actually bother to go and find out by talking to them directly!
Dear Totalbiscuit, ignorance is not a virtue. If you want to discuss a very charged issue with the people who are on various sides of the subject, you need to understand their actual positions. Do you know why those extremists labeled as “SJW” are even upset, or did you just dismiss them because they are? Are they as bad as MRAs because they use the same tactics (they don’t), or because MRAs are angry as well? Did you ever even bother to find out what an MRA is and what they stand for, or is the acronym’s meaning good enough? Did you investigate to see if any side has an actual merit, or did you just assume the answer lies in the middle?
And since we’re at this, let’s put something into perspective. The fact that one or both sides of this argument are angry, does not invalidate their position, or make them “extremists”. There are reasons why people will absolutely not engage with people from the other side and this doesn’t automatically make them “destructive elements” as you’ll liken them in your post. Victims have no duty to be nice to their abusers. The marginalized do not owe respect to their oppressors. This is the essence of the Tone Argument by the way, and sorry, but I still couldn’t be bollocksed to go and academically prove to you that it is not “made up”
But do not misunderstand me. You have every right to be in the middle of this subject. Feel free to partly agree with Anita and partly agree with the criticisms against her. But just because you find yourself in the middle doesn’t make everyone else an extreme. Your point of reference is not the anchor of the discussion. If you are willing to be as open minded as you claim, you need to engage with the primary sides of the argument and actually make up your mind if their reaction is warranted or not. And let me tell you, given your reaction when you caught a fraction of the fraction of the abuse that women in gaming are receiving, it looks to me that you’d be reacting far worse in their shoes.
Your laziness to actually take the time to explore these issues became infuriatingly obvious when we started talking about it on twitter. Clearly you have not actually bothered to read about feminism or understand some of its basic arguments, and yet a quick google search was all that you needed to declare that Tone Policing is not a thing. You expected everyone else to feed you the info (at an academically-sourced level no less) rather than making a rudimentary effort to educate yourself. Not for me or anyone else talking to you, but for your own damn benefit! You know, to be able to make an educated evaluation of the criticism levelled against you and either counter it, or fix the issue.
So this is the biggest flaw in your post. It’s lazily researched and has only the flimsiest of understanding of the dynamics of the situation. Tim VS JonTron, Zoe VS 4chan, whatever. Everyone must be a little bit right and a little bit wrong, correct? No. It doesn’t work that way. If you want to express an opinion on each of these situations, have the moral fortitude to actually stick your head out and argue your case on the actual issues being debated. Figure out where you stand and tell us! You disagree with Anita’s videos? Why? You agree? Why? This is what the rest of us are doing, and why (women primarily) are taking flak for it. Show us that you actually understand the issues at hand and why people on either side are wrong, or not.
If you want to have the discussion, then have at it. But do not attempt to dismiss or minimize those who don’t have the privilege of a huge following to buffer and protect them from the internet hate machine. The marginalized would like nothing more than to have a polite discussion, but as the reaction to Anita’s very polite videos show, this is not going to happen any time soon. So please do not equate the defence of the abused with the offence of the abuser.
Rest assured, I do not hate you for your opinion. I do not even dislike you. I am disappointed because, as one bullied PC-gamer to another, dear Totalbiscuit, you’re in the wrong in this. Not because you’re moderate, but because you’re not putting the effort required to do intellectual justice to the issues at hand. Not because you don’t know feminist concepts, but because you don’t want to know. Because you prefer to talk about the form rather than the content.
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Tumblr'Cultural Mormons' Adjust The Lifestyle But Keep The Label
On a recent evening in Manhattan's Upper East Side, a group of women have gathered to chat. They're seated in the living room of a cozy one-bedroom apartment.
"I consider myself a cultural Mormon," says Christy Clegg, who grew up active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I don't attend regular church services on Sunday, but I very much identify with my Mormonism."
The group is called Feminist Home Evening. It's a play on words. Mormon families are encouraged to have Family Home Evening — a night at home — once a week.
Like Clegg, these women represent a spectrum of belief, but it is their Mormon background that unites them.
"The thing that's interesting is I can see another person that grew up Mormon and no longer attends or whatever their level of connection is, and there's that automatic connection," Clegg says.
This group was started about two years ago in response to some high-profile excommunications within the LDS church — specifically, Kate Kelly, a prominent feminist advocate.
"I think at that time we had to talk and process," says Ashley Groesbeck, who has coordinated many of the group meetings. "It is a safe place to be connected to your Mormonism."
The meetings are held monthly, and the number of women ranges from 10 — the number present this evening — to about 20. Occasionally there's a guest speaker, but most often a member of the group will begin the meeting with a short welcome and they'll jump into a discussion.
The topics of conversation can be serious at times. Like the recent change to church policy that prevents the children of gay parents from being baptized. As a therapist, this change really affected Groesbeck.
"I was still working for the church last November when the inclusion policy, or the exclusion policy, rather, for gay members of the church came out," Groesbeck says. "I knew I could not stay. I couldn't live with it anymore, and I quit."
Other topics aren't quite as heavy and might even seem trivial.
"Coffee is a complicated relationship," says Heather McGee Teadoro, who is 25 years old and grew up in Utah. She admits she loves coffee and always has.
As a teenager, McGee Teadoro drifted away from the LDS church, and her coffee habits weren't an issue, but she's recently decided to return. Now, that craving is more problematic.
Mormons don't drink coffee. At least, they're asked not to. They're also asked not to drink alcohol or smoke or shop on Sundays.
Traditionally being called a "Mormon" means you live by these standards. Not doing so raises questions about your faith.
"I'm self-conscious among Mormons holding a cup of iced coffee," says Kate Cowley, 34, a film producer who lives in Manhattan with her husband and three young children. "I would feel, you know, I would feel uncomfortable."
Cowley and her family still pray together, read scriptures and attend church pretty frequently.
"I feel like when we're walking down the street in New York City and I have three kids all on a stroller, I look very Mormon in this community where, [with] three kids, I might as well have a million," she says.
But Cowley doesn't agree with much of what the church teaches. For example, she is deeply unsettled by the fact that women are not ordained to the priesthood. Over the past few months she's become more honest and open with her disagreements, but she doesn't want to leave her faith behind.
"I am determined," Cowley says. "I am hellbent on sticking around and being like, yeah, deal with me."
Others at this Feminist Home Evening feel liberated by their decision to leave.
Stacey Woodward remembers a pivotal moment for her. It was on a Sunday morning. She woke up in time to go to church.
"And as I was getting ready, I just had this real clear thought, voice in my head that said, 'What is your intention behind this? Why are you doing this?' " she says.
Woodward felt uncomfortable with her answer.
"I didn't want God to withhold blessings from me," she says. "I didn't want to bring shame on my family that was so well-respected."
Woodward gave herself permission to walk away, but she admits it wasn't easy.
"I'd never navigated this course. I'd never seen anybody navigate this course, and it was a very painful, lonely place to be," she says.
This loneliness makes sense to Jana Riess, a senior columnist at Religion News Service. Riess is also Mormon; she converted to the church in her 20s, and she knows all about the expected lifestyle that comes with membership in the church.
"There is definitely an expected kind of culture in the church," she says, "and it can be painful when you don't meet those kinds of norms."
She says it's common for religious minorities — like Mormons — to feel that one member represents the church as a whole. And that creates pressure.
"More orthodox members of that minority faith will say we need to have boundaries," Riess says. Those orthodox members might say, "We need to more firmly declare who we are and what we stand for."
For the past six years, Riess has written about her struggles with Mormonism in an online column aptly named "Flunking Sainthood." Initially she got a lot of flack from her Mormon readers. More recently, she's noticed a shift.
"We're a little more accepting than we were six years ago," she says. "And now we're seeing maybe a bigger umbrella, a bigger definition of what it means to be Mormon."
What it means to be Mormon is beyond belief for these women. It's family, it's culture, at times it can even seem like its own language. Ultimately, it's about where you come from.Los escándalos que involucran a la empresa constructora OHL con el gobierno federal y del estado de México, no paran. Desde que comenzaron hace cuatro meses, las acusaciones de conflictos de interés y las muestras de amiguismo, escalaron desde el secretario de Comunicaciones mexiquense hasta el Presidente de la República. Los audios que los exhiben, han abierto una alameda de suspicacia sobre qué tanto le deben los dos gobiernos a OHL y hasta dónde va a llegar todo. Ahora, nueva información sobre el caso sugiere que si las cosas están mal, se pondrán peor.
Tiene como origen, una vez más, la frivolidad con la que los ejecutivos de OHL México manejan información delicada, reflejo de la sensación de impunidad que acicala permanentemente Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes, que invariablemente los defiende. La última indiscreción cometida por los ejecutivos fue comentar que la captura el lunes de la semana pasada de Paulo Díez Gargari, abogado de la empresa Infraiber, a la que señalan como autora de los audios y responsable de su distribución mediática, fue pactada en Los Pinos.
Fuentes con acceso a esos niveles de información, dijeron que lo que soltaron los ejecutivos de la empresa constructora, fue que la PGR detendría al abogado Díez Gargari para “asustarlo” e inhibirlo. El abogado es la cara de Infraiber, propiedad del empresario tapatío Luis Topete, y ha sido tenaz en denunciar irregularidades en la relación de OHL con las autoridades en perjuicio de su cliente. El hecho de sugerir una complicidad con funcionarios del gobierno federal capaces de detonar una acción judicial en sí mismo es grave, pero más lo que agregaron en su indiscreción: que el plan lo platicaron con presidente Enrique Peña Nieto, Juan Miguel Villar, presidente de la empresa, y José Andrés de Oteyza, presidente de OHL en México. De haber sido así, tendrían que haber tomado en cuenta, de lo que hablaron es de un delito.
Esta reunión no es la que se reveló hace unos días sobre un encuentro en Los Pinos con el presidente Peña Nieto el 6 de abril, donde hablaron del sistema de verificación de aforos carreteros de Infraiber, cuya cancelación de un contrato otorgado por el Sistema de Autopistas, Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares durante el gobierno de Peña Nieto en el estado de México, detonó la indignación de la empresa, y la petición de Villar y Oteyza para seguir bloqueándola. La reunión a la que aludieron los ejecutivos de OHL se dio a finales de agosto, días antes del Tercer Informe de Gobierno, al cual fueron invitados por Peña Nieto.
No hay información oficial sobre ese encuentro, pero el acceso y el tono de la reunión, como lo socializaron en su entorno, es consistente con las acciones que ha tomado a su favor Ruiz Esparza, quien lleva meses hablando con los ejecutivos de OHL sobre acciones judiciales contra de Díez Gargari y Topete. El último botón de muestra lo dio el secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes –mismo cargo que ocupó en el gobierno de Peña Nieto en el estado de México-, que este domingo se defendió de las imputaciones del abogado que lo acusó de mal informar al presidente y al secretario de Hacienda, Luis Videgaray, en una carta que publicó el periódico Reforma donde aceptó que haber mantenido el contrato sobre los aforos vehiculares de Infraiber, habría afectado la operación de OHL.
Ruiz Esparza, sin mayor matiz, aceptó que el gobierno donde él trabaja, tomó partido por OHL. “La inquietud de los concesionarios era lógica, en razón de que el cobro de dicha tarifa alteraba el plan financiero, el modelo de negocio y el aforo, con repercusiones en los créditos bancarios otorgados”, escribió. Al no firmar Infraiber los acuerdos con las concesionarias, recordó, se canceló el contrato en un tribunal federal. “A partir de ese momento se (generaron) ataques hacia diferentes instancias a través de desplegados, suscritos algunos de ellos por el señor Díez. Al no obtener respuesta por parte de las autoridades del Estado de México, empezó a generarse filtración de audios ilegales y manipulados”, agregó.
Díez Gargari fue detenido la semana pasada para que declarara en calidad de testigo sobre la investigación de los audios grabados en forma clandestina, pero cuando terminó su diligencia, no recuperó la libertad, porque la PGR lo acusó de portación de una arma de fuego sin tener el permiso para ello. Paradójicamente, mantener detenido al supuesto autor de los audios no impidió para que, mientras estaba en los separos de la PGR, apareciera el audio del 6 de abril. Topete, el dueño de la empresa no está en México; hace semanas se fue al extranjero para evitar abusos de fuerza de la autoridad.
Las precauciones que tome no serán exageradas. La influencia de OHL en el gobierno es tan evidente, que sólo así se explica el cinismo con el cual sus ejecutivos hablan cándidamente sobre sus acciones. ¿Qué hizo OHL para que la protección sea tan grande? Aún no se revela esa bala de plata, en caso de existir. Pero las revelaciones sobre su extraña relación van subiendo de grado y de funcionarios salpicados. Por lo pronto, el presidente tendría que modificar su relación con OHL y aclarar si existió o no la reunión que presumen sus ejecutivos. Ya no se trataría de un conflicto de interés, sino de un acto ilegal.
rrivapalacio@ejecentral.com.mx
twitter: @rivapaRick Gibson (born 1951) is a Canadian sculptor and artist. He was born in Montreal and he studied Psychology at the University of Victoria. Between 1973 and 1974 he drew weekly comics for the student newspaper.[1] After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974 he moved to Vancouver. He lived in London, England from 1983 to 1989. He received a Master of Science degree in Interactive Art and Technology [2] from Simon Fraser University, Surrey in 2004.
3D holograms [ edit ]
In 1976, he became the holography assistant for the American new media artist Al Razutis.[3] In 1978 he received Canadian government funding to build his own holography studio and study holographic special effects. He exhibited the results of this work in Vancouver at the Helen Pitt Gallery in June 1978 and again in Victoria at the Open Space Gallery in June 1979.[4]
Freeze-dried sculptures [ edit ]
In an attempt to solve a holographic problem, Gibson experimented with freeze-drying techniques. He produced a series of sculptures that explored the ethics of using legally embalmed animals and humans as art supplies. These sculptures were first exhibited at the Unit/Pitt Gallery in Vancouver, Canada in 1981.[5][6] The same works were later shown in November 1984 at the Cuts Gallery in London, UK.[7]
Fetus earrings [ edit ]
During the 1984 exhibition of freeze-dried sculptures in London, UK, Gibson was given two dehydrated human fetuses from an anatomy professor. They were 10 weeks in development and had been dehydrated for 20 years. Gibson re-hydrated both fetuses, freeze-dried them and attached them as earrings to a female mannequin head. The sculpture was titled Human Earrings. They were exhibited at the Young Unknowns Gallery in south London in December 1987. On Thursday, 3 December 1987, the sculpture was seized by the Metropolitan Police.[8][9] Because of this incident, Gibson was expelled from Goldsmiths College on 21 December 1987, where he was studying post-graduate art, design and technology.[10] On 11 April 1988, Gibson and the gallery owner, Peter Sylveire, were formally charged with the common law offences of exhibiting a public nuisance and outraging public decency.[11]
The trial started on Monday, 30 January 1989 at the Old Bailey in central London. The judge was Brian Smedley, Michael Worsley was the prosecuting barrister, and Geoffrey Robertson and Francis Irwin were the defence barristers.[12][13] On 6 February 1989, the charge of public nuisance was dismissed.[14] On Tuesday, 9 February 1989, the jury of 10 women and 2 men[15] found Gibson and Sylveire guilty of outraging public decency. Gibson was fined £500 and Sylveire was fined £300.[16][17]
Immediately following the verdict, an appeal application was filed.[18] However, on 10 July 1990, the Court of Appeal dismissed the case and upheld the earlier conviction.[19][20]
There was considerable media commentary about this sculpture before, during, and after the trial.[21][22][23] The court case was also the subject of a one-hour British television programme.[24]
Since the trial, writers such as John A. Walker[25] and Eduardo Kac[26] have continued to reflect on the sculpture and its social implications.
Performance art [ edit ]
While living in London, Gibson met many performance artists at the Brixton Artists Collective. He did his first performance piece in Reading on 4 January 1986. He walked on the High Street with a dog carrying a sign which said: "Wanted: legally preserved human limbs and human fetuses".[27] He tried to do the same piece again in Brighton on 25 January 1986, but he was arrested and convicted of behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace.[28] Subsequent performance pieces included standing in front of the Director of Public Prosecutions office in London with a live rat in front of his face,[29] enabling people to kill live insects in Plymouth (where he was arrested but released without charge),[30][31] and questioning the killing of slugs in Vancouver, Canada.[32]
Cannibalism [ edit ]
On 23 July 1988, Gibson ate the flesh of another person in public. Because England does not have a specific law against cannibalism, he legally ate a canapé of donated human tonsils in Walthamstow High Street, London.[33][34] A year later, on 15 April 1989, he publicly ate a slice of human testicle in Lewisham High Street, London.[35][36] When he tried to eat another slice of human testicle at the Pitt International Galleries in Vancouver on 14 July 1989, the Vancouver police confiscated the testicle hors d'œuvre.[37] However, the charge of publicly exhibiting a disgusting object was dropped and he finally ate the piece of human testicle on the steps of the Vancouver court house on 22 September 1989.[38]
Sniffy the rat [ edit ]
On 28 December 1989, The Province newspaper in Vancouver, Canada, reported that Gibson intended to crush a rat named Sniffy between two paint canvasses with a 25 kilogram concrete block in downtown Vancouver. On impact, Sniffy would leave an imprint on the canvasses, forming a diptych. Gibson said he had acquired Sniffy from a pet store which sold living rats as food for snakes and lizards. The performance was planned to happen on 6 January 1990, outside the old central public library on Burrard Street.[39] Opinion about the impending event was publicly broadcast via newsprint, television, and radio.[40][41]
On the morning of 6 January, a group of animal rights activists from the Lifeforce Foundation illegally stole the device Gibson was going to use to crush the rat. Lifeforce's Peter Hamilton said that it was done to protect both the rat and Gibson. Because of this development, Gibson arrived at the corner of Robson and Burrard at 1 PM without Sniffy or his art making device. He told a crowd of over 300 people that he had returned the rat to the pet store where he had rented it. He encouraged the crowd to go to the pet store and rescue Sniffy before it was sold as snake food. He later told CBC that he had full intentions of killing the animals. As he tried to leave the area, Gibson was surrounded by activists. He, along with Susan Milne[42] and Paddy Ryan, were chased up Burrard Street by a mob. The three of them escaped through the Hotel Vancouver.[43]
Later that day, Sniffy was purchased from the pet store by Peter Hamilton of the Lifeforce Foundation.[44]
Immediately afterwards, cartoonists,[45] writers,[46][47] and the general public[48] commented on the event. Numerous books have also made reference to it.[49][50] Several television shows have also focused on it.[51][52] For the tenth anniversary of the performance, Radix Theatre, under the direction of Andrew Laurenson, created the Sniffy the Rat bus tour.[53]
Outdoor installations [ edit ]
While living in London, Gibson visited Grizedale Forest in the north of England, which is home to an assortment of outdoor sculptures. In 1992, he received funding from the British Columbia Ministry of Tourism to develop a similar project in the mountains near Vancouver. This project was carried out at the University of British Columbia Research Forest in Maple Ridge during the summer of 1992.[54] After completing this project, he was hired as a curator for Artropolis ’93 in Vancouver. He managed the installation of fourteen site-specific installations in Stanley Park during October and November 1993.[55] Following Artropolis, he was commissioned by the City of Vancouver to design and build four community bird feeders on the Woodland Drive Bridge.[56] Later, he worked with Ed Varney as a public art consultant for the City of Vancouver. They developed the first public art process for the new Vancouver Public Library. Working closely with architect Moshe Safdie, they managed the installation of the Joseph Montague fountain and they established a public art endowment fund.[57] They also wrote the first public art policy for the Vancouver Park Board.[58]
3D computer graphics [ edit ]
In 1996, Gibson received a research position at the Centre for Image and Sound Research at Simon Fraser University to study anaglyph images. He exhibited some of these images at the 1995 Currents exhibition in Vancouver[59] and in Victoria, BC.[60] In 1996, he built the world’s first completely anaglyphic website.[61] Between 2002 and 2004, he studied 3D lenticular printing for his master's degree.[2] By 2006 he was publicly showing autostereoscopic prints.[62] In 2007 he had a major exhibition of this work at the 3D Center of Art and Photography in Portland, Oregon.[63][64] In February 2011 he exhibited six large lenticular prints at the Blim Gallery in Vancouver, Canada. These prints paid homage to six renowned religious leaders by revealing the penis of God within them.[65]
Bioart [ edit ]
He gave a talk to the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) at Cambridge University in July 2012 about the use of live insects in art and entertainment.[66][67] On 8 February 2017 Gibson walked naked in front of the Vancouver Law Courts in the middle of winter to protest Canada's ban of genetic engineering of the human genome. He walked nude in downtown Vancouver for 11 minutes, 45.75 seconds in a light rain and a temperature of 7 degrees Celsius.[68][69]Advertisement Oklahoma House, Senate pass Ten Commandments monument bills Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Proposed constitutional amendments that ask voters to return a Ten Commandments monument to the Oklahoma Capitol grounds have been approved by separate House and Senate committees. The Republican-backed measures were approved Wednesday by rules committees of the Oklahoma House and Senate and sent to the full chambers for a vote. The resolutions call for a statewide referendum on whether to abolish an article of the Oklahoma Constitution that prohibits the use of state funds to support a religion. The state Supreme Court relied on that constitutional requirement in June when it ordered a Ten Commandments monument removed from the Capitol grounds. The 6-foot-tall granite monument was authorized by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2009 and was erected in 2012.Today marks day 18 of our son’s young life, but I can already tell some of the awesome purchases we made, and things we could have done without. Many parents will swear they couldn’t do without this or that, so consider this post my two cents on the subject of baby gear.
I’m not going to cover the obvious must-haves, like car seats and diapers/wipes. They’re either legally required, or just necessary to maintain basic baby cleanliness. I would also put cribs in this category, although some people will still argue that you can do without a formal crib for a baby.
What I’ll give you instead are my thoughts on some of the more unique items around the house that we’ve accumulated over the last year, and how useful they’ve proven to be in the large scheme of things under heavy testing. Granted, it’s only been three weeks, but in this high-pressure baby environment, we’re quickly losing patience for anything but the best of the best, and the most practical items. So I think it’s safe to make some initial judgments.
Definite Necessities
Here are some of the purchases we’ve made that have worked out so well, we consider them baby necessities:
Diaper Bag. I thought this would just be another fashion accessory. Turns out it makes things easy to organize when you travel out of the house (and there is a lot of stuff to bring everywhere).
I thought this would just be another fashion accessory. Turns out it makes things easy to organize when you travel out of the house (and there is a lot of stuff to bring everywhere). Baby Detergent. Another product I had no clue about when we started this journey. Turns out regular detergent can irritate baby’s skin, so this is a better alternative.
Another product I had no clue about when we started this journey. Turns out regular detergent can irritate baby’s skin, so this is a better alternative. Pacifiers. Doctors are split on the use of pacifiers in newborns, but I would say the majority were for it. I can tell you that it spares us a great deal of crying when baby’s hungry and mama’s still getting ready.
Doctors are split on the use of pacifiers in newborns, but I would say the majority were for it. I can tell you that it spares us a great deal of crying when baby’s hungry and mama’s still getting ready. Washcloths. These small wonders are extremely versatile for jobs like wiping, cleaning, washing, and almost everything else. We keep a healthy supply around.
These small wonders are extremely versatile for jobs like wiping, cleaning, washing, and almost everything else. We keep a healthy supply around. Receiving Blankets. Like washcloths, these turned out to be more versatile than expected. Other than the obvious uses of covering and/or holding the baby, they can also be rolled up as propping tools, used as temporary sheets, and as privacy covers when breastfeeding.
Like washcloths, these turned out to be more versatile than expected. Other than the obvious uses of covering and/or holding the baby, they can also be rolled up as propping tools, used as temporary sheets, and as privacy covers when breastfeeding. Bottle Set & Breast Pump. Even if you plan to breastfeed 100% of the time, sometimes you just won’t be home every 2-3 hours because of your schedule. A breast pump/bottle set is necessary (not to mention that you can freeze milk for over 3 months!).
Even if you plan to breastfeed 100% of the time, sometimes you just won’t be home every 2-3 hours because of your schedule. A breast pump/bottle set is necessary (not to mention that you can freeze milk for over 3 months!). Good Baby Book. For someone like me, who had no clue how to do almost anything with a baby, an “instruction manual” was priceless. Thankfully, my wife came through with a couple of great daddy books.
For someone like me, who had no clue how to do almost anything with a baby, an “instruction manual” was priceless. Thankfully, my wife came through with a couple of great daddy books. Good Thermometer. We went through two cheap thermometers before we realized that we were really getting what we paid for. So we spent the money for something decent and accurate, and something that takes less time than 2 minutes to get a reading. 🙂
We went through two cheap thermometers before we realized that we were really getting what we paid for. So we spent the money for something decent and accurate, and something that takes less time than 2 minutes to get a reading. 🙂 Pack-and-Play. If you’re away from home a lot (especially if you have extended family locally), this is a home away from home for the baby. Ours includes a bassinet and a changing table, and it’s really priceless (as well as portable!).
Very Useful
These are things we found to be extremely helpful in day-to-day life, but may be hard-pressed to classify them as “necessities.” They are:
Baby bathtub with infant net. I know you can wash your baby in a sink and all that. But it just seems much easier when a baby bathtub is involved and you don’t have to worry about much except the bathing part.
I know you can wash your baby in a sink and all that. But it just seems much easier when a baby bathtub is involved and you don’t have to worry about much except the bathing part. Diaper Champ. I recommend this one over the Genie because you can use your own garbage bags (not those expensive refills), and it seems to work just fine.
I recommend this one over the Genie because you can use your own garbage bags (not those expensive refills), and it seems to work just fine. Baby monitor. This has been a life saver, not only for the baby, but also for Mom! When I’m running around remote parts of the house while Mom is breastfeeding, she can call me over without having to scream and yell.
This has been a life saver, not only for the baby, but also for Mom! When I’m running around remote parts of the house while Mom is breastfeeding, she can call me over without having to scream and yell. Travel System. This is a stroller/car seat combination, and a lot of them are fairly expensive. But we purchased ours separately (and researched prices carefully, of course) for much less than the typical systems I see out there. It’s awesome when you want to take baby for a walk without waking him up.
This is a stroller/car seat combination, and a lot of them are fairly expensive. But we purchased ours separately (and researched prices carefully, of course) for much less than the typical systems I see out there. It’s awesome when you want to take baby for a walk without waking him up. Boppy. This is a breastfeeding pillow (photos), and another one of those “what the heck will you use that for?” items. But believe me–it’s perfect for breast feeding, and it also helps your baby to develop coordination and muscles as they sit and lay in it when not feeding.
This is a breastfeeding pillow (photos), and another |
somewhat different take.
In other words she’s admitting she was by no means unconscious when he started “fingering” her which she herself said she “liked”. This kid is now supposed to be a “rapist” because in his own drunkenness he could not figure out the exact moment when the equally drunk girl passed out? Really?
Yes, really. It doesn’t matter what “exact moment” she passed out, you stupid sack of garbage. If you stick your fingers into someone who is passed out, that is rape. If you stick your fingers into someone so drunk they’re on the verge of passing out, that is also rape.
The Lizard puts the word “liked” in quotes, as if it is a direct quote from the victim. It’s not. If you search her statement for the words “like” and “liked,” you won’t find her saying anywhere that she “liked” what Turner did to her.
Here are some of the things you will find. (I will put the words “like” and “liked” in italics.)
A paragraph in which she describes taking a shower in a hospital after several hours of being poked and prodded and examined for evidence of rape.
After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.
A paragraph in which she describes how she learned what happened to her that night in the time between her last memory of the party she was at and when she came to hours later on a hospital gurney.
This was how I learned what happened to me, sitting at my desk reading the news at work. I learned what happened to me the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened to me. That’s when the pine needles in my hair made sense, they didn’t fall from a tree. He had taken off my underwear, his fingers had been inside of me. I don’t even know this person. I still don’t know this person. When I read about me like this, I said, this can’t be me, this can’t be me. I could not digest or accept any of this information.
A paragraph in which she addresses Turner for trying to excuse his actions by claiming he was too drunk to know what he was doing. An excerpt:
Sipping fireball is not your crime. Peeling off and discarding my underwear like a candy wrapper to insert your finger into my body, is where you went wrong. Why am I still explaining this.
A paragraph in which she discusses one way in which the sexual assault has affected her:
I can’t sleep alone at night without having a light on, like a five year old, because I have nightmares of being touched where I cannot wake up, I did this thing where I waited until the sun came up and I felt safe enough to sleep. For three months, I went to bed at six o’clock in the morning.
So where does the idea she “liked it” come from? Not from her, but from Turner. In her letter, she recalls reading a news account of the evening’s events:
In the next paragraph, I read something that I will never forgive; I read that according to him, I liked it. I liked it. Again, I do not have words for these feelings.
Speaking of the word “like,” The Lizard’s comment received fifty “likes” from Roosh V forum users. Here they all are:
MiscBrah, Horus, n/a, BallsDeep, GlobalMan, KidA, Samseau, Captainstabbin, spokepoker, Genghis Khan, RoastBeefCurtains4Me, Burt Gummer, Tokyo Joe, bigrich, gajf77, Comte De St. Germain, Mr. Scumbag, getdownonit, Renton1875, H1N1, Benoit, Chevalier De Seingalt, J. Spice, DJ-Matt, debeguiled, Neo2, Grodin, PUA_Rachacha, VincentVinturi, arafat scarf, Professor Fox, godzilla, Roadrunner, UroboricForms, B TAHKE, MMX2010, yfc4, Grizzles, Ocelot, TooFineAPoint, Polo, DeltaSmelt, Dismal Operator, Gmac, Geomann180, mpr, tradman, Avarence, dies irae, Matrixdude
In a followup comment, The Lizard begs a fellow forum member who actually sees the incident as”obviously a real case of rape” to have some empathy — for Turner.
Please try to think about this in actual human terms and understand what happened here. The idea that a young kid’s life should be ruined forever because of this incident is disgraceful.
It’s not long before The Lizard sets forth a conspiracy theory to explain just why the victim’s letter went viral. Weirdly, it involves Donald Trump.
I can tell you why it went viral: 1. They need this to make up for the loss they took on lyin’ Jackie [last name redacted –DF] in the UVa case — a loss they’re still smarting from. 2. It’s needed as payback for TRUMP — pretty much the fact that he still dares to exist.
Unbelievable. The Lizard concludes:
There is serious evil afoot here. But it’s not in the actions of one drunk confused kid — the evil is in our society and the hysterical extremes it has reached in pandering to female lies.
In a series of followup comments, The Lizard informs us that white men can’t rape:
“Rape” victims are few and far between, and real rapes, violent drag into the bushes rapes, are vanishingly rare on college campuses, and not committed by young white male college students.
That women apparently love — no, LOVE — having sex behind dumpsters:
What I know for sure is that women go to parties and get drunk because they want to f**k; and women, especially when they are drunk and horny, LOVE the idea and the excitement of having sex in public locations to an extent that most prudish men and white-knights can never understand.
That he’s pretty sure the victim didn’t write her letter, because reasons:
I did not believe when I saw it, and I believe less now, that it was written in full by “Emily Doe”. It bears all the marks of a far more experienced, ideological, and nastier hand. I cannot prove, but strongly suspect, that this document was written in part or in full by Michele Dauber, the Stanford Law professor who has been primarily responsible for coordinating the propaganda campaign in this case.
Several commenters on Roosh’s forum, to their credit, take issue with The Lizard’s arguments, such as they are.
And then there is the odious piece of human garbage who calls himself GlobalMan — who may be a man we have met many times before, since“GlobalMan” was for years the internet moniker used by the extremely odd and terrible person better known as Peter-Andrew: Nolan(c).
Here is his take on the situation:
Wow. If [Turner’s] account is indeed accurate and true, not only is this the furthest thing from rape there could ever be, but it is also quite scary that men have to now worry about roving pairs of violent white knights intruding on any public lustful escapades with a willing and enthusiastic lover because they’ve been trained to view all males with natural virility as a threat to public safety. What you have is in fact actually a sweet and beautiful scene, two young drunk kids slipping and falling and going at it right where they fell. Not too long ago in history someone would have walked by these kids and smirked, passing by with a smile at the thought of young lust. Now such a scene is cause to use violence to restrain the male and send him off to the gulag for societal castration. A disgusting and sad outcome if there ever was one.
A “sweet and beautiful scene.” That comment got more than a dozen “likes” from the Roosh V Forum crowd.
I’m twitching again.
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Like this: Like Loading...TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie will not be named chairman of the Republican National Committee as President-elect Donald Trump takes over the White House, two sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed to NJ Advance Media on Thursday morning.
Christie had been lobbying for the position over the last week, but he and Trump decided mutually that he would not assume the job, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss the scenario candidly.
One source close to Christie said Trump's team is continuing to talk to the New Jersey governor, a longtime Trump friend and adviser, about various other positions in the incoming administration.
But, the source noted, Christie wants to serve out his second and final term as governor -- which ends Jan. 18, 2018.
The source added that Christie is close to Trump and will "certainly remain as an informal adviser."
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times was the first to report the news, via Twitter:
Christie not getting RNC chair role, per multiple people close to process. -- Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 8, 2016
Christie was one of the first major Republicans to endorse Trump, a former Atlantic City casino tycoon. for the party's nomination. He was once considered a possible running mate for Trump and then a potential pick for U.S. attorney general, White House chief of staff, secretary of homeland security, or secretary of energy.
But shortly after his victory over Hillary Clinton last month, Trump unexpectedly replaced Christie as chairman of his transition team. That led to questions of whether the governor would secure a spot in Trump's administration after all.
Christie -- whose record-low approval ratings at home have fallen into the teens -- has repeatedly told the press that he plans to finish his term in New Jersey, though he has never ruled out working for Trump's administration.
Sources confirmed to NJ Advance Media last week that Christie was angling to be named RNC chair. He was spotted twice in the past week -- most recently Tuesday night -- at Trump Tower in Manhattan, where Trump continues to hold transition meetings.
A source said the idea would have been for Christie to serve as a volunteer chairman while remaining as governor.
Trump has chosen others to be attorney general, chief of staff, and homeland security secretary. He has yet to select an energy secretary.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.ESPN personality Sam Ponder tweeted this thought about the outrage over the NFL’s mere 2 game suspension for Baltimore Ravens RB Ray Rice for assaulting his fiancee. The outrage was justified over the NFL and Roger Goodell’s total lack of awareness for saying that domestic abuse was a lesser crime than getting caught taking the wrong prescription medicine and a litany of other offenses. Ponder took the conversation surrounding the backlash a step further to open up a wider discussion about how women are treated in the wider sports culture.
Blogs/websites that constantly disrespect women & objectify their bodies, then take a strong stand on the Ray Rice issue really confuse me. — Sam Ponder (@sam_ponder) July 25, 2014
She makes an excellent point about the objectification of women happening all around us (hello, WEEI in Boston) and while not equating the two, the whole notion that “women are things” is a real issue that needs addressed.
Of course, the endless array of slideshows ranking the hottest women in sports, sexiest sideline reporters, and you name it are done for a simple reason – pageviews. And in the business of online content, that’s the right of those websites to do so. However, as someone who has probably been in more than enough of those slideshows herself, it’s Ponder’s right to ask where the line is as far as admiring versus objectifying women goes. All too often, women in sports don’t get a say in this discussion and their voice isn’t heard.
Unfortunately, Ponder’s Twitter mentions proved her point for her as it devolved into personal attack after personal attack against her from the worst of the social media cesspool and mouthbreathers who think women are just meant to look at. Some of these tweets are NSFW, many of them are vile, all of them prove the point that there is a troubling element of the online sports culture that is exactly what Ponder was talking about…
@sam_ponder @ChrisMcCurry518 sam – put the phone down. I think the baby is crying. — Brian Dempsey (@bdemps15) July 25, 2014
@BarstoolNate yea we need a marry fuck kill tomorrow with espn reporters. Make that happen @sam_ponder — Chris McCurry (@ChrisMcCurry518) July 25, 2014
Destroy me & the generation is fixed!Who knew it was so simple RT@Chris_Mini @sam_ponder is whats wrong with this generation.Get a clue lady — Sam Ponder (@sam_ponder) July 25, 2014
https://twitter.com/MattHayden614/status/492638171973165057
@sam_ponder @ChrisMcCurry518 you were too. You know you fucked up and now you're trying to clean up your shit. Typical woman. — Devon (@devonparshley) July 25, 2014
“Typical woman.”
@sam_ponder the dumbest thing I've read on Twitter in weeks. Congrats. You're entire career is based on being good looking. — Dustin Haley (@dustyhaley) July 25, 2014
https://twitter.com/ItsMrMushToYou/status/492524254437851136
https://twitter.com/tkrieg_92/status/492509874417594368
@stoolpresidente @sam_ponder hey Sam, you're hot and NOBODY gives a fuck what you say. Not even ya husband #onbible — Jitsu de Drew (@MMA_Dork) July 25, 2014
@sam_ponder 100% talking about barstool. Used to like you but you're clearly a fucking moron. Bible thumping freak. — Evan Shickman (@Shickmane) July 25, 2014
https://twitter.com/312bstoo/status/492494636372357120
The scary thing is that these are only a few tweets from many more keyboard warriors who either A) Couldn’t rationally understand Ponder’s tweet or B) Didn’t care to try to understand it. Ponder’s mentions are a horrifying place to visit if you want to feel good about society today. Another scary thing is that all of these very angry people from the lower rung of social media are all men. What kind of man could tweet such abuse to another human being, especially making fun of Ponder’s newborn child? It’s disgusting.
Sam Ponder tried to open up a grown-up conversation about the place of women in the online sports culture. Sadly, she got her answer as to how far away we are from having that conversation.Christian doctrine that God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (Latin: Trinitas, lit. 'triad', from Latin: trinus "threefold")[1] holds that God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons[2] or hypostases[3]—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit—as "one God in three Divine Persons". The three Persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" (homoousios).[4] In this context, a "nature" is what one is, whereas a "person" is who one is.[5] Sometimes differing views are referred to as nontrinitarian. Trinitarianism contrasts with positions such as Binitarianism (one deity in two persons, or two deities) and Monarchianism (no pluratity of persons within God), of which Modalistic Monarchianism (one deity revealed in three modes) and Unitarianism (one deity in one person) are subsets.
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not expressed in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a "triadic" understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
Etymology [ edit ]
The word trinity is derived from Latin trinitas, meaning "the number three, a triad, tri". This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus (three each, threefold, triple),[9] as the word unitas is the abstract noun formed from unus (one).
The corresponding word in Greek is τριάς, meaning "a set of three" or "the number three".[10] The first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology was by Theophilus of Antioch in about the year 170. He wrote:[11]
In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity [Τριάδος], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man. (Aut. II.XV)
History [ edit ]
From the Ante-Nicene Fathers to Constantine [ edit ]
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not expressed in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions. The New Testament possesses a "triadic" understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The Ante-Nicene Fathers asserted Christ's deity and spoke of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit", even though their language is not that of the traditional doctrine as formalized in the fourth century. Trinitarians view these as elements of the codified doctrine. Ignatius of Antioch provides early support for the Trinity around 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit".[13] The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written anywhere between the end of the first century to the beginning of the third century possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, and the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr (AD 100–c. 165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit".[15] The first of the early church fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, His Word (Logos) and His Wisdom (Sophia)[16] in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God.[17] The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against "Praxeas",[18] though he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine.[19] St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria used the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.[20] Origen of Alexandria (AD 185-c. 253) has often been interpreted as Subordinationist, but some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist.[21][22]
Although there is much debate as to whether the beliefs of the Apostles were merely articulated and explained in the Trinitarian Creeds, or were corrupted and replaced with new beliefs,[23] all scholars recognize that the Creeds themselves were created in reaction to disagreements over the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These controversies took some centuries to be resolved.
Of these controversies, the most significant developments were articulated in the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and also condemned the term homoousios (ὁμοούσιος, "of the same being") in the modalist sense in which he used it.[24]
Among the Non-Trinitarian beliefs, the Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same, the difference being simply verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being.[25] For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220.
From Constantine to the Middle Ages [ edit ]
Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople [ edit ]
In the fourth century, Arianism, as traditionally understood,[note 1] taught that the Father existed prior to the Son who was not, by nature, God but rather a changeable creature who was granted the dignity of becoming "Son of God".[26] In 325, the Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed which described Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father", and the "Holy Ghost" as the one by which was incarnate... of the Virgin Mary".[27][28] ("the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us"). About the Father and the Son, the creed used the term homoousios (of one substance) to define the relationship between the Father and the Son. After more than fifty years of debate, homoousios was recognised as the hallmark of orthodoxy, and was further developed into the formula of "three persons, one being".
The Confession of the Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed, said little about the Holy Spirit.[29] At the First Council of Nicea (325) all attention was focused on the relationship between the Father and the Son, without making any similar statement about the Holy Spirit:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; (...) And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. (...). — Nicene Creed
Later, at the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Nicene Creed would be expanded, known as Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, by saying that the Holy Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son (συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον), suggesting that he was also consubstantial with them:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; (...) And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets (...). — Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.[30]
The doctrine of the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit was developed by Athanasius in the last decades of his life.[31] He defended and refined the Nicene formula.[29] By the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine had reached substantially its current form.[29]
Middle Ages [ edit ]
In the late 6th century, some Latin-speaking churches added the words "and from the Son" (Filioque) to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, words that were not included in the text by either the Council of Nicaea or that of Constantinople.[32] This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014.[33]Filioque eventually became one of the main causes for the East-West Schism in 1054, and the failures of the repeated union attempts.
Gregory of Nazianzus would say of the Trinity, "No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light."[34]
Devotion to the Trinity centered in the French monasteries at Tours and Aniane where Saint Benedict dedicated the abbey church to the Trinity in 872. Feast Days were not instituted until 1091 at Cluny and 1162 at Canterbury and papal resistance continued until 1331.[20]
Theology [ edit ]
Trinitarian baptismal formula [ edit ]
Many scholars interpret the baptism of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels as a manifestation of all three persons of the Trinity: "And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'"[Mt 3:16–17] Baptism is generally conferred with the Trinitarian formula, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit".[Mt 28:19] Trinitarians identify this name with the Christian faith into which baptism is an initiation, as seen for example in the statement of Basil the Great (330–379): "We are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received, and to profess faith in the terms in which we have been baptized." The First Council of Constantinople (381) also says, "This is the Faith of our baptism that teaches us to believe in the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. According to this Faith there is one Godhead, Power, and Being of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19 may be taken to indicate that baptism was associated with this formula from the earliest decades of the Church's existence. Other Trinitarian formulas found in the New Testament include in 2 Corinthians 13:13, 1 Peter 1:2 and Revelation 1:4-5.
Oneness Pentecostals demur from the Trinitarian view of baptism and emphasize baptism ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ the original apostolic formula.[35] For this reason, they often focus on the baptisms in Acts. Those who place great emphasis on the baptisms in Acts often likewise question the authenticity of Matthew 28:19 in its present form. Most scholars of New Testament textual criticism accept the authenticity of the passage, since there are no variant manuscripts regarding the formula, and the extant form of the passage is attested in the Didache[37] and other patristic works of the 1st and 2nd centuries: Ignatius,[38] Tertullian,[39] Hippolytus,[40] Cyprian,[41] and Gregory Thaumaturgus.[42]
Commenting on Matthew 28:19, Gerhard Kittel states:
This threefold relation [of Father, Son and Spirit] soon found fixed expression in the triadic formulae in 2 Cor. 13:14 and in 1 Cor. 12:4–6. The form is first found in the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19; Did., 7. 1 and 3....[I]t is self-evident that Father, Son and Spirit are here linked in an indissoluble threefold relationship.[43]
One God in Three Persons [ edit ]
In Trinitarian doctrine, God exists as three persons or hypostases, but is one being, having a single divine nature.[44] The members of the Trinity are co-equal and co-eternal, one in essence, nature, power, action, and will. As stated in the Athanasian Creed, the Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated, and all three are eternal without beginning.[45] "The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" are not names for different parts of God, but one name for God[46] because three persons exist in God as one entity. They cannot be separate from one another. Each person is understood as having the identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures.[48]
According to the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675) "For, when we say: He who is the Father is not the Son, we refer to the distinction of persons; but when we say: the Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, and the Holy Spirit that which the Father is and the Son is, this clearly refers to the nature or substance"[49]
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) adds: "In God there is only a Trinity since each of the three persons is that reality — that is to say substance, essence or divine nature. This reality neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds; the Father begets, the Son is begotten and the holy Spirit proceeds. Thus there is a distinction of persons but a unity of nature. Although therefore the Father is one person, the Son another person and the holy Spirit another person, they are not different realities, but rather that which is the Father is the Son and the holy Spirit, altogether the same; thus according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial."[50]
Perichoresis [ edit ]
A depiction of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Deity of Christ was declared orthodox and Arianism condemned
Perichoresis (from Greek, "going around", "envelopment") is a term used by some scholars to describe the relationship among the members of the Trinity. The Latin equivalent for this term is circumincessio. This concept refers for its basis to John 14–17, where Jesus is instructing the disciples concerning the meaning of his departure. His going to the Father, he says, is for their sake; so that he might come to them when the "other comforter" is given to them. Then, he says, his disciples will dwell in him, as he dwells in the Father, and the Father dwells in him, and the Father will dwell in them. This is so, according to the theory of perichoresis, because the persons of the Trinity "reciprocally contain one another, so that one permanently envelopes and is permanently enveloped by, the other whom he yet envelopes". (Hilary of Poitiers, Concerning the Trinity 3:1).[51]
Perichoresis effectively excludes the idea that God has parts, but rather is a simple being. It also harmonizes well with the doctrine that the Christian's union with the Son in his humanity brings him into union with one who contains in himself, in the Apostle Paul's words, "all the fullness of deity" and not a part. (See also: Divinization (Christian)). Perichoresis provides an intuitive figure of what this might mean. The Son, the eternal Word, is from all eternity the dwelling place of God; he is the "Father's house", just as the Son dwells in the Father and the Spirit; so that, when the Spirit is "given", then it happens as Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; for I will come to you."[John 14:18]
According to the words of Jesus, married persons are in some sense no longer two but are joined into one. Therefore, Orthodox theologians also see the marriage relationship between a man and a woman to be an example of this sacred union. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Gen. 2:24. "Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Matt. 19: 6.[image or "icon" 17:22]
Economic and immanent Trinity [ edit ]
The term "immanent Trinity" focuses on who God is; the term “economic Trinity” focuses on what God does. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). "Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.[52]
The whole divine economy is the common work of the three divine persons. For as the Trinity has only one and the same natures so too does it have only one and the same operation: "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle." However, each divine person performs the common work according to his unique personal property. Thus the Church confesses, following the New Testament, "one God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are". It is above all the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show forth the properties of the divine persons.[53]
The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by Father, Son, and Spirit working in unity with one will. The three persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, for their work is always the work of the one God. The Son's will cannot be different from the Father's because it is the Father's. They have but one will as they have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God. On this point St. Basil said:
When then He says, 'I have not spoken of myself', and again, 'As the Father said unto me, so I speak', and 'The word which ye hear is not mine, but [the Father's] which sent me', and in another place, 'As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do', it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father. Do not then let us understand by what is called a 'commandment' a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Son.[54]
According to Thomas Aquinas the Son prayed to the Father, became a minor to the angels, became incarnate, obeyed the Father as to his human nature, as to his divine nature the Son remained God: "Thus, then, the fact that the Father glorifies, raises up, and exalts the Son does not show that the Son is less than the Father, except in His human nature. For, in the divine nature by which He is equal to the Father, the power of the Father and the Son is the same and their operation is the same."[55]
A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene Creed, formulated at Nicaea.
Athanasius of Alexandria explained that the Son is eternally one in being with the Father, temporally and voluntarily subordinate in his incarnate ministry.[56] Such human traits, he argued, were not to be read back into the eternal Trinity. Likewise, the Cappadocian Fathers also insisted there was no economic inequality present within the Trinity. As Basil wrote: "We perceive the operation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one and the same, in no respect showing differences or variation; from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of nature."[57]
The traditional theory of "appropriation" consists in attributing certain names, qualities, or operations to one of the Persons of the Trinity, not, however, to the exclusion of the others, but in preference to the others. This theory was established by the Latin Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, especially by Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and Leo the Great. In the Middle Ages, the theory was systematically taught by the Schoolmen such as Bonaventure.[58]
Trinity and love [ edit ]
Augustine "coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of |
20 settings for male vocals, 20 for female vocals, 20 for snares, and on and on.
Let these presets teach you and save you time. Professionals made them. But don't accept them as the end-all-be-all. They are starting points that you must adjust. Every mix is different.
17) Less is Usually More
Don't have a heavy hand when performing precision work, which is what equalizing is all about. Avoid massive cuts & boosts beyond the 3-5 dB range. Find the right setting for your high and low roll offs and then back them off just a tad. The same goes for the volumes of effects.
A great rule of thumb when mixing is: Find the right setting and back it off just a tad.
Less is almost always more in compression, effects, and especially in equalizing.
18) Why Compete When Everyone Can Win?
Notice in the image below how the kick on the left side has a slight boost. Then on the same frequency we applied a slight cut to the bass.
This lets the kick have it's own small region to define itself. They both still share the rest of the spectrum but the defining sound of the kick resides there and it needs to be able to thump with clarity by owning it. Another trick you can apply is side-chaining a compressor to the bass so that only those frequencies are ducked on the bass when the kick fires. It's very similar to a de-esser on vocals.
You can cut and boost on competing instruments so they can dominate their defining frequencies while still sharing them with other instruments. By making it easier for the ear to latch on to this definition, it can more easily pluck out the harmonics. This provides a sense of clarity.
19) Dig Deep Into the Sub-Bass
This is the bane of all amateur mixers. The reason is it takes a lot to even be equipped to deal with sub-bass. Not only will you need plenty of acoustic treatment in the form of bass traps, but you'll need a good subwoofer capable of producing the sub-bass.
You’re far better off with less or no sub-bass than too much - if you don’t have a treated room and a subwoofer, professional mixing headphones can help but their woofers will be too small to let you form the perfect sub-bass.
The main concern is that most listener's speakers and headphones won't have good enough amps to drive the woofers hard enough to produce sub-bass properly. But they'll still try and this will introduce distortion in the other frequency ranges at much lower volumes than you'd expect distortion to start occurring.
Too much is never good. Too little is okay. Any bass fiends will EQ their own extra bass in on their side anyways. Your safe bet is to get it as close as you can and then reduce it until you're better equipped to deal with it in your mixing environment.
20) Compression Shapes the Body, EQ Sculpts It
This tip is important enough to be given its own slot although it was mentioned before. Apply your EQ first and then move to compression.
Imagine having some play dough full of rocks. This is your raw track. You want to pluck those rocks out first before you form your model dinosaur. If you make the dinosaur first and then pull out the rocks, you'll have an oddly shaped figure with holes in it. Equalization is the act of removing the unwanted rocks before you shape the sound with compression.
Compressing before equalizing creates a mess. Then as you try to fix that mess post-compression, you only make it worse.
21) Slap Your Effects on A Bus & EQ Them Too
Learn about auxiliary tracks that you can use as effects buses. This saves your computer a ton of processing power. Instead of applying the same reverb 12 times to 12 tracks, you can send those 12 tracks to one bus with one reverb.
What this also allows you to do is apply an EQ to the reverbs and delays as well.
You'll have EQ'd your sounds before applying reverb, but reverb is purposefully lush and spreads out across the spectrum. While it's based on the sounds you feed it, it still has a sound of its own that grows beyond your original intentions.
You can trim out the tops and bottoms of the reverb as shown above and even cut out holes for the lead instruments and any other sound that is suffering from clarity issues after applying the reverb. Also, remember to set it where you think it sounds good, and then drop the volume by 2-4 dB. This reverb bus EQ will not only glue your sounds together by using a single reverb, but will allow you to create a lush soundscape without screwing up the mix.
22) Panning Reduces Volume & Introduces EQ Problems
A little known fact about panning is that it drops the volume the further and further you get to one side. Panning entirely to the left or right will drop your volume around 3 dB, and you need to compensate for that if you set your volumes in mono first.
This is why the mono trick mentioned above is a must. It will show you that your finely tuned volume decisions are as wrong as your equalization decisions, because you allowed panning to trick your ears due to your privileged seat in front of your nice monitors.
23) LCR Panning Sounds Great & Reduces EQ Problems
Wait a second... Yes. I said panning introduces and reduces EQ problems. It's not a contradiction. It's all about the listener's vantage point. You need to EQ to account for mono situations. But you can also be less severe about it by taking advantage of panning. You can't win every battle, but you can find the best compromise.
LCR panning refers to the practice of only placing tracks up the center, far left, and far right. The only sounds that should exist in between is reverbs and maybe some percussion. Of course your vocals, kick drum, bass, snare, and any other lead will always be up the center. But the left and right options give you leeway to move competing sounds as far away from each other as possible.
This technique is an entire can of worms for another post but one you can start toying with immediately. You'll begin to notice it here and there as you explore newer releases, especially in the modern Pop & Rap genres.
Conclusion
Equalizers are your main line of defense in the war of mixing. While software emulators are fun, there's nothing like routing to your best hardware equalizer and bouncing back in. But in the end it doesn't matter how you get it done as long as it's done and done right. And that's where these 23 EQ tips come into play. Let them serve as guidance on how to use this tool. Mixing with EQ doesn't have to be hard any more!Satire on False Perspective Artist William Hogarth Year 1754 Type engraving
Satire on False Perspective is the title of an engraving produced by William Hogarth in 1754 for his friend Joshua Kirby's pamphlet on linear perspective.
The intent of the work is clearly given by the subtitle:
Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontiſpiece
Summary [ edit ]
The work shows a scene that provides many deliberate examples of confused and misplaced perspective effects. Although the individual components of the scene seem self-consistent, the scene itself can be classed as an example of an impossible object.
Partial list of "errors" [ edit ]
The most immediately prominent errors are the first three or four:
The man in the foreground's fishing rod's line passes behind that of the man behind him. The sign is moored to two buildings, one in front of the other, with beams that show no difference in depth The sign is overlapped by two distant trees. The man climbing the hill is lighting his pipe with the candle of the woman leaning out of the upper story window. The crow perched on the tree is massive in comparison to it. The church appears to front onto the river. Both ends of the church are viewable at the same time. The left horizon on the water declines precipitously. The man in the boat under the bridge fires at the swan on the other side, which is impossible as he's aiming straight at the bridge abutments. The right-hand end of the arch above the boat meets the water further from the viewer than does the left-hand end. The two-story building, though viewed from below, shows the top of the roof. As does the church tower in the distance. The barrel closest to the foreground fisherman reveals both its top and bottom simultaneously. The tiles the foreground fisherman stands on have a vanishing point that converge towards the viewer. A tree is growing out of the top of the bridge. The vanishing point for the near side of the first building transforms midway down the wall. The line of trees obscuring the sign are likely representative of how objects should decrease in scale as they move further away, but in this case reversed. The sheep on the left-hand side increase in scale as they get further away. The swan behind the boat is larger than the men manning the boat. The base of the tree on the far left is behind the tree to the right of it, but the canopy is in front of the tree to the right of it. The left-most barrel appears to be on lower ground than the other two, when they should be on level ground. The bottom swan is slightly smaller than the cow. The man with the pipe is taller than the trees. The tops and bottoms of the windows on the second building have different vanishing points.
Aside from the impossibilities of scale, there are in fact approximately 10 different horizons based on the various vanishing points.
Historiography of perspective instruction [ edit ]
Until Brook Taylor's treatise on linear perspective was published in 1715, artists were taught perspective by studying methods used in earlier works by famous artists, rather than studying the mathematics behind the methods. Hogarth created the St Martin’s Lane Academy partially to remedy this gap in studies, and he invited his friend Kirby to become a perspective teacher there. Kirby obliged and later, by publishing his pamphlet, became famous enough to gain a royal appointment as a perspective teacher.Enter code: "leangains" to get 5% off your order.
Calcium
Vitamin D
Branched-Chain Amino Acids
Recommended:
Creatine
Whey protein
Casein protein
Glucosamine
For fat loss
Caffeine
Clenbutrx
VPX Meltdown
Yohimbine HCL
AlphaBurn
L-Tyrosine
(Pre-workout/Fat loss)
should
Remember
Calcium increases fat excretion and boosts testosterone.
That's great stuff and we obviously want our calcium intake in the optimal range. Adding a 500-750 mg tablet to your daily diet wíll usually do the trick. If you get enough calcium through your diet, there's no need to supplement it.Emerging scientific evidence suggests that people don't get enough vitamin D to function optimally. The newfound interest for this vitamin and it's potential benefits was actually featured in New York Time's Top Ten List of medical breakthroughs in 2007. Here's a good (and free) full-text paper on vitamin D's role in health and disease. Moreover, vitamin D may boost strength and athletic performance. 2000 IU/day is a conservative and safe dosage, but some people use considerably higher doses without any negative implications.I use BCAA pre-workout whenever I train fasted. You can read more on why here and here. I prefer Purple Wraath by Controlled Labs. It contains beta-alanine as well, which gives me a nice little tingle and also seems to aid a bit with intra-set recovery and muscle endurance in the higher rep ranges. Take 10 g pre-workout if you train fasted.I've been using Xtend by Scivation for my fasted training sessions ever since stores around here ran out of Purple Wraath a few months ago. Taste and effects wise, it's pretty much a toss-up between Xtend and Wraath. Price wise, Xtend can't be beaten. Flavor wise, Xtend is very agreeable and I prefer "Refreshing Watermelon".Creatine is the only legal supplement with numerous scientific studies to support it's effectiveness. It's so far ahead of the competition that it's the only supplement I can place in this category with a straight face. Besides elevating muscle creatine contents for a direct performance boost, creatine may boost muscle growth through effects on satellite cell proliferation, myogenic transcription factors and insulin-like growth factor-1 signalling (if that sounds like greek to you, let's just say all of this is "good stuff").I get beta-alanine through my BCAA-supplement, but this amino acid is also availabe as a stand-alone supplement; and as such has shown to boost exercise performance. As I noted before, the effect is only noticeable in the higher rep ranges (12 reps and above). The study summarizes the effect as "beta-alanine...have demonstrated improvements in performance during multiple bouts of high-intensity exercise and in single bouts of exercise lasting more than 60 s." So it won't improve your maximal strength, but anaerobic threshold and time to exhaustion will be enhanced. This may be particularily useful for CrossFit-practitioners and those training with kettle bells.Ideal use is pre-and post-workout. Optimum 100% Whey is the top selling product at bodybuilding.com. I would venture to guess that's due much to the innovative tastes available. I've tried Caramel Toffee Fudge and Extreme Milk Chocolate and both are very tasty.Ideal use is pre-bedtime, but it could be used at any other time during the day as well. Casein protein is slow releasing and provides more satiety than whey protein in general.For the best tasting casein protein, check out this post While I've been lucky enough to never find any use for this supplement personally, clients claim to have used it successfully for relieving joint pain. Studies support such notions and state that glucosamine seems to be a safe and effective supplement for relieving pain and stiffness in joints.Note that intermittent fasting potentiates the effect of stimulants. Any stimulant ingested during the fasted phase will have a greater effect compared to it's ingestion during the fed state. Some caution should therefore be exercised for those not familiar with the use of stimulants.If you're not a regular coffee drinker, you're really missing out by not adding caffeine to your diet when the going gets tough. It's cheap, suppressses appetite and has thermogenic properties This stuff is nasty as hell. On the plus side, it has a quite potent stimulatory effect and works very well as an appetite suppressant.If you can't stand the horrid taste of Clenbutrx, VPX Meltdown is a great alternative. This one actually has legit scientific backing, which is a true rarity when it comes to fat loss products. You can read both (free full text) studies on Meltdown here and here. Note the effect on resting energy expenditure. Not bad.This herb may be particularily useful for those trying to get rid of stubborn body fat - such as the fat covering lower abs and back in lean men and thighs and hips in lean women. Hokey as that may sound, there is a valid explanation for how this occurs. Lyle McDonald explains this in great detail in The Stubborn Body Fat Solution. In short, yohimbine inhibits alpha-2-receptors (and lower abs/back has a high density of a2-receptors) which aids with blood flow and fat mobilization from stubborn fat areas.Yohimbine is another fat loss product that has been proven effective in clinical trials and this is perhaps the most widely cited study on the effects of yohimbine on body composition.Pure yohimbine may lead to feelings of anxiety and even panic attacks in predisposed individuals. A better alternative can be found in Alpha Burn, and other supplements containing rauwolscine, which is a stereoisomer of yohimbine. Reg from Predator Nutrition recently sent me a box of these and I can vouch for it's psychoactive effects not being as rough as pure yohimbine. While it won't make you as jumpy and jittery as yohimbine, it seems to have a pretty potent appetite suppressive effect.L-tyrosine is a precursor ("building block") to the catecholamines dopamine and norepinephrine. For this reason, it has been studied in the context of performance enhancement among other things. Although studies show mixed results, empirical evidence suggests that tyrosine has it's use as a pre-workout stimulant when combined with other substances such as caffeine. It seems to enhance the effect of other stimulatory substances, which has been my experience as well. Tyrosine has also shown promise in alleviating the decrements in cognitive performance associated with stress and fatigue. For this reason, it might be useful for keeping your mind sharp during intense stints of dieting.I've been trying a wide range of pre-workout supplements but I've never found something worth recommending. Some like the extra pump from NO Xplode and similar nitric oxide based supps, I just don't any use for it.I was pleasantly surprised by Jack3d. Besides the usual ingredients present in many pre-workout supplements, such as caffeine, creatine, arginine and beta-alanine, it contains 1,3-Dimethylamylamine also known as geranamine. This is a potent stimulant (as far as legal alternatives goes) and this is what provides the oomph in this product. Apparently Geranamine is used as recreational drug in some circles and banned in a few countries. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see more countries banning it soon as everything that is mildly effective seems to get a ban sooner or later. Shortly after I wrote the supplements guide, Meltdown and Clenbutrx both got banned in Sweden.Anyway, being somewhat resistant to stims, I started off with the maximum recommended dosage the first time (three scoops). After 5-10 minutes, I could tell that it was working as I got an intense urge to do the dishes. During training, I didn't notice anything out of the norm besides a somewhat uncomfortable back pump after squatting. After training, I had to wait two hours before my appetite returned. I never have problems eating after training, especially not after fasted training, but the thought of food made me queasy. I also noticed some slightly panicky feelings at that point, the kind where you want to crawl out of your own skin. Nothing serious, but for those sensitive to CNS stimulants or prone to anxiety attacks, I would not recommend starting off with the highest dose like I did. However, it seems tolerance develops and within a few days I could use the maximum recommended dosage without any side-effects. Unfortunately, the stimulant effect is also lessened.In my experience, Jack3d is quite effective, but less so for the purpose it's advertised. I see it's use mainly as an appetite surpressant or stimulant, much like ephedrine. The mechanism by which Jack3d exerts its effect is also similar to ephedrine in that it increases epinephrine/adrenaline, which in turn boosts lipolysis and leads to that "focused" feeling. Or that urge to do something, anything.Either way you want to use it, for a pre-workout or motivational boost, or appetite surpression, Jack3d works, which is why it ends up on my list of recommended, but certainly not essential, list of supplements.By the way, I haven't found any studies to back the effectiveness of 1,3-dimethylamylamine for fat loss. If anyone knows of any human trials regarding its use for weight loss or improving cognition, alertness, or anything else for that matter, let me know. I always try to find some scientifical backing for the supplements I recommend but I'm at a loss for this one. Adipoxil is a strange beast. It's different from all other fat burners reviewed here in the sense that it has no stimulatory properties. At the same time, it's a very potent appetite suppressant - at least as far as legal alternatives goes. I suspect this might be explained by the synephrine and the "lipolytic oxidation protocol," which contains cayenne pepper and various other thermorgenic compounds. Synephrine and cayenne pepper are both known to suppress appetite.There's also a peculiar side-effect that's noticeable shortly after ingesting the tabs; it alters taste, and specifically it made coffee undrinkable. I'm not sure how to describe it. I'm a coffee-fiend but that hot cup of goodness turned wretched after I downed the tabs. Also, be careful with the dosing and don't go for double dose the first time you try it. I experienced nausea with two tabs and it wasn't very pleasant.Anyway, Adipoxil might be a good alternative for those looking for a supplement without pronounced stimulatory properties. I need to add a big disclaimer here however; Adipoxil does contain Yohimbine and caffeine, andprovide a stimulatory effect. I might just be a weird outlier to not have noticed anything. If you do try it, let me know in comments if you felt anything. I should also note that I only tried this three days in a row, so I'm not sure about tolerance issues. For the short time I ran it, it worked very well.I also tried another supplement from iForce Nutrition, the makers of Adipoxil: a pre-workout supplement called "Maximize V2". This was nothing special - pretty much the same as Jack3d, but less potent.that you can enter "leangains" as code when ordering from Predator Nutrition and get 5% off your order. I receive no commissions; instead you get cheaper supplements.Re: CNBC
From:glenn.hutchins@gmail.com To: ntanden@americanprogress.org CC: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-11-14 16:36 Subject: Re: CNBC
here's my question: "You have said that raising the minimum wage would make America uncompetitive. But virtually all minimum wage jobs [see graphs below which I will send to CNBC in advance] are in services industries that don't export like your hotels and resorts. How do you explain that?" fyi, the leisure and hospitality industry account for ~60% of the total private sector minimum wage jobs in the US comments? Glenn Hutchins > On Nov 14, 2015, at 12:06 PM, Neera Tanden <ntanden@americanprogress.org> wrote: > > Wouldn't it be also good for the CNBC audience to discuss his tax plan that adds 10 trillion to the deficit? > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Nov 14, 2015, at 11:53 AM, Glenn Hutchins <glenn.hutchins@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Neera: can someone please send me what Trump has said about the minimum wage? >> >> Glenn Hutchins >> >> On Nov 14, 2015, at 11:49 AM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Maybe given his wages are too high which he has walked back to only being about the minimum wage: ask him Since so much low wage work is concentrated in the service sector from fast food workers to housekeepers, why would raising the minimum wage affect US competitiveness? >>> >>>> On Saturday, November 14, 2015, Glenn Hutchins <glenn.hutchins@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> Turns out now that Trump is calling in between 8 and 8:10. So I am going on at 7:45 in order to be in place for to call >>>> >>>> I am trying to craft one question to ask him in case I get a chance. Any thoughts? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Glenn Hutchins >>>> >>>> > On Nov 14, 2015, at 11:30 AM, Neera Tanden <ntanden@americanprogress.org> wrote: >>>> > >>>> > I think you may get asked about the debate and Paris. I will send you ideas post debate. >>>> > >>>> > Sent from my iPhone >>>> > >>>> >> On Nov 13, 2015, at 3:23 PM, Glenn Hutchins <glenn.hutchins@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >> >>>> >> I am going on CNBC between 8 and 9 AM on Monday morning and expect, among other topics, to be asked about HRC. My plan is to contrast the Rs whining after the CNBC debate with her masterful performance before the Benghazi panel and pose the question of who looks presidential. >>>> >> >>>> >> As I prepare, any input from you two would be welcome. >>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> Glenn HutchinsIn NH, we have a 400 member volunteer House of Representatives. We have their contact information. We can call them. We can email them. We can email committees.
They are our representatives.
They get a lot of email. They hear from constituents. They hear from people all over the state who are concerned about issues. They also hear from lobbyists and special interest groups - from both inside and outside the state. They get paid $100 a year. It's a lot of work.
They are our representatives.
That's why this exchange is so troubling:
From: Kimberly Meuse
Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 1:51 PM
To:
Subject: No on SB3
Dear House Election Law Committee,
I’m very troubled by the solution-seeking-a-problem with our state’s SB3 bill. Our own Secretary of State has had to admit that there are no occasions where out-of-staters have come over our border to vote in our elections, and certainly his own claim of “perception” manufactured without evidence by some state reps isn’t enough to put this law into effect. The result would be limiting the ability for legitimate residents to vote based on fear-mongering and partisan gain. Town officials have no clue how to affect the requirements in this bill and pay for the staff to go door to door to fulfill the bill’s draconian measure of proof of domicile. Finally, the bill would require voters to pay a poll tax of $5000 if they don’t have proof of domicile within a small time frame. This isn’t about making our elections “fair”. It’s about recourse for the 1000 voter margin that put a Dem in the Senate.
Enough.
Best,
Kimberly Meuse -----Original Message-----From: Kimberly MeuseSent: Monday, May 1, 2017 1:51 PMTo: HouseElectionLawCommittee@leg.state.nh.us Subject: No on SB3Dear House Election Law Committee,I’m very troubled by the solution-seeking-a-problem with our state’s SB3 bill. Our own Secretary of State has had to admit that there are no occasions where out-of-staters have come over our border to vote in our elections, and certainly his own claim of “perception” manufactured without evidence by some state reps isn’t enough to put this law into effect. The result would be limiting the ability for legitimate residents to vote based on fear-mongering and partisan gain. Town officials have no clue how to affect the requirements in this bill and pay for the staff to go door to door to fulfill the bill’s draconian measure of proof of domicile. Finally, the bill would require voters to pay a poll tax of $5000 if they don’t have proof of domicile within a small time frame. This isn’t about making our elections “fair”. It’s about recourse for the 1000 voter margin that put a Dem in the Senate.Enough.Best,Kimberly Meuse
And the response?
From: Norman J Silber < njs@silbersnh.com Subject: RE: No on SB3 Date: May 1, 2017 at 4:06:48 PM EDT To: Kimberly Meuse
Who are you and where do you live? Do you have anything intelligent to add to this debate- your email certainly indicates a lack of a realistic understanding of the issues.
Unhelpful emails such as your just clog my in box and will be blocked in the future.
Norman Silber
Member of the NH House of Representatives Belknap County District 2- Gilford & Meredith
Ms. Meuse didn't do anything to deserve this kind of a response.
The arrogance and rudeness is astounding, coming from a freshman state representative. It seems Rep. Silber counts on that R next to his name to ensure his re-election, and not charming disposition or his behavior toward voters who have the nerve to question him.
A reminder from the House General Court Handbook, back in the days when it was still online - before the behavior of the majority party was so embarrassing that they took this down:Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle speak to reporters on his campaign plane near San Antonio, Texas March 4, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Young
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama raised $55 million in February, a record for any presidential campaign in a single month, a campaign official said on Thursday.
The amount is well above the $36 million the Illinois senator raked in during January and is also much higher than the $35 million raised by his rival Hillary Clinton during February, even though that month marked a record for her fundraising.
Obama and Clinton, locked in an intense battle to become the Democratic nominee to run against Republican Sen. John McCain, have stepped up their competition with one another for funds for their campaign coffers.
Both the Clinton and Obama camps have been pointing to the amounts of money their are hauling in as evidence their campaigns have enthusiastic backers. But the growing campaign tallies also underscore the extent to which the candidates are scrambling to gain advantage over one another in the hard-fought race.
While Clinton was not able to keep up with Obama’s total in February, she stepped up her fundraising that month after bringing in $14 million in January and making a personal loan to her campaign of $5 million.
Clinton, who has been lagging Obama in the race for delegates, racked up wins on Tuesday in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island that broke a winning streak by Obama and marked a comeback for her.john leung + clarkehopkinsclarke: isometric bookshelf
front view
translated from 2D drawings of optically challenging forms, australian architects john leung and clarkehopkinsclarke have created a 3D translation of a form appearing in isometric perspective entitled the ‘bias of thought’ bookshelf. although lacking any horizontal surfaces, it can still be used for storing books and hanging magazines by placing the items in the shelves which are lined with glass. the optical illusion serves as a reminder that whenever one picks up any sort of medium, ideas may be misinterpreted when passed from one person to another.
side view
side view
top view revealing the slanted supports that create the visual conundrum
designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions’ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. we have already acquired many submissions, so keep on the lookout for more of your projects to be published in the coming days!Edwards, Jacobs debate MLS stadium-Citrus Bowl option
Orlando official says MLS at Citrus Bowl was considered, but there's no documentation
Edwards said he wanted to see the proof that both Orlando and Orange County looked at renovation options to the Citrus Bowl that could have accommodated a new MLS franchise, and the numbers that led both sides to decide that building a new soccer stadium was less costly.
Orange County Commissioner Ted Edwards and Mayor Teresa Jacobs sparred Tuesday over whether leaders were "duped" by pro soccer officials into agreeing to build a new stadium as a condition to land a Major League Soccer franchise in Orlando.
An aide to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said Monday there is no written documentation on those costs.
"There isn't any documentation," said Heather Fagan, deputy chief of staff at Orlando City Hall. "Having said that, it was more than just 'chatting over coffee.'
"We asked our architects working on the Citrus Bowl project to evaluate incorporating MLS-requirements into the Citrus Bowl reconstruction. The architects came back and informed us it would be more cost-prohibitive then building a new stadium."
Since officials deemed a stadium retrofit to be "unfeasible," Edwards asked Jacobs in a memo last week for "any documentation concerning the review" of that possibility.
Jacobs said Edwards should have asked such questions before the vote. The mayor said she also disagreed with the notion that anyone was "duped" by league or team officials, and it was unfair to compare a new $1.2 billion stadium in Atlanta, to two Orlando venues that would cost a fraction of that.
"The reason we're building a two stadiums is because it's a lot less expensive," Jacobs said.
Fagan's response was similar to those from Orlando Venues Director Allen Johnson and Jacobs last month. Johnson said they looked at adding a retractable-roof system at the Citrus Bowl that would fan out over the lower bowl during soccer games but leave the stadium open to the sky during college football bowl games and other events.
"It was an extremely expensive proposal, probably close to $100 million, as I recall," Johnson said at the time. "We were told it would be cheaper to build a soccer-specific stadium than it would be to try to retrofit the Citrus Bowl."
MLS officials noted that Atlanta's new stadium would be built to meet the "intimate" soccer experience MLS wants, and can be accomplished in Orlando's new soccer stadium.
MLS spokesman Dan Courtemanche said last month that Atlanta's stadium will be built with soccer in mind. "Major League Soccer has repeatedly stated the importance of creating intimate fan experiences in our stadiums," Courtemanche wrote in a April 22 statement. "With a soccer stadium capacity of 29,000 fans, Atlanta's new $1.2 billion stadium fully achieves the League's initiatives — similar to how Orlando City SC's new $80 million downtown stadium accomplishes this goal."
Edwards, who voted against the stadium, responded Tuesday by saying that debate was "misleading" to the board.
"The city of Orlando looked at whether or not the Citrus bowl could be retrofitted, decided it was unfeasible...and doesn't have one scintilla of paper to back that up," he said. "It looks like it was home cooking and, unfortunately, we were duped."a rabid unicorn wandered into the Valley of Peace, Love and Rainbows, and it ate everyone. The end.this is my neatest work in a while, and it better be, because I've spent like 50 hours working on it. On and off for the last three months of so, for a couple of hours at a time in between all that comic-stuff. Usually I grow to detest a piece when the painting process stretches out for that long, but this this time I don't the tiniest prickle of dislike. Yaaay! I guess it's worked as a welcomed break from drawing pages for "a Redtail's Dream" for like six hours per day, every day. o_oand a few close-ups of the finished thing right over here. Photoshop CS4, Wacom Cintiq 12WXCLOSE Rand Paul was in Louisville on Monday to tour Siemens. He talked to reporters about his opposition to the GOP health plan being proposed and how he believes a market-driven plan would be better Michael Clevenger/CJ
Buy Photo Kentucky Senator Rand Paul speaks to reporters after touring the Siemens plant in Louisville June 26, 2017 (Photo: By Michael Clevenger, C-J)Buy Photo
Editor's note: This article has been updated to more specifically define what Senate Bill 17 accomplishes.
Senator Rand Paul called the California attorney general's recent decision to ban state-funded travel to the Bluegrass State "short-sighted" Monday during a short visit to Louisville.
"I thought we fought the Civil War a long time ago. We were going to be one country, not separate countries," Paul said. "Banning travel, I think, is a really really short-sighted response."
The California attorney general's ban is based on Kentucky's Senate Bill 17. The bill is designed to reinforce students’ constitutional right to express religious and political views in public schools and universities. However, the bill also says religious and political student organizations cannot be hindered or discriminated against for the way they conduct their internal affairs or how they select their leaders and members. Critics say those provisions could be used to let student groups prevent LGBTQ students from joining their ranks.
More:Fischer asks California AG to exclude Louisville from Kentucky travel ban
Top story: Dan Johnson angry about leaks. At least that's what a leaked email says
That law, could have indirect repercussions on the LGBT community in one of the nation's more gay-friendly cities, said Chris Hartman, the director of Louisville's Fairness Campaign.
"This is a clear example of the unforeseen consequences that even a vaguely anti-LGBT bill can have," Hartman said Friday. "This is a bill that we opposed, and here we have a real-world economic consequence of passing this bill."
Louisville has been widely accepted as an LGBT-friendly city, and the ban has been questioned by the Mayor Greg Fischer's office as well as slammed by Gov. Bevin's office in response.
"It is fascinating that the very same West Coast liberals who rail against the president’s executive order, that protects our nation from foreign terrorists, have now contrived their own travel ban aimed at punishing states who don’t fall in lockstep with their far-left political ideology," the statement from Bevin's office said.
Paul, who was visiting the Siemens rail manufacturing in plant visiting with executives and meeting with employees, spoke extensively on health care on Friday. Paul said the Republican proposed model doesn't replace the more than $120 billion dollars in subsidies or the necessary mandates for people's plans.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Breaking news alerts Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-866-2211. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
More: 'Love is Love': Kentuckiana Pride Festival sparkles through Louisville
"I don't think the Republican plan fixes that," Paul said. "What the Republican plan does is that it acknowledges that the death spiral of Obamacare will continue."
Paul is currently in opposition to fellow Kentucky senator and Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell, who is urging the Senate to pass the new health care bill that will replace Obamacare before the July 4 recess. Paul, however, is one of the few Republicans voting no on the bill, because he |
as a kind of battle cry, to try to discredit a study. But correlation—the degree to which two or more measurements seem to change at the same time—is important, and is one step in eventually finding causation—that is, establishing a change in one variable directly triggers a change in another.
The important thing is to correctly identify the relationship.
7. Is the journalist, or even the scientist, overstating the result?
Language that suggests a fact is “proven” by one study or which promotes one solution for all people is most likely overstating the case. Sweeping generalizations of any kind often indicate a lack of humility that should be a red flag to readers. A study may very well “suggest” a certain conclusion but it rarely, if ever, “proves” it.
This is why we use a lot of cautious, hedging language in Greater Good, like “might” or “implies.”
8. Is there any conflict of interest suggested by the funding or the researchers’ affiliations?
A recent study found that you could drink lots of sugary beverages without fear of getting fat, as long as you exercised. The funder? Coca Cola, which eagerly promoted the results. This doesn’t mean the results are wrong. But it does suggest you should seek a second opinion.
9. Does the researcher seem to have an agenda?
Readers could understandably be skeptical of mindfulness meditation studies promoted by practicing Buddhists or experiments on the value of prayer conducted by Christians. Again, it doesn’t automatically mean that the conclusions are wrong. It does, however, raise the bar for peer review and replication. For example, it took hundreds of experiments before we could begin saying with confidence that mindfulness can indeed reduce stress.
10. Do the researchers acknowledge limitations and entertain alternative explanations?
Is the study focused on only one side of the story or one interpretation of the data? Has it failed to consider or refute alternative explanations? Do they demonstrate awareness of which questions are answered and which aren’t by their methods?
I summarize my personal stance as a non-scientist toward scientific findings as this: Curious, but skeptical. I take it all seriously and I take it all with a grain of salt. I judge it against my experience, knowing that my experience creates bias. I try to cultivate humility, doubt, and patience. I don’t always succeed; when I fail, I try to admit fault and forgive myself. My own understanding is imperfect, and I remind myself that one study is only one step in understanding. Above all, I try to bear in mind that science is a process, and that conclusions always raise more questions for us to answer.I Typed in My Name and the Results Had Me Speachless
as told to Heidi R. - sponsored by
Ever try Googling someone only to come up with basic information and maybe a link or two to an outdated social media profile? There's a new website going around that promises to reveal much more then just a simple google search can show you.
Been issued a speeding ticket? Failed to stop at a stop sign? What about your family members? And friends? If you are like most of us, the answer to at least one of those questions is “yes”—the vast majority of us have slipped up at least once or twice.
An innovative new website—Instant Checkmate is now revealing the full “scoop” on millions of Americans.
Instant Checkmate aggregates hundreds of millions of publicly available criminal, traffic, and arrest records and posts them online so they can easily be searched by anyone. Members of the site can literally begin searching within seconds, and are able to check as many records as they like (think: friends, family, neighbors, etc. etc.).
Previously, if you wanted to research someone’s arrest records, you might have had to actually go in to a county court office—in the appropriate county—and formally request information on an individual. This process may have taken days or weeks, or the information might not have been available at all. With websites like Instant Checkmate, however, a background check takes just a few clicks of the mouse, and no more than a minute or two.
While preparing this article I decided to run a quick search on myself to give the service a real-world test. To my dismay, the search revealed several items I’d long forgotten—one of them being for the possession of a fake ID I was (embarrassingly) issued back in college when I was just 18 years old.
"possession of a fake ID I was (embarrassingly) issued back in college when I was just 18 years old"
After searching myself and finding those records, my curiosity was piqued, and I began researching family members—apparently my aunt Susanne isn’t a very good driver, judging by the numerous traffic citations that showed on her record.
One of the most interesting aspects of Instant Checkmate is that it shows not only criminal records, but also more general background information like court records, various types of licenses (FAA, DEA), previous addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, estimated income levels and even satellite imagery of known addresses—it’s really pretty scary just how much information is in these reports.
In addition to giving information on the specific person you search for, the report also includes a scrolling list of “local sex offenders” for whatever region you’ve searched—along with a map plotting out the locations of those offenders. I started perusing the ones that showed up in my report, and I was absolutely blown away when I stumbled upon my junior high school wrestling coach’s mug shot.
"I was absolutely blown away when I stumbled upon my junior high school wrestling coach’s mug shot."
His crime was listed as "Out of state offense,"" so I wasn’t able to get the specifics (you usually can—this was an unusual case), but he was definitely a registered sex offender. Scary stuff.
I would definitely recommend this tool to friends and family. Anyone can start running background checks on Instant Checkmate within a few seconds—just click this link to get started.
If you would like to search someone you know, click here.We jetted out to the UK in August for a pair of Skrillex shows at Reading & Leeds. While the weather wasn’t the best, we had an amazing time at each of the unique festivals, and we even got to hang in London for a bit before the shows for a studio session in Shoreditch.
All photos by Caesar Sebastian.
The crew checking out a Banksy in Shoreditch.
London continues to be a place to see many friends these days… Any chance we all get to work and hang is always a great time. A lot of tunes have been made in that city and I’m sure many more.
Ben Verse, MC for Pendulum, shows the crew (Sonny, Drew, Kyle, and Alvin) some new tunes.
From the inside looking out…
We arrive to Reading on the tour bus and make our way out into the festival crowd. Everyone was in great spirits.
A$AP Rocky is such an amazing act to see live…his energy and performance always mirrors him as a person… HONEST and FUN
Shavo from System of a Down and Sonny link up before his set.
One, two, three…LOST BOYS!
Shouts to Derek the master of lasers!
The mothership returns from its intergalactic journey with a new paint job.
Had a great time in Reading, and we took off right after the show for Leeds. The weather was a little bit meaner this day, but festival-goers were more than prepared for a little rain.
One of many rain dances we witnessed in Leeds. A little mud never hurt anyone.
Alvin gets the crowd (and himself) jumpin’ for his set.
Always stay hydrated at the festival folks!
Hey YOU!
Big love to the crowd from Sonny!
And finally, the stage manager extraordinaire…
Traveling to the UK is always a blast. Thank you Reading & Leeds for having us, both shows were amazing… GOOD PEOPLE, GOOD TIMES!For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
The Department of Homeland Security is closely monitoring the situation at Manchester Arena in the United Kingdom. We are working with our foreign counterparts to obtain additional information about the cause of the reported explosion as well as the extent of injuries and fatalities.
U.S. citizens in the area should heed direction from local authorities and maintain security awareness. We encourage any affected U.S. citizens who need assistance to contact the U.S. Embassy in London and follow Department of State guidance.
At this time, we have no information to indicate a specific credible threat involving music venues in the United States. However, the public may experience increased security in and around public places and events as officials take additional precautions.
We stand ready to assist our friends and allies in the U.K. in all ways necessary as they investigate and recover from this incident.
Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this incident.Medical marijuana stocks soared Tuesday as investors wondered whether a Liberal majority means recreational pot will soon be legal in Canada. Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau has voiced his support for the legalization and regulation of recreational marijuana.
Sarah Stuive, a biological control consultant, checks for bugs at Bedrocan Canada, a medical marijuana facility in Toronto on Aug. 17, 2015. ( Darren Calabrese / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Stocks in the sector had been on the rise ahead of Monday’s election, as a Liberal victory appeared more likely. Prices saw a double digit pop in the morning after the majority win, before easing. Shares in TSX-listed Aphria Inc. closed at $1, up 5.26 per cent, while Mettrum Health Corp. gained 7.6 per cent to $1.98. Canopy Growth Corp., which owns two of Canada’s biggest licensed marijuana producers, Tweed and Bedrocan shares closed at $2, up 8.26 per cent.
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The company’s chairman Bruce Linton said the Liberal victory is a game-changer for Canada’s medical marijuana market. “If you were to pick five years ago which one would be the first to federally permit recreational access, I’m not sure how many people would have bet on Canada,” he said. If recreational use was legal his company would have access to a much larger market. It is an outcome he has been preparing for since he founded the company formerly called Tweed. There are less than 40,000 Canadian medical marijuana patients, but the University of Ottawa estimates there are some 2.3 million recreational pot users. A Supreme Court decision forced the Conservatives to make medical marijuana accessible to patients. Last year the Tories replaced a program that allowed patients to grow their own pot with a commercial medical marijuana market they said would be worth $1.3 billion.
However, the market has been hamstrung by red tape, quality control issues and the resistance of the medical community. A viable recreational marijuana market in Canada is at least a year or two away as the government has to figure out taxation, dispensation and other regulatory overhauls, said Khurram Malik, an analyst at Jacob Securities.
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“But in the interim I think small tweaks to the medical market will considerably increase demand which is what we’re all waiting for.” Malik believes a Trudeau government could liberalize the existing medical marijuana program in the short-term to make it more compatible with a long-term plan. Those tweaks could include increased advertising, third-party dispensaries and an easier path to prescriptions. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies will more seriously consider a move into the marijuana market now that a major barrier — the anti-marijuana Conservative party—has been removed, Malik said. On Tuesday Canadian Cannabis Corp. announced it will buy Hydropothecary Corp., a licensed producer of cannabis and cannabis oils for $28 million. Malik said the takeover had been in the works for a while and the announcement was timed to the election. He added that the increased valuations of marijuana companies is likely to result in more consolidation activity in the sector. The election results have also made some recreational pot companies that operate in the U.S. reconsider expansion to Canada. The Canadian medical marijuana market is simply too small for consideration, said Don Robinson, CEO of Golden Leaf Holdings, a cannabis oil producer. “But if Canada legalizes recreationally then the market becomes much bigger and much more attractive.”Just weeks after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was forced to apologize for racist jokes aimed at Asians; and days after a white male Democrat claimed Hispanic Governor Susana Martinez “does not have a Latino [sic] heart,” another prominent Democrat, Vice President Joe Biden, has been forced to apologize for using the Jewish slur “shylock.”
Biden’s shockingly casual and offhand use of the slur occurred while the Vice president was speaking before the Legal Services Corporation Wednesday: “People would come to [my son] and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being-I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas,” Biden said.
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The term originated in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” A greedy, Jewish banker-character is named “Shylock.” The word is now widely known as a slur against Jews.
Biden has already been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and has issued an apology.
As of now, the same media that Frankenstein Villaged Republican Trent Lott out of his leadership position in the U.S. Senate in 2002 over his flattering of an old man, has hardly covered or shown any interest in either Reid’s or Biden’s bigoted remarks.
Reminder: Democrats sure got it good.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNCNow, with the presidential race heating up, it is more crucial than ever for voters to know that in fact most of them support Sanders' signature issue. Just look at this summer's polls, as with the New York Times surveys reporting that 57 percent of respondents want the government to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, while a whopping 84 percent percent think that money has too much influence in political campaigns.
Even those who cheer Trump's seemingly racist immigration-restriction rhetoric often add that they support him because, as a billionaire, he is not beholden to wealthy donors. All of this of course echoes the populism of the first Gilded Age, a mass movement that also contained elements of the right as well as the left -- but, then too, with the general public mostly supporting the latter's efforts to limit the growing concentration of wealth and political power. The successful campaigns for constitutional amendments establishing graduated income tax and the direct election of senators are echoed today in such initiatives as the push for an amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that have facilitated the outsize influence on our electoral system of big donors.
Meantime the major media outlets tend to focus on Sanders' identity as a democratic socialist, as with a recent New York Times Magazine interview that harped on that theme to the exclusion of policy questions. Sanders' political label does not, however, explain these journalists ignoring the widespread popularity of his message, for public officials with no such tag -- e.g. Elizabeth Warren -- find their own critiques of economic inequality similarly mischaracterized as located on the left side of the political spectrum.Intro
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pen-name Mark Twain) has been called the ‘father of American literature’. His novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is set in Missouri along the Mississippi River. Twain captures the essence of everyday midwest American English on almost every page, largely because the story is narrated by Huck Finn himself. The language is also notable because of the early representation of African-American dialects.
On these pages
The first piece of African-American speech appears at the start of chapter two. Who dah?calls Jim, and later Say - who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n. Several of these non-standard linguistic features are shared by all the characters, regardless of colour. It is chiefly their relative frequency in the narrative that marks Jim out as a black speaker.
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, 1885.
Shelfmark: 1609/6222.If you’re a Traeger or pellet grill owner, you’ve already got your self a slice of the good life. No matter whether you’re a newbie, or a fanatic, there’s always more to learn to become a master griller, smoker, and all around pro.
We set about to collect the top hacks, tips, and tricks to make your grilling, smoking, and barbecuing experience even that much better. Here are the top 7 …
1. Disposable drip bucket liners (Amazon: aluminum or biodegradable; eBay)
Tired of cleaning up that gooey mess? Accidentally bump the bucket off when you were putting the cover on or taking it off and get a nasty spill? Get these disposable drip bucket liners, and make cleanup a breeze.
2. Grill light (Amazon or eBay)
Got an all night cook going, and bumping around on your grill in the dark? Lose the flashlight, or head lamp, and get this must-have essential for any serious smoker. This one is a best-seller online for a reason. It bends, it clamps, and it’s got a magnetic base.
3. Drip tray liners (Amazon or eBay)
Quit messing around with aluminum foil, and get serious. No more short tear sheets of foil, or oily blackened and wadded up aluminum. Again, the hack here is making clean up EASIER, so you can get back to important business (grilling, smoking, adult beverages, and such!).
4. Meat smoking and meat temperature magnets (Amazon or eBay)
Leave the guess work and frantic web searches behind. Put one of these magnets on your pellet hopper or refrigerator. Quickly find what internal temp you’re shooting for, so you get the perfectly cooked cut of meat, all the time, every time.
5. Tappecue (Amazon or eBay), or a wireless thermometer (Amazon or eBay)
You likely spent hundreds on a grill, right? And you’re probably spending upwards of tens to hundreds more every time you cook on it. Protect that significant investment from the butcher, save wasted effort by not having to “peak” at your cook — and get the perfect internal temp.
6. Bucket Head Vacuum – for swapping out pellets (Amazon or eBay)
Moving from hickory to apple, but the hopper is 3/4 filled? Get a bucket head for a 5 gallon bucket, vacuum out the pellets, and you’ve got ready made storage to boot! Traeger also makes a basic bucket and storage lid kit with filter.
7. A-maze-n Smoker Tube – for adding extra smoke to any cook (Amazon or eBay)
Can’t get enough smoke? That’s where A-maze-n comes in. The secret to the tube is in it’s simplicity. Just add pellets, light one end, and leave on the grates. Great for cold smoking cheese, nuts, fish, or EXTRA smoke to pulled pork, brisket, or anything else.
BONUS TIP: Crowdsource – recipes, tips, tricks, and other ideas
Leverage the expertise of online communities of Traeger, pellet grill owners, and BBQ fanatics. Just a few we like to get you started:
Find a better deal on any of the above online? Leave us a comment, and we’ll take a look.
Want more accessory ideas? Read our Top 30 Traeger Essentials, Accessories, Gadgets, Gift Ideas, and More list, visit the Our Picks section of our site, and check out our 13 BBQ Books to Get You Started list too.
Thanks for reading! As always, we welcome hearing from our readers. Please feel free to leave a comment or hit the Contact Us form. And if you liked this post, please share it.
Editor’s Note: Post contains affiliate links. Learn more.
Featured Image: Tomasz Pasternak, from Noun Project
AdvertisementsThe City of Glendale and the Coyotes’ prospective buyer have done what many thought impossible. Multiple sources have confirmed that the two sides have bridged a $9 million annual gap on an arena lease agreement and the proposal will be presented at the Glendale City Council executive session on Tuesday.
that already has a purchase agreement with the NHL, was able to find multiple Coyotes-related revenue streams for Glendale that will provide the city between $8 million and $11 million annually on a 15-year lease. Details of the proposal were not forthcoming, but while the city has only approved $6 million in its budget to manage the arena, it is believed Renaissance Sports and Entertainment, the ownership group headed by George Gosbee and Anthony LeBlanc, was able to find multiple Coyotes-related revenue streams for Glendale that will provide the city between $8 million and $11 million annually on a 15-year lease.
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RSE needs about $15 million annually to manage the arena. The additional revenue streams will, in some manner, account for the difference between the amount RSE is seeking and the amount Glendale has budgeted. Although specifics of those revenue streams are not known, it is possible that some could come from ticket surcharges, parking fees, suite sales and stadium naming rights. Jobing.com signed a 10-year, $30 million naming rights deal in 2006.
Councilmember Gary Sherwood said the council will review the proposal on Tuesday and possibly suggest some alterations, and then it is expected to be added to the agenda for the City Council meeting on June 25, possibly for a vote.
If the council can’t sift through all of the information it has in time for a vote on June 25, it’s possible the process could be delayed until July. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly recently told Sherwood that if the NHL were confident a deal was forthcoming, it would be amenable to waiting until early July. However, Sherwood noted that a special city council voting meeting has been added on June 28, at which time a vote could also take place.
The next step, and likely the last major hurdle in the process, is the council vote, which will require four “yes” votes out of seven. Sherwood has been preparing a report that examines the financial implications for the city with and without the Coyotes that he will present to council members on Tuesday. Based on his task force’s findings, the Coyotes remaining in Arizona would mean about $1.5 million more annually for the city.
If the council does not approve RSE’s bid, Daly indicated recently to Sherwood that there are a number of options for relocation. Quebec is considered a fallback option because the league would prefer to procure a lucrative expansion fee from that city.
the chilling system and ice-making equipment are currently operational at the arena, which means it could serve as a temporary home while groups begin working on getting a new arena built. Key Arena would only seat about 11,000 people for hockey. A league source said this week that renderings of a reconfigured Key Arena in Seattle have been circulating, and a report from Seattle said, which means it could serve as a temporary home while groups begin working on getting a new arena built. Key Arena would only seat about 11,000 people for hockey.
But the memorandum of understanding for a new Seattle arena calls for an NBA franchise to be acquired in order to begin construction. It would likely have to be amended in order to begin construction for an NHL franchise.
Even without an immediate new arena, multiple sources believe Seattle is a good Plan B because it is a solid financial market, it has a thriving youth hockey program that has been strong for at least four decades and it’s the perfect location for the league’s realignment plan — some would argue it’s a better location than Phoenix given the travel requirements of Western Conference teams.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has made no secret of his admiration for Seattle, but the first option was and still is Phoenix.
If the Glendale City Council is unable to vote on a new deal before the new fiscal year begins on July 1, it is possible the city could ask the NHL to continue to manage the arena on a monthly basis until a deal is secured, Sherwood said. Again, that would require assurances that a deal is forthcoming.
In related news, Glendale on Friday trimmed the list of non-hockey bidders interested in managing Jobing.com Arena in half. Phoenix Arena Development Limited Partnership and SMG are the two finalists. The first is a subsidiary of the Phoenix Suns and manages US Airways Center. Philadelphia-based SMG manages multiple venues and partnered with the Arizona Cardinals’ Rojo Event Management and Select Artists Associates for the Glendale bid.
The two finalists will make presentations to Glendale staff members and consultants on Monday, and that information will be shared with the City Council in the closed-door session on Tuesday, along with RSE’s proposal. The estimated management costs of the non-hockey bids are unknown.
The two non-hockey bids are of use for only two reasons: for comparison’s sake when examining RSE’s bid and for actual management of Jobing.com Arena if the Coyotes are to leave. No ownership group is amenable — and neither is the NHL — to a non-ownership group managing the arena if the Coyotes stay in Glendale.
it’s still “status quo” for him. Tippett’s contract expires June 30, the same day as the draft, and Tippett joked that it would create a quandary for him if the draft ran later than midnight. With the team’s ownership status still in limbo, Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said Friday that. Tippett’s contract expires June 30, the same day as the draft, and Tippett joked that it would create a quandary for him if the draft ran later than midnight.
Tippett and GM Don Maloney have been in communication since Tippett returned from vacation in Minnesota on Wednesday, but with the council meeting looming on June 25 and the NHL Board of Governor’s meeting on June 27, the coach said he was content to let the situation play out.
the fate of free-agent goalie Mike Smith, who is seeking a lucrative, long-term deal. Should he reach the open market, he will have a number of suitors that could include the Vancouver Canucks, Dallas Stars and New York Rangers. Tippett’s status is directly tied to, who is seeking a lucrative, long-term deal.
On a final note, reports emerged on Thursday that there was a new potential buyer for the Coyotes. There were also reports that longtime suitor Greg Jamison was in town to discuss a deal with more equity up front.
Although he declined any further comment, Jamison categorically shot down both rumors. He was not in town this week and he does not have a new deal ready.
Sources also confirmed there is no other mystery buyer, a point that Bettman underscored to TSN on Friday when he told the media outlet that no parties other than RSE have negotiated for the team.
It’s RSE or bust for the Coyotes’ hopes in the Valley.
Follow Craig Morgan on TwitterTim MacMahon reports that the Rockets are in talks with the Knicks to acquire Carmelo Anthony while also working to sign free agent Andre Iguodala. (1:49)
ORLANDO, Fla. -- In the days leading up to free agency, members of the New York Knicks' front office told people that their priorities were to find a veteran point guard to help groom rookie Frank Ntilikina and to put together a younger roster without overspending on free agents.
To that end, they've been trying in recent days to unload some salary to make a competitive offer to a veteran point guard. According to sources, their top target at the moment is Utah Jazz free agent George Hill.
New York made its interest in Hill previously known but didn't reach out to the 31-year-old in the early hours of free agency, per sources. (Sources say the Denver Nuggets were among the teams to reach out to Hill.)
The Knicks also had interest in trading for Ricky Rubio, but the point guard was dealt from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Jazz in exchange for a protected first-round pick. The Knicks, according to a source, were unwilling to give up a first-round pick for Rubio, and it appears general manager Steve Mills is continuing an edict that originated with former team president Phil Jackson.
NBA 2017 Free-Agency Coverage We've got you covered with the latest news, analysis and buzz. Full coverage • Latest buzz | Every deal | Free agents
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One option for the Knicks when it comes to shedding salary is trading Courtney Lee. Another option? Trading Carmelo Anthony.
To that end, the Knicks and Houston Rockets touched base recently on a trade involving Anthony, per league sources, but talks didn't gain much traction. One name that came up in discussions was Ryan Anderson, per sources. But the Knicks said at that time they weren't interested in Anderson, who has been shopped around by the Rockets. Anthony has a no-trade clause and his estranged wife, La La Anthony, said recently Anthony's priority would be to remain close to his son, Kiyan.
But the Rockets would seem to be an attractive destination for the 33-year-old Anthony because of the presence of good friend Chris Paul, particularly after Houston missed out on Paul George. George's trade to Oklahoma City probably strengthens the market for Anthony.
It would not be a surprise if both Boston and Cleveland showed interest. The Knicks reportedly will not commit to trading Anthony, though, until they hire a new executive to replace Jackson.
Would Anthony want to reunite with coach Mike D'Antoni in Houston? According to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, the bad ending for D'Antoni and Anthony in New York wouldn't prevent Carmelo from joining Houston.
Veteran George Hill would fill the bill of an older point guard who could help groom Knicks first-round pick Frank Ntilikina. Photo by Juan Ocampo/NBAE via Getty Images
The Knicks also re-signed free agent point guard Ron Baker on Friday night. Terms of Baker's deal were unavailable, but people in touch with the Knicks expected them to use an exception to sign Baker. The Knicks will have access to the $4.3 million room exception and the $3.2 million biannual exception.
They also project to have $14.9 million in salary-cap space, a number that increased after the club decided to waive Maurice Ndour. That number assumes the Knicks will renounce their rights to Derrick Rose. According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, New York still has some interest in re-signing Rose.
The Knicks also inquired about Sacramento Kings swingman Ben McLemore, according to ESPN's Chris Haynes. They also reached out to Phoenix Suns restricted free agent Alan Williams on the first night of free agency, league sources told ESPN. Williams, a 6-foot-8 power forward, averaged 7.4 points and 6.2 rebounds last season in 15.1 minutes. Williams fits the profile of a player the Knicks are targeting: young and able to play on both ends of the floor.
Strange explanation on Longstaff: Coach Jeff Hornacek said the Knicks don't have a plan to replace ex-assistant coach Josh Longstaff, who played a lead role in the Knicks' player development.
"We have coaches who have played in the league a long time, and they were very successful," Hornacek said. "We've already discussed about different times making player development as a part of the practice so we're going to let those guys expertise help out on that part of it."
Most teams around the NBA have individual instruction for players outside of team practice hours and it seems, for some reason, that the Knicks are going away from this trend. This is something worth noting as the Knicks look to go younger. Will this development approach work? It's certainly uncommon. Longstaff was a favorite of many of the younger players on the roster, including Kristaps Porzingis. The organization as a whole had put a strong emphasis on developing younger players over the past few years like Porzingis, Baker, Lance Thomas, Langston Galloway, Willy Hernangomez and Mindaugas Kuzminskas.
Will this new approach to development be as effective as the old approach? That remains to be seen. If not, the club has certainly left itself open to questioning.... The Knicks' Summer League opener against Dallas on Saturday - and all Summer League games thereafter - will be televised by the MSG Network.Katy Perry was reportedly 'banned indefinitely' from China ahead of her rumored performance at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show taking place next Monday in Shanghai.
Page Six reported Thursday that Chinese authorities denied the 33-year-old pop diva's visa after outrage over her wearing the Taiwanese flag during a 2015 concert at Taipei Arena.
The communist country was further angered over her wearing a sunflower gown - symbolic of the Sunflower Student Movement, which protested a Chinese trade agreement in 2014.
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Denied! Katy Perry was reportedly 'banned indefinitely' from China ahead of her rumored performance at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show taking place next Monday in Shanghai (pictured in Shanghia 2015)
'She was initially granted a visa to perform at the VS show in Shanghai, then Chinese officials changed their minds and yanked her visa,' a source told the site.
'For every artist who wants to perform in China, officials comb through their social media and press reports to see if they have done anything deemed to be offensive to the country. Maroon 5 was banned a few years ago because one band member wished the Dalai Lama happy birthday on Twitter.'
Back in 2010, the 13-time Grammy nominee performed four songs on the runway during the lingerie extravaganza, which took place at Manhattan's Lexington Avenue Armory.
Prismatic World Tour: The Chinese authorities allegedly denied the 33-year-old pop diva's visa after outrage over her wearing the Taiwanese flag during a 2015 concert at Taipei Arena
Politically-charged costume: The communist country was further angered over her wearing a sunflower gown - symbolic of the Sunflower Student Movement, which protested a Chinese trade agreement in 2014
First time: Back in 2010, the 13-time Grammy nominee performed four songs on the runway during the lingerie extravaganza, which took place at Manhattan's Lexington Avenue Armory
Former 1D boybander Harry Styles is now rumored to replace Perry (born Katheryn Hudson) due to an official-looking flier leaked online, which reveals he'll sing his single Kiwi.
Grammy-winning singer Miguel is also rumored to be a musical guest at the San Francisco bra brand's bash, which airs November 28 on CBS.
Katy's banned news came hours after model-of-the-moment Gigi Hadid announced she was 'bummed not to be able to make it to China this year' over Twitter.
Legit? Former 1D boybander Harry Styles is now rumored to replace Perry (born Katheryn Hudson) due to an official-looking flier leaked online, which reveals he'll sing his single Kiwi
Confirmed? Grammy-winning singer Miguel is also rumored to be a musical guest at the San Francisco bra brand's bash, which airs November 28 on CBS
The real reason was reportedly due to an Instagram video of the 22-year-old IMG Model squinting her eyes to resemble a Buddha cookie that her sister Bella uploaded in February.
As for Gigi's sibling, the 21-year-old sneakerhead shared a lingerie-clad snap Wednesday gushing: '5.DAYS. @victoriassecret I am so excited! Can't wait to see you Shanghai!'
Other cancellations this year include Brazilian bombshell Adriana Lima due to a 'diplomatic problem' as well as Julia Belyakova, Kate Grigorieva, Irina Sharipova, and Dasha Khlystun.
Denied? Katy's banned news came hours after model-of-the-moment Gigi Hadid announced she was 'bummed not to be able to make it to China this year' over Twitter
Racist: The real reason was reportedly due to an Instagram video of the 22-year-old IMG Model squinting her eyes to resemble a Buddha cookie that her sister Bella uploaded in February
As for Gigi's sibling, the 21-year-old sneakerhead shared a lingerie-clad snap Wednesday gushing: '5.DAYS. @victoriassecret I am so excited! Can't wait to see you Shanghai!'
Brazilians, Russians, and Ukrainians: Other cancellations this year include Adriana Lima (pictured in 2016) due to a 'diplomatic problem' as well as Julia Belyakova, Kate Grigorieva, Irina Sharipova, and Dasha Khlystun
On Thursday, the buzzcut blonde joined fellow American Idol judges Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie at Hollywood's Dolby Theater for a taping ahead of the March 11 premiere on ABC.
Perry scored an eye-popping $25M paycheck to judge the reboot of the formerly Fox singing competition - according to TMZ.
The Swish Swish songstress will then resume her 90-date Witness: The Tour on November 24 at the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City with opener Purity Ring.
Premieres March 11 on ABC! On Thursday, the buzzcut blonde joined fellow American Idol judges Luke Bryan (L) and Lionel Richie (R) at Hollywood's Dolby Theater for a tapingPhilippe Coutinho: Enjoying a new lease of life in Spain with Espanyol
Philippe Coutinho is keen to make his loan move from Inter Milan to Espanyol permanent after enjoying his new lease of life in Spain.
The 19-year-old midfielder has become an instant hit with the Catalan club and it has been suggested they are looking to secure his signature from the Serie A side on a permanent basis.
The Brazilian, who is relishing first-team football, has fallen for Espanyol after joining them until the end of the season during the winter transfer window.
"I would like to stay, but I am not thinking about the future," explained Coutinho.
"A player always wants to be playing and I am enjoying the time I have played."
Choice
Coutinho joined Inter from Vasco da Gama in 2010 and made 18 appearances for the Serie A side before opting to try his luck in Spain and is pleased with his choice.
"It was not like I thought it would be," he admitted. "It is difficult to join a squad and compete straight away.
"But all of my team-mates have welcomed me and they have helped me settle.
"The coach gave me the opportunity in the first week and I trained very hard to be able to help the team. I am very pleased with the way things have gone.
"I am enjoying it all and the players here are very technical and the pace is fast. I have to work harder now than I did in Italy and everyone runs a lot |
from the beginning."
Bryant said somebody charged with making a false report would typically be cited and sent a summons. But because police have concerns about Todd's mental health, they are consulting with the Allegheny County District Attorney. She remained in custody and was awaiting arraignment.
Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students, the committee's executive director, Ethan Eilon, has said.
Eilon declined to comment on the investigation Friday or to help The Associated Press contact Todd.
Police investigating the alleged attack quickly noticed some inconsistencies in Todd's story and administered a polygraph test, CBS station KDKA reports.
Authorities declined to release the results of that test, but investigators said they received photos from the ATM machine and "the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction."
Police say they do not believe any other people were involved. They said Todd's friends believed the story about the attack.
Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the "B" was backward, Bryant said.
"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that," Bryant said. "They just take the money and run."**First, the well ordered report, dear Reds:** * Server: EUW, patch 7.5 * Type of Bug: In-game * Details: Riposte (W) won't stun when blocking an auto-attack based hard crowd control. * Reproduction steps: Fiora uses Riposte. Renekton (for example) uses his W on Fiora. Works with Nautilus' passive, Blitzcrank's E, Twisted Fate's W, Alistar's E, and many more. * Expected result: Fiora blocks the hard crowd control (Stun in Renekton's case), and Riposte stuns the target. * Observed result: Fiora blocks the hard crowd control, but Riposte doesn't stun the target, slowing instead. * Reproduction rate: 10/10. * Video: https://clips.twitch.tv/LitigiousCulturedOtterTheTarFu Here, occuring against Renekton. **Then** for those who just wanna know which bugs i'm talking about: First, the ones that have been here for a long time: The visual bug where an enemy champion would have two vitals active. It's annoying, but well you can play around that. Then, the Q target priority choosing (holy sh*t that's a weird way to phrase it, sorry.). I mean, you wanna last hit that minion, but nah Fiora's gonna extend her arm and go for that Q on the enemy renekton, without any vitals to hit. Maybe it was intended that way, but that doesn't make sense. There's also a bug where, when two Fioras are up against each other, sometimes one would not have a Vital, for the whole duration of the one on the enemy Fiora. Pretty benine, but well. I am aware that Riot probably knows about these. And then the good part: since last patch (or later) Fiora's Riposte won't stun when an aa-based cc was parried. For example, Renekton's W (omnipresent nowadays), Blitzcrank's E, Nautilus' passive... So many things. And that's awful. I mean, Renekton was hard enough to kill, and now he can just woob woob away from any bad play he made. There we go. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and see you in the fields of Justice (DEMACIAAAAA).
Title
Body Cancel
SaveTrial collapses after threatened exposure of UK backing of Syrian terror groups
By Simon Whelan
15 June 2015
At the London Old Bailey on June 1, the prosecution of Swedish national Bherlin Gildo for terrorist activities in Syria collapsed.
Gildo’s case was dismissed when his lawyers revealed that the British security and intelligence agencies actively supported the same Syrian opposition groups he was charged with joining.
Gildo had joined Kataib al-Muhajireen before he then worked with the Jabhat al-Nusra, the official affiliate in Syria of al-Qaeda. Along with the Islamic State (ISIS), they remain the principal fighting forces in the US-backed war to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Arrested in London on October 2014, on route from Copenhagen to Manila, the 37-year-old Gildo faced three charges. He was accused of attending a terrorist training camp, receiving weapons training between August 2012 and March 2013, and possessing information likely to be useful to terrorist objectives.
Gildo was arrested while changing flights at Heathrow Airport under schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, the same statute used to hold and interrogate David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who played a central role in the publication of Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency spying operations.
Gildo’s prosecution under the Act followed an extension of offences it covers to include non-UK nationals. The offence of fighting in Syria is not a criminal offence in his native Sweden.
In court, Gildo’s lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were party to repeated secret operations in the Levant, providing weaponry and so-called “non-lethal” equipment to the same Syrian Islamist terrorists Gildo was being prosecuted for fighting alongside.
Henry Blaxland QC, the defence counsel, said if the British “government was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable to allow the prosecution to continue.”
Speaking for the prosecution, Riel Karmy-Jones said the judge was aware “the prosecution requested an adjournment of three weeks to consider a number of different issues that had arisen at various stages of the case.”
Karmy-Jones added, “Following that full review the prosecution consider there is no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction in this case.”
Due to the politically sensitive nature of the trial, some reporting restrictions had been placed. Following the revelations, Judge Nicholas Hilliard removed the restrictions and entered a not guilty verdict on all charges.
After the hearing, Gildo’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said, “He has been detained in this country although he did not ever intend to enter this country.”
Gildo’s defence presented evidence, in the form of articles in the Guardian and New York Times, revealing details of arms being funnelled from the west to the Syrian opposition. Also submitted was a London Review of Books article by Seymour Hersh, implicating MI6, the UK’s foreign security agency, in a “rat line” system transferring both Islamist fighters and arms from the arsenals of Libya to the Sunni rebels in Syria.
Peirce told the media, “There is a fair amount of documentation that arms were being taken out of Libya via Qatar and Turkey and trucked through into Syria to the resistance and the same from Croatia and taken through Jordan. Given that there is a reasonable basis for believing that the British were themselves involved in the supply of arms, if that’s so, it would be an utter hypocrisy to prosecute someone who has been involved in the armed resistance.”
Gildo was essentially kidnapped by the British state and charged with crimes for which it was in fact culpable.
Gildo, when detained by British security, was in possession of a mobile phone containing images of himself pointing skyward surrounded by bloody Syrian corpses. The Sunni Islamists commit daily crimes and atrocities against captured Syrian army recruits and religious minorities.
While publicly opposing such groups, the US and Britain are simultaneously backing the Islamist opposition in Syria to overthrow the Alawite-dominated regime and are supporting forces opposed to the Shia-dominated Baghdad government.
While such a Janus-faced policy by the Western imperialist powers appears contradictory, it has a definite logic for British imperialism. When the interests of Western imperialism and the Sunni Islamists converge or coincide, such as during the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and now the Baathist regime in Damascus, the British, French and US intelligence services utilise the Islamists as proxy shock troops. As a result, British foreign policy, like that of Washington, descends ever deeper into criminality.
The ultimate aim of the US and Britain is to undermine the major Eurasian powers, namely Russia and China, and regional powers like Iran, and secure their own unchallenged domination of Middle Eastern oil supplies.
Just prior to the trial’s collapse, the US government, following a Freedom of Information request, was forced to release a secret seven-page US Defense Intelligence Agency report dated August 12, 2012. It stated, “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” while noting that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey” support the opposition; while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”
British and American military and intelligence support for al-Qaeda and ISIS-like terror groups in the struggle for control of Eurasia is a long-established tactic. During the 1980s, through the conduit of the Pakistani intelligence service, the imperialist powers, together with extensive funding from the Saudi royal family, sought to undermine the Soviet-backed Afghan government through the arming and incitement of the Mujahedeen and the organisation of the “Arab Afghans” into al-Qaeda.
In Syria, as was the case in Afghanistan, the most bloodthirsty Islamists are deemed by the imperialist intelligence agencies as the most effective in terrorising their armed opponents and the general population. Therefore groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, who daily engage in extortion, kidnapping, rape and bloody mass executions of their Shia and Alawite enemies and even one-time Sunni allies, are widely supported by the Western security services.
The British government cannot openly support the aims of the Islamists fighting in Syria, which would expose the “War on Terror” as a naked pretext for the reestablishment of colonial-style imperialist dominance of the Middle East and North Africa. But the Gildo case confirms the dirty secret of Western imperialism. Regardless of all their lofty words on waging a generational struggle against Islamic terrorism, the intelligence services are up to their necks in arming, training and inciting Sunni Islamist militias to terrorise and subjugate the Syrian and Iraqi people.
In Jordan and elsewhere in the region, Western military trainers are drilling those who today are officially sanctioned as “moderate” Islamists, but who tomorrow will appear in the rank and file of ISIS and similar outfits.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.The U.S. Supreme Court took different paths in two rulings delivered Thursday on cases concerning the First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech.
In Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, the issue was whether the content on state-issued specialty license plates should be considered free speech and protected from government oversight. The case centered on the state of Texas’s rejection of a license plate design, proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which featured a Confederate flag.
Justice Clarence Thomas joined the majority, consisting of Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, to make the ruling a 5-4 decision. The justices reversed the Fifth Circuit’s decision that held Texas’s specialty license plate designs are private speech, and found that the First Amendment does not apply in the case of license plates, since the content on state-issued plates is “government speech,” which, according to the decision, is not protected by the First Amendment.
Writing for the majority, Breyer likened the license plates to other public monuments, stating:
The governmental nature of the plates is clear from their faces: the State places the name “TEXAS” in large letters across the top of every plate. Texas also requires Texas vehicle owners to display license plates, issues every Texas plate, and owns all of the designs on its plates. The plates are, essentially, government IDs, and ID issuers “typically do not permit” their IDs to contain “message[s] with which they do not wish to be associated”… Third, Texas maintains direct control over the messages conveyed on its specialty plates, by giving the Board final approval over each design.
Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. wrote a dissent that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.
Writing at SCOTUSblog.com, Lyle Denniston called Alito’s dissent “strongly worded,” and said the Justice argued “that people seeing cars and trucks passing by on the roads definitely do not read license plate slogans as the government speaking, given the immense variety of what Texas has allowed to be said on those plates.”
In the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona, the High Court placed substantial restrictions on ordinances regarding signs and billboards, deciding that limiting signs based on their content is discrimination.
Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas was supported by Chief Justice Roberts and by Justices Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Sotomayor.
According to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which argued for the plaintiff, Pastor Clyde Reed, the Town of Gilbert placed restrictions on the pastor’s temporary church signs solely because of their content.
“While the town’s sign code generously permits an array of political, ideological, and other types of temporary signs, it severely restricts the size, location, duration, and number of signs like Pastor Reed’s inviting people to a church service,” stated ADF, adding that the town attempted to justify its restrictions based on sign appearance, for the sake of aesthetics, and on safety, but only restricted Reed’s signs and not others.
ADF senior counsel David Cortman argued that restricting signs based on their content is discriminatory and violates free speech as granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Court’s decision, states ADF, prohibits the government from discriminating against signs based on content and from valuing one form of speech over another.“Nothing bad happens when you do things out of your comfort [...]
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United States Donald Trump +1 New Jersey man, 81, 'assaulted' while wearing MAGA hat, officials say
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World War I +1 WWII veteran hoped for 100 cards on his century birthday. He got thousands.
Northeast's highest mountain records wind gust of 171 mphHi guys. Happy Christmas Eve, for those of you whom celebrate. Before I head off to celebrate with my family for the next two days, I wanted to make sure I got this post up. As some of you may know the Pantone color of the year was recently announced to be Marsala. Just like last year, I was a bit on the skeptical side and not entirely excited with the selection. The initial reaction made me think of it as a dull, 'grandma' type of shade. But then KB Shimmer announced they were creating a new polish based on the color. Ladies all over the nail community did a pelvic-thrust with joy... or expressed their happiness in other non-weird ways unlike me haha. So I'm super excited for this afternoon's post because I finally have the swatches of Men are from Mars-ala from
Hi guys. Happy Christmas Eve, for those of you whom celebrate. Before I head off to celebrate with my family for the next two days, I wanted to make sure I got this post up. As some of you may know the Pantone color of the year was recently announced to be Marsala. Just like last year, I was a bit on the skeptical side and not entirely excited with the selection. The initial reaction made me think of it as a dull, 'grandma' type of shade. But then KB Shimmer announced they were creating a new polish based on the color. Ladies all over the nail community did a pelvic-thrust with joy... or expressed their happiness in other non-weird ways unlike me haha. So I'm super excited for this afternoon's post because I finally have the swatches of Men are from Mars-ala from KB Shimmer to show you.
Men are from Mars-ala by KB Shimmer will be available for purchase on January 1st. Set those reminders!
Men are from Mars-ala by KB Shimmer will be available for purchase on January 1st.
KB Shimmer Shop | Facebook | Instagram
Overall Men are from Mars-ala has everything we are used to seeing in a KB Shimmer polish. In all honesty, I couldn't have pictured myself wearing this shade before this polish. It's absolutely stunning. And it looks so well against so many different skin complexions, including mine. Marsala, the Pantone color of the year, has never looked this good before!Men are from Mars-ala by KB Shimmer will be available for purchase on January 1st.
Men are from Mars-ala can be described as earthy red-brown linear holographic shade. For these swatches, I used two thin coats and sealed them off with a glossy topcoat. The formula and consistency are perfection, there were no issues with the application whatsoever. There were also no staining issues to report, I know some of us get wary around red-based polishes.Holo lovers rejoice. Out of all the finishes it could of been, I think making Marsala into a holo was a brilliant idea! It literally has brought life into this shade for me.PORTLAND, Maine — GPS giant Garmin has reached a deal to buy DeLorme, the Yarmouth-based maker of the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, for an undisclosed price.
Though most recognizable in Maine for its printed map of the state, the 40-year-old company increasingly has shifted to digital mapping and satellite communication devices.
“The Yarmouth facility will operate primarily as a research and development |
-per-view airing in the South American country.
According to a report from Veja Magazine as well as Tatame in Brazil, the UFC 148 card, which actually aired on a 30-minute tape delay on Globo TV pulled in 19 million viewers.
The fight was aired via tape delay due to a contractual agreement that Globo TV had with the UFC. These numbers only reflect the ratings of the tape delayed free broadcast.
This shatters the record for the last UFC pay-per-view in Brazil which was UFC 147 just last month with those numbers reaching between 10 and 15 million viewers.
No U.S. pay-per-view estimates are released by the UFC, but President Dana White stated prior to the show that he expected UFC 148 to break the one million buys mark.
Follow @DamonMartin on Twitter or e-mail Damon Martin.
For more UFC News and UFC Rumors, follow MMAWeekly.com on Twitter and Facebook.Debugging ARM without a Debugger 1: Use of Asserts
This is my first post in the series Debugging ARM without a Debugger.
This is an excerpt from my debugging techniques document for Real-time Programming. These techniques are written in the context of writing a QNX-like real-time microkernel and a model train controller on a ARMv4 (ARM920T, Technologic TS-7200). The source code is located here. My teammate (Pavel Bakhilau) and I are the authors of the code.
Failing fast is an extremely useful property when programming in C. For example, problems with pointers are much easier to debug if you know exactly when an invalid pointer value is passed into a function. Here are few tips for asserting effectively:
There is no such thing as putting too much asserts.
Assert pointers more aggressively.
Remove all uncertainties.
Print as much information as possible.
e.g. ASSERT(condition, “oops! var1:%d, var2:%x, var3:%s”, var1, var2, var3);
Example
CPU power used for asserts will almost never cause a critical performance issue [in this course]. You can disable them when you know your code is perfect. Verify pointers every pointer dereference.Do not just check for NULLs. We know more about the pointer addresses. We know that the pointer address is limited by the size of the memory. As well, from the linker script, we can even deduce more information. For example, we know that normally, we would not want to dereference anything below the address 0x218000 because that is where the kernel is loaded. Similarly, we can figure out what memory region is text and data.Turn off interrupts as soon as possible in the assert macro. When things go wrong, you want to stop the program execution (and the trains) right away. If you do not turn off interrupts, a context switch might occur to other task and you might not be able to come back ever to stop and display what went wrong.Make an assert macro that resembles printf and print as much contextual information as possible. When you have no debugger, rebooting and reproducing can be really time-consuming. 1.5 months is a very short time to build an operating system from scratch so use it wisely.
Here’s a short snippet of ASSERT macro. It has evolved over 3 months and it looks really dirty but it works. (source)
typedef uint volatile * volatile vmemptr; #define VMEM(x) (*(vmemptr)(x)) void bwprintf(int channel, char *fmt,...); #define READ_REGISTER(var) __asm volatile("mov %[" TOSTRING(var) "], " TOSTRING(var) "
\t" : [var] "=r" (var)) #define READ_CPSR(var) __asm("mrs %[mode], cpsr" "
\t" "and %[mode], %[mode], #0x1f" "
\t" : [mode] "=r" (var)) void print_stack_trace(uint fp, int clearscreen); void td_print_crash_dump(); int MyTid(); #if ASSERT_ENABLED #define ASSERT(X,...) { \ if (!(X)) { \ VMEM(VIC1 + INTENCLR_OFFSET) = ~0; /* turn off the vectored interrupt controllers */ \ VMEM(VIC2 + INTENCLR_OFFSET) = ~0; \ int cpsr; READ_CPSR(cpsr); \ int inusermode = ((cpsr & 0x1f) == 0x10); int tid = inusermode? MyTid() : -1; \ bwprintf(0, "%c", 0x61); /* emergency shutdown of the train */ \ int fp, lr, pc; READ_REGISTER(fp); READ_REGISTER(lr); READ_REGISTER(pc); \ bwprintf(1, "\x1B[1;1H" "\x1B[1K"); \ bwprintf(1, "assertion failed in file " __FILE__ " line:" TOSTRING(__LINE__) " lr: %x pc: %x, tid: %d" CRLF, lr, pc, tid); \ bwprintf(1, "[%s] ", __func__); \ bwprintf(1, __VA_ARGS__); \ bwprintf(1, "
"); /* if in usermode ask kernel for crashdump, otherwise print it directly */ \ if (inusermode) { __asm("swi 12
\t");} else { td_print_crash_dump(); } \ bwprintf(1, "\x1B[1K"); \ print_stack_trace(fp, 0); \ die(); \ } \ } #else #define ASSERT(X,...) #endif
That’s it for today.As heroin overdoses and deaths soar in many parts of the nation, the White House plans to announce Monday an initiative that will for the first time pair public health and law enforcement in an effort to shift the emphasis from punishment to the treatment of addicts.
The experiment, initially funded for one year in 15 states from New England to the D.C. area, will pair drug intelligence officers with public health coordinators to trace where heroin is coming from, how and where it is being laced with a deadly additive, and who is distributing it to street-level dealers.
Two senior officials described the initiative to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the program was not scheduled to be announced until Monday. The new program is a response to a steep increase in heroin use and deaths in much of the nation, especially in New England and some of the other Northeastern states covered in the new program. The death rate from overdoses has quadrupled in the past decade, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From local police to federal law enforcement agencies, two constant frustrations in the battle against the spread of heroin have been an inability to get solid, timely information about where the drug is coming from and who is distributing it, and widespread ignorance among first responders about how to recognize and handle overdoses.
The new effort, proposed by the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, one of 28 such federally funded law enforcement initiatives nationwide, seeks to address those problems by hiring 15 drug intelligence officers and 15 health policy analysts who will collect overdose data, find patterns and get intelligence about trafficking trends to street-level law enforcement far more quickly than the current system allows. In addition, the initiative will train first responders on when and how to deploy medication that can reverse opioid overdoses.
David McCarthy was rebuilding his life when he died of a heroin overdose. The Washington Post speaks to McCarthy's family and friends about his addiction and untimely death at 29. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
“Our approach needs to be broad and inclusive,” a senior White House official said. “Law enforcement is only one part of what really needs to be a comprehensive public health, public safety approach.”
Twenty-six states have passed overdose-prevention legislation that allows police or fire-and-rescue officers to administer naloxone, which quickly counters the effects of a heroin overdose. The laws also clear the way for people to call for help for an overdosing addict without facing arrest for their own drug use.
And the Obama administration this year proposed $133 million in new spending to curb overprescription of opioid painkillers, the drugs that have proved to be the primary gateway to heroin use, and to expand the use of suboxone and methadone, drugs that are used as more benign substitutes to wean addicts off the powerful urge to return to heroin.
By comparison, the $2.5 million being committed to the latest program by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is a small investment, but a senior law enforcement official involved in developing the new strategy said the pairing of public health workers and police is a key step toward “both reducing crime and reducing the number of people who end up in emergency rooms.”
The new money will pay for hiring “a cop and a health data analyst” in 15 of the nation’s 28 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, which cover about 17 percent of U.S. counties and about 60 percent of the population, the official said.
The new hires will work under a law enforcement coordinator who will use the data to identify targets for police to go after across state lines, and a regional health coordinator who will analyze trends in the overdose data and devise strategies for combating spikes in drug use.
The official said he proposed the initiative to overcome bureaucratic hurdles that make it difficult for information about overdoses and trafficking to cross state lines and get to police in a timely manner.
“If somebody from Brooklyn is arrested with heroin in Burlington, Vermont, we may not hear about it for months, when that information could allow us to see a trafficking pattern that lets us focus on who to go after,” he said.
Public health data often is not widely distributed for many months, if not years, after the events that originate it. The initiative will allow public health and law enforcement agencies “to see where fentanyl-laced heroin is turning up, in real time, so we can react,” the enforcement official said.
Fentanyl, an opiate that in its legal, prescription form is used to treat post-surgery pain, has been turning up as an additive in the heroin that has caused a growing portion of overdose deaths in recent months.
“Heroin is killing people,” the enforcement official said, “and too often, public health goes one way and law enforcement goes the other. Often, grants create silos in government. This program is designed not to create any new agency but to bring people together to break out of those silos.”Because Rubio is at least above-average and more often superb in nearly every other aspect of the game — passing, dribbling, defense, leadership — opinion on his overall value is divisive.
The Minnesota Timberwolves had just weathered a slapstick game against a dysfunctional opponent missing their best player, going through the motions with a tad more capability than a Sacramento Kings team sans DeMarcus Cousins to register a 113-104 victory at Target Center Wednesday night.
Coach Sam Mitchell had spent much of the evening angrily barking at his players, but with the win in hand and his future with the franchise under enhanced scrutiny heading into the last three weeks of the 2015-16 season, he was a sanguine dude perched behind the table for his postgame press conference.
Because it was a night where the Wolves looked better on the stat sheet than they did on the court, Mitchell had ammunition for his optimistic portrayal of the triumph. In particular, the three young stars at the heart of the team’s future marketing plan — Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, and Zach LaVine — all scored at least 23 points apiece, with LaVine’s onslaught coming entirely in the second half. Grease-and-glue guy Gorgui Dieng battled through a sore left hip to put up 16 points and 12 rebounds.
But Mitchell’s most trenchant praise came in support of a player who had something of an off-night due to chronic foul trouble and a tough matchup with the Kings’ crafty point guard Rajon Rondo. After starting to answer a question about the way Wiggins has been able to find teammates for assists while driving hard to the hoop, the subject of playing hard had Mitchell suddenly pivoting into a paean for Ricky Rubio.
“Ricky played — he’s amazing because every single play, offense and defense, he competes as hard as he can. And that is something that is rare in this league. Not to take anything away from the other guys — they all play hard — but the way Ricky gives 100 percent on every play, he’s just a, he’s a unique player,” Mitchell raved.
“For our team, he gets us into our stuff and makes the right decision and passes the ball and defends. I think quietly Ricky has had an unbelievable year. He’s in the weight room, working on his body, he’s been resilient, he’s taken care of himself. I think Ricky likes playing with this core of young guys that we have. And he is included [in that young core] — he’s only 25.”
As recently as the NBA trading deadline less than five weeks ago, credible sources were reporting that the Wolves might be willing to trade Rubio to Milwaukee for swingman Khris Middleton. On the basis of talent, such a swap wouldn’t be a devaluation of Rubio — Middleton is a wonderful young defender and three-point shooter, exactly the kind of player the Wolves need at both ends of the court.
No, the greater indictment arising out of the Rubio trade banter — if the reported discussions actually happened — was how cavalier at least some members of the Wolves front office were about their existing point guard situation.
Unless you count rookie Tyus Jones, who flashes glimmers of vision and poise but is so physically overmatched that he can’t sustain competence at the NBA level just yet, the only alternative to Rubio would be a continuation of the ongoing failed experiment of second-year guard Zach LaVine running the offense. For the better part of two seasons now, LaVine at the point has torpedoed teamwork and continuity at both ends of the court.
A willingness to deal Rubio without getting even a decent point guard in return underestimates his absolutely vital role in facilitating the development of cornerstones Towns and Wiggins and/or overestimates LaVine’s capacity to fill the void in Rubio’s absence. It also signals that there were some in the organization still clinging to the notion that LaVine would inevitably eclipse and replace Rubio as the point guard moving forward.
Fortunately that already specious notion has been further discredited by the play of the Wolves, but especially Rubio, over the past two months.
On Feb. 10, the last game before the All Star break, the Wolves finally deployed LaVine at shooting guard next to Rubio against a Toronto Raptors opponent that had won 14 of its previous 15 games. The Wolves came from behind to knock off the Raps 117-112. It tied for the team’s third-highest point total in 54 games.
Rubio had 19 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists (versus 2 turnovers) in that contest. Better yet, he scored efficiently, hitting on 2-of-3 two-pointers, 3-of-6 three-pointers, and all six of his foul shots. Considering that discussions about the Middleton trade reportedly took place after that feel-good performance, it seems that some members of the front office regarded it as an outlier.
And to be fair, after four-and-a-half NBA seasons as the sample size, the jury was already beginning to come in with a guilty verdict on Rubio’s inability to enhance his historically inaccurate shooting. The highest field goal percentage of his career is 38.1 percent, from two seasons ago; from long-range, it is the 34 percentage accuracy from three-point territory that he posted during his rookie season in 2011-12. In the modern NBA, the ability to space the floor by scoring from distance is almost mandatory for a guard on a playoff contender. By contrast, Rubio could be left unguarded, an advantage for opposing defenses that is magnified in crunch time, when generating points out of each possession is so important.
Because Rubio is at least above-average and more often superb in nearly every other aspect of the game — passing, dribbling, defense, leadership — opinion on his overall value is divisive. As someone who has watched Rubio improve the performance of the team every year he’s been with the franchise, I have been a staunch supporter despite the frequency with which he clanks his jumpers and muffs layups.
Rubio is one of the smartest as well as one of the most competitive players in the NBA, a kindred spirit to Kevin Garnett. So it wasn’t surprising to see him trying to make lemonade out of his wretched shooting by consciously trying to draw more fouls and also launch more three-pointers this season — two ways to enhance the efficiency of his scoring.
But even as he was making a career-best 82.6 percent of his free throws, and getting to the foul line more often than at any time since his second season in the NBA, Rubio’s shooting stats at the All Star break were still discouraging: 36.1 percent on field goals, including a paltry 29.2 percent accuracy from three-point range.
But for those willing to look more closely, Rubio was in fact improving as a shooter for most of this season. The Wolves recently released a valuable stat sheet breaking down the performance of each player into ten-game increments over the first 70 games of the season. (Wednesday’s win over the Kings was game 71.)
This breakdown shows that Rubio was making 39.3 percent of his field goals the first six games of the season. But then he got hurt and missed six contests — the final four of the team’s first ten games, and the first two of games 11-20, In the eight games after his return from those troubling ankle injuries, when he obviously wasn’t completely recovered, his field goal percentage plummeted to 30.0.
Since then, it’s been a steady climb in accuracy with each ten-game increment. In games 21-30, Rubio shot 33.8 percent. In games 31-40, it edged up to 34.6 percent, and then bumped to 38.2 percent in games 41-50.
In a season where the average field goal percentage is 45.2 percent, those improvements still amount to lousy shooting. But Rubio is so adept at other aspects of the game that he doesn’t even have to be average to solidify his status as an asset for the Wolves moving forward; he just can’t be as flagrantly terrible as his career percentages before this season.
Synergy with LaVine
I highlighted the Toronto game because it was the first time all season where LaVine and Rubio started in the back court together. It is a tandem Wolves fans have clamored for over much of the season. And the pairing has obviously been a catalyst for Minnesota’s — and Rubio’s — heightened offensive prowess over the past two months.
Mitchell announced LaVine would be his starting shooting guard early in the preseason, an experiment that mysteriously lasted all of three games. Possible reasons why the team pulled the plug on the lineup include that it would rob minutes from veteran guard Kevin Martin (who has since been bought out and is no longer with the team); force Wiggins to match up with bigger and rougher small forwards, compel LaVine to likewise step up in the size and weight of his matchups from point guard to shooting guard; and continue to groom LaVine at the point because of a lack of confidence in Rubio.
The All Star break was a nine-day hiatus, a time to take stock of the team 54 games into the 82-game season. Mitchell and general manager Milt Newton are both filling in on roles once filled by the late Flip Saunders—Newton guides personnel moves as the interim President of Basketball Operations and Mitchell is the interim head coach.
Over the break, both men apparently recognized that the best way to secure their future employment was to promote the long-term development of the roster. That meant getting LaVine more playing time at his natural shooting guard position, buying out Martin and point guard Andre Miller, curbing the minutes of veterans Garnett (who hasn’t played since late January) and Tayshaun Prince, and giving backup point guard minutes to Tyus Jones.
The result has been bountiful offense, especially from the starters, and cringe-worthy defense. But the biggest takeaway for the future has been the synergy between Rubio and LaVine.
The new back court tandem was unveiled in game 54. According to the ten-game increments, Rubio shot 41.5 percent from the field in games 51-60, and 44.6 percent in games 61-70—in other words, he has improved his field goal accuracy in five straight ten-game increments.
But that’s only part of Rubio’s improvement. His three-point percentage rose to 35.0 in games 51-60 and then bumped up again to 39.5 in games 61-70. And his free throw percentage rose to 88.7 percent in games 51-60 and a stellar 93.3 percent in games 61-70.
That quality of accuracy is further buttressed by quantity. After never shooting more than 39 free throws in any ten-game increment before the All Star break, Rubio took 62 free throws in games 51-60 and 45 more in games 61-70. After never shooting more than 26 three-pointers in any ten-game period before the break, he launched 38 treys in games 61-70.
What does all this mean? Well, if you look at True Shooting Percentage — a comprehensive statistic that factors in two-pointers, three-pointers and free-throws (one-pointers) — Rubio is singeing the twine with a 61.8 TS% in the 17 games since the All Star break. The average TS% in the NBA this season is 54.1. The most accurate team, the vaunted Golden State Warriors, have a collective TS% of 59.2.
Nobody reasonably expects Ricky Rubio to continue to outshoot the Golden State Warriors much longer — there will be some regression to the mean. But the presence of LaVine and the absence of injury will almost certainly elevate that mean.
According to the stats at Basketball-Reference.com, Rubio shoots 39.5 percent from the field when paired with LaVine and 36.5 percent when LaVine is on the sidelines. From three-point range, the numbers are 33.8 percent with LaVine and 30.8 percent without him. The percentage of buckets when Rubio is assisted rises to 51.5 percent when LaVine is with him compared to 42.6 percent without LaVine.
It is interesting to note that Rubio’s improved shooting over the past two months has not been dependent on LaVine, however — his two-point accuracy over that span is actually a little better in the (relatively few) minutes he plays without LaVine.
As might be expected, the presence of Rubio feeding him dimes has been very good for LaVine’s offense. He is shooting 39.1 percent from three-point range and 49.1 percent overall with Rubio and 38.1 percent from deep and 43.1 percent overall without Rubio. Most significantly, 66.9 percent of his buckets are assisted when alongside Rubio, versus 32.4 percent when someone else shares the backcourt.
A ‘quietly unbelievable’ season
Let’s flash back to the postgame comment from Mitchell the other night. He specifically cited all the work Rubio has put in to retain his resilience and stay on the court this season. Indeed the other knock on Rubio aside from his poor shooting has been that he can’t stay healthy.
But after missing six of the first 17 games this season, Rubio has suited up for every game since the first of December. Give a hat tip to Arnie Kander, the legendary concoctor of potions who serves as the Wolves vice president of sports performance, for helping Rubio stay fit. As Mitchell notes, however, much of the credit belongs to Rubio himself.
Even as Rubio starts to put his shooting and health problems behind him, the typically stellar aspects of his play have actually improved as well this season. He is simultaneously averaging more assists and fewer turnovers than at any point in his career. Analytical measures such as PER and Win Shares are career bests.
And where it matters most — impact on the team — Rubio is second only to Garnett in overall Net rating. The Wolves perform 10.3 points better per 100 possessions when he plays compared to when he sits.
On the cusp of his prime at age 25, Rubio is having, as Mitchell puts it, a “quietly unbelievable” season.Ed Lester to pay income tax and national insurance at source as ministers come under fire for signing off salary arrangements
Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury chief, has come under intense Labour pressure to say whether any minister had been aware they were signing off a tax avoiding scheme for Ed Lester, the head of the Students Loans Company (SLC).
Alexander and the business department, responsible for higher education ended the arrangement on Wednesday, saying Lester would in future pay tax and national insurance on his £182,000 pay package at source, rather than being paid via a private company without paying any tax.
Alexander repeatedly told the Commons: "I was not made aware of any tax benefit made available at the time I was asked sign off the arrangement." He said his responsibility was to sign off any salary levels above £142,500, and to make any adjustments to that size.
The news had come as an embarrassment at a time when the government is trying to crack down on executive salaries in the private sector.
He said the details of the contract were the responsibility of the Students Loans Company and the business department.
He was answering an urgent question tabled by Nick Brown, the MP for Newcastle upon Tyne.
Alexander, who has launched a Whitehall review, provided some reassurance about the pervasiveness of the practice, saying: "I can tell you in relation to the 180 appointments with salaries of £142,500 that I have approved myself in my time as Treasury chief secretary, this is the only one, so far as I am aware, having looked through the cases where any similar arrangement applies.
He added that this did not include arrangements that were made before his appointment or at salary levels below the £142,000 threshold. He said the review would look at this issue
David Willetts, the higher education minister, is the figure most likely to have been aware of the arrangement, but it is not yet known whether he was informed by civil servants of its details.
Earlier, the business secretary, Vince Cable, defended the SLC chief executive, saying Lester was "an exceptionally useful individual who has helped to turn round that organisation".
"The arrangements under which the negotiations took place involved substantial value for money for the taxpayer, a tax cut by the individual and we will pursue matters of public concern on the tax issues," Cable said.
Alexander has written to other Whitehall departments, including accounting officers, to ask whether public servants had been given similar tax arrangements.
He has also asked whether any such arrangements were put in place by the Labour government and why HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had sanctioned the arrangement, a point that is now likely to be investigated by the public accounts committee.
Angry MPs called for the review to be widened to include the level and nature of salaries paid to NHS executives as well as bonus payments being paid to the chief executive of the Child Support Agency.
Labour MP Gareth Thomas raised questions about why written answers provided to him by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills failed to highlight the arrangement.
Lester was appointed SLC chief executive in December 2010 and is paid £182,0000 a year through a private firm he has established rather than being paid directly.
Alexander confirmed that the former head of the civil service, Lord O'Donnell, had been aware of the arrangement.
Richard Bacon, a prominent member of the public accounts committee, said there has been too much of this going on, pointing to a similar case at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) under the previous government.
Alexander said he was not aware of the RPA example and promised he would continue to take strong steps to crack down on tax avoidance.
The PAC chairwoman, Margaret Hodge, urged Alexander to publish a complete list of public servants paid by companies when the review is completed in March.
She wanted details of why HRMC had sanctioned the arrangement, and the decision for government to contribute to his pension.Vehicular homicide charges possible in Whidbey crash
OAK HARBOR - The driver and the front-seat passenger of a Chevy Blazer that triggered a deadly crash Friday night on Whidbey Island are both facing possible vehicular homicide charges, the Washington State Patrol says.
State troopers said the 1994 Blazer crossed the center line of Highway 20 and hit an oncoming Subaru Outback, head on, at about 8:50 p.m., about five miles north of Oak Harbor.
Three people were killed in the crash - two male passengers in the back seat of the Blazer and the man who was driving the Subaru.
Three others were hurt - the pregnant wife of the man driving the Subaru as well as the Blazer's driver and her front-seat passenger.
A Washington State Patrol spokesperson said Saturday that the driver of the Blazer, Jordyn B. Weichert, 21, of Oak Harbor, was believed to be under the influence of drugs at the time of the accident.
According to the spokesperson, the crash was triggered when Weichert decided to take off her sweater or jacket as she was driving north along the two-lane highway.
The remains of the crashed Blazer at the scene.Weichert's front-seat passenger, Samantha R. Bowling, 22, of Oak Harbor, held the steering wheel while Weichert removed the article of clothing, the State Patrol said.
During the maneuver, Bowling lost control of the Blazer. It swerved across the centerline, then back into its own lane as Bowling over-corrected, then back across the centerline, crashing into the Subaru, the State Patrol said.
A State Patrol spokesperson said Weichert could be charged with vehicular homicide and vehicular assault and will be booked into the Island County jail when she is released from the hospital.
Bowling also faces a possible vehicular homicide charge when she is released from the hospital, the State Patrol said.
Officials said the driver of the Subaru, Brian R. Wood, 33, of North Vancouver, B.C., died at the scene of the crash.
His wife, Erin E. Wood, 31, was riding with him in the Subaru. She is hospitalized but in improving condition. She is six months pregnant.
Two young men riding in the back seat of the Blazer also were killed - Jacob D. Quistorf, 25, and Francis C. Malloy, 26, both of Oak Harbor.
Weichert, Bowling and Malloy were all ejected from the Blazer in the crash. Quistorf was wearing a seatbelt but was killed by the impact.
"I've been here since August of '96, and I haven't seen a wreck like this. I've seen significant damage... but as far as injuries and loss of life, this is the biggest one I've seen since I've been here," said a trooper at the scene.
The three injured were all taken to Whidbey General Hospital. Two of the injured were later taken to Harborview - one with head injuries and one with hip injuries.
Highway 20 was closed until after 2 a.m. while the accident scene was investigated and debris cleared from the roadway.Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management today (Aug. 4) said its incoming class of two-year MBA students boasts the highest percentage of women ever as well as a record average GMAT score. Some 43% of the incoming class this fall will be female, up five full percentage points from last year’s 38% total.
The GMAT average for the class, meantime, will be 724, an eight-point rise from last year when GMATs averaged 716. If other business schools maintain their GMAT averages from last year, Kellogg’s new score would give it the fourth highest numbers of any U.S. school, behind only Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton. The record GMAT now matches last year’s average score for the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Kellogg did not reveal the full range of GMAT scores for its new class, instead reporting that the middle 80% range is 690 to 760.
An eight-point jump in a single year is unusual. In the previous five years, Wharton and Chicago increased their averages by 10 and nine points, respectively, from 718 to 728 and from 715 to 724. In that same timeframe, Kellogg’s GMAT average had fallen by one point. The highest reported GMAT average for a U.S. school belongs to Stanford which last year boasted a 732 average. GMAT scores have added importance because they are a key metric used by U.S. News to annually rank the best U.S. MBA programs.
APPLICATION VOLUME FLAT
Kellogg achieved both records in a year in which applications were flat, according to Kate Smith, director of admissions, who did not disclose actual numbers on applications. “While the total number of applications was about the same, the strength of the candidates we saw seemed to grow,” she said. “We are fortunate to have an outstanding pool of applicants. Our goal is to make sure that students can handle the rigor of the classroom. That (the record GMAT average) is not as interesting as the diversity profile.”
The 43% number puts Kellogg ahead of most business schools and matches UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business which last year hit a record 43%, highest among the elite MBA programs. Some 41% of Harvard Business School’s incoming class this fall is composed of women. At Wharton, 40% of last year’s incoming class was female, while at Stanford it was 42%.
Overall, women make up only about 35% of the U.S. MBA student population. Kellogg Dean Sally Blount was among 10 female deans at top business schools who met earlier this year in a historic session, vowing to undertake steps that would remedy the gender imbalance.
Smith said the increase in women was largely the result of outreach programs. “Over the past few years, we’ve become more focused on attracting more women to Kellogg,” she said. “We have a deep commitment to diversity in every facet of our school. If you look at our track record, we’ve educated many terrific female leaders, including Ellen Kullman, the CEO of DuPont, and Jenny Lee, the managing partner of GGV Capital who is the only woman on Forbes’ Midas List.”
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS UP AT KELLOGG TO 40%, ALSO A NEW RECORD
The school also increased the percentage of international students in the new class to 40%, up from 38% a year earlier. The international contingent at Kellogg will be from 56 different countries, said Smith.
The industry backgrounds of incoming students remained relatively stable, with a few exceptions. The school doubled the percentage of military in the class to 4% from 2%, while incoming students from financial services declined by two percentage points to 21%.BELLENDS across the UK have been urged to not use their vote.
Thousands of complete bellends are planning to vote for stupid reasons such as what someone in a chip shop told them or something that happened to them in a dream.
Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “There’s a lot of emphasis put on ‘using your vote’. But if you are a bellend, you should not vote. You will only do it wrong.”
However shopkeeper and bellend Roy Hobbs said: “If we don’t vote for May we’ll have the entire Third World living here. That’s not just my opinion, it was on the local radio phone-in Big Chat with Mikey Dee.”
Office bellend Wayne Hayes said: “I might vote for the local joke candidate, Barmy Baron Bumface from the Free Doner Kebabs Party, because that is unbelievably hilarious.”
Nurse Nikki Hollis said: “I went to loads of trouble reading fact-checking websites and articles in The Economist, only to discover my neighbour is basing her vote on ‘asteroids’.
“She says none of the main parties are prepared for a giant asteroid hitting the earth so she’s voting Green.”When you look at the fighting in Gaza, or any of the other small, chronic wars we get these days, you notice that traditional war buffs, the ones who like to talk about WW II, don’t have much to say. If they say anything at all, it’s usually, “They should just wipe’em out!” Like, “Israel should just wipe the Pals out!” Or “America should just wipe Iraq off the map!”
And on paper, they’re right. Israel could kill every single man, woman and child in Gaza if it wanted to. And Hell, it probably does want to. So why doesn’t it? America could wipe the Sunni Triangle off the map easily, nuke the whole place or use neutron bombs—Hell, nerve gas, even—if we were worried about limiting damage.
But nobody does this stuff. Why not? That’s the big question. That’s what drives the frustration you’re hearing when these old-school war buffs try to deal with war circa 2008: they think in terms of hardware, and the hardware—the nukes—doesn’t seem to apply, somehow. So why not?
The first key fact is that we’re living in a lull, a pause in longterm military history. We live in the hangover after a wild night, the first half of the twentieth century. That was a binge to end all binges, an era of great, total, merciless warfare. Everybody thinks of the Western Front in the First World War when they think of total war, but there were plenty of other fronts just as merciless, just as brutal, like the Russian Civil War or the Greek-Turkish war in western Anatolia, which was even nastier, if that’s possible, than the Russian fighting. No quarter asked or given on either side.
In this phase, nationalism wasn’t a bad word yet. People were willing to die, more like eager to die, for their countries. Even countries like Italy had a real over-the-top mentality in WW I. Like I’ve said many times, Europe before 1945 was an alien planet that has about as much to do with Europe today as Abba has to do with the dead German guy who did the helicopter music in Apocalypse Now.
The first go-round, from 1914-1918, took a lot out of them, so when the sequel rolled around in 1939, a lot of countries were already moaning and groaning that nobody was going to get them out on the dance-floor again. England and France were going, “Aw no, jus’ lemme set a spell, my lumbago’s actin’ up….” But there were the younger, br |
endangering, according to court documents.
He is being held on a $251,000 bond at the Hamilton County Justice Center. A grand jury is scheduled to report on the case Oct. 22.
A previous version of this story listed the incorrect name and age for the suspect based on information provided by the Cincinnati Police Department.
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1RDcGqeBloomberg above the law
The definition of ‘oligarch’ according to Google is, ‘A very rich businessman with a great deal of political influence.’ And the definition of ‘oligarchy’ is, ‘A small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. A state governed by such a group.’
For a man who’s so extreme when it comes to dictating the lives of Americans, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg just can’t seem to obey the law. The most well-known example is Bloomberg’s strong-arming of the New York City Council to change the term limit law of the nation’s largest city so that he could be Mayor as long as he wished – something not afforded to any other New Yorker until then.
Bloomberg’s self-named corporation also ran afoul of the law recently when it admitted that Bloomberg’s employees had been spying on not only Wall Street corporations, but the Federal Reserve as well. One suspects that if the kids from Anonymous or LulzSec had done it, they’d find themselves being tortured in Guantanamo Bay right now. But not the rich, powerful oligarch Michael Bloomberg.
And let’s not forget Michael Bloomberg’s current favorite pastime – buying elections across the country with his personal fortune to flood Congress with anti-gun representatives. And it’s this passionate mission of his that has gotten the NY Mayor into a world of criminal trouble. At least that’s what 2nd Amendment advocates are insisting.
Using ‘straw purchasers’ to buy guns
All states require some form of identity check in order to purchase a firearm. That’s to prevent ineligible people from buying guns. One such instance is the prohibition against one person buying hundreds or thousands of guns in one day. But once again, Michael Bloomberg appears to be above yet another criminal law.
How do you buy 2,000 guns, out of state, with no paperwork? Ask Michael Bloomberg. According to AmmoLand.com, ‘If it was billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg as the well-founded rumors suggest, he would have had to do it anonymously, and wash the money pretty good, because it’s illegal to buy guns like that across state lines. Buying 2,000 guns that way would be 2,000 federal and state felonies.’
What they’re talking about is a popular urban program wherein a local city buys unwanted guns from its citizens, usually for $100 payable in the form of a debit card or grocery store gift card. The strategy is to get as many guns off the street as possible, especially if the owners are eager to get rid of them. After all, society is definitely better off if those guns are sold to the government and melted into scrap rather than sold to the neighborhood street gangs.
But towns and cities under financial constraints can no longer afford to fund the gun buy-back programs these days. And stepping in to buy all those firearms is a wealthy, anonymous gun control activist. Many have speculated that the mysterious donor is none other than NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Explaining further, the outlet goes on to write, ‘Giving money to someone else to buy guns for you — knowing you can’t buy them yourself – would be a “straw purchase,” something mayor Bloomberg knows is strictly illegal, since he has been fighting against straw buyers publicly for a long time. We don’t know who put up the cash and he sure isn’t saying. The crime doesn’t require that the true buyer ultimately receive the guns, just that the money moves through a knowing straw man (or woman).’
The Illuminati Special Report – Everything you ever wanted to know about the most secret society in history. From its ancient beginning through today. 36pg booklet. Get yours here.
The evidence
The outlet AmmoLand.com continues its investigation into the funding source for the recent Phoenix gun buy-back program. They’ve identified the straw purchaser, as well as the method used to buy all those guns. And for their part, local police officials aren’t cooperating with anyone pointing out that the private mass gun buys are highly illegal.
‘We know how it was done,’ the publication writes, ‘The anonymous bag man gave the money to Hildy Saizow and her anti-gun-rights group, the deceptively named Arizonans for Gun Safety (AGS), according to Phoenix police. Who has AGS taught gun safety to lately? That’s rhetorical, the answer is no one, ever. They’re in the business of buying guns to melt. And campaigning against gun ownership and gun rights.’
Saizow then took the anonymously donated money and bought $200,000 worth of Basha’s grocery store gift cards in $100 increments. That’s 2,000 gift cards, each loaded with $100. The publication points out that those numbers aren’t official, as ‘there is zero accountability’. They also point out that, ‘Phoenix PD didn’t just get 2,000 guns, as one officer feebly mumbled. Those guns cost somebody two hundred grand.’ But who now owns those guns? That’s a good question.
In closing their contemptible review of the anonymous gun buying program in Phoenix, AmmoLand.com calls government officials on one of their most dishonest statements of the program. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, who coincidentally happens to be a member of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control organization, repeatedly announced that not a single tax dollar was used for the gun buy-back event.
But in reality, ‘Scores of city police officers have been involved. Scheduling, cruisers, traffic control, coordination with the churches, advertising, press conferences.’ The outlet goes on to add the cost for storing the 8 tons of guns, checking them, inventorying them, transporting them and putting them away somewhere. Who paid for all that? The reporter answers his own question writing, ‘No one believes that no tax money was used. But that’s their story and they’re sticking it to Phoenix tax payers.’
Recent Whiteout Press articles:
Plot to assassinate Occupy Leaders exposed further
7-Eleven raid proves US Slavery alive and well
Restore the Fourth Rallies nationwide ThursdayLet’s begin with the law of the land: “A public office holder is in conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further his or her private interests.”
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Canada’s finance minister, Bill Morneau is, if not in direct violation of the law, certainly violating its spirit.
Too many companies and too many numbered companies are regulated by the Finance department, one company specifically carries his name — Morneau Shepell, which has made an enormous profit since he’s been in office.
READ MORE: Finance Minister Bill Morneau has been getting at least $65K a month from firm he regulates
After two years in office, Morneau has finally been forced to disclose what his real balance sheet is all about. It includes a number of offshore companies, one of which contains a villa in France, but all of which contain opportunities to avoid paying Canadian taxes.
The revelations shatter the laughable lie that he’s a champion of the middle class wanting to penalize Canadians who have found creative ways to dodge taxes. If he really thought those Canadians were cheating the system, he would have to be considered the cheater in chief.
Fin Min Morneau has been getting at least $65K a month from a firm which will benefit from law he’s pushing https://t.co/WybacnZ7ji pic.twitter.com/97XNewLcei — David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) October 20, 2017
But the news of who he really is and what he’s really been doing puts the prime minister in a box. How does he justify keeping a person with Morneau’s assets in the role of finance minister regardless of whether he is dragged, kicking and screaming into putting his mountain of wealth in a blind trust?
WATCH: Justin Trudeau asked about Bill Morneau controversy
Would a person who owns millions of shares in Husky Oil be considered for the position of Resources Minister? Would a person with a substantial interest in the pharmaceutical industry be appointed Minister of Health? Would a person who has been convicted of tax fraud be qualified to be the Minister of Justice? No matter how you cook this ethical pasta, the Canadian people find it inedible.
Earlier this week, Morneau tweeted his change of heart on a major proposal which would have affected Canada’s farm families. “Farmers, we listened. We will not be moving forward with proposed measures to limit access to the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption,” said the finance minister.
Farmers, we listened. We will not be moving forward with proposed measures to limit access to the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption. https://t.co/yyrmo35q5v — Bill Morneau (@Bill_Morneau) October 16, 2017
Does anyone reading this believe this is about Morneau getting new information from farmers and listening to them? Farmers weren’t telling him anything about his reform proposal that he didn’t already know. His company advises all businesses, large and small, and that includes farmers.
READ MORE: NDP, Conservatives call for probes into Bill Morneau’s assets
Morneau knows this stuff cold. His decision is based on listening to farmers wanting to enlighten him. What he is now listening to are people telling him that ticking off farmers is stupid politics. Farmers are a sacred cow in the Canadian pasture.
They grow food, doing something important for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Whether you’re living in a condo or a bungalow, you don’t grow your own wheat or corn or soybeans. Farmers are one of the designated groups intelligent politicians don’t target.
They share that space with firefighters, paramedics and police. All of these professionals protect us in a way that we cannot protect ourselves. And yes we need to add doctors and dentists to that group. Morneau’s tax reforms may create a lot of new business for Morneau Shepell, putting more money into Morneau’s deeper-than-the-ocean pockets.
WATCH: Morneau says he doesn’t “report to journalists”
But if Morneau is walking back his dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers political strategy it’s because he’s listening to farmers.
He’s listening to people who might be smarter than the fools who sold him on the tax raid proposals. But apparently, those folks haven’t counselled him successfully on communications.
When journalists were asking Morneau to explain what all his numbered companies are all about and why some of them are based offshore, he told the reporters they were offside, told them he wasn’t answerable to them, only to the ethics commissioner.
My goodness me, I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced the finance minister about this. Was there a better week I should have asked about it? https://t.co/PTwdyxyoFR — David Akin 🇨🇦 (@davidakin) October 19, 2017
Does the amateur public servant not get that Canada is one of many democracies where a government official is answerable to the public and must engage in public discussions? This isn’t a closed boardroom country, it’s an open democracy.
READ MORE: COMMENTARY: Trudeau makes his mea culpa — and Morneau gets ‘le shove’
Here again Morneau — who wanted desperately to be seen as one of us — has failed in his tax. While his head is still living on Bay Street, the people he answers to live on Main Street. Only days ago he pouted about how he didn’t want to be answerable to us: his boss. The prime minister wouldn’t even allow him to answer media questions.
In a joint appearance when a Global News reporter, among others, put questions to him, Justin Trudeau told the media that they should address their questions to the prime minister. He was now speaking for the finance minister.
WATCH: The ethics of Bill Morneau’s actions
This was odd politically and embarrassing to a democracy. Trudeau unwittingly made Morneau look like the ventriloquist who wasn’t going move his lips, but rather have the dummy speaking for him. The prime minister didn’t want to look like a dummy, but he did.
On top of all this, Morneau keeps saying that the media should get off this subject because it’s a “distraction.” But as longtime Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella told our CKNW Vancouver-based Corus radio show: “Morneau needs to understand he is the distraction.”
And that’s why if there is only way for the prime minister to get the public to change the channel, he needs to follow the path laid out by the poet:
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Follow the advice of Paul Simon, prime minister, tell your finance minister to “hop on the bus Gus.”
— Charles Adler is host of the Charles Adler Tonight show on CKNW, 630CHED, CJOB and NewsTalk 770.[bitcoin-dev] Address expiration times should be added to BIP-173
On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 10:44:11AM +0200, Andreas Schildbach via bitcoin-dev wrote: > On 09/29/2017 03:45 AM, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev wrote: > > On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 12:09:59PM +0200, Andreas Schildbach via bitcoin-dev wrote: > >> This feels redundant to me; the payment protocol already has an > >> expiration time. > > > > I'm well aware. As the payment protocol hasn't caught on - and doesn't fully > > overlap all the usecases that addresses do anyway - I think we should consider > > bringing this important feature to Bitcoin addresses too. > > Hasn't caught on? It is used for virtually all merchant transactions, > plus person to person transactions between Bitcoin Wallet users. "Virtually all"? I regularly pay with Bitcoin, and I haven't seen the payment protocol used in ages. Can you name some users of it? -- https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 455 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170929/28b4c7ee/attachment.sig>This election season I’ve been told by Republican friends more times than I can count that the Independent vote isn’t really important in the 2012 presidential election. They argue that, sure, Republicans would like to have their votes, but they don’t need them to beat Obama in November.
A recent poll from Gallup indicates that these Republican folks may be wrong:
What caught my eye in this is the similarities between the Republicans and Democrats polled. Exactly 90% supported their party’s candidate while 6% supported the opponent and 3% fell into the Neither/Unsure/Refused category. The only difference is the “Other” column where the difference is only about a half of a percent. Republicans and Democrats are literally split 50/50 on the coming presidential election.
The important thing to pull from these results is that it’s another group of people who will determine who wins the election in November. It’s the Independent voter that makes the difference in the end; in this poll, the Independent vote gives the edge to Romney.
But who are these people?
Tea Party people. Since the surge of the Tea Party, more and more people have started identifying as “Independent” when asked their political affiliation. They’ll still vote Republican on a lesser-of-two-evils argument, but calling themselves Independent makes them feel good.
Ron Paul supporters. Granted, Paul attracts some Republicans and some Democrats, but he also pulls actual Independent voters.
Libertarians. If you’re not an “R” and you’re not a “D,” then you must be an “I.” In reality, there are more than the two dominant parties, but in surveys like this one, the “other” voters will fall into the Independents’ column.
True Independents. These are people who go with the Democrats some of the time and with the Republicans some of the time. They’re actually some of the most people to talk with about politics because they are usually willing to think through both sides of an argument where a lot of definite R/D voters are a little more stuck in their ways.
It’s important to realize that Republicans have a good chance to win these voters in November. Consider this:
Tea Party people – Like I said, they’ll vote Republican no matter what they call themselves in polls. Put any candidate whose last name isn’t Obama on the ballot, and you’ll get their support.
– Like I said, they’ll vote Republican no matter what they call themselves in polls. Put any candidate whose last name isn’t Obama on the ballot, and you’ll get their support. Ron Paul supporters – They want to like the Republican, and a good number of them are willing to sit down and listen if Romney wants to get serious about getting fiscal policy under control.
– They want to like the Republican, and a good number of them are willing to sit down and listen if Romney wants to get serious about getting fiscal policy under control. Libertarians – Let’s be honest. Neither Romney nor Obama will take this crowd. Gary Johnson is their man.
– Let’s be honest. Neither Romney nor Obama will take this crowd. Gary Johnson is their man. True Independents. I could be wrong on this because it’s a hunch, but I’d bet that the bulk of the truly independent voters went for Obama over Bush in 2008 and now see that he hasn’t offered much hope or change. I expect them to be willing to vote for Romney in November.
In the end, Republicans have the ability to win this group of people, but they’ve got to get serious if that’s going to happen. Most of these folks are actually looking at the economy and watching recovery statistics. They know what’s going on; they see what’s working (and what’s not working).
If the Republicans hope to occupy the White House in 2013, they need to start offering real solutions that will convince these Independent voters that they are serious about fixing our nation’s problems.
But Republicans first need to come to their senses and realize that they actually need the Independent voters’ support to avoid four more years of an Obama White House.Bob Bradley and the Egyptian national team will get their wish.
The Pharaohs will play in Cairo for the first time in two years when they take on Ghana on Nov. 19 in the second leg of their World Cup playoff at 30 June Stadium, the Egyptian Football Association announced Wednesday.
The EFA also said fans will be allowed at the match, which will be for a shot at Egypt’s first World Cup berth since 1990. Bradley, Egypt’s coach since 2011, called for the game to be played in the violence-plagued capital city in front of fans to boost his side’s home-field advantage.
“We would love to play in Cairo," Bradley had said after the playoff draw last week in Cairo. "That is the dream of the team."
Egypt’s last game in Cairo was a 3-0 win over Niger in October 2011, four months before a deadly riot at a league game in the Mediterranean city of Port Said left more than 70 fans dead.
Since then, political turmoil and persistent violence in Cairo and the country’s other major cities has forced Egypt’s national team to play in Alexandria and in the Red Sea resort of El Gouna.
The 30 June Stadium, constructed by Egyptian Air Defense, has a capacity of 30,000 and the EFA said it would be full for the Ghana game.
Egypt advanced to the playoff after being the only team to take the maximum 18 points in the second round of African qualifying. But because they were ranked 50th in the September FIFA World Rankings – sixth-best of all 10 African group winners – they were relegated to Pot 2, and faced a pairing with a team from a Pot 1 that included Ivory Coast, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria or Tunisia.
The draw conducted last week at African Confederations headquarters in Cairo confirmed that Ghana — the 24th-ranked team in the world and a quarterfinalist at the 2010 World Cup — would be Bradley & Co.'s opponent.
The first leg of the playoff is scheduled for Oct. 15 in Ghana.At a time when people are increasingly buying “natural” and “organic” foods, the word “Chemex” mightn’t sound like an ideal name for a maker of coffee brewing gear. Yet Chemex’s 1941-vintage Coffee Maker has spent decades as a gold standard for pour-over coffee: featured in the MoMA collection, this Bauhaus-inspired design combines an hourglass-shaped glass pitcher with leather-bound wooden grips and special paper filters, producing delicious coffee.
The Chemex process involves placing freshly ground coffee beans inside a Chemex-brand filter atop the Chemex-brand pitcher, then “pouring-over” hot water in a manner that guarantees optimal extraction of coffee from the grounds. Following Chemex’s instructions, identical coffee beans and water produce a noticeably better cup of coffee than the typical home coffee machine – the reason many coffee shops offer Chemex-brewed coffee at a premium.
But traditional Chemex brewing requires learning, takes time, and demands a lot of user interaction: everything from hitting the right water temperature to the multi-step pouring process requires a lot more attention than just pressing the “start” button on a Keurig. While Chemex isn’t catering to the exact same audience, the company has acknowledged the value of a streamlined brewing process with this week’s release of Ottomatic ($350). Priced above top-ranked established coffee makers such as the single-cup Keurig K75 and small pot Bonavita BV1800, Ottomatic is designed to compete against premium metal and glass models such as the Wilfa Precision Coffee Maker — machines that are equal parts art and science. Chemex designed Ottomatic to look beautiful and radically simplify the fussy pour-over process. That’s exactly what it does. Read on for all the details.
By traditional coffeemaker standards, Ottomatic has a very attractive design. Measuring 11.5″ tall by 11″ wide by 7.5″ deep, it combines a silver metal and black plastic base with a non-removable clear plastic water tank on the left, a silver metal sprayhead in the center, and a hotplate on the right. Unlike the typical Chemex process (boil water in a kettle, pour the hot water into the Chemex pitcher in two stages, then figure out how to keep the coffee hot), Ottomatic handles almost everything within its all-in-one design.
Using the included pitcher, you fill the tank with up to 10 cups of water, using lines that mark the 3-, 5-, 6-, and 8-cup points. You then place the pitcher on the hotplate and a coffee ground-filled filter inside the pitcher, flip a power switch on the base, and walk away for around six minutes. A light bar next to the hot plate switches from white to red while the coffee’s being brewed; there are no other indicators, dials, or switches to consider. (You can see the brewing process in action above.)
That also means that there are no temperatures to set: for better or worse, Ottomatic handles everything. Prior to extraction, it heats the water within a 197.6F to 204.8F range – comparable to the Bonavita’s 200-205F and notably hotter than Keurigs, which max out at a generally too-low 192F – then uses the hot plate to hold the coffee at 176F to 185F. Although there’s room to argue that different coffee beans may benefit from individualized prep temperatures, Chemex’s presets for extraction and holding are the optimal temperatures recommended by the Specialty Coffee Industry and International Coffee Organizations, respectively, and roughly match Wilfa’s settings for the Precision Coffee Maker.
As shown above, the Wilfa model notably offers one adjustment: a dial that can adjust the coffee’s concentration relative to the amount of water in the tank. Chemex merely provides a paper manual with suggested gram and tablespoon measurements for the coffee grounds relative to either the water or brewed coffee. Serious coffee drinkers will already be familiar with both the dosage recommendations and how to tweak them, but it’s a small difference between these models.
A critical feature of Ottomatic is the sprayhead, which replicates the process used to prime coffee grounds in a standard Chemex pitcher. Rather than just pouring a steady stream of water into the center of the grounds, Ottomatic wets down all of the grounds with hot water, pauses to let them bloom, then pulses the water through its shower-like head to maintain the temperature as coffee flows into the pitcher. The pulses alternate between one-head and multi-head drips, the latter with markedly wider dispersion of water than with the Wilfa, as our video above shows. Users of the classic Chemex know that the water-spreading process typically requires active involvement in the form of pouring, pausing, looking, then repeating those steps two or three times until all the water you’ve boiled is in the pitcher. Ottomatic makes this process simple, fast, and passive.
The typical Chemex brewer is an a la carte product, leaving you to select the pitcher size and type of filters you prefer for $50, give or take $20 based on your preferences. By comparison, Ottomatic arrives in a large white and silver box, bundled with a six-cup pitcher (normally $41.50, sold in multiple sizes at Amazon), starter packages of 5 Chemex circle filters and 5 Chemex square filters (typically sold in 100-packs via Amazon), a brew clip, and a glass pitcher cover (normally $6.50, available at Amazon). You can use any 3-, 5-, 6-, 8-, or 10-cup Chemex pitcher, and your choice of FP-1 (circle), FP-2 (half-moon), FC-100 (circle), FS-100 (square), or FSU-100 (square unbleached) filters with Ottomatic, if you supply those parts yourself.
My guess is that your big question right now is whether Ottomatic is worth a $350 asking price, and on that point, the jury’s still out. Functionally and aesthetically, Ottomatic isn’t terribly different from the Wilfa Precision Coffee Maker, which can be purchased today for $250 in a jet black version or $330 in a much fancier aluminum. Both models stress simplicity over adjustability, automatically heating water to the same “considered optimal” extraction temperature range, and delivering what they claim to be “the right amount of water at the right time.” However, Wilfa’s basic paper filters are less expensive – only $5 for 100 – and its water tank matches Ottomatic’s in size, while the included carafe is larger.
But in our taste-testing, Ottomatic produced somewhat better results: using identical coffee with an identical quantity of water, Chemex’s cup was smoother – roughly the same flavor and intensity, but less grit – a difference we’d chalk up primarily to Chemex’s filters. In other words, Ottomatic will be the best coffee maker for people who appreciate the particulars of Chemex’s pitchers and filters, and are willing to pay a fairly significant premium to automate an unquestionably tedious manual process. As it’s a brand new product, we’ll have to see about the long-term reliability and number of use cycles – whether it can stand up to the demands of coffee shop use – but our gut feeling is that Ottomatic will become a staple in the homes of serious coffee fans as soon as it becomes more widely available. (Pre-orders and same-day orders are shipping now from Chemex’s web site.) Ottomatic is not a mandatory purchase, but for Chemex aficionados, the valuable hours it saves versus manual hand-pouring may justify the steep up-front cost.
Want to learn about other professional-grade food and beverage solutions for your home kitchen? Read more of my Kitchen Tech columns and reviews here.Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock.Happy, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.Happy is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks.May the Lord bless everyone who beats your children against the rocks!who take your babies and smash them against a rock.Happy is he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks.How blessed will be the one who seizes your young children and pulverizes them against the cliff!How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock!Blessed shall he be who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock.Blessed is he who will seize your infants and will dash the rocks!Blessed is the one who grabs your little children and smashes them against a rock.Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock.Happy shall he be, that takes and dashes thy offspring against the stones.Happy shall he be, that takes and dashes your little ones against the stones.Happy shall he be, that takes and dashes your little ones against the stones.Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.Blessedwho shall seize and dash thine infants against the rock.Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.Happy he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock.Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock.Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.Happy shall he be, who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock. By David.O the happiness of him who doth seize, And hath dashed thy sucklings on the rock!Ardent Flame Shifting Standard (Dragonknight Standard morph): Fixed an issue where the Major Defile debuff applied by this ability would stack after activating the shift ability.
Shadow Bolstering Darkness (Consuming Darkness morph): Fixed an issue where the caster was only receiving a 30% damage reduction instead of the full 60%.
Siphoning Sap Essence (Drain Power morph): Fixed an issue where this ability wasn’t healing when hitting more than 6 targets.
Dawn’s Wrath Radiant Destruction: Fixed an issue where this ability was scaling too quickly when your target was below 50% health.
Medium Armor Agility: Fixed an issue where this passive would occasionally not work.
Werewolf Fixed an issue where you would move without animating after activating werewolf form.
Arachnophobes rejoice! Damage from Giant Spiders has been halved.
Medicinal Use will no longer occasionally disappear from player characters who have died.
Veteran City of Ash The encounter with Horvantud the Fire Maw will now reset if he gets too close to the door. The adds associated with the Horvantud encounter will now always attack you.
Veteran Darkshade Caverns Lowered the health of each Alit associated with the mini-boss encounter by 20%. The health bar for the boss encounter will now correctly appear on the UI. Adjusted the XP you receive from the mini-boss encounter.
Fixed an issue where the bounty tooltip in the lower-right corner would erroneously appear when you had no bounty.
Reviving in the Outlaws Refuges now properly places you inside the Refuge areas.
Fixed an issue that was causing a decreased frame rate related to character loading.
Fixed an issue where white bars and invalid graphics would show up in the Alchemy UI.
Fixed an issue where a UI error would occasionally appear while gaining bounty shortly after logging in.
The Elder Scrolls Online v1.6.6 addresses several issues with combat, dungeons, a few crashes, and more. We are still working on fixing issues that some of you are seeing with Enlightenment, and exploring opportunities to increase XP gained in Dungeons and Trials.Zillow CEO obfuscates bitcoin with delicious irony.
Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of the real estate marketing company, Zillow, was on Bloomberg recently. During this program, the discussion turned to bitcoin, and the direction it has been heading lately. Rascoff made the following statement:
I'm skeptical of bitcoin, I just think it's a, theres too much shadiness associated with a currency that's not maintained by some sort of government or central bank. And I think it will blow up at some point, with some big scandal where someone loses 50, a 100 million dollars, and I don't think it's going to be here in five years ~Spencer Rascoff, CEO Zillow
In general, it is good to be skeptical of new technologies; however, it's comical when absurd statements are made about a technology, that Rascoff apparently has no understanding of. Then, to link it to a government, and central bank, that have created, sponsored, and allowed the most vile forms of "Shadiness" in the last 50 years. Let's compare some of the finer points of the current government & central bank as it relates to "Shadiness".
Debt monetization (QE or QEinfinity)
Purchase of worthless mortgage securities to save member banks
Removal of mark-to-market accounting (mark-to-fantasy)
$1.2 Quadrillion worth of financial derivatives (current)
0% interest rates for banks
Creating the largest financial bubble in world history.
Revolving door between government jobs & investment banks
PPT (plunge protection team)
HFT (High frequency trading)
$125 Trillion in national debt, unfunded liabilities included.
S&L debacle (savings & loan)
USD lost 96% of its value over the last century.
These are just a handful of the seemingly never ending list of "Shadiness" the central bank(s), and government have thrust upon the populace. The debauchery continues today, and one of the beneficiaries of the current status quo, is the real estate market. Is there any question why Rascoff would obfuscate reality when something like bitcoin challenges the foundation of the debt-based monetary system, his industry benefits from? What Rascoff, and others do not understand, is that bitcoin was created as a result of the current "Shady" central banks & over zealous governments. Bitcoin is the solution.
Link to interview can be found Here.It’s time the Buffalo Sabres got out of the Atlantic Division basement and make a big jump up in the Eastern Conference standings.
The Sabres have finished at the bottom of the division in three of the four years since it’s been re-arranged as the Atlantic, which has given them time and opportunity to put together a young roster with promise. Some reasonably believed 2016-17 was going to be Buffalo’s big break out, but a bottom-third offence helped sink them again — the consolation prize being Casey Mittelstadt with the eighth overall pick.
Mittelstadt adds another scoring forward for the future, although he won’t be on the 2017-18 team. This year’s Buffalo Sabres come back a year older, a year better developed and supposedly, a year closer to getting back in the playoffs.
We’ll see if it comes true and take a closer look at the team in our season preview.
The 411 on the Sabres Head coach: Phil Housley
GM: Jason Botterill
2016-17 record: 33-37-12
2016-17 result: Eighth in Atlantic Division
Key departures: Brian Gionta, Cody Franson, Dimitry Kulikov, William Carrier
Key acquisitions: Marco Scandella, Nathan Beaulieu, Jason Pominville
2017-18 cap: $68.078 million (cap space $6.921 million)
UP-AND-COMING PLAYER TO WATCH
Throughout our 31 team previews, we’ve mostly used this space to talk about potential rookies that could crack the roster. In Buffalo’s case, that candidate would be the eighth overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft, Alexander Nylander.
Nylander struggled, though, with 28 points in 65 AHL games last season and earned one assist in four late-season NHL call-up games. He was injured in the rookie tournament and hasn’t been healthy for training camp yet with week-to-week status, so he’s highly likely to go back to the AHL, where the team hopes to see some improvement.
Other than Nylander, we’re going to get more obvious. Jack Eichel, who will turn 21 in October, would like to see a breakthrough season in which he’s fully healthy. He was limited to 61 games last season and still scored one more point (57) than he did in his 81-game rookie season. Due for his first first post-entry-level contract, Eichel needs to be the offensive leader and is a candidate to top 30 goals and 80 points, with the potential to go even higher.
Eichel may not be at the same level as Connor McDavid, but if he becomes a top five scorer in the league it would give the Sabres a similar boost in their playoff hopes, and it would give Eichel a contract north of $10 million.
WHAT A SUCCESSFUL 2017-18 WOULD LOOK LIKE
It’s about time this team took a leap, isn’t it?
In some ways, the Sabres are the Winnipeg Jets of the East: a team of patience that has built through the draft in recent years, but one that hasn’t made any meaningful progress in the standings. At least the Jets have a playoff appearance to show for it, though.
New Buffalo coach Phil Housley has shown signs in training camp that he wants to open up the attack and use all five players to push the pace aggressively, which would seem to suit their collection of defencemen and offensive forwards, beefed up with summer pick-ups Marco Scandella, Nathan Beaulieu and Jason Pominville. The Sabres were 24th in goals per game last season (2.43) and should see an uptick there.
Success will be defined by the playoffs for the Sabres this season, but missing out may not necessarily constitute a disappointment. As long as they are in the playoff race until late in the season there will finally be a sign |
and Mets owner Fred Wilpon and his son, COO Jeff Wilpon, throughout their recent trials, tribulations and Ponzi scheme losses. The commissioner has never shown the slightest inclination to step in the way he did, for instance, with erstwhile Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, perhaps because of his long friendship with the Wilpons, or perhaps because he honestly believes, as he says, that the Mets are not actually in violation of MLB’s "internal economic rules."
Still, the potentially damning lawsuit from former Senior VP of Ticket Sales Leigh Castergine, full of specific, credible allegations, seemed as if it might change the landscape. Maybe the league wouldn’t intervene in the face of the team’s precarious finances — but how about precarious finances and potentially illegal sexist discrimination? If the lawsuit's claims are true, then Jeff Wilpon fired a woman for getting pregnant out of wedlock after months of inappropriate remarks. Would that not make the commissioner's office take a long, hard look at just who it was sticking its neck out for? Furthermore, just as the NFL's various hypocrisies were gathering into a mudslide, this seemed to give MLB a chance to distinguish itself by taking a strong stand. Leading the charge, Yahoo's Jeff Passan wrote:
If this is true – if these disgusting, abhorrent acts of misogyny receive even one iota of confirmation – one of Bud Selig's final acts as commissioner must be to rid Major League Baseball of this nepotistic fraud once and for all. Selig, or his successor Rob Manfred, must do this, because baseball needs to tell the world it is a safe place for women. That its top executives won't scoff and sneer and bungle the issues that face women every day like the NFL did the Ray Rice case. MLB shouldn't do this as a reaction to Rice; it should because it is the right thing to do.
Instead, Selig had only this to say about the matter: "That's employment litigation. There were a lot of charges there. Jeff denies them vigorously. I think in this particular case, they're going to court, and we're just going to have to see how it plays out." That was all.
It's certainly true that the allegations against Wilpon and the Mets are, for now, just that. The case has not been tried yet, evidence has not been heard and Selig would not be at all wrong to say that he needs more information before taking any action. What is surprising, however, is that he didn't even pretend to be concerned about the lawsuit, or to take it seriously. It would cost Selig and the league nothing to say: These are alarming allegations, and we will be investigating them thoroughly— and then do so. This is a league that will go to any lengths to investigate reports of a player taking human growth hormone; why doesn't this issue merit the same kind of proactive action? Or he could have said: Baseball strives to be a place that treats its employees equally regardless of gender or sexual orientation, and if these allegations are proven, we will take action. That would hardly be a risky position to take. But instead, Selig offered only a verbal shrug.
Nor is he concerned about the financial disaster that's hamstrung the team for half a decade now. "Do I have any problem with the Mets' finances? None," Selig told reporters. None? If that's true, it would make Selig just about the only person in New York of whom that can be said.
Ever since Bernie Madoff's scam collapsed and took the Mets' finances with it, the Wilpons have struggled to stay afloat. The team's payroll had plummeted from $143 million to roughly $85 million in the last four years, despite playing in the biggest and richest market in the country. At one point, the Mets had to borrow money from MLB just to make payroll. Earlier this year, the team refinanced a Bank of America loan that was coming due, buying themselves a little breathing room, but the Mets will have to do the same with more than half a billion in loans taken out against their television network, SNY, that are coming due next year. Attendance is quite understandably in the toilet, and that's no coincidence, as Castergine's lawsuit did not hesitate to point out.
Selig's legacy is much larger than the Mets, of course, and baseball itself is thriving financially. But he is leaving what should be one of the league's strongest franchises in a shambles. And in the process, he missed a chance to send a message about what Major League Baseball stands for. Or, rather, he is sending a message, but not a good one. And it leaves incoming commissioner Rob Manfred with considerable damage to undo.CBS has long been ground zero in the struggle to get networks to understand the diversity concerns of activists, journalists, and critics. The network — which actually had a record of being one of TV’s most diverse in the 1970s, when it supported much of the work of Norman Lear — has spent nearly two decades ruling the TV roost, mostly with crime shows starring white men in their lead roles.
And that strategy has proved lucrative. CBS has been the No. 1 or No. 2 network in total viewership in every year that starts with the digits 20. (I have to qualify only because it slipped behind Fox ever so slightly in some of the years of American Idol’s height.) This means that as every other major network on TV has hit rock bottom and reexamined its commitment to diverse casting alongside myriad other concerns, CBS has largely kept doing things the CBS way, and profiting.
But 2017 is different.
CBS isn’t having a great year so far, and that plays into more aggressive questioning of its diversity
As the network’s new president of entertainment, Kelly Kahl, and senior executive vice president of programming, Thom Sherman, took the stage for their very first executive session at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, they were surrounded by a swirl of terrible news.
First was that they were there at all — former president Glenn Geller, who spent barely a year in the job, left it for a medical leave that eventually became a permanent step away from the job. Second was that CBS actually slipped to third for the first time in years among the demographic advertisers care about, 18- to 49-year-old viewers. (It still placed first in total viewership, but advertisers care less about those over 49 than those under it, which means CBS can charge less of a premium on ads.) Third was that CBS’s fall slate is pretty terrible. (And, yes, this is all subjective, but the best I can say about a couple of its pilots is that I can see where they might — might — get better someday.)
But overhanging everything was CBS’s continued inability to put shows with diverse casts on the air. And even if Kahl and Sherman were talking about a fall slate they’d inherited from Geller, they were still talking about the second consecutive fall season where CBS had no new shows with women in lead roles, and a fall where only one of its new shows didn’t have a white guy lead (the new cop show S.W.A.T. features Criminal Minds star Shemar Moore in the main role).
And on top of that, the network had just refused to give Hawaii Five-0 stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park — that show’s only two main actors of Asian descent — the pay raise they asked for in contract renegotiations. Kim and Park left the show. (Kahl would only say the network made “a very lucrative offer” to the actors, but they turned it down.)
In the past, CBS might have rebuffed these questions with, “We make shows people want to see. We’re going to keep trying to get more diverse, but our lineup only allows so much room for new programming.” To Sherman and Kahl’s credit, they didn’t take that tack (that much) — but their actual answers also revealed just why the entertainment industry struggles with diversity concerns in the first place.
An interlude about the CBS Kevin James sitcom Kevin Can Wait that doesn’t fit anywhere else but is too weird not to share
The other big announcement Sherman and Kahl made, one that caused audible gasps in the room for how ghoulish it sounded, involves the recasting of the wife role on Kevin Can Wait, the network’s bland but solidly rated Kevin James comedy.
Initially, reports said that Leah Remini (James’s wife on his old sitcom The King of Queens) would be taking the place of Erinn Hayes (his TV wife in season one of Kevin Can Wait). But Sherman and Kahl revealed that the role wasn’t being recast, per se — it was being completely reconceived, and Hayes’s character would be killed off offscreen between seasons. After a time jump, James and Remini’s characters would be together.
Oof.
So many problems with Hollywood’s systems seem surface-level but run very, very deep
When asked by Variety’s Maureen Ryan if CBS’s entirely white casting department (on both coasts!) contributes to how few diverse actors the network casts, Kahl said he didn’t think that was part of the problem, while Sherman added, “They’ve been together for a long time. That’s just the way it’s been.” (He promised a few sentences later to expand the casting department to include a higher level of diversity — but it was clear neither expected this question to come up.)
Similarly, when pressed on the point of diversity again, Kahl said, “Every single drama on our air has at least one diverse character,” which feels like the answer of the West Wing producers scrambling to add Dulé Hill to their show’s cast after that series’ pilot all the way back in 1999.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, network TV isn’t as homogenous as it is simply because older, whiter TV executives aren’t aware of the problem. They’re at least aware enough of it to pay lip service to solving it. TV is homogenous because the systems put in place to produce, cast, and develop its shows are so heavily skewed toward white voices (and often white male voices) that ideas from other quarters can often be too easily brushed aside. (And that’s to say nothing of the agencies that bring talent to those networks, which have similar problems.)
Fixing that problem requires actively working to change not just surface-level appearances of diversity but also underlying systems — as FX has done with its initiatives to hire more diverse directors on its shows, which have radically changed its behind-the-scenes diversity. But fixing that is much, much harder, and if a network has had consistent success doing things the way they’ve always been done, creating incentives to fix broken systems becomes even more difficult.
Take, for instance, Kahl’s answer to a question that had nothing to do with diversity — does the network rely too heavily on cop shows? “Look at the top 10, top 20 list. There are tons of procedurals. These are among America’s favorite shows.” Or look at Sherman’s answer to a question about whether CBS would like to be more successful at the Emmys than it is: “We’d love to be nominated and have Emmys, but if push came to shove, we’d take ad revenue and ratings over Emmys any day.”
CBS has become one of TV’s most successful networks by doing things a certain way. It might know it needs to change, on some level, but until something truly cataclysmic happens, it’s not hard to assume business will continue as usual.
The irony here is that Sherman, especially, can’t really be blamed for the network’s current diversity woes, as he joined only recently from corporate sibling The CW (which has much, much more diverse casting on average) and had previously been at ABC during the casting of Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, both breakthroughs in terms of the idea that having a diverse cast could be a boon to a show’s ratings. He tried to lean on this track record a bit in suggesting he’s aware of CBS’s problems and will work to rectify them. But until those underlying systems are fixed, he might be tilting at windmills.Police lights (Photo: Courtesy)
Belton Police Chief Tommy Clamp said a woman is now in stable condition after allegedly being shot several times Monday morning by a man who then shot himself.
It is believed to be an attempted murder-suicide, the chief said.
Takeshia Jamison, 39, underwent surgery Monday morning and family members have told Clamp she is stable, he said.
The man, 47-year-old Jean Cesar, was found dead at about 5:30 a.m. after a shooting was reported at a home on Oak Drive in Belton. The two were dating, Clamp said.
The shooting is believed to be a domestic incident and there is no threat to anyone else, Clamp said.
Anderson County Deputy Coroner Don McCown said Jamison was shot 3 to 4 times in her extremities and abdomen.
He said Cesar died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A handgun was used in the shooting, McCown said.
The city police had been to the house once before for a domestic report, Clamp said.
Follow Mike Ellis on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM
Read or Share this story: https://www.independentmail.com/story/news/local/south-carolina/2016/10/10/man-shoots-woman-then-self-belton/91858600/Two weeks ago, we released a Guaranteed Content Poll regarding the design of the Veteran Cape. Players whose accounts are more than five years old will be able to wear this cape and it will be the first cape released from our Capes of Distinction range. The poll has now been closed and we can reveal that your cape will consist of the following designs:
Hood design: A2Collar shape: B3Collar pattern: C4Back symbol: D1Cape pattern: E3
We'd like to thank everyone that took the time to vote as well as to those that posted feedback on the Capes of Distinction thread. Now it's over to the RuneScape Graphics team to work on the new design, as well as creating a suitable emote.
Oh, and no, this isn’t an April Fools.
Mod Emilee
Community ManagementMichael Waltrip Racing appears set to announce that Brian Vickers will drive for the team full time next year with Aaron’s as his sponsor.
MWR sent out a media advisory Monday for a “major media announcement” on Tuesday. The announcement included the Aaron’s logo and a photo of Vickers.
MORE: Stewart released | WG chatter | Earnhardt-Kahne wreck | Winners & Losers
MWR general manager Ty Norris declined comment Sunday when asked about the possibility of an announcement that Vickers would drive the No. 55 car full time next season. Rich Lamprey, Aaron’s director of sports sponsorships, also declined comment on its MWR sponsorship and the possibility of Vickers being the driver.
Team co-owner Michael Waltrip has repeatedly said that he wants Vickers to drive the car full time in 2014.
Vickers, who won the Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last month, is in his second year as a fill-in driver in the No. 55 car, which is primarily driven by Mark Martin. Martin runs 24 points races in the car with Vickers behind the wheel for nine and Waltrip in for three. Martin, 54, has said that he would not return to the team next season.
“I feel very at home here and comfortable and confident in our chances to be successful, so this is where I want to be,” Vickers said after the New Hampshire win.
“Aaron's has been phenomenal to work with. There are partners that just write checks and there are partners that are partners, and they have been that for MWR and they have been that for me.”
Vickers is fifth in points in the Nationwide Series, where he competes full time for JGR. He has one win and three top-10s in nine Cup starts this season.
Vickers, who turns 30 in October, has three wins and 65 top-10s in 272 career Cup starts, primarily for Hendrick Motorsports and Red Bull Racing. He made the Chase for the Sprint Cup in 2009 but saw his 2010 season cut short after 11 races because of blood clots. He joined MRW on a part-time basis in 2011.Today on the program, two guys who once banked their future on the music biz... and have now been forced to move on. Dave Rhea played bass in the band Vonray. His brush with fame included a lucrative record deal and music placement on a popular TV show. But the emergence of the Internet made the record company financial model unprofitable, and Dave's contract was dropped. But he has now made a new career out of the very thing he says killed his music - the Internet. Derek Tenbusch had a dream job in the music business. He worked in marketing for EMI. When he got laid off last year, he knew he had to make a complete career change - music industry jobs like his just don't exist anymore. Derek decided to try to make a living doing something else he loves: playing online poker.Barcelona Negotiations with Andres Iniesta also continuing
Tuesday's victory over Juventus has seen Barcelona enter calmer waters following a summer of discontent, and there is also good news regarding Lionel Messi as president Josep Maria Bartomeu has confirmed the Argentine is already playing under the terms of his new contract.
There had been an element of concern in recent weeks over the future of the forward given the fact his signature was not yet present on the previously announced extension.
Los Cules hit back and suggested that the signature of Messi's father made the contract binding, something which Bartomeu once again pointed towards on Thursday in an interview with 'Fora de Joc' on 8TV.
"We will take the photo with Messi's signature, hopefully before the end of the year, but the contract has been signed by his father, who has the power of his image rights. This contract is signed until 2022 and he is already playing under it," he explained.
Controversy surrounding Andres Iniesta's own contract renewal has been significant too, Bartomeu's insistence that an agreement had been reached were quite bluntly rebuffed by the player.
When quizzed on the topic of the Blaugrana's veteran midfielder, the 54-year-old made clear that plans were in place to keep Iniesta at the Camp Nou, which includes some special aspects within the agreement, just for the Spanish international.
"The agreement with Iniesta will be special, it will be different just because it is him, I won't reveal exactly what because it is part of private negotiations, but with Ramon Sostres, we have been talking for a long time."
Nobody can argue against the importance of the 33-year-old to Barcelona supporters, he is a symbol of the club and this hasn't been lost on the president.
"Iniesta isn't just a reference point for us, but also for the young supporters, he has earned the right to play here until he decides not to any more, Andres is critical to this club and the intention is that this extension will be an indefinite contract so that he can finish whenever he desires."
Philippe Coutinho's appearance for Liverpool against Sevilla on Wednesday ensured the Brazilian will be cup-tied in the Champions League for the remainder of the 2017/18 season.
A transfer to the Camp Nou is now even more unlikely with Bartomeu suggesting that it was the market inflation which prevented the club from closing a deal in the summer.
"If the market does not allow a move, then you can't force one, the market is changing sizably because there is money coming into it that isn't from the world of football," he intimated.
The club's transfer business as a whole was a source of frustration for supporters, with only Paulinho, Ousmane Dembele and Nelson Semedo arriving as first-team players, yet the club chief has no regrets over the Blaugrana's summer dealings.
"I have no frustration with how the transfer period went, I'm very happy with our signings, we wanted a good right-back and Semedo arrived, Paulino arrived in midfield and Dembele as a Neymar replacement, I'm also delighted about Deulofeu's return," he concluded.Snyder is still intent on directing 'Justice League 2,' but that film has been pushed back to make room for Ben Affleck's Batman stand-alone.
Zack Snyder is going from the epic world of DC superheroes to war-torn Afghanistan.
After wrapping Justice League, Snyder is not tackling Justice League 2, as was the initial plan, but rather is focusing his attention on his long-in-development thriller The Last Photograph.
Snyder is still intent on directing Justice League 2, but that movie has been pushed back to make room for Ben Affleck’s Batman stand-alone movie. The move left an opening in Snyder’s schedule for a production that is smaller-scale, at least compared to massive superhero tentpoles he has been working on of late. Call it a palate cleanser, if you will.
Snyder set up the project in the mid-2000s, after the success of 300, but the rights lapsed. Gianni Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang is in the process of negotiating a new deal.
Snyder concocted the story and his longtime colleague Kurt Johnstad wrote the script, which will get a sprucing up. In 2011, Christian Bale and Sean Penn were attached to star, but the project is now actorless. The plan, sources say, is to repackage the project and approach Warner Bros., where Snyder and his producing partner and wife Deborah Snyder have a first-look pact for their Cruel and Unusual Films banner, with the aim of having it shoot in late 2017.
Photograph centers on a war correspondent in Afghanistan who is the only one to survive an attack on a group of Americans. When a special ops soldier in search of a family member shows up, the two team up, with the correspondent hoping to score the story of his life.Everything changes once there are direct threats or actual force against those they have blockaded.
The details on the Charlotte riots and attacks on motorists trapped on the highway and others are in our earlier post.
Instapundit (law professor Glenn Reynolds) was suspended from Twitter (then later reinstated) after posting the following tweet as those riots and highway blockades were ongoing:
Professor Jacobson has asked me to address whether such an act would be lawful as a justified act of self-defense. I’m on a flight now using airplane WiFi, so I’ll make this quick. (Before I go on, however, I should point out that Professor Reynolds has added some important context to his pithy tweet, and these later comments can be found at the link above.)
In short, one would apply the usual five elements of a self-defense justification to evaluate such a use of force against others, just as in any other instance of self-defense. Those elements are, of course: innocence, imminence, proportionality, avoidance, and reasonableness.
When all required elements are present, the use of force was legally justified. If any required element is missing, whatever that use of force might have been it was not lawful self-defense.
One of the challenges to legally justifying the use of force against highway blockades is the element of imminence. Do people who are merely blocking a roadway represent an imminent threat against which some defensive force might be justified?.
A second challenge is the element of proportionality. That is, if the force contemplated to be used against them is one’s vehicle, this will almost always constitute deadly force–that is, force capable of causing death or grave bodily injury. Deadly force can be used in self-defense only the force with which you are threatened also constitutes deadly force.
Unfortunately, persons merely blockading a highway do not inherently represent an imminent deadly force threat–simply blocking a roadway cannot normally cause death or grave bodily harm to those injured. As a result, using one’s vehicle to “run them down,” or even to physically push them aside, is unlikely to be legally justified unless there is some additional threatening conduct.
It is also worth noting that if you respond to even a legitimate threat that is non-deadly in nature with a deadly force response, it’s quite possible that you will be deemed the deadly force aggressor, even if the other party was the non-deadly force aggressor. In that case the other party could well be legally justified in using deadly defensive force against your deadly force aggression.
Chilling, right?
Note, however, that so far we’ve limited the discussion to using force against people who are merely blocking a roadway. Things change dramatically if they exceed that limited conduct and being to actually direct threats or actual force against those they have blockaded.
Once a person being blockaded has been placed in reasonable fear of an imminent deadly force attack, then that person would be legally entitled to use deadly force in self-defense, including the use of their vehicle to “run them down” and neutralize the unlawful deadly force threat.
The question then is what would be required to generate a fear of imminent deadly force that would be deemed reasonable by police, prosecutors, judges, and juries.
Certainly if the protestors attempt, or reasonably appear to attempt, to forcibly enter the blockaded vehicles, this would constitute reasonable grounds to fear an imminent deadly force attack. Such conduct would include the smashing of windows or attempts to force open doors. The same applies to attempts to set vehicles on fire, or to flip vehicles over.
Note that a defender need not necessarily wait until the protestors have turned violent against his particular vehicle. If they have begun threatening or using deadly force against other blockaded vehicles it is reasonable to infer that your own vehicle is likely to be next — you are, after all, legally entitled to defend yourself not just against the danger already occurring to you but also against the danger that is about to occur, that is imminent.
I caution, however, that you can’t just speculate that some danger about to occur, you must be making a reasonable inference from actual evidence (e.g., observations) around you. “For all I knew they were about to start setting cars on fire,” is not enough, that’s mere speculation. “I saw someone approach with a Molotov cocktail,” or “I saw other vehicles ablaze” is, in contrast, evidence from which one can reasonably infer an imminent threat.
As a parting thought, there is nothing to prevent a legislature from defining the disorderly blockading of a public way as an act against which deadly defensive force can be used, such as by creating a legal presumption under such circumstances of a reasonable fear of death or grave bodily harm. The large majority of states have already created such legal presumptions justifying the use of deadly defensive force in other contexts — particularly in the context of an intruder in the home.
I’ll leave moral concerns about such an approach to the moralists, but legally there is no barrier to such a law, and a solid argument could be made that it constitutes good public policy. After all, protestors would still be free to lawfully exercise their First Amendment rights, and it would foster public order and safety.
Perhaps it is time to write your legislators, or start a ballot initiative or referendum?
–-Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
UPDATE: Professor Jacobson has kindly permitted me to share a couple of practical/tactical oriented links with respect to managing oneself in the kinds of scenarios described above. Both of these sources are leaders in this area. Nobody else can tell you what you should do in a particular set of circumstances, and it’s not possible for me to provide a “legal seal of approval” given vagaries in jurisdiction and such, but you’d be wise to take what these gentlemen have to say under advisement:
Greg Ellifritz: “Surviving Mob Attacks on Your Vehicle”
Active Self Protection: “Using a Car to Escape a Mob”
Attorney Andrew Branca and his firm Law of Self Defense have been providing internationally-recognized expertise in American self-defense law for almost 20 years in the form of books, live seminars & online training (both accredited for CLE), public speaking engagements, and individualized legal consultation.
“Law of Self Defense, 3rd Ed.” /Seminars / Instructor Program / Twitter /Facebook / YoutubeSen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) says some of his "weak-kneed" Republican colleagues need to remember what they stand for regarding the repeal of ObamaCare.
During a Wednesday interview on Fox News, Paul — an opponent of the Senate GOP's healthcare bill in its current form — said all Democrats hate the legislation, and so do half of Republicans.
"The half of Republicans that hate it are conservatives like myself who went to rally after rally after rally saying 'We're going to repeal ObamaCare,' and now we're not repealing it, we're keeping it," Paul said.
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"These weak-kneed Republicans up here who are saying, 'Oh, we got to spend more money and we got to keep Medicaid forever, the expansion,' they need to get over themselves."
Paul said Republicans need to remember what they were for: "Repealing ObamaCare."
He added he'd like to support a healthcare bill, but will only vote for one that truly nixes the Affordable Care Act, not just modifies it or scales it back.
Senate leadership on Tuesday decided to delay a vote on their healthcare bill after it became clear it lacked the votes for passage.
Paul has been a vocal opponent of the Senate's bill.
On Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican met with President Trump and said following the meeting that the president is "open to making bill better."If "Disapproving Dad" was in the dictionary, this would be the photo next to it.
A young man (and musician) by the name of Benji got a surprising text from his father who claimed he was on an airplane with a rapper who seemed (at least to dad) high. The best part is papa decided to provide his son with some photographic evidence and sure enough...there's Wiz Khalifa.
"so my dad tells me he's sitting next to some rapper whose super high on his plane to Miami and then sends me this," Benji tweeted and shared a hilarious photo of his pops giving a stern (unless that's just his selfie face, which is very possible) look at the camera while snapping a pic to show Wiz (and his bright purple hair) sitting behind him.CNN's Anderson Cooper will moderate "Guns in America," a town hall featuring President Barack Obama on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
Washington (CNN) The nation's largest gun rights organization declined Wednesday to send official representatives to a nationally televised town hall with President Barack Obama on gun violence -- just days after the president reignited a discussion over this controversial topic.
"The National Rifle Association sees no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told CNN, which is moderating the live town hall Thursday evening in Virginia. The NRA strengthened its comment after initially saying the White House had "organized" the event.
The NRA, the most influential gun rights group in terms of political persuasion and financial contributions, boasts a membership of about five million people.
A CNN spokesperson said that it was the network, not the White House, that proposed the idea of a town hall on guns, and noted the audience would be evenly divided between organizations that support the Second Amendment including NRA members as well as groups that back gun regulation.
Obama on Tuesday presented a renewed push for further gun regulations, including background checks for firearms purchases through the use of executive action. While pro-gun regulation activists heralded Obama's renewed interest in the issue, his actions have been called into question about whether they would truly help stem gun violence.
Read MoreElmhurst police are warning residents take their keys out and lock their cars after an uptick in car thefts.Calling it a "new crime trend," police say thieves are stealing unlocked vehicles with keys or key fobs left inside. Over 100 vehicles have been stolen and more than 200 vehicles have been burglarized, police said.In most reported cases, the stolen vehicles have been identified as high-end unlocked cars parked overnight in residential driveways, police said."This crime trend has been occurring since May in targeted areas close to major highways. Cities that have been affected include Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Wilmette, Highland Park, Glencoe, Glenview, Winnetka, Northbrook, Deerfield, Hinsdale, Bolingbrook, Naperville, and most recently Elmhurst, where two vehicles were stolen," an Elmhurst news release said.Elmhurst police are alerting residents of the importance of locking car and garage doors. Leaving keys, key fobs, wallets, or any other valuables in your car puts your car at a high risk of being stolen, police said. Installing motion sensor lights in driveways and the front of homes is recommended as a deterrent, police said."If the thieves did not find the keys, they stole what they could," Elmhurst Police Chief Michael Ruth said.Clarendon Hill police sent out a similar alert, saying "suspected gang members from the city" are targeting the suburbs. Clarendon Hills police say six cars in Hinsdale and one in their town have been stolen.Residents in Glen Ellyn were also warned by police to secure their vehicles after a rash of car thefts.In most cases, the cars were unlocked with the keys inside. Thieves also used garage openers inside the cars to get into homes and search for the keys.The crimes usually happened during overnight hours, with purses and wallets also taken.Blair Turgott celebrates scoring the winning goal in Coventry City's 1-0 win at Peterborough United.
Coventry midfielder Blair Turgott says he does not feel his move from Premier League side West Ham was a step down.
The 20-year-old joined the Sky Blues during the January transfer window but has made just two appearances for the League One side.
"I made the decision to leave West Ham to get some games under my belt and I wouldn't say it's a step down," he told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.
"Whatever happens, starting or on the bench, I want to keep cracking on."
Turgott says he was urged to impress Coventry boss Tony Mowbray prior to their win over Peterborough on Saturday, in which he came off the bench to score the only goal.
Turgott's limited opportunities Competition in the middle of the park for Coventry City is high as Sky Blues boss Tony Mowbray currently has 12 midfielders in his squad.
"I've not played recently but he said when I get a chance, show me what you're about and impress me," he said.
"The gaffer told me to make an impact and win us the game and thankfully that happened."
After signing on a short-term deal until the end of the season, Turgott wants to use his cameo appearance at London Road to push for a starting role.
"I waited for my opportunity and made sure I was ready and hopefully I have shown that I should be playing more," he added.
"The gaffer told me to be professional and in the next couple of games I want to push on and get some more games."The world's only population of Javan rhinoceros, already under severe threat from poaching, could go extinct in the future due to natural disasters, including volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, according to a new study published in Conservation Letters. The few remaining Javan rhinos live in Ujung Kulon National Park, which is within sight of volcanic Mount Krakatoa and close to the Indonesian Sunda Arc, an area of converging tectonic plates that commonly cause earthquakes, triggering tsunamis.
In the study, a team of international researchers found that the 2013 global population of Javan rhinos was 62 animals, which is likely near the site's current capacity. A tsunami as high as 10 meters, or about 33 feet, which is projected to occur within the next 100 years, could threaten 80 percent of the area in the national park with the highest density of rhinos. As a result, the authors urge the establishment of additional rhino populations away from the reach of natural disasters.
Doing so will require identifying and securing new sites, securing the agreement of numerous stakeholders, including local authorities and the public, and intensive monitoring in Ujung Kulon National Park to determine which individual Javan rhinos may be suitable for translocation.
"What we found in this study provides good momentum for our efforts to save the Javan rhino, considering that we are racing against time," said Arnold Sitompul, conservation director of World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia.
Brian Gerber, postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University and corresponding author of the study, said that the science shows the need for additional rhino populations to safeguard the species.
"The Javan rhino is the most endangered land mammal in the world," he said. "Now, we need the social and political will to move things forward and establish additional populations."
The study provides a detailed analysis of the Javan rhino population, using an intensive camera trap method. The researchers obtained 1,660 images of rhinos from 178 camera trap locations in 2013 to produce a population estimate of 62 individuals. This compares with an estimate of 25 animals, at most, in 1937.
In addition to the call to build additional populations of rhinos, the study's authors emphasize the importance of taking conservation actions that can help increase the Ujung Kulon National Park's small rhino population numbers, increasing survival odds for at least part of the population in the case of a natural disaster. This includes maintaining strict protection of the remaining rhinos, maintaining the rhino monitoring work, and scaling up ongoing habitat management including controlling Arenga palm, which shades out the forest floor and inhibits the growth of plants that rhinos consume.
"We are proud of the achievements of successful management to boost the Javan rhino population, as revealed in this study," said Ujang Mamat Rahmat, head of Ujung Kulon National Park. "We also have conducted some studies on prospective areas for second habitat, and in the meantime, we will continue to work to improve the security patrols and increase carry capacity through invasive species control."
The International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species classifies the Javan rhinoceros as critically endangered. The species was extirpated from most of its historical range beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, primary as the result of excessive demand for rhino horn and other products.
Researchers hope to use the study's findings to revise the Conservation Strategy and Action Plan of Javan rhino, which will expire in 2017.America used to be the country of freedom where people dreamed of immigrating to if only they could get a passport, a visa, enough money to fly or sail across the ocean, if only the border guards would not |
anew for access to contraception, the VIDA statistics suggest that women writers are still fighting to have their work taken seriously and accorded as much coverage as men’s. The American Academy of Arts and Letters counts only 33 women among its 117 literature members. Even prestigious literary prizes don’t necessarily change everything. In the past three years more than half of the National Book Critics Circle awards have gone to women, and in the past two years the National Book awards for fiction have gone to women — Jaimy Gordon and Jesmyn Ward — but so far neither has made an enormous cultural splash.
“I think the prizes for men just underscore something already there for them,” Lorrie Moore, the novelist and short-story writer, said. “In many cases the prizes themselves may not have as much independent power as corroborative power.”
Jane Smiley, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for “A Thousand Acres,” said: “When I think about my own work, I think that it maybe falls between two stools, and sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s bad — not making the money that Jodi Picoult is making, not achieving the status of Franzen or Wallace. Nevertheless, one of the great things for our generation of women writers is the freedom we’ve felt to write about whatever subjects we wish to write about. Are we less innovative than the guys? I don’t see that. But if men aren’t much in the habit of reading women, then it doesn’t matter how innovative we are.”
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Who reads whom and how were among the concerns raised in Francine Prose’s sharp 1998 essay in Harper’s Magazine, “Scent of a Woman’s Ink,” which employed a blind taste test to show that when you take away the gender label, it’s not all that easy to identify the author by sex. “Fiction by women is still being read differently, with the usual prejudices and preconceptions,” she wrote. In doing so, she illustrated the continuing critical bias against women. “I wish I could say things had improved drastically since my Harper’s piece appeared,” Prose told me. “But it wouldn’t be true.”
Recently, when the novelist Mary Gordon spoke at a boys’ school, she learned that the students weren’t reading the Brontës, Austen or Woolf. Their teachers defended this by saying they were looking for works that boys could relate to. But at the girls’ school across the street, Gordon said, “no one would have dreamed of removing ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or ‘Moby-Dick’ from the syllabus. As a woman writer, you get points if you include the ‘male’ world in your work, and you lose points if you omit it.”
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Lorrie Moore added, “A female scholar once said to me: ‘I already know what women think, pretty much. I’m more interested in reading books by men.” The problem with this statement becomes clear if you flip it. Were a man to say, “I already know what men think; I’m more interested in reading books by women,” he would be greeted with incomprehension. While there may be no such thing as “male” or “female” writing, to say that the emphases of male and female writers might sometimes be different doesn’t mean that the deepest concerns or preoccupations of women are inferior or any less essential. Literary women novelists can of course do very well without male readers. And some literary male writers have admitted envying women the “femaleness” of the novel-reading (and -buying) community — a community that, from my own experience with book groups and individual readers, I know to be attentive and passionate.
People will remind you that women are the chief consumers of fiction in this country, and some will add that they think men are so hopeless when it comes to what they’ll read that perhaps we should forget about them as literary fiction readers altogether. More than a few men are understandably offended by this suggestion, and will describe not only their Proust or Pynchon reading group, but also their all-male Edith Wharton book group, or their admiration for Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!” I hope that these men help spread the word, and that the word includes a shout-out to other brilliant women writers like Andrea Barrett, Kathryn Davis, Dana Spiotta, Zoë Heller, Carol Anshaw, Bonnie Nadzam, Rivka Galchen, Lauren Groff and Susan Choi, to name but a few among many, many others.
But the top tier of literary fiction — where the air is rich and the view is great and where a book enters the public imagination and the current conversation — tends to feel peculiarly, disproportionately male. Will the literary habits of a culture change as younger readers take over? Will more literary women be able to persuade their publishers to keep that photo of a longhaired young girl in a summer dress facing shyly away from the camera off their book jackets and replace it with a neutral illustration and bold typeface? Will VIDA’s statistics dramatically improve? And will “Women’s Fiction” become such an absurd category it’s phased out entirely? Maybe, in a more just world.click to enlarge Makemusicday.org/Cleveland
6–9 p.m.: Sousa Palooza (brass and wind instrumentalists of all ages read Sousa marches), Lakewood Choir of Churches, Victor Samalot and Tower City Chorus
It’s nearly impossible to go a day without listening to music. Music is everywhere. It’s played in restaurants and stores. Music has the power to promote change; it has the power to express how people feel without them ever having to say anything at all. So what better way to show our thanks for all of the musicians who make music possible than by having a day dedicated to music?On June 21, Cleveland will join over 700 cities around the world in celebrating International Make Music Day. Pioneered in France in 1982 as the, Make Music Day has spread to over 120 countries and continues to grow each year. Completely different from the typical music festival, the free event gives every kind of musician — young and old, amateur and professional — the opportunity to take to the streets, parks, malls and porches to share his or her music and a love of music with friends, family and strangers.In Cleveland and throughout Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties, over 40 amateur and professional musicians will join musicians around the world in performing at a number of venues during the day and throughout the night.From Progressive Field to Happy Dog at Euclid Tavern and everywhere in between, you’ll be able to enjoy a variety of live performances in a celebration of music. If you’re a harmonica person, then you won’t want to miss the sunset sing-a-long and harmonica giveaway at Edgewater Park, but if trombones tickle your fancy then make your way to Lakewood Baptist Church for a trombone demonstration and a performance by Sousa Polooza.Jazz enthusiasts won’t want to miss Kamal Abdul-Alim at the Euclid Tavern. A jazz trumpeter from Cleveland, Abdul-Alim studied composition at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. After his time at Berklee, Abdul-Alim continued to grow as a musician and composer by traveling and studying all over the world, spreading his love for African and jazz music wherever he went.“Cleveland is a destination of musical excellence, and we’re excited to see how Make Music Day can bring different individuals and communities together,” says Hannah Santisi, program director for Make Music Cleveland, in a press release. “Most of our professional and educational music groups are already connected with their communities in one way or another. Why not combine each of those networks into one grand day of music making? Anyone can perform, anyone can listen — it’s going to be an amazing day.”If you’re a musician who’s interested in participating, interested in volunteering or interested in participating as a venue, the organizers at Credo Music invite you to learn more about the event at makemusicday.org/cleveland Current venues and performers include:6:15-7 p.m.: First Church Musicians7 p.m.: Kamal Abdul-Alim6 p.m.: Oberlin Percussion Group, Poor Ornery Sinners and Worldstock EntertainmentNoon-1:30 p.m.: John Wallace, guitar and David Ellis, viola da gamba10 a.m.: Stone Water Time Breath6-9 p.m.: Performance of Terry Riley’s “In C”, Harmonica Giveaway and Sunset Sing- Along lead Lily Roberts and Harmonious (a capella group)9 p.m.: Jam SessionCleveland Cello Quartet (Time TBA)5-9 p.m.: Chris Allen and the Guilty Hearts10:30 a.m.: Poor Ornery Sinners5-6 p.m.: Julia Wallace7 p.m.: Classical Revolution1 p.m.: Piano Jazz2 p.m.: Pete Meeboer, singer/ songwriter3 p.m.: Kathie Stewart4 p.m.: Canterbury String Quartet4:30 p.m.: Deb and Joan5 p.m.: THRE36 p.m.: Instrument Petting Zoo7 p.m.: Glenn Holmes Quartet on the Front Porch7-8:15pm: TriHearn4:15-5pm: Alex IzekawaAfter only a few months of operation, it seems clear that the people behind UNOCS weren’t able to come to an agreement on how to properly run the business. It was officially announced this morning that UNOCS has officially disbanded. This leaves Feathercoin, Worldcoin and Phenixcoin to fend for themselves. While we can’t say we didn’t see this coming, this is still a sad day in the crypto world. Best of luck to all the coins affected.
We are disappointed to announce to you that UNOCS as a partnership project will be terminated. We have tried to make this a success,
but can’t continue the chosen direction any longer because of several factors relating to cohesion and development.
We have come to the conclusion that each coin should go its separate way again.
This will be our final announcement. We wish all the people involved the best and would like to thank all who have supported this project as well.
The UNOCS teamWith a mission to advocate and raise the visibility and acceptance of Seattle’s growing transgender and gender-nonconforming community, the Gender Justice League will put on its first Trans Pride parade at Cal Anderson Park on June 28, two days before Seattle’s 39th-annual Gay Pride parade.Marchers will assemble at 5:30 p.m. on Broadway in front of Seattle Central Community College (1701 Broadway), and make their way to nearby Cal Anderson Park for performances by nationally known trans-identified artists, including singer Rae Spoon, writer Julia Serano and comedian Ian Harvie. About 25 different community organizations will also have tables set up at the park.“It’s really going to bring a lot of visibility to the trans community,” noted Ballard resident Danielle Askini, executive director and founding member of the Gender Justice League, which formed last September.Seattle will be one of only a handful of other U.S. cities that have held marches in support of transgender rights. Seattle was the first city in the nation to hold a transgender-Pride event in 1997, and this will be the first transgender-specific parade to take place in Seattle since then.Organizers of the parade hope the Trans Pride parade will become an annual event. The city Department of Neighborhoods has shown its support with a matching grant of $15,292 to stage the event, which is also fiscally sponsored by the Gay City Health Project.Seattle is seen as a mecca for transgender people, with one of the largest populations of transgender people in the country, drawing many from other places, Askini noted. Though there is no way of knowing the exact number of transgender people living in Seattle, she guesses that it could be as many as 10,000 to 20,000.However, there is still a significant struggle for many transgender people here who have experienced discrimination and violence and denied emergency-room care.“There are some pretty significant differences for trans people,” Askini said, adding that, due to the apparent visibility of transgender people, they face discrimination more immediately.Askini, who transitioned at age 13, experienced multiple hate crimes while growing up in Maine.According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force study, “Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey,” the transgender community is four times more likely to live in poverty and has double the unemployment rate of the general population.Forty-one percent of transgender people have attempted suicide in their life, and more than one in four transgender people have been attacked due to bias.Only 16 U.S. states, including Washington, currently have laws protecting the rights of transgender citizens. This means that, in most of the nation, it remains legal to deny someone housing, fire them or refuse them access to businesses that serve the public, because they are transgender.Trans Pride will help bring attention to this and give transgender people in the community, as well as the general public, an opportunity to meet each other, Askini said.“I want to open people’s eyes,” said Sarah, a Seattle mother with a 5-year-old transgender daughter. She plans to take part in Trans Pride. “I’m hoping to help make the world a safer place for [my daughter] by taking part in what I believe will be a historic event.”Sarah’s child expressed her self-identity as a girl at age 3. Rather than resisting her child’s gender non-conformity, and with the assistance of a support group of parents through Seattle Children’s hospital, she opted to support her in living the gender that felt right to her.“[Transgender people] are our neighbors and children. These are normal, everyday people,” Sarah said. “I think the tide is turning, slowly, especially in places like Seattle that this is a constant in. This is a type of person that has always been with us and always will be.”Sarah hopes that her child’s identity will not be an issue when she is Sarah’s present age.For more information about the Trans Pride event, visit transprideseattle.org.For more information about the Gender Justice League, visit genderjusticeleague.org.To comment on this story, write to CityLivingEditor@nwlink.com.oneword/Getty Images
In 2005, Deneise Younger went to prison for forging nearly a whole checkbook's worth of checks after a former partner slighted her. A few months into her sentence, she lost her temper with another inmate and placed razor blades in her shoes. For that, she was sent to solitary confinement for 180 days and her sentence was extended another year. While Younger had several of these impulsive reactions in her life, it wasn't until three months into her time in the South Carolina prison system that she was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder and manic depression. "I never realized what it was," Younger, 36, told me over the phone. "You just get real angry and without thinking, you act, not knowing that you have reacted or said something stupid until after the fact. When I was putting those razor blades in her shoes, I knew what I was doing, but not in the moment, and afterward I felt so bad. Like, 'Why did I just do that?'"
While Younger was able to reflect on her offenses in solitary confinement, the punishment made it difficult to manage her anger and depression. "I was so mad in there. I would beat the door, I would scream and cry. It was awful. I felt worthless, I felt helpless, I felt lost, I was embarrassed," she says. Aside from the psychiatric medication that was dropped off at her cell door once daily after her diagnosis, she didn't have access to any sort of mental health counseling that could help her make sense of her newly identified conditions.
In some instances, guards, officers, physicians, and inmates themselves were unaware that they had a condition like PTSD or a personality disorder for more than two years.
"I only saw the psychiatrist once a month to review how my medication was going, but I would have wanted someone to talk to a little bit more often," she says. "You are already angry, you are already grieving being in prison with all the rules and different personalities and the neglect, it's better when you can talk to someone and express yourself, you know?"
Without anyone to help her cope, Younger ended up in solitary with another impulsive episode and landed on suicide watch for seven days, even though she didn't have any suicidal thoughts or intentions. While this meant that she was checked in on more frequently, again, she didn't receive any sort of mental health counseling during or after the incident.
Unfortunately, Younger's case isn't an outlier. According to the last report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 50 percent of US inmates have mental health conditions but only 34 percent of state prison inmates had professional mental health therapy after being admitted to prison; the number is even lower for those in local jails, just 18 percent. So, thousands of individuals had, and undoubtedly have, to navigate America's meager mental health services in correctional facilities. What are they up against? Delayed diagnoses, ineffective and often abusive care, and violence. But denying mental health care, whether intentionally or not, to individuals doing time isn't just unconstitutional, it can create bigger problems down the line: declining mental health, extended sentences, and increased risk of recidivism.
The trouble can start as soon as someone with a mental health condition enters a correctional facility. Like Younger, many inmates receive their first mental health diagnosis in prison, but it isn't right away. In a new study published in April, researchers combed through records of more than 8500 Iowa state prison inmates and found that a whopping 99 percent of mental health diagnoses were first made during incarceration, some as late as 29 months into a prisoner's sentence. That means that in some instances, guards, officers, physicians, and inmates themselves were unaware that they had a condition like PTSD or a personality disorder for more than two years.
Diagnosing mental illness is undeniably difficult in many circumstances, but the way mental health care is currently run in American correctional facilities seems to make it extra challenging to figure out who needs help. For starters, confidential disclosure can be nearly impossible. Michael Bien, a San Francisco-based attorney who successfully sued the state of California for its overcrowded prisons, represents inmates with physical and psychological disabilities and has heard numerous complaints about discretion.
"A lot of prisoners have told me that when they finally got the courage to ask the guards to see a mental health professional, there wasn't any confidential space to do so," he says. "Instead, someone will come over to your cell and talk to you through the cell door. It's loud and everyone can hear you—why would you tell someone you are hearing voices or have thought about killing yourself? It can be completely embarrassing, especially in prison, where there's an expectation to be tough." It may be the reason some inmates are choosing to stay silent, and only get noticed once their condition worsens and they act out.
Delayed diagnosis can also be a part of behavioral issues. "People who are diagnosed late or not at all may act out, become violent, or create problems for themselves or other prisoners," says Tala Al-Rousan, a research fellow at Harvard's School of Public Health who was the lead author on the Iowa state prison study. "These behavioral problems can result in sentences being extended or harsh punishment like solitary confinement that can worsen their condition, leading to more behavioral issues—it's a cycle that can go on for years."
In federal prison, 40 percent of inmates with mental health conditions were charged with rule violations like physical assault, compared to about 28 percent that didn't have them, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report above. It doesn't mean that people with psychiatric conditions are necessarily more prone to violence, Al-Rousan says, but it may be that the difficulty of managing symptoms with negligent care and the stressful prison environment contribute to acting out—that connection is still being studied, she adds.
Watch More on VICE: Meet One of Britain's Most Notorious Reformed Criminals
Lack of staffing—another pervasive issue that heavily contributes to the grim state of mental health services—may mean that mental health professionals only have time for group therapy instead of individual meetings, an arrangement that can force people to clam up. "After we got court orders for California prisons to do group therapy, we learned that some of the sessions were not effective," Bien says. "The sessions wouldn't be tailored to one condition and every time people showed up, there would be different inmates in the group. The whole point of a group is that you are developing relationships and trust with those people. If it's different people every time, you're not going to want to talk about what's really on your mind, especially in prison where you are already worried about confidentiality."
Do we want them to be functional, productive people who are able to hold a job or do we want them to be so disabled by mental illness that they can't function?
Several investigations that have dug into the matter have uncovered shocking and unconstitutional levels of care in prisons and jails. In 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program filed a lawsuit suing the Alabama Department of Corrections for "grossly inadequate" medical and mental health care that "subjects all prisoners to a substantial risk of serious harm, including unnecessary pain, loss of function, injury and death."
Maria Morris, a SPLC attorney who developed the lawsuit, spent three years interviewing inmates and pouring over medical records and contracts with a team of experts before filing it. She recounted some of the grievances to me, many of which expose why early diagnosis and effective treatment aren't happening. For example, nurses without any mental health education—"essentially like the ones who take your blood pressure at the doctor's office," Morris said—would determine whether an Alabama inmate needed to see a psychiatrist. Without any psychiatric training, how would they know who qualified?
In many instances, inmates saw unlicensed counselors who were technically not supposed to be practicing without close supervision. Therapy sessions sometimes lasted for just five to ten minutes, and occurred weeks apart, even for patients who were severely ill with disorders like schizophrenia. One of her clients, who Morris referred to as "among the sickest people in the system," was locked in his cell for more than 23 hours a day and received all of his "counseling sessions" by essentially shouting through a solid metal door. (The Alabama Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment on this.)
Subpar care is only one part of the grim reality of being in prison with a mental health condition. Sadly, many mentally ill inmates are also often abused and denied care, even when it's clear that they are suffering. During interviews with inmates, Morris and her team learned of too many situations that fell into that category. One inmate cut himself on five separate occasions but never received mental health care. Numerous prisoners reported being medicated against their will and were sent to solitary confinement until they would agree to take medication; many have never received a hearing to determine if it's necessary to take medication in the first place. Inmates on suicide watch would be left alone for days at a time—ironically, no one was watching them.
Mentally ill inmates can find themselves in solitary confinement, also called segregation, which is more often a placement that can aggravate their condition. In 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Prison Law Office sued the Arizona Department of Corrections for excessive use of solitary confinement, among other things. "Prisoners with mental health issues in Arizona aren't being adequately treated, so they are accumulating disciplinary charges, which if you have enough, you will work your way into solitary confinement," says David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, who argued the case for prisoners in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
"But it's completely uncontroversial that solitary confinement exacerbates preexisting mental illness and impacts the suicide rate, so it's really a lethal combination." An analysis of inmates in New York City jails found that more than 50 percent of self-harm occurred in solitary confinement and another study found that its associated with an increased risk for PTSD upon release.
Morris also told me about instances where mental health symptoms were confused with acting out. A client of hers that was schizophrenic was responding to voices in his head instead of following guards' orders. He was beat up by them and placed into segregation for lack of compliance. "Sometimes people are definitely put into segregation because they have done something violent which may or may not be related to a mental health problem…but there are also people who get placed into segregation in Alabama for essentially being hard to manage and I think certainly a lot of those individual are individuals with mental health problems. Unfortunately, mentally ill people are more susceptible to the harms of segregation, than people who aren't mentally ill," Morris said.
One of the most difficult things to hear Younger recall was the physical and verbal abuse directed toward mentally ill inmates, including herself. "There were some guards that would just do picky things to spite you, like turn off the TV early or threaten to put you in lockdown," she says. "There was one time where they harassed a woman who had some real bad issues. This one particular guard took her cigarette and told her she wasn't getting any more. She was trying to get the cigarette back and they maced her, hit her with the radio, and the other guards handcuffed her. Blood was everywhere. I went through a lot of emotions seeing something like that: I was angry, I was scared, I cried. If you could do something like that to someone who really really really didn't do anything, what would you do to me?"
According to a 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, "corrections officials at times needlessly and punitively deluge [prisoners with mental disabilities] with chemical sprays; shock them with electric stun devices; strap them to chairs and beds for days on end; break their jaws, noses, ribs; or leave them with lacerations, second degree burns, deep bruises, and damaged internal organs. The violence can traumatize already vulnerable men and women, aggravating their symptoms and making future mental health treatment more difficult."
"There is a very serious problem with a lack of accountability in regards to what [prison staff] can do," Morris says. "And I think when you add someone who is seriously mentally ill to the mix, the lack of accountability becomes even greater because those prisoners have a hard time getting people to believe what they are experiencing in prison…the men who are severely mentally ill in Alabama seem to be particularly vulnerable to violence by the guards."
In order to begin to repair the broken mental health system, it's clear that prisons desperately need to hire more professionals, and more qualified ones. According to Morris, the Alabama Department of Corrections maintained that their conditions were largely related to dried up funding. "It essentially boiled down to 'We are doing the best we can. We don't have any money, we can't hire more people, we can't hire more psychiatrists because there aren't any more in Alabama,'" she says. "And that's probably true. It's hard to hire for this position because it's a difficult work environment without good pay."
If facilities can only make do with the workforce they have, additional training for both medical staff and officers could lead to better outcomes for inmates. "These are very difficult situations for psychiatrists to navigate and we are presumably as well-trained as anybody to take care of mental illness," says Elizabeth Ford, a psychiatrist who runs New York City's Correctional Health's psychiatric services and oversees mental health care at Rikers Island. "Yet most patients are in settings where most of the staff aren't trained anywhere close to that and are being asked to manage some of the same things. A lot of New York City jails are trying to change that and train staff as best as they can."
When resources are tight, prisons could turn to other, relatively obvious networks for clues on an inmate's mental health. "It would be helpful to get information from an inmate's former provider or a clinic in the community there they were receiving care," Ford says. "But it can be challenging because there's this idea that once someone enters the criminal justice system, you shouldn't be sharing information back and forth with the community. That's enormously challenging." When Al-Rousan spoke with prison psychiatrists in Iowa, they echoed that having access to patient records would enormously help with diagnosis.
Perhaps one of the reasons why mental health care isn't a priority in correctional facilities goes back to the unfavorable attitude that society possesses toward inmates. "Right now a lot of people have the perception that the people in prison should be punished since they are criminals," Fathi says, adding that there's a need for a cultural shift that recognizes the importance of humane and responsible care. "But under the US Constitution, prisons and jails have to provide mental and medical health services that comply with the 8th Amendment—no cruel or unusual punishment. Most prisoners are eventually going to get out and they are going to live down the street from you and me. Do we want them to be functional, productive people who are able to hold a job or do we want them to be so disabled by mental illness that they can't function?"
Morris added, "When we sentence someone to prison, we are taking away a lot. There is no question that if you go to prison, you are being punished. It's loud, it's smelly, and you have no freedom to do much of anything. You don't have the ability to talk to people you love or to touch the people you love—you lose a lot. But to make someone who is ill suffer from that illness as a punishment is just inhumane. They didn't want this condition, they didn't create it, and they have to be punished more as a result of it? It doesn't seem right—it just seems cruel."
Read This Next: We Asked What It's Like to Have a Mental Illness in PrisonPARIS – Werner Herzog (“Grizzly Man”) will receive the Carrosse d’Or award at this year’s Directors Fortnight, the section which runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival.
The Society of Film Directors (SRF), which brings together top French filmmakers, said it was honoring Herzog with the Carrosse d’Or to “pay tribute to [his] relentless energy and [his] great creativity,” as well as his “ability to juggle formats, production norms and systems, and to blur the lines between fiction and documentary, feature films and television, reason and madness.”
“We also pay homage to your leadership and your powerful capacity to pull in Hollywood stars as well as unknown people and amateurs, and to the way you impose your distinctive tone and vision, flouting moral conventions and political correctness,” the SFR added.
Launched in 2002 by SRF, the Carrosse d’Or recognizes a director each year for “the innovative qualities in his/her films, for his/her audacity and intransigence in direction and production,” stated the SFR.
Herzog’s latest film, the ecology-themed adventure thriller “Salt and Fire” (pictured above), starred Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal.
Recent Carrosse d’Or honorees include Aki Kaurismaki, Jia Zhangke, Alain Resnais and Jane Campion.
The full lineup of Directors’ Fortnight will be unveiled in mid-April by its artistic director, Edouard Waintrop.About a week ago, comedian Paul F. Tompkins Tweeted out the following:
Eight men out... of the 1990s. Maybe something new coming from the Mr. Show gang in the new year? #MrShow pic.twitter.com/gBy8CQ49nv — Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) December 31, 2014
As you might expect, this set comedy nerds frothing at the mouth: was a new season of Mr. Show on the way? A reunion tour? Speculation ran rampant, but as recently as two days ago we weren't any closer to having a confirmation: someone over at the AV Club emailed David Cross directly asking after Tompkins' photo, and he was cagey on the details:
“Well I suppose you could say we were all meeting in anticipation of being able to do (something?) to mark the twentieth anniversary of Mr. Show? I suppose that works. It was the first time we’ve all been together in a room since the audio record for Hollywood Said No and it was a blast.”
But this morning, a Kickstarter page for Cross' directorial debut, Hits, popped up online. Cross is opting out of a traditional distribution model for the film, choosing instead to release Hits via Torrent (in a "Pay What You Wish" deal) while also bringing the film to theaters. The Kickstarter campaign's there to fund a theatrical rollout for the film, and those who chip in can get a variety of rewards. For instance: Kickstarting the film's distribution plan to the tune of $20 will get you a digital download of the film and a thank you note from Cross (by February!). Subsequent reward tiers are pretty standard, but when you get to the $500 tier, things get interesting:
But, wait, it gets better: once you hit the $5k tier, Cross flat-out confirms a Mr. Show reunion is happening:
Now, that's not very specific, as far as confirmations go-- we know Mr. Show's reuniting and that something's being filmed-- but, hey, a confirmation's a confirmation. Comedy nerds are now encouraged to begin speculation as to what type of Mr. Show reunion this might be: something for Netflix? A one-night-only live show that'll be filmed for HBO? A second at-bat for Run Ronnie Run (note: it's not a second at-bat for Run Ronnie Run)? My money's on an HBO special, but what do you guys think?• 2-4 Players
• 10-15 Minutes
• Ages 8+
A light, trick-taking card game in which players take on the roles of skillful warriors as they battle it out and attempt to be the first player to run out of cards.
An adaptation of the Russian card game Durak, Battle of Durak features new rules, complex strategies, and a role-playing fantasy twist.
Gameplay:
Players take turns attacking and defending with battle and skill cards in an attempt to add more cards to their opponent’s hands while depleting their own.
Strategic hand-building is key to winning the game. Hold on to the right cards, play your characters skillfully, and prepare for the final battle.
Mechanics:
• Trick-taking
• Hand-building
• Asymmetric player powers
• Player elimination
• Co-operative play
Become a Skillful Warrior:
• Barbarian: A fearsome warrior with brutal attacks. Even if you are not facing him directly, you are not safe from the barbaric outbursts of rage.
• Mage: A skillful master of illusions. Manipulating the suits and values of Battle Cards to shift the outcome of each battle.
• Thief: A cunning and crafty fighter. Convincing foes they stand against a much more formidable opponent.
• Necromancer: A master of the black arts that has dedicated himself entirely to the dead. Forcing Battle Cards from the graveyard to come back into battle.
• Alchemist: A crazed chemist that creates powerful concoctions. Putting together Battle Cards to create much stronger attacks.
• Assassin: An explosive fighter that hunts from the shadows. Waiting for the right situations to make a critical attack.
Variants:
• Ambush: Added rules that allow for a more engaging, faster-paced gameplay.
• Team Battle: Create an alliance with another player & attempt to overpower the opposing team.
Combine Skill Cards from multiple game sets to go head-to-head in battle using the same character classes!
Download the Rulebook PDF
Try the 2-player Print N PlayWEDNESDAY, 3:32pm: Tanaka's posting will begin Thursday morning and be completed by January 24th at 4pm CT, a source tells Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News (on Twitter). Teams can place their bids – up to $20MM, of course – starting tomorrow morning (link).
TUESDAY, 9:50pm: Rakuten Golden Eagles president Yozo Tachibana announced that Tanaka will be posted, according to a tweet from Sankei Sports tranlsated by Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter links).
9:23pm: The Golden Eagles will announce momentarily that Tanaka will be posted, according to Jim Allen of Kyodo News (on Twitter).
5:35pm: The Rakuten Golden Eagles have decided to post star pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, according to reports from Japanese outlets Sponichi (link) and Nikkan Sports (link). It's a turnaround from reports last week that indicated the Golden Eagles were leaning against allowing Tanaka to make the jump to MLB.
One MLB source tells David Kaplan of CSNChicago.com (on Twitter) that he believes the Cubs will not be outbid for Tanaka's services. Convincing Tanaka to come to Chicago, however, could prove to be problematic, according to that source. "This is exactly type deal that Theo [Epstein and] Jed Hoyer will be all in on. However, will Tanaka say no to the [Yankees, Dodgers, and others]? Not sure he will," the source told Kaplan (link).
Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com (Twitter link) adds that the Angels and Diamondbacks – who have been quite vocal about their fondness of Tanaka and overall need for a frontline starter – should also be in the mix for his services. Tanaka being posted also means good news for other free agent pitchers who have been in a holding pattern as clubs have waited for the top domino to drop.
Rakuten was planning a record NPB offer for Tanaka – roughly $7.7MM USD – but that's significantly less than what he's expected to get from an MLB club. One GM recently told Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com that Tanaka was certain to receive a deal worth more than $100MM if posted.
Per the Sponichi report, team President Yozo Tachibana acknowledged that the process is moving into its final stage. When asked if the team was set on a decision, Tachibana said, "Yes, it looks that way … We're completing the final procedures."
It seems likely that the Golden Eagles have been dragging their feet in large part because of the reduced posting fee that they would receive under the new system. While the Japanese clubs holding the rights to predecessors such as Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yu Darvish saw major financial windfalls, the new system caps Rakuten's maximum posting fee at $20MM.
Special thanks to Aaron Steen for his Japanese translation.ORLANDO, Fla. – World Cup 1994 put Orlando firmly on the soccer map. The 1998 MLS All-Star Game added to the city’s credentials. And several appearances by the US women’s national team, first in 2013 and then last October, under |
and Baahubali: The Conclusion - have been made on a total budget of Rs 430 crore. You must remember that SS Rajamouli had always intended to release his Baahubali films in the maximum number of theatres possible and therefore, his audience was not just based in South India but also the North and everywhere else in between. Still, he did not cast pan-Indian faces but Telugu and Tamil film actors for his project. SS Rajamouli was solely relying on Baahubali's story and its visual appeal.
In Bollywood, the scale and scope of a film is dictated by the star. The most expensive films in Bollywood such as Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (Rs 175 crore), Dhoom 3 (Rs 175 crore) and Dilwale (Rs 165 crore) are incredibly low on content and the money allocated is not invested in the quality of the film but is majorly a part of the actors' fees, which brings us to our next point.
2. Actors' salaries and egos
In a recent interview with The Indian Express, Baahubali 2's National Award-winning sound designer PM Satheesh said, "Why is that stuff like this (Baahubali) happening in Telugu cinema and is being pulled off wonderfully there because the money for the film of this sort goes into the production. It's not eaten up by a few big stars. If you have a 600 crore-film in Mumbai, at max Rs 100 crore will go into the production, if you are lucky."
When the content is top priority, most of the budget is automatically be kept aside for that. In Bollywood, the Khans, the Roshans, the Kumars and the Kapoors would never sacrifice their large salaries for a film. Forget salaries, no one would be willing to dedicate five years of their career towards a single project. Don't forget that Prabhas did not sign any film for the five years that he was involved with SS Rajamouli's Baahubali.
3. Bollywood cinema lacks religious imagery
Religion is the opium of the masses, so said Karl Marx and how right he was. Both the Baahubali films are strongly influenced by Hindu mythology (Mahabharata) and mythological fiction (Amar Chitra Katha). There is heavy religious imagery in the films, particularly in Baahubali 2. This is a common trait in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada masala films as their mainstream, commercial fare is deeply rooted in Indian mythological tropes. It is no surprise that India, being a largely religious country with a huge Hindu population, have taken to Baahubali 2 quite strongly.
However, Bollywood cinema has, for lack of a better word, become overtly secular over the years. Contemporary Bollywood films do not wear religion on their sleeve. For that matter, they do not draw from the epics as well. Films like Rajneeti and Sarkar have oblique, throwaway references to Mahabharata but at the end of the day, Bollywood's masala cinema is devoid of the 'epic' trappings of South Indian masala cinema. This prevents Bollywood films from being popular in the more religious South.
4. High-concept films have failed in Bollywood
In the South, high-concept, VFX-driven films have by and large been successful. Shankar's Enthiran: The Robot and I, SS Rajamouli's earlier work such as Eega and Magadheera and Anushka Shetty-starrer Rudhramadevi have all made money. These successes gave director Rajamouli and producer Shobu Yarlagadda the confidence to organise a coup as big as Baahubali.
In Bollywood though, high-concept films have failed miserably. Take the example of last year's Mohenjo Daro. Or Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet. Shah Rukh Khan's Ra.One made money thanks to the presence of SRK's star power but beyond a point, it did not make as much moolah as was expected of it. Love Story 2050 was a disaster and the Krrish films have nothing in terms of VFX to write home about. Failures after failures have made Bollywood too scared to approach anything as grand in scale and scope as Baahubali.
5. Bollywood has no one like SS Rajamouli
SS Rajamouli had been making films all his life as a test to finally pull off Baahubali. He first made Magadheera to test whether there were takers for his mythology-based cinema. It was a hit. Then he made Eega, a science-fiction fantasy film to see how far he could take special effects in an Indian film. That worked as well. Finally, combining all his strengths and convictions, he made Baahubali and the gamble worked.
No such visionary filmmakers in Bollywood, who are singularly devoted to making VFX-driven visual epics, exist in Bollywood. While Hollywood has many such as James Cameron, Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro, there are no such filmmakers in Bollywood. The closest to such filmmakers that Bollywood has is Sanjay Leela Bhansali. In Bollywood, the best filmmakers make more personal, small-scale films. Visual epic is not Bollywood's cup of tea.
ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 Hindi movie review
ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 Tamil movie review
OPINION: Baahubali 2 is all about the superficial. There's hardly anything elseI am thinking the MVP for the AutoMicroFarm would be between 4 and 24 square feet of growing space; this would require between 30 and 180 gallons for the fish tank.
I have two options in mind for the MVP:
Take it indoors; this adds light requirements [1]. In essence, it become an aquaponics kit such as this one, but with lights. Advantages: don’t need to worry about heating/cooling; becomes a showcase/conversation starter; can be situated very near or in the kitchen. Disadvantages: ideally want LED lights, which are at this point very expensive. Set it up in a greenhouse. Advantages: don’t need to worry about lighting, so initial costs are appreciably lower. Disadvantages: need to heat in the winter, perhaps cool in the summer.
Right now, I am leaning towards the greenhouse, since it will involve a smaller up-front cost and LED grow lights will (or at least should, in theory) come down in price, hopefully soon. Please share any experience or advice you may have about this.
[1] Research on LED growing lights: if there is no additional light source, the energy required is 5.84 kWh/lb, assuming lights on 12 hours a day and 15 lb/ft^2 annual yield.Travelling across Britain last week to interview ordinary people about the upcoming local elections and whether the UK still sees itself as one country, there was a scene in the Highland town of Aviemore that summed it up rather well. On the high street two election posters were hanging next to each other: one for the party that wants to take the UK out of the EU, the other for a party that wants to take Scotland out of the UK.
Earlier, a man in John O'Groats, on the most northerly tip of mainland Britain, had explained that the people on the north-east coast were different from those in the rest of the Highlands. "We are of Norse descent here, we are not Highlanders. So we don't want Gaelic on our road signs." Another said that the problem was not only London, and Edinburgh, but also the local capital of Inverness. "The money just stays there." By which he meant "the state money".
If elections are the main ritual by which a nation imagines itself politically, then the UK last week felt comatose. Asked about their local polls people would give me tired looks that seemed to say: "Poor foreigner, you fell for that one? Let me set you straight." Then would come a couple of dismissive or contemptuous phrases and that was the end of it. It was hard to argue against that view, as many justified their apathy about the elections with their ignorance of them.
With one or two exceptions people seemed to look at politics as a talent show with really boring contestants. You could follow it, or you could ignore it – a lifestyle choice. Either way, it would make no difference to your life. "Without wanting to sound ageist," a girl in Newcastle told me, "I suggest you go find some older people if you want to talk about the elections. That generation still cares about these things."
She had worked in a Labour call centre for a while. It was a paid job, not voluntary work, and it taught her one thing, she said: "How to take abuse."
For a Dutchman like me this swamp of cynicism and indifference sounded very familiar. It was a huge contrast to Egypt though, where I lived for a few years before the revolution. Egyptians would be grateful if the government got anything right. In the Netherlands and the UK people seem to get annoyed if the government gets anything wrong. Electoral rhetoric drives up expectations.Is the UK still a country? Coming into Edinburgh Airport it was hard not to notice just how similar the place was to a terminal at some London airport. With the exception of the ubiquitous RBS billboards ("here for you"), it was the same shops and restaurants selling the same stuff while the Scottish tabloids were consumed with a story about Simon Cowell.
Expressions of national sacrifice are everywhere. In the departure/arrival room at the Wick airstrip, surrounded by photos of the Prince of Wales opening the refurbished airport, there's a plaque dedicated to those who fell manning the Wick Aerodrome between 1939 and 1945: "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn." The rest of Wick is dotted with memorials, with one pink pillar commemorating the men who fell in places as far apart in time and space as Zululand and the Nile, Sebastopol and Waterloo.
For centuries this isolated place hundreds of miles from London has been sending its sons to die in far-away places. What will happen to these memorials if Scotland breaks away?
And is there still such a thing as a country anyway in a globalised world? It proved difficult to discuss local issues with people, as so many issues had regional, national and global components. Petrol prices, poverty, jobs and crime – to name but a few.
A man in Plymouth explained that he didn't hate eastern Europeans for taking the jobs that British-born people refuse to do, but he did hate them for sending their earnings back to their countries of origin. Then a woman explained that she was unlikely to vote as the local authorities had failed to get rid of the stench coming from a sewage works. She and her husband had been living with it for 17 years, writing at least three letters a year. She still couldn't hang laundry outside to dry. "They can't seem to get anything done," she said with a kind smile about the people in city hall answering her letters.
However, this is my favourite anecdote, pulling in many threads of how the local and the global now interact. In Wick, in the far north of Scotland, a woman described how she used to take out car insurance from a local agent. He would come to her house every month to collect payments and that is how it worked for decades. These days, she said: "I have to ring a call centre in India and they make you listen to music as you are put you on hold and then you have to deal with somebody you don't know, and every time you call it's somebody different." After losing his job, she continued, the insurance agent had found a new one at Tesco, the retail group that had put so many local shops out of business. "You can't help going there," she said with what sounded like guilt. "It's too... too convenient."
She paused for a moment, then added with a firmness that struck me as peculiarly British: "But I have never stopped the milkman."AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE AS PRINT! PRINTS START AT JUST $17.68!ORDER AS PRINT: society6.com/product/no-lookin… Want a print made just for you? Drop a comment or send me a note for further information!Red Dead Redemption is far and away my favorite Rockstar game (GTA Vice City is my other favorite, but more for nostalgia). The writing, level & sound design, the soundtrack, the voice acting, literally everything about this piece of entertainment is crafted so well that if i were to recommend games to someone to play and understand that there is depth in video games beyond standard military shooters, this is one of them. So, it's fair to say that i am beyond hyped to see how this sequel will turn out.Are you excited for this release? Let me know what you are excited that's coming out soon! Both gaming and film.Let me know what you think of this design, and give me suggestions for what you'd like to see from me!SOCIAL MEDIABUSINESS INQUIRESedwardjmoranbusiness@gmail.comWhile Sony is bemoaning the fact that they’re not getting a lot of third part game dev support at the moment, that doesn’t mean their handheld gaming device isn’t getting new games anytime soon. In fact, we’ve got a great list of games heading to the PS Vita which should reassure fans that their favorite handheld-gaming device will be with us for a long time to come.
Our friends over at Pocket Gamer have compiled a nice list of upcoming PS Vita games. Here’s what you can look forward to:
Rainbow Moon – Fans of strategy RPGs will be happy to know that the PS vita will be getting Rainbow Moon, a port of the PS 3 original. And while it is mostly a port, developer EastAsiaSoft is promising to look at the possibility of “added functionality, including cross-saving support.” Rainbow Moon is expected to be available on the PS Vita sometime in early 2013.
Earth Defense Force 3: Portable –Looking for a game for your PS Vita that’s a throwback to classic sci-fi monster movies? Earth Defense Force 3: portable has got you covered. The publisher has just announced via Twitter that Earth Defense Force 2017 is headed to the PS Vita this winter.
Ragnarok Odyssey, Picotto Knights, Dokuro – GungHo Entertainment has created an American division that will be tasked with handling three PS Vita translations. These games include innovative puzzler Dokuro and action RPGs Ranganrok Odyssey and Picotto Knights.
All in all, it looks like the PS Vita has an amazing line-up of games that should keep fans happy. And with Sony’s redoubling its efforts to attract more game developers, things can only get better.
Which of the upcoming PS Vita games are you looking forward to? Any console games that you’d like to see ported on the PS Vita? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
[via Pocket Gamer]The young pig at the outer edge of the immobile transport truck bearing him to slaughter was so terrified and parched that his mouth was foaming. But when the truck stopped at a traffic light and animal activist Anita Krajnc thrust an open water bottle through a ventilation opening, he raised his snout and slurped until the traffic light turned green and the truck revved up and veered around toward Burlington, Ontario's Fearman's Pork Inc., the slaughterhouse across the road.
This happens often during Toronto Pig Save slaughterhouse vigils, and other activists also tip water bottles into the gasping mouths of frantic pigs. Twice, I have been one of them, holding out my water bottle and crooning through tears the mantra that encapsulates our mission as well as our despair: "We see you. We're trying. We're sorry. We love you."
What was different and unexpected on the June 22, 2015 vigil was that the truck driver, Jeffrey Veldjesgraaf, stepped down and, in a heated exchange captured by a Toronto Pig's Save videographer, asked Krajnc to stop giving water to the pigs he was transporting to their death. Krajnc refused with a biblical reference to giving water to the thirsty. "Have some compassion!" she urged.
Veldjesgraaf snapped, "You know what, these are not humans, you dumb frickin' broad," and later added, "You do it again and I'll slap it out of your hands."
But in face of Krajnc's defiance to his threat to "call the cops" - "Call Jesus!" she retorted - Veldjesgraaf climbed back inside the truck and hauled his cargo of hundreds of pigs to slaughter at Fearman's.
The next day, the pigs' owner, Eric van Boekel of Van Boekel Holdings Inc., filed a complaint against Krajnc and on September 9, 2015, she was charged with criminal mischief. Her trial began a year later, in Burlington's Courthouse, with van Boekel and Veldjesgraaf's testifying. On October 3rd, the proceedings were devoted to Krajnc. The courtroom was so packed that the judge invited journalists to move into the empty Prisoners' Dock, which he said he'd temporarily dub the 'Press Dock,' and when every seat was filled, permitted people still waiting to enter his courtroom to sit on the floor accommodate the overflow crowd that included Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA, the world's largest animal rights organization.
In her testimony, Krajnc confirmed the accuracy of the prosecution's description of what happened on June 22, 2015. Then, in response to her lawyer James Silver's questions, she gave detailed accounts of Toronto Pig Save, which she co-founded in 2010, and of the burgeoning Save movement it spawned, that now numbers more than fifty groups in Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Australia.
Krajnc could not save the young pig who sipped her water, but she transformed her legal defense into a powerful platform to not only justify her small act of mercy but also to elaborate on Toronto Pig Save's mission. She identified herself as the group's full-time organizer and defined its three goals: to promote a non-violent vegan world, to promote activism, and to promote a cultural shift so that everyone who sees suffering of any sort bears witness, thereby helping animals, people and the planet.
Culturally savvy, the Save Movement uses social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, websites, Vimeo and YouTube - to show the realities of animals going to slaughter and to connect supporters. A Save Response Team is mandated with finding homes for animals who fall off slaughter trucks and are reprieved. There are a plethora of related groups: vegan outreach, poster and postcard campaigns, climate/vegan groups, an SOS squad that issues placards and distributes PETA and vegan starter kits, and a program that pays students $10 each to watch the documentary Earthlings. Dozens of virtual headsets, recently purchased, are being distributed worldwide to render the viewing experience more authentic and compelling.
And, at the heart of the Save Movement are slaughterhouse vigils where supporters bear witness to the terrible suffering of doomed animals being trucked away into local slaughterhouses. At Fearman's Pork Inc., Krajnc testified, ten thousand pigs are slaughtered daily, and videos of pigs being slaughtered by the same methods used at Fearman's and elsewhere were entered into the trial records as Exhibits relevant to her defense.
"We want everyone to see what we see," Krajnc said. "As Leo Tolstoy said, "When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her."
The Save Movement is also guided by the reasoned non-violence of Mohatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. These two icons also strove to change the system that permits the violence afflicted on other creatures, and to go to the darkest sites of injustice and to bear witness there.The first thing you notice is how close together they are. Led Zeppelin are not scattered around the huge stage of the O2 arena in London like 100m relay runners awaiting the baton, like most bands at this venue. They are huddled within a few feet of each other in the centre of the stage, and they stay that way for most of the two hours or so of Celebration Day, the new movie that captures their one-off return to playing live in December 2007. Jimmy Page might wander off a few feet to hit a guitar pedal, John Paul Jones occasionally sets his bass down to sit at a keyboard, but Robert Plant sings from the heart of the group, just in front of the drum kit – occupied by Jason Bonham, son of Zeppelin's drummer John, who died in 1980. For most of the film, all four of them are in frame simultaneously.
"It was like a shield wall – it was a Romano-British shield wall, and what was coming at us was the idea of failure and ridiculousness – for me," says Plant, speaking on a sunny autumn morning in his local in north London. "It would be precocious of me to walk to the front of the stage and take on a kind of rock singer pose, at that time in my being – and that's five years ago. I could only send it up, and I don't want to do that."
"It was always like that," counters Jones, talking later that day amid the old-money graciousness of the Connaught hotel in Mayfair, where he and Page are both ensconced. "You need to be that close. There's a lot going on, a lot to concentrate on and focus on. Plus, I like to feel the wind from the bass drum."
"This was going to be a critical show," Page says. "We only had one shot at it, so we needed to go out there and do it really well. There was a lot of listening to be done, there was a lot of communication – nods and winks, and you can see this generate through the course of the evening to the point where we're really communicating through the music."
Celebration Day will likely mark the world's last chance to see Led Zeppelin communicating through the music. At a press conference the following day, they will avoid questions about whether they will ever again reunite, but Plant's ambivalence about Zeppelin's role in his current life is evident during our conversation. He talks about how being the singer in the band is "just kind of narrating some bits and pieces which hold together some great instrumentation". He says fronting Led Zeppelin means being specifically a rock'n'roll singer – and how that's not what he is any more; he's a singer. He talks about how the lyrics of those old, old songs are the words of a young man – "There was nothing cerebral about what I was doing at all" – even if he knows his writing got better as the band matured.
And he talks about how the last years of the group were something different anyway, after first he and his wife were seriously injured in a car crash in 1975, and then his five-year-old son Karac died of a respiratory infection in 1977. "My boyhood was over," he says. "I was 27 [in 1975] and flattened. A little premature, but that was it. It was over. Whatever happened after that was going to be different, and so it was."
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What you experience on Celebration Day, then – those extraordinary songs, somehow combining intricacy and technical excellence with the wham! and the bam! of the earliest rock'n'roll – is just a reminder of how things must have been before it had to be different. For almost the whole point of Led Zeppelin is that it was music made by young men supremely confident in their ability to bend anything to their will – hard rock, folk, blues, funk, Arab-influenced epics, balladry. There is no doubt in their music: Dazed and Confused is as inaptly titled a signature song as could be. "There was a Zeppelin swagger, definitely," Jones says drily. "We knew we were good. At our best, we thought we could be a match for any band on the planet. And at our worst, we were better than most of them."
In one way, though, Celebration Day captures Led Zeppelin rather more perfectly than any previous live document: it's tight and punchy and unrelenting. Might it even be a better representation of Zeppelin's strengths than live shows in their heyday, when they might surrender half the set to lengthy solo instrumental excursions? "I think you should ask Jimmy that," Plant says, with a slight laugh. "Time is a funny thing when you're onstage. It did leave me occasionally a little bit adrift. But I'm a Jimmy Page fan, so I like to hear where he goes."
I do put the question to Page, who punches his hand quickly and repeatedly. "Like that!" he says, illustrating the ferocity of their presentation. "That's exactly what we were. That was the intention. We're doing that to bring in the element of surprise."
Then he notices the implicit criticism of lengthy solo instrumental excursions. "Can I just say, the thing with Led Zeppelin in the day – sure, the sets got longer, but it wasn't necessarily because of extended solos. Although that certainly would have helped." The problem, he says, was the desire never to lose anything from the set, even when new songs were added after each album. "We'd start out with a stripped-down show and by the end of the tour we were playing twice as long," Jones says. "And then, the next tour, we'd strip it all down again and start again."
Page formed Led Zeppelin in 1968, after the Yardbirds broke up around him. His first recruit was Jones, whom he had known from the sessions they had worked on in the mid-60s. "I just wanted to stop going crazy and do something creative," Jones says. "And so I thought: 'I don't care what it is, as long as it's good.'" He was followed by Plant and Bonham, a young singer and drummer whom Page travelled up to Birmingham to scout.
Jones remembers their first rehearsal, in a basement in Chinatown, London in August 1968. "You think: 'I hope this drummer's all right, I really do,' because if the drummer's not listening or not on the ball, it's really hard work for a bass player. The first number we played – 'Ah, thank God for that; he's not only good, he's great; this is gonna be a joy.'"
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page onstage in 1975 in the US. Photograph: Neal Preston/Corbis
Page already had a design for the group, having seen the way a new rock scene was developing in the US when he toured with the Yardbirds. "The FM stations were playing full sides of albums. Plus I'd been playing what were called the underground clubs – the Fillmores and places like that – with the Yardbirds. I could see the way it could go. One of the things we didn't adhere to was the singles market. We didn't have to do that because we had the mindset of these stations. It made a difference to how you would sequence the numbers and how one thing would roll into another – the cascading hills and valleys within the music."
The first Zeppelin album came out less than six months after the group had formed, and so began the relentless process of becoming the biggest band in the world. "It was hard touring," Jones recalls. "We toured by car for the first tour. There was another bloke in a little van driving the equipment. We finally got it right and got the private jet. We finally figured it out." It's surprising to see, given Zeppelin's live reputation, that only 295 shows are listed on their website, across the entire course of their career – less surprising that 133 of them were in the US.
The bigger the band got, the more of the world they got to see, and the more their music opened out, assimilating influences way beyond the scope of their hard rock peers. There were visits to India, to Morocco, to other places where 12-bar blues wasn't the muscial lingua franca. "In Morocco, we had some Nakamichi recording gear, which was quite the thing in those days, that Jimmy had got hold of," Plant says. "Every year there was a folklore festival in Marrakech and I got a press pass. I said I was working for the NME. And I could get right to the front with my recorder, and there were a lot of Berber rhythms that were spectacular."
And sometimes, Plant says, they left impressions of their own: "Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972. I played drums and he played guitar and it was the only club in Bombay that had a drum kit. Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances. Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club with Page and me wired out of our faces. I'm not a very good drummer, to say the least, but for some reason or another it left a mark."
When they returned from their travels and the four of them became Led Zeppelin again, the process of integrating the ideas into song began, be it some fragile acoustic snippet, or one of those towering electric edifices – Kashmir, Achilles' Last Stand, In My Time of Dying, Stairway to Heaven – that still startle with their grandeur. It was all done before they reached the studio, hence the fact that even their final album – with Bonham and Page reportedly deep in their narcotic and alcoholic addictions – took only three weeks to record.
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"Page and I were studio musicians originally," Jones says, "and you don't waste time in a studio by trying to figure out the chord sequences. Studios cost money. If you want to work out everything you hire some old house or wherever and just go and sit there for however long it takes. Then you go and record it."The preferred old house was Headley Grange, a former workhouse in Hampshire, where Zeppelin would write and rehearse and then, when ready, summon the Rolling Stones's mobile studio to record the results, with Page overseeing sessions with minute attention to detail.
"I was curious to know how things had been recorded on some of the records that I was really keen on," he says. "From Robert Johnson, where you can hear how he's moving in and out on the mic, to those recordings that were done by Sam Phillips, and the Little Richard records. Where were the mics placed? How many mics were there? I learned various things that I now put into practice. And when I was a studio musician, then I could really see how recording worked, and also how it didn't work – like a drummer who was stuck in a little isolated booth, which was padded out so you couldn't hear any of the natural ambience of his kit. And so I knew instinctively that the drums had to breathe, but the fact was you had John Bonham, who really knew how to tune his drums, he really knew how to make them project."
And so Led Zeppelin developed that huge, spacious signature sound. Plant sounded as if he had hatched from some alien egg, all disembodied yowls and indecipherable screams, compared to the other blues-rock shouters of the day; Jones could arrange songs into new shapes or offer basslines beyond the imagination of other players. And then there was Page's guitar. For all the epic soloing, the Zeppelin records show off a player with a startling lack of vanity: he's always serving the song, and often he's low in the mix, letting Bonham and Jones rumble on before the necessary colour is added. His most effective interjections could be the simplest: the strange, off-key, rhythmic stabs that give the end of Immigrant Song its dramatic tension, for example.
For all that Zeppelin soon became a huge band, they were spurned and mocked by critics. "All you knew was that the Stones got all the press, and we sold a shitload of records," Plant says. Jones remembers being shocked by Rolling Stone's damning review of their first album, and still sounds irritated by the resentment of the group's success. "I thought we were about the most honest band out there," he says. "We were playing music that we loved for the reason that we loved it. I remember reading somewhere a musician saying that at a festival: 'I saw piles of Fender basses.' I thought: you bastard. I had one bass for like eight years in Zeppelin. One Jazz bass, my 1962 Jazz bass – and I know it was 1962 because that was the year I bought it, new."
As with any band, it always comes back to the songs. And when you get as successful as Led Zeppelin did – the record concert attendances, the private planes, the platinum records – your songs cease to be your own: they become owned by the audience, and it is the crowd that grants them their meaning. As Plant says at the following day's press conference about Stairway to Heaven: "Maybe I'm still trying to work out what I was talking about. Every other fucker is."
"Part of the investment for all music lovers is selfish, because it takes us to places we want to be and we want to remember," he says in the pub, more thoughtfully. "It takes us to a different person than the one who's now listening to it."
Page is sanguine about it. He knew what people wanted at the O2, and he was happy to deliver. "There's no way that we could get together, and omit something like Stairway, that would've been insulting to the public. We'd have to do certain things: Whole Lotta Love's obviously gonna be in there, Kashmir just has to be in there, and Stairway."
But, Plant points out, the music still holds its power because it has not been overused: it doesn't represent anything but itself. "Because we haven't gone out and flogged it, there's an anticipation and a memory of it being clean and pure and not part of some sort of threshing middle-aged circus, which I think is very much to our credit. If we'd been part of the merry-go-round year after year, or every two years, I think it might have damaged everything."
A degree-course's worth of books has been written about Zeppelin over the years, all containing their share of astonishing and horrifying stories. If only a fraction held any truth – and there are simply too many tales of violence, paranoia, underage groupies and the like for some of them not to be true – you can still be fairly certain that being in Led Zeppelin in the 1970s made possible decadence beyond imagining, and misbehaviour beyond mere condemnation. The tales provide ample fodder for those who see the band as vile representatives of a predatory, aggressive, arrogant male sexuality, even if for others they feed into the image of Zeppelin as the fullest representation of rock at its most swaggering. Ask them about what is often referred to as their "aura", though, and you meet a brick wall.
"It's the music," Page says. "My life has been about that, not just trying to create a stir over something else that's irrelevant to the music. I'll tell you something: in all those books you won't get any more understanding about the music than you will by actually listening to it. It's not about some bit of insanity over here, it's about that music that's recorded across those albums."
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"Any peripheral bullshit left me cold and still does," Plant says. "The band was always four guys that got together and played and when they get together it becomes a different chemical combination. And in the middle of all that, there was probably a tiny fraction, a minuscule amount of what might be there now, of people being 'busy', people who were angling, people who wanted to encourage and advance their interests. It was a good thing to be near, because it was so powerful when it worked. It was an amulet for a lot of people."
Perhaps they are ashamed of what went on. Perhaps they feel not acknowledging the legend contributes to their lasting impact. Because, in a way, Zeppelin knew it wasn't really only about the music. Hence the attention lavished on their album sleeves. Led Zeppelin III – the one with the spinning card; Led Zeppelin IV – the one with no writing on it and the four symbols inside; Houses of the Holy – the one with the creepy cover of naked kids on the Giant's Causeway; Physical Graffiti – the one with the die-cut sleeve so the inner bag became part of the design; Presence – the one with the strange black obelisk and the embossed band name; In Through the Out Door – the one in the brown paper bag. Their albums were events.
"It was a major part," Page says of the designs. "It was quite interesting with the fourth album. We were getting flak from the press because they really couldn't understand what we were about. OK, we'll show you what it is, we'll put out an album with nothing on it, because it's what's inside that's going to be the important thing."
Of the three remaining men who once conquered the arenas of the world, you would bet on it being Page who most wishes they could do it again, though guessing what he's thinking is almost certainly a mug's game. After the band broke up, Plant was able to forge a successful solo career; after a period in which he "couldn't get arrested", Jones became an in-demand producer. Only Page never quite seemed to find a new musical home. Curiously, with his long white hair, he's the one who still looks most like a rock star from the days when bands were still big. And to hear him talk, you wish you could have been there during those days, too. "Sometimes we'd really be going at such a speed, to see whether we could really do it," he says of the band's shows back then. "If you go out with that sort of attitude, you're not going out there to fool around. There might be an area where it might dip – but it certainly comes back with a fury."
"All these cliches and terms that are used for whatever we were are fine," Plant says. "We were just a bunch of guys who could play in many different ways. And for young guys who were loaded with expectations of life and its promises, sometimes a tough backbeat doesn't |
most famous black artist after this New York Times thing comes out.
Saturday, January 12, 1985
Jean Michel called and said he was coming by to work and he did, and he brought his mother. Jean-Michel's mother is a sweet mother, she brought him a birthday present that said from Mami-M-A-M-I.
Wednesday, January 16, 1985
I talked to Jean Michel and invited him to the party that Fred was giving for Natasha Grenfell at Le Club. And he asked if he could bring — he said, "My girlfriend," and I was shocked. I said he'd never called anybody that before, and he said her body was so hot that he would come five times in a night. This is a black girl he met who works at Comme des Garcons.
Tuesday, January 22, 1985
Talked to Jean Michel and he was in a funny mood. He thinks his "girlfriend" doesn't love him and so he's taking heroin again. The black girl. Charlotte. I told him I would come and visit him. Cabbed to pick him up ($8). We went to Odeon and had two tables and there were twelve of us. Boy George had that boy Marilyn with him. Jean Michel was nodding out. There was a little kid with Keith who didn't say anything, and Keith didn't say much, and I didn't say anything, so Boy George had to do all the talking and he's really intelligent, really a smart kid, and he does talk a lot.
Wednesday, January 30, 1985
Jean Michel invited me to dinner with his father at Odeon (cab $6). And the father was this thin normal-looking man in a business suit, smart, and so you can see where Jean Michel gets his smartness. And now Jean Michel doesn't even like his girlfriend from Comme des Garcons, Charlotte, because she borrowed money from him. He likes to give people money but then he resents them for taking it. He'll say, "They're using me." It's a funny attitude. And in a moment of passion once he told her he loved her and she told him that she was a "free woman," so he tied her up and told her how dare she think that he meant it.
Saturday, March 9, 1985
Talked to Jean Michel and he said he was straight, but he sounded like he was on something. He was with Jennifer, Eric Goode from Area's sister, who's his new girlfriend. He's got three or four girls on the string now, but he's only still in love with Charlotte, from Comme des Garcons. And Jean Michel was complaining about the show that we're having with Bruno... oh, I don't know, I think that whole period is over, with him coming up to paint. He hasn't come that much to the new building, just a few times, and-well, he's feeling on top now that his show is running downtown, but I don't know if he's working.
Thursday, March 28, 1985
Jean Michel was really sweet and sent over a drawing for me. He's gone off to Hawaii.
Friday, May 3, 1985
Then, I’d promised Jean Michel this dinner at Le Cirque. So Benjamin dropped me and I glued and went over there. He’d invited Eric Goode and his girlfriend and Clemente and his wife Alba and then when he ordered the most expensive wine they said they were out of it, and then when he ordered the next most expensive, they were out of it, too. I don't think they wanted to give it to us, see, because it was a free dinner. Sirio's been telling me for years he wanted to give me one, so here it was. And they gave all these excuses and apologies, and then Jean Michel ordered the cheapest wine, and that they had. And it was actually good. And the next day when Paige and I went there with Interview, Sirio was still apologizing. But anyway, it cost me in tips ($200).
Wednesday, May 8, 1985
There was a big Area party. Jean Michel picked me up and we went down there. And my display window had my Invisible Sculpture in it and Jean Michel's stuff looked great.
Thursday, May 9, 1985
Went to Jean Michel's, picked him up (cab $6). And he's working again and his work is wonderful, it's so exciting, and I think he will last.
Sunday, May 12, 1985
Jean Michel called, he's working on his painting for the Palladium. But it's collapsible and he can take it away any time he wants.
Tuesday, May 14, 1985
And Jean Michel was in a dark mood. He'd bought Jennifer a dress to wear to the opening and then he didn't even bring her, he left her home. And I didn't lecture him about the heroin he takes because I didn't want to have a fight.
Wednesday, May 29, 1985
Then Jean Michel came over to paint and he was laughing and kidding around and Paige called up to me on the phone and screamed, "Get him out of here!" And I just didn't know what to say, she hung up before I could even think, and then she just left the office. She was calling Jean Michel a creep and everything.
Monday, June 10, 1985
And Jean Michel said he got a huge bill — like maybe I think $100,000 — from his dealer in L.A., Gagosian, for his stay there when he was living so high.
Friday, June 21, 1985
Called Jean Michel but he hasn't called me back, I guess he's slowly breaking away. He used to call me all the time from wherever he was.
Wednesday, July 10, 1985
Jean Michel came by and did a masterpiece upstairs. He wants to get work done before he goes away again. He had Jay filling in paintings, and I'm going to have Jay fill in, too. He tried to hire Jay away, but Jay didn't want to work for him.
Friday, September 6, 1985
Jean Michel came in and our show is on Saturday. But really, the shows that get noticed are in October and November, so it's still kind of early, but it'll be okay, just a little thing. And in his stupor Jean Michel knocked paint onto the Dolly Parton portrait and messed it up. And Sandy Gallin keeps calling, saying he wants it right away, and 1 wish they wouldn't rush me because I want to make it really good and it's not ready.
Friday, September 13, 1985
Jean Michel called and said he was invited to the MTV awards thing. Keith called, same thing. MTV must want artists to do their logos for them. And Keith was upset because his tickets were up on the mezzanine. Jean Michel arrived in a limo. He said he didn't want to go with Keith because Keith was too pushy. And it did get sick later on-Keith just wanted to be photographed so badly. And he wanted to go with me so he'd be sure to be photographed.
Saturday, September 14, 1985
Called Jean Michel and said I'd pick him up and did. Went over to the Tony Shafrazi Gallery (cab $5) and it was wall to wall. I was wearing the Stefano jacket with Jean Michel's picture painted on the back, but I've decided I can't wear odd things, 1 look like a weirdo. I'm going to stay in basic black.
Thursday, September 19, 1985
When we were at the Odeon I asked for the paper, and there in Friday’s Times I saw a big headline: "Basquiat and Warhol in Pas de Deux.” And I just read one line — that Jean Michel was my "mascot." Oh God.
Friday, September 20, 1985
I had my opening at Leo Castelli's to go to, of the Reigning Queens portfolio that I just hate George Mulder for showing here in America. They were supposed to be only for Europe — nobody here cares about royalty and it'll just be another bad review. And I told Jean Michel not to come to this. I asked him if he was mad at me for that review where he got called my mascot, and he said no.
Sunday, November 24, 1985
Jean Michel hasn't called me in a month. so I guess it's really over. He went to Hawaii and Japan, but now he's just in L.A. so you'd think he'd call. But maybe he's getting tight, maybe he's not throwing money around the way he used to. I heard he locked the door to his bedroom when he left so Shenge can't get in, and he didn't leave him any money, either. Can you imagine being married to Jean Michel? You'd be on pins and needles your whole life.
Sunday, December 8, 1985
Went to church. Paige called and she's thinking of going to a place uptown to get treatment for being a chocolate addict, some treatment they give heroin addicts. And she said she finally is completely over Jean Michel. It happened to her at the Comme des Garcons fashion show. She said he looked like a fool out there on the runway modeling the clothes and that's when she finally was over him.
Monday, December 9, 1985
Jean Michel called me early in the morning to tell me about the fight with Philip Niarchos he had at Schnabel's on Friday night. I guess he still remembers some funny comment Philip made once about how now they're "letting n------ into St. Moritz."
Thursday, December 19, 1985
Tina Chow called and said there was a dinner for Jean Michel at 9:00, just really small. Jean Michel had his mother and her friend there. I brought him a present, one of my own hairpieces. He was shocked. One of my old ones. Framed. I put '"83" on it but I don't know when it was from. It's one of my Paul Bochicchio wigs. It was a "Paul Original."
Sunday, December 22, 1985
Then went over to Jean Michel's birthday lunch at Mortimer's that Marsha May from Texas was giving. And finally I gave Jean Michel a gift he really loved-the rhythm and blues six-album set, that Atlantic just put out. And Ahmet Ertegun wrote some of the songs, those were his big years. Jean Michel was reading the liner notes all through lunch. And then afterwards Jean Michel wanted to go to Bloomingdale's, it was 4:30. So we went over there. He wanted to get a $3,000 gift certificate for his mother and when he took out his gold Amex card one guy asked to see ID but the other guy nudged him and said, "It's okay."
Wednesday, January 8, 1985
Called Jean Michel in L.A. and he said no stars had been at his opening, and he said Jon Gould had been there but he wouldn't talk about him to me for some reason.
Monday, January 20, 1986
Jean Michel woke me up at 6:00 this morning and I went back to sleep and now my tongue can hardly move. He's got problems because he's trying to get Shenge out of the house, he says he's been supporting him for three years, but the main reason is that (laughs) Shenge is now painting like he is. They're copies of his paintings. Jennifer's away. And oh, Jean Michel must be so hard to live with. I told him I'd had dinner with Kenny and the Chows and he wanted to know why I didn't invite him and I said that I'd called him three days ago and he didn't call back.
Tuesday, February 25, 1986
Jean Michel called and said he found a dead person in his backyard yesterday. He called the police and they were in the backyard all day, and by 6:00 they still hadn't taken the body away. He was from the flophouse next door. And Jean Michel sent the cat that didn't catch rats down to Atlanta, he sent it on a plane for $100 down to some gallery there. The poor cat probably never got taken care of — I mean, can you imagine being a cat in the hands of Jean Michel?
Monday, March 24, 1986
Went home after dinner with Jean Michel and caught the Academy Awards. Saw Geraldine Page saying she deserved it.
Sunday, April 6, 1986
Jean Michel was picking me up to go see Miles Davis at the Beacon and it was rainy and cold, and I curled up and watched W for a while, and ate some garlic and then he called and said to meet him over there (cab $4). His cab arrived after mine and he had Glenn O'Brien with him and some other people. He and Glenn are friends again. B.B. King played first and he's just great. And then Miles Davis came out, blond, in gold lame, and he plays really terrific music. High heels. Then we went to Odeon for dinner.
Monday, August 18, 1986
The day started with Jean Michel calling from Josie's, she's the South African Calvin Klein model.
He's not in a gallery now. He left Mary Boone and they're both glad. He wants to be with Leo, but I don't think Leo's taking anyone on. Jean Michel would just like to have one show there, though, even though he knows Leo won't sell anything.
Thursday, November 27, 1986
And then Jean Michel called and he’s furious at Paige because he finally found out about his father playing the cannibal in Paige’s pictorial spread for Tama’s book, A Cannibal in Manhattan, he’d just seen the item on Page Six about it. He said, “What is she trying to do? Is she after my father?” And he said his father’s writing a book, and he said (laughs), “He’s not even a drug addict — how can he write a book? About what?” That’s the first time I ever heard Jean Michel say something funny. I wonder if that’s his sense of humor. And he didn’t go to Germany for his big show.
Damian Weber is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Buffalo. He last wrote in these pages about Ted Berrigan. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. You can listen to his album here. You can purchase his book a dictionary in the subjective here.A Tail of Three Kitties Life at the Adams Household
Comic 15 - Treat Techniques 6th Mar 2014, 8:33 PM Average Rating: 5 (1 votes) Rate this comic Cat Speak Wookiees Camera Shy Please Train Your Dog Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - GTAV Cuddle Time Vacation Tea Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Civilization V Blankets The Chase Fresh Water Cowlicks New Computers Treat Techniques Alternate Identities - Minecraft Sharing the Bed Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Minecraft Alternate Identities - Game of Thrones Let Me In Imaginative Hearing Alternate Names for Kitty - Chicken Unconventional Methods Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Star Wars: Battlefront Take Care When Handling Suddenly Kitty - Bathroom Counter Indecision View from the Toilet Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Civilization V Alternate Names for Kitty - Loaf Fly Swatter Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Star Wars: Battlefront Suddenly Kitty - Couch Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Civilization V Kitty Problems - Winter Gum The Hunter LEGO Adventures - Craigslist Purchases Corn Sleep Talking - Pilgrims Imaginative Hearing - Badass Pizza Cottonwoods Alternate Names for Kitty - Flop Packing Stairs Basement Wall Suddenly Kitty - Loft Supermoon Eclipse Sheep Ice Cream Horses Revenge of the Sheep Sleep Talking - Encryption Cat Battles The Cynic vs. The Optimist Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Skyrim Call and Response Alternate Identities - Guitar Hero Funeral Rites Bitches Sentences You'd Never Hear Otherwise - Skyrim Sleep Talk - Solid Teapot Save My Place | Load My Place Permalinks: Copy this comic strip into LiveJournal, your blog or Myspace with this code: <a href="http://tailofthreekitties.the-comic.org/comics/pl/389827"><img src="http://tailofthreekitties.the-comic.org/images/comics/73/ab8ccfae6898ead473befe177887888a649056787.jpg" alt="A Tail of Three Kitties - Treat Techniques" border="0" /></a> <br />
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[URL=http://tailofthreekitties.the-comic.org/comics/pl/389827]Treat Techniques[/URL] Comments:SACRED TEXTS NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT It costs thousands of dollars a year to pay for this sites' bandwidth and maintenance. Without your continued support, sacred-texts would go offline or have to be scaled back. Your support is crucial; this site does not receive grants or institutional support. The best way to support the site is to purchase the CD-ROM. The Sacred-texts CD-ROM has hundreds of books on it that are extremely hard to locate, including all of the major world scriptures. If you buy a copy, you can feel good knowing that you are helping keep this site online. If you've already purchased the CD-ROM, or you can't afford it, you can also donate directly using PayPal in any amount. For a limited time only, make a donation of $20 or more via PayPal, and I'll send you an copy of an older version of the CD-ROM. Hurry, supplies are limited! This offer will end when supplies run out. You can now buy the CD-ROM using PayPal without having to actually sign up for PayPal. Also, you don't have to have a credit card to buy the CD-ROM using PayPal: you can use your checking account. --J.B. Hare --J.B. Hare This site is available on CD-ROM! Buy it now "Stunning"
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Everything on the disk can be viewed in a standard web browser on your PC or Macintosh. Proceeds from sales of the CD-ROM go to support free access to the Internet Sacred Text Archive on the web and development of new etexts.KANSAS (Analysis)– For a nation lauding itself as the “land of the free,” the United States certainly maintains a remarkable number of laws criminalizing activities most would consider part of their daily lives. From kids penalized for setting up a lemonade stand to the prohibition of cannabis, seemingly everything Americans do has attached to it a law, license, permit, or regulation, as well as a consequent penalty.
A penalty — as a list of thousands killed by police in recent years during encounters surrounding countless non-violent “crimes” attests — up to and including death.
The U.S. justice system grapples with a number of systemic problems. Among them are unjustified yet unpunished police violence, the opioid epidemic – and other drug-related issues, as well as backlogged courts and a proclivity toward punitive incarceration — the result of which has rightfully garnered the U.S. a reputation internationally as a prison state. When debating reform in these and other areas, overcriminalization as a root cause is rarely considered. But it must be.
The United States’ law-and-order love affair has mired disadvantaged communities in a nearly inescapable loop beginning in childhood, known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The American Civil Liberties Union describes this phenomenon as “a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Many of these children have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse, or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished, and pushed out.”
Related | Study: Mass Incarceration Barely Reduces Crime
In economically disadvantaged and even wealthy neighborhoods, black market drugs can represent a promising income opportunity — enough to make the risks of jail or prison time negligible in comparison. This reward/risk ratio prevails even in locations held to mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines implemented in a hotly-contested crime bill passed during the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Consider the example of Weldon Angelos. Convicted of possessing cannabis worth only $1,000, Angelos received a stupefying 55-year sentence, without the possibility of parole, from Salt Lake City federal judge Paul Cassell.
Cassell, tied to mandatory minimum sentencing without recourse, later sparked both praise and scorn by stating publicly his regret for condemning the 24-year-old Angelos to what amounted to a life sentence. “If [Angelos] had been an aircraft hijacker, he would have gotten 24 years in prison… And now I’m supposed to give him a 55-year sentence? I mean, that’s just not right. That wasn’t the right thing to do. The system forced me to do it,” Cassell lamented in 2015, adding that, “Mandatory minimums can be used to send a message, but at some point, the message gets lost.” Angelos’ nightmare incarceration — one example drawn from multitudes — will end when and if he survives in prison through 2059. By then, he will be 78 years old.
Clearly, much is wrong with this picture. But efforts to extricate the U.S. criminal system from the odious double-hex of excess law and overpopulated prisons have thus far been met with intractable resistance.
“How did we get in this situation?” Politico asked in 2015:
“It began with well-intentioned lawmakers who went overboard trying to solve perceived or actual problems. Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. Over time, this has translated into more than 4,500 federal criminal laws spread across 27,000 pages of the United States federal code. (This number does not include the thousands of criminal penalties in federal regulations.)
As a result, the United States is the world’s largest jailer — first in the world for total number imprisoned and first among industrialized nations in the rate of incarceration. The United States represents about 5 percent of the world’s population but houses about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.”
Laws proliferating and falling behind the times
The passage of time and superimposed layers of legislation have created a legal landscape fraught with contradictions, paradoxes, and anachronisms deserving of a comprehensive, meticulous revision.
Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate posits that, with the nation’s collective body of criminal code being so voluminous, the average American obliviously commits three felonies each day. It is the failure of the law to keep pace with and adapt to the modern, digital age that Silvergate believes accounts for this absurdity.
Related | Long-Term Incarceration Perpetuates Cycle Of Incarceration
Federal wiretap laws, Silverglate told the Wall Street Journal in 2009, were “written before the dawn of the Internet, often amended, not always clear, and frequently lagging behind the whip-crack speed of technological change.” Lawmakers, Silverglate warned, were prone to initiate strict controls on the flow of information, fearing the impact of new technologies “because they don’t understand them and want to control them, even as they become a normal part of life.”
“The burgeoning U.S. prison population reflects a federal criminal code that has spiraled out of control,” Holly Harris, Justice Action Network’s executive director, wrote this spring. According to Harris:
“No one—not even the government itself—has ever been able to specify with any certainty the precise number of federal crimes defined by the 54 sections contained in the 27,000 or so pages of the U.S. Code. In the 1980s, lawyers at the Department of Justice attempted to tabulate the figure ‘for the express purpose of exposing the idiocy’ of the criminal code, as one of them later put it. The best they were able to come up with was an educated guess of 3,000 crimes. Today, the conservative Heritage Foundation estimates that federal laws currently enumerate nearly 5,000 crimes, a number that grows every year.
Overcriminalization extends beyond the law books, partly because regulations are often backed by criminal penalties. That is the case for rules that govern matters as trivial as the sale of grated cheese, the precise composition of chicken Kiev dishes, and the washing of cars at the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health. State laws add tens of thousands more such crimes. Taken together, they push the total number of criminally punishable offenses in the United States into the hundreds of thousands. The long arm of the law reaches into nearly every aspect of American life.”
Excess law spawns excess enforcement, violence, death
Bloomberg published an article by Stephen L. Carter in 2014 titled “Law Puts Us All in Same Danger as Eric Garner,” noting, “Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence, such as the chokehold that killed Eric Garner.”
Watch the video of Eric Garner’s tragic demise:
New York City police officer Eric Pantaleo choked Garner to death in July 2014, after he and other officers approached the large-framed man for selling untaxed, loose cigarettes — a crime whose only possible victim would be the revenue-shorted state. Garner, not armed and heavily outnumbered by a group of police on scene, warned desperately he could not breathe. He nevertheless paid with his life for selling tobacco that — without the legal imposition of taxation — would otherwise be a non-criminal act.
Carter contends that many such non-violent transgressions as Garner’s may begin with what seem to be merely frivolous or annoying laws, but readily ripen into interactions with police. The specter of a non-judicial execution hangs over them. “Better training won’t lead to perfection,” he cautioned of militarism in police training programs. “But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.”
Reversing the trend of over-criminalization in a law-and-order era
The United States will have to backtrack significantly to approach sanity in crime-related legislation and begin dismantling its tinder box of unethical incarceration, state enforcement, and unjust sentencing mandates. Considering, however, the divisive political climate and the heightened focus on law and order touted by President Donald Trump and his administration, the national penchant for cementing new law to the books shows no sign of slowing any time in the near future.
Related | Children Released From Juvenile Detention Being Billed For Incarceration
Until U.S. legislators heed the call to overhaul this over-criminalized morass, Carter warns:
“Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.”
It isn’t just modern critics who admonish the public against criminalizing every facet of life. James Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 62”:
“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”
Unfortunately, the United States appears no more poised as a nation to heed the alarm bells of overcriminalization in 2017 than was the case so long ago.About This Game
Imagine waking up one day and having to do basically everything with a bow and arrow. Crazy right? Well, that is what happened to you and now you need to live your life accordingly. Play your way through your various work days where you sell ice cream to kids, make vegetarian pizzas, deliver newspapers, chop wood, catch fish, destroy someones lawnmower and various other shenanigans. We don’t judge, but we certainly encourage you to destroy EVERYTHING! After all - you’re the master of #Archery in VR. Don’t try this IRL.After playing this game you can add the following job titles to your CV:Pizza BakerPaper DeliverWood ChopperFishermanIce Cream SellerHot Dog EaterFloristBalloon SmasherGunslingerBasketball PlayerWhack-A-MolerAirplane CrasherFluffy Unicorn CreatorAstronautFarmerHunterBowlerChefZombie KillerLink to press kit: http://www.vrunicorns.com/archery VRUnicorns is a bunch of game jammers from Europe. We fancy making quirky semi-realistic room scale VR sports games with a touch of grotesque humor.Jakob and Max have known each other since many years. Like since waaaaay......back. Julie and Max first met each other at Shayla Games in Spring 2015. Max and Julie organized a Vive Jam in Stockholm in Autumn 2015 and Max had invited Jakob, who mainly sat in a room for himself being grumpy.Julie organized a Vive Jam in Copenhagen in early 2016 and Max brought Jakob to Copenhagen. Jakob was still grumpy, but very productive and PizzaHood was the very first version of what we now call #Archery. Here’s a video of Julie playing that very first version of #Archery:Video from Vive Jam Copenhagen: https://youtu.be/DFQbeYHluXk Jakob and Max continued working on so-called Pizzahood and then became part of VRUnicorns early Summer 2016 (talks about it started in Amsterdam...go figure) and Julie joined the dev team as what we call #IdeaGuy (which means all talk - no talk...testing&giving feedback an such). She forced the name #Archery on the game. For reasons only she knows. Julie was finally allowed to join the dev team for real early 2017 (she was kicked out of version control many times before that) and Horatiu is also working on #Archery now in between #SelfieTennis & #Utopia.Turning Yellowhead Trail into a freeway will cost Edmonton residents $510 million, including a 1.76 per cent dedicated property tax increase.
That increase will be phased in over the next 10 years as Edmonton ramps up construction on the total $1-billion project, city officials said while releasing the fine details of the project Thursday.
The freeway has provincial and federal funding. But because those grants don’t cover land acquisition, splitting the tab three ways actually means Edmonton pays more than half.
“It’s just using a mortgage to fix a billion-dollar challenge,” said Mayor Don Iveson, defending the decision to go further into debt to pay for the infrastructure. “It’s spread out over a long period of time and it does deal with a significant congestion and traffic safety challenge that we have.”
City council is set to vote on the borrowing bill Tuesday.
Residents want this issue fixed, Iveson said. They’re saying “the Yellowhead is a decades-overdue investment. There’s no time like the present to get moving on it and the sooner we can do it, the better we’ll be able to take advantage of this construction climate.”
The increase in debt will leave Edmonton at about 60 per cent of the legal debt limit for municipalities set by the province, said chief financial officer Todd Burge: “We’ll still have plenty of debt room over time.”
Borrowing plan
The city typically borrows money as it’s needed, paying back loans over 20-year periods. This project will not significantly reduce the debt room because previous LRT debt will start coming off the books in four years, said Burge. Also, Edmonton is a fast-growing city. As the city’s revenue grows, so does the amount of debt it’s allowed to take on.
Edmonton had $3.3 billion in debt at the end of December.
Servicing the $510 million in additional debt will increase taxes by 0.24 per cent in 2018 and 0.32 per cent the following year. The total over 10 years is a 1.76 per cent increase. To put that in context, a 1.76 per cent increase on this year’s tax bill would be about $40 for the typical household, which is a $408,000 single-family home.
The Yellowhead Trail project is expected to create 6,000 jobs during construction, $500 million in wages and generate $100 million in federal and provincial income taxes, said Burge.
Iveson said the funding balance is not a surprise since federal and provincial governments normally won’t pay for buying land. He’s hoping some of the land is only needed on a temporary basis as construction lay-down areas. The properties could be sold again after the project is complete.
Project details
The project involves a 25-kilometre stretch of road that currently has 10 interchanges, eight intersections with signals and several intersections without signals for private accessways. The goal is to make it free-flowing and improve safety at some of the existing interchanges.
It’s a dangerous goods routes and the most heavily used truck route in Edmonton.
The project will go through a screening process to see if it’s a good candidate for a public-private partnership, according to a city report Thursday. City officials will also seek fixed-price contracts to protect against cost escalation.
Adam Laughlin, head of infrastructure for the city, is scheduled to give a full presentation on the project Tuesday.
estolte@postmedia.com
twitter.com/estolteDENVER, Oct. 26 -- On Barack Obama's march through the red states, there is no inclination to examine the philosophical differences between the political parties.
There's no point, he says. "We're all in this together," the Illinois Democrat assures the crowds who flock to his events, including one Sunday in the Colorado capital that drew between 75,000 and 100,000 supporters. "We don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games and the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us... by who we are or what policies we support."
Obama on Monday will begin what his campaign aides call the "closing argument" in his run for the White House: a sharpened distinction between what government would look like under him as opposed to under Republican nominee John McCain.
But as McCain and the Republicans step up their warning of unbridled power if the Democrats win control of the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994, Obama of late has largely avoided partisan rhetoric. Instead, he has focused on making a case for the themes he has emphasized in his nearly two-year campaign for the presidency and "the promise of change over the power of the status quo."
"Policies we support" might seem an important distinction as voters face this historic election, but it appears Obama would prefer the examination not extend beyond him and his Republican rival.
Obama is unsparing on McCain and President Bush -- "We will not let George Bush pass the torch" to McCain, he says -- and aides say his rhetoric may get sharper in the final week of the campaign.
Yet, in his recent speeches in early-voting states that went for President Bush four years ago, Obama never mentions a future in which Democrats run Washington. Instead, he seeks to reassure voters that what comes after Nov. 4, if he is successful, will not be a revolution but more of a reconciliation.
"Together, we cannot fail," he says. "Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save."
Obama, in his short tenure in the Senate, has rarely crossed Democratic orthodoxy, and McCain says his opponent cannot point to a significant issue on which he disagrees with the Democratic congressional leadership.
But even on the issue that propelled his success in the Democratic primaries, his opposition to the war in Iraq, Obama's message these days is one of soothing, nonpartisan conciliation.
"There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it," he says at almost every stop. "There are patriots who believe in Democratic policies and patriots who believe in Republican policies."
Bush and McCain sometimes seem excepted from that good-natured absolution.President Trump lashed out at Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., on Sunday, days after the outgoing GOP lawmaker suggested that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly are all that separates “our country from chaos.”
“Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee,” Trump tweeted early Sunday. “I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said ‘NO THANKS.’ He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!”
Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017
..my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said "NO THANKS." He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal! |
, there are such attacks against faith, against morality in every way that finally, it is as if the Congregation of the Faith decided: we have no right to treat [in such a way] those people who only say and teach what the Church has always taught...we have no right to consider what they do as a very serious sin, while all around them there are so many -- up to prelates and cardinals; we would almost say all the way up to the Pope - who not only talk nonsense, but utter heresies that are an open path to sin.
Yet there are some men in the Church who are reacting, thinking, who are saying: things should not be like this. And it is in the midst of this disorder, amid tears that comes this whisper: no, we cannot force you to accept the Council. They perhaps will not say it so clearly, but they did indeed say it to us after all. Of course, we take this very cautiously, we ask God to enlighten us so that we see what it all means, if it's really true, of whether tomorrow it will all start again in another direction. Nevertheless, my dear brothers, all this shows us something: that fidelity to all that the Church has always taught really does pay. We must just remain firm. These modern people cannot deny it; the reality is obvious: we are Catholics and we want to remain so.
May Mary keep us Faithful to the Catholic Faith
And so our first request today to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, here in Puy, is precisely that we may keep and preserve all these treasures, that we may remain Catholics pure and simple and continue our work, so that it might spread again, and so that little by little we might win souls, that souls may be saved and return to Our Lord, to the Faith, to His commandments, God’s commandments.
Allow me to make an appeal to the young people today, on Good Shepherd Sunday. All of you, every one of you, must ask yourself: Is the Good Lord calling me to the religious life? To the priestly life? Does He want me to become a priest? Does He want me to work in His vineyard to win souls, to save them? To show you that this is not just an idea, even Abp. Pozzo told us:
You really should think soon about founding a seminary in Italy!”
This is to show you that they are taking us seriously in the midst of this disarray, in the midst of this general confusion in which no one knows what is good, what is evil, in which all sorts of theories emanate from the authorities themselves. And there is no sign that this confusion will stop; it will increase even more!
How much we need this protection of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary! And there is no doubt that this guidance is fidelity; what the Church has done and taught in the past cannot suddenly become false. Quite the contrary! It is true and it remains true, and those who adhere to it are protected from error, from novelty. Let us prepare ourselves, then, for some tears; the Church’s trials that are only beginning. Through these tears, let us unite ourselves with all our hearts to Our Lord and Our Lady, remembering that God is All-Powerful, He is Divine Providence, He governs all things. He is the one who writes history, not men! Human beings who are free do all that they can, all that they want, but ultimately the one who has the last word is God. God who does not abandon those who seek Him, for those who ask for His help will receive it and even more:
to them that love God all things work together unto good” (Rom 828).
All things, even the trials, even this crisis in the Church, “all things work together unto good for those who love God.” Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary for this love, the Faith, hope and charity that lead infallibly to heaven.
Source: FSSPX/MG – transcription DICI dated April 13, 2016Rep.
REP. FLETCHER FILES CAMPUS PERSONAL PROTECTION ACT
by: Rep.
02/05/2013
AUSTIN - Rep. Allen Fletcher (Cy-Fair/Tomball) filed HB 972, the companion bill to Senator Birdwell's Campus Personal Protection Act, which would remove the criminal prohibition of the possession of concealed handguns by license holders on the campuses of public or private colleges and universities.
To obtain a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) in Texas the applicant must be an adult over the age of 21 (with the exception of military personnel), and upon completion of classroom instruction, pass a written exam and a shooting proficiency test. The applicant must then submit the paperwork to the Department of Public Safety for state and federal criminal history background checks. The Department of Public Safety also monitors those currently licensed to ensure their continued eligibility.
Under current law, license holders are prohibited from carrying a handgun in academic buildings and dormitories. However, guns are already lawfully carried on university and college campuses; students and faculty with a CHL may carry on campus grounds, including parking lots and sidewalks. Individuals may also lawfully keep a gun in their vehicle parked on campus, with or without a CHL. Many students over the age of 21 live off campus where they can legally keep guns in their homes and apartments.
"As a retired Houston Police officer, I know that officers cannot be everywhere at all times. Campus police cannot be in every classroom or academic building. That is why I strongly support the right of properly licensed citizens to carry on college campuses," Representative Fletcher said. "The fact is that these are adults who are trained and licensed to carry a concealed weapon for protection. As we have learned in the past, 'gun-free zones' have not been absent of crime and have only been successful in disarming law-abiding citizens. We must afford citizens the right to protect themselves."
Alice Tripp, the Legislative Director of the Texas State Rifle Association said of the bill: "We recognize and thank Rep. Fletcher for taking on this important personal protection initiative. Adult students, faculty and staff with concealed handgun licenses should not be denied an important option for personal protection as they move about their day-to-day activities, including while attending classes in Texas colleges and universities. There are no crime-free zones."
The Campus Personal Protection Act will continue to allow institutions of higher education to prohibit concealed firearms at college sporting events. This bill would not alter current law prohibiting CHL holders to carry in hospitals, bars, and churches located on campus. In addition, private institutions of higher education may establish rules relating to CHLs on their campuses.
Texas is currently one of 21 states that prohibit concealed handguns on public campuses.
You can check on bills filed by going to the website: http://www.legis.state.tx.us.
Contact:
Robert Papierz
(512) 463-0661
Contact InfoBrogressive man-crush Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky has been having a rough time of it these days. Like every other Republican -- except, possibly, Jeb (!) -- he's starving for oxygen now that a Republican candidate with even stranger hair has sucked most of it out of the campaign. The only thing he has going for him is, of course, that he is a Different Kind of Republican Who Can Speak To The Young And (also, too) Weed!
Except, of course, that this was primarily hype centered around a couple of legislative freak shows and, recently, probably because he's struggling to be heard over Trumpapalooza like the rest of them are. This week, he's demonstrated that he's willing to screech in close harmony with the other 15 caterwaulers.
First of all, Paul demonstrated he's a different kind of Republican on foreign policy by saying the same things about the Iran deal that every single one of his fellow candidates have said.
In a Facebook post, the Kentucky senator said his three concerns were: "1) sanctions relief precedes evidence of compliance, 2) Iran is left with significant nuclear capacity, 3) it lifts the ban on selling advanced weapons to Iran." "I will, therefore, vote against the agreement," he said. "While I continue to believe that negotiations are preferable to war, I would prefer to keep the interim agreement in place instead of accepting a bad deal," Paul added.
Here with an opposing view is Mr. B. H. Obama of Washington D.C.
"It'll be interesting to see what somebody like a Rand Paul has to say about this," Obama said in an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. "I think that if I were succeeded by a Republican president — and I'll be doing everything that I can to prevent that from happening — but if I were, that Republican president would be in a much stronger position than I was when I came into office, in terms of constraining Iran's nuclear program," Obama added.
And, in conclusion here are the libertarian children of the damned at Reason to explain that there remain unicorns in the golden woodlands.
And anyway, Paul opposes the deal. He will have plenty of opportunities to explain to the American people—Republican primary voters, among them—why his rejection of the deal is consistent with his own national security principles, and why a more restrained foreign policy approach consistent with his libertarian-leaning views would actually make the country safer. In a Republican field that pits him against extremists like Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, there's no reason to automatically assume that Paul will fail to make a comparatively appealing case.
Let's see. Graham and Santorum and Paul all have the position on the agreement, but Paul's will be different because libertarianism! We talk a lot about political conjuring words around the bar at this shebeen. This is what we're talking about.
Meanwhile, and continuing the Paul family political tradition by which Liberty (!) does not extend as far as the freedom of women to control their reproductive systems, Aqua Buddha has jumped on the phony Planned Parenthood video bandwagon with both feet.
Congress holds the power of the purse. So this is one measure Congress can take now — even with President Obama in the White House. And it's up to you and me to ensure my colleagues in Congress take action, and set the stage for a pro-life President to sign even more pro-life legislation into law once elected.
The hell of it all is, there might even be room for a genuine libertarian candidate on the Republican side, as much as there is room for Bernie Sanders among the Democrats. It certainly would make the campaign more interesting. But this hopelessly dim fellow is not that person. The blog's Five Minute Rule is cruel, but it is fair.Police looking for man who tried to steal 4 drills from Sears
Police are seeking the public’s help in finding a man accused of trying to steal drills from a Concord Sears store.View surveillance photos from the store.Police said the man put several drills in his cart and tried to leave the store without paying for them.When employees tried to stop him, they said he made "chicken noises" and ran out of the store without the drills.The man is described as white and between the ages of 25 and 35 years old. He was last seen wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with jeans or possibly sweatpants and flip-flop-type shoes.Anyone with information is asked to call Concord police at 603-226-3100, submit tips online at www.concordregionalcrimeline.com or text TIP234 and a message to CRIMES (274637).
Police are seeking the public’s help in finding a man accused of trying to steal drills from a Concord Sears store.
View surveillance photos from the store.
Police said the man put several drills in his cart and tried to leave the store without paying for them.
When employees tried to stop him, they said he made "chicken noises" and ran out of the store without the drills.
The man is described as white and between the ages of 25 and 35 years old. He was last seen wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with jeans or possibly sweatpants and flip-flop-type shoes.
Anyone with information is asked to call Concord police at 603-226-3100, submit tips online at www.concordregionalcrimeline.com or text TIP234 and a message to CRIMES (274637).
AlertMeEarly in the morning of April 29, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Resolute Bay, a small Inuit community in the far northern reaches of Canada, received a distress call from Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo, a two-person team collecting data in the Arctic.
It was the 23rd day of their expedition, organized through Cornelissen's Holland-based scientific research organization, Cold Facts. The time was easy to measure, de Roo had joked several days earlier in a voice recording, based on smell alone -- neither had washed in as many days. They were only a few days away from their scheduled pickup, on May 4.
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Search and rescue planes were deployed to scour the area where the researchers were last believed to be located. They spotted, and managed to rescue, the team's dog, but found no sign of anyone else. After just two days in the harsh Arctic conditions, they had no choice but to assume that both men were gone. The search and rescue became a recovery mission, with the goal of bringing home the men's bodies and equipment.
The disappearance did not receive an enormous amount of mainstream news coverage, but as word of the tragedy spread, blog posts began to appear from people who had traveled with one or both men in the Arctic, memorializing the lost researchers and, in nearly all cases, commenting on the biting irony of the circumstances in which they were presumed to have died: having fallen through the ice.
It was Cara Augustenborg, who in 2008 was selected as a climate ambassador on a expedition sponsored by Ben & Jerry's and led by Cornelissen, who voiced the question point-blank, asking, "Did climate change steal my friend?"
“I’m a scientist, so I really hesitate to say any one thing is related to climate change," Augustenborg, who is currently the climate change spokesperson for Ireland's Green Party, told Salon. "But it is just too coincidental to not just come out and say it... to say that at least people are saying this.”
In voice recordings made over the course of their expedition, Cornelissen and de Roo made reference to the unseasonably warm weather -- “too warm, actually," Cornelissen confessed in a final recording, posted online just one day before he vanished. He was nonetheless in his typical good spirits. "In the end, it was me skiing in my underwear only -- and my boots, of course," he said. "It's very good that you guys don't have a picture of me from the ice."
"We think we see thin ice in front of us, which is quite interesting," he said. "We're gonna research some more of that -- if we can."
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Thin sea ice is far from an unusual sight in the Arctic, which is warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the planet. The region is losing about 11 percent of its sea ice per decade, a decline, as Margaret Williams, the managing director of the WWF’s Arctic program, previously told Salon, that is “one of the most visible impacts we see as a result of climate change." Even more significant has been the loss of older, thicker and thus more resilient ice, which in recent winters has become, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "extremely rare."
It was a message that Cornelissen, who was dedicated to climate outreach, was particularly eager to share. “He wanted people to just know how fast the Arctic is changing," Augusternborg recalled. "I still talk a lot about the expedition in public, and I always use one of the things he said: The reason we’re seeing changes in the Arctic so quickly is because when you change the temperature of a frozen environment just one or two degrees, it all melts and transforms into a completely different ecosystem.”
But what struck many, upon hearing the news, was that Cornelissen and de Roo weren't just traveling anywhere. Their expedition had taken them to what's known as the Last Ice Area. The WWF identified the area several years back as part of its efforts to protect the Arctic polar bears, explained Clive Tesar, the head of communications and external relations for the WWF's Global Arctic Programme. Recognizing that any hopes of mitigating climate change would come too late to save the rapidly disappearing summer sea ice, they decided that a parallel goal to reducing greenhouse gas emissions would have to be focusing conservation efforts on the habitat that might hold out the longest, thus buying the species a few extra decades:
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The purpose of Cornelissen and de Roo's expedition was to measure the quality and thickness of the sea ice across 400 kilometers of this area, in order to help the WWF with its work. Much of the data they collected has yet to be recovered for analysis, said Marielle Feenstra, a spokesperson for ColdFacts. But their deaths seem to suggest that even this last stronghold in the Arctic is losing its stability.
"It's not a surprise" that this is happening, Tesar told Salon. "It's an unfortunate reality." Another reality, he added, is that there's still a lot we don't know about exactly how that change will manifest. "What we do know is that there's a high degree of uncertainty, among people who use the ice, about its stability," Tesar said. "Every time you talk to Inuit in that region, they will tell you: 'We're less certain than we used to be about where to go, and when to go there.'"
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The Arctic is an extremely dangerous environment even in the best of circumstances, and the circumstances throughout the region haven't been ideal for a long time now. Fellow explorer George Divoky, who has spent the past 41 summers studying a colony of Arctic seabirds on Cooper Island, off the northern coast of Alaska, can attest to that. For 28 years, he'd rarely even bother to unpack the shotgun he brought with him to protect against polar bears -- until 2002, when one wandered into his campsite for the very first time. The encounter turned out not to be an anomaly, but rather the beginning of a new era for Divoky: one in which the bears, stranded on land and often starving, are posing a heightened threat to the people in their midst.
Divoky had spent a little less than a week with Cornelissen in Barrow, Alaska, in April 2008. The two got along famously, he recalled. The two shared a love and concern for the Arctic, and a passion for outreach, that was rare even for polar scientists. And like Divoky, Cornelissen and de Roo knew what they were getting into, and didn't take the risks lightly. In fact, it was Cornelissen who once designed trip-wires for Divoky to set up around his camp as an early deterrent against the influx of polar bears. The news of his colleagues' death, Divoky said, shook him on multiple levels: It was not just a personal loss, but also yet another wake-up call to how rapidly things are changing. What got to him, he told Salon, "was this thing that I have been aware of ever since the bears showed up: it’s like, OK, the Arctic is changing, and you have to really be careful now.
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"You always have to be careful in the Arctic, but now you don’t even know what you can predict," Divoky continued. "You don’t know how thin the ice might be.”
* * *
It's impossible to know what Cornelissen and de Roo were thinking in their final moments, but it's easy to image that they would have wanted their deaths to serve as a warning not just to their fellow explorers, but to all of us who are still not fully attuned to the dramatic reality of climate change -- a message they worked tirelessly to promote.
"They loved being out there. They loved pushing themselves; they loved the physical challenge of it," said Ruth Dawkins, who met both men nine years ago during one of the Ben & Jerry's expeditions, and who wrote about their disappearance for the Guardian. "And then they would come home, and right away they would be getting out and talking to people about it. They never rested."
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"I would say that their key message was about the need for collective action on climate change," Dawkins told Salon. Every individual had to work as hard as they could doing their own small part, they would tell their climate ambassadors, but the climate movement, as a whole, would take all kinds of people: researchers, communicators, as well as people like them with the sense of adventure -- and funding -- to access the places that nobody else could.
They served a role, concurred Divoky, that not everyone can appreciate. He was touched, he told Salon, to read so many comments beneath news stories from people who remembered Cornelissen and de Roo, but dismayed to see several asking, "Well, what were they doing up there, anyway?”
“He was doing it to let people know that the Arctic was changing," Divoky said of Cornelissen. "He was going out to try and find that out. If he had just stayed home, who else would be going out there and getting this information and bringing it back to people who would never go out on the ice?”GOC Central Command Major-General Avi Mizrahi praised the outgoing Judea and Samaria Division commander, Brigadier-General Nitzan Alon, and slammed the right-wing politicians who targeted him throughout his term.
"He knew how to maintain the ties with the Jewish settlement with the necessary sensitivity but also with determination and without shortcuts," Mizrahi said during the change of command ceremony Tuesday.
"Brigadier-General Alon was criticized many a time for his determination, unjustly in my opinion, and I find it necessary to condemn those senior elected officials who were fooled by rumors and made statements that weren't even slightly based in reality," he added.
Alon on Tuesday (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
"We know that your security activity was flawless," he said.
Tensions between settlers and Alon ran high during his term in the West Bank, peaking when a group of youths attacked Alon at Tapuach Junction earlier this year. The youths surrounded Alon's car, kicked the vehicle and called the officer a "traitor."
'Status quo increasingly difficult to preserve'
Alon voiced disapproval of the far Right during Tuesday's ceremony, saying that efforts must be made to reign in the "growing extremist margins of the Israeli public."
"Even now the extremist minority is capable of intensifying the operations that we call 'price tag,' but in effect amount to terrorism," Alon warned, adding that these hostile acts must be stopped.
Tuesday's exchange of command ceremony (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
Addressing the Palestinian conflict, Alon said that preserving the status quo is becoming increasingly difficult.
"Strategically, the gap between us and the Palestinians over core issues are growing," he said, cautioning that the Palestinian Authority might soon stop considering Hamas a "mutual enemy."
The Samaria and Binyamin settlement councils welcomed Alon's departure.
"His flaccid policy towards Arab rioters, the statements that show a clearly leftist world-view and the war on Jewish settlement have caused a great rift and a credibility crisis between the army and the settlers," they said in a statement.
"We hope that the incoming commander will disregard Nitzan Alon's legacy, and will be wise enough to establish a policy that distinguishes between an enemy and a friend and treats the Jewish settlement (movement) with the respect and fairness it deserves."
Follow Ynetnews on FacebookMacklin apologises for dole comments
Updated
Families Minister Jenny Macklin has apologised for claiming she could live on the dole, conceding the comment was "insensitive".
Ms Macklin angered welfare groups when she made the remark last week, amid a growing push by community organisations and business leaders for an increase to the $35-a-day payment.
Dozens of protesters rallied outside the Minister's office on Friday, demanding an increase in the Newstart allowance and chanting "Shame, Jenny Macklin".
Asked about it yesterday, Ms Macklin backtracked from her previous comments, adding that it would be "very hard" to live on such a low income.
"I can understand that people are angry about what I've said - I have heard that message very clearly over the last week or so," she told reporters in Sydney.
"I do acknowledge that my remarks were insensitive and I'm certainly very sorry for that."
As a cabinet minister, Ms Macklin earns about $328,700 a year - or $6,321 a week.
Her comments sparked renewed debate about the level of unemployment benefits and whether they were too low.
There is growing momentum within Labor ranks for the allowance to be increased, with one party source saying this week that there were was "serious" support for the idea in cabinet.
'Show some heart'
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd weighed into the debate on Friday morning, urging the Government to boost the payment, especially given the decision to dump the budget surplus promise.
"This is a country with a bit of a heart... I think this is the sort of area where we should be showing a bit of a heart as well," Mr Rudd told ABC News 24.
"These are folk who are doing it tough, but I'm not going to get in the business of supporting one option or another.
"I think we could be doing more."
There are divisions within Labor about the best way to go about the change, with some arguing for an across-the-board increase to the payment, while others suggest a more targeted approach.
Asked today whether she supported an increase in the dole, Prime Minister Julia Gillard replied: "I understand it's very, very tough for people on low and fixed incomes to make ends meet.
"We keep our focus on creating jobs, because the best thing we can do for anybody who's experiencing unemployment is to make sure that there's a job available for them."
The Coalition has previously expressed guarded support for an increase, although acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss on Friday questioned Labor's ability to afford the extra spending.
Topics: welfare, unemployment, community-and-society, federal-government, government-and-politics, australia
First postedVik Kapoor repeatedly failed to conquer his fear of public speaking. Now he understands why that was so. (COURTESY OF MYKO PRODUCTIONS)
For years, whenever Vik Kapoor spoke before a crowd, he would begin to perspire. Sometimes by the end of his lecture, he was drenched in sweat.
“My fear of public speaking affected my self-confidence, which is why I made it my New Year’s resolution to tackle this problem,” says Kapoor, a life coach and adjunct professor at Howard University’s law school. “Initially, I tried to lessen my fear by looking for simple solutions. I vowed to wear black whenever I spoke in public to hide the sweat stains, and I scheduled a doctor’s appointment to see if a health issue was causing my anxiety. I also decided to become my own cheerleader by giving myself mini pep talks before each of my lectures.”
After coming up with these solutions, Kapoor felt better. But the next time he spoke in public, his planning failed. “As soon as I began my talk, I started sweating,” he says.
Kapoor became so frustrated that he discarded his resolution.
Kapoor didn’t know it at the time, but he now realizes he was suffering from “false-hope syndrome,” a tendency to have unrealistic beliefs about what is required to change behavior.
(The Washington Post)
University of Toronto professors Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman coined the term in 2000 based on their research showing that people frequently underestimate the work needed to meet self-improvement goals. When hope meets reality, the commitment to change often collapses.
Several other social scientists believe that false-hope syndrome helps explain why people struggle to lose weight, quit smoking and exercise regularly.
About 25 percent of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions abandon them within a week, according to the statistics website StatisticsBrain.com, whether it’s to begin the Paleo diet, sign up for a daily yoga challenge or start a meditation practice. By February, most people have given up on their resolutions altogether.
Sasha Albani, a psychotherapist and marriage and family therapist in San Francisco, says the key to sticking with a resolution is to make sure that it aligns with one’s personal values.
“We are more likely to follow through on our goals when we make value-led decisions. For example, if we value the physical and mental health benefits of exercise, we’re more likely to succeed at beginning a new exercise program,” Albani says.
She says that our goals are harder to accomplish when our values clash. For example, let’s say that you want to stop drinking coffee and soda, but you really value how alert caffeine makes you feel. In this case, it’s going to be more difficult to change your behavior.
A theory of behavior change known as acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, may help some people stick with resolutions.
According to the American Psychological Association, ACT therapy may work particularly well when we want to change a bad habit but we are unclear about the barriers that could get in our way.
This psychological intervention can help increase cognitive flexibility by showing people how to identify their values and the steps that they need to take to change their behavior.
“ACT therapy breaks down goal-setting into three steps by using the guiding principles of values, commitment and willingness to change,” says Daniela Tempesta, a psychotherapist and life coach in San Francisco.
According to Tempesta, these are the psychological components that are necessary for achieving your new goals.
After several years of failing to keep his resolutions, Kapoor contacted a life coach who introduced him to ACT. He quickly learned that while he valued speaking confidently, he didn’t value himself. When he had tried to give himself mini pep talks, he spoke to himself unkindly.
“I’d tell myself, ‘Anyone can do this, it’s easy, just pull it together.’ I realized that this was negative self-talk and not a pep talk at all,” Kapoor says.
With the help of his therapist, he learned how to apply ACT in a way that set him up for success.
“I realized that my fear of public speaking stemmed from a deep worry about not trusting myself. My anxiety was my body’s way of propelling into the fight-or-flight response. Once I identified this insight, I had to examine why I didn’t feel confident about my abilities,” Kapoor says.
Kapoor took what he learned in ACT and eventually incorporated it into his work so that his clients could benefit from practicing acceptance and self-compassion.
For those who make resolutions, Tempesta suggests looking at the changes to be made and thinking about how they can be achieved. She recommends these ACT principles:
Examine barriers: If you’re vowing yet again to run a marathon or lose weight, ask yourself what stood in your way before. What will you do differently this time that might make success more likely? For example, if you began training for a marathon by running in the morning even though you’re really not a morning person, you might choose to train at a different time of day.
Clarify values: While resolutions often reflect someone’s values, they can compete with other values. For example, if you want to lose weight but eating is one way that you cope with stress, you may want to see whether there are other methods that will help you control stress. You might decide to adopt a pet or begin a weekly yoga class. Tempesta says that if you find a way to align your values (managing stress and eating healthier), you’re more likely to reach your goals.
Accept emotions: Once you have clarified your values, ask yourself what feelings might arise as you work toward your goal. For example, if you give up caffeine because it can make you anxious, will you then feel irritable, tired or depressed? Personal reflection can help you consider mechanisms for coping with these feelings.
Take action: Commit to making behavior changes based on your values. For example, if you value eating healthier but your colleagues often invite you out to lunch, think about how you will avoid ordering french fries instead of salad. You might take control by suggesting a restaurant with healthy offerings where you won’t be tempted to eat your favorite carbs.
If you stumble along the way, don’t give up, Tempesta says. Simply notice the thoughts and feelings that block your path and begin again. Remember that if you falter on your resolutions, you don’t need to wait until Jan. 1 comes around again to harness new hope.
Fraga is a psychologist based in San Francisco. She is not an ACT therapist.
Read more:
A little anxiety can be good for you, but too much can hurt your health
A doctor with bad knee runs into one-size-fits-all medicine, and it’s a problem.Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Friday suspended Rajya Sabha MP Ritabrata Banerjee from the party for three months after complaints over his lifestyle. “His (Ritabrata) lifestyle is unlike that of a communist. We have received a lot of complaints. He has been suspended for three months,” a senior CPI(M) leader was quoted as saying by PTI on condition of anonymity. A three-member inquiry commission has also been set up to probe into the allegations against the 38-year-old parliamentarian. According to reports, the 38-year-old parliamentarian uses hi-tech and expensive gadgets that do not go with the tenets of the party.
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“If the allegations are found to be true, then further action will be taken and, if they are found to be baseless,his suspension will be withdrawn after three months,” he added.
This was not the first time that the CPI (M) leader has found himself in troubled waters. In February, a party member had raised objections against him over his use of costly gadgets like Apple watch and Mont Blanc pen. Using his position as an MP, Banerjee had reportedly written to the employer of the party member complaining against him. Subsequently, the party state committee had publicly criticized his behaviour and cautioned him.
With PTI inputsWhile the fanfare surrounding the launch of Apple Watch and the new MacBook may have stifled focus on the software side of things, Apple did today roll out iOS 8.2 download to the masses, as was expected. Whenever a new build of iOS is seeded by Apple, eager jailbreakers immediately begin inquiring on whether any exploits exist and if a jailbreak will be possible, and in this case, TaiG has mentioned before now that it does. Interestingly, however, the security documentation for iOS 8.2 notes of a patch to an exploit, crediting TaiG in the process, and in turn, suggesting that the Cupertino company may have foiled any plans of a jailbreak.
As pointed out by security expert i0n1c on Twitter, the iOS 8.2 security notes point to a MobileStorageMounter fix, which cites “CVE-2015-1062 : TaiG Jailbreak Team.” This is addition to four exploits Apple previously patched when iOS 8.1.3 was released.
The description also suggests that the exploit could allow a malicious app to “create folders in trusted locations in the file system.”
With i0n1c, real name Stefan Esser, speculating on Twitter, TaiG is keeping decidedly quiet at this moment in time, with no tweets for over a week. This doesn’t tell us much, since those behind recent jailbreaks have tended to keep quiet until the last moments, a move, perhaps, to avoid being harassed ad infinitum by eager jailbreakers. As such, we’d suggest not trying to contact TaiG or any other hacking team for progress updates at this time.
Since everything is up in the air at the moment, we’d also advise those keen to preserve their device’s jailbroken status / potential to swerve iOS 8.2 for the time being. If you are planning on getting an Apple Watch in the near future, then there will come a time when your hand is essentially forced, but with any luck – and the continued endeavors of TaiG et al – it won’t be a case of having to choose.
We’ll keep you in the loop; stay tuned.
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Related StoriesShare. Puzzle title is the biggest launch game in the publisher's history. Puzzle title is the biggest launch game in the publisher's history.
Update: Atlus today confirmed, via a cake, it has shipped 200,000 units in its first week in North America.
A week after its release, Catherine has already become Atlus' biggest launch title ever. The game has shipped the most units at launch of any Atlus game in the company's history.
"Catherine has exceeded our highest expectations," said Tim Pivnicny, VP of Sales and Marketing at Atlus, in a statement given to IGN. "It released last week to tremendous critical acclaim and fan response, bolstered by the release of a demo a couple weeks prior, and continues to generate discussion among fans for its mature themes, engrossing subject matter, and frantic, challenging gameplay.
"It is fitting, then, that Catherine can boast the largest launch in the 20-year history of Atlus, and continues to see strong sales at retail."
Atlus could not provide exact sales numbers at this time. Catherine launched in North America on July 26 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201612/3041/1155968404_5266069111001_5266045757001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Bolton: Russia sanctions insufficient; U.S. must ‘make the Russians feel pain’
The sanctions against Russia announced Thursday by the administration of President Barack Obama are likely to fail, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton said Friday morning, and are an insufficient response for the Kremlin’s “attack on our constitutional system.”
Obama declared that the U.S. will expel 35 Russian diplomats from the country and close two compounds, one in Maryland and another in New York. The moves announced Thursday also include sanctions against Russian intelligence agencies and businesses. The package does not represent “the sum total of our response to Russia’s aggressive activities,” Obama said in a statement accompanying the announcement, but Bolton remained unimpressed nonetheless.
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“I don't think they will have much impact at all,” Bolton said of the sanctions package in a Friday morning interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “The Russians have walked all over the Obama administration for eight years. It's really been a pathetic performance. So what this last burst of activity has to do is hard to say. I do think it's intended to try and box the Trump administration in. I think it will fail. This is simply an executive order. If President Trump decides to reverse it, it's easy enough to do.”
If the sanctions are to serve as successful deterrents, Bolton said, the U.S. must “make the Russians feel pain |
guidance on bomb making and received the attackers’ last wills.73 Ultimately, however, the terrorists, needing to act fast before they were arrested, decided the targets and timing on their own.74
The role of Abu Ahmad/Osama Atar as coordinator and handler of returning foreign fighters has been confirmed by the investigation. His Turkish phone number was retrieved on a Stade de France suicide bomber. The same number was found in the cell phone of Adel Haddadi. Haddadi and Usman were in constant contact with Abu Ahmad during their trip to Europe through the encrypted Telegram messaging application, and Abu Ahmad was the one to whom they reported. After his arrest Haddadi told interrogators that Abu Ahmad had been responsible for their military training in Raqqa and that he provided them with false passports, communication devices, contacts with facilitators and smugglers, and money.75 When Haddadi and Usman were unexpectedly detained by the Greek authorities, Abu Ahmad organized the transfer of additional funds to continue their trip.76 So far, he is the only cadre of the Islamic State whose direct involvement in the planning of the Paris and Brussels attacks has been formally established and documented.
Another suspected leading figure in the Paris-Brussels attack network, Abu Suleyman al-Faransi, is considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to be one of the “conceivers” of the attacks. Indeed, he is described by U.S. intelligence as one of those involved in creating the infrastructure of the Islamic State’s external operations unit that ultimately reported to al-Adnani.77
Abu Suleyman has been identified78 as Abdelilah Himich, a 26-year-old Moroccan national who lived in France for 10 years in Lunel—a town with a reputation as a jihadist recruiting ground—before leaving for Syria in February 2014, months after he was released from prison following a conviction for drug trafficking in April 2013.79 After initially joining Jaysh Mohamed Ash Sham, a fighting unit founded by an Egyptian-Afghan veteran close to Jabhat al-Nusra and active in northeast Syria, he joined the Islamic State in April 2014. Despite lacking any longtime ties to jihadist networks, he was quickly promoted by the Islamic State. His rapid rise within the Islamic State could be explained by his military service in the French Foreign Legion for two years, during which he served in Afghanistan. Soon after joining the Islamic State he became the emir of the Tarik Ibn Ziad brigade, a leading fighting brigade made up of 300 European foreign fighters. According to several French jihadis who had traveled and fought under his leadership, he also participated in Islamic State-filmed executions and crucifixions.80
Due to his background and combat experience, Himich is likely to have been considered as a key asset for the Islamic State, although the extent of his role in the conception and planning of the European attacks in still debated within the intelligence community.h
The genesis of the plots and attacks conceived and carried out by the Islamic State targeting Europe have usually involved several planners and organizers, who might vary for each project. In that regard, in the Paris and Brussels attacks, the intense communication and brainstorming activity deployed by the operatives, logisticians, ground coordinators, and their principals in Syria are evidence of a collaborative and team process rather than a single mastermind’s plan.
The Future Threat
Following the Paris and Brussels attacks, the Islamic State’s threat to Europe has been mostly through sympathizers responding to the organization’s calls to hit the West, often encouraged or remotely controlled by its Syria-based core members. Fourteen such attacks have targeted Europe since the beginning of 2016.81 Nonetheless, the Islamic State still has a very real capacity to mount centrally directed attacks against Europe. The organization has long contemplated such operations, and over the past two years, it has been increasingly invested in its external operations deployment and support networks, with a special focus on France and Belgium. The number of veterans from the Syrian battlefields being deployed to Europe and the apparent continued survival of senior francophone figures at the apex of the Islamic State’s external operations wing suggest that despite military efforts to deprive the Islamic State of territorial control in Iraq and Syria, the group will continue to be a threat to France, Belgium, and other European countries for some time to come.
Jean-Charles Brisard is Chairman of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT) and the former chief investigator for the 9/11 families’ lawyers. He is the author of Zarqawi, the New Face of al-Qaeda. Follow @JcBrisard
Kévin Jackson is Research Director at the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT) and contributor at the Jihadica academic blog. Follow @alleyesonjihad
Substantive Notes
[a] As of September 2016, 1,112 French nationals or residents and 537 Belgian nationals or residents have traveled to Syria and Iraq. The Belgian numbers include both French-speaking and non-French-speaking. “European Jihad Watch,” Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT), October 2016.
[b] The Cannes-Torcy network grew from ties formed between militants in Cannes and others in Torcy (in the Paris region) around its charismatic leader Jérémie Louis-Sidney, a former drug dealer. Its members participated in an attack against a Jewish grocery in September 2012 and were involved in subsequent plots against military targets. Some network members relocated to Syria.
[c] During his detention, Nemmouche talked about the “Cannes brothers” to a fellow inmate, referring to those from the Cannes-Torcy network who had traveled to Syria. There, Riahi and Nemmouche were both part of KAM, and given that Riahi remained very close to his childhood friends Boudina and Tliba, it is highly likely that Nemmouche also spent time with the latter. See Matthieu Suc, “Mehdi Nemmouche, le djihadiste qui parlait trop,” Mediapart, September 7, 2016.
[d] During a conversation with the fellow inmate, Nemmouche told him that after his return from Syria, he had felt that “everybody had let him down” and that he had ended up roofless with virtually no financial resources. See Suc, “Mehdi Nemmouche, le djihadiste qui parlait trop.”
[e] To get the green light to deploy overseas, Donath claimed he first went to Reda Seyam, a senior German-Egyptian Islamic State member who was the deputy to the Islamic State “governor” of Aleppo. He, in turn, told Donath to first obtain clearance from his supervisor within the amniyat. With that clearance, he went back to Seyam, who said he would recommend this course of action to his own superior. According to Donath, his request was a ruse to allow him to leave the territory of the Islamic State. Authors’ interview, source close to Donath’s case, October 2016.
[f] This network made of French, Saudis, and Levantine jihadis was dismantled from June 2014 onward. It planned to strike a wide range of targets, including hotels. For more background on this network, see Rukmini Callimachi, “How ISIS Built the Machinery of Terror Under Europe’s Gaze,” New York Times, March 29, 2016.
[g] It is not clear whether this was Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
[h] According to French external intelligence, “Abaaoud was a coordinator but not the mastermind. We know the mastermind, but [we] will remain discrete on this issue.” In July, its director was heard by a judge in charge of the investigation on the Paris attacks and stated that he “cannot provide the names of the mastermind and his collaborators due to the sensitivity of [the DGSE] sources.” Thibault Raisse, “Enquête sur le 13 Novembre: le patron de la DGSE interrogé par un juge antiterroriste,” Le Parisien, October 29, 2016.
Citations
[1] Thomas Hegghammer and Peter Nesser, “Jihadi attacks and alleged attack plots in the West, January 2011-June 2015,” appendix to “Assessing Islamic State’s Commitment to Attacking the West,” Perspectives on Terrorism, 2015.
[2] Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, “Indeed Your Lord Is Ever Watchful,” pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com, September 22, 2014.
[3] For more information on Majlis al-Shura al-Mujahidin and KAM, see Ben Taub, “Journey to Jihad,” New Yorker, May 25, 2015.
[4] For a comprehensive profile of Elouassaki, see Guy Van Vlierden, “Profiles of Three Major Belgian Fighters in Syria and Their Paths to Jihad,” Militant Leadership Monitor, VI:7, July 2015; for more information on Maaroufi, see “Syrie: un jihadiste franco-marocain des Pyrénées-Atlantiques tué,” Le Parisien, June 2, 2014.
[5] Posts on various social media accounts run by Syria-based Belgian and French jihadis, archived by the authors.
[6] Authors’ interview, source close to a case involving a French militant network linked to the Syrian jihad, June 2016.
[7] Facebook post issued by Tyler Vilus on August 2013, archived by the authors.
[8] For more background on the Cannes-Torcy network, see Pierre Alonso, “Cellule de Cannes-Torcy: le terrorisme, affaire de potes,” Libération, December 16, 2015.
[9] Ibid.; authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, May 2016.
[10] “Plusieurs projets d’attentats terroristes déjoués en France, selon une note de la DGSI,” RTL, November 3, 2014.
[11] Authors’ interview, source close to the Lunel network case, June 2016.
[12] Paul Cruickshank, “The inside story of the Paris and Brussels attacks,” CNN, March 30, 2016; authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, May 2016.
[13] Mark Eeckhaut, “Nemmouche zei dat hij werk zocht in Brussel,” De Standaard, July 25, 2014.
[14] “Threat of attack on the Netherlands remains realistic,” National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Netherlands, July 11, 2016.
[15] Authors’ interview, source close to a case involving a French militant network linked to the Syrian jihad, June 2016.
[16] Paul Cruickshank and Brian Dodwell, “A View from the CT Foxhole: An Interview with John Brennan, Director, CIA,” CTC Sentinel 9:9 (2016).
[17] Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, “Indeed Your Lord Is Ever Watchful.”
[18] “Interview with Abu Umar al-Baljiki,” Dabiq, issue 7, pp. 72-75.
[19] Judgment of the Verviers cell, Court of First Instance of Brussels, July 5, 2016.
[20] Ibid.; authors’ interview, source close to the case, August 2016.
[21] Authors’ interview, source close to a case involving a French militant network linked to the Syrian jihad, June 2016.
[22] Judgment of the Verviers cell, Court of First Instance of Brussels, July 5, 2016.
[23] Paul Cruickshank, Nic Robertson, Tim Lister, and Jomanah Karadsheh, “ISIS comes to Libya,” CNN, November 18, 2014; Geoff Porter, “How Realistic Is Libya as an Islamic State Fallback,” CTC Sentinel 9:3 (2016).
[24] Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, “Say, ‘die in your rage,’” pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com, January 26, 2015.
[25] Authors’ interview, source close to the Harry Sarfo case, July 2016.
[26] Soren Seelow, “Est-ce que tu serais prêt à tirer dans la foule?” Le Monde, January 6, 2016.
[27] Authors’ interview, source close to the Harry Sarfo case, July 2016.
[28] Rukmini Callimachi, “How a Secret Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers,” New York Times, August 3, 2016.
[29] Authors’ interview, source close to the Nils Donath case, October 2016.
[30] Callimachi, “How a Secret Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers.”
[31] Pieter Van Ostaeyen, “Official communications by the Islamic State on the Brussels attacks,” pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com, March 25, 2016.
[32] Matthieu Suc, “Ces terroristes qui menacent la France 2/3: la chaîne de commandement qui conduit aux attentats,” Mediapart, March 23, 2016.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.; Soren Seelow, “Le djihadiste français Salim Benghalem aurait été le geolier des ex-otages en Syrie,” Le Monde, September 25, 2015; Éric Pelletier and Thibault Raisse, “Le kamikaze de Bruxelles jouait les kapos en Syrie,” Le Parisien, March 22, 2016.
[35] Authors’ interview, source close to the Vilus case, July 2016.
[36] Callimachi, “How ISIS Built the Machinery of Terror Under Europe’s Gaze.”
[37] Suc, “Ces terroristes qui menacent la France 2/3: la chaîne de commandement qui conduit aux attentats.”
[38] Soren Seelow, “Le djihadiste ‘repenti’ de Paris qui a permis de déjouer un attentat en Allemagne,” Le Monde, June 2, 2016.
[39] Callimachi, “How a Secret Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers.”
[40] Authors’ interview, source close to the Harry Sarfo case, July 2016.
[41] Suc, “Ces terroristes qui menacent la France 2/3: la chaîne de commandement qui conduit aux attentats;” authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, September 2016.
[42] Seelow, “Est-ce que tu serais prêt à tirer dans la foule?”
[43] Paul Cruickshank, reporting on CNN Newsroom, November 19, 2015.
[44] Authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, September 2016.
[45] Ibid.; authors’ interview, source close to the case, August 2016.
[46] Seelow, “Est-ce que tu serais prêt à tirer dans la foule?”
[47] Authors’ interview, source close to the case, August 2016.
[48] Suc, “Ces terroristes qui menacent la France 2/3: la chaîne de commandement qui conduit aux attentats;” Soren Seelow, “Attentat manqué de Villejuif: sur la piste des commanditaires,” Le Monde, August 3, 2015.
[49] Ibid.; authors’ interview with a source close to the investigation, September 2016.
[50] “Macedonia: Immigrants Gain Safe Passage with Amended Asylum Law,” Independent (Macedonia), June 18, 2015.
[51] French National Assembly investigative committee report on the measures taken by the government to fight against terrorism since January 7, 2015; page 143; July 5, 2016.
[52] Sebastian Rotella, “ISIS via WhatsApp: ‘Blow Yourself Up, O Lion,’” Propublica, July 11, 2016.
[53] Statement of the German Federal Prosecution Office 33/2016, July 7, 2016.
[54] “Macedonia: Immigrants Gain Safe Passage with Amended Asylum Law,” Independent (Macedonia), June 18, 2015.
[55] Jean-Charles Brisard, “The Paris Attacks and the Evolving Islamic State Threat to France,” CTC Sentinel 8:11 (2015).
[56] Information obtained by the authors from the Hungarian Counter-Terrorism Center (TEK).
[57] “The Knights of Shahadah in Belgium,” Dabiq, issue 14, p. 6.
[58] Fabrice Grosfilley and Patrick Michalle, “Quand la police descend chez El Bakraoui trois semaines avant les attentats,” RTBF, June 1, 2016.
[59] Sebastian Rotella, “How Europe Left Itself Open to Terrorism,” Propublica, October 18, 2016.
[60] Authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, September 2016.
[61] Authors’ interview, French and Belgian counterterrorism officials, July 2016.
[62] Information obtained by the authors from the TEK.
[63] Soren Seelow, “Attentats du 13 novembre: Les confessions du quatrième commando,” Le Monde, April 26, 2016.
[64] Boris Thiolay, “Attentats de Paris: révélations sur les trois Syriens arrêtés en Allemagne,” L’Express, September 16, 2016.
[65] Authors’ interview, source close to the investigation, September 2016.
[66] Scott Bronstein, Nicole Gaouette, Laura Koran, and Clarissa Ward, “ISIS planned for more operatives, targets during Paris attacks,” CNN, September 5, 2016.
[67] “ISIS planned for more operatives, targets during Paris attacks,” CNN, September 5, 2016.
[68] Elise Vincent, “13-Novembre: l’enquête dévoile un projet terroriste de grande ampleur,” Le Monde, October 5, 2016.
[69] Judgment of the Verviers cell, Court of First Instance of Brussels, July 5, 2016.
[70] Information obtained by the authors from the TEK.
[71] Vincent, “13-Novembre: l’enquête dévoile un projet terroriste de grande ampleur.”
[72] Soren Seelow, “Oussama Atar, coordinateur présumé des attentats de Paris et Bruxelles,” Le Monde, November 8, 2016.
[73] Elise Vincent, “Le mystérieux ‘Abu Ahmed’, ‘émir suppose’ des commandos de Paris et Bruxelles en Syrie,” Le Monde, October 5, 2016.
[74] Rotella, “ISIS via WhatsApp: ‘Blow Yourself Up, O Lion.’”
[75] Authors’ interview, French counterterrorism officials, June 2016.
[76] For an overview of the external funding of the Paris attacks, see “Le financement des attentats de Paris,” Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, October 2016.
[77] Sebastian Rotella, “U.S. identifies key player in ISIS attacks on Europe,” PBS Frontline, October 19, 2016.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Judgment of the Paris High Court, April 19, 2013.
[80] Authors’ interview, French intelligence officers, November 2016.
[81] German federal domestic intelligence (Verfassungsschutz) director Hans-Georg Maaßen in conversation with Rolf Clement, Verfassungsschutz, October 30, 2016.Kranz (wreath) of fresh Stange glasses and, in the center, larger modern glasses.[1] (wreath) of fresh Kölsch beer that is typically carried by a server ("Köbes"), containing traditionalglasses and, in the center, larger modern glasses.
Beer is a major part of German culture. German beer is brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, which permits only water, hops, and malt as ingredients and stipulates that beers not exclusively using barley-malt such as wheat beer must be top-fermented.[2][3]
In 2012, Germany ranked third in Europe in terms of per-capita beer consumption, behind the Czech Republic and Austria.[4]
Reinheitsgebot [ edit ]
The Reinheitsgebot ("purity decree"), sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law" or the "Bavarian Purity Law" in English, was a regulation concerning the production of beer in Germany.
In the original text, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley, and hops, which had to be added only while the wort was boiling. After its discovery, yeast became the fourth legal ingredient. (For top fermenting beers, the use of sugar is also permitted.)
There is a dispute as to where the Reinheitsgebot originated. Some Bavarians point out that the law originated in the city of Ingolstadt in the duchy of Bavaria on 23 April 1516, although first put forward in 1487,[5] concerning standards for the sale and composition of beer.
Thuringians point to a document which states the ingredients of beer as water, hops, and barley only, and was written in 1434 in Weißensee (Thuringia). It was discovered in the medieval Runneburg near Erfurt in 1999.[6] Before its official repeal in 1987, it was the oldest food-quality regulation in the world.[7]
Styles [ edit ]
Wheat beers [ edit ]
Filtered and unfiltered German wheat beers
Weizenbier and Weißbier are the standard German names for wheat beer – "Weizen" is German for "wheat", and "weiß" is German for "white". [8]
Weizenbock is the name for a strong beer or bock made with wheat. 16-17° Plato, 6.5-8% ABV.
Roggenbier – a fairly dark beer made with rye, somewhat grainy flavour similar to bread, 4.5-6% ABV.
Berliner Weisse – a pale, very sour, wheat beer brewed in Berlin. 9° Plato, 2.5-5% ABV. The beer is typically served with raspberry or woodruff flavoured syrup.
Leipziger Gose – an amber, mildly sour, wheat beer with an addition of salt, brewed around Leipzig. 10-12° Plato, 4-5% ABV.
Hefeweizen – an unfiltered wheat beer. "Hefe" is German for yeast. [9]
Kristallweizen – a filtered wheat beer. Characterized by a clear appearance as opposed to the cloudy look of a typical Hefeweizen.
Kottbusser – an heirloom style originating in the city of Cottbus, typically containing oats, honey and molasses in addition to wheat and barley malts.[10]
Pale beers [ edit ]
Export — a pale lager brewed around Dortmund that is fuller, maltier and less hoppy than Pilsner. 12-12.5° Plato, 5-5.5% ABV. Germany's most popular style in the 1950s and 1960s, it is now becoming increasingly rare.
Helles — a malty pale lager from Bavaria of 11-12° Plato, 4.5-5% ABV.
Kölsch — pale, light bodied, top fermented, beer which, when brewed in Germany, can only legally be brewed in the Cologne region. 11-12° Plato, 4.5-5% ABV.
Maibock — a pale, strong lager brewed in the spring. 16-17° Plato, 6.5-7% ABV.
Märzen at Oktoberfest, served in the traditional 1-litre Maß
Märzen — medium body, malty lagers that come in pale, amber and dark varieties. 13-14° Plato, 5.2-6% ABV. The type of beer traditionally served at the Munich Oktoberfest.
Pilsener — a pale lager with a light body and a more prominent hop character. 11-12° Plato, 4.5-5% ABV. By far the most popular style, with around two thirds of the market.
Spezial — a pale, full, bitter-sweet and delicately hopped lager. 13-13.5° Plato, 5.5-5.7% ABV.
Dark beers [ edit ]
Altbier — a top fermented, lagered beer. It is brewed only in Düsseldorf and in the Lower Rhine region. Its origins lie in Westphalia, and there are still a few Altbier breweries in this region. Tastes range from mildly bitter and hoppy to exceptionally bitter. About ten breweries in the Düsseldorf region brew Altbier at 5%-6.5% ABV.
Bock — a heavy bodied, bitter-sweet lager that uses dark coloured malts. 16-17° Plato, 6.5-7% ABV.
Doppelbock — a very strong, very full bodied lager that uses dark coloured malts. 18-28° Plato, 8-12% ABV.
Dunkel — a dark lager which comes in two main varieties: the sweetish, malty Munich style and the drier, hoppy Franconian style.
Schwarzbier — a bottom fermented, dark lager beer. 11-12° Plato, 4.5-5% ABV.
Unfiltered beer [ edit ]
A glass stein of unfiltered Eichbaum Kellerbier
Kellerbiers are unfiltered lagers which are conditioned in a similar manner to cask ales. Strength and colour will vary,[11] though in the Franconia region where these cask conditioned lagers are still popular, the strength will tend to be 5% ABV or slightly higher, and the colour will tend to be a deep amber, but the defining characteristic is the cask conditioning. Kellerbier is German for "cellar beer".[12]
Zwickelbier was originally a sample amount of beer taken by a brewery boss from the barrel with the help of a special pipe called a "Zwickelhahn". Zwickelbiers are unfiltered lagers like Kellerbier, though with a slightly different conditioning process which gives the lager more carbonation. Zwickelbiers tend to be younger, lower in alcohol and less hoppy than Kellerbiers.[13]
A very similar beer is Zoiglbier, which in the Upper Palatinate's brewing practice is advertised with a "Zoiglstern" (i.e., sign) — a six-pointed blue-and-white symbol made from wooden slats, similar to a Star of David.[14][15]
Brands and breweries [ edit ]
While the beer market is weaker but more centralized in northern Germany, southern Germany has many smaller, local breweries. Almost half of all German breweries are in Bavaria, [16] where the seven main breweries produce 158 million gallons [17]. In total, there are approximately 1,300 breweries in Germany producing over 5,000 brands of beer.
The highest density of breweries in the world is found in Aufseß near the city of Bamberg, in the Franconia region of Bavaria with four breweries and only 1,352 citizens.[18] The Benedictine abbey Weihenstephan brewery (established in 725) is reputedly the oldest existing brewery in the world (brewing since 1040). In 2004, Oettinger replaced Krombacher as the best selling brand in Germany.[19]
Top ten best-selling German beer brands in million hectolitres Brewery Location Output in 2012 [20] Output in 2015 [21] Oettinger Oettingen 5.89 5.39 Krombacher Kreuztal 5.46 5.49 Bitburger Bitburg 4.07 3.84 Beck's Bremen 2.78 2.59 Warsteiner Warstein 2.77 2.34 Hasseröder Wernigerode 2.75 2.25 Veltins Meschede 2.72 2.79 Paulaner Munich 2.30 2.42 Radeberger Radeberg 1.91 1.90 Erdinger Erding 1.72 1.80
Alcohol content [ edit ]
The alcohol-by-volume, or ABV, content of beers in Germany is usually between 4.7% and 5.4% for most traditional brews. Bockbier or Doppelbock (double Bockbier) can have an alcohol content of up to 16%, making it stronger than many wines.
Drinkware [ edit ]
An ornate stoneware beer stein.
A common half-litre Humpen mug.
A Weizen beer glass.
A Pilsner beer glass
Dunkel, pictured here in a Stange glass.
A Maßkrug is the style of glassware featured at German beer festivals, especially in Bavaria, such as Munich's Oktoberfest.
A German bierstiefel (beer boot).
A Berliner Weisse glass.
Weizen glass [ edit ]
Weizen A glass of
A Weizen glass is used to serve wheat beer. Originating in Germany, the glass is narrow at the bottom and slightly wider at the top; the width both releasing aroma, and providing room for the often thick, fluffy heads produced by wheat beer.[22] It tends to be taller than a pint glass, and generally holds 500 millilitres with room for foam or "head". In some countries, such as Belgium, the glass may be 250 ml or 330 ml.
Wheat beers tend to foam a lot, especially if poured incorrectly. A customary manner is to swirl around a bit of (preferably cold) water in the glass to wet it and afterwards pouring the beer slowly, holding the glass in an angle of approximately 45 °.
Beer stein [ edit ]
A beer stein (or simply a stein STYNE) is an English neologism for a traditional type of beer mug. Steins may be made of stoneware (rarely the inferior earthenware), pewter, porcelain, silver, glass, or wood. They may have open tops or may have hinged pewter lids with a thumb-lever.
Steins usually come in sizes of a half litre or full litre (or comparable historical sizes). Like decorative tankards, they are often decorated in nostalgic themes, generally showing allusions to Germany or Bavaria.
It is believed by some that the lid was implemented during the time of the Black Plague to prevent diseased flies from getting into the beer.[23]
Maß [ edit ]
The Maß (pronounced [mas]) is a term used in German-speaking countries for a unit of volume, now typically used only for measuring beer sold for immediate on-site consumption. In modern times, a Maß is defined as exactly 1 litre. As a Maß is a unit of measure, various designs are possible: modern Maßkrugs (Maßkrüge in German) are often handled glass tankards, although they may also be in the form of steins. At the Octoberfest beer is available in Maßkrug or half litre 'Halb'.
Stange and Becher [ edit ]
A Stange (stick or rod) is a cylindrical glass that is traditionally used for Kölsch beer. A Becher (tumbler), traditionally used for Altbier, is similar to a Stange but is slightly shorter and much thicker. Stangen are carried by placing them into holes in a special tray called a Kranz (wreath). In Cologne Stanges are usually served by traditional waiters called Köbes.
Pilstulpe [ edit ]
Pilstulpen Traditional German
The Pilstulpe ("Pilsner Tulip") or Biertulpe ("Beer tulip") is the tradition glass for German pilsner beers. Sizes are typically around 300 millilitres (11 imp fl oz; 10 US fl oz), but can be as large as 500 millilitres (18 imp fl oz; 17 US fl oz). When used in restaurant settings, a small piece of absorbent paper is placed around the base to absorb any drips from spilling or condensation.
Beer boot [ edit ]
Beer boots (Bierstiefel in German) have over a century of history and culture behind them. It is commonly believed that a general somewhere promised his troops to drink beer from his boot if they were successful in battle. When the troops prevailed, the general had a glassmaker fashion a boot from glass to fulfill his promise without tasting his own feet and to avoid spoiling the beer in his leather boot. Since then, soldiers have enjoyed toasting to their victories with a beer boot. At gatherings in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, beer boots are often passed among the guests for a festive drinking challenge. Since the movie Beerfest appeared in 2006, beer boots have become increasingly popular in the United States. Glass beer boots are either manufactured using a mold or from mouth-blown glass by skilled artisans.
In Germany, beer boots usually contain between 2 and 4 litres and are passed from one guest at the table to the next one clockwise. When almost reaching the bottom of the boot, it suddenly starts bubbling. By some accounts, drinker who caused the bubbling has to order the next boot. There are also boots known with 6 and 8 litres. That being said, beer boots are almost never seen in Germany, even among friends who do drink as much and more beer on an evening out together; normal glasses are preferred.
Beer festivals [ edit ]
Inside a tent at Munich's Oktoberfest - the world's largest beer festival
Oktoberfest is a 16- to 18-day festival held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. Only beer which is brewed within the city limits of Munich with a minimum of 13.5% Stammwürze (approximately 6% alcohol by volume) is allowed to be served in this festival. Upon passing this criterion, a beer is designated Oktoberfest Beer. Large quantities of German beer are consumed, with almost 7 million liters served during the 16-day festival in 2007. Recently in 2015 the festival officially served 7.3 million liters of beer.[24]
Other festivals include
In many cases, the beer festival is part of a general funfair or volksfest.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]It’s a relatively mild winter day in Toronto, but the wind whipping across the tarmac at Pearson International Airport threatens to freeze exposed skin anyway. Beneath the upturned wing of a Hainan Airlines Boeing 787, just in from Beijing, ramp worker Ahmed Osoble appears oblivious to the cold as he unloads luggage from the plane’s cavernous belly, wearing an orange safety vest over his bulky parka and green ear protectors over his black toque. One-by-one, Osoble and another ramp worker guide U-shaped luggage canisters, or “cans,” onto a hydraulic platform so they can be lowered to a waiting train of luggage carts hitched to a tractor. They work quickly. “If this plane is even five minutes delayed, it causes a whole bunch of other headaches,” Osoble yells over the noise of whining jet engines before jumping in the driver’s seat and scooting away.
For most who arrive or depart from Canada’s busiest airport, that luggage cart is the only glimpse they’ll get of the vast apparatus built to handle the straining suitcases and lumpy gym bags they check in at the departure counter. As passengers shuffle through the bright, airy airplane terminal, ground workers like Osoble shepherd thousands of pieces of luggage into a dimly lit world of grubby conveyor belts, bulky scanning machines and pinball-like flippers that violently shove luggage in the direction of its final destination. The average suitcase takes just 8.5 minutes to wind its way through the 16-km maze of conveyor belts at Pearson’s Terminal 1, and less than one per cent of the tens of millions of bags moved every year in Canada end up lost.
Yet these days airlines are offering passengers a big reason to bypass all that purpose-built infrastructure. Last fall, Air Canada and WestJet followed Toronto’s Porter Airlines and most U.S. carriers by charging economy-class passengers on domestic flights $25 to check a single suitcase (a charge to check a second piece of luggage had already been in place for several years). The move amounted to a doubling-down on the industry’s new fee-based business model, which, at times, appears designed to make parts of the travel experience so uncomfortable that passengers will pay to avoid them. A term has even been coined to reflect what airlines are inflicting on their customers: calculated misery. Want to sit with your family? Pay extra for advance seat selection. Uncomfortable in your economy-class seat? Pay to upgrade to a larger one that was only squeezed in because your original seat was shrunk.
But nowhere has the strategy been as lucrative for airlines’ bottom lines as the decision to charge for checking bags. In addition to asking passengers to pay for a formerly free service, the new fees have helped spawn a whole new family of optional charges related to advance boarding privileges—all the better to beat the rush of passengers lugging swollen carry-on luggage into the cabin and tying up precious overhead bin space.
Related Reading: Inside the search for MH370
Of course, all of these new fees and strategies to separate passengers from their money come at a time when the airlines are already benefiting tremendously from falling oil prices. And they’re not planning on passing on the savings if they can help it. “Our plan is not to pass any of it on,” WestJet’s CEO Gregg Saretsky said during a recent conference call to discuss the airline’s record fourth-quarter profit, in 2014, of $90 million. Likewise Air Canada’s CEO Calin R |
anks in the face of Trump’s pledge to renegotiate or tear-up the NAFTA agreement. When the Liberal cabinet met in Calgary, a Trump advisor tried to ease Canadian concerns it was in Trump’s crosshairs. And Trudeau’s ambassador to Washington David MacNaughton suggested Canada was trying to avoid being “collateral damage.” “We will co-operate on trilateral matters, when it’s in our interest, and we’ll be looking to do things that are in our interest bilaterally also. Some of them may be within NAFTA. Some may not be,” said MacNaughton. On Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto called Trudeau to convey sympathy in the wake of the Quebec City mosque shooting as well as to talk trade. A brief, and unenlightening PMO readout of the meeting said the two leaders discussed “trade, prosperity, job creation and competitiveness in North America, one of the most successful economic regions in the world. The two leaders looked forward to continuing their regular discussions in this regard.”
Read more about:Sen. Ted Cruz went after FBI Director James Comey, who promised a year ago that the IRS investigation would be a very high priority. Yet today, as Comey sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he won’t answer whether a single person has been interviewed or, really, much else about the investigation, hiding behind the fact that it’s an ‘ongoing investigation’.
What I like about this clip is the passion with which Cruz questions the FBI Director.
He also hits back at Leahy, the committee chair, when he’s basically told to accept the witness’ non-answer. Cruz pretty much tells Leahy that he can accept the FBI Director’s answer if he wants, and he understand the non-answer might be good enough for them because many Democrats don’t really care about getting answers in the IRS investigation. Leahy noted that his motives had nothing to do with it, but that the non-answer given by Comey was appropriate. Cruz fired back, to make his point, that when he sought to criminalize the targeting of anyone by the IRS based on their political views, Democrats on that committee voted it down.
Watch:If you liked this drawing, please consider supporting me on Patreon:
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My first Patreon Choice drawing! The requirements for this one happened to be very simple and gave me a lot of room to use my imagination. All that was required was that it featured "a pony interacting with a human". Well, yeah, I know that Zelda is not, strictly speaking, human, but I don't believe anyone will hold me up to that. Lyra, of course, is totally a pony, as far as I know.I took this chance to try out a bunch of different brushes and shading techniques, so please don't be put off if the rendering looks a bit uneven. I was able to find some options that I'll certainly be using in future pieces, and that made the 4 days I spent working on this one totally worth it.© Reuters. The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt
Frankfurt (Reuters) - Nach der US-Terminbörse CBOE könnte auch die Deutsche Börse bald auf den Trend zum Handel mit Internetwährungen wie Bitcoin aufspringen.
Ein Sprecher des Börsenbetreibers sagte der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters am Mittwoch, das Unternehmen denke darüber nach, einen Future anzubieten, mit dem Anleger sich bei Investitionen in Bitcoin gegen fallende Kurse absichern können. "Wir prüfen darüber hinaus, ob es sinnvoll sein kann, einen Index basierend auf Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoin zu berechnen und anzubieten", sagte der Sprecher.
Ein könnte auf der Derivatebörse Eurex, einer Tochter der Deutschen Börse, gehandelt werden. Bis zu einer Entscheidung werde es noch einige Zeit dauern, sagte der Sprecher. Zuerst hatte die "Wirtschaftswoche" über die Gedankenspiele berichtet, einen Future einzuführen. Hintergrund ist der fulminante Handelsstart eines solchen Derivats Anfang der Woche an der CBOE. Der Future war am ersten Handelstag um mehr als 20 Prozent nach oben geschnellt. Ähnliche Papiere der Rivalen CME und, mit denen Investoren auf steigende und fallende Kurse setzen können, stehen bereits in den Startlöchern.The selection of the next BBC chairman will be “an establishment stitch-up”, a senior MP has warned amid growing concern at the cosy relationship between those making the decision.
Britain’s most powerful civil servant, Sir Jeremy Heywood, is helping to choose the next chairman and his wife was handed a £600,000 contract by the BBC Director-General, Lord Hall, to carry out a review of the corporation last year. The review was dubbed “the bonfire of the boards”, but it has been described by BBC insiders as “essentially a waste of money”.
Lord Hall and Lady Heywood are good friends, having worked together at the Royal Opera House, where Lord Hall was chief executive. Lady Heywood sits on the board of directors at the opera house. The BBC said at the time of the review that Lady Heywood had been hired after a “competitive process”.
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Philip Davies, a member of the Commons Media Select Committee, which must approve the trust chairman proposed by Sir Jeremy’s panel before the formal appointment, said: “This is a panel to deliver an establishment stitch-up. This is not the process by which we’re going to end up with a BBC Trust chairman who is going to hold the BBC to account, which is what people look to the chairman to do on behalf of licence payers.”
Last month, it emerged that Lady Hall is a senior employee of the headhunting firm Saxton Bampfylde, which is being paid tens of thousands of pounds to recruit the new BBC Trust chairman. Mr Davies said: “Given that Tony Hall’s wife works for the recruitment firm in charge of this process, and given he is friends with the wife of one of the interview panel, I don’t know why don’t they just go the whole hog and let Tony Hall choose the next chairman.”
He questioned why Sir Jeremy is part of the three-strong interview panel for the £110,000 post, which Lord Patten of Barnes vacated in May. “There’s plenty to be doing trying to reform the civil service. He should be focusing on that, not trying to find some stitch-up for the BBC chairman post as well.”
The core purpose of the chairman is to police the BBC on behalf of licence-fee payers. Sir Jeremy’s involvement in choosing the candidate is regarded as a break with precedent because the Whitehall seat on the panel has previously been filled by a senior staff member from the body overseeing the appointment process, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Labour’s Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: “The selection process has to be open. This is a particularly important appointment for the BBC, as it tries to restore confidence in itself. Anybody involved in it has to be really careful that they are open about any potential conflict of interest.”
The job description for the role of trust chairman was quietly altered to reduce the time commitment from “three to four” days a week to as little as two days a week if necessary. It has been speculated that this was part of an attempt to lure Lord Coe, believed to be the Government’s preferred candidate, to the job.
A spokesman for the DCMS said: “It is essential the best possible person is appointed and Sir Jeremy Heywood, as the most senior civil servant in the UK, will help ensure the right candidate is identified.”Daytona Beach, FL—On Thursday, Florida Man Randy Barnes went on a spectacular 18-hour crime spree that involved autocannibalism, first-degree arson, theft, voting fraud, and numerous other destructive acts. He is now in police custody, according to Sgt. Dale Reynolds of the Daytona Beach Police Department.
“At approximately 7:30 am Thursday morning, Florida Man took a cornucopia of substances including methamphetamine, cocaine, shark tranquilizers, ecstasy, speed, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and motor oil mixed with absinthe,” says Reynolds. “Neighbors say he removed his own face and ate it while listening to the soundtrack from Titanic at an extremely loud volume.”
Florida Man’s bizarre criminal behavior has become legendary throughout the country. In March of 2013, Florida Man broke into an area house, defecated on the floor, and screamed at the homeowner for not having a sufficient amount of Lucky Charms breakfast cereal.
In January of 2012, Florida Man allegedly stole seven kittens from an animal shelter, dressed them in judicial robes, and had them sit on the Florida Supreme Court. Still, this latest feat is Florida Man’s most ambitious crime spree to date.
After leaving his home around 8 am, Florida Man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at the Daytona International Speedway, sparking a blaze that took firefighters four hours to put out.
Florida Man proceeded to steal hundreds of dollars’ worth of footwear from a department store, hijack a police helicopter, crash into a children’s hospital, take over an Arby’s kitchen, feed patrons roast beef tainted with PCP, ruin a Bat Mitzvah, steal another police helicopter, crash into a separate hospital, and convince a Kindergarten class to take up arms against their teacher.
“At no point did he stop masturbating,” says Sgt. Reynolds. “That probably contributed to the helicopter crashes.”
Florida Man also disrupted Volusia County’s special election for School Board. He allegedly visited several polling stations with various wigs, fake beards, glasses, and costumes, and cast 1396 write-in votes for “I LOVE COKANE [sic],” which won the election by nearly 600 votes.
For much of Florida Man’s epic crime spree, Daytona Beach residents cheered the criminal, threw him drugs, and gave him high-fives as if he were the main attraction in a psychotic parade. Even many law enforcement officers stood by and watched.
“Seeing Florida Man at work is oddly inspiring,” said Sgt. Reynolds. “I was especially moved when he stole that Ski-Doo and jumped over a shark, Happy Days-style.”
Florida Man’s eventual capture, which occurred around 2 am Friday morning, was a group effort staged by the Daytona Beach Police Department, Florida National Guard, and U.S. Coast Guard. They lured him into the sea with promises of bath salts, then ensnared him in titanium netting developed by NASA.
“This was a ‘aster‘iece,” says Florida Man, now a faceless, chattering monster. “I will ‘e re‘e‘bered forever for this.”
According to a statement from the Daytona Beach lockup, Florida Man will be charged with “Everything. Literally everything.”
See more of Florida Man’s exploits here: http://www.reddit.com/r/FloridaManThe tanning salon industry is feeling burned by "Obamacare."
Business owners around the country say the little-noticed 10 percent tax on tanning in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has crippled the industry, forcing the closing of nearly 10,000 of the more than 18,000 tanning salons in the U.S.
Experts say the industry is overstating the effects of the "tan tax" and that it has been hurt by other factors, too, including public health warnings about the dangers of tanning and the passage of laws in dozens of states restricting the use of tanning salons by minors.
Nevertheless, some salon owners say the health care overhaul will be on their minds on Election Day. Republicans have vowed to repeal "Obamacare" if they win the presidency and retain control of Congress.
"When I go to vote, I'm supporting candidates who are pro-business and who want less government involvement, less government regulation," said Chris Sternberg, senior vice president of Sun Tan City, a Louisville, Kentucky-based chain with nearly 300 salons in 22 states.
The tax, similar to that imposed on tobacco, is meant to discourage a practice known to increase the risk of cancer. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network says those who use tanning beds before age 35 increase their lifetime risk of melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer, by 59 percent.
Congressional experts also projected the tax would raise about $2.7 billion to help expand health coverage for uninsured Americans, but the industry says it actually has raised just a fraction of that.
The industry has spent millions lobbying to repeal the tax, which it says destroyed 81,000 tanning jobs.
Kim Arnold, a business owner in upstate New York, said she and her husband had to close their third Tropical Tann location last August because of the tax.
"Customers would say, 'I'm not paying that,'" she said. "I'd have people walk right out the door."PlayStation Review Round Up – July 09
July saw a steady share of excellent games as well as a few movie based bombs. Generally summer is a drought for good gaming, but 2009 seems to confound that logic. Here is a look at what we reviewed for the month of July.
July’s reviews spanned all genres from 2D fighters two wild west shooters. A lot of the games that were reviewed turned out to be quite entertaining. The big winners this month were [shal]BlazBlue[/shal], [shal]Red Faction: Guerrilla[/shal], [shal]Battlefield 1943[/shal], and [shal]Shatter[/shal].
As for the lemons, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits left us feeling a sense of déjà vu and [shal]Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen[/shal] was, not surprisingly, a bad game based on a movie.
First a quick recap of this years best games.
PlayStation LifeStyle 2009 Editors Choice Recap
Flower (PSN)
inFamous (PS3)
Killzone 2 (PS3)
Patapon 2 (PSP)
Resistance: Retribution (PSP)
Shatter (PSN)
PlayStation 3
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (PS3)
Red Faction: Guerrilla (PS3)
Fight Night Round 4 (PS3)
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (PS3)
Guitar Hero: Metallica (PS3)
NCAA Football 10 (PS3)
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits (PS3)
The Bigs 2 (PS3)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PS3)
Next Page: PlayStation Network, PlayStation Portable, Hardware & Gear…
Pages: 1 2Jon Jones recently caught a break after he received a 90-day deferred sentence for not having his registration and insurance with him following a traffic stop on Jan. 31, 2016 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
That's because when he appeared in court on March 23, "Bones" had all of the paperwork proving that he was indeed covered and registered. As a part of the deferred sentence, all citations would be voided and erased form his permanent record -- as long as he didn't receive further citations within that time period.
Objection failed.
During a recent appearance on The MMA Hour, Jones revealed that he was recently pulled over in "The Duke City," once again, and was issued five citations after the police officer accused him of drag racing; which eventually led to a heated confrontation between Jones and the officer.
He breaks it down:
"About three or four days go. This is crazy. So, I ended up getting a deferred sentence for not having my proper paperwork. I went to court and judge told me no citations for me knowing that 90 days and this will go off your record. So, me knowing that, obviously, I am driving and following the law doing what I can to stay out of trouble. I'm driving up the street, coming back from dinner. I pull up to the red light and there are these fans that are rolling down their window and trying to get me to roll down my window. I wasn't really in the mood to talk, so I rev up my engine at them and they start clapping and smiling and they are happy. The light turns green and I start driving away. I literally get pulled over, like I don't know, 10 yards after driving. I get pulled over in a 35 mile per hour zone and the officer tells me I was drag racing. I was obviously really upset and I asked him how is it possible to be drag racing in a 35 mile per hour zone. And he says, 'Well, I didn't say you were speeding, but I am going to ticket you for drag racing. Knowing that I just got a deferred sentence and knowing this is the last thing I need to be associated with a drag race, knowing that I wasn't. So I freak out. This guy ended up giving me five citations. So I ended up arguing with this officer and it got pretty heated and he ended up giving me five tickets. Yeah, five tickets. It's bullshit quite frankly. He gave me a ticket for exhibitionist driving. He said that revving my engine was illegal and he gave me drag racing, which is impossible because I was in a 35 zone. He acknowledged I wasn't speeding but he gave me a ticket for drag racing, which I don't understand how you can drag race for 10 yards under 30 miles per hour. He gave me a ticket for altering my exhaust, which I didn't, he wanted to throw that in there, too. He gave me a ticket for swerving lanes, he said I drove through the dotted lines three times, which is also not true. And then he gave me a ticket because he said he couldn't see the registration number at the bottom of my license plate because it was covered up by the frame of the license plate. It was just excessive, the guy just picked me. I think he was a DWI cop, he wanted to find a drunk driver. And once he saw that I was sober, he wanted to find something to justify pulling me over. He kind of fabricated this whole thing that I was drag racing. I am going to fight it, it's the last thing I need to be going through before this fight. I am going to fight it the best I can. I simply wasn't drag racing and I really got emotional and said a lot of things I shouldn't have said to a police officer. But, getting accused of something I didn't do kind of really pissed me off. I regret some things I said to the guy, but it will be coming out shortly. I'm sure someone will be pulling the tape of it or something. Whatever."
Jones says he doesn't feel the Albuquerque Police Department is picking on him at this point, but says the individual police officer was seemingly just in a bad mood and wanted to be very confrontational.
"Bones" says he will let his lawyers handle it moving forward and is adamant that he has never in his life participated in a drag race. Plus, he is confident this latest legal hiccup won't interfere with his upcoming fight against Daniel Cormier, which is set to headline UFC 197 on April 23, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Keep it tuned to MMAmania.com for more on this developing story.Last week the world lost one of its finest actors, Alan Rickman—but to those who knew him, he was much more. To Emma Thompson, he was the “ultimate ally,” as the Oscar winner recalled in her emotional tribute. To J.K. Rowling, he was the safekeeper of Harry Potter secrets. And to Helen Mirren, Rickman was the literal Antony to her Cleopatra in the 1998 stage show at Britain’s National Theater.
“I was quite intimidated when I first met him,” Mirren tells The Hollywood Reporter in a sweet interview about her former co-star. “He’s a quite imposing-looking man. He was tall. He had this incredible large head with this incredible Roman emperor kind of visage and a wonderfully sardonic expression on his face.”
Of their experience onstage together, Mirren recalls, “It was difficult because he stepped in at the last minute when the actor who was originally playing the role dropped out.... He came in and very courageously jumped in. Antony and Cleopatra is an extremely emotionally demanding play.... He was extremely generous on stage.”
Here is a glimpse of the two together onstage in said production, which will make you want to build a time machine:
“The reality of Alan inside of that was quite a vulnerable, emotional person, which made him all the more interesting and lovable,” Mirren continues. “I remember that when Antony and Cleopatra ended he gave me a gift: it wasn’t anything new. It was a beautiful old antique bracelet, a little bit broken and just absolutely beautiful and it was so classically Alan.”
Mirren seems to cherish her recollections of Rickman offstage as well, remembering, “He was also very twinkly and kind and gossipy and generous. Alan loved to go to restaurants, to sit and chat, drink some wine and gossip about actors and acting, directors and plays. I know in America you mostly know him as a film actor, but in Great Britain, we are very aware of him as a consummate theater actor as well. He was adored by everyone who knew him.”
While the two did eventually sign onto another project together, the upcoming Eye in the Sky, the actors did not end up sharing any scenes—a point, Mirren says, “I’m very, very upset about.”
Related: Read Emma Thompson’s Emotional Tribute to Her Friend Alan RickmanBy Kathy Finn
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Perhaps no other city in the United States is as well-suited as New Orleans to wed a scientific discussion of environment with a celebration of the occult.
That's exactly what unfolded on Saturday at "Anba Dlo," an annual New Orleans festival where prominent scientists joined with practitioners of the voodoo religion to look for answers to the challenges of dealing with water.
In "The Big Easy," a low-lying Louisiana city devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and threatened by the BP oil spill of 2010, water is a subject nearly impossible to ignore.
Four representatives of Rand Corp, the global consultancy that helped develop the state’s master plan for coastal restoration, joined a dozen environmentalists, architects and policy specialists who took part in Anba Dlo, which translates from a Haitian dialect as "beneath the waters."
The event was held at a community center in the New Orleans neighborhood known as Bywater, one of those pounded by Katrina.
Against a backdrop of elaborate Halloween decorations and voodoo-themed performance stages, the discussion centered on how South Louisiana, by necessity, is developing new models for water management.
"I've spoken at a lot of conferences around the country, and this festival is pretty unique," said Jordan Fischbach, a policy researcher for Rand in Pittsburgh. "But then, this is New Orleans," he added with a laugh.
The festival, now in its seventh year, is the brainchild of Sallie Ann Glassman, a longtime New Orleans resident who is a high priestess in the Haitian religion of voodoo and an anti-poverty activist.
In 2006, the year after Katrina, Glassman and her husband, real estate developer Pres Kabacoff, built the multipurpose community center in the devastated Bywater neighborhood.
Her voodoo shop – where Glassman holds readings and healings, and dispenses talismans, voodoo dolls and chicken foot fetishes – became the first tenant of the new "healing center," which in time came to house a restaurant, fitness center, fresh-foods grocery and performing arts space.
Glassman regularly uses the center to stage events aimed at strengthening the neighborhood, and she sees the Anba Dlo festival as a natural way to focus attention on one of the biggest problems facing New Orleans and the region.
"As a priestess, it's my work to bring balance and healing and wholeness to the community, so this is absolutely in keeping with my work," she said.
During the afternoon symposium, which drew about 100 people, both Katrina and the BP oil spill figured prominently in the discussion about how Louisiana can restore its coastal marshes.
Katrina and other storms seriously damaged the coast, and the oil spill led to massive litigation that eventually will funnel billions of dollars in penalties to Louisiana to help pay for the damage.
"Dollars alone won't make anything happen, but dollars do matter," Mark Davis, director of the Tulane University Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy, told the symposium as he discussed the estimated $50 billion cost of implementing Louisiana's master plan for rebuilding its coast.
As twilight fell on New Orleans, the scientific discussion faded into the background and hundreds of costumed revelers gathered for a parade that would launch a night of live music, psychic readings and acrobatic performances.
At midnight, Glassman was slated to perform a ceremony in which she would invoke the voodoo mermaid spirit known as La Siren.
"She is the force of the great ocean and power of water to work away at the hard rock of reality," Glassman said.
Glassman prays to the spirit "partially to apologize for what we've done to the water, but also to bring us guidance to fix the damage and live more in harmony with the planet," she said.
(Editing By Frank McGurty and Nick Zieminski)No, they do not realize how transparent they are. Most are old and still use the ancient methods that worked 50 years ago of blaming the Russians. I think most of them are pretty stupid, really, not much of an i.q. Hillary is mentally unstable. You do not have to have a doctors degree to make that diagnosis. Her lies, her actions all point to an unstable woman, corrupt to the very core of her being. The entire media is focusing on who hacked instead of what was in the emails. I simply have a hard time expressing how revolting our media is in their support of the cabal for decades. Curse words are inadequate. I used to contemplate how the people of the Soviet Union felt about Pravda. It seemed so oppressive. Now we know, we see, we feel and I hate. Obama has become the most fake, two faced, phony President in history. Bush was evil but he could not hide it and Obama could for a few years but now we see he is so disgusting. My litmus test of an honorable politician or just an average citizen, is if they support Hillary Clinton. If they do, they lay open the emptiness of their mind and soul.“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.
Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on.”
Friends have left and friends are leaving.
Why, oh why, am I so sad?
For five years, a good friend sat at my side as counselor to me, his bishop. Years later he came out. No friends he could count on. Now, he’s gone.
My close siblings with gay children. November came. Now, they’re gone.
Ten years ago, a leader’s baptismal talk touched me. Passionate, poignant, & perceptive. I still remember what he had to say. Recently, hidden facts of history came out. Now, he’s out. His wife and he are gone.
Twenty-five years ago, I was bishop. A single man, returned missionary, came in to say he was gay. My clueless counsel was to “keep coming”. My clueless action was to take none. Every Sunday, I watched for him. Any Sunday I saw him, my heart melted with joy and relief. He’s still here! For twenty-five years he managed to stay. November came. Now, he’s gone.
A former bishop & his wife, members most of their life. Hidden facts of history came out. Now, they’re out.
This weekend I saw an old friend from 20 years ago. History came out, her husband’s out. Out of the church, not the family. She stays for her kids. But, for how long? I’m concerned that like her husband, she’ll soon be gone. Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere for her to discuss, and for that she longs.
Several more examples, I could give, of friends and family who have left. And, left in just the past 2 years, many since November’s veer.
Why does it sadden me?
That they have chosen a lesser path? No, I don’t believe that. If there is a heaven to get to, that’s exactly where my friends who have gone will go. I wish them joy & godspeed on the road they have chosen. This is a happy thought for me.
But, tears well up. I miss the days when they were reliably in neighboring chairs and tables. Chairs of instruction. Tables of counsel. Chairs of service. Tables of camaraderie, community, & cordiality. Now, empty chairs at empty tables. My friends are gone.
Perhaps, I’m sad from seeing little done to help my friends stay. Questions and doubts must be halted and hidden. “A grief that can’t be spoken.” Or worse, a grief dismissed as if merely token. That is, if they muster the courage to be outspoken.
It’s definitely sad, that one’s orientation is better undisclosed. Love spoken for those closeted unknowns, is proscribed from our expression. After all, in the church none are homosexual. Another “grief that can’t be spoken.”
It makes me sad that I can’t do more to ease the emptying of chairs at tables.
In reality, I am THE only part of the puzzle that I can direct and control. My sadness is causing me to drastically reform my thoughts and actions. Stand silently on the sidelines?…..No Longer! I’m going to stand up for what I have been taught is right, all my life. What I believe in my heart, is right and just and fair.
I’m willing to discuss, to empathize, to understand, to reach out. I’m willing to follow Jesus and love unconditionally. At least, attempt to love in His way. More of my friends are going to leave. That’s OK. But, I want them to know that neither one of us has abandoned the other. We are still friends. Probably, better friends for having supported each other, wholeheartedly, in our respective journeys.
Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me
That I STAY and you are gone.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on.These findings challenge the idea proposed by some evolutionary psychologists that gender differences in mate-preferences are determined by evolved adaptations that became biologically embedded in the male and female brain Dr Marcel Zentner
The classic explanation for these differences has been that men and women’s brains have evolved to make certain choices. However, a new study by University of York researchers in Psychological Science – an Association for Psychological Science publication – suggests that evolution is only part of the answer.
The study by Dr Marcel Zentner and Klaudia Mitura, from the University’s Department of Psychology, found that increasing gender equality reduces gender differences in mate preferences. They say this indicates that the strategies men and women use to choose mates may not be as biologically rooted in our evolutionary past as scientists originally thought.
To be a ‘success’ in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources to raise offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females. Researchers have previously argued that women tend to prefer partners who have an ability to invest resources in their children (i.e. wealthy men), and men tend to prefer partners who appear fertile (i.e. young women) because evolutionary adaptations have programmed these preferences in our brains.
But in the modern world, ‘success’ is not necessarily tied to offspring. Dr Zentner and Klaudia Mitura hypothesized that the influence of evolutionary biases on mate choice would decline proportionally with nations’ gender parity, or the equality between men and women.
Dr Zentner said: “There was accumulating evidence that gender differences in mental abilities, such as math performance, vanish in gender-equal societies.” But he and his fellow researchers wanted to see if they could observe the same trend for selecting sexual partners.
The researchers had 3,177 respondents complete an online mate preference survey from 10 countries ranking from a low (Finland) to a high (Turkey) gender gap in terms of the Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) – a measure that was recently introduced by World Economic Forum to iron out shortcomings of earlier gender parity measures. The participants were asked in their native language whether certain criteria (such as ‘financial prospect’ and ‘being a good cook’) were important in choosing a mate.
Dr Zentner says what they found was that the gender difference in mate preferences predicted by evolutionary psychology models “is highest in gender-unequal societies, and smallest in the most gender-equal societies.”
They confirmed their results in a second study based on mate preferences reported by 8,953 volunteers from 31 nations. Again, the researchers found that there were fewer differences between men and women’s preferences in more gender-equal nations compared to less gender-equal nations.
Dr Zentner said: “These findings challenge the idea proposed by some evolutionary psychologists that gender differences in mate-preferences are determined by evolved adaptations that became biologically embedded in the male and female brain.”
However, he also adds evolutionary roots shouldn’t be ruled out entirely. “Indeed, the capacity to change behaviours and attitudes relatively quickly in response to societal changes may itself be driven by an evolutionary programme that rewards flexibility over rigidity,” he says.Health care law's massive, hidden tax change
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.
Section 9006 of the health care bill -- just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document -- mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.
The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year.
Right now, the IRS Form 1099 is used to document income for individual workers other than wages and salaries. Freelancers receive them each year from their clients, and businesses issue them to the independent contractors they hire.
But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they'll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.
The bill makes two key changes to how 1099s are used. First, it expands their scope by using them to track payments not only for services but also for tangible goods. Plus, it requires that 1099s be issued not just to individuals, but also to corporations.
Taken together, the two seemingly small changes will require millions of additional forms to be sent out.
"It's a pretty heavy administrative burden," particularly for small businesses without large in-house accounting staffs, says Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Eliminating the goods exemption could launch an avalanche of paperwork, he says: "If you cater a lunch for other businesses every Wednesday, say, that's a lot of information to keep track of throughout the year."
The paper trail
Why did these tax code revisions get included in a health-care reform bill? Welcome to Washington. The idea seems to be that using 1099 forms to capture unreported income will generate more government revenue and help offset the cost of the health bill.
A Democratic aide for the Senate Finance Committee, which authored the changes, defended the move.
"Information reporting improves tax compliance without raising taxes on small businesses," the aide said. "Health care reform includes more than $35 billion in tax cuts for small businesses... indicating that during these tough economic times, Congress is delivering the tax breaks small businesses need to thrive."
The new rules could drastically alter the tax-reporting landscape by spotlighting payments that previously went unreported. Freelancers and other independent operators typically write off stacks of business expenses; having to issue tax paperwork documenting each of them could cut down on fraudulent deductions.
More significantly, the 1099 trail would expose payments to small operators that might now be going unreported. If you buy a computer for your business from a major chain retailer, the seller almost certainly documents the revenue. But if you buy it from Tim's Computer Shack down the street, Tim might not report and pay taxes on his income from the sale.
The IRS estimates that the federal government loses more than $300 billion each year in tax revenue on income that goes unreported. Using 1099s to document millions of transactions that now go untracked is one way to begin to close the gap.
While all but unnoticed at the time -- a Pennsylvania business group issued the first warning last October as the idea emerged in draft Senate legislation -- the 1099 rule changes began sparking attention in the blogosphere in the last week. The libertarian Cato Institute called it a "costly, anti-business nightmare"; Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., introduced legislation last week that would repeal the new 1099 requirements.
The notion of mailing a tax form to Costco or Staples each year to document purchases may seem absurd to small business owners, but that's not the worst of it, tax experts say.
Marianne Couch, a principal with the Cokala Tax Group in Michigan and former chair of a citizen advisory group to the IRS on small business and self-employed tax issues, thinks the bigger headache will be data collection: gathering names and taxpayer identification numbers for every payee and vendor that you do business with.
But she also sees a silver lining in the new law.
Her firm already recommends collecting tax data on all vendors, since the IRS requires that you have it on hand at the time of the transaction, not just at tax-filing time. And eliminating the corporate and goods exemptions at least means that businesses will no longer have to pour over every transaction to determine if it needs a 1099. The new rule is simpler: If it crosses the $600 threshold, it's in.
"There are probably going to be some hiccups along the way, because systems will need to be |
have assumed testing positions... 11:00 - Pre-release lethality assessment initiated...
At that time, the potato count started to drop from around 463,000 at a rate of about 700/min, projecting that they would be depleted in ~9 hours 40 minuts from the start, or 21:00 PST.
Theorised formula for timers
This is a Mathematical Theory that attempts to explain how the [email protected] system calculates the game time.
Assuming that when we reach 100%, Portal 2 is released-
Originally slated time of P2 release = b
Actual moment of P2 release = V
Man Hours of a single user = m
Number of concurrent Players (NOTE: One game per unique User ID) = c
Potato Multiplier/Auxilliary Power = p
Game completion bonus = g
Time Reduced = t
thus: t=mcp+g, V=b-t
(Not valid since the potatos countdown started)
Auxiliary Power (previously Challenge Status) (The Potato Multiplier)
This email from a member of the team at Valve confirms that the Potatoes act as a multiplier to each user's Man hours. But we need to reach a certain milestone of potatoes for that multiplier to activate. The actual milestone amount, and how much of a multiplier this will give us is unknown. Please update the Wiki with this information when the milestones are achieved.
Possible Overclock Potato Numbers
375,466 Potatoes
419,011 Potatoes (4/19/11 being the original date of Portal 2's release)
500,000 Potatoes (There is no evidence to support this. It is hoped only because it's a large, round number)
Theories
It could be possible that we have already surpassed the Potato Milestone, but the overclocking won't activate until a specific progress percentage. That percentage could possibly be 75%. If Valve wanted Portal 2 released within a certain time frame, they would have to put a safeguard against a possible early potato overclock wouldn't they? Thoughts? This is possible. However, Valve is all about service, and to give the illusion fans can release the game early without having that truth would be bad service. The fans would be none the wiser. They can arbitrarily make the overclock potato amount whatever amount there happen to be at the precise moment they want to start overclocking. Not to mention Valve has given no hint as to what the number might be, so it is entirely possible they will simply activate it when they want without a specific figure in their head. If the overclocking starts at a weird number such as 478,391 potatoes, then we will know that it was activated manually. Seems like it was activated manually.
If Valve wanted Portal 2 released within a certain time frame, they would have to put a safeguard against a possible early potato overclock wouldn't they? Thoughts? It is possible that the large number of fake potatoes (obtained through the website without loading the games), is so large they are still figuring out how to handle the large decrease in potatoes when they remove them (because it will be a very large number). So some of the crossed out numbers above may still be the actual milestone, but it hasn't actually been achieved yet due to the cheating. Update: Cheated potatoes will disappear from profiles; however, they will not be removed from the overall [email protected] count. Removed potatoes that are re-earned legitimately will not increase the [email protected] count, either. There will be no sudden decrease due to removal of fake potatoes.
Or it could just be possible that more potatoes == a faster rate. There's nothing in that email that suggests there is some magical number at which the rate suddenly increases.
Update: The overclocking has started (at about 463,000 potatoes). It's possible that it was always going to trigger at this time, with the amount of potatoes collected at this point being used to determine how long the overclocking would last.
Number of active test subjects
This displays the number of people currently playing Portal 2 (confirmed on Steam Stats page). Originally the page displayed "ZERO". Just ten minutes after the overclocking started it changed to "NINE".
Download it and distribute that link like crazy.Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, has asked the South-east to stop complaining of marginalisation by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.
According to Daily Post, He lamented that all his efforts to persuade the Igbo to wisely invest in Buhari’s presidential bid in 2015 failed because of lack of co-operation by many South-east leaders, who threw their weigh behind former President Goodluck Jonathan.
“This is not a question I should answer because I’m a politician. But before these things happened, before the government of Jonathan failed, I went to all the Igbo fora to tell them that the Jonathan government will fall”, he told Thisday.
“I went to our Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo in Enugu twice. They could not even reply to a letter written by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, seeking for a meeting with them”, he added.
Ngige, revealed how he went to Lagos and convened an Igbo stakeholders forum in William Nwodo’s house in Ikoyi, Lagos in 2014, where he analysed the voting pattern in Nigeria and told them that even if they did not want to support Buhari, they should give him 25 per cent of their votes.
“They refused to listen to me, and to make matter worse, there was no voting in most of the areas in the South-east; they just allocated 5 per cent to APC.
“It was that bad, it is too late to cry when the head is off. Politics is business in a way, you invest in business and you reap profit.
“Yes, that is what it is. But all I want to tell you is that we played bad politics; we made a bad investment because they invested in the Jonathan presidency. They invested in Jonathan more than the South-south, where he hails from.
“I am not saying that is enough to marginalise them or not allow them come in but we are there. I will continue to speak for them and when there is anything to be distributed, we will make sure that the South-east gets its own portion. But they will not get excess portion.
“Even in a family where the head of the family goes to the farm to harvest his yams those who accompany the farmer to the farm get more share.
“When they bring back the yams some of them will be damaged, and the pieces are put out in one section. Then the whole yams are put into the barn and some will be sent to the market for sale. And some will be sent to the family centrally for distribution among the family units.
“Those ones that are in pieces, the extras, will be shared among those that went to the farm. We did not benefit from the extras with people who went to the farm. We didn’t go to the farm in the south-east”, he added.
On what the All Progressives Congress (APC) will be campaigning on ahead 2019, Ngige stated: “Oh my God, so you are in the group of those who are pessimistic, who have refused to see the wonders of this government?
“Well, I’m from the South-east, so when we get there we will show them that first and foremost we have fought corruption to a standstill and that people can no longer steal at will, much less keeping such monies at home.
“The movement was from the bank to the house, but now that homes have been raided, maybe they will go to the farm to keep them. But people cannot steal money because there is no hiding place anymore.
“They cannot steal primitively like it was done before. The poor people of Nigerian are happy about this,” he said.
The APC chieftain said he has no regret for his role in helping to bring Buhari to power, saying if the opportunity presents itself again he will do exactly the same thing.
“If not for this government, the government of Muhammadu Buhari, government of change, Nigeria would have been worse than Venezuela.
“The crisis you have in Venezuela today, the demonstrations in Venezuela, are as a result of the collapse of the whole economic firmament of that country. Venezuela, like Nigeria, did not plan for the rainy day.”PITTSBURGH — Although the Pittsburgh Penguins were among the NHL’s first expansion teams when the league doubled in size from the so-called Original Six in 1967, the Steel City’s NHL roots go much further back. Pittsburgh’s first NHL team, the Pirates, were regular opponents of the first incarnation of the Senators, including the 1927 squad that claimed Ottawa’s most recent Stanley Cup.
While the two never faced one another in the playoffs, Ottawa’s connection to the club was undeniable. Ten of the 34 players to skate for the Pirates between 1925 and 1930 were from the Ottawa area, while an 11th served in the House of Commons and died in Ottawa.
By awarding Pittsburgh a franchise in 1925, NHL president Frank Calder hoped to prevent the formation of a rival league by Eddie Livingstone, former owner of the National Hockey Association’s Toronto Shamrocks and Blueshirts.
Calder’s plan worked, although it was Ottawa Senators owner Frank Ahearn who almost scuttled the deal. According to Pittsburgh hockey historian and pittsburghhockey.net web manager Jim Kubus, the Senators opposed the Pittsburgh franchise for two reasons.
One, they argued that two-thirds of the nascent Pirates players would be amateurs from the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets, then champions of the United Stated Amateur Hockey Association, and thus not ready for prime-time professional hockey. Second, they opposed expansion into larger American cities, fearing it would put teams on uneven financial — and thus competitive — footings.
But Ottawa dropped its opposition on Nov. 7, 1925, and Pittsburgh was awarded its franchise the same day.
“A lot of people are surprised to know about the history here,” says Kubus. “There are some in this region for whom hockey never existed before Sidney Crosby. And then there are a slew of people for whom hockey never existed before (Mario) Lemieux.
“But we can go back more than 80 years to the origin of the game.”
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In favour of Pittsburgh’s NHL bid, Kubus notes, was Duquesne Gardens. Opened in 1899, it was the first rink in North America to have refrigerated ice. “They could start their leagues a month-and-a-half to two months before any of the Canadian leagues really got going,” he said.
Incidentally, Duquesne was also the first rink to use shatter-proof “Herculite” glass above the dasher boards — chicken wire was used in most NHL cities — and notably, although much later, was an early proponent of good ice when it acquired Zamboni Ice Machine No. 4.
And Pittsburgh, Kubus adds, had already laid claim to the first official professional hockey game, with the International Professional Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Pros hosting the newly formed league’s first game in 1904.
But on Nov. 26, 1925, Pirates captain Lionel Conacher — known as The Big Train and one of only two men today with their names engraved on both the Stanley and Grey Cups — and goalie Roy “Shrimp” Worters — who, at only 5’ 3”, is the shortest person to ever play in the NHL — stepped onto the Boston Arena ice for Pittsburgh’s first NHL game, against the Bruins. Aptly, Conacher scored the Pirates’ first goal, while Ottawa-born Harold Darragh notched the game-winner, with the visitors prevailing 2-1.
The Pirates’ second game, two nights later, featured some more dramatic history when they faced Howie Morenz and the Canadiens, with near-legendary keeper Georges Vezina in goal for the Habs. Vezina, who had lost 35 pounds in the previous six weeks and was playing with a fever of 102 F, started vomiting blood during the first intermission. He returned to his net to start the second period but collapsed on the ice and had to be replaced. He never played again. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis the following day, and died three months later.
The Pirates made history again a month later, in a 3-1 Boxing Day loss to the New York Americans at Madison Square Gardens, when Worters and New York netminder Jake Forbes faced 141 shots between them (Worters: 73, Forbes: 68). It’s an NHL record that still stands.
The “Smoketown Sextet,” as the local Pittsburgh Press dubbed them, finished their rookie season with a 19-16-1 third-place finish, good enough to make the playoffs, where they dropped a two-game total-goals series against the Montreal Maroons, who eventually won the Stanley Cup.
A total of 34 players donned the Pirates black and gold, making Ottawa’s contribution of 10 all the more remarkable (In 1980, incidentally, when the Penguins switched their sweater colours from blue and white to black and gold, the Boston Bruins complained, arguing they had the colours first. The Pens, though, successfully countered that the Pirates’ use of the colours predated the Bruins’).
Notable among the Ottawa 10 was Eardley’s Hubert “Hib” Milks, who scored 70 goals with Pittsburgh and finished his NHL career in 1933 with the Ottawa Senators.
Darragh won a Stanley Cup with Toronto in 1932, was the team’s last surviving player. He died in 1993.
And Conacher, who later won Stanley Cups with the Chicago Blackhawks and Montreal Maroons, and was chosen as Canada’s top athlete of the half-century, came to Ottawa as a Liberal Member of Parliament, representing Toronto’s Trinity riding. He died in 1954 when, in a friendly softball game between MPs and the press gallery, he suffered a heart attack stretching a single into a triple.
Following their inaugural season, meanwhile, the Pirates only returned to the playoffs once, in 1928, when the Americans defeated them by a two-game score of 6-4. The following year, they won just nine of 44 games, yet somehow managed to fare even more poorly in their final season, with just five wins and three ties against 36 losses. The team was relocated to Philadelphia for a few years before folding.
Goalie Joe Miller, from Morrisburg, played for Pittsburgh in those two final years. It’s worth noting that of his 14 wins for the team, 11 were by shutout, and his goals-against average was 2.87.
But the Pirates had a few moments of historic significance, including coach Odie Cleghorn being the first to change players on the fly and the first to use set lines, when most teams simply iced their best players for as long as they could last, often the entire game.
“But they were a bad team,” says Kubus. “An asterisk. And the truth of the matter is that even when they were here they weren’t supported or beloved by the folks who lived here.
“I don’t think anybody missed them when they went away.”
bdeachman@postmedia.com
Pittsburgh Pirates from the Ottawa area:
Archie Briden (LW, 1929-30)
5’ 8”, 170 lbs.
Born July 16, 1897 in Renfrew or Hintonburg.
NHL career: 29GP 4G 3A 7Pts 20 PIM
Harold Darragh (LW, 1925-30)
5’ 10”, 145 lbs.
Born Sept. 13, 1902 in Ottawa
NHL career: 308 GP 68G 49A 117Pts 50PIM
Gord Fraser (D, 1929-30)
6’ 0”, 180 lbs.
Born March 3, 1894 in Pembroke
NHL career: 144GP, 24G 12A 36Pts 224PIM
Albert Holway (D, 1928-29)
6’ 2”, 190 lbs.
Born Sept. 24, 1902 in Belleville
NHL career: 112G 7G 2A 9Pts 48PIM
Fred Lowrey (RW, 1925-26)
5’ 9”, 155 lbs.
Born Aug. 12, 1902 in Ottawa
NHL career: 53GP 1G 1A 2Pts 10PIM
Gerry Lowrey (LW, 1928-30)
5’ 8”, 150 lbs.
Born Feb. 14, 1905 in Ottawa.
NHL career: 211GP 48G 48A 96Pts 148PIM
Rennison “Ren” Manners (C, 1929-30)
5’ 11”, 160 lbs.
Born Feb. 5, 1904 in Ottawa
NHL career: 37GP 3G 2A 5Pts 14PIM
Hubert “Hib” Milks (LW/C, 1925-30)
5’11”, 165 lbs.
Born April 1, 1899 in Eardley, Que.
NHL career: 317GP 87G 41A 128Pts 179PIM
Joe Miller (G, 1928-30)
5’9”, 170 lbs.
Born Oct. 6, 1898 in Morrisburg.
NHL career: 127 GP 24W 87L 16T 2.92GAA 16 Shutouts
Rodger Smith (D, 1925-30)
6’0”, 175 lbs.
Born July 26, 1896 in Ottawa.
NHL career: 210GP 20G 4A 24Pts 172PIMMuch as I’m tempted to talk about Facebook privacy, I’m going to resist. Plenty has been written about Facebook and privacy, Facebook and “forced” sharing, Facebook and sharing by default, Facebook this and Facebook that. And I’m sure much more will be written about it.
Tim O’Reilly has been supportive of Facebook. The company has frequently been clumsy, but it’s also been willing to push the limits of privacy in ways that might be potentially creative and in ways that might potentially create more value for us than we give up.
But none of the many reactions to Facebook get to the core of the problem, which isn’t privacy at all. The real problem becomes visible when you look at it from the other direction. What effect does massive sharing have on the recipients? Let me ask the question in another way. Maybe I care if you see all the music I listen to; maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m embarrassed if you find out that I mostly listen to dignified classical music but occasionally go slumming with Beyonce; maybe I’m not. But turn that around: while I might be interested in what you listen to, I have hundreds of Facebook friends; do I really care to be informed about what everyone is listening to? Do I really care to keep up with everything that they’re reading? A little bit of information (cool, I didn’t know that Bert Bates is a Dead Head) is interesting, but a deluge is The Big Snore.
The other day, I read a perceptive article, “In Defense of Friction,” arguing that “automated trust systems undermine trust by incentivizing cooperation because of the fear of punishment rather than actual trust.” That’s a profound point. If we rely on computational systems for a trust framework, we actually lose our instincts and capacity for personal trust; even more, we cease to care about it. And there’s a big difference between trusting someone and relying on a system that says they’re trustworthy.
Taking this a couple of steps further, the article points out that, to many people, Facebook’s “frictionless” sharing doesn’t enhance sharing; it makes sharing meaningless. Let’s go back to music: It is meaningful if I tell you that I really like the avant-garde music by Olivier Messiaen. It’s also meaningful to confess that I sometimes relax by listening to Pink Floyd. But if this kind of communication is replaced by a constant pipeline of what’s queued up in Spotify, it all becomes meaningless. There’s no “sharing” at all. Frictionless sharing isn’t better sharing; it’s the absence of sharing. There’s something about the friction, the need to work, the one-on-one contact, that makes the sharing real, not just some cyber phenomenon. If you want to tell me what you listen to, I care. But if it’s just a feed in some social application that’s constantly updated without your volition, why do I care? It’s just another form of spam, particularly if I’m also receiving thousands of updates every day from hundreds of other friends.
So, what we’re seeing isn’t the expansion of our social network; it’s the shrinking of what and who we care about. My Facebook feed is full of what friends are listening to, what friends are reading, etc. And frankly, I don’t give a damn. I would care if they told me personally; I’d even care if they used a medium as semi-personal as Twitter. The effort required to tweet tells me that someone thought it was important. And I do care about that. I will care much less if Spotify and Rdio integrate with Twitter. I already don’t care about the blizzard of automated tweets from FourSquare.
Automated sharing is giving Facebook a treasure-trove of data, regardless of whether anyone cares. And Facebook will certainly find ways to monetize that data. But the bigger question is whether, by making sharing the default, we are looking at the end of social networks altogether. If a song is shared on Facebook and nobody listens to it, does it make a sound?
Related:Hi everyone and Happy New Year!
I wanted to start this year off with one of my New Year’s resolutions – to have my own blog!
So welcome to my very first post! I hope you enjoy.
This is Orly Naughty which is a fabulous vampy red. I used two coats and I wanted to add something to make it a bit more special for the Holidays so I added some gold leaf that came in an Essence nail art kit. Finally, I topped it off with Nails Inc Kensington Caviar Top Coat. Unfortunately the topcoat dulled the shine of the gold leaf and caused the nail polish to run a bit but I still liked the overall look.
I suspected the gold leaf would dull when I added topcoat so on my other hand I used some gold shards, which were also in the Essence nail art kit.
This turned out much better. I liked this combo a lot! The gold shards really caught the light and I though they were a nice contrast to the vampy red. I thought of it as grown up bling :)
Thanks for looking!
AdvertisementsCLOSE The United States and China will be among the nations signing the Paris climate agreement in New York next month, President Barack Obama confirmed Thursday during a meeting with Xi Jinping. Newslook
President Obama, China President Xi Jinping, and U.S. and Chinese officials during a meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C. (Photo11: Pool, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Despite ongoing disputes over cyber espionage, intellectual property, and the South China Sea, the United States and China struck deals Thursday on nuclear security and climate change.
The two nations agreed to sign the new global climate change agreement on April 22, the day it becomes operational; the agreement reached in Paris late last year calls on countries to develop plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"We're committing to formally join it as soon as possible this year, and we urge other countries to do the same," President Obama said before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the bi-annual nuclear security summit.
As for that topic, the United States and China issued a joint statement pledging more cooperation on efforts to improve the storage and security of nuclear material in an effort to prevent nuclear terrorism.
Praising China's newly created "Nuclear Security Center of Excellence," Obama said that "I believe we can deepen our cooperation, including against nuclear smuggling."
Obama said the United States and China are also working together on other counter-terrorism measures and efforts to address the threats of North Korea's nuclear program.
The president pledged "candid" exchanges about various disputes with China, including human rights and allegations that it has engaged in intellectual property theft and cyber espionage against the United States. Obama also cited "maritime" disputes, an apparent reference to Chinese territorial claims and military activity in the South China Sea that have caused friction with neighboring nations.
"We have deep concerns about our ability to protect the intellectual property of our companies," Obama said. "And we care deeply about human rights."
Xi, who also cited "disputes and disagreements" with the United States, has denied accusations of cyber espionage and intellectual property theft.
While Xi said the two nations should "seek active solutions through dialogue and consultation," he acknowledged that won't always be possible. In those cases, he said, the United States and China should manage problems "constructively, and avoid misunderstanding and mis-perception or escalation."
The Chinese president pledged cooperation on an array of global economic and security issues.
"The world economic growth is sluggish, and regional issues are complex and protracted," Xi said at one point. "The terrorist threat is on the rise."
Obama made a similar pledge, noting that China will host a G-20 summit of nations later this year.
"As I've said before," Obama said, "the United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous China, working with us to address global challenges."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MEWkiKDe Rossi not included in Roma's summer training camp squad... as Chelsea set sights on £11m man
Chelsea target Daniele De Rossi has not been included in the squad for Roma's summer training camp in Riscone.
The combative midfielder played for Italy at the Confederations Cup and is set for an extended break after the tournament.
De Rossi, 29, is likely to cost the Blues around £11million to procure and he would take Oriol Romeu's place in the squad.
Not included: Daniele De Rossi was not in the squad for Roma's pre-season training On the ball: De Rossi is a fierce defensive midfielder and good in the air
The Spaniard has been sent on loan to Valencia for a year, and, with John Obi Mikel linked with a Stamford Bridge exit too, Jose Mourinho needs another midfielder.
Brazilian defender Wallace, who has just joined Chelsea, could also move on loan to Roma as part of the potential De Rossi deal.[+]Enlarge Synthesis of the rheumatoid arthritis drug leflunomide (Arava) features a new trifluoromethylation reaction.
Medicinal chemists love to add trifluoromethyl groups to drug candidates. The substituents are roughly the size of a milquetoast methyl, but the C–F bonds make the moieties resistant to metabolism, helping compounds to circulate longer in the body.
Now, chemists led by F. Dean Toste at the University of California, Berkeley, report a new method for adding trifluoromethyl substituents to molecules. Working in collaboration with researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led by James P. O’Neil, the chemists adapted the reaction to make molecules with one 18F in the trifluoromethyl group, creating a new method for making radiolabeled compounds for positron emission tomography (PET).
The reaction uses a tris(pentafluorophenyl)borane catalyst and stoichiometric amounts of a gold complex to generate the trifluoromethylated product (Science 2017, DOI: 10.1126/science.aan1411). The gold complex tolerates a wide range of reactions, including aluminum hydride reduction, Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation, osmium-catalyzed dihydroxylation, periodate-mediated diol cleavage, and palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling—all without rupturing the Au–C bond. The complex even withstands the harsh reaction conditions of aromatic nitration when used to synthesize the rheumatoid arthritis drug leflunomide (Arava).
The Berkeley chemists discovered the trifluoromethylation serendipitously when they were trying to do a different reaction. Observing that they’d made a trifluoromethylated product, they decided to look into the mechanism of this unexpected transformation. They figured out that the trifluoromethyl group loses and regains a fluoride during the course of the reaction—a so-called fluoride rebound mechanism.
“The fluoride rebound made it clear that we had an opportunity to do something new in the radiochemical arena,” says the report’s first author Mark D. Levin. Working with O’Neil’s team, they determined they could use radiolabeled potassium fluoride and a cryptand to swap the 18F into their trifluoromethylated products. At the moment, the radiolabeling reaction is limited to trifluoromethylating sp3 carbons, but the chemists hope to make it work for radiolabeling aromatic trifluoromethyl compounds as well.
“None of us started this project with PET in mind,” Levin says. “But now, because we stopped to investigate an unexpected result, we have a platform from which we can start to develop new tracers, not to mention a new mechanism to help us think about synthetic problems.”The Tesla Model S Nose Cone is arguably one of the cheaper looking components of the vehicle and for many represents an eye sore that just won’t go away.
If you happen to represent the segment of people who believe that their Model S has been beaten with the ugly stick, then fear no more. The masterminds behind the ever so popular Model S Center Console Insert (CCI), Teslaccessories, provides a glimmer of hope in their latest blog entry where they make mention of a potential nose cone enhancement.
“We’re also working on custom nose cone enhancements for the Tesla Model S. Work is proceeding slowly, but we’re making progress toward one or two prototypes that we’ll share with you when they’re ready.”, says Teslaccessories.
We can't wait to see what these guys whip up, but in the meantime we thought we'd share some user posted renditions on how the Model S nose cone can be enhanced. For the creative bunch that have ideas on how to dress up the front of the car, reference our Tesla Model S DIY section that explains how to remove the Tesla Model S nose cone.
How would you change it? @Teslarati
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"McConnell’s move made the Supreme Court seat an issue for the presidential election," Masket wrote. "It motivated conservatives to stay on board with the Republican presidential nominee no matter who it was."
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A lot of conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, had their doubts about a glib, insincere libertine like Trump, especially someone who had a history of donating to Democratic politicians and no record of Republican loyalty. But that empty seat on the Supreme Court, Masket argued, tipped the scales.
"The balance of the Court, particularly on such issues as abortion, was in play," he wrote. "Abandon the nominee, and Hillary Clinton gets to pick the next one, two, or three justices. Stand by the nominee, no matter how repellent, and you get to."
My inclination is to agree with Masket. One of the most interesting things that I found, talking to attendees at both the Republican and Democratic conventions over the summer, was that Republicans often spoke about the Supreme Court and Democrats almost never did. The tendency to cite control of the court was particularly pronounced among Trump-skeptical Republicans I spoke with. Very few of them talked about the economy but the court came up over and over again. The opposite was true when I spoke with Democratic voters.
Trump understood that as long as he promised an anti-choice, anti-labor, anti-environmentalist philosophy when appointing judges, the Republican voter base would squelch its concerns about putting such a thoroughly unqualified man in charge of the nuclear codes and fall in line. Over the summer Trump took the highly unusual step of releasing a short list of judges he would consider, heavily advertising that the list was basically handed to him by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two far-right think tanks.
The move was brilliant precisely because Trump clearly doesn't give two hoots about the Supreme Court or the judiciary in general, despite the fact that he's been involved in a mind-boggling 3,500 lawsuits over the course of his career and had 75 ongoing when he was elected to office. Letting the Federalist Society pick judges for him clears up his schedule to focus on issues that really matter to him, such as the weight of Miss Universe pageant winners and demanding that black Broadway actors apologize for talking back to powerful white men like Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
For the past week and a half, I've been covering what it means for Trump to have the power to fill the Supreme Court seat that was left open after the death of former justice Antonin Scalia in March — and the even more dire possibility that he'll be able to replace one of the aging liberals on the court in the next four years. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 years old and Stephen Breyer is 78; Anthony Kennedy, the most moderate of the court's conservative justices, is 80.)
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It's difficult to deny the conclusion that, in the end, Republican voters are more organized and focused on the long game than Democratic voters, and that ability to focus will pay off. Trump will likely be out in four years — possibly less, if the quickly mounting scandals result in enough legal troubles — but the damage he's likely to do with his court appointments will last years and in some cases generations.
Using the courts to dismantle the right of workers to unionize, for instance, will pay off dividends for Republicans long after Trump leaves the White House in the inevitable cloud of shame and disgrace. Unions can organize and educate voters and represent the only real hope that Democrats have of convincing some of those longed-for white working-class voters to stop voting racial resentments and begin voting their economic self-interest. Republicans get this, which is why they have focused heavily on creative litigation aimed at destroying unions, and now they are on the cusp of dealing some wounding blows.
It's the same story with conservative lawyers' chipping away at campaign-finance laws. Trump will do plenty of damage to both parties, but the free flow of money in politics means that the Republicans will be able to rebuild more easily than the Democrats, who have a much less wealthy donor base. Just as important, elevating the power and voice of the wealthy over everyone else will help Republicans continue to capture more state legislatures and congressional seats, reinforcing the horrific situation we have now, whereby a Republican minority is ruling over a Democratic majority.
This year's election postmortems were tedious before they even began, of course, but please indulge me for a moment: The media's unwillingness to cover the court issues, especially McConnell's unprecedented and unconstitutional holdup of Obama's court appointee, was a major act of malfeasance. Yes, it's hard to keep a story in the news when there aren't new developments to cover. But McConnell's corrupt and anti-democratic behavior was a far more serious story than Hillary Clinton's email management. It should have been extensively covered, and it was not.
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This problem is made all the more serious when you consider the divergent media consumption of conservative Americans and everyone else. Most Americans, moderate or liberal, get their news through the mainstream media. Most conservatives turn to conservative media, like Fox News. Conservative media is better about covering the court issues and keeping them at the forefront of voter minds, and the result was that Republican voters had their votes moved on this issue. For more Democratic-leaning voters, it completely fell out of mind.
The result is that Republican voters treated this election as if it were an urgent one, and millions of voters who turned out for Obama in the previous two presidential cycles couldn't be bothered to cast ballots this time around. Perhaps if they had really understood that this election would determine the direction of the federal |
ineffective at preventing the importation of a number of diseases into the United States, the most glaring example being active tuberculosis (TB).
Judge Robart’s temporary restraining order left standing several sections in President Trump’s January 27, 2017 executive order. In one section, President Trump limited the number of refugees who could arrive in the United States in FY 2017, which ends on September 30, to 50,000.
Robart did not attempt to stop that presidential directive, because every legal expert agrees the president can, on his own authority as defined in the Refugee Act of 1980, limit the number of refugees to any number — even zero. In FY 2016, under President Obama, 84,995 refugees entered the United States.
Two other sections left standing in Judge Robart’s temporary restraining order are specifically relevant to the executive order it is anticipated President Trump will sign on Thursday:
Sec. 3 (a) Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries of Particular Concern The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat. Sec. 4 (a) Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs. The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program, as part of the adjudication process for immigration benefits, to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission.
Sec. 3 (a) directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to determine “information needed from any country” concerning the potential “security or public-safety threat” of refugee applicants as well as visa applicants.
Sec. 4 (a) directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “implement a program … to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission.”
These projects have been going on at both State and Homeland Security for over one month now.
What that means is the Trump administration has likely developed a significant list of objective standards in both security and public health that refugees and other immigrants must meet in order to be granted entry into the United States.
That list is likely to be included in the executive order and will be significantly more resistant to legal challenges.
A surprise to look for will be a number of detailed public health standards as well as security standards.
One possible new standard will be the implementation of a recommendation made recently by a number of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control that all refugee applicants be tested for latent TB, and that no refugee be allowed to enter the country if they test positive for latent TB, or have not successfully completed treatment for latent TB if they have tested positive for it.Get 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
None of the players owned lock, stock and barrel by Liverpool FC will be requesting an audience with John W Henry to extend their stays at Anfield anytime soon - contracts don't come to an end until June 2015.
Here, we take a look at who is in for the long haul and when the first team squad members are likely to call their agents and go for a chat about their future in a red shirt.
That's unless the transfer window is thrown open at Melwood in January!
You can follow all the gossip on who's maybe on for a move by checking our regular Rumour Mill on the Liverpool section of the site.
All contracts end on June 30 of their respective years.
June 2014
Aly Cissokho - The 26-year-old French defender is on loan from Valencia CF in La Liga, and under contract with the Spanish club until 2016.
Victor Moses - A striker who came to Anfield on loan from Chelsea FC in the September 2013. The 22-year-old's spell with the Reds is up at the end of May.
June 2015
Steven Gerrard - The club captain and talisman for some of Liverpool FC's finest hours in recent years will have just turned 35 when his contract is up.
Glen Johnson - The defender, 29, has had some bad luck with injuries in his career but has been a fixture of Liverpool's back four for four years.
Kolo Toure - The Ivorian centre-back signed in the summer on a free transfer. The 32-year-old has won Premier League titles with Arsenal and Manchester City.
Daniel Agger - The Danish centre back, 28, is vice-captain of the club and has played with the Liver bird on his chest for nearly eight years.
Jordan Henderson - Despite what some former Manchester United manager might say, Henderson, 23, has enjoyed a consistent season for the Reds as a midfielder.
Brendan Rodgers - Being a manager of a Premier League club can be a precarious business. 40-year-old Ulsterman Rodgers must deliver to stay in the dugout
June 2016
Sebastian Coates - The 23-year-old Uruguayan centre back is still staking a claim for a regular place in the Liverpool side.
Jose Enrique - The Spanish defender, 27 has been solid at the back on occasion, but hasn't managed to graduate into Spain's national side of superstars.
Martin Skrtel - The Slovakian centre-back skippers his national side. This season the 28-year-old has produced some outstanding performances in a red shirt.
Brad Jones - The Australian goalkeeper, 31, came to the Reds from Middlesbrough FC in 2010
June 2017
Lucas Leiva - The boy from Brazil, 26, has been at Anfield for more than six years and after a difficult start firmly established himself in the first team as a midfielder.
Mamadou Sakho - A 23-year-old French international and newest member of the squad is still settling into life here on Merseyside.
Martin Kelly - The Whiston-born right back, 23, is still coming back from a long spell on the sidelines with injury
Joe Allen - The 23-year-old followed the manager from Swansea when he signed for Liverpool FC as a midfielder in August 2012.
June 2018
Luis Suarez - He faced the wrath of the manager when he openly flirted with other clubs during the summer, and comes with some complex baggage, but the 26-year-old Uruguayan striker's goalscoring genius has seen him shortlisted for the FIFA's Ballon d'Or this year.
Simon Mignolet - A deal worth an estimated £10m brought Liverpool's most expensive goalkeeper to Anfield in the shape of the 25-year-old Belgian who quickly established himself as the number one between the sticks.
Daniel Sturridge - Off to a flyer this season for the 24-year-old striker, who has enjoyed a career renaissance under Brendan Rodgers since arriving at Liverpool in January 2013.
Philippe Coutinho - The Brazilian playmaker has found his feet in an attacking midfield role for the Reds and at 21 is one of the club's brightest prospects for the future.
Tiago Ilori - A 20-year-old London-born Portuguese, the centre back is still waiting to make his first team debut.
Luis Alberto - The 21-year-old striker is still finding his feet with the Reds and can look forward to building on his number of first team appearances
Iago Aspas - There are those who still need convincing of Aspas, the 26-year-old forward who joined the Reds fro Celta Vigo in June 2013.
Raheem Sterling - a promising young prospect. the 18-year-old striking right winger has already featured in the England side.Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
From the February 2016 issue
While poltroons, charlatans, earnest amateurs, and fuzzy idealists vie for the presidency, in Southern California, Dan Gurney drafts proposals for a better internal-combustion engine. No, it’s not 1964, and we’re no longer stumping to send Mr. Gurney to Washington. But the 84-year-old nonpareil racer-cum-inventor refuses to retire. His latest work is the patented design of an internal-combustion engine intended for production vehicles.
With the pistons and the connecting rods rotated 90 degrees, the MC4S’s two cylinders drive individual crankshafts that rotate in opposite directions.
Called the MC4S, for moment-canceling four-stroke, it’s intended to be smoother and more reliable than the internal-combustion status quo. The design prioritizes durability, efficiency, and simplicity above power, and yet the engine still achieves the kind of performance you’d expect coming from a guy with 51 major racing victories. Gurney proposes that the MC4S engine could be used in everything from helicopters to cars; a motorcycle is the obvious first application, though.
The breakthrough feature is in the bottom of Gurney’s two-cylinder, twin-crankshaft engine. Counterweights attached to the cranks cancel primary shaking forces as usual. Rotating the cranks in opposite directions eliminates the undesirable gyroscopic moment (rotating force) that occurs when the entire engine is rapidly rolled for cornering, hence the moment-canceling name. While this benefit is a boon to motorcycles, it doesn’t apply to four-wheeled vehicles because their engines roll only a few degrees in corners.
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The engine displaces 110 cubic inches, or 1800 cubic centimeters, with a broad 5.0-inch bore and a short 2.8-inch stroke. For the sake of durability, the average piston speed will be limited to 4200 feet per minute at 9000 rpm. Gurney also suggests that the patent could be adapted to four-, six-, and eight-cylinder designs.
Simulations predict the two-cylinder would make more than 250 horsepower, surprising Gurney’s team. “We didn’t think the numbers would be as large, but the same simulations have worked on our other engines within 2 percent,” he says.
Gurney plans to build five prototypes, the first of which should be running on a test stand by July. If the engine lives up to its theoretical potential, Gurney hopes to license the design to a manufacturer. “We certainly have no idea how to produce anything at a reasonable price,” he admits.
Angle in the Dangle
The counter-rotating crankshafts get the headlines, but the MC4S’s impressive power is a product of its cylinder-head design. Gurney studied more than 200 valve-configuration variations to find the best arrangement. The intake ports taper to accelerate airflow, as is common in racing and high-performance engines. An optimum amount of squish—the inward movement of the air-fuel mixture toward the center of the chamber as the piston approaches top-dead center—improves combustion. Cam phasers tweak the timing of valve events to balance low-end pull with top-end vigor. Computer simulation suggests that the idealized cylinder head leads to a 15-percent increase in the amount of airflow versus a conventional head. With that design, the engine should be good for 262 horsepower. The simulation predicts an output of 189 horsepower with a conventional head.
History Lesson
Then editor-in-chief David E. Davis Jr. launched the campaign to elect Dan Gurney president of the United States with his July 1964 column. While popular with our people, Gurney never appeared on any ballots. He was only 33 years old at the time, and thus ineligible to be president.Following Mobile Movie Theater Shooting, Folks Want More Police Patrol Copyright by WKRG - All rights reserved Video
It's been a week since the shooting at a west Mobile movie theater injured four teenagers. Folks say the shooting happened because too many teenagers use the parking lot as a popular hangout other than actually seeing a movie. The city's Public Safety Committee will be meeting with Police Chief James Barber this week to discuss the shooting. Meanwhile, we went to the theater to ask folks what they think should be done about it.
Despite what happened here Christmas night, folks say they still come to this movie theater on Schillinger Road.
"Yeah I still would. I mean I don't think it's something that's going to happen all the time," says James Johnson.
"Absolutely, I've been living around here for years and there's been no problem and this is just an isolated incident," says Darla Rester.
Witnesses say they heard an argument break out outside the theater and that's when two people opened fire, striking four teenagers, two of which were only 14 years old.
It seems to be a Christmas tradition—these are police patrolling the theater near Government Street last Christmas. People say police should be there more often.
"I know they don't have the manpower to do it all year, but during the holidays especially just placing one police patrol car here or something," says Johnson.
"There should be more police patrolling. When there are a lot of young people gathering around and you know, anything could happen," says Rester.
When our cameras got there, we were met by a rowdy crowd of mostly young teens, many of whom were not there to see a movie. Folks say that's the root of the problem.
"Parent should be aware of what their children are doing because it seems like this theater has become a drop off point where the kids just go and hang out, which, they do need somewhere to hang out but at the same time, if you're going to be at the theater, you need to buy a ticket and go and see the movie," says "Carla".
Three days after Christmas, 17-year-old Johnny Vail was named a person of interest and arrested on unrelated charges that pertained to two other shootings.
Police are still looking for other suspects.Note: I’m overwhelmed by the response this blog has gotten! If your comment has been trapped in moderation, sorry about that–I work full time and didn’t expect my blog would get this level of attention. I’ve left some particularly atrocious comments up because I feel they prove my point. So, survivors, trigger warnings ahead.
There’s a subculture with a healthy Internet presence, centered around passionate advocacy for a particular ideological cause. It has several popular male leaders. These men enjoy comfortable jobs, speaking engagements and publishing credits. That places them in a position of power in this subculture, and they’ve got the dedicated followers to prove it.
And then these leaders are accused of abuse: sustained sexual harassment, even rape, all directed at women, an under-represented demographic in this community. Rather than treat these allegations with respect and serious inquiry, there is backlash. These women, people say, are sluts. They are liars. They exaggerate. They can’t take a joke. They shouldn’t have been drinking. Their allies are traitors. They should be sued.
Did you think of Sovereign Grace Ministries? ABWE? The homeschool and Quiverfull movements? Maybe even the Catholic Church?
Reasonable guesses all but you’d be wrong. The subculture in question is the mainstream atheist/skeptic movement, as it exists in the United States. I’m referring, specifically, to the backlash now facing Karen Stollznow, Carrie Poppy, and other survivors, in addition to their allies, like PZ Myers.
For the uninitiated: the American atheist community has faced accusations of entrenched sexism for some time. You might remember Rebecca Watson and ElevatorGate. Recently, these accusations ramped up again after several women came forward to report serious allegations of rape, assault, and harassment perpetuated by atheist men at popular conventions. These men include Michael Shermer and Ben Radford, among others.
You might also guess that a community centered around the pursuit of reason would react…reasonably, and treat these allegations seriously. But you’d be wrong about that too. Shermer et al enjoy devoted followings and these followers have reacted viciously to the suggestion that their heroes could be capable of abuse.
I have never been particularly involved with the American atheist, humanist or skeptic communities. I sided with Rebecca Watson during ElevatorGate, but the extent of my participation in that fiasco is a single blog post. The backlash Watson received made me wary of any further interaction with this community; I didn’t think that as a feminist, and especially as a survivor of sexual assault, I could share my experiences without finding myself the object of harassment. And after my experiences with Christian fundamentalism, I felt I’d really hit a lifetime quota for that sort of abuse.
But then this week happened. About a month ago, I appeared as a guest on God Discussion, which is run by Al Stefanelli and Deborah Beeksma, along with other members of Homeschoolers Anonymous. I didn’t realize then that Stefanelli has a reputation for being an anti-feminist blowhard. If I’d known, I would have never agreed to appear on his show. His views only became known to me after I read his latest screed against PZ Myers. I felt then, and still feel now, that Stefanelli’s post showed a deep ignorance of how rape and assault survivors respond to trauma, and that his attack on Myers was unwarranted.
And so that’s exactly what I said on Stefanelli’s Facebook. I didn’t accuse Shermer or anyone else of rape. I said, simply, that I was disturbed by Stefanelli’s post for the reasons I described above.
Cue the abuse. I got immediately swarmed by atheist anti-feminist men and the situation escalated until one of them threatened to kill me. Several times, in fact. Al’s since deleted the threats, but as far as I know, he still acknowledges that the threats were made. The person making the threats is possibly unwell; he also told me he’s a genetically engineered soldier. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that someone repeatedly threatened to kill me.
Which seems reasonable–unless you’re EllenBeth Wachs. Wachs, who identifies herself as the past president of the Florida Humanists Association, told me I’d brought the death threats upon myself for being so easy to troll. She repeated those statements on Twitter.
I’m not sure why Wachs is so convinced the person was joking; there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that’s the case. I have no idea if I was being trolled or not, but ultimately this doesn’t matter: making death threats crosses a line. It’s never funny. It’s totally inappropriate behavior and if Wachs was in the least bit invested in actual rationality, rather than the fevered defense of Michael Shermer, she would have acknowledged that.
But she hasn’t. She still thinks it’s hilarious that someone threatened to kill me and the abuse didn’t end there. Shocked that I called her behavior sociopathic, she demanded an apology–for obvious reasons, she didn’t get it. And that’s when she name-dropped my boss and threatened to call him.
Summary: she laughed at me for getting threats, told me I deserved it, then threatened my job.
And this is from an atheist. Not a fundamentalist Christian. An atheist. Someone who calls herself rational.
Her definition of rationality is as creative as Ken Ham’s definition of science.
Wachs’ abuse is just a highlight of the abusive tweets I got from other atheists, mostly men, over a 24 hour period. And let me reiterate: I’ve never actually accused Shermer or anyone else of committing a crime. My offense? I suggested atheists take rape allegations more seriously.
This isn’t reason in action, it’s fundamentalism. If your response to the suggestion that you take rape seriously is threaten and abuse me, then you are not rational. If your response to anyone making these allegations is to blame them for their own trauma, you are not rational. If you immediately assume that a woman who says she’s been raped, assaulted or harassed is lying, you are not rational. If you refuse to believe even the possibility that someone you admire is capable of assault, then not only are you irrational, you are actively protecting a toxic subculture.
I grew up with this bullshit. I went to school with this bullshit. I got over this bullshit years ago. My patience for it is buried right alongside my faith in God.
I will not participate in any movement that attacks survivors. I will not swear allegiance to a set of leaders at the cost of my ability to think critically. I will not do either of these things because these are the trappings of fundamentalism and I rejected fundamentalism years ago at no small personal cost.
Over the last 24 hours I’ve heard that I’m milking this for attention, that I’m out for a career as a professional victim. Let me tell you something: if I really wanted to be a professional victim I already have enough material to last me two lifetimes. I experienced religious abuse. I survived a sexual assault. I have an incurable genetic disease. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for years.
And the only reason that I am stable, gainfully employed and yes, happy, is because I have rejected victimhood. I am not a victim. I am a survivor. I do not owe you anything.
I commented on Stefanelli’s article because I know what it’s like to be attacked when you finally come forward about sexual assault. If your response to that is to wish me dead or otherwise abuse me, that says more about you than it does about me. It tells me that you’re fanatical. You’ve bought into this idea of culture war and just like the Christian fundamentalists I knew, you’re willing to sacrifice the vulnerable in order to protect your movement. If survivors have become collateral damage for your cause, then something has gone terribly, tragically wrong.
So count me out. I’d rather stay here in no man’s land than fight in the trenches on either side of this war. And right now, I feel like I’m stranded in the middle and both sides are trying to gun me down.
But you know what?
That means I’ve done something right. When you speak truth to power, expect power to shout you down. Or at least, it’ll try. I don’t intend to let it win.
See you in the middle.
AdvertisementsWATCH: Pastor Rick Warren's Orwellian 'Doublespeak' on Marriage Equality
Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor and founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. — the eighth-largest church in the U.S., according to On Top Magazine — tried to dance around providing a logical basis for his opposition to marriage equality when asked about it on CNN last night.
Warren sat down with Piers Morgan to discuss weight loss, religion, tolerance, and same-sex marriage on Piers Morgan Tonight Friday.
"How can you espouse genuine equality if you don't allow gay people the same rights to get married as straight people?" asked Morgan after Warren lamented what he claimed is the changed definition of "tolerance," to mean that one must agree with another person completely in order to be tolerant of that person's views.
“I'd like to reposition it this way,” Warren replied, sidestepping Morgan's question. "I'm more against the redefinition of the term marriage than anything else. I don't think other groups get the opportunity to redefine a term. For instance, if a Muslim says this is a term we use and all of the sudden I take that term and mean it for me, well, that's not right. I think historically, around the world, the vast majority of people would say marriage means one man and one woman in a commitment. Don't take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.”
"It's not against the law for you to love anybody — a man or a woman," continued Warren, apparently unaware of the frequency with which gay and lesbian people are fired, excommunicated from their homes, families, and churches, and often beaten and harassed for their perceived or actual gender identity or sexual orientation. "It's not criminal, at least, it shouldn't be. But when you start taking a term..."
"But that term is from the Bible," noted Morgan. "There are many things in the Bible which simply today wouldn't fly. I mean, if you were to look at me in a lustful way, or any woman in this audience, according to the Bible, you should be stoned to death. Now clearly we don't do that anymore, so there are a number of things in the Bible which seem very anachronistic."
Citing the number of faith-based scholars who have "evolved" in their thinking to support marriage equality and LGBT rights, Morgan asked the pastor if he could imagine a time when the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations would say, "actually, you know what, real equality means everyone has the same right to get married, gay or straight."
"I cannot see that happening in my life," replied Warren. "I fear the disapproval of God more than I fear your disapproval or the disapproval of society."
Watch the CNN segment below.Media playback is not supported on this device Managers react to Mourinho sacking
One of the most successful members of the Premier League "managers' union" left a hole when he was sacked by Chelsea on Thursday.
Jose Mourinho, 52, left the Blues seven months after he led them to their third Premier League title.
Chelsea, who finished eight points clear of the rest last season and won the League Cup, have lost nine of their 16 league games so far and are 16th in the table, one point above the relegation places.
Mourinho's peers have been giving their thoughts on the Portuguese.
Most have been "surprised" by Blues' decision to sack their most successful manager in history, who won three league titles, the FA Cup and three League Cups over two spells.
Premier League managers react
Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal:
"It was a big surprise for me, something that I did not expect.
"He is a fantastic manager with a record that nobody has in this football world, but it is still possible.
"The main thing is, first, the results, and secondly the chemistry between the players, the manager and his staff. I cannot say what was happening in Chelsea, but I was very surprised."
Manchester City's Manuel Pellegrini, who had a war of words with Mourinho and was twice referred to as "Pellegrino":
Manuel Pellegrini (right) and Jose Mourinho did not always see eye-to-eye
"The Premier League loses an important manager. Maybe a manager that I disagree with on a lot of things, but to think in a different way - he is not my enemy.
"It is a bad thing for the Premier League but I hope he can have a good experience."
"I think the Premier League will miss him, of course. Me, I don't have to miss anyone, but I prefer the Premier League with Mourinho than without Mourinho."
Norwich's Alex Neil:
"The power that players have is probably more than it's ever been.
"What has happened at Chelsea has typified where the game is at this present time. Clubs have got guys who are commodities worth millions. It's easier to get rid of one than 20.
"There's the team who won the Premier League to a team that is nowhere near the standard. The manager and players are the same. Something's not quite right."
Sunderland's Sam Allardyce in the Evening Standard:
"The news did come as a surprise to me.
"I accept that none of us managers can go on for ever if we're not getting the results that are expected, but I didn't think it would be this week - or just before the heaviest period of the season when the games come thick and fast.
"You change a manager just before that - I suppose only time will tell if it has the right effect or not. Even although the results haven't been good in recent weeks, Chelsea haven't been playing too badly.
West Ham boss Slaven Bilic (left): "Mourinho going shows nobody is safe."
"It's like us all, though, when the goals dry up, you don't win football matches, whether or not you dominate possession. That seems to be Chelsea's ultimate problem and while they generally see more of the ball than their opponents and have more attempts at goal, because they don't appear to have prolific scorers any more, they're struggling."
On being accused by Mourinho of playing 19th century football in 2014, when he managed West Ham:
"When you play 19th century football and get a result, it keeps you in a job. If you play 21st century football and keep losing, you're out of a job."
West Ham's Slaven Bilic:
"I can only say about Mourinho that I'm definitely surprised. When you are the best in the business you have many people who would like you to fail.
"It's a big loss for the league and Premier League is going to miss him. I really hope he is not lost because we'll miss him a lot.
"Nobody knows if Jose would have turned it around. Chelsea are in an uncomfortable situation, but they are not panicking.
"I do believe he would have turned it. It's not the only time this happened to a big club. It happened to Borussia Dortmund [under Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp] last season.
"Mourinho going shows nobody is safe. You have to enjoy your job, do your best and work hard for the club you are in"
On rumours that Chelsea players might have intentionally underperformed:
"I don't believe any player will deliberately have a bad training, not to mention a bad game. They are top professional players."
West Brom's Tony Pulis:
"He's the greatest manager in this league at the moment.
"We have managed against each other for a bit. He has been very good to me. I am disappointed. I thought they would see it out. When managers don't do well, it is lovely to see clubs stick with them and then see the manager get through that sticky patch.
"I am a little bit disappointed Chelsea have not stuck with him. But who am I to criticise them? The big thing is that at all the top clubs in Europe, managers will be looking over their shoulder because one of the great managers is now available again.
Mourinho in the Premier League Season Managed Won Drew Lost Win % 2004-05 38 29 8 1 76.32 2005-06 38 29 4 5 76.32 2006-07 38 24 11 3 63.16 2007-08 6 3 2 1 50 2013-14 38 25 7 6 65.79 2014-15 38 26 9 3 68.42 2015-16 16 4 3 9 25
"The times I have spent with him, he is a different character. He is very funny and has a good sense of humour. He is good company.
"My little grandson came to the game last year. Mourinho was kicking around with him before the game and chasing after him.
"As a Premier League you want the best managers, the best foreign players and the best English players. He is, without doubt, one of the best managers. Losing him is not good for the league."
Bournemouth's Eddie Howe:
"I was surprised and disappointed when I heard about Jose Mourinho. It's a sad occasion when anyone loses their job."It seems I just got finished talking about one zombie short and now we’re going to be mobbed by lots more. Like a horde of the flesh eating, living dead it’s the Zombie Short Film Festival! Going out for a night of flesh eating undead shorts, followed by drinking and taking place in the mighty city of Toronto. I dare you to find something better to do with your time.
It will cost $20 Canadian to enter your film, where it will be viewed by a jury of 4 living people. Those films that get selected will appear in the festival and be eligable for a prize, plus the awarding of the soon to be coveted Zomb-D’Or.
The Zombie Short Film Festival is the brain-child of Jim Taylor and Cory Laffin, two dudes who live in Toronto. We are hoping to hold it at the Revue Cinema, on Roncesvalles Avenue, in Toronto. Our target date is Friday, October 30th. I talked with Jim Taylor not to long ago and got the skinny on what is going on. There are still some details that need to be put together but it looks like this is coming along nicely!
The ZSFF if accepting submissions, most likely in DVD format, up until October 1st of this year. If you are a filmmaker, an aspiring filmmaker, or a friend or loved one to a filmmaker, please tell them about our festival! We are accepting any and all submissions at this point, from any place.
The criteria is as follows:
It must be a short film with a maximum running time of 20 minutes. It must involve zombies.
If you are interested in making a submission, have any questions, or wish to volunteer your time and/or services to this noble film festival, please contact us at zombieshortfilmfestival@gmail.com.
I had a few questions for the guys organizing this and here’s what Jim had to say.
TC: What prompted you to start a zombie themed short film festival?
Jim: Like you, Cory and I also have a lasting love affair with zombies in film. We were discussing this over beers in my kitchen, one night, when the subject turned to zombie short films we saw or worked on. That’s when it occurred to us that pretty much every film maker we know has made a zombie short film…and there was no zombie short film festival to show them. So we decided to fill the niche.
TC: How many films do you expect to have entered?
Jim: Well, from the looks of things…hundreds! I put up a website and a twitter account about a week ago, and the thing is kind of exploding. The plan is to have a jury adjudicate each entry, and then we’ll screen the finalists at the theatre on Oct. 30. The audience will have a chance to vote for their favorites, and then the winner will be announced at the gala.
TC: What venue(s) will they be playing at?
Jim: I’m hoping it will be the Revue Cinema, on Roncesvalles Ave. I’m still in talks with them, though, so nothing’s official.
TC: Have either of you ever lived through a zombie uprising? If so, any tips?
Jim: So far I’ve been lucky, but I’m one of those people that always thinks about zombie attacks, and how to best survive them. When you’ve had as many boring jobs as I’ve had, it can be pretty amusing to come up with contingency plans for when the undead rise to feast on the living. I think the best thing to do, should it happen, is stock up on food, get to the highest point you can, and always carry a crowbar.
TC: Any recommendations on food, lodging and parking for the festival?
Jim: If everything goes the way I hope, and we get the Revue Cinema, the public will have no shortage of great restaurants and places to stay. Roncesvalles Ave. has tons of each. It’s the best street in Toronto!
TC: Will there be any actual zombies present?
Jim: How could I call it a Zombie Short Film Festival is there wasn’t?
If you’re going to be anywhere near Toronto on October 30th, this sounds like a sure bet for an amazing time.
[tags]zombies, short film festival, toronto, movies[/tags]
Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing SquidBrent Bogseth, the owner of the former Regulus Cafe, was charged in connection with the death of his wife, Kimberly. [DNAinfo/Heather Cherone; Facebook/Mike Kessler]
PORTAGE PARK — The family of a woman who owned Regulus Coffee House in Portage Park and whose husband has been charged with her murder launched an online fundraiser in an effort to get custody of her 18-month-old son.
Brent Bogseth, who moved to Grand Junction, Mich., with his family after the cafe at 6032 W. Irving Park Road closed last year, is being held without bail after being charged with murder in connection with the death of his wife, Kimberly Cook Bogseth.
Brent Bogseth is being held without bail after being charged with murder in connection with his wife Kimberly's death. [Van Buren County, Michigan, Sheriff's Office]
Kimberly Bogseth died from blunt-force trauma most likely caused by a hammer, according to the medical examiner's report.
Brent and Kimberly Bogseth, who were high school sweethearts at Taft High School, had an 18-month-old son, Gage, who is now in the care of Michigan authorities, family friends said.
Heather Cherone discusses the case:
The fundraiser — launched by Kimberly Bogseth's mother Cheryl and sister Kelly — is an effort to raise $30,000 to pursue custody of Gage and cover legal costs as well as the cremation of her body and any of Gage's needs.
"Kimberly was not only a mother, but a daughter, a sister and a friend to many," Kelly Cook wrote. "She will be greatly missed."
Brent Bogseth was arrested Sept. 11 in Chicago with his son, police said. His wife's cellphone and a hammer were found in his truck, Michigan police said.
As of Tuesday morning, more than $1,400 had been raised.
Kimberly Bogseth's body was discovered Sept. 9, about two blocks from the home she shared with her husband and son in a rural area after she was reported missing Sept. 1.
The search for Kimberly Bogseth, 32, went viral on Reddit after a series of Facebook posts by Brent Bogseth and other friends of the couple caught the attention of Internet sleuths who tried to determine whether she had left her family willingly or been harmed.
Brent Bogseth told his wife's friends and family that she left him and their son to move to California. He filed for divorce several days after police said he killed her, according to court documents.
Brent Bogseth's next court date is scheduled for Oct. 14, Michigan authorities said.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 25: Actor James Franco attends the 'This Is The End' Special Screening at the Charlotte Street Hotel on June 25, 2013 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
The "Com |
issue with.
1.25 They do not appreciate purchasing halal certified food without their knowledge, given that many halal certified products are not labelled as such. Without a label, consumers cannot easily determine at the point of sale whether a product is halal certified.
1.26 The main purpose of certification is to ensure Muslims that the products are permissible to consume. If Muslims are not able to determine at the point of sale which foods are halal certified, why bother with certification? As one submitter said, it “causes one to ponder what the point of the certification is if the consumers requiring halal certified products do not know it is halal certified.”[12]
1.27 Many submissions were concerned that the cost of halal certification was being passed on to them when they purchased products. While there are those who argue that the costs cannot possibly be passed on to the consumer because the cost is so minimal when spread across millions of products, the point remains that the manufacturer paid money to a halal certifier, and some consumers may not wish to support in any way a manufacturer that has given money to a particular organisation, be it religious or not.
1.28 If companies were paying the Catholic Church for Catholic certification, and then not telling consumers about it, one can imagine that many Australians would be up in arms about it.
1.29 Australians want the freedom to support causes and ideologies of their choosing. They want to support schools, charities and businesses that represent their concerns and they want to be able to make informed choices.
1.30 That means proper and transparent labelling and a clear indication of how money collected through any certification scheme is utilised.
1.31 Another consideration is where certification revenue goes. Some Australians may prefer not to support companies that sell certified products if the certification revenue is sent overseas. For example, an Australian halal certifier – the Islamic Coordinating Council of Victoria (ICCV) – is funding a mosque and orphanage complex in Indonesia, even though the Deputy Chair of the ICCV had initially said that the money stays in Australia.[13]
1.32 Halal certificated products need to be labelled as such on the packaging in order for consumers to make an informed choice at the point of sale. They may still choose to purchase the product or they may not, but the main point is that the choice is theirs to make.
Consumers want information
1.33 Increasingly, consumers want to be informed in detail about the products they purchase. This includes the country-of-origin, fair trade, sustainability, where ingredients were grown and where the product was manufactured, among other considerations.
1.34 Ethical slaughter is an important issue for many Australians. The outrage stemming from the live export trade a few years ago demonstrates that people care about animal welfare and the method of slaughter undertaken. This was also reflected in a number of submissions. These people would like the opportunity to purchase meat that has not been slaughtered in a way that they do not agree with. How many of these Australians are unknowingly purchasing and eating meat that has been slaughtered in a way that they may regard as unethical?
1.35 Therefore, wanting to know about certification is just another piece of information that consumers would like to be able to access easily.
Double standards
1.36 Halal certification has caused a number of people in the community to question why all Australian consumers are expected to support Islamic religious causes in the purchase of their everyday grocery products.
1.37 It seems a legitimate question to ask and yet, for daring to voice that concern, some Australians have been labelled racists and Islamophobes. As Halal Choices argued in their submission, when you choose to buy Australian products, no one labels you a racist. Yet when you choose not to buy halal products, you are labelled a racist and a bigot.[14] The double standard in how consumers are treated is nonsensical.
Confusion for consumers
1.38 With a lack of certification labelling, particularly with halal certification, consumers are left to contact the manufacturer or supermarket directly to confirm whether a product is certified or if a company has paid for certification.
1.39 Astonishingly, it can be hard to find a simple answer to such a simple question.
1.40 Some companies are unwilling to provide confirmation, others do not know the certification status of their products and some provide conflicting information.
1.41 One submitter explained his efforts to find out whether products were halal certified.[15] He contacted different Woolworths stores about their meat products. Staff in the first and second stores were not able to confirm whether meat they sold was halal certified but they believed all chicken products were halal certified. The second store’s halal certificate for chicken in the deli had gone missing. Staff in both stores were not able to produce any lamb, beef or chicken products that were guaranteed to not be halal certified.
1.42 At the third Woolworths store, staff said that it was illegal to sell halal products without a logo (which is not the case) so no meat in the store was halal certified except for those with a certification logo. Yet no meat products appeared to have a logo. A deli worker then said that the chicken was halal, but there was no halal certificate.
1.43 Woolworths customer service gave the consumer even more mixed messages. The first customer representative confirmed via phone that all Woolworths branded meat was halal certified but it was not possible to confirm this for other branded meat products. Then a second customer representative stated via email that Woolworths branded meat was not halal certified while apparently also indicating that Woolworths branded meat is often produced in abattoirs that are halal accredited:
Some of the meat and poultry that is sold at Woolworths comes from abattoirs that are halal accredited and these sites do use pre-stunning as part of the slaughter process. Woolworths is not halal accredited and therefore meat and poultry sold in our stores is not recognised as halal.[16]
1.44 Finally, a local independent butcher told the consumer that over 90 per cent of chicken, lamb and beef in Australia was halal slaughtered.
1.45 Such mixed messages do not assist any Australian consumer, be it a Muslim consumer or someone not wishing to purchase halal certified products.
Products that don’t require certification
1.46 Halal Australia states that “All foods are considered halal” except for pork/pork by-products, blood, alcoholic drinks, animals improperly slaughtered, carnivorous animals, birds of prey and particular other animals and “foods contaminated with any of the above products including all meat, fat and biproducts such as emulsifier and gelatin.”[17] This includes plants and fish.[18]
1.47 So there are a wide range of products that are already permissible (halal) for Muslims to consume without certification being necessary.
1.48 The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), believed to be one of the country’s largest halal certifiers, adds that “some products are naturally Halal and do not require verification”. AFIC said that lists are available for Muslim consumers, yet provided no further detail to the committee about where these lists are and how widely they are made available to Muslims in Australia.[19]
1.49 The Kashrut Authority indicated that for kosher certified food:
It is a matter of knowing the facts about the ingredients in the product and how the product is made. Sometimes those factors are so obvious that the product is kosher and we publish that in our guides... We provide that service free to the community.[20]
1.50 More effort needs to be made by Islamic certifiers and bodies to inform Muslims within Australia that there are a number of products they can consume; and to provide this information freely, without resorting to certification being paid by manufacturers.
Comparison with kosher
1.51 While the kosher system does have the challenge of dealing with fake kosher labels, the kosher authorities in Australia told the committee about its efforts to ensure as many products as possible were accurately labelled, and that Jewish communities were informed of kosher products via apps, websites and printed information.
1.52 In supermarkets in populated Jewish communities (mainly in Melbourne and Sydney), kosher labels appear on the shelves of kosher certified products, if not on the product packaging. Some supermarkets also have a separate kosher section or aisle.[21]
Religious certification
1.53 The committee’s report states that no religious ritual is involved in kosher or halal slaughter. The kosher authorities stated that no prayer or words are uttered during kosher slaughter.[22] However, the name of Allah is invoked during halal slaughter by the slaughterman when he says “bismillah” (‘in the name of Allah’) as he cuts the animal’s throat. This was confirmed by Mr Wasim Raza, Manager of AFIC.[23] There is clearly a religious connotation to this so to deny any religious element during halal slaughter is not accurate.
1.54 While there are those, such as Mr El-Mouelhy’s Halal Certification Authority,[24] who say there is no discrimination and claim that Islam allows women to perform halal slaughter, the reality is different. Mr Raza (from AFIC) confirmed that no females take part in it at all:
All I can say at this stage is that currently there are no females, in Australia or overseas or in Muslim countries, that are involved in this practice.[25]
1.55 The exclusion of women and non-Muslims from participation in the slaughter process in many of our major abattoirs raises questions of discrimination, particularly when evidence suggests the majority of meat consumed domestically by non-Muslims is slaughtered in accordance with halal requirements.
Halal certification: lack of regulation, transparency, accountability
1.56 The committee heard examples of a lack of regulation and transparency in halal certification systems, and improvements that could be made in both the export and domestic markets.
Export market
1.57 I agree with the committee’s conclusions that improvements need to be made to the halal certification system of exported products. The current system – where importing countries set the rules – can lead to non-tariff barriers to trade such as monopolistic situations and Australian companies having to get multiple certifications.
1.58 The AFGC said that a number of their members – particularly meat processing companies – have raised these issues with them:
In facilitating trade we should be mindful of avoiding those sorts of monopoly situations, because that can quickly become a barrier or it can quickly impose costs that are unreasonable. That has absolutely been raised with us. A flow-on issue that is raised is that the same company and the same processing plant can be required to get two, three or four different halal certifications.[26]
1.59 This was echoed by a group meat processors, according to additional documents sent to the committee, which were not mentioned in the committee’s report. Their concerns are significant, because these meat processors product a large majority of beef and are at the forefront of halal export certification in Australia.
1.60 This group of meat processors – including some of the largest processors in the country – state that the current halal certification system is “not transparent...demonstrates inconsistent application of halal standards...is high cost to Australian industry...does not have the confidence of consumers of halal beef” and “is causing market access failures.”[27] Further documents illustrate the confusing web of agreements, audits and arrangements that are currently in place.
1.61 They “call on the Australian Government to initiate urgent reform of the system by which Australian beef is halal certified”, including greater oversight by the Australian Government.[28]
1.62 Making improvements to the export certification system is a sensitive issue, given that it involves overseas governments. However, this should not deter our nation from seeking improvements in this system. Encouraging our government to discuss these matters with other governments, even as part of regular trade negotiations and agreements, could be a possible solution, as suggested by the AFGC and the Export Council of Australia.[29]
Domestic market
1.63 I agree with the conclusions made by the committee regarding the lack of regulation and potential for exploitation within the domestic halal certification system.
1.64 Mr Wasim Raza said that “the biggest issue that is facing this halal certification is local certification.”[30]
1.65 Certification relies on the integrity of the certifier and the confidence that consumers have in the certifier’s credentials. Yet very little information is available about the certifiers themselves; and the current domestic system is confusing, lacks structure and transparency, and is unaccountable to any overarching authority or body. None of this helps Muslim and non-Muslim consumers have confidence in halal certification.
Basic questions unanswered
1.66 Even some of the most basic questions about halal certification could not be answered by halal certifiers or other witnesses.
1.67 These included questions as to how many certifiers there are in Australia, how many abattoirs permit halal slaughter, the lower and upper ranges of certification fees and what percentage of meat and non-meat products are certified in the domestic market.
1.68 In contrast to this confusion, the kosher authorities and organic organisations were able to clearly answer most of these questions for their respective systems. For example, after this inquiry, we know how many organic and kosher certifiers there are in Australia yet we still don’t have a number of halal certifiers that serve the domestic market.
1.69 Also, among the Australian Muslim community, there are differences regarding the most basic elements of certification, including the definition of ‘halal’ and whether reversible stunning is permitted under Islam or not.[31]
Lack of transparency
1.70 As mentioned earlier, little is known about many halal certifiers in Australia. Some do make an effort to provide information to the public via websites and other methods, yet overall there is still a lack of information about processes, credentials, audits and accountability.
1.71 The AFGC encouraged certifiers to do more to improve transparency:
When you are dealing in the consumer space, it is in their interest to take those steps. That would be things like: who they are—are they not-for-profit? Are they a commercial entity? What are the standards, competencies, skills and processes followed?; greater clarity on how the certification is undertaken; and; particularly; if they have charitable status, tax-deductible status, to be quite open about revenue and spending and where the money goes.[32]
1.72 For those certifiers who are charities, there should be even more transparency:
If you have a government imprimatur or you have a charitable status confirmed by government, then it is reasonable to say there should be a higher standard of transparency.[33]
1.73 Two of what are believed to be the largest halal certifiers are registered charities (AFIC and the Supreme Islamic Council of Halal Meat in Australia).
1.74 Surely in the current environment, more information, rather than less, could help counter any suspicion and confusion in consumers’ minds.
Lack of oversight, standards and qualifications
1.75 There is no overarching body that oversees or accredits halal certification in Australia, and there is no national halal standard which certifiers are accountable to.
1.76 In contrast, organic certification has the Organic Industry Standards and Certification Council which oversees the national organic standard.[34] The Executive Council of Australian Jewry presented a submission on behalf of kosher certifiers, and the Association of Kashrut Organisations is an international body which ensures its members maintain kosher certification standards.[35]
1.77 Additionally, Mr Ayan spoke critically of the qualifications of some certifiers and their staff. He said that “most organisations have got a very low educational and professional profile” and claimed that some the leading figures lack the educational qualifications that would normally be expected of business leaders.[36]
1.78 This again comes down to credibility and accountability. If there is no regulation or standard to follow, what is a halal certifier’s performance measured against? If there is no overarching authority, who keeps the certifiers accountable? Indeed, who certifies the certifiers? Taking steps towards more accountability can only improve consumers’ confidence in halal certification.
Where does the money go?
1.79 Some organisations were forthcoming about where the revenue from certification goes.
1.80 For the NSW Kashrut Authority, “All income is absorbed in financing operating costs and improving services to kosher consumers.”[37] Some of the surplus from Kosher Australia is used to “expand its own operations”. The remainder goes to Mizrachi Nominees for the provision of overheads and in return for “the support it provided for kosher certification services for many years” when Kosher Australia was not able to recover its costs.[38] Funds collected by the Kashrut Authority of Western Australia “are used to entirely offset the cost of providing kashrut services.”[39] The committee’s report mentions that money from organic certification goes back into operating costs, market access and education.
1.81 Therefore, cost recovery is the main motivation for kosher certification and for some in the organic certification industry.
1.82 The 1982 Royal Commission into the Australian Meat Industry was in favour of halal certification not being “a profit-making venture.” At the time, the Commission reported that “AFIC has expressed general agreement with this principle”.[40] During the course of this inquiry, AFIC again confirmed its agreement that certification shouldn’t be for profit.[41] This does represent a division within the Islamic community, where some halal certifiers are private companies that operate for profit.
Financial confusion
1.83 In his evidence to the committee Mr Wasim Raza said that “Certification fees are... mainly to recover expenses incurred by AFIC for certification purposes.”[42]
1.84 Also, AFIC is a registered charity listed with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and therefore receives all the tax exemptions, rebates and concessions that come with that status.
1.85 Despite the declaration that halal certification should not be for profit, AFIC’s own charity status, and Mr Raza’s confirmation that fees are mostly a cost recovery exercise, AFIC’s own financial statements for 2012 and 2014 show significant monies raised from halal certification.[43] When ‘halal expenses’ were subtracted from the ‘halal income’ listed over the last four years, the profits raised from halal certification were as follows: $489,592 (2011), $647,722 (2012), $609,886 (2013) and $751,009 (2014). As I mentioned in the hearing, that hardly seems like a cost recovery exercise.
1.86 When asked about this during the hearing, Mr Raza was not able to provide a definitive answer, stating that he had not seen the financial statements and that they did “not sound correct” to him.[44] A few weeks later, Mr Raza explained that:
Halal Income was mentioned separately but all Halal expenses were not accumulated under a separate heading of Halal expenses but were accumulated with all of the AFIC expenses, which gave the impression Halal activity made huge profits.[45]
1.87 No further information was provided as to what the correct figures were.
1.88 Mr Raza also mentioned during the hearing that figures in the financial statements were “revised” and “downgraded”, without providing further information or corrected financial statements.[46] Such bungling does not imbue confidence in the accounting abilities of one of Australia’s largest halal certifiers. Combine this with the many investigations of AFIC financial mismanagement conducted by police, federal departments and state departments in recent years, and there is reason to be concerned.[47]
1.89 At the very least AFIC needs to improve their financial reporting to make it perfectly clear how much money is raised from halal certification, and where those certification funds go.
Potential funding for extremism
1.90 The committee’s report does not go far enough in detailing the evidence presented regarding the potential for halal certification funds to find their way to radicals. My intention is not to doubt the abilities of the relevant authorities in this matter; I merely wish to present some additional points in the context of this discussion.
1.91 Officials from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), while stating that they had no information to indicate halal certification is linked to terrorism, also said that they do not follow certification funds from a certifier to wherever the certifier sends it (for example, to a mosque, school, charity or bookstore).[48] AUSTRAC also has “much more limited visibility of domestic financial activity”[49] and is not able to track money overseas once it moves on from its first overseas recipient.[50]
1.92 The Australian Crime Commission said they “have not found any direct links” between halal certification and terrorism funding.[51] Yet it’s logical to conclude that funding derived from halal certification could be directed to Islamic charities and objectives. AUSTRAC’s 2014 report Terrorism Financing in Australia found that there is a high risk that charities and not-for-profit organisations could be used as channels for terrorism funding; indeed “some Australia-based charities and NPOs have been exploited by terrorist groups”.[52] Mr El-Mouelhy, for example, boasts that he contributes to Human Appeal International (HAI).[53] The overseas branch of HAI has been named as a possible fundraiser for Hamas.[54]
Corruption
1.93 I support the committee’s suggestion that allegations of illegal activity within certification schemes should be presented to law enforcement authorities.
1.94 However, it is still crucial to at least mention the claims of corruption and allegations of misconduct involving Australian halal certifiers. The scope of allegations alone raises concerns that the confusion and lack of transparency surrounding halal certification leaves it open to such behaviour. This is in stark contrast to the kosher and organic certification certifiers, who presented little evidence of misconduct in their systems.
1.95 Numerous examples of alleged corruption were presented to the committee, in addition to reports from the media. These examples included allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, intimidation, suspect certification practices and fraudulent certificates, in both the domestic and overseas halal certification systems.
1.96 Mr Ayan documented a number of claims of corruption and misconduct in his submission, his evidence at the hearing and in documents he tabled with the committee. Not all of them are explored here but a few examples are given below.
Allegations of bribery
1.97 Mr El-Mouelhy, an Australian halal certifier, admitted on national television that he paid bribes to Indonesia halal officials in order to access the Indonesia market. He was asked by ABC’s Four Corners about paying $28,000 in cash and travel costs to Indonesian officials visiting Australia nine years ago:
Geoff Thompson: And in your mind, that was a bribe? Mohamed El-Mouelhy: In my mind, ah- in er-er, you know, as a, as a, as an after-fact: yes, it is a bribe. Geoff Thompson: But you paid it nevertheless. Mohamed El-Mouelhy: I paid something, yes.[55]
1.98 Mr El-Mouelhy repeated this story to Indonesia’s Tempo magazine – presented to the committee as evidence - which included in its article a copy of a statutory declaration signed by Mr El-Mouelhy in 2012 attesting to the payments he made to Indonesian officials.[56]
1.99 Tempo also mentions evidence of alleged money transfers (ranging from $3000 to $10,000) from a different Australian halal certifier to an individual within the Indonesian Council of Ulamas (MUI) in March 2013, in an effort to stop MUI from revoking that certifier’s authorisation to certify products for the Indonesian market.[57]
1.100 Fairfax Media offered further information:
Fairfax Media has established a Melbourne whistleblower wrote to three Australian government departments including the Federal Police in March telling them of corruption allegations between the MUI and Australian halal certifiers trying to firm up the lucrative export market in Indonesia. The allegations include bribes paid to the MUI. Fairfax Media has seen an MUI contract sent to Australian certifiers requiring them to “contribute in activities for the halal product service in Indonesia.”[58]
1.101 And the ABC concludes:
Four Corners has learned that there is a global pattern of complaints about the MUI expecting payment from halal certifiers.[59]
1.102 Professor Azyumardi Azra, a key religious adviser for the Indonesian halal authority, admitted there are problems with the certification system between his country and Australia:
...need to clean up all this mess. Not to use these halal certificates for personal enjoyment like visiting Australia on business class Singapore Airlines for instance...This is the case. I check. The person visit Australia with their wife and asked for business class airline ticket. So I think it’s not credible. It’s not accountable. So we need to put this in order.[60]
Claims of intimidation and misuse of certificates/labels
1.103 The committee was presented with allegations of intimidation by halal certifiers. Kirralie Smith and Abdul Ayan included examples of this behaviour by halal certifiers in their submissions and tabled documents. Mr Ayan summarised:
Some of them do not hesitate to exert, sometimes with impunity, their market power and influence to extract concessions or unfair or illegal advantages...This manifests itself sometimes in the form of threats and intimidation of halal establishments who do not cooperate to become willing clients.[61]
1.104 The misuse of certificates and labels is another problem within the halal certification system; an issue that was raised by the Royal Commission into the Australian Meat Industry in 1982.[62] More recently, there are claims that some companies display other companies’ certificates on their premises, create fake certificates and use labels without permission in order to avoid paying for certification.[63] Last year, the Federal Court heard the case of two kebab shops and a wholesaler that were involved in using fake halal certificates.[64]
1.105 When I spoke of what Senator Dastyari described as “con men” and what I termed “opportunists” within the domestic certification market, Mr Raza, replied: “I would agree with the senator and yourself.”[65]
Conclusion
1.106 I agree with the committee’s conclusion that improving the halal certification system would bring benefits for Australian businesses in our export markets. However, this shouldn’t be the only reason why this inquiry advocates for improvements. There is an additional reason that the committee failed to mention in these final paragraphs. Ensuring that Australian consumers have access to more information about the products they purchase, so that they can make informed choices, is also of paramount importance and should be a driving force behind change in the halal certification system.
1.107 Consumers have a right to know what they are supporting when they purchase products, whether that is organic farming, the Jewish community or Islamic causes. There are no concerns about consumers exercising their choice when they purchase products with the Heart Tick or products that don’t contain palm oil. Such attitudes should also extend to religious certification.
1.108 This inquiry has attempted to shed light on certification in Australia. I am grateful that those who participated did take the opportunity to put facts on the table.
1.109 However, it is disappointing that more answers were not forthcoming, particularly with regard to halal certification.
1.110 We know more than we did at the start of this process but many questions remain unanswered due to the lack of cooperation by those directly involved in the halal certification industry.
1.111 Hopefully the recommendations in this report will lead to improvements in certification across the board and increased transparency and certainty for Australian consumers.
Senator Cory Bernardi
Liberal Party of Australia, SA
Navigation: Previous Page | Contents | Next PageRabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Rabbi Dr. Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth 199-2013 and a member of the House of Lords since 2009. He has authored many books on Judaic thought, appears regularly in the British media and has kindly allowed us to post his essay on the Sabbath Torah reading each week as well as other sermons. More from the author ► Rabbi Dr. Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth 199-2013 and a member of the House of Lords since 2009. He has authored many books on Judaic thought, appears regularly in the British media and has kindly allowed us to post his essay on the Sabbath Torah reading each week as well as other sermons.
If leadership is the solution, what is the problem?
On this, the Torah could not be more specific. It is a failure of responsibility.
The early chapters of Genesis focus on two stories: Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. Both are about a specific kind of failure.
First Adam and Eve. As we know, they sin. Embarrassed and ashamed, they hide, only to discover that you cannot hide from God:
The Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen. 3: 9-12)
Both insist that it was not their fault. Adam blames the woman. The woman blames the serpent. The result is that they are both punished and exiled from Eden. Adam and Eve deny personal responsibility. They say, in effect, “It wasn’t me.”
The second story is more tragic. The first instance of sibling rivalry in the Torah leads to the first murder:
Cain said to his brother Abel... While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” (Gen. 4: 8-10)
Cain does not deny personal responsibility. He does not say, “It was not me,” or “It was not my fault.” He denies moral responsibility. In effect he asks why he should be concerned with the welfare of anyone but himself. Why should we not do what we want and have the power to do?
In Plato’s Republic, Glaucon argues that justice is whatever is in the interest of the stronger party. Might makes right. If life is a Darwinian struggle to survive, why should we restrain ourselves for the sake of others if we are more powerful than they are? If there is no morality in nature then I am responsible only to myself. That is the voice of Cain throughout the ages.
These two stories are not just stories. They are an account, at the beginning of the Torah’s narrative history of humankind, of a failure, first personal then moral, to take responsibility – and it is this to which leadership is the answer.
There is a fascinating phrase in the story of Moses’ early years. He grows up, goes out to his people, the Israelites, and sees them labouring as slaves. He witnesses an Egyptian officer beating one of them. The text then says: “He looked this way and that and saw no one (Ex. 2: 12, vayar ki ein ish, literally, ‘he saw that there was no man’).”
It is difficult to read this literally. A building site is not a closed location. There must have been many people present. A mere two verses later we discover that there were Israelites who knew exactly what he had done. The phrase almost certainly means, “He looked this way and that and saw that there was no one else willing to intervene.”
If this is so then we have here the first instance of what came to be known as the Genovese syndrome, or “the bystander effect," (For a discussion, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese) so-called after a case in which a woman was attacked in New York in the presence of a large number of people who knew that she was being assaulted, but failed to come to her rescue.
Social scientists have undertaken many experiments to try to determine what happens in situations like this. Some argue that the presence of other bystanders affects an individual’s interpretation of what is happening. Since no one else is coming to the rescue, they conclude that what is happening is not an emergency.
Others, though, argue that the key factor is diffusion of responsibility. People assume that since there are many people present someone else will step forward and act. That seems to be the correct interpretation of what was happening in the case of Moses. No one else was prepared to come to the rescue. Who, in any case, was likely to do so? The Egyptians were slave-masters. Why should they bother to take a risk to save an Israelite? The Israelites were slaves. Why should they come to the aid of one of their fellows if, by doing so, they were putting their own life at risk?
It took a Moses to act. But that is what makes a leader. A leader is one who takes responsibility. Leadership is born when we become active not passive, when we don’t wait for someone else to act because perhaps there is no one else, at least not here, not now. When bad things happen, some avert their eyes. Some wait for others to act. Some blame others for failing to act. Some simply complain. But there are some who say, “If something is wrong let me be among the first to put it right.” They are the leaders. They are the ones who make a difference in their lifetimes. They are the ones who make ours a better world.
Many of the great religions and civilizations are based on acceptance. If there is violence, suffering, poverty and pain in the world, that is the way the world is. Or, that is the will of God. Or, that is the nature of nature itself. All will be well in the world to come.
Judaism was and remains the world’s great religion of protest. The heroes of faith did not accept; they protested. They were willing to confront God himself. Abraham said, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” (Gen. 18: 25). Moses said, “Why have you done evil to this people?” (Ex. 5: 22). Jeremiah said, “Why are the wicked at ease?” (Jer. 12: 1). That is how God wants us to respond. Judaism is God’s call to human responsibility. The highest achievement is to become God’s partner in the work of creation.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God called out “Where are you?” As Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, pointed out, this call was not directed only to the first humans. It echoes in every generation. God gave us freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. God teaches us what we ought to do but he does not do it for us. With rare exceptions, God does not intervene in history. He acts through us, not to us. His is the voice that tells us, as He told Cain before he committed his crime, that we can resist the evil within us as well as the evil that surrounds us.
The responsible life is a life that responds. The Hebrew for responsibility, achrayut, comes from the word acher, meaning an “other.” Our great Other is God himself, calling us to use the freedom He gave us, to make the world that is more like the world that ought to be.
The great question, to which the life we lead is the answer, is, which voice will we listen to? The voice of desire, as in the case of Adam and Eve? The voice of anger as in the case of Cain?
Or the voice of God calling on us to make this a more just and gracious world?David Korevaar, University of Colorado
Chopin's Pedagogy: A Practical Approach
Presentation delivered at the MTNA National Convention, Pedagogy Saturday, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2010
Resources
I see this paper as essentially practical: Chopin's pedagogical ideas are ideas that I and many other teachers use regularly. Rereading Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger's important book Chopin as Pianist and Teacher reminds me of how much Chopin's ideas resonate with the way I teach, the way I was taught, and the way that I try to play. This important source collects most of the information that we have on Chopin's teaching in a convenient and user-friendly format. The book draws from Chopin's memoranda books, correspondence, and his fragmentary "Projet de méthode" as well as the annotated scores and statements of his students and associates.
Chopin's approach to teaching was original and individual: as he had been himself largely self-taught, and thus not part of any "school" of learning or teaching, he was to some extent free of the technical dogmas of his contemporaries. He saw technique in an essentially musical way, and his teaching emphasized sound production first, technique second. In his sketch for a method, he writes, "One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful quality of sound, to know how to play long notes and short notes and [to attain] unlimited dexterity." "A well-formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality." (Quoted in Eigeldinger, 16-17).
Chopin spent a great deal of his time on teaching, unlike Liszt who, at least in the 1830s, had no desire to be known as a teacher. Chopin's teaching was his primary means of support once he settled in Paris (1832-1849). In fact, he seldom performed after 1835, and was not particularly interested in teaching his students to perform. (Eigeldinger, 5). He told one pupil, "Concerts are never real music; you have to give up the idea of hearing in them the most beautiful things of art." Contemporaries (students and associates) mentioned that Chopin himself was at his best as a performer in private because of his nervousness.
Students were given one to three lessons a week, officially of 45 minutes each, but not always so short if the pupils were talented. He taught 5 pupils per day. He was much in demand as a teacher of wealthy women, who paid 20 gold francs per lesson (this was a lot of money) or 30 if he came to them (Eigeldinger, 6-7). The more talented pupils seem to have paid less; sometimes nothing at all.
Of Chopin's roughly 150 pupils, only a few are of great interest to us, both because of their later success as performers and teachers and because of their recollections. Clara Wieck's description of George Mathias, one of Chopin's most important disciples because of |
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“Wilson’s Heart is an immersive first-person psychological thriller set in a 1940’s hospital that has undergone a haunting transformation. In this original VR adventure, you become Robert Wilson, a patient who awakens to the shocking discovery that his heart has been replaced with a mysterious device. As the hospital hauntings intensify, you and your fellow patients must traverse increasingly maddening corridors, overcome frightening environmental hazards and work together to defeat the sinister inhabitants in your pursuit to reveal who stole your heart… and why.”
The visuals and setting aren’t the only thing that make Wilson’s Heart unique. It also features the one of the most impressive voice casts that a VR game has ever enjoyed with the likes of Peter Weller (Robert Wilson), Rosario Dawson (Elsa Wolcott) and Alfred Molina (Bela Blasco) all lending their voices to various characters.
During a demo with Wilson’s Heart in San Francisco last week, we learned for the first time that the game will feature combat mechanics. We previously believed that Wilson’s Heart would focus primarily on puzzles and exploration, but you will in fact get to enjoy hand to hand fights as a 60+ year old man. Let that sink in for a moment and smile.
In addition to the physical combat, you can also use environmental objects to defeat foes through quick time events that test your reflexes. The real focus, however, are your “Heart Powers.”
As the title implies, Wilson’s Heart is a game that revolves around your missing heart and the mystical/mechanical replacement you find in your chest. By pulling this orb out of your body (yes you read that right) you will have access to a variety of powers. The first of which is being described as, THE WANDERER:
“THE WANDERER seeks out and delivers penance to those who deserve it. As Robert Wilson, you will rip the heart device out of your chest and guide it around with a wave of your hand, using it in combat and to solve puzzles alike. The Wanderer is one of four heart powers you will unearth in the game.”
According to Twisted Pixel, Wilson’s Heart will feature roughly 8-10 hours of gameplay for most players depending on how fast they chose to progress through the game’s easter-egg filled environments.
Wilson’s Heart was funded by Oculus Studios and will be exclusive to the Oculus Rift with Touch. According to Oculus’ head of content, Jason Rubin, Wilson’s Heart will be the April installment of the company’s plan to release at least one high-quality, Oculus Studios title for Rift every month this year.
Tagged with: Games, wilson's heartOutraged Caller Compares Jeremy Corbyn’s Speech To A Hitler Rally
Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a lengthy speech to baying crowds at the Labour conference in Brighton. But this caller said it was more like a Nuremberg rally.
The Labour leader was given a rock star welcome as he told delegates that his party was a “government-in-waiting”.
Mr Corbyn pledged to introduce controls on private rents if elected as he claimed the Tories were “hanging on by their fingertips”.
Despite the Labour chief’s words being met with rapacious applause, James was left far from impressed with what he heard.
He told Shelagh: “I despise the man, I despise his speech that has just been said - bringing Grenfell into it, how deplorable of the man.
“All he has just done is do his little speech to his sycophant and he has had a round of applause.”
The LBC presenter told James that some of what Mr Corbyn had said, particularly on housing, was proving popular with many people.
This led the call to retort: “I’m sure the same was said about Hitler at the Nuremberg speeches because that’s what that reminded me of.”
Watch above.She was very funny in Community, and not funny at all but still great in Mad Men. Now, Alison Brie is taking on the big screen. This week sees the DVD release of subversive rom-com Sleeping With Other People, in which she and Jason Sudeikis debate whether avocados are erotic or not. And later this year she'll appear in five more movies, from James Franco's The Disaster Artist to Anna Kendrick comedy Get A Job. Yep, the Brie business is a-boomin', so we sat down with her for a half-hour to discuss all manner of random things...
Alison Brie faces off with Jason Sudeikis in Sleeping With Other People.
Mad Men finished last year. Are you missing it?
I am, a lot. I watched the final episode of Mad Men at home with my father. I cooked dinner and we drank wine and watched it. It was great. We kept stopping and starting, though, because my dad likes to discuss what you're watching while you're watching it. But it's interesting because his father, my grandfather, worked for a period of time as an ad man. It was kinda cool to hear his stories. That was something I'd never known about my grandfather before I started working on the show.
Have you kept up with anyone from the show?
I've not. It's tough. The cast members of Community are much more like a family to me. I take more ownership of that show. We make an effort to see each other and we have a group text that is constantly pinging away, every day, so we still feel very connected. Ken [Jeong] uses the most emojis. He's huge on emojis. He likes to use the purple angry face and the flames!
What was your first ever acting experience?
I played Toto in a school production of The Wizard Of Oz. I was probably six or so. I didn't have any lines but I got to improv all my barking, so I think it was valuable, career-wise. If you're playing a dog, kneepads are essential. My mum sewed them into my costume for me. And I think I just read the room. There's a lot of opportunities for scene-stealing if you're a dog. I took the role very seriously even then. They would do two performances a night, with entirely different casts, and I just wanted to be better than the other Toto. (Laughs) My nemesis Toto, who I was clearly better than. "Oh, she's doing it that way? My bark isn't going to be quite like that..."
And what was your first brush with Hollywood?
I remember walking home from middle school and they were shooting a movie called Bye Bye Love that stars Matthew Modine and Paul Reiser. Somebody working on the movie stopped me and bought my school binder for $10, because they wanted one that looked like a real, used binder, with drawings all over it. There I was, in sixth grade, walking home punching the air. It was the coolest thing. I'll never forget that movie.
As Trudy aongside Vincent Kartheiser's weaselly Pete Campbell in Mad Men.
Is it true that Halloween was filmed at your high school?
That is true. It sucks now, because they basically tore down the whole place, so it doesn't look the same at all. It's really a shame. When I was a freshman in sophomore, I had a locker that you could see in the movie! I always found that super-cool. The town I grew up in, South Pasadena, had a lot of movies shot in it. Old School was shot a block from my high school. We'd go by the set of the Beethoven movies, where I got to meet Charles Grodin. Father Of The Bride was shot in Pasadena proper. My dad would drive my sister and I past the Father Of The Bride house, because we thought it was so cool!
Famously, you once worked as a clown...
I was not a scary clown. I was called Sunny and I had a yellow ’fro and yellow-and-white polka dot outfit. I was 17 years old and I did it for a summer and it was a great job. When I think about doing something like now, it totally terrifies me: "Go and entertain these 20 seven-year-olds for an hour!" Kids can be tough critics. But it was actually really fun. I had a boombox and a bag full of tricks. I would play music and put down a parachute for us all to sit on. I'd make balloon animals and paint faces. Then we'd play games like Duck Duck Goose. My balloon animals weren't great, though. My giraffe looked exactly like my wolf. (Laughs) The only downside was all the dads hitting on me and walking me to the car and stuff. You're trying to balance doing these games with not showing your underwear to looming dads.
Sounds like a testing experience. Did it toughen you up?
Definitely. The company that I worked for was quite an amateurish one. Their headquarters was just this warehouse in Compton, full of bounce houses. Very strange. I would drive there, pick up my bag of stuff, go in their closet, paint my own face, then go to the gas station en route to three parties. I'd be fully dressed as a clown, red nose and everything, a 17 year-old girl pumping gas in Compton. And there'd just be some dude going, "Wassup?"
What kind of movies do you watch at home?
Alien is one of my favourite films. I'm a classic horror fan. It's a tough one for me, because I get scared quite easily. I've developed this system where my fiancé pre-screens new horror movies for me. I'll go, "Can I watch it?" and he'll shake his head. One we liked recently was It Follows. We watched it on a Sunday morning, because I like to have bright sunshine flooding into the room! The Babadook is on my list. And what's the one with Rose Byrne? Insidious. I walked in on him watching the end, and got haunted by that...
Gun crazy: Brie in Community's Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design episode.
What's the most star-struck you've ever been?
Jon Stewart. I was just thinking about this, actually, which is why my answer was so fast, because I was reading his chapter in Judd Apatow's book. I got to be on The Daily Show, maybe two years ago, and I was excited to be on it, but I just remember it catching me off-guard being in a room with him. I was speechless, because he is so charismatic and intelligent and is doing such amazing things. I am so in awe of what he does. Meeting funny people, you sort of think, "We have the same sense of humour and do the same thing!" With Jon Stewart, I could never do what he does. It's crazy. I almost didn't want to say anything, because I didn't want to sound stupid in front of him. The second person I'll say is Paul McCartney. At a BAFTA tea five years ago I got shoved into a group of people by my publicist, who was like, "Don't you want to meet Paul McCartney?" I shook his hand, dribbled slightly and then ran to the bathroom and cried. (Laughs) He did a voice on Bojack Horseman, which was insane.
Finally, you worked with Chevy Chase for many years on Community. What's your best Chevy story?
I have a number of stories, but what can I share with you now? (Laughs) The first season of the show, I'm standing out in front of this stage, on a break. And Chevy, who has a mischievous side, appears and says, "Come with me." He takes me over to this golf cart and takes me on a joyride around Paramount. I'm freaking out, because it's this new big job for me and I don't want to get in trouble. We turn a corner, there's this big van blocking the middle of the road, and there's only a tiny gap between it and the wall. Chevy goes, "We can make it." I look at him and say, "Chevy, we can't make it!" He floors it, which means we're up to about five miles an hour, and we slowly inch through, knocking the driver's side mirror off the van. The driver gets out, this huge guy, and I'm really scared. Then the guy says, "Oh my God, are you Chevy Chase?" He just wanted a photo with him. Chevy and I should make a Mad Max-style movie, just us in that golf cart.
Sleeping With Other People is out on DVD, Amazon and iTunes from February 22.Chalk up almost two million views and several hundred comments to the Jet Li of the French educational system. We actually included this video in our rundown of the scariest teachers on YouTube a few months ago. The cries of "Fake!" in our very own comments section caused us to take a second look, to see if there had been a failure in our wacky video vetting process and if any staff needed to be let go as a result.
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Sample comments:
"I don't care what one student did, this guy's anger was unjustified."
"I wonder why you misinformed people keep saying it is a fake. The sad story is, things like this aren't that uncommon outside the United States, you should open up your provincial minds and learn that United States =/= The Rest of the World."
"its not fake it was on the news the guy he beat up in the corner died"
"that shit is legal in france"
The Evidence:
No matter where you find this video, you find people bitterly divided over its authenticity (even among our staff, in fact). The fact that it's French has made it impossible to track down its origins or to judge things like whether or not a teacher would be wearing those striped track pants on the job.
Who knows, right? He's French. A translation of the voices also offers no help, since there is a great deal of, "Sir! Sir! Stop!" and very little, "Let us continue to stage this video, Pierre!"
Doubters like to point to the ludicrous Jean Claude Van Damme roundhouse kick 17 seconds in, which misses the student's face by two feet yet sends the victim flying backward.
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"Not so," say the faithful. "Would one not fling himself back out of the way of even a missed kick? Would not one even fall back over a chair in one's startlement?"
Perhaps the first blow is more telling, where instead of simply flinching and throwing up his hands to protect his face, the victim seems to pre-emptively launch his body to the right.
In fact, the only real, sustained beating takes place where all the blows are hidden in the corner, behind a desk.
And of course we have the behavior of the camera person, who keeps shooting right up to the moment when the teacher presumably unleashes a karate chop that embeds the camera/phone in the student's eye socket. Note that in his fury the teacher neither broke nor confiscated the phone.
But the real nail in the coffin for this one is the fact that there is just no mention of this event anywhere outside of this video. If you read French leet-speak, you know that none of the French commenters on the video had heard of the incident.
Plus, no combination of the French words for "crazy teacher" or "teacher attacks classroom" or "Van Damme Roundhouse Kick" yields any mention of this particular incident in the French news media, even though classroom violence is a big issue there and many lesser incidents involving abusive teachers have gotten coverage. Are we to believe that an incident where four children were beaten, with full Jean Claud Van Damme roundhouse kick video, would go utterly unnoticed? Hardly.
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So what's the alternative? Is it a clip from a French sketch comedy show? Or maybe an edited commercial, like the turd softener up there? It's hard to say. The earliest version of the clip we can find is this one uploaded to the French YouTube page. The guy who uploaded it has long abandoned the account, and his only other video is this one of he and his friend riding bicycles.Apple has acquired Locationary, a crowdsourced location data company that helps businesses keep their information up to date. The company confirmed the acquisition to All Things D, noting that it "buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." According to the publication, the deal includes both Locationary’s technology and its team but a price was not disclosed.
Apple came under fire from customers when it launched Maps in iOS 6, thanks to its buggy and incomplete nature. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook published an open letter in which he admitted that the new app "fell short" of the company's high standards and promised that the company was "doing everything" to improve it. Locationary has built a business on collecting, verifying, and updating information on businesses around the world. While Apple's plans are not clear, its new acquisition could help deliver up-to-date listings not only in Maps, but in other services on its iOS and OS X devices.The pension fund for the United Methodist Church has blocked five Israeli banks from its investment portfolio in what it describes as a broad review meant to weed out companies that profit from abuse of human rights.
The fund, called the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits, excluded Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, according to the pension board's website.
The Israeli bank stock the board sold off was worth a few million dollars in a fund with $20 billion in assets. The fund also sold holdings worth about $5,000 in the Israeli real estate and construction company Shikun & Binui, and barred the company from the pension group's investment portfolio.
The pension board identified Israel and the Palestinian territories among more than a dozen "high risk" countries or regions with "a prolonged and systematic pattern of human rights abuses." Other countries on the list include Saudi Arabia, the Central African Republic and North Korea.
A spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry declined to comment.
The Methodist church has about 13 million members worldwide and is the largest mainline Protestant group in the United States.
The pension board had initiated the review in 2014 with a focus on protecting human rights and easing climate change. A total of 39 companies around the world were excluded from the fund's investments over human rights concerns and nine more were blocked over worries about their alleged contribution to global warming. The fund remains invested in 18 Israeli companies, according to board spokeswoman Colette Nies.
The banks had been among several companies targeted by United Methodist Kairos Response, a coalition of church members who advocate for divestment from companies with business in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
"This is the first step toward an effort that helps send a clear message that we as a church are listening and that we are concerned about human rights violations," Susanne Hoder, a leader of United Methodist Kairos Response, said Tuesday. "We hope it will also be encouraging to people in the Jewish community who are working for justice."
A competing group, United Methodists for Constructive Peacemaking in Israel and Palestine, said in a statement that the pension board action should not be viewed as divestment from Israel, since the top Methodist legislative body rejected proposals in 2012 to divest from companies that produce equipment used by Israel in the territories. The same body, called General Conference, passed a resolution denouncing the Israeli occupation and expanding illegal Jewish settlements in the territories.
The pension board's decision came at a time when divestment is gaining momentum among liberal Protestants as a tool to pressure Israel over its policies toward Palestinians. Last year, the United Church of Christ voted to divest from companies with business in the Israeli-occupied territories. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took a similar vote in 2014.
The next Methodist General Conference is scheduled for this May.
The Associated PressEarlier this week, we reported that the Xbox One launch was going to be missing Lego Marvel Super Heroes. It seems that whatever was holding things up has been handled.
Warner Bros. told us today that the title would be ready to go at retail on November 22 in the United States. It will be on store shelves in Europe on November 29 for both next-gen consoles and on November 15 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, 3DS, and PC.
You can read our review of the title here. If you can’t wait for the Xbox One release, it is available now on PlayStation 4 (along with current-generation consoles).
Our Take
Lego Marvel might be the same game across platforms, but it is simply gorgeous on next-gen hardware. If you haven’t yet played it, I’d recommend grabbing it for your new console of choice. If you’re not upgrading right away, you’d do well to play on any other system.A LumenoCity-style event might be coming to Cincinnati Union Terminal the first weekend in September.
Buy Photo Union Terminal could be the site of a second version of LumenoCity. (Photo: The Enquirer/Gary Landers)Buy Photo
A new LumenoCity-like light show might be coming to Union Terminal during the first weekend in September.
The event hasn't been finalized yet, but the Cincinnati Museum Center and creative partner Landor are working on details.
"We would so like to make this happen," said Elizabeth Pierce, vice president for marketing and communications at Museum Center.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which is producing August's LumenoCity in Washington Park, is not involved in the Union Terminal plans.
This new event would play up Union Terminal's connection to the Hall of Justice. The Hall of Justice is the fictional headquarters of the Justice League comic characters and was modeled after Union Terminal.
"If we could pull it together, it would be such a spectacular experience," Pierce said.
Financing the event is the biggest issue for now.
Last year's LumenoCity, performed with Music Hall as the background, was estimated to cost $1 million. The Union Terminal event would cost at least $500,000, Pierce said.
There are logistical questions, too. How would people access the event? Would it be drive-in style? A combination of people and cars?
The first LumenoCity drew unexpectedly large crowds to Washington Park. The 2014 event, Aug. 1-3, is a free but ticketed event for 37,500 people – 12,500 each night. Tickets were distributed to CSO and Cincinnati Pops subscribers, with the remaining "selling out" on Ticketmaster in 12 minutes Monday morning.
LumenoCity: Fountain Square simulcast possible
Related: LumenoCity tickets gone in less than 12 minutes
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1pH42tgAstronomers at the University of Warwick and the University of Sheffield have helped discover an unusual star system which looks like, and may even once have behaved like, a game of snooker.
The University of Warwick and Sheffield astronomers played a key role in an international team that used two decades of observations from many telescopes around the world. The UK astronomers helped discover this “snooker like” star system through observations and analysis of data from an astronomical camera known as ULTRACAM designed by the British researchers on the team.
They looked at a binary star system which is 1670 light years away from Earth. NN Serpentis is actually a binary star system consisting of two stars, a red dwarf and a white dwarf, which orbit each other in an incredibly close, tight orbit. By lucky chance Earth sits in the same plane as this binary star system, so we can see the larger red dwarf eclipse the white dwarf every 3 hours and 7 minutes.
It was already thought that there may be at least one planet orbiting these two stars. However the University of Warwick and Sheffield astronomers were able to use these incredibly frequent eclipses to spot a pattern of small but significant irregularities in the orbit of stars and were able to help demonstrate that the pattern must be due to the presence and gravitational influence of two massive gas giant planets. The more massive gas giant is about 6 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the binary star every 15.5 years, the other orbits every 7.75 years and is about 1.6 times the mass of Jupiter.
Given the overall shape of the system, and how this star system came to exist, it was hard for the British members of the research team not to think of the game of snooker.
One of the UK researchers on the project, Professor Tom Marsh from the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics, said:
“The two gas giants have different masses but they may actually be roughly the same size as each other, and in fact will also be roughly the same size as the red dwarf star they orbit. If they follow the patterns we see in our own star system of gas giants with a dominant yellow or blue colours, then it’s hard to escape the image of this system as being like a giant snooker frame with a red ball, two coloured balls, and dwarf white cue ball.”
This star system will also have seen dramatic changes, in what is relatively recent times in astronomical terms: What is now the White Dwarf “cue ball” of the system may have suffered, and caused, violent changes to its own orbit and the orbit of all the planets and stars in the system.
Professor Vik Dhillon from the University of Sheffield, said:
“If these planets were born along with their parent stars they would have had to survive a dramatic event a million years ago: when the original primary star bloated itself into a red giant, causing the secondary star to plunge down into the present very tight orbit, thereby casting off most of the original mass of the primary. Planetary orbits would have seen vast disturbances. Alternatively, the planets may have formed very recently from the cast off material. Either way, in relatively recent times in astronomical terms this system will have seen a vast shock to the orbits of the stars and planets, all initiated by what is now the white dwarf at the heart of the system.”LIVE HIGHLIGHTS: The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the triple talaq bill and all amendments to it were defeated. The bill now goes to Rajya Sabha. Speaking on behalf of the government, MoS MJ Akbar called into question the credibility of All India Muslim Personal Law Board for opposing the move. He asked 'who made them community representatives?' Earlier, BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi called for a law against maulvis who oversee instant triple talaq. She said talaq-e-biddat has nothing to do with religion. She further said women are the biggest minority in this country and this is why they have been oppressed in the society. Earlier, speaking in the Lok sabha Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the legislation meant to ensure gender justice to women is affected by instant divorce. The Congress has sought the bill to be sent to the Standing Committee, while few other opposition parties like the AIMIM and Biju Janata Dal have called the legislation an "injustice to Muslim women". The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights of Marriage) Bill 2017 makes instant triple talaq a non-bailable warrant with imprisonment of up to three years in jail.
Stay tuned as Ashish Yechury brings you LIVE updates:
Dec 28, 2017 9:08 pm (IST) congratulate PM Shri Narendra Modi and the entire government for successfully passing the Triple Talaq Bill - The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, in Lok Sabha and bringing the practice of Triple Talaq within the ambit of criminal offence: Amit Shah, BJP president
Dec 28, 2017 8:30 pm (IST) Supreme Court banned triple talaq because it believed that a couple should get time for reconciliation. With this bill, it will be now a non-bailable offence, there will be no chance of reconciliation.I moved an amendment over compensation for Muslim women in cases of triple talaq. it was negated by the government: Sushmita Dev, Congress
Dec 28, 2017 8:23 pm (IST) Shameful display of brute force passing the Triple Talaq Bill turning Muslim husbands into criminals, this is not what we fought for in the Supreme Court of India: Indira Jaising, senior Supreme Court Lawyer
Dec 28, 2017 8:06 pm (IST) The bill was passed after the House rejected a string of amendments moved by various opposition members. MPs from the RJD, AIMIM, BJD, AIADMK and All India Muslim League opposed the bill, calling it arbitrary in nature and a faulty proposal.
Dec 28, 2017 8:03 pm (IST) Under the law, instant triple talaq in any form --spoken, in writing or by electronic means such as email, SMS and WhatsApp -- would be illegal and void. The bill will now be sent to the Rajya Sabha for passage before it is forwarded to the President for signing it into law.
Dec 28, 2017 8:02 pm (IST) The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill would only be applicable on instant triple talaq or 'talaq-e-biddat'. It gives power to the victim to approach a magistrate seeking "subsistence allowance" for herself and minor children. A victim can also seek the custody of her minor children from the magistrate.
Dec 28, 2017 7:36 pm (IST) Muslim Women (Protection of Marriage) Bill, 2017 has been passed in the Lok Sabha. All amendments to the bill have been rejected. the Bill will now go to the Rajya Sabha for their approval.
Dec 28, 2017 7:15 pm (IST) Speaker of the House Sumitra Mahajan is holding a vote on clause by clause proposed amendments to the triple talaq bill by voice vote.
Dec 28, 2017 7:06 pm (IST) We are not looking at this from the lens of politics but from the lens of humanity. The jail term is upto three years and quantum of punishment will be decided by the magistrate and we have left it for the court to decide and its conscience. It is being said that we are breaking families, but when women were being abandoned, this argument found no place. Under Section 304B, if you try to burn a bride, then you will be imprisoned: Prasad.
Dec 28, 2017 7:04 pm (IST) This law has not been passed for any political mileage. People are questioning that why is this law a criminal law. To that, I will say I have not studied law from London but from Patna Law College: Prasad
Dec 28, 2017 7:01 pm (IST) They argued that since Supreme Court invalidated triple talaq, then why the law. i have taken into consideration the SC majority judgment of the triple talaq verdict. Should the muslim women frame and hang the SC verdict in their homes now?: Prasad
Dec 28, 2017 7:00 pm (IST) Today we saw a big thing that the level of debate has been fantastic. I am thankful to Meenakshi lekhi, Sushmita dev for their comments. The stand by congress is perplexing and very conditional. one they say that we hurried but the important point is being ignored. The muslim women approached the court thinking that Modi government will support it and we did: Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Dec 28, 2017 6:57 pm (IST) The government had argued in the court that all talaqs must be abolished. By this law, they are trying to do away with our personal laws. The law minster who is the drafter has failed to distinguish between civil law and criminal law. In Section 3, the law minister accepts that triple talaq will be void, then how can you punish him? Something which is void cannot be punished as it has no legal force. The law minister quotes Pakistan, but the Section 61 of Paksitan law has been stayed by the supreme court of Pakistan. No muslim country has a penal provision: Owaisi
Dec 28, 2017 6:56 pm (IST) My primary objection is two-fold: Parliament lacks legislative competence, bill lacks legislative coherence. It violates Article 15. Triple Talaq has been declared null and void already. It lacks rational nexus as sections under IPC exists, says Owaisi. He cites the EP Royappa case to argue that the bill is constitutionally not valid. This bill will be injustice to Muslim women, he adds.
Dec 28, 2017 6:51 pm (IST) Every hour, three women are raped and five are assaulted. Society needs to be reformed. The minister has brought a bad law. If a Muslim man says triple talaq, then how is it valid when the court has done away with it? This law will give handle to Muslim men to further subjugate women. They want to achieve their dream of putting Muslims behind the bars. Instead, create a corpus of 1000 crore for Muslim women: AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi
Dec 28, 2017 6:16 pm (IST) The Lok Sabha session has been extended till the triple talaq bill is passed. The session was supposed to end at 6 pm. However, when chair decided to hold a vote by the show of hand whether or not to extend the session, majority of the MPs voted to continue.
Dec 28, 2017 6:11 pm (IST) We don’t claim that all evils be remedied with this bill, but there is a dictum “never leave the good in search of the ideal.” We will be on the path to gender progression through this bill All laws must be compliant with fundamental rights. I know someone will say tomorrow that I am saying nonsense, but I don’t care. Let Allah decide. In the name of talaq, lakhs are forcing woman to live in an atmosphere of fear. This atmosphere of fear will end with this law. And when this ends, there will be a new life in this country: MJ Akbar
Dec 28, 2017 6:06 pm (IST) Surah 2 Verse 41 – for a divorced woman, maintenance must be given on a reasonable scale.Hazrat Ali was not the person to have accepted Islam after Muhammad, it was his wife Begum Khadija who was 15 years elder to Muhammad. Triple talaq is against the spirit of the Quran. Where have we reached today?: MJ Akbar
Dec 28, 2017 6:00 pm (IST) Surah 24 Verse 5, those who make false allegation against a woman will not be spared. And woman will have rights similar to rights equal to that of the men. You cannot make a law against a woman – 226 and 228 of the Quran. Islam has a contract of marriage, this triple talaq violates the contract: MJ Akbar
Dec 28, 2017 5:51 pm (IST) What is the credibility of All India Muslim Personal Law Board? Who chose them to be community representatives? This slogan 'Islam khatre mein hai' was used before independence to divide India and is now being used to divide society, poison is being spread. You change law easily when it comes to men but you remember Allah when it comes to women?: Union Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar
Dec 28, 2017 4:15 pm (IST) Attacking the Congress for opposing the law, Meenakshi Lekhi cited the Shah Bano case to accuse the party of practicing appeasement politics.
Dec 28, 2017 4:09 pm (IST) Talaq-e-biddat has nothing to do with religion. It is customary. There should be a law for maulavis witnessing this kind of talaq: Meenakshi Lekhi
Dec 28, 2017 4:02 pm (IST) Women are the biggest minority in this country. This is why they have been oppressed in the way they have. It is high time we do away practices that oppress women. Those opposing the law against triple talaq are speaking language of personal law: Meenakshi Lekhi
Dec 28, 2017 3:42 pm (IST) "When the Supreme Court judgment came, we welcomed it. Today, the Law Minister has brought the triple talaq bill which takes a civil issue like divorce and turns it into a criminal law. The government says it will act as a deterrent. The bill talks about right to subsistence allowance, how will the government ensure she gets it? We are asking these questions since Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad disagreed to a standing committee," says Congress' Sushmita Dev.
Dec 28, 2017 3:29 pm (IST) The triple talaq bill should not be seen through the prism of politics and neither should be linked with any religious motive or vote-bank politics, says Ravi Shankar Prasad in Lok Sabha: #BREAKING -- This bill should not be seen through the prism of politics and neither should be linked with any religious motive or vote bank politics: @rsprasad on #TripleTalaqBill in LS pic.twitter.com/JDGk7PFK3v — News18 (@CNNnews18) December 28, 2017
Dec 28, 2017 3:25 pm (IST) After Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's emotional plea, Leader of Congress party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge says, "Send the bill to the standing committee. All party people will be present there. Give some time, an elaborate consultation of the bill needs to take place. All of us are supporting this bill, but there are certain lacunae which should and can be rectified in the standing committee, we can sit together and sort out in a time bound manner."This article is over 3 years old
Paterson Brown Jr, 18, was fatally shot during a physical altercation after driving unidentified officer’s vehicle through car wash in Richmond last weekend
Virginia man shot by off-duty officer at car wash was not armed, police say
Police said a man killed by an off-duty officer at a Richmond, Virginia, car wash last weekend was unarmed.
The Chesterfield County police department said on Monday that Paterson Brown Jr was shot on Saturday at a gas station by an officer who was having his car washed there. The 18-year-old was taken to the hospital, where he died. The officer was not immediately identified.
Officials said Brown got into the officer’s vehicle and drove it out of the washing stall. They said the officer approached Brown and told him to exit his vehicle.
Surveillance video showed the officer physically struggling with Brown. A witness told police Brown moved suddenly, as if reaching for a weapon, which was when the officer fired.
Chesterfield police lieutenant Richard |
speedskater Brian Hansen,[148] and basketball player Frank McCabe.[147]
Marquette alumni in science include George Delahunty Donald Laub, Robert B. Pinter.
Faculty [ edit ]
The following is a list of notable members of the Marquette University faculty, both past and present:
University presidents [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Media related to Marquette University at Wikimedia Commons
Coordinates:Norwich City have signed striker Tristan Abrahams from Leyton Orient.
Abrahams, 18, has signed a two-year deal with a year option. The youngster made his first-team debut for Orient in March this year and made eight further appearances, including netting the winner against Hartlepool United in April.
Abrahams will be loaned back to Leyton Orient for the season, but will be available to train with and feature for City’s U23s.
“I’m absolutely buzzing to come to a club I’ve admired for a long time,” Abrahams says. “It’s a great opportunity for me and I’m so happy to have signed. I was told a few clubs were interested but when I heard Norwich were also interested I knew that was the one to come to straight away.
“Heading back to Orient works well for me because I want to play as much first-team football as I can to really improve my game for when I come back to Norwich.”
Matt Gill, City’s Under-23s manager, said: “Tristan had a very good end to last season, coming back from his loan and making his senior debut at Orient in difficult circumstances. That was fantastic for the young lad, and he’s hit the ground running in first-team football.
“We want our boys playing senior football, so this deal works really well for us – he plays senior football and also integrates with the lads here too. He’s very athletic and everyone you speak to about him will tell you what a great attitude he has.”
Richard Money, City’s Head of Academy, added: “He’s played League Two football and is still young. He’s a big, strong centre-forward and one we think we can develop. The fact he’s already at a good club and that they want to take him back on loan is a good deal for everybody.”The 2017 MLS Fantasy season brought considerable changes to the game. Unlimited transfers every round has vastly changed the strategy behind the game. A smaller budget with one fewer player has done a lot to change the way teams are selected. It's no longer possible to stack a team with the best premium players and charge into the round. This is where playing the value game comes in.
What is the Value System?
In MLS Fantasy, each player who participates in the round is ranked against the average score of other players from that same position. If the player scores above the average, he gains value, but if not, he can lose value. Team value is also the first tiebreaker for prizes.
The end goal of any MLS Fantasy manager (beyond having fun) is to win a prize. At the end of the season, it is points and not value that really matters. While a value-first strategy may be counterintuitive, the logic behind it is sound, because only the top performers receive consistent value increases.
And if your squad increases in value, that obviously maximizes your spending power in building your squad each round. You can potentially add one, two, maybe more top players if you have more money to work with. And assuming you pick the right top players, the effect snowballs, as those players should help you increase your squad value at a faster rate, too.
In the 2016 game, the top managers had a final value between $125.0 and $130.0, a $5-10 increase over the base of $120.0. This averages out to a $0.3 increase each round. Theoretically, a manager with an outstanding team could gain $1.5 in value in a single round if all 15 players greatly exceed the average.
This season, managers can hunt value increases more easily and shed players who are likely to cost the team in the long run. With the constricted budget, managing team value is the quickest way to add to the number of premium players available for any squad.
The Top 10 vs The Top 1,000
Nearly all of the top 10 MLS Fantasy players in the overall rankings this season have a value near $103.5. This translates to an average increase of nearly $0.6 a round and at this pace, managers could achieve a final squad value of approximately $120.0, doubling the largest increases in value from 2016. Managers in the top 1,000 have squad values ranging from $101.0 to $103.0, with an average increase of approximately $0.4 per round.
The Goal
To keep pace with last season's increases, managers should target a $0.3 value increase each round. Believe it or not, many managers are exceeding this already.
So what is the real goal if you want to pull away from the pack? Gaining $0.5 each round. This is not only attainable but translates to a team budget of $108.5 by midseason.
Tips and Tricks to Maximizing Value
With an apparent averaging effect on overall value, massive value increases might seem hard to come by, but there are ways to maximize your potential value gains.
Budget Bench Options - When picking $4.0 players, avoid those that will play regularly unless they are greatly exceeding expectations. Players at this price point are usually young up-and-coming talents that haven't proven their skills yet. When they do play, they are usually not lighting up the Fantasy score sheet. Those 1-3 point performances are usually a guaranteed -$0.1.
- When picking $4.0 players, avoid those that will play regularly unless they are greatly exceeding expectations. Players at this price point are usually young up-and-coming talents that haven't proven their skills yet. When they do play, they are usually not lighting up the Fantasy score sheet. Those 1-3 point performances are usually a guaranteed -$0.1. Steady Bonus Points - A player who gets regular bonus points is rarely going to lose value. Those few points a game will likely translate to meeting the average.
- A player who gets regular bonus points is rarely going to lose value. Those few points a game will likely translate to meeting the average. Boom or Bust - Many players are all-or-nothing types. Forwards and defenders who contribute very little aside from goals or clean sheets respectively have a higher chance of decreasing in value rather than increasing. Avoiding unfavorable match-ups is advised.
The best news for you? The value game is a strategy best used as the season progresses, where managers attempt to build the strongest team later by forgoing some of the riskier early-season options. Having that extra cash when it comes to crunch time can make all the difference in earning a prize or missing out.A female farmer busy attending medicinal trees at Agmundia village under Kaliganj upazila of Jhenidah. Photo: Star
An organic farming training center has been built on 8 acres of land in a remote area under Kaliganj upazila. This is the first such training center in these parts of Bangladesh, made possible through the initiative of a Japan-based voluntary NGO known as Hunger Free World. The farmers and female workers of different districts are receiving training from the center, which is housed in two four-storied building in Kaliganj upazila. An education building was established in 2001 in pourashava area on 15 decimals of land which was provided by a benevolent man of the upazila. The second building is an organic farming training center established in 2010 at Agmondia village on 27 bighas of land under Kaliganj upazila town.
Hunger Free World's in-charge, Hafizur Rahman, said that computer training is available at the education building. Besides, there are Suniketon Diptimoy Patshala, Suniketon Library and a residential dormitory here. Hundreds of students are provided computer training for three months and a certificate is provided to them by Bangladesh Technical Education Board while Suniketon Patshala imparts quality education to the kids from classes play group to five. People from all walks of life study different kinds of books on agriculture at Suneketon library and apply their knowledge in preparing vermin compost and other materials.
Organic farming training center in-charge, SM Shahin informed that this center has been built in 2010 with training on seven topics of agriculture: compost (earth-worm, bokashi, quick compost, liquid compost, light compost, compost hip, compost pit, and herbal compost), insecticide, organic farming, poison-free farming, herbal training, training on tailoring and apiculture. Around 800 women workers have been trained on organic farming while hundreds of male farmers have been provided training on fish cultivation.
Besides, residential training on different topics have been provided to 50 female workers. Shahin mentioned that an unpaved road about one kilometer long runs to the training center but it needs to be paved. The foreigners cannot visit the spot easily due to the earthen road. The offices also suffer from the lack of electricity supply. Tk 1.5 lacs have been deposited to Palli Electricity Samity office but the connection has not been provided yet. Most of the activities are hampered due to lack of electricity. Shahin said, there are 300 kinds of medicinal trees in its complex.
Of the trainees some successful women are Juthi Begum, Parul Mahmuda of Mollikpur village, Razia Khatun, Monoara Begum, a UP member of Mostabapur village, Rebeka Khatun, Sona Bhan, and Nazma Khatun of Dapna village, Basonti Rani of Raigram village, Monoara Begum and Anwara Begum of Neamotpur village and others.
Sona Bhan told this correspondent that she does not run after VGF or VGD card. She earns Tk 20,000 per month producing compost fertilizer. She is increasing her vermin compost farming day by day. Rebeka Khatun said that she was a maid servant before taking training at the organic farming training center. Now she is solvent, and self-reliant. She is able to maintain her family as well as bear the educational expenses of her sons and daughters. Ex-UP member and social worker Rezaul Islam of Agmundia village informed that the farmers of the area have been highly benefited by the organic farming training center. Around 500 farmers are now following organic method of cultivation on their farms.
Fish farmer Enamul Haq said that he has taken training from the training center and now earns good profits by cultivating fish. He has learnt to produce Bokashi fertilizer and Emu which is very useful for fish farming. He will never apply chemical fertilizer again in his fish farms, he added.
Raigram UP Chairman Jahurul Islam said, “We thank the authority for building this training center. The initiative taken by the organization is no doubt a noble one. The male and female farmers are being enormously benefitted by the center.” “We want safe food and poison free vegetables,” said Country Director of Hunger Free World, Ataur Rahman Miton. “This is why this organic farming training center has been built here. We will build an organic restaurant here as well,” he added.Article:
#ChoosePublicTransport: Driving Modal Shift
The Trapeze Team | September 16, 2015
We all know traffic congestion is an increasing problem. London is the most congested city in Europe (followed closely by Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool), and on the A217 alone, drivers spend 139 hours a year gridlocked in traffic!1
As such issues escalate we are seeing increased recognition that investment in public transport is the solution to rapid population growth and urban development. Is it time to #ChoosePublicTransport instead of the private car?2
The arguments for seem obvious: Public transport is far more efficient in terms of carrying and moving people around on their journeys – as this clever GIF from The Atlantic shows.3
However, experience tells us that simply adding more bus services may not be able to get more people to choose public transport. But why is this? To find out, let’s first think about some of the factors that influence people’s choice of transport mode…
How do passengers select their best transport option?
Firstly, it’s important to recognise that there are a number of factors outside the control of public transport authorities and organisations that play a critical role in influencing people as to the choice of transport mode they make. Indeed, these are discussed in detail in this article in Longitudes.4
Perhaps the most obvious ‘non-transport’ factor is density. Just as Alain Bertaud, a former employee at the World Bank, pointed out in this study, density is the primary reason why 30% of daily trips are carried out by public transport in Barcelona, but only 4% in Atlanta.5
Because Barcelona is 30 times denser than Atlanta, it is much easier for Barcelona’s transport authorities to establish public transport routes that meet the needs of residents. When the travelling public can easily access modes of transport that take them where they need to go – and quickly – they are more likely to use that mode of transport.
This partly links to another key factor – accessibility. Yet it would be a mistake to think that, just because a city has a high density, it also has easy-to-access public transport routes that can meet the travel needs of residents. To illustrate, consider the examples of Beijing and London. While Beijing has a much higher population density than London, its public transport mode share is much less.
According to a World Bank case study, the reason is that Beijing’s public transport terminuses – bus stops and metro lines – are usually placed more than a twenty minute walk away from places of work.6 Unlike in London, where people’s jobs can be reached far more quickly after getting off at a tube station or bus stop.
The walking element here is actually another important factor that can influence transport decisions. A detailed study from researchers at MIT found that there were some bus stops used by people almost a kilometre away, who would walk simply to use the public transport service.7 Yet there were also bus stops that people refused to walk even 100 metres to use.
The reason for this, quite simply, was that the bus stops which people avoided were located on streets or areas that were less pleasant than those people would walk 900 metres to use. They were usually on narrow poorly maintained sidewalks, without any trees beside wide roads. By contrast, the popular bus stops were on wide, well-maintained pavements beside narrow streets and lined with large, pleasant looking trees.
So, what can we do?
Given that these non-transport factors sound like a job for urban developers and planners it might be tempting to conclude that there is little bus and train industry professionals can do to make public transport more popular – but this isn’t the case.
Working closely with urban developers and city planners is obviously a key factor, as we look to highlight the importance of accessible public transport, with more attractive, denser urban environments. And here it’s not just public transport that can benefit from designing our cities in this way.
As Al Gore pointed out at the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, redesigning our cities to create dense urban spaces can eliminate the need for cars, and significantly decrease carbon emissions.8 In the very necessary fight against man-made climate change (or “catastrophic climate breakdown”, if you prefer George Monbiot’s less euphemistic terminology), such considerations must be taken into account.9
To return to the Barcelona – Atlanta comparison again, despite Barcelona having a slightly higher population, the city produces just over a tenth of the US city’s transport carbon emissions.10 This is purely down to the lower use of the private car, and greater use of public transport. If there was ever a convincing reason to invest in city models that promote public transport as the most logical transport mode of choice, this could be it.
Yet beyond the sweeping changes, there are also smaller, incremental changes that can be made to attract people to public transport – and, in particular, buses.
Trees and technology
A first step here relates to bus stops and terminals. It is possible to make these spaces far more attractive to passengers through two simple methods: trees and technology.
Let’s break this down a bit further. First of all, as this CityLab article notes, “planting a few trees around a bus stop” can make waiting for the bus seem shorter, and “offers local authorities an opportunity to significantly improve users’ wait time perception,” making the entire experience more pleasant.11 As we saw in the MIT study, a pleasant and attractive environment can encourage people to flock to bus stops they like, so this suggests it is possible to make public transport more popular simply by making our bus stops look nicer.
On the second point, it’s actually quite well known that technology can make public transport more attractive and pleasant. Again, real-time passenger information at bus stops can make waiting for buses feel shorter – in much the same way trees can.12 Such technology has also been proven to attract passengers and increase ridership, too.13
But technology that has the potential to make public transport more popular goes beyond the bus stop, of course. We know the potentially significant benefits of making Wi-Fi available to bus passengers can have, for example.14 And while this is a more outwardly obvious example, there are also other areas technology can help, albeit more subtly.
For instance, technology that improves and supports driver training can also help make public transport more popular.15 This is because perceptions of buses can be significantly impacted by the driver: Positive, welcoming individuals who are also good drivers encourage people to use the bus more frequently – whereas a single bad experience of poor driver behaviour or dangerous driving can dissuade passengers from using the bus, even stopping them from ever using the bus again.
Of course, technology isn’t just about software or IT systems. It’s also about utilising modern engineering technology, to build modern buses and trains that can attract new users. As we discuss in this article, modern buses, such as the new Enviro 400 MMCs, have been reviewed very positively by users.16
The general look and quality of the vehicles is therefore an important aspect here. Just think of this study by the Scottish Government, which found that newer buses were viewed more positively by passengers because they looked modern and were easier to get on and off; whereas older buses, described as looking ‘run down’ and being ‘wee rickety things’, were viewed as unsafe, unreliable and not user friendly.17
Sharing ideas
Ultimately, there’s no one clear way to making public transport more popular. Not only are there a multitude of different factors to consider, there are also numerous different ideas – many of which are equally valid and important.
And, of course, different organisations, different commentators and different people will bring new ideas to the table. For example, this article suggests: “Why not modify a bus to deliver a connection to each seat for either Internet activity, or music, or TV […] why not have themed ‘party buses’ every Friday for people wanting to celebrate the end of the working week and the start of the weekend?”18
Fresh ideas can take us as an industry in new and interesting directions. So, more than simply brainstorming ideas individually, it is clearly important to communicate with and share ideas across the industry – and indeed, across the divide between public transport operator and public transport user. Consultation with passengers will be just as important as meeting other industry experts at conferences and other trade shows and events.19
This is why we run our own annual user conference – because such events encourage mutually beneficial collaboration and sharing of ideas that can revolutionise the way we think about transport.
By sharing ideas, we can uncover innovative solutions and ways to make public transport popular, and encourage all members of the public to #ChoosePublicTransport.
But what do you think? Do you have any ideas for ways we could make public transport more popular? Tweet us your ideas at @TrapezeGroupUK, using the hashtag #ChoosePublicTransport.
References
WOOD, V., “London is named the most congested city in Europe” The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/11820300/London-is-named-the-most-congested-city-in-Europe.html “A world without cars?” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/blog/article/a-world-without-cars THOMPSON, D., “The case against cars in 1 utterly entrancing GIF” The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-case-against-cars-in-1-utterly-entrancing-gif/281615/ FANG, K., “Making public transit popular” Longitudes https://longitudes.ups.com/making-public-transit-popular/?utm_content=buffer2f7c9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer BERTAUD, A., “The spatial organisation of cities: deliberate outcome or unforeseen consequence?” http://alainbertaud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AB_The_spatial_organization_of_cities_Version_31.pdf FANG, K., “Urban accessibility planning support systems, with a case study in Wuhan, China” World Bank https://www.esmap.org/sites/esmap.org/files/ESMAP_Urban_Wuhan_Accessibility_Planning_Optimized.pdf JIANG, Y., ZEGRAS, C, P., and MEHNDIRATTA, S., “Walk the line: station context, corridor type and bus rapid transit walk access in Jinan, China” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, dept of Urban Studies and Planning http://www.wctrs.leeds.ac.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/abstracts/lisbon/01822-01.pdf EDWARDS, J., “There’s a plan floating around Davos to spend $90 trillion redesigning all the cities so they don’t need cars” Business Insider UK http://uk.businessinsider.com/plan-to-spend-90-trillion-redesigning-cities-without-cars-2015-1 MONBIOT, G., “Climate change? Try catastrophic climate breakdown” The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-change-report-global-warming “Al Gore thinks we should spend $90 trn designing cars out of cities” CityMetric http://www.citymetric.com/transport/al-gore-thinks-we-should-spend-90trn-designing-cars-out-cities-673 JAFFE, E., “Trees can make waiting for the bus feel shorter” CityLab http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/08/trees-can-make-waiting-for-the-bus-feel-shorter/401135/ BADGER, E., “How to make waiting for the bus feel much, much shorter” CityLab http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/01/why-technology-forever-changing-psychology-waiting-bus/8158/ “RTPI increases ridership! Who knew?!” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/blog/article/rtpi-increases-ridership-who-knew “Saving lives with on-board Wi-Fi, one journey at a time” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/article/saving-lives-with-on-board-wi-fi-one-journey-at-a-time “NOVUS DT explained” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/product/novus-dt ADNEY, P., “The image of the bus: time for an extreme makeover?” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/blog/article/the-image-of-the-bus-time-for-an-extreme-makeover “Understanding why some people do not use buses” The Scottish Government http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2010/04/23115458/6 “How to get more people to use public transportation” HubPages http://floatingmind.hubpages.com/hub/how-to-get-people-to-ride-public-transportation ADNEY, P., “A little more conversation” Trapeze http://www.trapezegroup.co.uk/blog/article/a-little-more-conversationWith Donald Trump’s victory, news organizations are increasingly finding themselves writing more about the so-called alt-right, a racist, far-right fringe movement that heavily supported Trump’s election.
As part of this, news organizations are also increasingly telling writers to be clear that this movement is racist. The Associated Press previously released a style guideline for this:
Usage “Alt-right” (quotation marks, hyphen and lower case) may be used in quotes or modified as in the “self-described” or “so-called alt-right” in stories discussing what the movement says about itself. Avoid using the term generically and without definition, however, because it is not well known and the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience. In the past we have called such beliefs racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist. Boilerplate Again, whenever “alt-right” is used in a story, be sure to include a definition: “an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism,” or, more simply, “a white nationalist movement.” Here is an example from the AP news report: With an ideology that’s a mix of racism, white nationalism and old-fashioned populism, the “alt-right” has burst into the collective consciousness since members showed up at the Republican National Convention to celebrate Trump’s nomination last summer.
Now the New York Times has followed suit, releasing its own guideline:
Let’s avoid using “alt-right” in isolation, without an explanation (which means it will rarely be appropriate in headlines). We don’t need to adopt one-size-fits-all boilerplate, but any description can touch on some key elements, based on our own reporting about the “alt-right”: It’s a racist, far-right fringe movement that embraces an ideology of white nationalism and is anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and anti-feminist. It is highly decentralized but has a wide online presence. Followers rail against multiculturalism and what they see as “political correctness.” So, for example, we might describe someone as “a leader of the so-called alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist and anti-immigrant positions.”
Some news organizations, such as the liberal ThinkProgress, have taken more drastic measures, noting that it will not refer to the phrase “alt-right” except in quotes. Its editors argued that the term is merely a marketing ploy to mask the alt-right’s racist intentions, and journalists shouldn’t fall for it.
Vox, by the way, mostly follows the Associated Press on this, as is our default.
Speaking personally, I think the New York Times and Associated Press approach makes more sense than the ThinkProgress approach. While it’s true that “alt-right” seems to be an attempt to hide what’s really going on in the movement, it’s also good to be able to distinguish between different racist groups. For example, the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis are both racist movements, but you couldn’t lump them together in vague terms about racism without neglecting what makes each unique and, at certain points in history, frighteningly successful.
Besides, the term “alt-right” is already out there. Without using that phrase, it’s going to be a lot harder to help readers understand which specific movement this new wave of racists belong to. In this way, not using the term “alt-right” might make it easier for the people in the movement to get away with what they’re doing.
Watch: Fear and loathing at a Trump rallyEarly in his career, Jamal Crawford would set up for corner three-pointers directly in front of the opponent’s bench and find himself distracted. Now the sixth-most prolific shooter in NBA history, the younger Crawford realized that the presence of the other team was getting in his head.
Oh, no, it wasn’t their trash talk that was bothering him. It was his own.
“It affected me,” Crawford admitted with a laugh. “(I would) think about what I’m going to say if I make it.”
That, in a nutshell, describes one of the most enjoyable dynamic in the entire NBA: one that typically hides in plain sight. No major sport brings active participants so close to resting opponents with such frequency. Every player shooting in front of an opponent’s bench knows he’ll be yelled at, and most shooters will turn around to gloat if the shot goes in.
I spoke to six different players who frequently shoot corner threes for this story, and none of the six would admit to ever being distracted by something an opponent said. Crawford has honed his approach and dropped the trash talk, but he still loves when opponents try it.
“I laugh at it inside,” Crawford told SB Nation. “Because I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to make it so I can turn around and look at ‘em.’”
Crawford is describing The Look.
This is a phenomenon that is hardly new but is increasingly popular.
Give Stephen Curry credit for that. He has the most famous example of The Look in the past few seasons, when he gave a sit-down-and-shut-up look to the entire Kings bench while his shot was still in the air.
For proof that The Look has caught on, here’s an example of De’Aaron Fox — who shot 25 percent on threes in college — doing it.
The Look is ingrained into shooters, a quick-but-vicious stare at the other team’s bench, before they have to sprint back on defense. It’ll sometimes be directed at one specific player if he’s especially vocal. Thunder center Steven Adams said that this frequently happens to Andre Roberson, a known bench yeller.
“They make it, and they’ll turn and look directly at him,” Adams said. “It’s just one of those things where it’s just like, ‘Damn! Shit!’”
Bucks guard Jason Terry remembered a time when an opponent took it too far and actually grabbed his jersey. The referee missed it and instant replay didn’t exist, so it went unpunished.
That hardly ever happens, however. More often, according to the shooters interviewed for this story, aggressive bench ‘defense’ is a motivator. Terry remembered one example from the 2008 playoffs involving Peja Stojakovic.
“Stojakovic hit one in the corner on us, and we were all standing up,” said Terry, then with the Dallas Mavericks. “I swear I could have touched him. That close. Did not affect him whatsoever. And it actually did the opposite. He was pumped up.”
Players believe that some shooters can be spooked — “some guys get scared, some guys come up short, even airball,” Terry said — even if they themselves can’t be. In their mind, they make shots against stifling on-court defense, and some yelling won’t change that.
“You’ll be so locked into making a shot that you can’t really hear the crowd,” Celtics guard Terry Rozier said. “Most of the time, I can’t even hear it.”
Rozier remembers one corner three he hit earlier this year against New York, jabbing twice and rising up over Enes Kanter. After hitting the shot, he made sure to give the Knicks bench The Look.
“Just talking shit, just having fun,” Rozier said.
Ninety-nine percent of these interactions happen without anyone ever noticing, but something like Curry’s will occasionally rise above it.
Another example happened in Game 3 of the 2013 NBA Finals, when Miami Heat forward Juwan Howard and then-assistant coach David Fizdale were caught screaming in Danny Green’s ear during Game 2 from three feet away.
It didn’t work.
News sites wrote about the play. At Dime Magazine, it was even asked if this should be banned: “So the obvious question is: Should NBA benches be allowed to do this?”
That won’t happen, and no player suggested that it should. Even shooters who believe that screaming from the sideline will motivate their opponents join in. It’s a rare moment when benched players can feel like they’re doing something to help their teammates on the court.
That’s especially true when nobody on the court is trying to guard the shot. For Adams, that’s the only time that he plays bench defense.
“If he’s wide open, if there’s a fault in the defense, then I’m the last resort,” Adams said.
Not everyone participates in these corner distractions. Mavericks center Salah Mejri doesn’t believe that it works, but his main reason for not standing up to yell is more practical.
“It’s hard for me to get up,” Mejri said. “I always put the heat on my knees.”
All this brings us to the question: Does it actually work?
One team employee in an NBA analytics department told me that he has never heard of such data being tracked and that it would be difficult to do so because the ‘home’ and ‘away’ bench varies by arena and team. Plus, we’re looking for a trend. That would require several seasons’ worth of data, at minimum.
But it doesn’t really matter what the stats say. It won’t prevent benches from playing ‘defense,’ even if it means they fall victim to The Look.
“It feels like it’s helping,” Rozier said. “It’s something that you just do.”
Beware THE LOOK from players shooting corner threesConsent given to turn reactors at the massive Kashiwazaki-kariwa plant back on, but Japanese worry over active fault lines and mismanagement
If a single structure can define a community, for the 90,000 residents of Kashiwazaki town and the neighbouring village of Kariwa, it is the sprawling nuclear power plant that has dominated the coastal landscape for more than 40 years.
When all seven of its reactors are in operation, Kashiwazaki-kariwa generates 8.2m kilowatts of electricity – enough to power 16m households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land along the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.
But today, the reactors at Kashiwazaki-kariwa are idle. The plant in Niigata prefecture, about 140 miles (225km) north-west of the capital, is the nuclear industry’s highest-profile casualty of the nationwide atomic shutdown that followed the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi.
Fukushima evacuee to tell UN that Japan violated human rights Read more
The company at the centre of the disaster has encountered anger over its failure to prevent the catastrophe, its treatment of tens of thousands of evacuated residents and its haphazard attempts to clean up its atomic mess.
Now, the same utility, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], is attempting to banish its Fukushima demons with a push to restart two reactors at Kashiwazaki-kariwa, one of its three nuclear plants. Only then, it says, can it generate the profits it needs to fund the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi and win back the public trust it lost in the wake of the meltdown.
This week, Japan’s nuclear regulation authority gave its formal approval for Tepco to restart the Kashiwazaki-kariwa’s No. 6 and 7 reactors – the same type of boiling-water reactors that suffered meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.
After a month of public hearings, the nuclear regulation authority concluded that Tepco was fit to run a nuclear power plant and said the two reactors met the stricter safety standards introduced after the 2011 disaster.
Just before that decision, Tepco gave the Guardian an exclusive tour of what it claims will be the safest nuclear plant in the world.
Now, as on the day of the triple disaster that brought widespread destruction to Japan’s northeast coast, Kashiwazaki-kariwa has the look of a working nuclear plant. Just over 1,000 Tepco staff and 5,000-6,000 contract workers provide the manpower behind a post-Fukushima safety retrofit that is projected to cost 680 billion yen ($6.1bn).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kashiwazaki-kariwa nuclear power plant, with the Japan Sea in the distance. Photograph: Justin McCurry for the Guardian
They have built a 15-metre-high seawall that, according to Tepco, can withstand the biggest tsunami waves. In the event of a meltdown, special vents would keep 99.9% of released radioactive particles out of the atmosphere, and corium shields would block molten fuel from breaching the reactors’ primary containment vessels. Autocatalytic recombiners have been installed to prevent a repeat of the hydrogen explosions that rocked four of Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors.
Other parts of the sprawling complex are home to fleets of emergency vehicles, water cannon, back-up power generators, and a hilltop reservoir whose 20,000 tonnes of water will be drawn to cool reactors in the event of a catastrophic meltdown.
“As the operator responsible for the Fukushima accident, we’re committed to learning lessons, revisiting what went wrong and implementing what we learned here at Kashiwazaki-kariwa, says the plant’s chief, Chikashi Shitara. “We are always looking at ways to improve safety.
“Because of our experience at Fukushima, we’re committed to not making the same mistakes again – to make the safety regime even stronger. That’s what we have to explain to members of the public.”
‘This is no place for a nuclear power plant’
The public, however, is far from convinced. Last year, the people of Niigata prefecture registered their opposition to the utility’s plans by electing Ryuichi Yoneyama, an anti-nuclear candidate, as governor. Exit polls showed that 73% of voters opposed restarting the plant, with just 27% in favour.
Yoneyama has said that he won’t make a decision on the restarts, scheduled for spring 2019, until a newly formed committee has completed its report into the causes and consequences of the Fukushima disaster - a process that could take at least three years.
Fukushima evacuees face 'forced' return as subsidies withdrawn Read more
For many residents, the plant’s location renders expensive safety improvements irrelevant. “Geologically speaking, this is no place for a nuclear power plant,” says Kazuyuki Takemoto, a retired local councillor and a lifelong anti-nuclear activist.
Takemoto cites instability caused by the presence of underground oil and gas deposits in the area, and evidence that the ground on which Tepco’s seawall stands is prone to liquefaction in the event of a major earthquake.
Local critics have pointed to the chaos that could result from attempting to evacuate the 420,000 people who live within a 30km radius of Kashiwazaki-kariwa. “That’s more people than lived near Fukushima, plus we get very heavy snowfall here, which would make evacuating everyone impossible,” Takemoto adds. “The situation would be far worse than it was in Fukushima.”
Adding to their concerns are |
than 48,000 tons, and the jacket, or the legs that support the structure below the surface and attach to the seabed, can be hundreds of feet long and weigh more than 25,000 tons.
An automated dynamic-positioning system keeps Pieter Schelte's frame stationary in the notorious North Sea currents. When it's time to lift a topside, the ship maneuvers so that the oil rig stands between its hulls, almost touching them. Eight immense arms slide out from the decks and clamp the topside (which was previously cut from the legs) in an unbreakable hydraulic grasp. To eliminate the tension created by the ship's yawing and pitching on the water, the clamps adjust constantly with the waves. Ballast water is pumped out of the hulls, lifting the ship and topside, and both bob free like the world's largest cork.
Removing a jacket is a different challenge, since the torque involved in rotating such a huge structure is enormous. A pair of lifting beams 540 feet long tilt down from the ship's stern, and the jacket—previously severed at the seabed—is winched tightly against them. When the beams tilt up again, the entire jacket ends up lying flat on the Pieter Schelte's deck: the Eiffel Tower on a sunbathing cruise. All in a matter of hours.
The Pieter Schelte took eight years to build, and that timing is no accident. Over the next 25 years, numerous tapped-out North Sea oilfields will need their abandoned rigs removed, with more rigs waiting to be installed in new sectors to replace them. The Pieter Schelte can do that too.
Illustrations by Axel Pfaender
(Illustrations by Axel Pfaender)LinkedIn is a great tool for job seekers -- but to be successful, you've got to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Here's how.
February 2, 2017 3 min read
Have you looked at your LinkedIn profile lately? Chances are you’re one of the millions who describe themselves with overused words such as “specialized,” “passionate” or “creative.”
Related: 5 Steps to Build Your Personal Brand
Every year, LinkedIn analyzes the summary section of more than 400 million users to find these buzzy words. Its recently released list of the top 10 most overused words found in profiles will give you an idea of what you should take out from your online resume.
The top 10 LinkedIn buzzwords:
Specialized Leadership Passionate Strategic Experienced Focused Expert Certified Creative Excellent
“When you come across a LinkedIn profile that proclaims that a person is ‘a passionate, skilled professional with extensive experience,’ do you have a good sense for their skills? Probably not,” says LinkedIn Career Expert Blair Decembrele.
On average, a recruiter will spend five to 10 seconds looking at a LinkedIn page, so it’s more important than ever to make your profile stand out. This is easier said than done. The solution is not to just replace those buzzwords with some others that you find on Thesaurus.com, but instead use language that illustrates your professionalism and successes.
Related: The One Thing You're Doing Wrong on LinkedIn
Decembrele shares some tips to help spice up your LinkedIn profile:
1. Focus on your professional brand.
Write a summary of 40 words or more -- the more words you have, the more often you’ll show up in a recruiter’s search. Instead of including any of those generic buzzwords, use your summary to write about your professional brand and career goals, and bring in some data and metrics to back up what you’re saying.
“Rather than saying you’re a ‘passionate sales executive,’ consider using metrics that can help quantify your skills to showcase that you ‘spearheaded sales resulting in over $500,000 annual recurring revenue,’” Decembrele says.
2. Upload an excellent profile picture.
Your profile picture is more important than you think -- it’s a significant part of someone's first impression of you.
“Members who include a profile photo receive up to 21 times more profile views and 36 times more messages," Decembrele says.
3. Add visuals.
The last thing you want is a boring LinkedIn profile, so on top of banishing those buzzwords, you should also make your profile appealing to the eye by adding pictures, videos and presentations to your “experience” section.
Related: 11 Strong Signs That You've Mastered LinkedIn
4. Say what you’re looking for.
If you don’t include what you’re looking for on your profile, then people won’t know whether you’ll be a good fit. List your current or desired location in your profile -- this makes you stand out up to 23 times in searches, Decembrele says. Many recruiters will source for candidates through their location.
5. List your skills.
When you’re describing your previous experience, don’t just explain what you did on a day-to-day basis -- instead, write about what you gained. List at least five relevant skills you have gained in your previous positions, projects or volunteer jobs.CHICAGO—Touting the program’s convenience and affordability, Chicago officials unveiled Monday the city’s new gun-sharing service, “QuikShot,” which allows individuals to check out a loaded firearm for short periods of time.
The municipal initiative, through which users can rent semiautomatic pistols, shotguns, rifles, and submachine guns at more than 250 self-service kiosks, has reportedly been designed to make firepower easily available to residents and tourists alike nearly everywhere within the city limits.
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“QuikShot lets anyone with a credit card walk up to one of our street-side firearm stations, select a gun, and head out into the Windy City fully armed in just a few seconds,” program director Arvind Reynolds told reporters, noting that borrowers can either rent their weapon for increments of 30 minutes or withdraw it for a full 24 hours if they plan on using it throughout the day. “With QuikShot, you and your friends can each take a Beretta up to Wrigley Field, or you can head to an outdoor concert in Millennium Park with a concealed 9mm revolver, or you can simply take in the great view of the Magnificent Mile from the roof deck of the Hancock tower through a scoped sniper rifle. The possibilities are truly endless with QuikShot.”
“And if the guns at one station are all checked out, users only have to walk a block or two to the next one in order to find a loaded firearm,” he added. “So whether you’ve been planning an outing for a while or simply decided to head out in the spur of the moment, QuikShot has you covered.”
According to sources, after paying a small registration fee, QuikShot users may rent a firearm as often as they wish in neighborhoods ranging from Edgewater in the north, to the downtown Loop business district, to Hyde Park on the South Side, allowing them to brandish and discharge one or more rounds wherever they choose to in the city. Additionally, due to higher demand, Chicago officials said that multiple QuikShot kiosks would be opened around highly trafficked destinations, such as Navy Pier, the Art Institute, the Water Tower Place shopping center, and the Chicago Lakefront running and cycling paths.
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Because the firearms are expected to see heavy use, Reynolds confirmed that repair crews would regularly monitor the city’s reholstering docks in order to clean and reload the weapons, as well as to replace guns that have jammed or misfired during operation, ensuring that borrowers aren’t inconvenienced by their gun malfunctioning at a crucial moment.
“It’s a great addition to the city—nothing beats being able to run out of my apartment and have a gun in my hands whenever I want.”
Users, however, are reportedly expected to provide their own protective Kevlar body armor, with program administrators adding that the city of Chicago is not liable for any injuries incurred due to use of its rentals.
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“It’s a great addition to the city—nothing beats being able to run out of my apartment and have a gun in my hands whenever I want,” said Lincoln Park resident Keith Madsen, 32, noting that a QuikShot membership is much more economical than purchasing and maintaining his own extended magazine AR-15 assault rifle. “Even if I’m not necessarily planning on firing a gun on any given day, it’s always nice to know that I have the option if something comes up.”
Sources confirmed that the city is planning to expand the service in the months ahead by purchasing more guns, with the goal of increasing its publicly available arsenal to more than 65,000 weapons in anticipation of the hot summer months, when QuikShot usage is expected to reach its peak.
“QuikShot is so easy that I’m actually shooting a handgun way more often than I normally would,” said local resident Danny Taylor, who participated in a pilot trial of the program, as he deposited an empty.357 Magnum with the QuikShot logo imprinted on its grip at a Rogers Park reholstering station. “Whether I’m going to a house party or just to the liquor store, it’s nice to know that I can grab a piece, use it for as long as I want, and then drop it off without a lot of fuss.”
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“In fact, I’m thinking about checking out one tomorrow morning before I head into the office,” he continued.If a postman knocks on your door during evening hours, don't be surprised. They are there to deliver your parcel once you reach home after your office hours so that you don't have to visit the nearest post office to collect your returned goods.
Starting next week the India Post will commence delivery of e-commerce goods during late afternoon and early evening hours. "To begin with e-commerce parcels will be delivered till late 8pm. Delivery at residences will be kept for later part of the day so that those families who are not at their respective offices during the day can get doorstep parcel delivery and not visit the post office the next day to claim the goods," said Ashok Kumar Dash, chief post master general, Maharashtra Circle.
The Maharashtra Circle of India Post has already established its e-commerce parcel processing unit in Parel area to have a centralised distribution network. The pilot project of delivery till 8 pm will initially cover areas of Bandra-Khar-Santacruz and Chembur-Ghatkopar.
"These areas are from where majority of the e-commerce orders are placed and sent. Therefore, we decided to commence the experiment from these suburbs of Mumbai instead of initiating it in south Mumbai," said Dash.
The postman will be handing over e-commerce parcels through mechanised delivery process on a pilot basis, and at a later stage speed post letters too would be delivered till 8 in the night.
The latest initiative by the India Post is aimed at giving a fight to private courier services and upgrading itself in order to be appealing in an ever-competitive e-commerce delivery market. Apart from increasing revenue potential, it will also help the department to improve its goodwill among the public.Conyers is a “icon,” said @NancyPelosi in his defense on @MeetThePress. I hope that she already regrets saying this. pic.twitter.com/6TVyioTdKT — Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) November 26, 2017
During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi cast a bit of doubt on the sexual harassment accusations against Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) while adding that she wouldn’t comment on whether Conyers should step aside right now.
And she also called the embattled lawmaker an “icon.” Yep, she actually said that about a man who was recently exposed as secretly settling a lawsuit from a woman who claimed she was wrongfully fired for resisting Conyers’ sexual advances.
While telling host Chuck Todd that the House Ethics Committee is looking into the allegations against Conyers, she described the Michigan Democrat as an “icon in our country.”
“He has done a great deal to protect women,” she told Todd. “I believe he understands what’s at stake here, and he will do the right thing.”
Pelosi further noted that Conyers is entitled to “due process” over the allegations while wondering aloud how many accusations have been made against the lawmaker.
Immediately following the interview, Pelosi was absolutely shredded on Twitter:
Pelosi waffles on Conyers sexual misconduct allegations and calls Democratic congressman an icon https://t.co/NQK2VyFKtj — Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) November 26, 2017
Nancy Pelosi's interview with Chuck Todd this morning is a devastating showpiece of our era's bipartisan moral blindness. Dems had an opportunity to lead on sexual assault and are completely blowing it. https://t.co/pu2OcaWKvQ — Elise Jordan (@Elise_Jordan) November 26, 2017
Conyers is a “icon,” said @NancyPelosi in his defense on @MeetThePress. I hope that she already regrets saying this. pic.twitter.com/6TVyioTdKT — Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) November 26, 2017
Nancy Pelosi & congressional Dems don't seem to understand the Weinstein moment. This will damage the party. https://t.co/DxGwMQhTe7 — Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 26, 2017
Watch the clip above, via NBC News.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comWhen news broke that the Rangers were in discussions to bring former Winnipeg Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec, it appeared that Jeff Gorton had found Benoit Allaire’s newest reclamation project. With the official start of free agency three hours away, news has already broke that Pavelec and the Rangers will agree to a contract:
G Ondrej Pavelec to NYR. — Bob McKenzie (@TSNBobMcKenzie) July 1, 2017
Since the deal can’t officially be announced until 12:00 PM EDT, the terms of the contract are unlikely to be announced prior to then. However, it’s hard to imagine the deal being more than a one year deal for modest money due to the rough season Pavelec endured last year.
We’ll update this post as details come out. Thoughts on the Rangers’ newest backup goalie?Randomization
Hi! My name is Alan Comer, and I am here today to talk about randomness. I have worked on many TCGs over the last 10+ years — Magic Online, Kaijudo, and Pokémon are the biggest. Every time, randomness becomes a hot topic of discussion. It happens inside the companies, as well as on the forums. I have been called on many times to explain what really happens, and why. I would like to start with the basics so that everybody is on the same footing.
First off, what is randomness?
For true randomness, each event is independent of all others and is impossible to predict. Each possible outcome has a specific chance that it will occur.
How do we use randomness?
We don’t. We use something called pseudo-random (as does every other game ever made). We try to get as close to true random as possible because getting 100% of the way there is extremely painful. Like many things in computer science, you must weigh tradeoffs. The more random you get, the longer it takes to generate results.
Okay, so how are pseudo-random numbers generated?
There are many ways.
C/C++ has a function called rand(). It is generally considered terrible. To improve on this, people have come up with better and better algorithms— ComplimentaryMultiply with Carry, Mersenne Twister, on up to cryptographically secure algorithms. These are called PseudoRandom Number Generators, or PRNG for short.
Which is best?
Well, the cryptographically secure ones are best, but quite time consuming. After that, things break down into various camps arguing their side is better. As a general rule, they are good enough for our purposes, as long as they are used correctly. Virtually all games use PRNGs
What is a seed?
The original input into the PRNG. From this number, the PRNG creates random numbers
What do we need to look for in our algorithm?
First order results: Does every number show up approximately the same number of times as every other over a given sample size?
Second order results: Given the previous number, is the likelihood of the next number still flat? Failure to be flat here would cause things like “Card A shows up after Card B too often”
Periodicity: Simply put, how long does it take before it repeats? How long after you give it a seed does it take before it works reasonably? If this is too low, you could learn the sequence and be able to predict results later in the game based on earlier ones. Periodicity in PRNGs are orders of magnitude larger than the length of the game, and anything longer than the length of the game is enough.
How can the PRNG be proven it is random?
It can’t. The nature of statistics states that statistics itself can’t be proven. That is why it is called “The Theory of Statistics”. Anybody who is telling you that they can prove something with statistics is wrong. In addition, no matter what test is run, there is always a chance of a false positive or negative.
How should one test for a failure of randomness?
The proper test is to first, state your theory as to what is the problem is. Next, you need to decide a sample size, and make sure it is large enough. After that, you calculate what the expected result is, and what is a reasonable variance from that result (Z Score). Finally, you run through all the steps and compare the result. After this, it is likely that you have the correct answer. Yes, this is ugly and annoying and time consuming. But, we do it because we must verify that our game is fair.
What can go wrong with tests?
Human error: This is a big one. When you are looking at thousands of events, missing something uninteresting can be common and skew the results.
Looking at the past: You must start with an idea of the problem, then test. Sooner or later, even very unlikely things are bound to happen. If you get a funny opening hand 5 times in a row, many people think that the odds of that happening were very low. However, the odds that it happen is 100% because it already happened. It is now a known event. Just think about the lottery. The odds of winning are very low. However, most weeks, there is a winner and people ask “what were the odds?” The randomizer wasn’t broken; in whole, everything worked like it should. However, from that 1 person’s perspective… The same thing happens with strange opening hands. One person gets the event, and often posts in the forums just like one person eventually wins the lottery.
Too small a sample size: On one project, the customer complained that Event A happened too frequently based on their sample size of 1,000 events. I disagreed. Eventually, they hired somebody independent to test it. They came back after testing 1,000 events. Yes, it was definitely wrong. The event happened too infrequently. I ran a test of 1,000,000 events. It was fine. Sample size is very important.
What have we done to test our algorithm in HEX?
I have run 1,000,000 numbers and looked at the 1st and 2nd order results. They look fine.
Periodicity tends not to be a problem for TCGs, as each game gets a new seed, and the periodicity is much larger than the length of the game.
Also, whenever anybody new joins the project, they are encouraged to look at the RNG and how it is used. It is important that everybody on the project believes that we are random, and the best way to do that is for them to check it out themselves.
What are some problems I have seen over the years on TCGs?
Invalid shuffling algorithm: Even though the PRNG is correct, I have seen a bad algorithm for shuffling a deck, which caused bias in the hands that were given. I only saw this in old code, as the problem had been caught before I even arrived on the project. HEX does not have this problem.
Not waiting long enough after the seed to use the PRNG.
I was working on one project, running 10000 games overnight Ai vs AI to test AI strengths. I noticed that the AI always won an even number of games. The seeds I was using were consecutive and the algorithm was not generating different enough numbers for it to affect consecutive games! Again, this was not HEX.
Misusing the results of the PRNG.
A card that had a chance to kill each troop based on its toughness. The code was comparing the result of the RNG wrong, which resulted in an extra 10% chance for each troop to die. Yes, this was found in HEX, and has been fixed.
Using an RNG that doesn’t perform well directly after seeding, and reseeding it too often.
Yep, I have seen code that generates a new seed for each random number it needs. When I saw this and tested it, I found that some numbers were twice as likely to be generated than others. This is a known effect of the PRNG that was being used for this. This I also found in HEX, back when I did a complete audit of the PRNG. However, it was in the pack opening code, something that as of this writing, has yet to be released to the public.
Finally, what is my opinion of the state of randomness in the game?
I feel really good about it. It is a hard thing to get right, but a lot of experienced engineers have looked it over. The last few audits have found no problems. There are quite a few posts about it on the forums, but I would be worried if there wasn’t. In fact, while working on Magic Online, I came up with the following rule:
“There is a correct amount of people complaining on the forums for a game to be properly random”. In short, if nobody is seeing strange looking events, the game isn’t random. Conversely, if too many people are having problems, it also isn’t random. Much like Game Theory saying there is an answer, but not what the answer is, I don’t know what the correct level of comments is, just that there is one.
-Alan Comer
Discuss this article in our forums!But the president’s emphasis on those who hope to follow him into the White House was revealing. As he enters the last six months of his term, Mr. Obama has been talking to his advisers about the burdens his successor will bear in consoling bereaved families and settling the nerves of the nation after another mass shooting. If Americans cannot find a way to stop this cycle of violence — and Mr. Obama predicted on Sunday that there would be another killer who would seek to divide people — the next president will have to double as a national grief counselor.
With the Republican and Democratic conventions likely to dominate news coverage for the next two weeks, Mr. Obama also recognizes that the power of his words is diminishing. For months now, he has seen how the campaign has stirred up such vitriolic anti-Washington sentiment that it has all but drowned out his appeal for coolheaded debate or common-sense solutions.
“It makes it extremely difficult for him to change minds or compel action, however rational that action may seem,” said Robert Dallek, the historian who has written books about Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan. “The distractions of the current political campaign, at some level, make his words superfluous.”
Superfluous, perhaps, but still necessary: Mr. Obama has spoken more than a dozen times after mass shootings. On Sunday, after the ambush of police officers in Baton Rouge, the White House issued a statement from the president. A few hours later, it notified the news media that he would appear in the briefing room at 4:30 p.m., soon after the governor of Louisiana and other state and local officials spoke to reporters in Baton Rouge.
For Mr. Obama, it was the seventh time in 10 days that he had appeared before cameras after an outbreak of violence. The string of shootings had in fact consumed most of his time. The president spent part of a flight to Europe fine-tuning his remarks in response to a pair of earlier shootings, in Baton Rouge and Minnesota, before speaking to reporters after landing in Warsaw. The next morning, he spoke again after the shootings in Dallas, and then a third time at the end of a NATO summit meeting.Bitcoins Are Surging in Popularity: Here’s Why
You have likely heard about Bitcoins, and perhaps you’ve followed their rapid ascent in the marketplace over the last six months. But when we talk about using Bitcoins and the increasing popularity of the monetary system, what exactly are we talking about?
The short answer is digital money.
Bitcoins are a form of money, just like the American dollar, the Euro, the rupee and the pound. The primary difference is that Bitcoins exist almost exclusively online.
The Barter System of Old
The premise behind Bitcoins is directly tied to the millennial-old idea of bartering. When civilizations were founded, residents traded goods and services. A farmer might trade eggs for firewood, for example. But over time, the barter system began to get more complicated.
Sometimes the farmer just couldn’t trade eggs or firewood. He needed something more desirable to work with. Coins or other valuable items were introduced to the local economic system. The coins were made of gold or other valuable items with a limited supply, and the market dynamics adjusted over time so that a certain number of coins could buy a particular item or service.
It was noticed quickly, however, that carrying coins was not always desirable. While the jingle of a full purse was fun, it was also a huge draw for thieves and cutthroats. Individuals realized that they could handle transactions more safely if they didn’t actually have their coins and valuables on hand.
Therefore those with valuable coins began to store them with a goldsmith or banker and instead of paying for an item in gold at the time of purchase, they would simply write a promissory note to the merchant and the seller would be able to pick up the promised gold coins from the goldsmith or bank at his leisure.
But an interesting phenomenon developed. Most of the coins – as many as 90 percent – never left the bank despite being promised to one person and then another. Individuals were simply trading promissory notes without bothering to physically collect and redistribute coins.
The banked coins just sat there, so early bankers decided to use them to their advantage. They let other customers borrow them and in return earned more coins as interest – all recorded on promissory notes, of course. Soon, rather than having one gold coin in circulation and nine safe in the bank for every ten on the first promissory note, bankers had almost doubled the funds available in the town leaving almost no funds in the bank should everyone come to claim their gold coins all at one time.
The Monetary System Today
Naturally, bankers then soon realized that virtually all banking was happening through promissory notes. They also knew that digging more gold out of the ground to increase the money supply was more trouble than it was worth. So the solution was simple. Banks would simply print more promissory notes, or tender, and stop trying to tie the paper notes to actual mined gold.
Now banks could print money at will, without worrying about digging gold or silver out of the ground.
The idea of fiat money was introduced.
Fiat currency is simply money that has no backing other than the value it is perceived to have. The U.S. dollar is always fluctuating in value depending on how others perceive its value, for example.
Since only governments or government appointed agencies can now legally print official government money, value is determined by economic factors as well as the amount of money that is actually printed and allowed into circulation.
This is essentially the same concept behind Bitcoins, but without printing presses or government fiscal games.
The Increasing Popularity of Bitcoins
Bitcoins are much like the Euros printed in Europe, but Bitcoins are manufactured digitally using processing power. There are no real coins to hold in your hand when it comes to Bitcoins.They are simply the next manifestation of fiat currency – money that is valued by economic factors.
And the economy seems to like Bitcoins.
The “Bitcoin Standard”
One of the most popular things about Bitcoins is the close resemblance the currency has to gold. Not that the virtual coins are gold and shiny, of course. But the gold standard called for all currency to be tied to actual gold coins or bars, of which there is a limited supply worldwide. This would prevent ever-increasing debt creation by countries and banks, which in turn, leads to inflation and other financial problems.
By comparison, the “Bitcoin standard” ties each Bitcoin to a tremendous amount of effort. There is also a limited number of Bitcoins ultimately available through a process called “mining.” Decades ago, banks abandoned the gold standard because it was so hard to get the gold out of the ground and it prevented full control of monetary systems.
Today, Bitcoins are earned by “miners” must work hard to verify previous Bitcoin transactions, or blocks. Each block that is added to the block-chain (or each transaction that is checked for fraud and added to the list of other previous transactions) earns the miners doing the work digital Bitcoins. The miners can then exchange their freshly mined Bitcoins for other forms of currency in an exchange or marketplace.
Nobody can create Bitcoin funds without investing quite a bit of hard work and processing power to earn them. And nobody can “mine” new Bitcoins without monitoring the current system for fraud, or individuals trying to re-spend Bitcoins that have already been spent. It’s a surprisingly clean system.
No Government Ties
At the very highest level, Bitcoins are a currency that is unaffected by any government, at least for now. Bitcoins are bought and sold in various markets much like gold is, but unlike gold, the Bitcoins can be used in an increasing number of stores and enterprises. Even large online marketers like Overstock.com have recently started accepting Bitcoins as a form of payment.
Without government printing presses and banks behind the Bitcoins, they operate far closer to the barter system and promissory notes of old than the modern fiat currency of today. Chiefly, the government has no control over the funds, although they do not technically have the ability to monitor cash under your mattress either. Those who prefer to invest in gold and keep cash on hand to avoid the government eye appreciate the similarities between Bitcoins and these other cautious systems.
Chief among the many other reasons Bitcoins continue to grow in popularity, individuals who prefer to operate out of the ever-watchful eye of the government appreciate the relative anonymity provided by the coins as well as the joyful risk of a new investment.Archbishop Hilarion Capucci earned everlasting infamy for running guns to the Palestinian jihadis who would have oppressed and subjugated his own people if they had had half a chance, and the Vatican in turn earned even more infamy by sheltering him all these years.
But Capucci’s jihad-enabling actions were no surprise: he comes from an ecclesiastical tradition that is deeply, insidiously, and inveterately anti-Semitic. Recently I encountered a bishop of that tradition who is openly and viciously anti-Semitic, dismissing Pamela Geller’s work on the sole grounds that she is a Jew. Capucci’s superior, Gregory III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and All the East, has proudly declared: “We, the Arab Christians, always defend Islam and our Muslim brothers – no one defends Islam like the Arab Christians do.”
Gregory III has also blamed “Zionists” for jihad attacks on Middle Eastern Christians. He is the Patriarch who walked out of a Ted Cruz speech in a rage over Cruz saying he stood with Israel. He, like so many of his peers, appears to have thoroughly imbibed the “Palestinian” jihadis’ hatred of and contempt for Israel, despite the fact that it is a more hospitable place for his own people than the Muslim countries he weeps over and offers a better life for Christians than the Islam he so ardently defends. They think that the jihadis will go easy on them if they echo their political line, loving what they love and hate what they hate. They will be in for a rude awakening when the jihadis to whom they have been so solicitous and accommodating turn on them.
Patriarch Gregory III and the now-dead Archbishop Hilarion Capucci are not alone in selling out their people and aligning with jihad murderers. Much of the Melkite clergy, and Catholic clergy in general, in the U.S. as well as in the Middle East, cower before jihad killers and pretends their cowardice is “respect.” The contemporary Catholic hierarchy in general is making nice with the jihad force, and thereby enabling its advance. And it will reap what it is sowing.
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)
“Hilarion Capucci: Arms-smuggling archbishop dies aged 94,” BBC, January 2, 2017:Media playback is not supported on this device Brilliant Simone Biles wins women's all-around gymnastics gold
American gymnast Simone Biles produced a stunning performance to win the women's all-around Olympic gold medal.
Biles, 19, who has won 10 World Championship medals since 2013, scored 62.198 to win her second Olympic medal by a margin of more than two points.
Compatriot Alexandra Raisman got silver with Russia's Aliya Mustafina third.
Great Britain's Ellie Downie came 13th, narrowly missing out on becoming the best performing female British gymnast in an Olympic all-around final.
Biles lives up to billing
Biles has won gold in the team and individual all-around finals in Rio
Biles, described by many as the greatest ever gymnast, had arrived in Rio as the overwhelming favourite for gold and the 4ft 8in athlete delivered in a big way.
Having already led the United States to victory in the team event, she turned the spotlight on her individual brilliance with a dazzling display of power, agility and gravity-defying moves.
She went ahead after the first of four disciplines with a score of 15.866 on vault, although she dropped back to second with 14.966 on the uneven bars, with Mustafina taking the lead at the halfway point.
Media playback is not supported on this device Simone Biles produces spectacular bars routine
Biles then turned on the style with an acrobatic beam routine that included a stunning spin to score 15.433 before a floor routine to samba music packed with energetic tumbles, including the move that bears her name.
She scored 15.933 for that final routine and burst into tears when the victory was confirmed.
The United States have now won this event four times in a row, following victories by Carly Patterson in 2004, Nastia Liukin in 2008 and Gabrielle Douglas in 2012.
Biles has more chances for success in Rio as she is also in the vault final on Sunday, the beam final on Monday and the floor final on Tuesday.
Simone Biles included a tumbling move that is named after her during her floor routine on her way to a huge score of 15.933 - the highest score on a single piece of apparatus from any of the gymnasts in the final
Downie misses out on British record
Britain's Max Whitlock had won a bronze medal in the men's event on Wednesday, but Downie's medal hopes ended with a poor score on her third apparatus, the uneven bars, before she made another error on beam.
Inspired to try gymnastics? Find out how to get into gymnastics with our special guide.
Those mistakes saw her drop down from seventh to 13th, to miss out on emulating her sister Becky Downie, who came 12th in the all-around final at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Seventeen-year-old Ellie Downie, the winner of the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award in 2015, gained a total of 56.883 after scores of 14.300 on floor, 15.100 on vault, 13.783 on uneven bars and 13.700 on beam.
'No-one thinks they can beat Simone'
Gold medallist Simone Biles said: "I'm very excited and relieved, I've finally done it. You never know the feeling until it hits you.
"I'm not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, I'm the first Simone Biles. To me I'm just the same Simone."
Media playback is not supported on this device Two experts in gymnastics discuss what it takes to be at the top of the sport
Silver-medallist Alexandra Raisman added: "No-one goes into this thinking they can beat Simone.
"I'm sure most people don't go into it thinking they can beat Usain Bolt, so it's kind of the same thing.
"We are like sisters. I told her before today, I want you to win and I want second."
Great Britain's Ellie Downie was competing at her first Olympic Games
Great Britain's Ellie Downie said: "I was really happy with how floor and vault went. On bars I lost a bit of concentration, which is something I'll learn from.
"On beam I didn't feel nervous and the actual routine was really good but the landing I needed to focus more.
"It's mixed emotions knowing if I had gone clean I had a chance of a medal, which shows I'm right up there. That's a big positive to take out of these Games.
"It's been a bit of a rollercoaster experience but I'm very proud of what I've achieved."
Reaction to the final
US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted her praise for the American duo
Craig Heap, who helped win two Commonwealth Games gold medals for England, was among those impressed by Simone Biles' performance
Fellow British gymnast Ruby Harrold was quick to congratulate Ellie Downie on her performance
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox.Elon Musk says he wants to help.
On Saturday, the famous entrepreneur tweeted a mild rebuke of a recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump that temporarily blocked immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries before part of the order itself was blocked by a federal judge. On Sunday, Musk tweeted an offer to bring specific complaints about the order to the president.
Musk, a new business advisor to Trump, does have that kind of access.
Please read immigration order. Lmk specific amendments. Will seek advisory council consensus & present to President. https://t.co/qLpbsP4lEk — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2017
But some of the most lauded responses to Musk's offer voiced speculation about the idea and anger over Musk's willingness to acquiesce to any |
no pressure, I would suggest to you — after three to four months — you're going to see evidence of his sneaking up on unfamiliar food and learning to like it."
I fear it might take a little longer.The Grilled Cheese Doughnut’s cheddar on a glazed doughnut is one of many off-beat and familiar grilled cheese sandwiches at soon-to-open Tom+Chee in Northwestside. (Photo: Tom+Chee )
Doughnuts land in Indianapolis again — this time as grilled cheese sandwiches.
Cincinnati-based restaurant Tom+Chee, known for quirky takes on comfort food classics, including nine grilled cheese doughnut sandwiches, opens Aug. 29 at 5650 W. 86th St. in the Northwestside Traders Point shopping area, the company announced.
Tom+Chee's basic Grilled Cheese Donut puts cheddar between a glazed doughnut. Offerings get crazier from there, for instance the Mint Summer's Night featuring mozzarella, chocolate mascarpone cheese, fresh strawberries and chocolate mint candy grilled between a glazed doughnut.
Fresh banana, peanut butter, mascarpone and mozzarella fill The King.
Doughnut stacks grab attention, especially with Indianapolis' recent doughnut run. The Indianapolis Star this summer reported three new doughnut shops: General American Donut Co. at 827 S. East St., Square Donuts at 14 S. Rangeline Road in Carmel and Rocket 88 coming this fall to 874 Virginia Ave.
Tom+Chee's doughnuts are part of the chain's menu mix. The restaurant specializes in familiar tomato soup and grilled cheese, hence the company name. Tom+Chee serves three tomato soups and more than 20 grilled cheese sandwiches.
Several sandwiches contain potato chips. One holds macaroni and cheese. Other selections are "fancy," say the Pesto+Turkey or the Hippy+Chee with hummus, cucumber, mixed greens, tomato and cheddar on wheat bread. A build-your-own grilled cheese is another option.
Tom+Chee also offers salads, specials and vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes.
Originally started as a food tent in Cincinnati, Tom+Chee has grown since founders Corey Ward and Trew Quackenbush pitched their business on ABC's "Shark Tank" in May 2013, the company reported. One hundred and fifty stores are under contract in 20 states, including Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey and Georgia, according to Tom+Chee.
Tom+Chee has also been featured on television's "The Chew," "Man vs. Food Nation," and "Amazing Eats." The Today Show, on NBC, named the chain's Grilled Cheese Doughnut one of the "Best Sandwiches in America," Tom+Chee reported.
"From the moment we experienced Tom+Chee for ourselves, we knew we had to bring it to Indianapolis," area franchisee Scott Greaves said.
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Ward and Quackenbush will be at the 10:30 a.m. Indianapolis grand opening. The 67-seat, 2,000-square-foot Tom+Chee here will be open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Call Liz Biro at (317) 444-6264. Follow her on Twitter: @lizbiro.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/VmWBg725 Apr 2016 | Jourdan Templeton | 2 minute read
With the release of Microsoft SQL 2016 looming, I've been keeping an eye on the SQL PowerShell cmdlets. In particular, Invoke-Sqlcmd.
I was disappointed however, to find the cmdlets are still only included when installed with the SQL Management Objects. It seems that this cmdlet has been designed to fill the gap between batch files + sqlcmd.exe and more modern PowerShell.
One of my rules when writing PowerShell is that the script should run on any machine without requiring special things to be installed. Based on this rule, I have written a small function. The only dependency is the.NET framework, as long as you're running on Windows 7/Server 2008+, you should be good to go.
Invoke-SqlCommand
Usage
Using the cmdlet is quite simple and can be used with either Windows or SQL auth:
Input
$server = "<server>.database.windows.net" $db = "<database>" $sql = "SELECT TOP 5 * FROM [Index]" Invoke-SqlCommand -Server $server -Database $db -Username $user -Password $pass -Query $sql | Format-Table
Output
I've been doing some work in the BI space lately. I've found it interesting to use unconventional data sources (like logs or output from other cmdlets etc). Then using PowerShell to clean/normalise the data and finally, plugging a reporting tool in over the top.
PowerShell is a great language for bridging operational scripts with a database for reporting (especially when your report is at the PoC stage). This code makes it super easy to plug your PowerShell script into an Azure SQL DB too.
Let me know what interesting uses you find for this cmdlet!
UPDATE 05/05/2016
Thanks to danekan on Reddit, I have updated the gist above to create an alias for the -ServerInstance param. This makes my code somewhat interchangeable with the Invoke-SqlCmd cmdlet without major changes.
Adding the following line to your existing scripts that use Invoke-SqlCmd to complete the transformation: New-Alias Invoke-SqlCmd Invoke-SqlCommand -Force. Just a quick disclaimer however: I have not intentionally made this to be at full feature parity with Invoke-SqlCmd, therefore your mile may vary :)
//jourdantA new Bible translation of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation, with many footnotes. Besides the new Bible translation, this page offers free download of many other free e-Books.
You can download the new Bible translation of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation here, by clicking the link of your choice. The Microsoft Word.doc files are “ready to print” in format; i.e., they are double-columned, and even and odd guttered for double-sided photo-copying and velo-binding or spiral binding. If you prefer the Textus Receptus, there is also a growing Textus Receptus section later below.
Word for Windows Section to download new Bible translation:
(NOTE: for the Word documents, WordPad, might open them. Except Word Pad might not display the footnotes. You can download for free the Free Office suite software for Windows, Linux, and Android, free, by clicking here.)
The whole Bible, Word 2007 for Windows,.docx format, 2.8 MB. Updated 2017-03-27
PDF Section to download new Bible translation:
These documents are in PDF (Portable Document Format), readable by most all platforms- Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Besides cross-platform compatibility, another advantage to these is that you don’t have to download and install any fonts. To read these, you probably already have Adobe Acrobat Reader. To download these files, right-click the links, and then choose “save as” or “save link as.” I will from now on be putting most of my efforts into these PDF editions, since I don’t have to use as much time adding changes to all the various Word editions.
The whole Bible, PDF format; 8 MB. Updated 2017-03-27
Gospel of Matthew, PDF format, Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.6 MB. Updated 2015-08-21
Gospel of Matthew, PDF format; 1 MB. Updated 2015-08-21
Gospel of Mark, PDF format, Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.2 MB. Updated 2015-12-24
Gospel of Mark, PDF format; 875 KB. Updated 2015-12-24
Gospel of Luke, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.5 MB. Updated 2016-01-17
Gospel of Luke, PDF format; 965 KB. Updated 2016-01-17
Gospel of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 2.5 MB. Updated 2017-03-27
Gospel of John, PDF format; 825 KB. Updated March 27, 2017
Download the David Robert Palmer gospels in e-Sword. After you download this module, you will need their third party module installer to put it into e-Sword.
Harmony of the Gospels – Palmer’s Diatessaron, PDF format; 1.5 MB.
The Epistle of James, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.5 MB. Updated 2016-06-04
The Epistle of James, PDF format; 1.3 MB. Updated 2016-06-04
First Epistle of Peter, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.8 MB. Updated 2016-08-04
First Epistle of Peter, PDF format; 1.5 MB. Updated 2016-08-04
Second Epistle of Peter, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.3 MB. Updated 2016-06-02
Second Epistle of Peter, PDF format; 1.2 MB. Updated 2016-06-02
First Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 1.6 MB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-04
First Epistle of John, PDF format; 404 KB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-04
Second Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 211 KB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-08
Second Epistle of John, PDF format; 189 KB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-08
Third Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; 221 KB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-10
Third Epistle of John, PDF format; 188 KB. Updated to NA28 2015-11-10
The Epistle of Jude in 62 Greek manuscripts (Swanson style) and 12 critical editions. PDF format, 360 KB. Updated 2016-05-25
Revelation, PDF format, alternating verse by verse with the Greek text, with 513 footnotes; 3.2 MB. Updated March 27, 2017.
Revelation, PDF format, with the footnote textual variants in English, with 308 footnotes; 836 KB. Updated March 27, 2017.
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation, My new Bible translation so far, 1,474 footnotes, PDF format, 437 pages, 6 MB. Updated March 27, 2017
For the individual books of the Bible, Macintosh computers can read the PDF documents above.
Download free eSword module of David Robert Palmer four gospels.
This is a third party site, and it is free, but you may have to sign up for an account, and also download their module installer. Download the David Robert Palmer eSword module.
Robinson-Pierpont Majority Text Section
The whole Bible, PDF format; 8 MB. This file is gradually being conformed to the Byzantine majority text compiled by Robinson and Pierpont (RP). The books immediately below, are completely conformed in this Bible, and others are gradually being done. Updated 2016-10-11
The whole Bible, Word 2007 for Windows,.docx format, 2.8 MB. Updated 2016-10-11
The Gospel of John, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Robinson-Pierpont Greek text
The Epistle of James, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Robinson-Pierpont Greek text
First Epistle of Peter, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Second Epistle of Peter, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
First Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Second Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Third Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Third Epistle of Jude, in 62 Greek manuscripts (Swanson style) and 12 critical editions. PDF format, 360 KB; Updated 2016-06-01
The Apocalypse of John, the Greek text of Robinson-Pierpont alternating verse by verse with an English translation. PDF format, 3.7 MB, with 508 footnotes; Updated 2016-10-11
Textus Receptus Section
I recognize and accept, that many people believe the Textus Receptus is the accurate Greek text base for a translation of the New Testament. Therefore, I have begun making TR versions of the previous documents:
The whole Bible, PDF format; 8 MB. This file is gradually being conformed to the TR. The books immediately below, are certainly TR in this Bible, and others are gradually being done. Updated 2016-10-11
The whole Bible, Word 2007 for Windows,.docx format, 2.8 MB. Updated 2017-07-13
The Gospel of John, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Textus Receptus Greek text
The Epistle of James, PDF format; English Bible verses alternate with the Textus Receptus Greek text; 1.5 MB. Updated 2016-06-04
First Epistle of Peter, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; Updated 2016-06-02
Second Epistle of Peter, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text; Updated 2016-06-02
First Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Second Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Third Epistle of John, PDF format; Bible verses alternate with the Greek text
Third Epistle of Jude, in 62 Greek manuscripts (Swanson style) and 12 critical editions. PDF format, 360 KB; Updated 2016-06-01
The Apocalypse of John, the Textus Receptus Greek text alternating verse by verse with an English translation. PDF format, 3.7 MB, with 508 footnotes; Updated 2016-10-11
Download Other Free PDF Documents.
Aesop’s Fables
Aesop’s Fables, It’s a PDF, 200 KB
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Allen & Greenough: New Latin Grammar
In PDF, 11.5 MB
Download Allen & Greenough: New Latin Grammar
Appolonius on Greek Grammar
On Adverbs, Connectives, Pronouns, Syntax; (in Greek) PDF, 4 MB
Download Appolonius on Greek Grammar
Appolonius, Dyscolus de Pronominibus
ed. Paulus Maas, (in Greek) PDF, 33 MB
Download Appolonius, Dyscolus de Pronominibus
Bennett, Charles E.: A Latin Grammar
In PDF, 7 MB
Download Bennett: A Latin Grammar
Bennett, Charles E.: A New Latin Composition
In PDF, 8.5 MB
Download Bennett: A New Latin Composition
Burkitt, F. Crawford: The Gospel History and its Transmission
Download Burkitt: The Gospel History and its Transmission
Calvin, John: Commentaries
In PDF, 1.5 MB
Download Calvin’s Commentaries
Charles, R. H.: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John
by R. H. Charles, D.Litt., D.D., In Two Volumes, Volume 1, 44 MB, PDF, Charles-Revelation-Vol-1.pdf
Download R. H. Charles on Revelation Vol. 1
Charles, R. H.: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John
by R. H. Charles, D.Litt., D.D., In Two Volumes, Volume 2, 25 MB, PDF, Charles-Revelation-Vol-2.pdf
Download R. H. Charles on Revelation Vol. 2
Cicero, Selected Orations
In Latin and English; PDF, 19.5 MB
Download Cicero: Selected Orations
Clement to the Corinthians A, B
(two epistles, Greek only), PDF, 114 KB Clement-To-Corinthians-1-and-2.pdf
Download Clement to the Corinthians A, B
Collar & Daniell, Beginner’s Latin Book
In PDF, 5 MB
Download Collar & Daniell, Beginner’s Latin
Complutensian Polyglot, Old Testament
From 1520, PDF, 336 MB
Download Complutensian Polyglot, Old Testament
Complutensian Polyglot, New Testament
From 1520, PDF, 164 MB
Download Complutensian Polyglot, New Testament
De Jonge: Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum
De Jonge, H. J.: Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum, PDF, 600 KB. Download De Jonge: Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum.
De Jonge, H. J.: Novum Testamentum A Nobis Versum
The Essence of Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament, PDF, 1.2MB
Download De Jonge: Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum
The Didache
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles; critical Greek text showing variants from 9 ancient source mss. and 10 editions; compiled by David Robert Palmer, proofread by Nikolaos Adamou, PDF, 715KB
Download The Didache Greek text.
Didymus: De Trinitate
PDF, 1.5 MB. Download Didymus: De Trinitate.
Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov, PDF, 5 MB. Download Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov.
D’Ooge, Benjamin L: Latin for Beginners
This is an HTML book with hyperlinks, zipped to 392 KB.zip file
Download D’Ooge Latin for Beginners HTML file in zip
D’Ooge, Benjamin L.: Key to “Latin for Beginners”
In PDF, 349 KB
Download D’Ooge Latin for Beginners PDF
Erasmus: Quatuor-Evangelia
208.5 MB. Download Erasmus: Quatuor-Evangelia.
Eusebius: Church History
Pdf in Greek only. Download Eusebius Church History.
Eusebius: Gospel Problems and Solutions
This PDF contains Eusebius’ Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum. On page 113 is the famous passage where Eusebius of Caesarea provides us evidence that almost all copies of the Gospel of Mark at that time did not contain Mark 16:9-20. Download Eusebius Ad Marinum.
Giles: The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books 1-4
Latin text with literal English translation interspersed, PDF, 7.5 MB
Download Giles: The Metamorphoses of Ovid
Goodspeed: Historical & Linguistic Studies
Edgar J. Goodspeed, Vol. 2, Greek Gospel Texts in America
It is volume two of “Historical and Linguistic Studies in Literature related to the New Testament.” Click here to download Goodspeed Historical & Linguistic Studies.
Goodwin, William W.: Greek Grammar
In PDF, 8.5 MB
Download Goodwin Greek Grammar
Green, Samuel G.: A Brief Introduction to New Testament Greek
PDF, 3 MB
Download Smith Greek Course
Grenfell and Hunt, the Hibeh Papyri Part 1
Edited with translations and notes. With Ten Plates.
“The papyri which form the subject of the present volume were obtained in the spring of 1902 from the Ptolemaic necropolis of El-Hibeh, partly by purchase, partly from our first excavations at that site, as is recorded in the Introduction. On p. 5 will be found an explanation of the remarkable fact that some of the literary papyri here edited belong to MSS. of which fragments were published by us in 1897. The papyri were, with one exception (no. 23), derived from mummy-cartonnage, and all belong to the third century B.C. …” Bernard P. Grenfell – Arthur S. Hunt.
Click here to download Grenfell & Hunt Hibeh Papyri.
Harris, J. Rendel: “Conflate Readings”
You can download “Conflate Readings” by J. Rendel Harris here.
Harvard Entrance Exam, 1869
Download pdf of the admissions exam in the year 1869 for Harvard College.
Hort “Notes on Select Readings”
Download pdf in which Fenton John Anthony Hort, D.D. discusses TC issues of the Pericope Adulterae, John 7:53 to end of chapter. Download Hort Pericope Adulterae
Hoskier, Herman C.: A Full Account and Collation of the Greek Cursive Codex Evangelium 604
With Two Facsimiles and Ten Appendices; PDF, 66 MB
Download Hoskier on Codex Evengelium 604
Hutton, Jeremy M.: “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” in Text, Tradition and Geography
In PDF, 242 KB
Download Hutton: Bethany Beyond the Jordan
Ignatius Epistles
(Note: I do not agree with some Ignatius doctrine, but these documents are useful for the study of patristic Greek.) Download here: Ignatius: 6 Epistles in Greek, to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Philadelphians, Romans, Smyrnians, & Trallians, PDF, 244 KB. Download the Ignatius Epistles.
Irenaeus Epistles re Polycarp and Florinus
Irenaeus: The Epistle Concerning the Martyrdom of Polycarp, plus Epistle to Florinus, (in Greek), PDF, 92 KB. Download Irenaeus.
Jongkind: Introduction to the Tregelles Greek New Testament
From (2009) PDF, 319 KB
Download Jongkind: Introduction to the Tregelles Greek New Testament
Krans Refutation of Holland
Krans, Jan: Refutation of Thomas Holland’s book, “Crowned With Glory,” especially re. Erasmus and the last six verses of Revelation.
Now downloadable here: Krans, Jan: Vid in the NA27. Download Krans, “vid” in the NA27.
Now downloadable here: Lake, Kirsopp: The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 2
Includes the Shepherd of Hermas, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Epistle to Diognetus; PDF, 16 MB. Download Lake Apostolic Fathers 2.
Now available for download: Lake, Kirsopp: The Text of the New Testament, PDF, 5 MB.
Download Lake Text of the New Testament.
Now available for download here: A Re-examination of Codex C
Lyon, Robert W.; “A Re-examination of Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus,” a doctoral thesis presented to the University of St. Andrews. PDF, 6 MB.
Download the Re-examination of Codex C-04 here.
Now available for download here: Miller Greek Testament Primer.
The full title is: Miller, Edward: A Greek Testament Primer, and Easy Grammar and Reading Book, Oxford, 1888, PDF, 3.5 MB. The Rev. Edward Miller, M.A. was an understudy of Burgon. The cover to this book says he was Rector of Bucknell. Download Miller.
Milton, John: Paradise Lost now available for download here.
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) wrote this epic poem called Paradise Lost. Milton dictated the poem when he was blind. Though his poem was widely acclaimed, politics always entered the conversation. He also had unorthodox views on divorce and polygamy. This is a PDF, 1 MB in size.
Download Milton Paradise Lost.
Download The Nicene Creed in Greek and English.
Ottley, R. R., The Book of Isaiah, According to the Septuagint LXX
Volumes 1 & 2, (Greek & English & commentary) PDF, 56 MB is now downloadable here. Download Ottley Isaiah Septuagint LXX.
The Oxford TC Debate on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament
, @ New College, May 6, 1897, PDF, 162 MB. The participants discussed theories by Hort, Scrivener and Burgon. Prebendary Miller represented Burgon. The other participants besides Mr. Miller were Dr. Ince, Professor Sanday, G. H. Gwilliam, A. C. Headlam, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Bonus.
Download the Oxford TC Debate PDF.
Palmer, David Robert; The Didache; the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
A critical Greek text showing variants from 9 ancient source mss. and 10 editions; pdf, 715KB. This is Greek text only; I plan to release my own English translation sometime in the future.
Download the Didache Greek text.
Palmer, David Robert: Quick-Reference Greek Ligature Guide
Free download, PDF, 6 MB. You can download the Quick-Reference Greek Ligature Guide here. You can also purchase a printed and bound edition here.
Pearson Latin Prose Composition Based on Cicero
By Pearson, Henry Carr, PDF, 5 MB. Download Pearson Latin Prose Composition.
Pharr, Clyde: “Homeric Greek, a Book for Beginners.”
This is a PDF, 6.3 MB in size. Download Pharr Homeric Greek.
Plumley Coptic Grammar
– by John Martin Plumley; An Introductory Coptic Grammar (Sahidic) 1948, PDF, 850 KB. London Home & van Thal 1948; Photocopied at the Hebrew University Library, Jerusalem, 1988; Transcribed by George Somsel and Paterson Brown; revised IV.10
Download Plumley Coptic Grammar.
Polycarp Epistle to the Philippians, The Greek and Latin text alternating verse by verse with English
This is a PDF, 343 KB, and is now downloadable here. This is a very early Christian document, by the Overseer of Smyrna, the Martyr Polycarp. It is the Greek and Latin text alternating with the Greek and Latin text alternating verse by verse with an English translation. Also contains the Greek and Latin text alone afterward, plus two other English translations alone, by J. B. Lightfoot, and Kirsopp Lake. Download Polycarp Epistle to the Philippians.
“And these were more noble than those in Thessalonika, in that they searched the scriptures daily, to see whether those things were so.”
Robertson, A. T.: A Grammar of the Greek New Testament It is a PDF, 6.5 MB in size. Download Robertson Greek Grammar.
Robertson, A. T.: An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament,
PDF, 10.4 MB; now downloadable here. Download Robertson: Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament.
Robertson, A. T.: Studies in the Text of the New Testament, PDF, 8.6 MB
Now available for download. Download Robertson-Studies in the Text of the New Testament.
Robinson-Pierpont Greek Text of the New Testament, Byzantine text form
Now available for download here: Robinson, Maurice A., and Pierpont, William G.: The New Testament in the Original Greek, Byzantine Textform (2018); with NA28 variant readings within the text (NA29 in Acts), and with Appendix, PDF, 13 MB, 610 pages. Download Robinson-Pierpont NT PDF. The Appendix by Maurice A. Robinson is entitled: The Case for Byzantine Priority.
A stripped down 2018 edition, with no variants or Appendix, and with minimal formatting, is also available: 9 MB PDF, 453 pages. Robinson-Pierpont 2018 GNT, No Variants.
Also available, for textual criticism experimentation, is an all-majuscule / uncial edition. That was the PDF link; you can also download a Microsoft Word “.docx” edition of the Robinson-Pierpont 2018 Greek New Testament in all majuscule.
Rutherford, W. Gunion: First Greek Grammar- Accidence; PDF, 4 MB; First Greek Grammar- Syntax, PDF, 5.5 MB
Download Rutherford First Greek Grammar, Accidence. Download Rutherford First Greek Grammar, Syntax.
Scrivener, F.H.A.: A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the Received Text of the New Testament, PDF, 8.5 MB
Scrivener, F.H.A.: An Exact Transcript of the Codex Augiensis, & A Full Collation of 50 Manuscripts, PDF, 31 MB now available for download.
Download Scrivener Codex Augiensis transcript.
Scrivener, F.H.A.: A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. 2
PDF, 12 MB – Versions, Editions, Greek dialects, Select Passages. Download Scrivener Plain Introduction Vol. 2.
Scrivener, F.H.A.: A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. 1
PDF, 32 MB, now available for download.
An image of Scrivener from the book A Plain Introduction Vol 1., free download.
Collation of Textus Receptus editions now available for download: Scrivener, F. H. A.: Appendix B: Collation of all editions of the so-called Textus Receptus (in a Hoskier work). Click here.
Many people like to do a Bible Study pertaining to the underlying Greek Text that is used in the older Bibles compared to a new Bible.
This is a collation of Textus Receptus editions their differences, PDF, 1 MB. This document shows all the differences between Robert Stephens’ editions, Erasmus’ 5 editions (especially 1550), Elzevir 1624, and editions of Beza, Aldus, Colinaeus. These all are called the “Textus Receptus” or “Received Text.” By the term “Textus Receptus” is meant these various Greek New Testament editions from which the translators of the Geneva Bible, the Bishops’ Bible, the Great Bible, and the King James Bible, translated, to make their English translations of the Bible. Download here. This is what we mean by the Textus Receptus.
Smith, William: A First Greek Course, containing accidence, syntax, exercises for lower grades, PDF, 7.5 MB
Download Smith Greek Course
Smyth, Herbert W.: Greek Grammar for Colleges, PDF, 16 MB
Download Smyth Greek Grammar.
Sophocles, E. A.: A Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, PDF, 69 MB.
Download Sophocles.
Souter, Alexander: A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, PDF, 7.5 MB
Download Souter Pocket Lexicon
Tregelles, Samuel P.: Greek New Testament, version 2, corrected, ed. Dirk Jongkind et al., PDF, 3 MB
Download Tregelles Greek New Testament.
Stephens, Greek New Testament, 1550, PDF, 2.5 MB
Download Stephanus Textus Receptus
Tyndale, William, New Testament, PDF, 1.7 MB
Download Tyndale NT.
Wilson, Richard: UBS – Byzantine text differences;
1.1 MB PDF listing all differences in the text. Download.
Von Soden, Hermann F.: Greek New Testament, Part 1, Investigation, PDF, 57 MB
Download Von Soden Pt 1
Von Soden, Hermann; Greek New Testament, Part 2, The Textual Evidence -Classifications & Text Types of the NT Manuscripts, PDF, 340 MB
Download here.
Von Soden, Hermann; Greek New Testament, Part 3, the Text with Apparatus, PDF, 183 MB
Download here.
Walton’s Polyglot
was a mammoth work compiled by Brian Walton, consisting of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Chaldean, Samaritan, Greek, Arabic, Ethiopic, Latin, plus variant readings of Codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, in 1657!
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 1, Prolegomena & Variant Readings, PDF, 185 MB
Here.
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 2, Genesis – LeviticusA, PDF, 100 MB
Here.
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 3, LeviticusB – JudgesA, PDF, 101 MB
Here.
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 4, JudgesB – IV KingsA, PDF
99 MB Download by right clicking here.
Walton’s Polyglot Part 5; IV KingsB – PsalmsA, PDF, 92 MB
Download by right-clicking here and choose “save as.”
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 6
PsalmsB – JeremiahA, PDF, 115 MB. Download here.
Walton’s Polyglot, Part 7
JeremiahB – EcclesiasticusA, PDF, 112 MB, download by right-clicking here.
Walton’s Polyglot Part 8
Contains EcclesiasticusB – Maccabees, PDF, 102 MB; download by right-clicking here, and choose “save as,” or “save link as.”
Walton’s Polyglot Part 9
Containing Numbers, Deuteronomy and most of the gospels, is now downloadable. Right-click here and choose “save as” or “save link as.”
Part 10 of Walton’s Polyglot
Contains Gospel of JohnB, Acts, Paul, Catholic Epistles, Revelation, PDF, 107 MB. Right click here to download.
White, John W.:
First Greek Book, Alphabet, Paradigms, Syntax, Verb Parts, Word Grouping, Vocab, PDF, 5.2 MB
White & Morgan:
An Illustrated Dictionary to Xenophon’s Anabasis, PDF, 14 MB.
Whitney, S. W.: The Revisers’ Greek Text, Vols. 1 & 2, PDF, 18 MB
Winnemucca, Sarah: Life Among the Piutes
Sarah Winnemucca was the first native American woman to write a book in English. In her book, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, she describes her childhood, her clan’s first meeting with whites, her education in English, and her becoming a go-between between her people and the United States government. I highly recommend this book. I am sure you will find it interesting. PDF, 1.6 MB
Adv.: Instant King James Bible download, including app for iPhone, with 5 bonuses.
Have you ever noticed, that while engaged in your Bible study, when you consult many commentaries, that they all seem to have some of the same answers, or seem afraid to break the mold? They don’t even comment on so many of the Bible verses you want to study. This new Bible translation has footnotes that are unique, and original thinking. For example, in many Bible verses, especially in the Gospel of Luke, there are verbs that are “continuous aspect.” These Bible verses make no sense unless you understand them that way. I translate those Bible verses as continuous in English, and have footnotes and end notes explaing why. This is an example of what I mean when I say these documents will make a unique Bible study for you. Download these new Bible translations for a unique Bible study.
Someone commented on the fact that I apparently think that present tense in the verbs means “continuous.” One man in Illinois said, “Show me just one authority on New Testament Greek, that says this is so.” (I don’t think he considered me remotely qualified to make a new Bible translation. He also did not notice many Bible verses where this is clearly taking place.) So, here are some lessons in N.T. Greek verb tenses, from two authorities that do say this is so.
The first is from A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, by F. Blass and A. DeBrunner, A translation and revision of the ninth-tenth German edition, incorporating supplementary notes of A. DeBrunner, by Robert W. Funk, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London (1961). This is one of the top two or three advanced grammars of New Testament Greek. You won’t find a higher authority than this. In my footnotes in my new Bible translation, I refer to it as “BDF” for Blass-DeBrunner-Funk. Here is what they have to say about the Greek tenses, in Section 318, in pertinent part.
**COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S |
Independent Labour Party (ILP), Orwell made his way to the militia barracks of the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista, otherwise known as the POUM, a party of the far left. There, and without fuss, he signed on as ‘Eric Blair, grocer’. Grocer. How unheroic can you get? He was not really a grocer. He could have signed on as ‘Author’ with far more justification, or bookshop assistant, or even schoolmaster. He was renting a Hertfordshire cottage that used to be a grocer’s and he and his wife had kept the shop going as a sideline, making a little money selling mostly sweets to kids in half-penny packets. But when it came to signing on to fight in a socialist revolution, being one of the ‘we of the sinking middle class’ suited him best. He was a grocer now and, naturally enough, first cue was yet another encounter with heroes he could believe in: In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers’ table. He was a tough-looking youth of twenty five or six, with reddish yellow hair and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye. He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast, gazing with a puzzled frown at a map which one of the officers had open on the table. Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend—the kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not he was a Communist. There was both candour and ferocity in it...
‘Italiano? ’
I answered in my bad Spanish: ‘No, Ingles. Y tu? ’
‘Italiano.’ As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was as though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy. I hoped he liked me as well as I liked him. But I knew that to retain my first impression of him I must not see him again. One was always making contacts of that kind in Spain. Orwell would write a poem in this man’s memory. After the bad days of Comstockery, the quality of his poetry was improving with the quality of his encounters: The Italian soldier shook my hand Beside the guard room table; The strong hand and the subtle hand Whose palms are only able To meet within the sound of guns, But oh! what peace I knew then In gazing on his battered face Purer than any woman’s! Eric Blair, grocer, spent six months in Spain, mainly on the Aragon front with the eighty men and assorted dogs and uniforms of an under-strength centura of the Lenin Division of the POUM militia. He was prepared to die with these men, and for them if necessary. Not everything was to his liking. Military training was useless, modern weapons were rare, the barracks was filthy, standards were low. Even the buglers couldn’t play properly. The usual adjectives came out and did duty: ‘frightful’, ‘disgraceful’, ‘wasteful’, and so on. So did the smells: this time, the horse-piss and rotten oats of a former cavalry barracks. He noted in passing how some magnificent chargers had been captured and handed over to the militia, who were busy riding them to death. This was not a free society nor even an attractive one, nor could it be, but in those first few days Orwell was convinced that it was the most equal society he had known. Just as he saw the English miners as "genuine working men," so he saw the Spanish militias as ‘genuine revolution- aries’, ‘microcosms of a classless society’. At the front he reckoned complete equality, or something not far from it, had been achieved. ‘Snobbishness, money grubbing, fear of the boss etc.’ had ceased; class prejudice had gone; comradeship was real and unaffected. Above all, he was struck by the ‘essential decency... straightforwardness and generosity’ of the Catalans.
In other words, he thought he had found what he had been looking for in Part Two of Wigan Pier: a socialism that did not need its ‘sleek little professors’ to tell it what it was. He intuited the same instincts in the Spanish working class which he had found in the English. In Lancashire and Yorkshire he believed he had found the real England in a class of men whose loyalty was not to something abstract, as it tended to be with intellectuals; or to something he could hardly comprehend, as it was with the Burmese; or to something unknowable, as it was with the tramps—but a loyalty to each other, face to face, here and now, without question, whatever the odds. And so it was with the Catalans, except they were not only loyal, they were armed and loyal. The English miners were a class in themselves. The Spanish militias, on the other hand, were a class for themselves. Having saved the Republic from ‘Black’ Spain, the land of colonels, priests, and landowners, they now seemed ready to establish Red Spain, a land fit for workers and peasants. Here began Orwell’s first lesson in Revolution: when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and café had an inscription saying it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even unceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos dias’. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist.
He saw action twice. First in early April as part of a wider Republican drive—as reported in the New Leader at the beginning of this book. Orwell’s own account of the action is in chapter 7 of Homage to Catalonia and is a masterpiece. If the attack was part of the revolution, he is saying, no politician could possibly comprehend it because we who made the attack could not comprehend it either. Their rifles jam, their bombs stick, they crawl on their bellies sick with fear there, and they crawl on their bellies sick with fear back, and they achieve nothing in between but casualties. None of this was predictable before the attack. None of it made sense after. Orwell gets back to his lines, quite incongruously remembering only ‘the bare misery of the Fascist dug outs’. They are told by their superiors that the attack was a great success, but he hardly believes it. They always said such things. He never made of the war more than a matter of being there. When he looked back, what mattered most was ‘first of all the physical memories, the sounds, the smells, and the surfaces of things’. The rest was a question of getting through it with all the experience, instinct, and common sense you could cup in your hands. If you have no heavy weaponry and face an enemy who has machine-guns, there are only three things you can do. You can dig in at 400 yards. You can advance and get mown down. Or you can make pointless small-scale night-attacks of the sort described. The common-sense alternative to all this, and what matters most, apart from a weapon that doesn’t jam, was firewood, food, tobacco, candles, warm blankets, good boots, and a daily alternative to the boredom and the vermin. Always drawn to the little platoons and the little platoons to him, his comrades made him their corporal. After 115 days away, Eileen remembered him back from the front. ‘He arrived completely ragged, almost bare-foot, a little lousy, dark brown and looking really well. For the previous 12 hours he had been in trains consuming anis, muscatel out of anis bottles, sardines and chocolate.’
No sooner was Orwell back in Barcelona than he was in action again. This time, however, he found himself fighting his own side. After months of left factionalism in government circles, a new Republican army was on the streets of Barcelona while the old Caballero regime was falling apart in Valencia. By the middle of May, after perhaps 500 had died in what Orwell later referred to as a ‘dust up’ between the army and the militias, Juan Negrin was in, Caballero was out, and the POUM was on its way out. Internecine struggles had been simmering all winter. They boiled over on 25 April, after Caballero dismissed the Communist-controlled defence committee of Madrid and fighting broke out between Anarchists and Communists in the Catalan border town of Puigcerda, and Roldan Cortada, a well-known Communist, was assassinated in Barcelona. When Orwell arrived back on the 26th mass rallies were taking place in memory of Cortada, while Anarchist suspects were being rounded up. Orwell was due to return to the front in a matter of days, but opted to stay put while the POUM militia—officially subordinate to the mass Catalan Anarchist trade union the CNT, but fiercely independent too—stood its ground and refused to surrender its weapons. Fighting broke out in and around the Telephone Exchange on 3 May, after police tried to dislodge telephone workers who had been carrying out their duties in a conscientious Anarchist fashion. He looked on amazed at the sudden turn of events. While the POUM was fighting Fascists at the front, the Republic was fighting, or at any rate hassling, the POUM in its own backyard. ‘Anti-Fascism’ was a Communist concept subject to an array of Soviet interpretations, but this was ridiculous. Loyal to his comrades, and loyal to the anti-Fascist cause as he saw it, Orwell took his rifle, an old Mauser, up onto a cinema roof overlooking the Ramblas and loitered there looking for a kill. In so doing, as a well-educated man at the heart of a revolution, he mused that he should feel part of history. But he never did. ‘At such times the physical details always outweighed everything else’:
Throughout the fighting I never made the correct ‘analysis’ of the situation that was so glibly made by journalists hundreds of miles away. What I was chiefly thinking about was not the rights and wrongs of this miserable internecine scrap, but simply the discomfort and the boredom of sitting day and night on that intolerable roof, and the hunger...If this was history it did not feel like it. Orwell had not come to Spain to fight a left-wing government. After his initial infatuation with a classless society, he knew by now how perplexing Spain could be, and how squalid, but he had warmed to his comrades and was shocked and distressed at the lies that were being told, slandering them as Fascists and fifth-columnists. At the same time, he knew the military limitations of the militias, was never going to be convinced by his own side’s incipient Leninism, and remained a supporter of the Republic. He still wanted to join its army once he had stopped resisting it. Just before the street-fighting broke out on 3 May he told a Comintern representative that he hoped his connections with the POUM would not count against his application to join the International Brigade, then fighting in defence of Madrid. Subsequently he applied for a discharge from the POUM and did not report to their Barcelona barracks as instructed. He only wanted to get to Madrid and do some hard fighting, and probably some hard reporting too. Up to this point Orwell had inclined to the Republican and Communist-party ‘fight-the-war’ line over the POUM’s ‘fight-the-war-and-the-revolution’ line. But equally, he never had any illusions about growing Soviet influence on the Republic, and could not help noticing how capable Republican security forces looked compared to his own tattered comrades in the militia. After a few days street-fighting and stand-off, the shooting died down and a deal was struck. Assault guards came in from Valencia to patrol the streets, carrying their new Russian automatics with pride. At the front, the POUM’s ancient rifles exploded on their shoulders. Then it was back to the front on 10 May. Later in May, however, he was in Barcelona again, just out of the military field hospital at Lerida. Contrary to his claim that enemy snipers couldn’t hit a bull in a passage, Orwell had caught an early morning hola right through the throat: a high-velocity 7 mm-calibre bullet between the trachea and carotid artery. This time the war finally hit home. It was not long since he had described shooting an elephant in Burma. Now he was describing being shot himself in Spain. We should not be surprised that the sensations for Orwell and his elephant were the same. The writing always comes first:
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick—one never does when a shot goes home... In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down...he sagged to his knees. (‘Shooting an Elephant’, New Writing, 1936) Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock—no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sand bags in front of me receded into immense distance...The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling. (Homage to Catalonia, 1938) He was lucky to survive. As he said, Spanish marksmanship saved his life a few times. It took eight days to move him down the line from field stations to hospitals to a sanatorium in Barcelona where, after two weeks’ convalescence, he was released. Released, but as a soldier not discharged, and by no means at liberty. For its part in resisting the May demilitarization the POUM was being accused of treason in the press, and on 16 June, the day after a sick and heavily bandaged Orwell set out back to the front to secure his discharge papers, the government finally declared it an illegal organization, raiding its offices and closing its newspaper, La Batalla. Security police and others were making arrests. POUM’s leader, Andres Nin, was taken on the same day, and held in a Communist private prison, or checa, where he was tortured, possibly with some government knowledge (though it was still early for the Negrin government which had only been in power three days). Other comrades, including Georges Kopp, formerly commandant of the Lenin division, and Bob Smillie, from Orwell’s old platoon, had also been arrested, Kopp on 20 June. It took no time for Republican security forces to identify Orwell and his wife as spies. On 18 June, the same day her husband was issued with a medical discharge and safe passage by the 29th Army Division, security men raided Eileen’s room at the hotel. She stayed in bed, concealing their ILP papers. When Orwell got back from the front on the 20th the Blairs expected to be arrested at any minute. Because Eileen was clearly the bait, she stayed at the hotel while Orwell slept rough. They pestered the British Consulate for visas and looked for a way out, while at considerable risk to themselves they also went to see Kopp in jail, where they lobbied on his behalf. To no avail. Kopp spent eighteen months in prison. Bob Smillie was already dead—murdered, or allowed to die in custody, whichever way it was.
On 23 June, along with Stafford Cottman, another British volunteer from Orwell’s old platoon, and the ILP official John McNair, the Blairs left Barcelona by train, posing as war tourists. If they had been caught they would most certainly have been arrested. Three weeks after crossing over into France a full indictment was published against them for High Treason and Espionage: ‘One must consider them ILP agents of the POUM.’ ‘Eric Blair took part in the events of May.’ It seems they had been spied upon by men they took to be their comrades. Here ended Orwell’s second lesson in Revolution. Man to man Orwell claimed later that he had gone to Spain knowing nothing of Spanish politics and with no idea what kind of war he was joining. He saw it as a war against Fascism and that was that. But this was not quite true. The Road to Wigan Pier is not exactly politically innocent, and there are strong similarities in the stance he took against left-wing intellectuals in that book and the stance he took against them in Homage to Catalonia. In other words, he was keen to write a book about Spain just as he had written one about England, and just as he drew powerful conclusions from his English experience, so he drew them from his Spanish, with exactly the same reversals of expectation. He goes to Wigan with grave doubts about capitalism, and leaves it with grave doubts about socialism. He goes to Spain an out-and-out anti-Fascist, and leaves it an out-and-out anti-Communist. Orwell’s politics was developing now as a matter of truth to action. The miners had shown him a better England and made him a better man. The Spanish people had saved the Republic and shown him a new Spain. Twice he had seen the truth for himself. Now he was going to act on it.
So, in a small footnote to the history of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell returned to London to defend the actions of the POUM and to sever his links, such as they were, with Communist and Communist-influenced sections of the British intelligentsia. He was not alone in this. The ILP and the Glasgow POUM Defence Committee both launched campaigns to defend their arrested Spanish comrades. More important, during the summer and autumn of 1937, goaded by letters from Kopp about the squalor and brutality of life inside a Republican prison, Orwell forged an aggressive, unrelenting essay style that would come to be his trademark: establish the truth of the encounter; show its wider political significance; challenge the reader’s moral integrity. This style had started surprisingly well in 1931, in ‘The Spike’ and ‘A Hanging’, but had deteriorated somewhat in Down and Out in Paris and London, only to languish in the novels but stay alive in the book reviews, to show new life in Burmese Days, and look promising again with The Road to Wigan Pier. Unlike that work, however, which simply bolted his politics onto his experience, Homage to Catalonia, as Richard Keeble shows, blended them together in ways that mixed into a single, absorbing story. Homage to Catalonia is told in the first person. It rarely speculates beyond that, but equally there is hardly a sentence which does not carry some wider nuance. Consider how his description of the attempt to save Georges Kopp turns from a matter of first-person fact into the wider significance of why it matters at all. The narrative starts, ‘My wife and I visited Kopp that afternoon’. They try to retrieve from the police documents that had been taken from Kopp and might serve to save his life. An army officer helps. He is entirely sympathetic, if entirely proper, in his response to Major Kopp. The police, by contrast, are corrupt. Having retrieved the army documents but having failed, nevertheless, to obtain Kopp’s release, Orwell and the army officer accept the situation, bow slightly to each other, ‘and then there happened a strange and moving thing, the little officer hesitated a moment, then stepped across, and shook hands with me’. Orwell says he records this encounter because, ‘trivial though it may sound... it is somehow typical of Spain’. Note the ‘somehow’. As in Orwell’s exchange with the militiaman at the start of the book, the passage may be rooted in chance encounters and quicksilver reporting, but it is also reaching out with a wider meaning, a meaning which in a lesser writer or a lazier journalist would look tendentious. Encounters like this are repeated all through; they are his homage. Orwell is feeling his way not only towards an anti-politics politics, but also towards an anti-literary literariness that ultimately becomes his house style. I have not got the time to make the story into literature, he seems to be saying. But he only seems to be saying it. In Orwell, the writer always beats the journalist to the story.
Rather than identify ‘Orwell’ as like them, we do better to identify a coming generation of journalists as like him. Always a better essayist than a novelist, in Homage to Catalonia he is a book-length essayist trying to capture the intimacy of the first-person novelist. Jenni Calder has called this ‘the necessity of action’ in his writing. The style was not entirely original. Documentary film-makers had been trying to do first person for ten years or more. Social investigators had been taking readers into London slum life for well over fifty, and a few before that. Modern war reporting had relied on personal witness for even longer. Orwell’s notebooks bulged with cuttings and pamphlets and duplicates. He had always been an immediate, there-and-then kind of guy; keen to know, find out, explain, move on. His nieces and nephews remembered him that way. So did the Peters brothers—‘A walk was a mixture of energy, adventure and matters of fact. The world, we felt, was just like this.’ So did the boys he taught at prep school. He was a good teacher. His flatmates, schoolfriends, and Spanish comrades too, all remembered him as someone who ‘always reacted to situations’, was ‘awfully personal’, and who wanted to get involved and understand people. ‘He was not, I repeat, not a snob.’ You might say, therefore, that even though he hardly ever worked to deadlines from the front, there was something of the journalist in him. But you might also say that a man who went in search of the truth was bound to react strongly when his own side told lies, not only against himself but against his wife and comrades too, as a matter of course. Orwell felt trashed by Republican Spain. Fascism could never have hurt him like this, because he had no interest in Fascists. It was as if in Barcelona his taste for life and his taste for art and politics came together, once at the outset to be exalted, once at the end to be disgusted. In defence of the Revolution and against those who had betrayed it, Orwell found his voice. No English journalist, with the possible exception of Hazlitt or Cobbett, had been so personally driven or self-possessed. So, in his urge to tell it like it was whatever the cost, Orwell had a lot of the journalist in him. But the theory was that the modern press had learned not only to invent ‘the masses’, but to comfort and deceive them too. The first British instance was generally thought to be the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), a literary war with Kipling taking special briefings from the generals while Edgar Wallace (Daily Mail ), Henry Nevinson (Daily Chronicle), Winston Churchill (Morning Post), and J. A. Hobson (Manchester Guardian) reported back from the action. South Africa was a unique war in British history. For the first time, a tight relationship between pressmen and politicians was apparent. In the United States, Walter Lippman talked in 1922 of ‘the manufacture of consent’ out of newspaper stereotypes and fictions, while Norman Angell talked in 1914 and again in 1926 of the newspaper industry’s daily drive for ‘the quickest reaction from the very largest number’. In Great Britain, Harold Lasswell warned in 1927 against too much emotion in the press— though not without admiration for newspapermen’s ‘terse, vivid’ style and rapid storytelling. Orwell’s first published pieces, as we have seen, followed these sociological lines by addressing the twin problem of state censorship in Britain and mass commercialization of the press in France. The view from the left was that in the capitalist news kingdoms of the world—pioneered by Northcliffe in England and Hearst in the United States—everything was bland and mass-manipulated. This view was endorsed by the press lords themselves. But there were countervailing developments too, in particular a growing personal and professional commitment among journalists to getting as close to what was happening as possible, and telling it in their own name, whatever the cost. Long before Orwell, therefore, and in a way which suited his dissent from the orthodoxies of both the right (mass news is popular opinion) and left (mass news is manipulation), ‘being there’ in order to tell the truth had grown to be part of the journalist’s trade. By the time he was thinking of going to Spain, ‘with some notion of writing newspaper articles’, the greatest living practitioner of the trade was Ernest Hemingway.
Like Priestley and Chesterton, Hemingway was one of those writers whom Orwell never gave his full attention but with whom he had a lot in common. Both men had lived in the same area of Paris in the 1920s; both were anti-Fascist and anti-Communist, not party men but pro-Republican and pro the masculine virtues too, not only in their lives but in their prose. When they speak, you listen. When you listen, it is in that man-to-man, democratic way that so impressed Thomas Paine in revolutionary America in 1776 and Orwell in revolutionary Spain in 1937. That said, while Orwell served in a trench on twopence a day, Hemingway was in and out of Spain (five times), staying at the Hotel Florida courtesy of the North American Newspaper Alliance on a dollar rate of $500 a cable. He even had a chauffeur (in Madrid he had four), and his girlfriend Martha Gellhorn had a direct line to the White House. All the same, man (and girlfriend) could really write. Although Orwell affected disdain for Hemingway’s tough-guy prose, it is hard to believe he did not learn from it. Years later, when they were both serving as newspaper war correspondents, they met briefly in Paris at the Hotel Scribe, an incident that the American felt obliged to inflate as time went by.
Orwell also had much in common with two other great left-wing American writer-reporters—Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck. He, like them, never saw himself as anything more than a jobbing writer and shared something of their ‘ordinary Joe’ prose style. Steinbeck would come to be seen as ‘uniquely American’, just as Orwell would come to be seen as uniquely English. More than Hemingway perhaps, and along with two other belly-to-earth Americans, Miller and Faulkner, Sinclair, Steinbeck, and Orwell were committed to trying to tell the truth about ordinary lives. Miller’s Avenue Clichy, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Sinclair’s Packingtown, Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley, and Orwell’s Aragon Front all came out of being there and getting it right. Orwell never could and never did write a novel as good as The Grapes of Wrath, but Steinbeck’s taste for ‘the shock of first hand observation’ and ‘complex, self-contained, imaginative worlds’ matched Orwell’s politics, and Sinclair’s Chicago Union stockyards prefigured twentieth-century totalitarian genocides not a world away from "Nineteen Eighty-Four." All these writers knew how very small worlds could contain very big ones. Orwell got out of Spain believing that it was just a rehearsal for the next big war to come. Along with civilian bombing, mass mobilization, and the inexorable shift towards total government and a new kind of politics, he was convinced that another key feature of war would be how intellectuals would seek to deceive the masses. Not for the first time, he was taking his arguments, as well as picking his fights, from the left, on the left. Determined to tell the truth about Spain, at the same time he was sympathetic to the Left Book Club line that in the age of the masses the truth was impossible:
In the last quarter of a century the whole picture has changed. Political propaganda has become the chief internal weapon of governments, and it is employed not only to persuade a sufficient number of people that a particular course of action is expedient or right, but to keep whole populations in a complete, and it is apparently hoped, a perpetual emotional subjection. He increasingly adopted Julien Benda’s argument that, as they were drawn into politics, intellectuals would find that if they told the truth they would not be able to go on being political, and if they went on being political they would not be able to tell the truth. Culpable if they did, and culpable if they did not, Orwell argued that in an age of opinion, these trends were clear for all to see across Europe’s intelligentsias: evidently so in the capitalist news and advertising industries, and flagrantly so in the one-party states—whether of the right or the left or the Vatican—where ambitious, rootless party intellectuals were in power through lies and deception. Orwell raged against them, starting with Gordon Comstock (an intellectual and victim of intellectuals) in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and going on right to the end with Winston Smith (the same) in "Nineteen Eighty-Four." In England he had known that all was not well on the metropolitan left long before Kingsley Martin’s New Statesman and Nation refused to publish his review of Franz Borkenau’s The Spanish Cockpit in July 1937. Comstock had shown a worrying propensity for self-deception—first sign of mass deception—and Wigan Pier had been intensely critical of left intellectuals for much the same reason. But what Orwell found pathetic in Comstock and repulsive in Kingsley Martin, he found murderous in Barcelona. His ‘Eye Witness in Barcelona’ (Controversy, 1: 11, August 1937) set the tone, and a good example of his desire to set the record straight can be found in his clinical, point-by-point sectional removal of F. A. Frankford’s charge of POUM treachery as published in the Daily Worker on 21 August 1937. At least Frankford had been to Spain. For those who had not been there and seen for themselves, Orwell took the opportunity to administer careful beatings. Stalinist duchesses were particularly welcome. Anti-communist Orwell’s reflections on the revolution in Spain, as told in chapter 5 of the first edition of Homage to Catalonia, are straightforward. In the summer of 1936 Spanish workers had taken up arms and aligned with loyal Republican forces in order to prevent a Fascist takeover by units of the professional army and police. In Catalonia these actions were accompanied by the spontaneous collectivization of farms, businesses, and local government. What had begun as the prevention of an army coup d’état therefore, turned into a full-blown revolution, a revolution made conscious by the myriad anarchist, socialist, and trade-union organizations—the PSUC, UGT, CNT, FAI, PCE, POUM, and so on—who steered it. A ‘plague of initials’, Orwell called them. Then, within a year of these momentous events, the USSR was trying to run the show according to its own ends, which were not (necessarily) those of the Republic or the revolution. Which is to say, according to Orwell at any rate, all that had been won in 1936 was being lost in 1937. His specific charge was that, under the new dispensation, the Republic was actively suppressing revolutionary groups and dismantling revolutionary achievements in order to reconstitute a bourgeois ‘popular front’ able to defend itself from Franco on the one hand while attending to its own (and Soviet) worries about the prospect of an extreme-left popular government on the other. Because this involved disarming and imprisoning men he had fought alongside, in Orwell’s eyes the government, and especially the Communists who were increasingly influencing the government, were little better than the enemy. ‘The point to notice is that the people who are in prison now are not Fascists but revolutionaries... and the people responsible for putting them there are... the Communists.’
According to Orwell, then, militias such as the POUM and the CNT who had resisted being disarmed on the streets of Barcelona in May 1937 were clear defenders of the revolution, while those who had tried to disarm them were its enemies. To him, these were grand facts— heavy beasts roaming an otherwise vague and indeterminate political landscape. Counter-revolutionary moves by a Communist-backed government had led to his comrades-in-arms being traduced, arrested, and imprisoned, their leader murdered, their offices closed, and their party declared ‘Trotsky-Fascist’. In response, in a flurry of essays and reviews, most notably ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’ (New English Weekly, 29 July and 2 September 1937) and ‘Eye Witness in Barcelona’ (Controversy, August 1937), followed by Homage to Catalonia in April 1938, Orwell told against those on the ideological left in Britain who had sold the revolution short by shutting their eyes to what was really happening.
What was really happening? Orwell stuck to what his eyes did see and to the POUM position—though not necessarily in that order. Sometimes he went beyond what he could actually have seen. Often what he actually did see was viewed in the light of the POUM position. He hardly considered Labour party policy on Spain as policy at all, vacillating as it did between supporting ‘democracy’ on the one hand and the ‘Republic’ on the other: both positions entirely rhetorical. And in a moment of high revolutionary ardour that would stay with him for the next three years, Orwell pronounced all Popular Front governments like Negrin’s freaks (bourgeois head, workers’ body), threw the charge that the POUM was Fascist back in Negrin’s face (‘the present government has more points of resemblance to Fascism than points of difference’), and insisted that even in time of war—especially in time of war—the revolution must come first. If you do not free the people, he argued, you will not win the war; and if you do not win the war, you will surely not free the people. All opposing views he dismissed as lies, or contrary to how the people on the ground actually saw things, which was in accord with how he saw things, which was usually in accord with his moment of ideology: My reading of the situation, derived from what people were actually doing and saying at the time, is this— The workers came into the streets in a spontaneous defensive movement, and they only consciously wanted two things: the handing-back of the Telephone Exchange and the disarming of the hated Civil Guards. In addition there was the resentment caused by the growing poverty in Barcelona and the luxurious life lived by the bourgeoisie. This was the POUM line at least, and although Orwell started out sceptical in the end he came down in favour of it, not so much because he believed the line but because believed in the men who believed the line.56 What mattered to him in Catalonia and Aragon was the same as what mattered to him in Yorkshire and Lancashire: not so much the politics as the people—the unbeliever who came to believe, the uncommitted who came to commit, the man who was blind who came to see. In this extract, note the withering away of what Orwell reasons to be the case and the slow, incipient growth of what he knows to be the case simply by his commitment to it: On the surface the quarrel between the Communists and the POUM was one of tactics. The POUM was for immediate revolution, the Communists not. So far so good; there was much to be said on both sides...But here the peculiarity of Communist tactics came in. Tentatively at first, then more loudly, they began to assert that the POUM was splitting the Government forces not by bad judgement but by deliberate design. The POUM was declared to be no more than a gang of disguised Fascists, in the pay of Franco and Hitler, who were pressing a pseudo-revolutionary policy as a way of aiding the Fascist cause. The POUM was a ‘Trotskyist’ organization and ‘Franco’s Fifth Column’. This implied that scores of thousands of working-class people, including eight or ten thousand soldiers who were freezing in the front-line trenches and hundreds of foreigners who had come to Spain to fight against Fascism, often sacrificing their livelihood and their nationality by doing so, were simply traitors...It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from the blankets, and to think of the sleek persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise...all the |
my career. As a principal, I will be frank with you– the kids really loved me. Even though I was the principal, and the principal is the one who is supposed to punish, when they had troubles, they came to my office to talk to me. To cry in my office.
We had our fourth child. By the way, Uri adopted by law all three of my children. He is a real father of everybody.
OK, Tzvia, now explain your love affair with Zionism, and how it passed. And what the stages were.
It’s not just me having a love affair with Zionism– it’s everybody. The education from first grade is Zionist. Second grade we already started to study bible. The Zionist movement was a secular movement, but it took the bible as the ethos of our existence. Everybody from second grade to 12th grade studied bible. It’s not a matter of choice.
Including the schools you were principal of.
Yes. Now don’t get me wrong, I love bible. I love bible! The thing that I got the most from Israel is the Hebrew language, because I can read the bible in my own language, and it’s a wonderful book. It’s not a book, it’s a collection of ancient writings. My master degree is in bible.
So there is the bible. You learn how you were an ancient people– so special. I mean these people, we were wandering on the globe for 2000 years! We were not exiled, by the way. If you study history, the Romans didn’t expel anybody. But the situation was very bad, and whoever was in a good situation could leave for other places. Like people do nowadays. But the idea of being the oldest people, from Abraham, to King David 3000 years ago. Then 2000 years ago– since then, we are wandering on the globe and finally the Zionist movement came to our salvation! [Sighing humorously.] What we learned– we learned about how the Zionism came to existence, we learned about the first pioneers coming to Israel, and Israel was in such a terrible shape. And the pioneers– they dried the swamps, the swamps caused diseases, and they had such hardships. And they were hungry. And it was so romantic. At the end of the day they were sitting around a campfire singing and dancing, and the kibbutzim and moshavim were built. All these stories– they are wonderful stories, and I taught them too! I taught these stories to my students. Bible is my favorite, and I can be an actress while I teach bible because there is so much drama there and so much politics there, and ach–it’s a great, great book.
Now I was leftist, you see, and Kibbutz Dan for instance was a kibbutz led by the Mapam party, which is like Meretz now– sort of. So I was the right kind of Zionist; in fact in those days before 67, before the Begin time, the right was not a nice thing to be. So in fact I was the mainstream. I was not Mapai– Labor, left mainstream. But Mapam. Nicer!
How many acts did your crisis unfold over?
Until 1967 everything was clear to me. Even the incident of Kafr Qassem. Are you aware of the massacre in Kafr Qassem. [In Oct. 1956, Israeli police massacred 49 Palestinian civilians in a city in the Triangle section near the West Bank]. Even that– I was not fully aware. I must say that I remember in the high school, when I was in the kibbutz, that we had a conversation about that! As if–what is there to talk about? This was an absolute crime!
Another thing that didn’t bother me, that I wasn’t aware of then, was the military regime until 1965 for the Palestinian citizens. I was not fully aware of that. I mean– How come?
Why not?
Another thing, I absolutely believed that in 1948 when Ben Gurion declared the state of Israel, the seven countries attacked Israel, and Israel won. Also I bought into the Partition. I didn’t understand how unfair it was. The Israelis accepted it and the Arabs didn’t accept it. So these were facts that were instilled in me- and I believed them! And I taught them too. And I taught about the celebration of the 29th of November 47 [UN Partition vote]. I taught how wonderful it was, how enthusiastic the people were. And during the independence days, we used to dance on the streets, it was such a day.
Now in 1967 there was a change. I was 23, and I had my first baby, he was six months old, and I was so scared I had a stomach ache. Because Egypt and Jordan and Syria– what I knew was, they attacked us. And I visioned myself running with my baby, and the Arabs are stabbing me. As you probably remember [from our first interview June 26], I didn’t know any Arab. And I went to friends of mine who were in their 30s, I thought they were really adults, and I said I am so scared, and they calmed me down. They said, “Listen, our army na na na na, and their armies, na na na na na. So don’t worry—the victory is ours.”
And as you know– six days, what a victory!
I was leftist but I was happy about the victory.
You know who Yeshayahu Leibowitz is? Thanks to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, I switched right away to the demand of returning all the occupied territories to the Palestinians and wanting peace. And this is the left position, until this very day. I mean: Return the occupied territories and make peace.
This was me being leftist. I was not very involved, I had little kids, I worked hard, I was not politically involved. And this is how it continued.
73 was of course a disaster. Then after 73 there was 82, the first Lebanon war and my husband Uri was in that war too. My husband, he was in ’67. in 73, and in 82 and in between. Whatever there was, he was in. We were Zionists. My husband and my brother. In the ’73 war, my brother had just finished his three years of service and he volunteered as a tank commander, to go to the war, and he came back alive.
Then in April ’83 my brother got killed.
I’m sorry.
Yah! [in pain] He was 31.
What was his name?
Arik. I mean his name was Ariyeh but we called him Arik. He was our baby brother. Had he lived now he would be 62. He was an angel. He was so good at heart. He used to save flowers– if there are buildings, and there are flowers, he used to take them and replant them elsewhere.
My parents never recovered. This is something you don’t recover from. Ever. For my father? My father would take off his shirt for his kids.
Where was he killed?
Lebanon. He was already Reserve, because he was 31.
Where were you when you heard?
I was in the US. I was in Connecticut. I was living in West Hartford. We just came from a day trip that we had with our kids, a wonderful day trip, I think we went to Rhode Island. We used to go on day trips. And I went up to rest and then my husband said that I need to come down, and I went down, and an Israeli woman was there.
At your door?
She came in our house. She needed to tell me so I will go to Israel for the funeral.
Why not a phone call?
Oh no; she came. The embassy called her because they knew her, she lived in the same town. So she came. I’m thankful that she came and not a phone call. And I didn’t know what I needed to take with me. I needed a passport, I needed something to change into, and her husband took me right away to the airport, and I flew to Israel. I remember during the whole flight I just was sitting in the window, and I cried and cried and cried. To be alone from the minute you are told until you get– it’s hours. It was so long. [Sighing.]
One of the things I realized– when I left Zionism, is: Memorial day. I hated Memorial Days. I used to go with my mother and my sister. I was part of it. And at the beginning, being part of this Memorial Day, being embraced by everybody, I thought it helped me to mourn. But then I couldn’t any longer participate in those memorial days with my heart, and I really hated it. They have their speeches, and what an hypocrisy! When the prime minister says, Our heart is with you. I mean, they play on our beloved blood. They dance on our blood. Do you say that in English? To dance on the blood? When you are using the dead for your own benefit? Because the Memorial Day is the day on which we have heroes. But the Palestinians have shahidim [martyrs] and the Israelis mock them, oh, they like shahidim. But what do we have? Why this Memorial Day? We have heroes. We have heroes. [ironically]
The same thing?
But of course. We have heroes! My brother was not a hero—[losing her composure] he wanted to live. There is a word in Hebrew, Hantzaha, comes from the word, eternity, forever. There are projects to make the fallen soldiers, to live in our souls. When Muslims say their shaheeds go to the garden of Eden, and have 70 virgins, that’s ridiculous, but when we do it for our people, they will live forever, that’s OK. My brother is dead, that’s it. He wanted to live. when he was a kid, he wanted to move to the Caucasus mountains because he heard people live so long there. He had so many dreams.
I became more critical after Nurit Peled-Elhanan and her husband Rami created the alternative memorial day, for the fallen– soldiers and non soldiers. It was then that I started to say to myself, what am I doing here? But I couldn’t go to the alternative memorial day because of my sister.
How did you know about Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s alternative?
Because I was a liberal Zionist.
What happened next?
Well I still was a Zionist. I taught in Hebrew school, Solomon Schechter day school, and I taught them about the beauty of Israel. And I was so enthusiastic about Israel that I was hired by Hadassah and I wrote books to teach Hebrew to adults—and all my Zionism was poured there!
It was?
Yeah! I loved Israel! I love Israel even now. I love to tour Israel. I know Israel like my palm. And I can go to the same places over and over again. For me it’s a homeland, yes, I’ve been there since I was 6. I mean the story of Zionism is another thing, but I grew up there. I’m attached to that. So I wrote for Hadassah books for learning Hebrew, very good books, you should know — full of love to Israel.
When?
In the ’90s.
What were your politics?
I was leftist. And I said that Israel must return the occupied territories, that there shouldn’t be settlements. I was Meretz. And I will tell you something funny. Because of the writings, because of my yearning for my homeland, I went back to Israel in 1995. And I lived in Israel from 1995 till 2012. I used to come here on my vacations, and my husband would come to Israel. He came less because he didn’t like going back to Israel even though he was a Zionist. He had had enough wars, and he hated the rightwing governments. As if there is a difference!
He thought there was?
We both thought there was a difference. And I mean realizing that the Labor Party was so much worse. I mean, these rightwing guys they put everything on the surface, you know who you are dealing with.
So I came back to Israel. And again I was the prinicipal of another elementary school in Jerusalem. And I was Meretz.
Now 95 when Rabin was killed, I did believe that Rabin was so great. He was better than the others, no question about that, even for the internal politics he was better than the others. He was very intelligent and honest. I don’t know whether he would have changed the reality to a better place, but he was a leader. So Rabin was murdered and Netanyahu came into office. You probably know, there are pictures where he walks with a coffin behind him [demonstrating against Rabin]. It’s like—what is the play by Shakespeare that he sleeps in the same bed of the one that he was responsible for his murder. Hamlet?
I was Meretz, and I was not that involved, I had a lot of work to do. When I retired when I was 67, I continued to work on my own. I had my own small business of teaching with my own ideas of what Israel should be and so on, but I was not active.
I had gone back with our youngest daughter, born here, our 5th child, Daphna. She’s 28 now. We have four daughters. Only two of them are active, but our [third] daughter Hadas who is now 37, already in her early 20s she understood what I only started to understand at the age of 64, in 2008. She went to Rutgers, and at Rutgers, you have some progressive guys. And she is very smart. She knew already, what is Zionism and what is Israel, and about the ethnic cleansing and all this stuff. But she is not a pusher; she did not talk to me or my husband about this matter. She left us, you know; you are free to find your own way.
Daphna, she is a completely different kind of person. I remember when she was in high school, we talked about Hadas’s politics, we said Hadas and us, we think alike, except we are Zionists, and she is not. We meant that in terms of economics. We think alike. But she is not Zionist, and we are.
You didn’t understand how profound a difference that was?
No. Meanwhile Daphna the youngest one moved back to the United States five years ago, and she started to see what is the real thing. Now Daphna is not like Hadas, and she gave Uri, Ilan Pappe’s book [The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine], and he was shocked. Shocked!
It was about the same time that I started my journey from Sheikh Jarrah [in East Jerusalem]. What drove me to Sheikh Jarrah was just the fact that people were kicked out. I was infuriated. You kick out people from their homes to the street? Now you see, in Jerusalem, there is a road running from south to north. This side is Jewish, this side is Palestinian. I never went to that side. You don’t go there!
The first times I went to Sheikh Jarrah, I met liberal Zionists. Moshe Halbertal. Assaf Sharon. They wanted to end the occupation but they were appalled to think that you might have to lose the Jewish state because of the occupation. We have to give back this land, so as to save Zionism. Was that you?
At that point, yes. The steps I made—I was speeding but at the beginning, I just wanted the people to live in their homes. And you cannot expel these ones, because of what happened before ’48– and not give back to them what belonged to them before ‘48.
You mean if you apply that principle to Sheikh Jarrah, why not apply the same principle of restoration in Baka, or in Walaja?
But I didn’t go that far. What I said was, in soccer it is called an own goal. I thought it was an own goal, Kicking out the Palestinians. You see I still was thinking like a Zionist. Because then you need to give back what belonged to them. So I still didn’t go all the way.. Though I was not fully aware of the Nakba at that time, I just thought that [the Jews] who had won their case in the court might lose in the long run,, I still believed that the judicial system might do equal justice for Jews and Palestinians. Of course I was wrong.
What got you all the way?
I started doing my own research. I went to every talk, every tour, I went with Machsom Watch to the West Bank, I went with Ir Amim to East Jerusalem and North Jerusalem, I went with Shovrim Shtika [Breaking the Silence] to Hebron. And then at Sheikh Jarrah, there was a guy with a small desk, and he asked, Who wants to sign to come to south Hebron hills with Ta’ayush? I didnt know what Ta’ayush was. But I am for adventures. That’s why I went to Kibbutz Dan. So I signed, and next Saturday morning 6 in the morning, I was with the Ta’ayush people. You know what Ta’ayush means in Arabic,
Together.
Together. I went with the Ta’ayush people, and this was a shock. Ezra Nawi and Emil Vardi told us what to do. Oh, Ezra he is the sweetest guy ever, his heart is– his last penny he would give to release Palestinians. I want to make some money for him, just to send him something! So I went there and I saw the Palestinians, and settlers came and the army came and the settlers didn’t let the Palestinians do– I don’t remember what it was. But I was so naïve. I said to Emil, Can’t I talk to this settler and tell them it’s not right. He said, go ahead.
What happened?
The settlers mocked me. They were the age, they could be my grandchildren.
They were very rude to you?
Oh definitely. The whole thing—you know how it works; the army comes, and the army says this is a closed military zone and that’s it, and everybody goes away. I was– all of a sudden– I saw the reality. And I was shocked.
What is that reality? Tell Americans, right now.
The reality is that I met the Palestinians that are so poor that they live without electricity, without roads, without water, and they are harassed, and they live in tents, in caves, in all kind of sheds, and they are harassed by the settlers, they are harassed by the army, they are harassed by the Civil Authority. And the only ones that are helping them there are the Ta’ayush people, and we have no power. Only being there and trying to stand up for their rights, and also argue with the army.
You were speeding then in consciousness?
Yes. And when I realized what the reality was, I called my sister whom I regarded as leftist– she is Meretz also– and I wanted to tell her what I experienced. And she didn’t want to listen to me.
What did she say?
Well. She is very gentle. But you can hear through the telephone when someone doesn’t want to hear you. She said, “I know, I have a friend who is in Machsom Watch.” And I said, “But I’m your sister, I want to tell you what I observed! I want to tell you what I experienced!” I was overwhelmed. She is gentle and polite and she listened.
Did she hear?
What I heard was that I will never tell her again anything about what I experienced. That’s it.
Has that been the case?
Well I tried once more. It was almost a fight, and I love my sister and–that’s it. I don’t care about losing my friends, but I don’t want to lose her, so I just gave up.
When did you go with Ta’ayush?
2008 2009 2010. Every Saturday. I was addicted to that.
What about the liberal Zionists who are involved in these actions and say, we need to preserve the Jewish state? Did you have this conversation? Did you share that view?
Among the radical Israelis, there is the inner more radical circle, that we want one democratic state between the sea and the river. However, I’m very scared of that.
You are?
Yeah. Not because the Palestinians will outnumber us. I don’t care at all. I’m afraid of even a worse apartheid because the ones who are in power won’t give up the power unless they are forced to, and what upsets me so terribly— Forget about Israel. Eventually it will disappear.
When, 100 years?
I don’t know. As long as the west especially America stands behind Israel, Israel still can exist. But do you know the most rightwing? They want a whole state, but they want to put the Palestinians in reservations. And they have a good example, what America did to the Indians. I mean America was much more successful. America really finished the Indians. Israel cannot because Israel is not in the 17th 18th 19th century. And after World War 2 the world changed, and Israel didn’t realize that. And it still has the support of America.
Am I right in thinking your chief influences were outside the country? Hadas at Rutgers, Daphna coming to America, Ilan Pappe. Your husband Uri fights in all the wars, he’s Israeli through and through. But he’s shocked by a book published in England by a Baghdad Jew? Why is this knowledge something that has to come from outside Israel?
Because in Israel only recently in the past couple years you can hear the word Nakba. The word Nakba– I didn’t know this word before.
So it is important to get outside Israel to understand?
Yes, yes. You see we used to go on many trips. We loved to travel in Israel. We’d go to archaelogical sites, and there are many in Israel. And we would pass Arabic ruins– they’re not interesting, they’re Arabs. I didn’t ask, who lived here? Or where are they? People in Israel– they’re blind. They’re absolutely blind.
Not only that. But I feel released here, that I can speak freely. You saw what happened now, with the mob on the streets that attacked the left demonstration in Tel Aviv, right? I truly think that soon enough there will be a murder.
But why didn’t you stay liberal Zionist? When I go to actions in the West Bank, there are activists I meet who are for a Jewish state. Is that still the case?
Yes
So why didn’t you stay in that spot? Why wasn’t that your path? Why did you go further?
Because it’s not right. It cannot be. It just cannot be. The Jews came, expelled the Palestinians and want a Jewish state, which means that 20 percent of the citizens who are Palestinians– they will be the second class citizens. It’s not their place. And I don’t care who lives there, whether they are Jews or Arabs or Africans- I want a country to be a democratic country.
By the way, with what is going on now in Gaza, I am absolutely not in favor of Hamas. They are fanatic religious people who make the people of Gaza miserable. But that is not the issue. They become more and more fanatic because when the situation is getting worse and worse, people become extremer and extremer. This is not the issue. The refugees’ problem must be resolved. The Jewish state—the Jewish state! I mean, where on earth can you have a country that is called Jewish state? Not Israel, but– Jewish state! And bringing into Israel a million Russian people– I don’t know whether they were Jews or not, and I don’t care—but just because they’re white. It is just a racist issue.
When did you understand that racism is at the heart of it?
Well, I was aware of the racism against the Mizrahim. But about the Arabs–I used to look upon that as discrimination. But it is discrimination based on racism.
How often do you talk to American Jews?
When I will be able to talk to American Jews, I feel I will fulfil something in my life. This is my goal, what I want to do.
When did you form the goal?
When I decided to come back here.
After Ta’ayussh and you couldn’t walk up the hills anymore. You said, I’m going to talk to American Jews. How are you doing with that job?
When I found Jewish Voice for Peace, I was happy to find radical Jews. But I must telll you about my friend who is 92. She is a New Yorker. She has been here since she was 7. They came from the shtetl in Russia. She was a radical and a communist, not a Zionist. She’s very smart. And now she’s in a home. So I and my husband went to visit her and we kept telling her what’s going on. And then when we touched ‘48, she jumped. She said, No no no no! You’re not telling me that Israel, a small country– it was attacked by seven Arab countries, did not have the right to fight for itself. So the change in the Jewry in the States won’t come from Roslyn.
What does Roslyn signify?
If she gets scared of what I am telling her, who can I talk to? I don’t know. I met another Jewish woman from West Hartford, I thought she might be radical. And it was true– she’s on my side. But guess what? She went public, and her friends left her. She used to be active in the community of greater Hartford.
She was excommunicated?
Yeah.
Has she accepted that?
She continues her work. But her friends in greater Hartford they don’t want to talk to her anymore.
Because she’s a radical on this question?
Because she doesn’t support Israel.
You have lived in this country a long time. Don’t you see a significant shift inside the Jewish community?
I don’t know enough to tell you. What I can say is, I met Sherry Wolf, and Sherry Wolf told me that she is sensing that among the young people there is some kind of shift. And the fact that there is J Street– some of them just are not brave enough to go all the way. So they are [air-quotes] Zionist. But some of them really aren’t. Some of them maybe they think like Jewish Voice for Peace [JVP] but they are not brave enough because the [mainstream Jewish] community doesn’t want you. And people need to feel that they belong to somebody, that they are part of a community.
In West Hartford I have some acquaintances. Because when I lived there, I was a teacher in Solomon Schechter day school for eight years. And then I left and I founded my own private supplementary school. So I have some fans there. I thought maybe I would go to West Harford,and meet people who have a say in the community. I want to confront them. Because I don’t care. It’s not like in Israel. Here I don’t care. In Israel I do care.
You would be scared in Israel?
You see, in Israel the atmosphere is such – that–
There’s not a lot of personal autonomy or freedom?
Yes. I have new friends in Israel with my own ideas, with whom I relate, much closer, much better, than with my older friends. But one of my best friends, when we talk on Skype, she tells me about her grandchildren. I tell her about mine. But I feel like I’m bored, I’m not telling her what really bothers me, I feel like I can’t talk about terrible things in Gaza. I can’t talk to her about the real things.
How’s your work going in West Hartford?
Oh I didn’t start yet. You see I came here last year. And I didn’t know my area. And I tried to find people to start to be active, and I called and I looked on the internet. Didn’t find. Didn’t find.
What about J Street?
No I knew I didn’t want them.
There’s J Street at Rutgers. Why don’t you walk in there and say, you people don’t know what you’re talking about?
I don’t know how to do that yet. I don’t have the connections. That’s why I want to go to West Hartford. I can talk to Audrey Lichter, Listen Audrey I want to meet you and I want to talk to you. Jeff Halper when he was here, he went to West Hartford, and he couldn’t get any synagogue, so he went into a church in West Hartford. So I want to confront Audrey Lichter, I know who she is, I know she’s active in the community. I know she’s smart, and she supports Israel. I want to tell her, this is stupid. I want to tell her what’s going on.
What would you tell her?
I don’t know yet. As I said, I’m here 10 months. What I found at first was the dialogue project; and that’s nonsense. Do you know dialogue projects. With Marsha [Kanry]? I went once.
Why didn’t you like it?
Because there is nothing to do there. Everybody is telling their feelings. I want to do stuff– not tell my feelings and get sympathy. This is not my goal. I just found Jewish Voice for Peace before I left for Israel at the end of January… And I became active there, and I’m happy. In JVP, I have a say. For instance, that demonstration [on June 26], it was due to my initiative. Because they were talking about Sodastream, Sodastream, and I felt that I was suffocating. And when they finished with SodaStream, I started to cry. Because I knew what was going on. And I said, We must do something. And they listened.
They were already starting the attacks on the West Bank.
Right. So I said we must do something. With all the respect to SodaStream, it’s not– And they listened. It was Monday, and the demonstration was Thursday. So it was quick.
So you are seeking to engage. So you are ambitious?
Oh I am a very ambitious person. Absolutely.
I have a goal. I will be satisfied when the people in the west especially America will understand who is the oppressor and who is the victim and why Israel is criminal, and will pressure their government to stop this crime from continuing. And I think, how can I do that. For my part? I can tell my own experience; I can explain how I came to this understanding. So J Street is a good goal—since they are not fanatic, they’re not AIPAC, so probably some of them may listen… But I think, in this country there are many blacks and Latinos and they don’t stand by the Palestinians. They are people who, from their own life, should support the Palestinians. I was so upset about the progressive mayor of New York who supports Israel. I suggested to JVP, but so far it doesn’t seem that they got enthusiastic about that. So I am trying to see if I can do something on my own to reach out for the blacks and the Latinos in New York.
Maybe I can approach them and tell them, Listen, your organization should do something. In the Bronx, in Harlem, in Brooklyn, Those are the place where I want to see demonstrations supporting the victims. They deserve their support. I don’t know yet how to do it, but I feel like the ground is burning, the people in Gaza are killed, and I don’t have time. How many more people will be killed? How many children won’t have water?
When I talk to my mother’s boyfriend, he says well the Jews have always been persecuted. We just want a safe place. That’s why we need Israel. We were wiped out in Europe. Don’t we deserve that? What do you say when– We need Israel because the world has always hated Jews.
In Hebrew I say that’s a diklum, something you put in people’s mouths and they say the same thing over and over again. A diklum is reciting something. Not like poetry. But in kindergarten you say Rasti Rasti venna halti. It’s a diklum, it’s for little kids.
How do I answer? First of all, the least safe place for Jews is Israel. I mean, If you look at the large picture, in the Middle East, most people are Arabs except for Iranians, and they feel closer to Arabs, because they’re Muslim. And in that area, this Israel, instead of cooperating with the people that live in the Middle East, they’re fighting them. How long will that last? For how long?
That’s why you say Israel can’t last?
It cant last. I just read Ali Abunimah’s book, an excellent book. And I don’t know what will happen to the Jews in Israel after being so terrible to the Palestinians. I don’t know, will they take revenge? I don’t know.
You see this guy. [She holds up a book: Roots Run Deep. Life in Occupied Palestine] Hamde Abu Rahma. Do you know him? So we visited him and bought this book from him. Because he shows the pain and he shows the beauty of life and I think that Hamde– I feel closer to him than to these [Israeli] bastards that go and kidnap kids from their beds at night. So Hamde won’t take revenge, he’s a man of life. But I don’t know!
So, first of all if you’re looking for a shelter, that’s the worst shelter on earth for Jews– just to be realistic.
Now whether the Holocaust that has been abused so badly by Israel—[sighing]. I’m not willing to live with this fear, I’m sorry. Maybe the people around here [in downtown New Brunswick], if they know that I’m Jewish, the most that can happen, They don’t like me.
That’s your assessment of the US.
Not only the U.S. You know, also, Arab countries, Morocco. The Jews there that didn’t leave Morocco, they live a better life there than their Morocco brothers in Israel. I think. I’m not sure. I don’t want to say things I’m not sure of.
The Jews who didn’t leave, you mean?
Yes. They’re trying to scare you, like the Muslims are conquering Europe and they’re going to go after the Jews. Well– who wants to be scared? I feel pity for them. But definitely Israel is not a shelter.
You know about the paranoid American Jews from the Holocaust, who say, It can happen again. They threw us out of England twice, Jews in Germany loved that place, things change. But you’re saying, You don’t live your life in that way?
What shall I do about paranoia? I don’t know. I’m not afraid. I’m not paranoiac.
In 2006, I began to meet Palestinians. And as you say, that’s very important. One day I was walking up Broadway, and a Palestinian shouted, my goal in life is to end Zionism. I was shocked by that statement, but now I would say, one of my goals in life is to end Zionism. Then a couple of years ago, I heard Hannah Mermelstein outside the Israeli consulate in New York saying, When someone asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, she said No. I was shocked then and now I’m at the point where I think, it shouldn’t be a Jewish state, I don’t know about right to exist. But everyone of us has changed our consciousness. And shocking moments bring awareness. So, you have had that process too. Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?
No. Absolutely not.
Why not?
It’s a racist state. Not a democracy. If it’s a Jewish state, meaning that the Jews are the privileged people, and then you have either the Palestinian citizens who don’t have the same rights, and you have the Palestinians under occupation, they have no rights whatsoever. Of course not! Are you going to have in America a Protestant state for instance; they’re a majority no? Or the demographics are changing here too? It’s an oxymoron. Do you know Shulamit Aloni?
No but she died.
Yes. She was Zionist until her last day, and her son Udi, he wanted to know, mom why are you Zionist after all this? Because she was outspoken and she was the one who said, It cannot be a Jewish and democratic state, cannot be. Shulamit Aloni said that. Udi said, So mom how come you are saying you’re a Zionist. She said, Oh, go away! She couldn’t deal with it. All her life she was Zionist. I don’t know what she thought inside herself. You see you live here, so you didn’t experience the pain that I’ve experienced. I had like an earthquake in myself.
In what way?
Everything. All the songs that I love that I heard on Independence Day. All the literature. All the myth with the newcomers. It was so romantic. All of a sudden, everything, it’s gone.
You were how old when this happened?
64.
What does that say about your maturity. Not to be judgmental. But it took you that long– what kept you from awareness so long?
You see, in Israel, all of us– the Jews– are brought together with little differences, left mainstream right, and not knowing, absolutely not knowing Arabs at all. They don’t exist. They exist only in theory. We would drive on main roads and highways, and you see the Arabic villages, they look different and they have the mosques. And you don’t go there. It’s not yours. And speaking for myself, I always, always worked in a very diligent way. I was very dedicated. It was not a job; for me, teaching and running a school, it was part of my life, and I had kids. So I had those ideas—Meretz– but I didn’t really pay attention because the Arabs were not in my life, I didn’t know what was going on. And only when I saw with my own eyes what the reality was—then I was shocked!
Before that there are walls. It’s not in the media. Not in our lives. They don’t exist. They are really half an hour from me. If it’s the back yard, you still can peek thru the window. But it’s not even the back yard, it’s covered, it’s completely covered.
There are the cities that have Jews and Arabs. Haifa, Akko, Jaffa |
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